I love Metal music. I always have, and probably always will. Heavy metal, thrash metal, even the often maligned Nu Metal of the early noughties. I am here for it all.
But I have always known that it is an acquired taste and that most people do not share my passion for it. That’s fine of course, as taste is subjective and individual, but I do find that their critiques are often lacking in rigour.
One common criticism levelled at Metal music with ‘screamed’ or ‘pig squeal’ vocals is ‘You can’t even understand what they are saying’! I would counter that with ‘Can you recite the lyrics to Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’? They can’t, because no-one can understand what she is wailing on about in that song.
Or I’d ask them if the understanding of lyrical content is a contingent factor in musical enjoyment (as they seem to be claiming), how do they enjoy songs in languages they don’t speak? Many of these people would happily dance at a wedding to ‘Hey, Macarena’, ‘99 Luftballons’ or ‘Gangnam Style’ without understanding the words. They all would recognise ‘Non Regrette Rien’ as the song from Inception and could hum the melody at will.
People always go mental at a gig when I tease them by playing the opening riff to PANJABI MC - Mundian To Bach Ke, and feel disappointed when I stop playing it before the vocal (like I’m really going to start rapping in Punjabi and get thoroughly cancelled).
And I suspect they would all react in the same physical manner to ‘Je T'aime Moi Non Plus’ that everyone else does when they hear it (if you know what I mean?). Epistemically speaking, this argument is a non-starter.
Another argument is that Metal music is so angry, so negative, so cynical. True on all accounts but how exactly does that invalidate it? I suspect these are the kinds of people who think music should be exclusively a way of expressing positive emotions like happiness and joy. I disagree with this line of reasoning vehemently, as I explain here. Music is a form of emotional expression and, last I checked, anger, despair and sadness are emotions, common to many and as valid as any other.
But I get it. Metal isn’t for everyone, and again that’s fine. But something has always confused me. An exception to the rule that I have never worked out. Many non-Metal fans seem to really like ‘Chop Suey’ by System Of A Down.
Most surprisingly to me, this includes my other half.
Now my partner hates Metal music. I don’t listen to it as much these days as I am much more pretentious and listen to a lot of weird jazz and obscure orchestral music, but when we started dating I listened to A LOT of metal.
In March of 2005, only a few months into our relationship, I purchased Trivium’s second studio album Ascendancy and I rinsed the Hell out of it. I probably wore the CD down with the repeated plays, I played it so much. I also played Metallica, Iron Maiden, Atreyu, Bullet For My Valentine and an EP by obscure thrash band ‘Devil Sold His Soul’ constantly in rotation.
My partner hated all of it, which was fair. I was an obnoxious 20 year old guitarist and felt I had a monopoly on the definition of what musical taste was; she loved her boy bands and Pop Divas. Our compromise was always hip-hop, as it was the only genre that our individual tastes seemed to overlap at all; and we listened to a lot of Eminem, Dr Dre, 50Cent, Jay-Z, etc.
But one Saturday morning we got in my car to go out for the day. I had one of my CDs in the player that I had been listening to on the drive home from work the previous evening. That CD was the album Toxicity by one of my all time favourite bands System Of A Down and the track playing when I turned on the engine was ‘Chop Suey’.
I was more than half-expecting her to do what she always does in that situation and change over to FM radio or turn off the stereo completely, but she didn’t. She just said ‘Oh, I like this song’.
‘WHAT?!!’ I exclaimed with discombobulation. ‘You like THIS song?’
I couldn’t work it out at all and she couldn’t explain it. She just repeated that she liked it.
When Serj Tankian and Daron Malakian start the call and response in the bridge, screaming ‘FATHER’ at the top of their lungs while the cacophony of drums and the thrashed and distorted semi-tonal guitar riff bombarded our ears, she just sat there smiling away like we were listening to Whitney Houston banging on about dancing with somebody. It was so bizarre. So atypical of her taste.
And it’s not even her favourite ‘SOAD’ song, ‘BYOB’ (Bring Your Own Bombs) is. That makes sense as it was their most commercially successful single and has a ridiculously catchy a (weirdly) jaunty chorus (‘Everybody’s going to a party, have a real good time’), but it still has some insanely aggressive metal elements in it.
