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Went to a metal concert last year for a huge, well known band. The number of punisher/warrior, thin blue line, militia-styled ragged flag, Gadsden shirts and hats was off the charts.
In my younger days metal was anti-authoritarianism, anti-cop, anti-conformity… now these clowns are the ones who want to be holding the riot batons, the body armor, and support the very fascists we hated.
I got plenty of grey hair, the crowd around me didn’t so I’m thinking there’s a generational shift to metal going fascist.
Yeah, the meme rings pretty true.
Lot of metal recently using racist ideology, etc. Sucks that anything with a Celtic or Viking design has a racist vibe behind it now
Right? Of all people our veterinarian wears a Mjölnir necklace…I had to do a triple take to make sure he wasn’t a supremacist asshole, but no, he’s a legit Norwegian who likes Nordic style in general. He wears a Dragestil belt with silver inlay, some tattoos too. Cool guy. Sad that my first thought was wondering if he was a nazi supremacist because the symbols have been usurped and corrupted.
As an Icelander who still practices the old customs this drives me nuts. These scum lack the basic imagination to come up with their own logos so they steal our symbols? Fuck that.
I just wish one of the Kardashians or some influencer would go big on Nordic symbology and bring it to the mainstream. Maybe it would lose its appeal to these fucks.
That’s the thing, isn’t it? All these extremists steal other people’s stuff and corrupt it to their own purposes. Nazis did it. Religions did it. Supremacists are doing it with Nordic cultural symbols.
Fucking posers, man…
Yeah there are people who think (sterotypical) Vikings are their true “white” heritage and end up harassing anyone they don’t like out of fanbases for viking-related bands. Heilung, for example, had to publicly state that those kind of people are not welcome after some of them were harrassing a woman for having the “wrong” skin color to be able to participate at one of their shows. These guys haven’t yet figured out that their bigotry is the exact opposite beliefs of the vast majority of the pagan/viking/etc communities.
I find that whenever I go to metal shows, most people are very kind, polite and free of bigotry. Maybe what you’re describing is a US thing, or maybe it’s just that Metallica is a super mainstream band which attracts more dickheads than your average metal show.
I know metalheads have a history of gatekeeping, and keeping these fascists away from the scene should be priority #1.I can only offer what I experienced at the show I attended. Metallica was touring with Five Finger Death Punch, a very much right-wing “military rock” band that just sucks IMO. They straight up dog whistled the right wingers in the crowd using a lot of “there’s something wrong in this country” type of commentary. Metallica bringing them on tour doesn’t really change my growing opinion that Metallica supports right wing ideology. My understanding of the greater Metal crowd is that they are indeed good people, I went to an Industrial Metal concert a few weeks back and it was free of the iconography I saw at the Metallica show, and everyone was great. We had a good time. It was also the loudest show I think I’ve ever been to. Thank goodness for earplugs, lol.
Sorry, but I just read “Five Finger Death Punch” and automatically thought “Ahhh there you go…” lol
Let’s not forget that time their singer tried to murder his wife.
I’ve never understood the popularity of FFDP. “War is the Answer” is their best album by a heavy margin and it’s just… Fine? Like it’s listenable, I can listen to it without being bored. At the end of the day it makes me wish I was listening to Avenged Sevenfold, Shinedown, or Killswitch Engage.
But the rest of their music is unbelievably boring. Their covers of other people’s music is their best work, probably because they can’t write interesting music.
It’s performative. That’s why.
Sounds about right for James Hetfield. When off stage the dude is one of those Mossy Oak weirdos.
The clothing/camo? I’ve only ever seen him in California motorcycle kit - all black, Maltese crosses, flat-brimmed ball cap, etc.
I mean, Kirk Hammet literally wore swastika shirts back in the day. I used to be a huge Metallica fan boy when I was younger but eesh.
No shit…I never knew that.
Yeah I think it was either before Metallica, or early days. I’ve tried to find a picture, but they’ve done a good job of scrubbing it from the Internet. I know my source is “trust me bro” at this point lol, but I swear I’ve seen it multiple times years ago
Oh, I don’t like metal and still considered them to be a mostly apolitical group of weird nerds. But it probably fits to the general trend of neonazis trying to infiltrate and overtake other subcultures. Oi! just doesn’t draw large crowds I guess, probably Punk rock in general is not such a big thing anymore?
Some Punk went mainstream, but even then I think Punk still holds on to that anti-authority ideology better. Greenday’s recent commentary on the Right Wing stirred things up a bit.
