Incoming! Death Metal Cliche Alert!

BBC are showing a documentary tonight about lunatic fringe metal bands, centering on the tale of a bunch of Italian cretins called "Beasts of Satan" that ended in murder. And this, of course, has given the media the change to trot out all those lazy clichés yet again.

BBC News quotes one Michele Tollis:

"No one can contradict me when I say that heavy metal and satanism are closely linked. They're inseparable," he says.

The Guardian's Sarah Dempster is even worse; she turns up the bad cliché knob all the way up to 11

Perhaps the most startling realisation to spring from this fog bank of ridiculousness is that heavy metal has, over the past 35 years, barely changed at all. While pop, dance and rap have all grown, diversified and experimented with fashionable trousers, metal has remained in a state of suspended adolescence, clinging like lichen to its black jeans and refusing to relinquish a MO so primordial it's probably scrawled on a cave wall somewhere near Birmingham, accompanied by a chalk drawing of a shouting Neanderthal that looks, coincidentally, a bit like Tony Iommi. Death metal (a relatively recent variant birthed in the late 1980s) may have upped the ugg-factor by swapping proper singing for singing like an illiterate serf describing a stampede of wild boars, but its primary fixations - pseudo-demonism, third-form nihilism, angry boffing and white trainers - form the pubescent marrow in a bony chain that links everyone from Cradle Of Filth and Slayer to Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath.

It appears that Sarah Dempster, just like Beasts of Satan themselves, doesn't get metal. It's not meant to be taken seriously. Heavy metal at it's best has always been pantomime, and most fans recognise this. Has Sarah Dempster ever been to an Iron Maiden gig?

Like a lot of things, it's a moronic minority that give everyone else a bad name. How many murders have been committed by football hooligans? The figure runs into hundreds over the years. Yet nobody suggests that football fandom itself is responsible for the thuggish behaviour of a minority of so-called fans. When was the last time you heard of large numbers heavy metal fans being drunkenly abusive towards everyone else after a gig? When was the centre of any major city turned into a no-go area when Metallica were in town?