The Anti-reflexive Reflexivity of Metal

Every hardcore metal head knows who their favorite bands are and what kind of metal music they personally listen to.  In fact, I have been in countless arguments simply over the legitimacy or authenticity of certain metal bands.  I was a fan of progressive metal after I went through my intense Metallica and thrash metal phase.  I like bands like Dream Theatre, Planet X, Liquid Tension Experiment and others that fall into this interesting sub-genre.  When I would bring this up to Deathmetal or Metalcore fans, they would scold me and tell me “That’s not F*&%ing metal!  Bunch of Opera singers and Berklee grads get together and play stupid concept albums, get out of here.”  But for me, the music was so complex, so unique that I could not get enough of it.  I did not care what these other metal heads said due to what Kahn-Harris describes as “knowing better but deciding not to know.”  In the modern Western world, children are taught from a young age that everyone has a right to their own opinion.  In the metal community, where individuality is king, this has spawned deeply opinionated views about almost every aspect of the scene.  At a young age, I started to realize there are metal heads who have their own opinion and nothing is going to change it.  After years of arguing over the best guitarist or genre, I stopped fighting the losing battle and began not caring what other people thought, only what I like and wanted to listen to.  I would value the opinions of my closest friends, but the average death metaller did not have much input on metal music that I hadn’t already heard.  So I stopped caring about analyzing the musical subgenres and rating bands, and started caring about just the music that resonated with me.  That music happened to be progressive metal with epic stories, high operatic vocals, and complex instrumental sections dispaying incredible virtuosity.  I was infatuated with trying to play the guitar parts and solos of John Petrucci, lead guitarist of Dream Theater and still my personal guitar hero.  But just because I started to ignore the reflexivity in the metal scene does not mean I am not aware.  I still heard of new and upcoming bands and judged them and their impact on the scene by myself.  The only difference was I did not run around yelling and screaming that my band is better than that new band and their garbage polluting the scene.  So much new music has exploding onto the metal scene, it is hard to even keep up.  But I think that my views are more grounded in my love for the music than in the importance to the scene, especially as I have drifted further and further away from the metal music scene.