Metal music in your 20s

TheRightToArmBears

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Well I'll always love metal, but I love other stuff too. It'll never be just metal, but there will always be metal.

And thanks for reminding me that I'm 20 in a month and a day!
 

emeraldrafael

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I think its like that with anything thats.. um... heavy(?). Like, grunge used to be the shit in the early nineties if you were old enough and felt that rebellion thing.

I think metal has its niche in angsty teens who want to be hard, and adults who either cant grow up or are precocious dicks. Not to say metal is bad (granted I dont care much for it, but still), but its not the center of your life cause you can finally look at it as an adult and just say why dont these people get a damn haircut and settle down.
 

KissofKetchup

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I'm 20 and I'm really just getting into metal and rock in general. I still mostly listen electronica but I still love me some System of a Down and Nirvana (I know they're not metal)
 

Macabre9037

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I was all metal all the time in middle school and high school I loved it. Then around my junior or senior year, I couldn't stand it. All the fans I knew were pretentious dickheads and the music just didn't seem as good to me anymore so I stopped listening.
I do occasionally still listen to some but its the least represented genre in my library. I honestly listen to all kinds of music jazz, country, hip-hop, pop, punk, rock, folk, neo-classical zydeco punk, etc. I pretty much decided that if a song or band is good in my opinion, I'll listen to them, I guess I just like music.
 

LostAlone

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emeraldrafael said:
I think its like that with anything thats.. um... heavy(?). Like, grunge used to be the shit in the early nineties if you were old enough and felt that rebellion thing.

I think metal has its niche in angsty teens who want to be hard, and adults who either cant grow up or are precocious dicks. Not to say metal is bad (granted I dont care much for it, but still), but its not the center of your life cause you can finally look at it as an adult and just say why dont these people get a damn haircut and settle down.
You are simply not looking at something as music if your reaction is 'why dont these people get a damn haircut and settle down'... that has NOTHING to do with the music. That's knee jerk you-kids-with-your-music bullshit that belongs in the 1950s.

Also, on behalf of the hugely diverse body of metal fans, I'd like to say that as someone who is a metal head, has waist length hair, a masters degree, a good job and is planning his wedding, that musical tastes aren't something that define you as an individual. To say that metal is only for angsty teens and precocious adults is the same as saying that rap is only for gun toting drug dealing blacks. Its real easy to make vast generalisations about the kind of people who like anything, but it doesn't make it true, and it is both offensive and utterly inaccurate to think in those terms.

Now, I totally agree with you that by the time you have a proper job and pay taxes and such, music should no longer be the centre of your life, whatever the genre. Same with drinking, smoking pot and constantly trying to sleep with people. Anything in moderation is fine, but yeah, you should have got some perspective somewhere down the line. That's what becoming an adult really is about. Compromise and moderation and stability.

There isn't a correlation between what music you like and how old you are. Age means basically nothing in those terms. What does change is your outlook on life. If you are generally relaxed and happy with your lot, you probably won't want rage filled music. People don't just suddenly decide that metal is awful, they just don't see it reflecting them in the same way. But that doesn't preclude outwardly normal functioning adults from liking it.

Finally, I don't know where you're from, but here metal is the music of the kids that get picked on. The kids who wanna look hard listen to rap and talk 'street' despite being middle class, white and living in Surrey.
 

Justice Shades

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Jul 30, 2009
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I never listened to exclusively metal, but I had a definite preference for rock and metal around age 16-17. Now I'm 20 and listen to a wider range of genres than I used to (I even caught myself listening to classical recently), but when it comes to metal I still listen to the greats like Black Sabbath and Motorhead. Ultimately I think you should listen to music because you like it, not because you like the idea of it.
 

RipperSU

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Nov 20, 2009
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Im 21 and I really got into metal around 12 or so. Going from lighter 'Nu-Metal' stuff like Korn and Bizkit and moving into Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and all that sort of stuff. I find a lot of contemporary metal to be quite uninspired, even classic bands bring out pretty terrible stuff these days.