I was addressing that Neonazis usurped the Skinhead subculture for a long time. The skinhead subculture is part of the punkrock scene. Most of punkrock was always leftist though, at least here in Europe. I think you’ll have to try hard to find a rightwing skinhead nowadays though. A switch towards Metal sounds like an almost natural thing for the neonazi scene. Metalfans should try their best to stop that or it might destroy the whole subculture.
It’s a bit muddy, it’s been a few years since the whole skinhead/punk thing was more closely related. I do remember that there wasn’t much visual difference between Punks and Skinheads unless you got the Punks were wearing their full getup with mohawks and basically had hair, whereas the skinheads really didn’t, obviously because “skinhead”. I always associated skinheads with being racists or nazi-types, but they also (at least in my experience here) were also anti-authority and often leaned hard into anarchy, too. So definitely some overlap with Punk.
I have no idea about the skinhead culture these days in the US, or what it aligns itself with. Can’t imagine anyone affording a pair of Doc Martens, and plus they’re low quality chinese made now.
I don’t know if there’s anything to be done at this point. There were 80,000-ish in attendance for the sold-out Metallica show. The people wearing right-wing stuff were everywhere, plus flying right wing thin blue line and Gadsden flags while tailgating in the venue parking lot.
AFAIK in France skinhead and Neonazi are basically synonymes, but I’m not big on this subculture thing, and this probably depends by country/language. But please don’t go there calling yourself a skinhead lol
Not too long ago it came to public attention that there were a lot of Republicans listening to Rage Against The Machine. Which is hilarious.
They don’t seem to consider what anything means as long as it sounds white enough and has an angry enough tone.
It makes sense that those types would join the punk /metal scene. It’s a scene made up of those on the fringes of society who are rebelling against authority (regardless of what that authority may be) and who are willing to accept anyone like them.
I’ve met plenty of LGBT, geeks, on the spectrum and otherwise different folk who are part of the punk and metal scenes.
I’ve met plenty of LGBT, geeks, on the spectrum, and otherwise different folk who are a part of the punk and metal scenes
Me too.
I was volunteering with an anarchist mutual aid group and one of the volunteers was wearing a punk war vest (idk if punks have their own term for it, I’m a metal head) with a variety of punk patches and queer buttons.
Maybe it’s just a symptom of only seeing shows in a city with a good radical scene, but most people I’ve met are completely normal and don’t have any concerning things like a punisher tattoo or a thin blue line shirt, etc.
It makes sense that those types would join the punk /metal scene.
They are since 40+ years, The skinhead subculture is part of the punk scene. And Neonazis usurped that subculture for a long time (not so much nowadays though).
To a lot of young people, myself included. The authority, or at least the authority we interact with- is progressive. So something like a thin blue line flag is rejecting that authority. Also the Gadsden flag has always been anti-authority.
Wait, what? No. So much no here.
I didn’t say to everyone, I said to a lot of people that is the current dominant ideology from people in positions of authority that they interact with.
Nazis ruin everything. Just like how the Nazis ruined the skinhead subculture.
The Youtube algorithm just showed me a video about that the other day. I didn’t even know that they originally had nothing to do with being right-wing fascists.
My entire understanding of skinheads was “skinheads are fascists” and I never delved any deeper into it. Until the other month when my barber told me I should consider getting a chelsea cut, my gut reaction being “why would I want to look like a neonazi?”
But one simple online search later, and I went back for the shave. The original sentiment of the skinhead culture is slowly being reclaimed, though there will always be two potential interpretations of what someone with that style stands for, I’ll happily rock my skinbird cut at union rallies and antifa protective counter-protests when actual nazis try to raid our local queer clubs.
… Is google pulling up the wrong kind of Chelsea cut? You must have some interesting barbers lol.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=chelsea+cut&iax=images&ia=images
but that’s bing 🤓☝
Unfortunately any anti-establishment counter-culture movement that is predominantly white will attract Nazis. And these nazis sometimes don’t even know they are one. You even see it in some far left movements. There are people in those movements who call themselves lefties yet have espoused right wing fascist ideology
to be fair, it doesn’t help that some very prominent “leftist” “feminists”(see TERF) are signal boosting Nazis, or how for some reason we still allow tankies to call themselves leftists because of American Cold War propaganda (this 1950s-70s Cold War cartoon said the USSR are clearly left, since they are “communism”, so anyone supporting these “communists” must also be a leftist!)
