Speed Screed: Metal Dad

I had the strangest vision of myself yesterday, as a forty-something father driving my kid or kids to school or something, blasting death metal from the late 90’s through the car’s stereo. There is something extremely odd about that idea. In terms of generation gaps, metal is not really the music of any particular generation – it’s a non-popular offshoot of rock and roll with a diverse number of influences including 20th century atonal music and folk music. So when my kids are rolling their eyes and asking of this is the music that my generation listened to, I would truthfully tell them “no.”

But of course this is true for many other genres besides metal. Jazz is very similar inasmuch as it went through its own set of revolutions and evolutions over time, but it was concurrent with popular music and not woven into it except in the most basic ways (blues’ influence on early rock, for example). But jazz is generally pretty unobjectionable; even if my kids didn’t like it, they probably wouldn’t be embarrassed by the fact that their dad listened to jazz.

On the other hand, there is a persistent weirdness about pulling into a school parking lot to drop off your children with “Smashing the Antiu” by Nile blasting out the speakers. Especially since, unless I miraculously end up being a metal musician, I sincerely doubt anything else about my attitude or personality would indicate any sort of stereotypical metal-like tendencies. I’d probably be driving some eco-friendly hybrid and waving goodbye while Karl Sanders is growling about disemboweling the enemies of the Pharaoh.

Now, obviously, I’d probably keep metal away from really young kids, although that they would almost certainly be completely unable to discern any of the lyrics. But the music my parents listened to influenced me a great deal, and I still ended up here with the strong opinion that metal stands head and shoulders in both quality and originality above all other genres of non-classical music. So maybe it hardly matters what they hear from me, they’ll probably end up just liking what they like and that will be that.

But the really funny thing to me is that there is essentially nothing “square” about death metal. It’s gritty, violent, intense, and for preference, fast. It’s just hard for me to picture my kids mocking the music I listen to for how “lame” or “old-fashioned” it is. There are plenty of other good reasons to mock it, but I can’t conceive of metal being associated with old timers.

The other thing is that death and black metal might be considered extreme (and actually good) offshoots of the angsty popular bands of recent years, so in that sense they are associated with the energy and conflicts of youth. On the other hand, what angsty teens listen to transliterated texts from Ancient Egypt being growled out over the most crunchy, dark riffs every to issue forth from a drop-A-tuned electric guitar?

Not many.

Nile rules.