Many of my friends know I have a fondness for heavy metal music. Some of my friends share that fondness, some are amused, some have no opinion, but at least a few find it an inscrutable and dissonant element of my personality. It raises an occasional eyebrow when it comes out that I’ve been to concerts and clubs where bands named Black Sabbath, Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Overkill, Anthrax, Pantera, Godsmack, Judas Priest, White Zombie, Prong, Crowbar, Collision, Threshold of Pain, Fatal Array… the list is long and the names are creative. I’ve also seen many non-metal bands live, but that’s not nearly as interesting. There’s an energy to heavy music, especially live, that’s I haven’t found in any other genre. There’s also a camaraderie that I haven’t experienced as fully in any other musical style. That camaraderie derives not only from the common interest, but from the outsider element of that interest. People who don’t like metal often don’t understand why we do, the commercial support for metal (i.e. radio play) is nearly nonexistent, and much of the world has all sorts of negative beliefs about the music, the artists and the fans. The sense of brotherhood is also embodied in that very metal phenomenon, the mosh pit.
I’ve witnessed many mosh pits, and have even taken forays into a few, a fact that some find even more inscrutable than my taste for the music. If you don’t know what a mosh pit is, take a peek at these videos. Dozens or more fans of the music, running and thrashing around, slamming into each other with malicious intent – doesn’t sound like something a sane person would do, does it? Yet, as is so often the case with things we find incomprehensible, all is not as it seems. There is etiquette in the pit, the people in the pit are there to have fun, people respect and help each other, and those with malice in their hearts are identified and culled. Googling mosh pit etiquette provides countless and varying lists, but they’re all rooted in the same premise – it’s about fun, not violence. Someone falls, half a dozen will immediately pick him up. Someone gets hurt, everyone’ll help him get out and get help. Someone inadvertently hits someone else, you’ll see an immediate handshake or a hug. If someone doesn’t want to be in the pit, they’re not going to be forced in.
Of course, mosh pits are violent – that’s the point. Yes, people get banged up – that’s expected. I’ve come out of concerts with bruised shoulders and stomped toes. I’ve been clocked in the head a couple times (insert joke here). Why would anyone do this? Why feel pain and risk injury? It’s fun, and bruises heal. Mosh pits offer a release of aggression in an oddly “safe” environment, with a self-selecting group and hidden from those who would judge. While it’s inevitable that some will get banged up, and there is real risk of injury, there’s a difference between violent fun and intent to injure. And, of course, there are some who don’t play the right way. I’ve witnessed goons who seem to enjoy hurting others. Very often though, they end up getting yelled at by other moshers, or just slammed by someone bigger than them. Etiquette and rules, respected and self-enforced. In that self-enforcement, there’s a bond, one that total strangers share the moment they enter a pit. It’s part of the broader bond that metal heads share.
I once heard an observation that, if you go to a rap concert, the artists will first thank their posse and entourage. If you go to a pop concert, the artists will first thank their writers and producers i.e. people who helped them make the music. If you go to a country concert, very often the first thanked will be God. But, if you go to a metal concert, the band will first thank the fans. I’ve witnessed this time and again. Ozzy Osbourne, the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, has screamed “Thank you!” “I love you!” and “God bless you!” countless times to his crowds. I’ve heard Tom Araya, the lead singer and bassist of the thrash metal band Slayer, say the nicest, kindest and most appreciative words to concertgoers. I recently witnessed him stop a concert to criticize and challenge a security guard that was mistreating some kids at the front of the pit. It’s beyond doubt that metal bands have a powerful loyalty to their fans. Philip Anselmo, the erstwhile front man for Pantera, tended to ramble between songs when I saw the band play live, offering some not-very-flattering opinions about many things, but his praise for the fans was always effusive and unwavering.
Metal heads know that we’re an oft-misunderstood fringe, that we’re outside the mainstream. Like any common interest that exists on the outskirts of society, it is a bonding force, a source for fellowship, an motivation to tribalism of a good sort. It’s also an outlet, and that outlet has had the effect, in my experience, of making people very nice and friendly. I recently saw Slayer at Madison Square Garden (the small room, not the arena). Between the opener and the main band, I went out to the bar, and bumped into someone. I apologized, as normal humans do, and the guy turned, smiled, put a hand on my shoulder and said “hey, it’s cool, bro.” An over-reaction in the direction of “nice,” and one that I’ve experienced many times.