Left Auth is a thing…
yup, there is, but tankies aren’t it.
auth left looks like some form of highly self-regulating society, the problem is the inherent instability in this type of system almost always ends in auth right as a group of elites takes control, or breaks down into non-auth-left when motivation for said society dies down.
How predominantly white were the original skinheads? Because it was hugely Jamaican influenced.
For what it’s worth, Wikipedia says:
In addition to retaining many mod influences, early skinheads were very interested in Jamaican rude boy styles and culture, especially the music: ska, rocksteady, and early reggae (before the tempo slowed down and lyrics became focused on topics like black nationalism and the Rastafari movement).[1][12][13]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinhead
Which sort of implies it was a white people thing that was influenced by black culture but not when it was too black.
I have no real idea of the demographics though. I shave my head, but it’s because I hate sitting in a barber chair making smalltalk and I save money not doing it.
I HATE the small talk! My barber gives me a scalp massage too, really scratching it up, and that’s just awful too. I’ve asked him not to do it but it’s part of his routine and he does it automatically. My ideal barber would let me fall asleep in the chair.
Which sort of implies it was a white people thing that was influenced by black culture but not when it was too black.
I can see why you might think that from reading about it in 2024 but I’d suggest to you that the tempo slowdown is the major factor. Ska is an uptempo party music. Rocksteady slowed the tempo down and Reggae generally kept the tempo at that slower pace.
Also there was a progression of people leaving skinhead for rock following more high energy bands like The Who and The Small Faces and going through the psychedelic changes into Rock at the end of the sixties.
The fans of ska had no problem with reggae, especially Bob Marley, who was collaborating with Mick Jagger in no time. It’s just they’d moved on from skinhead because the scene had become much more associated with violence. There was also the very deliberate efforts of the National Front to recruit football supporters during the early 70s heyday of football hooliganism. A lot of the people that were into violence were attracted to the second wave of skinhead just as cultural changes to the music in Jamaica and the UK meant that a lot of the first wave were evolving into mods and then some of them hippies and eventually you see the emergence of street punk at the end of the 70s.
As for Rastafarianism, that was not at the time a dogmatic religion like Catholicism or the Moonies but arose out of cultural immersion and community practice in the places in Jamaica where most of its adherents lived. I don’t think it is a matter of being too black, it’s just that it’s very specific to Jamaica and eventually the Jamaican diaspora.
Edit: It’s no accident that the third wave of skinhead was kickstarted by Two Tone and was explicitly multi-racial and also that Two Tone harked back to uptempo ska.
Skinheads against racial prejudice – SHARPS.
Me hoping the new YouTuber I found hasn’t tried to chat-up any underage girls.
Challenge: impossible
Lul you’re not kidding. It’s crazy to see how often you hear that happening and it happens with all sorts of youtubers not just weeb and gamers.
Metal bands are mostly nazis? Is that the news “satanic scare” like we had in the 80’s?
Not metal generally, but you should look into Black Metal. It’s a real problem there… :-/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Socialist_black_metal_bands
Lol, a lot of those names are a little too on the nose. I mean Kristalnacht and Infernall SS? Can’t imagine making a wrong assumption on those
says Death Metal
links Black Metal
Yeah, already corrected it. Morning Rush.
That’s why I stay away from these labels. Not against them, but I can’t tell what is what.
It’s generally not that hard, when you listen to metal.
Yeah, power and folk are good, anything else is bad. Easy.
/s
Pfff
When I used to have time to figure that out Metallica and Megadeth were still in their good phase, with 4 albums each. And no internet. There was like heavy metal, death, and eventually Nord or something. And these would cover any bands.
Sounds like trash and speed existed as well in your time. Black perhaps too, not sure if I’m remembering history well.
This is a tiny portion of black metal in a sub genre . But it isn’t surprising that an extreme genre with a strong counter culture doesn’t have some extreme spin-offs.
Also you can tell which bands are in NSBM because they are all terrible at actually making music.
Of course there are nazis bands, especially I’m black metal. But that’s a minority, and they generally suck anyway. But I’m not into BM at all personally, so I don’t bother tbh.
It’s not a majority, but it is a higher risk factor. Especially when Sweden/Finland produce a lot of metal bands and are also a higher risk factor for nazi sympathy - by and large they certainly don’t idealize them but they also aren’t always vilified to the same level as you might expect elsewhere
Nazis are absolutely vilified in Sweden and Finland, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’d say NSBM bands is a lot more prevalent in Eastern Europe and Russia.
