Samuel Besden

Heavy metal controversies 

Heavy Metal music has been the center of controversies. It’s been called the devils music and blamed for violence. Bands like Iron Madden have been sued due to accusations about their music.  I don’t think people want to give Heavy Metal a chance because they just don’t understand it. When a band gets banned from performing it’s because the local government and people don’t understand the artists.  A band called Cannibal Corpse was banned from preforming in Russia due to explicit lyrics and album artwork. Even germen metal band Rammstein got banned from distributing one of their albums in Germany because of the artwork on the cover of the album. People see the bands as bad influences on kids and demand that the bands get bared from preforming in whatever city that their scheduled to play. People need to pull the foot out of their asses and get over the fact that the artists will wright music how they want to and that the lyrics will have explicit lyrics and album covers. Things like the Parental Advisory label that appear on almost all albums letting people know that the cd contains explicit lyrics showed up in 1985 to inform people about the contents of the album. The superstore Walmart is a great example of how major companies can straight out tell the record labels and the artists that if they want to have the album sold at their stores then they have to sell an edited version that any true fan of any artist/music is going to ignore because they don’t want to hear blank spots that you get with the edited clean versions of the album. If your reading this and you’re going there aren’t blank spots in edited clean versions go listen to a song that you know that has explicit lyrics and a clean version of it side by side and you will hear the blank spots.   It’s become harder for artists to sell their albums in major stores because of shit like this and it needs to end. The fact that Walmart and any other stores that have the same policy will sell games like grand theft auto and horror movies that aren’t for some people but won’t sell albums that have explicit lyrics is complete bull shit. The festivals that the bands play at are even subjected to the same stupidity. A festival that is held in South Africa called Witch Fest was shut down three time and had to relocate each time to a new area.  The fact that groups of people like religious groups can have something like a music festival shut down because they don’t like it is outrageous. This has happened more than once the popular Heavy Metal group Slipknot was banded from playing a show in Greece due to a religious group that didn’t like the lyrics in one the songs. Instead of just letting it go or petitioning the government to have the band not preform that one song they have the entire fucking event shut down due to them having problems with the ONE song. Some people I believe are just alive to fuck things up for other people over something that they would never listen to or go to. For all those people that feel the need voice their opinions and cause trouble just to have bands banned from doing a show or from simply selling their music to make a living to support their family’s go fucking do something else productive with your life or just shut the fuck up and stop trying to ruin the music for the people that actually listen to it.