I still listen to a lot of music that has its roots in metal or other sub-genres though but really I just listen to anything I like. Classical, Metal, House, Hardcore Punk, Stoner Rock, Trip-Hop, Hip-Hop, Avante Garde, Blues, pretty much every genre.
 

emeraldrafael

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LostAlone said:
Hm... Prehaps I should explain abit on my reasoning. I'm not saying that you're not a fan anymore, but you've grown more realistic, and that Metal as the major point of your life has been lost. You're not centering it in your life, and you can look back in respects to other music, and say that this is just not a realistic aspect of life when you go into a "normal" job, where standards are needed to be met. Besides, it was meant to be a joke, but I guess it was like an airplane to you.

Also, where I live you dont get necessarily picked on for listening to metal, but you look like the douche. I live in a city (and a rather big one), so we have a diverse population of races. Though we aslo have that same problem with people wanting to be "hard" by listening to rap and saying its their voice and they lived on the street, when really Gang violence (as most rap likes to portray) isnt so much the issue and instead is just normal crime. Towards where I siad about its niche group, thats just my opinion based on the group I live in. Metal is hardly anyting revolutionary (IMO), and most mainstream (and actually I would say most american Metal from what I've heard, and I've heard a lot, since my music major friend calls me in every weekend and we go to his work and listen to pretty much every CD of ever genre we can till the store opens again the next morning while he tells me all about it on the level of a college professor) is rather stagnated since its introduction and its greats such as Iron Maiden. I've found that to get really good metal, you have to go outside the US. So the only people that listen to it here are those two groups, and these are also the same people that listen to ICP and wear that face paint and stuff, saying they're speaking their message.

As you said, Metal is an aggressive and to an untrained ear anger specifically driven music. Is it all anger? no, not really. Some is, but most metal is heartfelt, just a really heavy and strong version of rock (which is why in most record stores/music places they'll list something that goes from Rock -> Hard Rock -> Metal), where the rifts, chords, and notes are all a heavier variety. If you enjoy it, you should listen to it. To say that all metal is Angry 30 year olds who never grew up and scream out their problems is to say that all Grunge was just a bunch of emo pale people out of Seattle who just needed to see the sun a little more (both are wildly and grossly false).

The question (and subsequently my answer) wasnt that when you hit 20 you just lose all respect for metal and hate it, like a lightswitch switched from on to off. It was that you lose the singular importance that metal seemed to take on your life and you branch out. So I took the people that still hold it above anything else and lived in that frame of mind in my joking examples above. Really the only serious part of my entire answer was the first two sentences.
 

GundamSentinel

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Aug 23, 2009
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Still listen to metal sometimes, but not nearly as much as in my teens. I've grown out of it. Looking back, most of it really wasn't enjoyable music at all. Meh, I'll probably grow out of the music I'm listening to now as well.
 

LightspeedJack

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Depends what you mean by Metal. I like Metalcore and Death metal but I have never been a fan of just straight up plain metal.
 

sukotsuto

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I usually only listen to intrumental version of most metal songs, if I were to listen to any metal. I was a major fan of the 90s Japanese glam rock scene, especially years ago when I was younger. Now, I'm mostly more interested in house, trance, 80s new wave, and soft rock, probably because AI prefer to mellow out, and I didn't need the rush from listening to metal that much anymore.
 

Togs

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Dec 8, 2010
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Im the complete reverse- when I was younger it just sounded like a discordant carcophony, and whilst most still does some parts of it I can know appreciate and see all the furious anger behind it
 

MisterGobbles

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My musical tastes started with listening to classic rock on the radio ALL THE TIME when I was a kid, from about 8 till around 12. Linkin Park was introduced to me at age 10 and I of course loved it, but I never bought the CDs. When I was 12 I discovered such music as My Chemical Romance, and I bought all their CDs and such. I didn't really listen to anything else because I didn't own an iPod or many more CDs, and I relied on my dad's immense collection of music, which was mostly very calm stuff.

Anyway I got into a few other bands, namely Fall Out Boy and Sum 41, and I often listened to them. I also got into The Killers at age 13, and I love them to this day. By now of course I listened to other things than this, but these were the big ones.

