Wrassling Metal

Now a quick look in the sport section of this site will show that I am a bit of a wrestling fan.  It is something that a while back I would have been quite reticent to mention, I was kind of embarrassed by it.  However, as the years go by I have realised that that is just a bit silly and have embraced my love of spandex clad men pretending to fight.  Something I have less been able to embrace my love of is ‘wrestling metal’.

Now by wrestling metal I essentially mean American radio rock metal.  Bands like Disturbed, Five Finger Death Punch and the band that inspired this article Hellyeah.  All of these bands are really not that great.  They play very generic metal with a big chorus that is safe enough to be played on American radio.  Or to work as a theme tune to a WWE PPV/generic wrestler entrance video.  Just go on Youtube and watch any wrestling compilation video and you will quickly see what I mean.  Now the truth is I know that these bands are bad.  I know that Hellyeah, despite having Vinnie Paul are really not worth that time.  Yet I can’t help but enjoy them.

Now the truth is I don’t really feel embarrassed about this.  As someone who is a well known fan of people like Taylor Swift and has a lot more country music on his Ipod than the normal British metal fan, I have long ago given up any real shame at my music tastes.  I just like music, I will always lean towards the heavy but more often than not I can be convinced by a good song.  But the issue of wrestling metal is one that interests me because as I said, I know this is not good.  Take my respect for Vinnie Paul out of it and Blood for Blood, the new Hellyeah album, has very little to make me want to listen to it.  Yet as I sit listening to the breakneck pace of “Demons in the Dirt” I can’t help but bob my head and enjoy it.  It’s big dumb fun in the simplest sense of the word.

I think that is where this music fills that void in my life.  We all spend a lot of time appreciating fantastic music and I absolutely adore doing that.  However, sometimes as I sit in my living room doing dissertation work, which is what I have spent a lot of this summer doing, I just want to bang my head and shout along to some nonsensical lyrics.  Wrestling metal provides that in my life.  Yes I know Five Finger Death Punch are not a brilliant metal band (even if I believe they are on course to become one of the biggest) but if they keep writing choruses like “Over and Under” or doing covers like “Mama Says Knock You Out” I don’t think I care.  They can be as big and as dumb as they want because every now and then big and dumb is what I fancy.