And I found out she’s not alone. We used to have parties on the weekends in our house share as it was a big place and in a relatively secluded area, and we invited everyone our age along. I distinctly remember a group of five or six of girls in our age group (18-22) who I know were all pop music fans, dancing along to both these songs, (particularly BYOB), like it was just any pop song from a hack DJs 2000s setlist.
Given the swung and jumpy rhythm of ‘BYOBs’ catchy chorus, I can get my head around it somewhat, but I still don’t have an answer for why so many people who have no interest in Metal love ‘Chop Suey’.
Whenever I am at a gig with a sound engineer, I try to catch them and the waiting audience out when I’m sound-checking. The look of recognition on their faces when I play something they recognise but weren’t expecting an acoustic artist like me to play is something I live for. If I’m on piano I’ll play the intro to ‘Still DRE’ by Dr Dre and watch them lose it. Or I’ll play ‘For The Damaged Coda’ by Blonde Redhead and instantly reveal the Rick & Morty fans in the audience.
On guitar, I normally play PanJabi MC - Mundian To Bach Ke as it always gets a laugh. Sometimes I play the guitar riff from Eminem ‘Lose Yourself’, which always goes down well. But the best reaction is when I play the intro for ‘Chop Suey’ on my acoustic. Check this guy out playing it below (he’s not me. I wish I could play like this).
No-one ever expects an acoustic player to play this song and last time it happened, they all just stopped what they were doing, smiled along and watched me play it. I started playing the heavy palm-muted riff and they still waited silently, Then I played a bit of the chorus and they started singing along. All this was eating into my performance time but they just sat there staring at me, stunned into silence. I wasn’t even playing a particularly intricate arrangement of it, in fact quite the opposite. It was a dumbed down, simplified version. But that didn’t matter. They were still captured by this song.
It seems to have a magical aura that entices people and draws them in. I’m working on learning it properly and fully as I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t factor it into my set and capitalise on its enduring popularity.
I find it beautiful and sorrowful at the same time, which is why I’m so attracted to it and Metal music in general. Maybe that duality of emotions, that juxtaposition between two disparate and seemingly contradictory feeling states is more plainly expressed in this song than others and is therefore more accessible to the masses?
Maybe the contrast between the chromatic vocal melodies of the verses and the more contemporary Ionian chorus melodies/harmonies strikes a perfect balance between genres; a bridge from pop to metal?
Maybe the oddly devotional and religious subtext in the song triggers a fundamental instinct within our nature and resonates with the religious impulse that we have had ingrained in us by evolution?
Maybe it is just a song of such singular greatness that it transcends genre and taste barriers?
I don’t know, but I will continue to delve into this question for an answer. If you have a theory, please leave it in the comments as I would love to hear it.
This song also has an incredible story behind it. It’s composition, it’s lyrical content, it’s craftsmanship. I may write an essay just to review it as an artistic artefact yet because I love and admire it so much.
Until then, thanks for reading.
The Common Centrist.
I’d wager a guess that quite a bit more than just this quietly lurks under the surface of many a 30/40 - something. SOAD, Incubus, NIN, RATM, even some weird little late 00s flash in the pans like Does It Offend You, Yeah? My theory as to why is it conjures a sense memory of the last era of a collective popular music culture with any semblance of an identifying characteristic. Over the last 15 years, music has progressively stratified itself into a full MCUification of Swiftie style McMusicStuffs on one end, and a hard Balkanization of scenes on the other. If you’re not a nerd (and/or a careerist in the pro audio industry in my case), it might have been the last time, whether you liked the sound or not, popular music autonomically put you someplace with other people. Which is not to say that only AI factory drivel gets made today (take, for example, Son Lux or James Blake as two superb examples of distinct and brilliant modern songwriting), but rather that nothing floats around a grocery store or cab ride radio station that’s original or weird enough to be memorable anymore. None of it feels even a little transgressive or dangerous - it’s all some flavor of corporate newspeak. And as such, it ties you to nothing and no one. It is lonely.
Perhaps it's a Smells Like Teen Spirit phenomenon? Even those who weren't grunge / '90s alt-rock fans like that song quite a bit... I was memed for liking the Smashing Pumpkins quite a bit in my senior year!