It’s also something that’s more related to some genres of music than others. It’s definitely a much bigger issue in metal than you would find in, say, jazz or electronica. On the other hand, it’s more overt than the kind of Nazis you find in country music, and they get much more publicized.
It’s definitely a much bigger issue in metal than you would find in, say, jazz or electronica.
For a while, and I assume it continues today, there was/is a synth subgenre called fashwave, a Nazi-adjacent take on vaporwave. I imagine they have a niche elsewhere in the electro scene, and prob. industrial too?
Fascists have no culture of their own except violence, they have to steal everyone else’s.
Well that’s just lovely. I shouldn’t be surprised.
jazz or electronica.
Gabber pretty much inherited all the Nazis Punks threw out of concerts and are, to their credit, also not terribly unlikely to throw them out of concerts. There’s definitely infiltration going on when it comes to Dark Techno. When it comes to Jazz it shouldn’t be too terribly fucking surprising that white supremacists don’t like it. It was outlawed in the Third Reich, though they also produced their own for foreign propaganda purposes.
It was outlawed in the Third Reich, though they also produced their own for foreign propaganda purposes.
Funny, I replied to someone else saying almost the exact same thing, but I couldn’t remember the name of Charlie and his Orchestra. Thanks.
Someone else told me about the electronica thing earlier and I shouldn’t have been surprised.
Nazi Jazz
Hrm 🤔
There was a whole movie made about how the Nazis weren’t all that into jazz.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108265/
Although they did record some as propaganda to play back at the west over the radio.
The good ol’ American tradition of forcing squaredance onto kids in schools—I was a victim myself from the ‘80s to the mid ‘90s—was borne of the fear and disgust of the black and Jewish roots of jazz, with Hitler idol Henry Ford being a big advocate for it.
Yep, and one of the ways cannabis was demonized in the first half of the 20th century was by associating it with jazz culture, making it very much something that “they” did.
Yeah, and the aggression in music easily syncs with literal agreccion of the third reich, so it’s a low-hanging fruit if you don’t have other ideas for music and songs. Lemme try:
Panzer death
Panzer death
Blood soaked brothers march
Panzer death
Panzer death
Glory to our patriarchbonus points for samples of machinegun added to drums, lyrics in German, bandmembers photographed in pseudo-nazi uniform, etc.
Some idiots will listen that on repeat in no time
Edit: Listen to Hanzel und Gretel - SS Deathstar Supergalaktik, it covers most of the the cliches
Tried to find hints that SS Deathstar Supergalactic is parody. Found none. Help :(
I know people are saying it’s a Black Metal issue, but uh… Pantera :(
Oh goddammit.
Yeah I can’t even listen to ‘Walk’ anymore, fuck.
Yeah Nazis are a problem in pretty much all subcultures. Industrial, punk, goth, and so on. Subcultures attract people who don’t feel like they have a place, and this is the group extremist groups target.
ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?
MOTHERFUCKER!
RE
SPECT
WALK.
Sadly, no more will I be talking to Phil Anselmo.
People who listened to Lostprophets in 200X
I’d argue that the problem with Lost Prophets wasn’t necessarily their political views though…
Yeah, it was entirely the music.
Oof
Never happened to me, but I also don’t listen to metal.
Dethklok seems pretty safe.
There isn’t all that much out there about Brendon Small though and what I could find he should be a decent enough person…plus I liked Metalocalypse quite a bit, so that helps me 😁
Dunno much about Bryan Beller, Nili Brosh or Gene Hoglan, just saw a few random videos with them so hard to gauge.
Gojira are environmental and humanist activists to a certain degree. At least in their music that is.
Plus they fucking rock, holy shit.
WHAAAAAAAAAALES
But yeah having a whole song about the Amazon burning that happens to also have some stellar riffs? Yeah I’m on board
Just listen to cattle decap. The morally superior band. Kidding. They’re pretty great tho, more people should listen to cattle decapitation. Especially the later albums which are more approachable
Brendon Small made Home Movies. He has to be a decent person. I will be very upset if he isn’t. I may have to go poke him in the eye if he isn’t.
Years ago, Brendan Small did a couple of characters on Comedy Bang Bang who, while being absolutely fucking hilarious and source of some of the top moments on the podcast, were kinda problematic, coming off as ethnic caricature. He quit doing those characters in 2017, for I think pretty obvious reasons, though I’m not sure whether anyone ever called him out on it. I assume it was similar to PFT’s rationale for dropping Ice-T from his own repertoire. In any event, you can take this however you will.
