Nicholas James Pell writes:
Mock horror surrounding metal is about as fresh as three-day-old tuna steaks. If you’re my age or older you will likely remember the hysteria surrounding heavy metal in the 1980s. Back then, it was Tipper Gore and the PMRC, with an assist from congressional panels. There’s a certain not-so-subtle irony in seeing the role of thought police played not by dowdy senators’ wives, but by a denim-and-leather-clad army of schoolmarms.
One distinguishing feature of metal is that it’s less encumbered than its cousin, punk rock. While sometimes antiauthoritarian, metal never carried punk’s pseudo-anarchist party line pretensions. Metalheads like metal bands if they’re good, not if they’re correct, whatever either might mean from one second to the next. This is why the scene has not just tolerated, but embraced black frontmen, homosexual frontmen, and frontmen who are now frontwomen. At gigs in the American Southwest and Latin America, whites are a decided minority, so what’s the big deal?
