Racism is so metal

This article is something I need to get off my chest. I love heavy music with aggressive themes, from Black metal to hardcore to grind – I love it all. I love the catharsis and thrill that a pounding drum and palm muted guitar line can provide but sometimes the shit that comes with it really makes me wonder why.

Metal has well established problems with racism (see: below), sexism (see: lack of inclusion of any female members unless they are overly sexualised in a “female fronted” band) and a culture that suffocates new ideas or experimentation (see: recent festival bills with the same headliners as in the early 90s).

This week it was racism that reared its ugly head. What has particularly set me off is the latest event in a long line of racist events (Google it: there are a couple) that make up Phil Anselmo’s life. At the last week’s annual commemoration of iconic Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrel, the former Pantera member (also a member of Down, Superjoint Ritual and others) choose to finish his set by snapping off a Nazi salute and shouting “White Power” into the crowd (he later said that this was due to the fact they were drinking white wine backstage). This was captured on camera and put up on YouTube (however the video was put up on video a week after the event as the filmer was afraid of the backlash from tarnishing Anselmo’s name). The video is conclusive, Anselmo’s actions were horrific. There is no doubt that he is a piece of scum who, whilst a gifted vocalist, deserves to be recognised and castigated by the mainstream metal media for the awful bigot he is. But instead of reacting to a clear scandal (although one that has happened a bit too much in Anselmo’s life) metals major media outlets reacted slowly – if at all – to this despite in some cases being present at the dimebash event. Kerrang, Decibel and Revolvers were loath to call Anselmo out on his clearly racist actions as they were seemingly afraid of damaging their working relationship with a metal icon (Decibel and Revolver have had no mention of this even happening on their site in an age when being first to report on everything is so treasured). Others such as Metal Hammer chose to hide behind safe language using terms like “Nazi-esque gesture” and “allegedly shouted White Power,” when the guy clearly did it. Eventually after the smaller blogs had broke the news (and a couple of days later when the mainstream media finally caught up), these new articles were bombarded with metal fans defending Anselmo. Cries of “it’s just a joke” and “metal is meant to be offensive” echoed from the keyboards of hicks.

It should take no explaining why I’m annoyed at this but let’s spell it out. Famous man uses a far right salute and slogan. Man in crowd videos racist stuff and waits a week. Big media fails to report it despite being at the event (they were happy enough to host videos of Anselmo singing the Pantera classic ‘Walk’) and despite seeing the video. When reported, a scary number of metal fans didn’t seem to work out that racism is bad and can’t be excused as a joke.

It really annoys me that a society in love with being a subculture and “for the outcast” is so bad at excusing the persecution of minorities.

Not cool metal world.

Not cool.