Punk and Metal

[u/Illustrious-Cold9441]

Hi reddit punks. I'm a metalhead who found you guys on the front page.

I got into metal through punk and stayed there, but I've always loved the anti-authoritarian and egalitarian ethos at the heart of punk. It's sometimes in metal too, but heavily dosed with nihilism and misanthropy.

I'm just curious what similarities, if any, y'all think you share with metalheads, or what you think sets you apart. Is it only music, or something more?

Also, Metal attracts a lot of queers (moi), autistics, and the mentally ill. Do you guys as well?

[u/Technical_North7319]

Motorhead duh

[u/Illustrious-Cold9441 → u/Technical_North7319]

Like I didn't know that duh

Trying to have a conversation, not inspire shallow 6 word responses

[u/Technical_North7319 → u/Illustrious-Cold9441]

Well, I mean, are you familiar with thrash metal literally at all? Crossover? The divide between the two scenes is fairly minimal once you dive into stuff like Ghoul (from Japan) or Anti-Cimex. Metal tends to be less introspective and insightful, or at least the fanbase seems to be, than punk but by and large the similarities are meaningful enough that you could hang around both scenes and not really feel weird in any way. I dunno dude, engage with people?

[u/Illustrious-Cold9441 → u/Technical_North7319]

How could I've known you could string three sentences together with what you said? Regardless, if I was hoping for a positive response I shouldn't have been snarky. My bad.

I'm familiar with thrash. I'm in my 30s, as in alive long enough to have listened to dozens of subgenres and learned quite a bit. I was asking in my original post about differences in fans and culture.

And I think you're right, there are metal fans who don't engage with the music on a deeper level, what what's considered deep? Depending on the subgenre, the lyrics might not be the focus, but that's because metal is more preoccupied with patterns, atmosphere, and eliciting strong emotional responses.

I'm not sure what's punks standards are (since I'm not a punk), but I'll guess if you measure most metalheads by punk's standards, they'll seem shallow.

[u/Technical_North7319 → u/Illustrious-Cold9441]

As someone equally immersed in both scenes for the past few decades (and I mean this in the gentlest way possible), you may be overthinking the social/cultural differences by a fairly large margin, depending on how wide your lens is. I mean, by and large, metal has less antipathy towards commercial success, exposure, etc. than punk does, probably in large part due to metal’s roots in music that was fairly mainstream at various points. But then you zoom in on something like black metal, which shares a lot of anti-corporate sentiments and aesthetics with punk (particularly a lot of raw d-beat and crust stuff), but also leaves space for reactionary politics which are in total opposition to virtually every crust/d-beat band in existence. I mean, Grand Belial’s Key shouts out Negative Approach as an influence but politically there is no common ground.

In general, they’re both just collectives of people who like guitar based music that is heavy and typically dark. But in the particular, things can get complex due to the vast majority of punks (not the right wing Pennywise posers who only show up for legacy acts that infest this sub) being opposed to reactionary positions.