This sense of “us vs them” is reinforced by the outside world in many ways. Heavy metal had its time under the microscope, when Tipper Gore and the Parents Music Resource Center went after explicit lyrics in music. Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne were sued by parents of teens who committed suicide for supposedly writing lyrics that drove those teens to kill themselves. Metal was brought up as a possible cause or contributing factor to the Columbine and Tucson shootings and for serial killer Richard Ramirez. Yet metal is by no means unique in being scapegoated. Violent video games (modern and vintage), horror movies, Arnold the Terminator, long black trench coats in The Matrix, Elmer Fudd shooting Daffy Duck in the face, Elvis gyrating his hips on national television, The Beatles song Helter Skelter – all have been pointed at as inspirations for violent and tragic acts. Yet just as horror movie fans know they’re not being encouraged to grab an axe or a chainsaw and run around a campground, and just as Schwartzenegger’s fans know that they’re not being encouraged to creative use of farm implements and automatic weapons to address their problems, metal fans know that they’re not actually being exhorted to malfeasance. The “assault from without” tightens the bond between metal heads.
My introduction to the world of metal came in 1986. I had started my career in engineering, fresh out of college, in the summer of 1985 on Long Island, NY. One of the kids who started at the same time and worked in the group I was assigned was a hard-core metal fan. We became friends, and he brought me to my first metal concert – the band Megadeth, performing at a club called Sundance in Bay Shore. The club had, as the name suggests, a country-western theme, but that night it was all long hair and black leather jackets. I saw it all – head banging, moshing, crowd surfing, stage diving – and I also saw immediately and obviously that everyone was there simply to have fun. I also witnessed the sort of belligerence that reinforced the bonds between the fans. The club was small, the stage was perhaps four feet high, and the front row of fans was pressed up against the stage. Commonly, kids who were crowd surfing would be passed forward onto the stage, where they’d leap off and back into the crowd. No harm, no foul, no threat to the performers (who obviously knew it was part of the routine). But, one security guy on the stage, a skinny, angry-looking biker type with a full beard and a cigarette sticking out the center of his mouth, was aggressively shoving kids off the stage before they had a chance to get their footing and take their dives. His attitude was bad, his behavior was uncalled for, and everyone knew it. When one crowd-surfing kid got spun in a way that caused him to inadvertently kick the security guy in the head, the crowd roared with delight and swept the kid away from the jackass. He looked absolutely furious, and seemed ready to dive into the crowd after the kid (who had done nothing intentional). It seemed that he sensed his unpopularity, though, and he stayed on the stage, blowing steam and with rage in his eyes. Even today, nearly thirty years later, the incident puts a smile on my face, and reminds me of who the “good guys” are.
In 1994, a friend and I took a drive down to Asbury Park, NJ, to see a band called Overkill at a club. It was a fun night, capped by the singer, Bobby Blitz, stage diving right onto my head, but my fondest memory involved a five-foot-nothing waif of a girl who was crowd surfing. She spend a good amount of time riding the crowd near the front of the stage, and got passed over our heads several times. Shortly after I lost sight of her, I turned when I heard a screeching over the music (no small feat). I saw her standing in front of some big lummox of a guy, looking up, yelling and shaking her finger at him. He stood, shoulders slumped, utterly shamed and dejected, and I surmised that he had put his hand in an inappropriate place when she surfed overhead. He received his dose of “etiquette,” no outside enforcers needed.
The political lesson to be taken from all this is that not everything needs government regulation, not everyone needs some watchful nanny protecting him or her from others, and that social and cultural order can develop and sustain organically in the unlikeliest of settings. Moshers don’t need authority figures to protect them from each other, and they don’t need hall monitors eyeballing those around them.
I can’t and won’t proclaim myself as truly hard-core when it comes to the genre. I have my favorite bands, defined as much by my age and by the years I was introduced to metal as by anything else. Occasionally, I find a new band I like, but I don’t keep up with the countless bands, I don’t like all the sub genres, and I’m certainly way too old for moshing. I haven’t been in a pit in over 15 years, and even in my early thirties it was obvious that mosh pits are for the young. But I still feel the camaraderie, the brotherhood that comes from being a fan of something that many don’t understand or find inscrutable. I go to concerts only occasionally now, but when I’m at one, I still feel the brotherhood. To those who don’t “get it,” it’s OK, you don’t have to, we won’t think less of you. And, to my metal brothers (and sisters), I quote my friend and metal mentor Mario, “mosh with vengeance!“
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