he other day, an exasperated multi-genre loving friend of mine asked a question in her Facebook status: Why do metalheads hate indie music? She received several excellent responses from other friends. I thought the question was worth discussing further, so I’m writing my reply here.

I actually don’t hate anything, and if I did, I wouldn’t be wasting such a rare and intense emotion on a genre of music that probably, if I felt like digging deeper, has some amazing gems to offer. So I don’t hate indie music – but sometimes I pretend that I do, because I write a metal blog, and metalheads hate Indie music.

Or do they?

First of all, there are two types of indie music: indie and Indie. The first – indie – refers to musicians and bands who make their careers without help from a major label. indie musicians place fierce value on maintaining control of their music, and rely on word-of-mouth, airplay on independent / college radio stations / touring and the internet to spread the musical word. You can be an indie band in any genre – there are metal indie bands, emo indie bands, pop indie bands, hip hop indie bands and probably classical indie musicians, although I’ve never met any.

In fact, whole subgenres of metal have built up a culture around the “indie” concepts. Black metal, I’m looking in your direction. If your black metal album isn’t printed on the corner print shop with a handdrawn cover and a pasted-in photocopy of a picture of your grymm band staring wistfully into the forest, with a hand-scrawled linear-note about your kinship with Odin and an aural soundscape akin to shovelling
dirt down the stairs of your apartment onto a microphone (thank you Venom), then, you’re just not Krieg enough, are you?

Metal – at it’s heart a grassroots global tribe – embraces and <> the concept of indie. Independently represented bands jostle for space alongside our major label faves, and the <> community of online blogs, forums and review sites give indie bands the chance to shine. In short, we don’t care where you come from, as long as you kick our ass. Yes, indie is a good thing.

But then, somewhere along the way. Indie got corrupted into a subgenre of its own. Someone gave indie a sound – a kind of wimpy alternative rock that seemed to be less about virtuosity than making sure your lyrics made no sense. indie became Indie.

And, even though they could never hope to replicate the originality of their idols – The Velvet Underground, The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, the Stone Roses … Indie bands started acting like rockstars. They adopted a Dress. They played huge stadium shows. They got into the magazines, where they were described as having the voices of demons and the chops of satan’s minstrel. They threw the goat.

Arctic Monkeys. Look at them, all snuggly warm in their stripy sweaters. Where's the corpsepaint, guys?

Yep, right there – you know we were doomed to hate them.

Indie started stealing our schtick – we corner the satan market. We own goat-throwing and backstage antics and distorted guitars and demonic vocals. That’s ours. They wish they were as bad-ass as us. Who asked our permission to corrupt it into another genre?

If it’s one thing metallers hate, it’s subgenres who wish they were metal. To make matters worse, Indie idolizes Kurt Cobain, who we detest because he killed metal in the nineties with his sweaters and angst and
droning vocals.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Indie is not alone in our wrath. We hate emo – because the general public have no idea what the difference between emos, Goths, metalheads and punks are, and dammit, it’s important. We’re not terribly fond of
goth or punk, but they were sort of here first, and we share certain successful genre crossovers with them.

We hate all indie sub-genres, including BritPop, Shoegaze, Math Rock, CB6, Twee Pop, Dance Rock, chillwave and indietronica – because their ridiculous genre names give Death Metal, Brutal Death Metal, Blackened Death Metal and Gore Metal a bad and ill-deserved rep for being redundant.

We hate hip hop and rap, because it’s a culture completely foreign to us, and we’re all white supremesists.

We hate pop music because it’s insipid, none of the guys are hot, and all the girls are hot but would never sleep with us.

We hate musicals because they make people happy. Only metal should make people happy.

We hate anything with the word “post” in front of it, because we dread the day “post-metal” arrives.

We hate electronic and dubstep because in the grymm future world of Hello Kitty all music will be made at a giant Mac manufacturing plant in Japan.

We hate everyone with a silly haircut.

We hate anything with the word “core” at the end of it, simply because it’s crap.

Such a happy bunch of characters, aren’t we?

What I’m trying to say is that metalheads love to talk about music – the music we love, and the music we don’t love. We have strong opinions about music because it plays such a huge part in our lives.

I think she's kind of hot. She'd look hotter in a slayer t-shirt

Here are some Indie (not necessarily indie) bands I hate

When I say hate, read can’t understand what’s so great about them.

The White Stripes I’m counting them as indie because their first albums were on a popular Indie label, and then they were part of that whole Garage Rock Revival subgenre. And I hate them. Because I’m sorry, but if there’s only two musicians in your band, and one of you can’t play your instrument, and the other it barely covering for that, then I’m not listening. Their music videos are really imaginative and I love the amount of SOUND they get from only two musicians – but it’s just not my thing.

Kings of Leon They had this one catchy bass line and what did they do? Ruin it.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs No No No

Le Tigre Satan fuck what an annoying voice.

Modest Mouse such a COOL name for a band, with music that just doesn’t GO anywhere. It just drones on and on and on.

But indie lovers, don’t despair. I think no less of you for liking these bands than you think of me for liking overblown orchestration, ten minute guitar wanks and gargly, cookie-monster vocals. Take out “The White Stripes” and add “Venom” and the description still fits. We can’t help what we love.

Stay tuned next week for the second half of this story: “Why I Love Indie Music”.

In the meantime, listen to Venom \m/
Steff