Rant: Heavy Does Not Equal Good

I have no real idea why, but it seems like a lot of the more die-hard heavy metal fans (those who have graduated on from listening to stuff like Sleeping With Sirens to, I dunno, Children of Bodom or something) seem to have this strange notion, that a band simply being heavy makes it much better.  And, thus, conversely, they state outright that a song that isn't as heavy as something else is somehow inferior.  

I know that this message will not get out to many, but I’d like to at least attempt to shed light on the stupidity of this notion, because it truly is stupid and needs to be stopped before someone hurts themselves.  To do this, I will compare heaviness in music to something seemingly completely unrelated: humor.

If you’re making a movie, humor is a quality that you may add for flavor.  It can certainly add to the entertainment value of a movie, and is especially crucial if you’re making a comedy movie.  A humorless comedy would certainly be a painful sit.  In addition, humor can be added to an action movie or something and make it a more enjoyable package.

However, humor isn't always appropriate.  If you’re making, say, a holocaust drama or some brutally realistic war movie, humor can be seen as trivializing things or could just be unfitting for the tone you’re setting.  In these cases, adding humor to your movie would actively make it worse.

Also, humor used improperly could make things worse.  If you include a bunch of jokes in your movie that aren't funny, people will want to slam their heads into a wall.

And, here’s where we bring things full-circle back to heaviness.  It’s really a lot like humor in these regards.  If you’re listening to a deathcore song, yeah, it’d better be pretty heavy.  If it wasn't, it’d be a really lame, boring song.  In fact, it probably wouldn't really even be deathcore.

However, if your song is some other genre that doesn't necessarily require heaviness (I’m not going to list them here, because there are a painful amount of metal/rock subgenres and I’m pretty sure I’d mess something up and lose some metalhead street cred) or your band is dipping its toe in some different style of music that you haven’t done before, making a softer song is fine.  Artists can sound equally skilled in a song with less screaming and distortion than they can in a song that’s way heavier.  If the artist is intending on making a less heavy song, you can’t tell them that it sucks because they succeeded in what they were doing.  Yeah, you can like it less, but taste is a subjective little thing, and you can feel free to like what you do and even broadcast your opinion.  I only start getting pissed off when you say that a song made by insertartisthere sucks because it isn't heavy.  It’s like saying you didn't like a holocaust drama because it wasn't funny enough.  The only response I can think up in these situations is, “it wasn't supposed to be, dumbass!”. 

Do you post comments on a One Direction song saying “I like Metallica better”?  No, of course you don’t.  The two aren't the same thing and aren't even trying to be the same thing, so why compare the two?  I know that most metal fans get off on comparing bands (or albums), but at least try to compare stuff that’s actually similar.  Telling me that One Of Us Is The Killer isn't as good as 43% Burnt purely because it isn't as heavy makes you look like a dumbass (and, before you ask, I absolutely adore both of them, albeit for different reasons).  And you don’t want to do that, do you?  If it tried to be as heavy and failed, that would be one thing, but if the band wanted to try something different, then they’re perfectly allowed to.  If you think it’s objectively worse, please try to explain it to me in a statement more logical than “durr hurr it’s not as heavy”. 

And this is coming from someone who loves heavy music!  It’s like the icing on a cake (it’s one of the few reasons I can really stand all of the metalcore bands I do).  However, if I’m trying to eat a pizza, I certainly don’t want there to be icing there, and I’m not going to complain about its absence.

Come on, boys, there are plenty of other reasons to mock the fangirl-catering post-hardcore bands than their lack of heaviness.  Say the singer is messily autotuned, they all sound the same, the instrumentation is weak and not technically complex.  Those are all things they attempted to do properly and failed.  If they weren't trying to be heavy, that’s okay.  Then again, if they were then I guess you can go on ahead (but that’s something that’s pretty hard to judge).  I do believe in the notion that some bands are objectively worse than others, but most of the difference in our perceptions of them is wholly based upon our own taste, and, no, you can’t change other people’s tastes by whining at them hard enough.