Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Met Eddie Trunk and an issue for the future of metal

On Saturday I went to Chuck Levins, to meet Eddie Trunk, the writer of "Eddie Trunk's Essential Hard Rock and Heavy Metal."

Prior to recieving his autograph and buying his book there was a question and answer session. I took this time to ask for his opinion one of the burning questions I have had about the present and future of heavy metal and is subgenres. Specifically, whether or not the trend will continue for there to be more left wing metal and less libertarian metal. He said he does not have a ball and cannot see the future.

Personally I think that this is going to be an issue in the future for metal. A lot of the old metal was very libertarian in it's messages, because it was advocating freedom to drink, smoke, and do whatever, but a lot of the metal heads weren not for giving to the poor or those in need. Also satanism is advocating dominating others at your expense and absolute freedom. This is not a message of equality or help those in need (left-wing) or order (right wing). These old messages in metal of freedom are in between equality and order on a spectrum. Libertarians believe in extreme freedom. So one can see why this message is prevelant in a lot of metal.

This is something that is going to need to get dealt with, because often times satanism and similar imagery is used to espouse freedom. However, some metalheads are saying they are liberal, which in itself is broad (in fact classical liberalism in the united states is another name for libertarianism).

I believe this issue about which direction metal is going to take is something that needs to be discussed and dealt with, because it can have profound consequences for how metal is written, performed, and discussed.