Brutal Death Metal Bands Are Selling More Tickets Than Pop Stars?!

Hey brother ,
Off topic,
My boys won Canadas metal battle and they’re going to Wacken,
I think you’d dig them.

https://youtu.be/j3JXTHX0svI?si=1hQcNmga26X_WF1e

My hears came in last week. Can't wait to debut them early June when I'll see Midnight and Hellripper. And all that for 30 euros. Cheers 🤘

3:51
Did he actually say "Megan Thee Trainor?"😂😂

Metal>pop.

I just saw Kreator and Carcass with 300 people max in Knoxville, Tennessee I was so confused. It was a great fucking show though. The venue was so small Kreator couldn't use their pyrotechnics.

Metal is doing fine but there were no metal acts listed in the top 10 highest grossing acts of 2025.

Ontario Canada just brought a new law in to cap ticket prices on resale to face value.

Modern Pop is computerised, pornified focus-group excrement. Metal is much more like proper music with artistry & emotional resonance.

Disco is better than death metal by far😂😂😂

I'm that kind of metal fan that when anybody just mentions None So Vile I start playing it in my head, instantly. Dang, what a perfect half hour gem.

I guarantee you that all of those people paying thousands for a Taylor Swift concert, would not even pay $10 to see her if she had been an unknown local bar singer, even if her music was completely identical. They are not fans of the music, they are fans of the hype, they want to be part of the popular thing. The most important moment for them is the photo of themselves at the concert they can post on social media.

This year I am going to see Knocked Loose, Dropkick Murphy’s and The Hu Band for less than €180. I went to see Sabaton last year for €100 and that was for the Golden Circle.
A few weeks ago, I was heading home when I stopped into one of my local bars to grab some food, I saw they had a death metal
Showcase that night, I had planned on a quiet night but that went out the window when I saw that.

Why Death Metal is Viewed as Trash, Evil, Rebellious, Satanic, Immature, and Pretentious

Glorifies Active Blasphemy: Explicitly attacks the God of the Bible (YHWH) and mocks sacred Christian theology.

Promotes Satanic Philosophy: Uses the figure of Satan to champion pride, self-worship, and total rebellion against divine law.

Rejects Moral Absolutes: Embraces harsh nihilism, arguing that right and wrong do not exist and that human life holds zero sacred value.

Obsesses Over Decay: Fixates heavily on death, mutilation, gore, and the destruction of the human body.

Spreads Pure Pessimism: Denies the existence of hope, salvation, or a benevolent creator, portraying the universe as an empty, hostile void.

Encourages Misanthropy: Promotes a deep hatred for humanity, focusing entirely on war, cruelty, and societal self-destruction.

Employs Visual Depravity: Utilizes desecrated religious imagery, occult symbols, and horrific artwork to intentionally shock and offend.

Relies on Shock Value: Uses cheap tactics like gore, curses, and blasphemy to get attention rather than relying on deep substance.

Stuck in Adolescent Rebellion: Mimics the behavior of an angry teenager fighting against authority figures and parental rules.

Lacks Emotional Maturity: Expresses complex human struggles through one-dimensionally aggressive tantrums instead of nuanced emotional intelligence.

Glorifies Edge-Lord Imagery: Obsesses over dark, edgy themes like monsters, blood, and demons that resemble juvenile horror comic books.

Fails at Real Philosophy: Reduces massive, complex philosophical questions about existence down to simple, angry slogans and repetitive anti-religious rants.

Trapped in a Fantasy World: Avoids dealing with real-world adult responsibilities by escaping into exaggerated, cartoonish scenarios of violence and evil.

Uses Fake Intellectualism: Wraps simple, angry concepts in complex vocabulary words to sound much deeper than they actually are.

Overcomplicates Song Structures: Crams dozens of fast, jarring riffs into one track just to brag about technical playing skills instead of making good music.

Claims Gatekeeper Elite Status: Features a fanbase and musicians who look down on other music genres, claiming theirs is the only "pure" or "real" art.

Acts Spiritually Superior: Portrays its anti-religious or occult themes as enlightened, secret wisdom, viewing ordinary people as brainwashed sheep.

Takes Itself Too Seriously: Treats cartoonish themes of gore, monsters, and Satanism with absolute, deadpan seriousness, completely lacking any self-awareness or humor.

Disguises Noise as Avant-Garde: Claims that unreadable logos, guttural pig noises, and wall-of-noise production are high-concept artistic choices rather than poor design and bad mixing.

It's fake and people know it, Tyler Swift and the like feel plastic and produced for kids we use to call it bubble gum. The record companies just go out find someone that can sell to the public. With metal the kid in his bedroom working his ass off just to learn the guitar,bass or drums that has always been the reason, it's real.

Is there a "pop middle class"? I feel like pop stars are either, well, STARS or … nothing. And there's nothing in-between.

I've always said that the popularity of pop is overrated, and of metal underrated, simply because for metal the interest is spread over a much greater number of bands. If 1000 metal fans listen to 100 metal bands, and 1000 pop fans listen to 5 pop artists, the top 5 most listened artists will all be pop artists, even though there are as many metal fans as there are pop fans.
That's why focusing on top lists of radio plays, album sales or Spotify listens are a flawed way of measuring popularity.

Downsize definitely, one of the main problems being the massive setups used to give us the visuals. As ticket buyers we're paying a huge amount for something that's supposed to enhance the show, not be the show. I'd like to see Metallica do a 'cheap tour', downsizing on all the visuals to give us a ticket price around $70, and hopefully set a trend

I completely understand your point. The fan base is different. For example, I religiously follow the rock band THE WARNING. You’ve probably never heard of them right? They are 3 sisters. They have a fan base called The Warning Army. They’re not big, yet! But in a couple years, you will hear about them all over the place. Just check out their discography and you’ll understand why they have a very intestine fan base of different generations, GenX, Millennials, GenZ. Their Queen of The Murder Scene album is a masterpiece 🤘

Can't forget the price of gas $4-$5 just crazy and include the price of concessions…

Metalheads are truely tolerant. You cannot say that about punks or indy fans. The Metal-scene is neither woke nor anti-woke. Metalheads don't care for Dave Mustain's weird opinions or Till Lindemann's groupies, the just rock out, and do not respond to political "dogwhistles".
…. maybe we just can't hear the high frequencies.

Honestly love how you tied in your sponsor with your content. Most of them I skip through. Everything you said was on point and you got a sub out of me! 🤘

I feel like "There Is No Business To Be Done On A Dead Planet" by All Shall Perish is a very valid selection for riff of the week, but "Until There Is Nothing Left" by Cryptopsy is also fitting.