Having a "cause"

The world is doomed.

Finito, kaput, el screwdo. You are nothing more than a worthless speck of dust floating through the cosmic infinity just waiting to be consumed by the endless black of armageddon.

Visual Reinforcement

Metalheads as a whole have known this to be an undeniable truth since Black Sabbath first rang those three dissonant chords on their first album. We responded accordingly by drinking copious amounts of hard liquor, banging our heads and making awesome music. In the following four decades, there have been countless metal songs written about nuclear holocaust, global war and environmental degradation. I think it’s fair to say that not only do we expect it as an inevitability; a few of us welcome global destruction.

So why, why I ask you, would any of you be so naive to think you could change that?

It seems that more and more these days, there are so called “metalheads” that are developing a “social conscience”. They sit in cafes, drinking fair trade latte’s and munching on granola, possibly debating the plight of the Bavarian Painted Shrew or Canadian refugees or God knows what else these self-important blowhards decide to get passionate about for the next six months of their lives. They are the kind of people that sit there, picking bugs out of their dreadlocks and berate you over wearing leather; eating meat that’s not been processed in a kisses and cuddles free range cow day-care and accuse you of being callous and disengaged. Now, hang on, I hear you say, that sounds awfully similar to elitism, isn’t elitism what this website promote? No. You are wrong and ugly. The kind of elitism that these... crusaders we shall call them, promote, is nothing more than a steaming load of delusional hippie ideals that needs to stay the hell out of my genre.

You're one step away from this.

Brenocide has already covered the falseness of Vegans and The Open Minded and these new-age crusaders are very much cut from the same cloth, one where words like tolerance and positivity are liberally tossed around. Typically, they are fresh-faced (and I use that term very loosely) College students with far too many ideals and not enough common sense. They still have the outright arrogance to think that they can change the world, because, let’s face it, there is no such thing as a completely altruistic motive. These smug little do-gooders really just want the self-satisfaction and karmic brownie points that come from “doing their bit”. What these people don’t seem to understand, is that their efforts are generally going to be fruitless. Remember that Ethiopian orphan boy you were sponsoring? His entire village was wiped out in a flood. That fair-trade coffee you buy all the time? The CEO of the company is embezzling half the funds to feed his cocaine and Faberge egg habits; all of his Cambodian workers are still starving. You haven’t made a difference.

There is only one path to true metal redemption from something that’s as deeply engrained into one’s psyche as this. What these people need, (and generally get) is a good dose of reality. They usually do this themselves, by going backpacking in some Third-World Country and experiencing poverty first-hand. They ride in on a wave of good intentions, but soon find themselves overwhelmed by the sheer number of people in need. They simply don’t have enough money to hand out to every one-armed beggar and fall for every slick scammer that specializes in preying on such simple folk.

When they return after a few months, they are broken people, unable to look at the world and see the hope that was once there. Some of them cut their hair and settle down to a life of corporate finance, some of them remain filthy longhairs. However, there is one crucial difference. Now, they aren’t concerned with saving the whales anymore, they’re just angry. At everything. These people are the enlightened few that realise life is nothing more than a machine fuelled by broken dreams and the blood of sick puppies and the only thing you can believe in is heavy metal.