Saw a random YouTuber I thought I liked do a livestream. He usually does reactionary or random updates content.
I go in and he’s ragging on Biden and I see people doing SuperChats with pro-Trump messages and just casual racism. Apparently, Biden’s PR person probably should have been white according to these guys. I ducked out, was quite sad.
A few years ago I found this band I liked - then I saw they literally played a concert for the staff at Guantanamo. Man… that was sickening.
When I was in high school, the worry was finding a cool punk band and discovering they were skinheads.
Is Sepultura safe?
I’d say yes. According to their German Wikipedia entry, they support Sea Shepherd, environment and wildlife protection, and indigenous people in their fight against deforestation.
Varg supports 90% of that and is also varg (they are probably fine I am just doing comedy)
Varg Vikernes or VARG the German metal band lol
I’d imagine he means Varg Vikernes. He’s like the poster child for this whole problem going in the community, specifically the BM community.
OBG
Safe and based.
Biboca, garagem, favela, porra!
Definitely did that with Sabaton
Relatable lol
I don’t think he’s an out-and-out white supremacist, but one of the weirdest heel-turns ever was seeing actual Latino immigrant Tom Araya go from being the face of the evilest thrash metal band in the world to an outspoken evangelical Catholic MAGA-pilled Trump supporter.
I don’t think it’s uncommon unfortunately for immigrants who make their money to then move to the right of the political spectrum from a “I got mine” point of view. The right welcomes these new voices because they can point at them and say they aren’t racist, and that there aren’t systemic issues, not recognizing that the individual who was successful was so in spite of the barriers.
Yea as a Mexican whose lived in multiple states in Mexico patriarchy and conservatism is still very much alive, especially in smaller areas. It’s getting better but it’s still a very religious country. They suffer from much of the same things the US does when it comes with dealing with conservatives. Instead of it being about white power it’s just about patriarchy and religion and good old conservatism. Doesn’t help that a lot of the population is barely literate and many don’t go to or graduate high school. In my experience, graduating high-school is seen like getting an associates degree In the US.
don’t think he’s an out-and-out white supremacist
outspoken evangelical Catholic MAGA-pilled Trump supporter
Bruh, what?
No my clothes arent soaking wet, they are just well hydrated.
i can remember back in the late 90/early 2000, that the right wingers pushed hard into the goth and metal scene here, looking for new recruits. it definitely felt like a targeted approach, and they did the same with the techno scene before (where they were mostly thrown out). they had more success in the folk scene, but they slowly gained ground over the last years. this sucks :-(
They didn’t realize that most of the metal scene has connection with the punk scene, and the punk scene is full of anarchists and anti-fascists. It’s weird how much success they had with the country music scene.
Who would have thought that country music, which originated in the South, would be so receptive to white nationalism??
Pre-9/11 and Toby Keith a lot of country music was anti-establishment and anti-fascist.
Or even outright anarchist.
Some, but for every Phil Ochs there was a Marty Robbins.
I was gonna say, I don’t think metal has a higher rate of nazis. You look at country and you basically have to accept they’re all MAGAts (another reason to just avoid country). I think most people in metal are pretty progressive, that’s why they’re in metal. Honestly Dero Goi is a great example: he jumped down a conservative rabbit hole and left metal.
If anything, it’s just that the nazis are always a vocal minority and when they’re into metal it’s some confirmation bias for close minded people who don’t like metal.
Well, they had plenty of success with skinheads before…
Going back ten years to people trying to explain away Kanye’s BLKKK SKKN HEAD by pointing to the brief moment of time where skinheads weren’t all Nazis is pretty funny now though.
I dunno anything about the Kanye incident, but skinheads started and there continue to be non racist skinheads everywhere. It wasn’t a brief period of time at all.
Sure bro
Lol, sure bro
they had more success in the folk scene
Who could forget the absolute renaissance of ultra-nationalist country songs that inundated the country after 9/11?
I was practically begging for some Big and Rich just to get people to stop playing that Ted Nugget slop, by the time I was out of college.
I can’t be expected to research every individual in every band I listen to. That’s hundreds, possibly thousands, of musicians.
Art and artist can be separated. I mean, even this painting shows technical merit?
Not enough to get him into art school.
Damn shame, in hindesight. A bit more mediocre art on the pile could have spared us the implosion of Central Europe.
There’s definitely a timeline where he just paints paintings of government buildings to hang inside those buildings
Hey that’s actually not bad at all
That’s some nice architectural art, who did that?
