Faking it

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:13:00 -0700
underground metal

Did you ever get that sneaking suspicion that some metalheads are "faking it"?

Sure, they have bought all the right things. They have the posters on the walls, the tshirts, the CDs and rare vinyl and maybe even some classic demos.

But they're faking it and you can tell because they don't understand metal as being different from rock music, indie, emo, punk -- you name it!

They've picked metal as an identity, because they need some cause in order to claim their lives have meaning, but they don't seem to understand it at all.

It's like they're spectators at an art gallery who say "I like the red one; red's my favorite color!" or tourists visiting a battlefield when they can't remember who the two sides were. It's like they're not actually engaged with life itself much at all, but want to dress up like metalheads so we think they are.

Now, if you get enough of these people together in a room, they'll start to vouch for each other. "John's okay, he's ueber-kult, especially if you ignore that collection of emo and indie punk moldering in his closet!" And across the room, John's saying the same thing about Shawn.

But if you step outside the happy little circle of social bullshit, suddenly the truth is revealed like shapes under snow in that instant where you realize your location and recognize its landmarks: these people are inverted metalheads. They don't like metal, they like the idea of looking like metalheads. They don't like the ideas behind metal, but they like that it seems "different."

Who do you know who's faking it? It might be time to call them out on it just to watch them squirm.