The Black metal enthusiast..not talkin' about corpse paint

Let me start off by saying that I am a huge metal fan and not that pseudo heavy stuff with teens in skinny jeans with tattoos, and swooped hair.  I am an African American who started off listening to hip-hop and continue to do so.  Well Sometime in college I decided to give metal a try when i constantly saw a classmate of mine wear band shirts most notably being killswitch engage.  Mind you this is my first introduction into this type of music which I must admit was put off because some of the sub-genres penchant for gore, satan, and violence.  So i had a little research to do in what the heck i was listening to, what sound I liked, the lyrics, vocals (hardest part for people to accept).  I found out i like the band and even saw they had melodic parts along with their harshness, and the subject matter was just as regular and normal as anything else.

Research Phase 

I look at music in a few ways, do i like it or do i not and does it relate to my feelings and my life.  I found myself visiting every myspace page i could find and writing down band names that I was curious about, which let me tell you was quite annoying.  This was a  confusing process because there are a ton of different "cores" which i won't even list here.  But I eventually developed a liking to technical death metal, metalcore, stuff mixed with hardcore, forms of black metal, doom, grind, progressive etc...  My favorite band is meshuggah :).  I started to read blogs, reviews, interviews to get a greater sense of where these musicians were coming from.   It turned out some of these dudes were quite smart, but just decided to make music that reflected their subject matter in a non happy go lucky way.  I was always a thinker introspective type of guy and and honestly hip-hop didn't touch that heart string for me.  Metal brings the heat with musicianship combined with aggressiveness(not all ways) which is the opposite of  my even keeled temperament/personality. 

An observation 

As i looked at bands I appreciated the deep and thoughtful lyrics about depression, politics, literature, philosophy, atheism etc.  Although some bands will not be as thought provoking but i tend to gravitate towards the subject matters above.  Aside from connecting with what i stated above I couldn't help but notice that it seemed to be predominantly dominated by white guys, I am fine with this by the way, it is just something i noticed.  Over the years more and more whites have gravitated towards rap even in the late 80's early 90's.  But I have not seen this to the same extent from the black community over to metal. I know there are the jimi hendricks of the world, living color, motown era rock n roll, blues.  There are bands such as bad brains, fishbone as well that are awesome.  On the heavier side of things sepultura's vocalist is black, suffocation (death metal band) had two black band mates for a long time, Black Death which i just found out about while writing this :), blasphemy, oceano.  A couple of these bands are cool some are lame as I will always keep to the criteria above and not based on race.  

Now knowing these bands exist does make me feel slightly more connected to the genre.  

A good pair 

In the impoverished neighborhoods that I grew up in rap was prevalent, from gangster, to thought provoking conscious rap that asked its listeners to step up their thinking and knowledge, ostentatious formulas that is more prevalent today.  But once you dig deeper into the hardships of living in dilapidated areas of poverty, violence, fear, and eroded hope.  I am surprised this connection hasn't been more widely expressed, not withstanding i could be missing something with the thousands of bands out there.  Styles like Doom metal would definitely be a form of metal that could display desperation of unemployment.  death metal/black/hardcore-punk/grind could represent gang violence.  These would work as possible concept albums but in general coming from these areas a greater sense of rebellious harsh music that is metal should be a breeding ground in the african american community.  Maybe this is an exposure problem or the worry that their peers will not accept it.  or maybe they want to make it but there is no infrastructure to facilitate instrument usage.  Let me make this clear, I am not asking for all black bands although that would be cool, but just more of them opening up to the possibility of listening to it or playing it and showing up to shows.