Also at around age 13, or the year 2007, the year Guitar Hero 3 came out. This, more than anything, was the game that introduced me to more artists than anything else, including Metallica. I went out and bought And Justice For All and I...I just couldn't get into it. I think that at that time I was expecting something heavier, and I didn't understand the time signature changes. Anyway I just didn't really listen to the CD.

Pick up at the end of 2008. Death Magnetic comes out, and I wanted to pick it up because I had heard that it was good. I did...I absolutely loved it. The next month I was in Disney World, and I bought Master of Puppets, which I liked even better. I had been stupid and left Justice at my house, but when I got back, I relistened to it, and it finally clicked...

So Metallica was my first metal love. I started taking guitar and learned much of their material, and my stoner guitar teacher introduced me to Megadeth, Pantera, Avenged Sevenfold (who I wouldn't learn to truely appreciate until last year), and other things. I was into a lot of the old school thrash and nothing really else. I especially hated metalcore, or what I thought was metalcore at the time.

Anyway, time passed by, I started hating a lot of the older things I had listened to. Then around the middle of 2009, I discovered Nine Inch Nails. This was the band that truely exploded my interest in music to sky highs. They led me to Fear Factory, which led me to other bands. At the same time my friends were introducing me to a lot of non-metal stuff, and the combination of interests just lead to discovering band after band after band...

So now at age 16 I would say that I'm less a fan of the thrash stuff (although I still love it to death). I listen to a huge assortment of things but the main ones are metalcore/post-hardcore bands and progressive ones, as well as an assortment of non-mainstream pop and rediscovering bands from earlier this decade that I had missed. My favorite band at the moment is Periphery.

I don't know if my tastes will change to exclude metal in the future, but I certainly hope not. That shit is dope ;) I'll probably mellow out if I'm not part of a metal band myself (no one where I live can play double bass worth a shit...), but I doubt I'll grow out of it. I look forward to what the next few years brings to the genre.
 

CrazyGirl17

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Sep 11, 2009
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Dunno, I'm in my early 20's and I still like some songs from metal bands like Megadeth and Metallica. Also (if nu-metal counts), I'm a big Linkin Park fan.

Yes, I know, but they do have some good songs...
 

csbears

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Feb 28, 2010
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*looks at the last few posts and blinks* Damn...I uh, just wanted to say that I was one of the kids who got picked on in school and listened to metal...oh and for my age that I am head and heels above my "peers" maturity-wise. Don't mind me, just wanted to sneak that in here.
 

similar.squirrel

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I listened to little else between the ages of 13 and 16, and was all the more annoying for it. The walls of my bedroom were adorned with all manner of skull-based motifs, I wore hilariously lurid t-shirts regardless of the weather and bought any album that had vaguely spiked writing on the cover [most of which were absolute tripe]. If I could go back in time, I'd beat some sense into irritating little whippersnapper.

Nowadays, I occasionally listen to things like Opeth, Diablo Swing Orchestra and John 5, but metal is pretty low on my list of musical preferences.
I do have a guilty habit of sticking on some Cradle of Filth every once in a blue moon, but I'd class that in the same category as a middle-aged accountant going to Rocky Horror screenings every now and then. Cheesy, slightly wrong but ultimately fun.

A lot of the instrumental music I listen to is reasonably heavy, like Red Sparowes and Russian Circles, but I wouldn't tarnish those bands with the metal moniker.
 
Apr 29, 2010
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My metal phase lasted during middle and high school. Now, I still listen to it, but I also listen to a variety of other genres as well now.
 

Sneeze

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Dec 4, 2010
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I got into metal like 16-17 onwards, I spend most of my early life under the impression I "hated" music because all I ever heard was pop stuff which I never really took to, being completely ignorant stuff existed outside the charts. I was introduced to a few metal bands and it kinda went from there.

I do still listen to a lot of metal, but its not exclusively that, there's plenty of other stuff I like too. Rock, punk, even a little bit rap or country now and then. Still can't say I care to much for pop, though Lady Gaga can be annoyingly catchy at times...
 

MiracleOfSound

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Jan 3, 2009
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I'm 30 and its the only kind of music that consistently excites me.

You were obviously not really into the music or the feeling it gives if you 'grew out of it'.