Cowboy Hats

Wait no, Brenocide, you're wrong on this one. What about Lemmy? He wears cowboy hats. You going to tell me that Lemmy isn't metal now? 

Are you Lemmy Kilmister? Probably not. Would you be caught dead wearing a black leather cowboy hat with a big skull on the front of it? Probably yes. I don't write these things for deities like Lemmy Kilmister to read and think about. I write them for chumps like you. With your wispy goatees, your baggy t-shirts, your hunched postures and your studded belts. I'm on your side, I'm your bud, and I want you to get laid sometimes. I'm not that sucky friend that keeps his opinion to himself about your appearance. I'm that good friend that will stop you at the door before you go out looking like Sheriff Douchely.

Cowboy hats are high-crowned, wide-brimmed hats that give the rest of the world a good enough reason to continue to make fun of our country. Former Pantera snare-slammer, Vinnie Paul wears one to every public appearance, photo shoot, interview, music video, and toilet he sits on to really drive home to everybody that doesn't quite get it yet, that he is in fact originally from a place within the state lines of Texas. It wouldn't be so bad if said hat wasn't typically decorated with Chinese dragons, flames, skulls, roses, poker cards, barbed wire, tribal designs, snakes, or whatever else a braindead weight lifter would tattoo around his bicep. I'm sure some of you Pantera fans out there are all pissed now, since I just dissed your favorite heavy-handed drummer. Although nothing scares me less than a Pantera fan, I'll still ask you to kindly cool your jets and realize that we're not just talking about Pantera's drummer, but also the guy who played drums for Damageplan and started the band Hellyeah. I mean, Hellyeah for god's sake. Like always, I will bring up my trusty metal "old stuff" formula...

Awesome Old Stuff  < Awful New Stuff = NOT METAL
Awesome Old Stuff > Awful New Stuff = Should have broke up. STILL NOT METAL

Giddy-up for the Phony Express

Vinnie Paul looks more and more every day like a long-haired Guy Fiere, and shouldn't be a fashion role model for anybody, much less you. As for the rest of Hellyeah, do you know where the guys in Mudvayne are from? Illinois, and we're not even talking southern Illinois either. Tom Maxwell of Nothingface is from Baltimore; Bobzilla from Los Angeles. These guys have about as much right to pass themselves off as southern rockers as Staind's Aaron Lewis from Massachusetts. Oh wait.
If you really can't help but decline my advice, here's the best way to go about wearing your Ronald Reagan headpiece:

1. Put your hat on.
2. Buy a revolver.
3. Twirl it a couple times.
4. Shoot yourself in the mouth with it.
5. Repeat as necessary, cowpoke. 

When I was younger, being a metal fan seemed like a much simpler gig. You liked metal, and you didn't so much like pop, pop rock, punk, rap, and country. Before the 'core travesties of today's scene, they were more or less the only enemies. Country music, in its current definition, has always been like the opposite of heavy metal to me. Does that mean I hate country? Yes. But like with most genres of music (excluding anythingcore) it has its respectable names when you sift through all the garbage. Let's take Johnny Cash for instance, and keeping that in mind, let's try a little experiment. If you could, minimize this page at your earliest convenience, navigate your way to Google Image Search, and type in "Johnny Cash". Just scroll down a bit. There may be one or two pictures of him wearing a cowboy hat, right? Afterwards, try typing in names like "Tim McGraw", "Toby Keith", and "Alan Jackson" The amount that their country music sucks is relative to how often they wear cowboy hats. Do you really want to walk around looking like anyone of these ten-gallon tards?

So we've defined that the cowboy hat is the official uniform of country music that sucks, country music that sucks being the polar opposite of metal that is awesome. So why would you wear something that's the complete opposite of who you are and what you represent? My friend, we have arrived at the point of the article: because it's ironic. As you all know very well, irony is the weapon of hipsters, and should be avoided by savvy metalheads like it were contagious homosexuality. Wearing something not cool because it's cool to do so is like masochism in fashion. It's like putting your manhood in a blender because it feels good. It's a psychological problem, not a fashion statement.

You are not Lemmy. You are not even Matt Pike. One person is Lemmy Kilmister, and 6,897,864,759 people aren't Lemmy Kilmister. If you belong to the latter group, you can't pull off wearing a cowboy hat without looking like a wrangler from retard ranch.