Metal Friends?

Two recent events have convinced me that I need more metal friends. By that I of course mean friends who listen to and can discuss metal music (not cyborgs, although I wouldn't mind that so much either). The first event came last weekend when I ran into some old college friends after I had left a local record shop. After brief introductions and small talk, they asked about the CD's in my hand. I had picked up Daedelus' Love To Make Music To (review forthcoming), which I described as electronica, as well as one called Radiance of Shadows: one of the two billion albums by the band Nadja that, at that point, I had yet to hear (review also forthcoming). My immediate reaction was to describe Nadja as drone doom metal and leave it at that, but then my common sense kicked in and remembered that most people have no idea what that is, so I simplified:

Me: "It's like....drone....metal."

Yes! Brilliant! Drop the "doom" and they'll totally know what the hell I'm talking about!....right?

College friends: "....drone metal?"

Of course they didn't. So my fiancee chimed in and managed to eventually change the subject, which was probably for the best.

The second event was the discovery of this picture:

(He's madly in anger with you)

Yeah, I know it's old (so three weeks ago!), but I didn't find it until last week because I'm usually pretty late with these kinds of things. As was the case with most people that know what it's referencing, I laughed out loud and kept laughing probably long after I should not have found it funny anymore. Immediately I wanted to tell someone about it who would care so that we could both share a laugh and maybe they could make fun of me for not having seen it sooner (because only on the internet can having a life outside of the internet be used as an insult both ways), but I came up blank.

I have friends and acquaintances that I can talk to about pretty much every other form of music I listen to besides metal. Psych rock? Yup. Old school rap and R&B? Uh huh. Jazz? Surprisingly. General weird, unclassifiable shit? Sorta. Indie? I can throw a rock in any direction from where I'm sitting and hit someone who can talk about indie bands. But metal? None. I used to work with a couple of guys who's knowledge (and collection) of metal dwarfed mine and anyone that I knew or have known since, but we didn't keep in touch after I quit the job.

I think the main thing I miss is having someone open-minded to talk to about music. Most of the people I've known who were into metal had very broad musical pallets that didn't end with metal. Whereas it's always been a stereotype (and with good reason) that metal fans only care about metal and think that everything else is, shall I say, "fuckin' gay!!!1", my experience has been that people who were fans of metal have always been the most open-minded about all forms of music. Bringing up metal in any conversations these days, though, I usually find myself having to defend it.

It's not really as big of a deal as I'm making it, I suppose. But it is nice being able to say "stoner doom" without having to explain himself.