Don’t judge the metalhead
So here I am sitting on my living room’s couch, covered my legs with wool blanked (since it’s just so damn cold), with headphones on, listening some Satan music, as people may call, in form of Behemoth https://open.spotify.com/album/7FY3UoY2F1mdvptEBkHiZ b, feeling superb calmness around. It makes me wonder is it all OK with me, since people link this kind of music with destruction, hate, etc.
Thing is I am not any kind of a writer, this is the first time doing that, in addition to my teacher’s remarks on how my writing style is killing her, keep in mind I am not a native English speaker also. Terrible intro, I know :D
Let’s start by stating that I am a music lover, mostly metal and rock in multiple forms it exists, some dark and heavy, some classic and melodic. It all started when I was in my early teen years, my father had this Sony stereo with some Cd’s like AC/DC, Scorpions, ZZ Top but also always mentioned me the band called Bon Jovi, he was joking how good they were since his cassette tapes of Bon Jovi was always stolen so people must like it. And here I was — from listening to all kinds of random music to starting to really like specific band and rock music for the first time. Time went and I explored other bands but also felt more comfortable to go into some heavier music like Iron Maiden, Metallica.
Step by step I felt how my tolerance for heavy music changed and I started to go much more into metal than rock type of music, for example, Slipknot, which use to sound just like some noise to me, became one of my favorite bands and I was so eager to finally see them live, sadly bad time in form of COVID-19 came and the show is off… But getting back to shift of tolerance to dark music, it made me I bit surprised and I thought maybe I just maturing as a person and my taste changes. Many of my relatives were surprised to see how now I like stuff like Arch Enemy, Jinjer, Amon Amarth, my sister even called me as “ a radical person” and told it spread aggression in me (I was listening Nightwish and that time) so we had some heated argument about that, and left it there for some time. I believe after a year or so she told her mind about it was wrong, really nice of her to admit it.
More time went and heavy metal music was my daily soundtrack at work (I am DevOps engineer or IT guy for folks who are not into IT) it always made me calm and focused, can remember multiple times then right music helped me (or at least I like to believe in did) to solve some issue I was stuck with. But arguments with colleagues and friends always reoccurred, since not so many people around me listen to this music and just by hearing was like scared or something… I think it was too unfamiliar for them, not something they used to. And one day my colleague told me about Charles Duhigg’s book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do and How to Change (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14059373-the-power-of-habit) which touch upon music listening habits also. I was surprised how many things in life are just our habits, the music we listen to also. It came to my knowledge that this kind of journey I went is just a normal thing, as I became used to rock music my tolerance for similar and heavier stuff grew also and made this transition possible.
My simple message:
Let’s all be more thoughtful about others people circumstances and don’t rush into early assumptions and judgments lets try to see wider picture sometimes.
So it’s all OK with me (as far as I know… haven’t been tested as Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory). And I just wrote my first article.
Thanks for reading it :)
