Heavy Metal Bands Get Softer

No Rock & Roll Fun would probably do this better, but...

According to Reuters:

For heavy metal bands, it has always been about distortion-laden guitars, pounding drums, singers who can growl and break-neck solos. But now business demands are making some metal acts show their softer side.

You know I always felt that any music style that makes claims on "Keepin' It Real" was about one step away from selling out for a pat on the head from whichever corporate sponsor was willing to give the kids a taste of sanitized rebellion. Music as sandbox, fling your toys here but as soon as you turn 21 you better get a haircut and get a real job (or keep living in the basement with your fading t-shirt collection -- there's always a choice).

Rap, the other music with a very public "Real" fetish, went from "people pissing on the stage" to advertising Benz's and Courvousier so fast, for example, it's hard to believe it's still the same genre (though, I guess, strictly, it went from "let's party" to "life's hard" to "let's party, but try not to get fingerprints on my priceless art collection"), but that's a whole other story.

Anyway, Reuters puts the blame squarely on Metallica, which is good:

Metallica, the biggest-selling rock act of 1990s, paved the way for that success with palatable radio hits like "Nothing Else Matters" and "Enter Sandman" that enticed radio stations to also play harder songs from older albums like "Master Of Puppets."

Heavy Metal bands aren't the only bait-and-switch artists, of course. I'm sure we all have albums at home that we bought for that one single that was really great and then when we got it home...

It turns out that that one single must have used up all the creative juices of the band and the other 10-15 tracks are filler or in a completely different style (writing this I wanted to add "4 Non-Blondes I'm looking at you", but that was so long ago it shocks me that I'm still bitter about it).

The thing is: isn't Heavy Metal supposed to be unlistenable to anybody but its target audience? Aren't headbangers supposed to be proud of the parent-bothering-ness of it all? What's the point, then, of putting out a single that might appeal to Mom'n'Pop, too?

Then again when Mom'n'Pop are quite likely to have records by Led Zeppelin or Jimi Hendrix or some other rock giants then listening to "softer, more daytime-acceptable songs" probably is going to have them worried.