I'm going to be totally honest here - I love heavy music. From the moment my dad first played me Led Zeppelin and the Clash when I was a lad, to now as I prowl the internet for obscure black metal bands, heavy music has been a part of my life since I was old enough to enjoy music. However, if there is one thing I cannot stand about it, especially extreme metal, it's the goddamn fans.
The stereotypes are already there - metalcore fans are melodramatic "Christian" 16 year olds. Death metal fans are 25 and still live with their parents. Black metal fans are racist shutaways obsessed with forests and Norway. And while they are just that - stereotypes - there is a certain unifying theme to extreme metal fans: the inability to accept anything new.
Change is a two-edged sword for most artists - on the one hand, they have cultivated a following of fans based on a specific sound. But on the other hand, the artist's interests may lie somewhere else. So what's one to do? If you choose the latter, it doesn't matter if you're Satyricon or Bring Me the Horizon, your fans will be pissed.
That failure is compounded when you take what is potentially the most conservative and ruthlessly inaccessible of all metal genres - black metal - and attempt to progress. If a black metal band has the audacity to be anything besides just that, they are scorned as 'untrue' and 'sellouts' (Unless they're Dissection, but still). With that being said, enter Watain. The Swedish black metal outfit that began as a fairly uninteresting Third Wave BM act in 2000 with Rabid Death's Curse (okay, Casus Luciferi was pretty good). By the time 2005 rolled around, and black metal subgenres had begun to really differentiate and find their bearings (2006 saw Agalloch's Ashes Against the Grain), Watain had made it very clear they were setting their sights away from traditional black metal.
Much to the 'trve' fan's chagrin, the band released their 2007 album Sworn to the Dark, which cemented the idea that the band wasn't content to worship Gorgoroth and continue producing lo-fi tremolo recordings. When it comes to black metal, Sweden has always had more of an eye for the limelight (think about it: Dark Funeral, Dissection, Marduk...), and while that might make Fenriz angry, it's undeniable.
So it shouldn't have come as any surprise when Watain put out two remarkably un-kvlt albums. Sworn to the Dark was still a lot of fun - the crash of 'Darkness and Death' and hypnotic, headbang-inducing 'the Serpent's Chalice' makes for some incredibly enjoyable, if somewhat mindless black metal. Nevertheless, fans were disappointed by the departure from the sound of Casus Luciferi - and, normally, that's not much of an issue. You have ten or twenty particularly vocal detractors who publicly spout their anger on Facebook, but mostly people keep to themselves. But, again, this is black metal.
We're talking about a genre that contains bands who actively suppress tabulatures from circulating, and where musicians fiercely guard their demos, releasing them to the public after 12-15 years (Xasthur, anyone?). The genre is built on secrecy and inaccessibility, and has been described by my non-metalhead friends as 'the most difficult music to listen to they've ever heard'. It's this uber-conservative nature that adds to the vitriol bands get when they perform black metal with a potentially more mainstream edge.
Thus, you can imagine the mounting anger of the 'trve' neckbeards when 2010 came around and Lawless Darkness hit shelves. The lo-fi recording, which was absent on Sworn to the Dark, did not make a return. The band incorporated many more "mainstream" elements into their music - 'Reaping Death' is borderline catchy - and while there were still no breakdowns or clean vocals, fans were pissed.
The pot finally came to a boil a few weeks ago when The Wild Hunt was released. The band's first album signed to Century Media, and since then the band has faced insane amounts of criticism. Some of the metalheads I'm friendly with have been spitting absolute venom at this record. Why? Because of this song. Hell, one of the comments on that youtube video is 'RIP WATAIN'.
'They Rode On' is, for better or worse, an utter departure from the band's former style. It's been described as an 80s ballad - an anthem to hold your lighters up to and sway rythmically. Amidst a sea of BM fan tears, Erik Danielsson softly croons into a microphone 'they rode on...'.
Opinion time: it's not bad. I personally wouldn't listen to it because it's not my kind of slow, but honest to goodness why care so strongly about this? It's a stylistic evolution. Just because Watain made this song doesn't mean Casus Luciferi ceased to exist. We're human beings, and free will is a wonderful thing.
But wait, it gets better. Let's remember the album also features this amazing piece of work, which is one of my favorite Watain songs, and other great songs. If it's not clear, I do quite like the Wild Hunt. It did let me down in a few cases (I can't get into 'Outlaw'), but it's still a solid B in my book. In any case, the fact that people are fixating on one song, and a decision by the band to take Watain in another direction, is silly. It is a lot less dark than their other albums, but that's not a horrible thing.
The problem is that black metal fans impose a strict sense of what's 'acceptable' for a BM band to do. Cradle of Filth got (and continue to get) loads of shit because they're a bit more mainstream than Blut Aus Nord. Any stylistic elements that Darkthrone didn't include in A Blaze in the Northern Sky, unless they make the music more 'evil' or 'sinister', are instant 'sellout' moves. It's stupid because these people limit themselves to what they can listen to, and then turn around and become total douchenozzels by telling people they're not allowed to listen to band X because band X includes a bit of Metallica influence.
What's unfortunate is that this phenomenon extends to a good chunk of metal fans. Facebook and Youtube comments for newer Watain (and Liturgy*, and pretty much any band that the neckbeard elite do not 'approve of') are a cesspool of hate for artists who just wanted to try different things. It's annoying to deal with these people in real life, because metal music is about brotherhood and the bonds you make with rejects like you, and people like that (as Sergeant D calls them, Internet Music Nerds) ruin it for everyone. And it's that inability to accept that something just isn't your cup of tea that makes me dislike a good amount of metalheads.
* I really don't like Liturgy. Aesthetica is the Justin Timberlake of tryhard hipster black metal - it tries to do everything and is laughably bad at all of it. Even funnier is Pitchfork calling them 'kvlt', but that's another blog post.
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