Link: https://www.newarab.com/opinion/never-be-never-see-metallicas-cowardly-silence-palestine

As Antonio Gramsci argued, ruling groups maintain power partly by making their ideas seem like common sense. This helps explain the political significance of Metallica’s call for disengagement at a time when Israel’s genocide in Palestine demands urgent international attention. Hetfield’s vague agenda of “love, energy and heavy music” ultimately amounts to a refusal to stand for anything meaningful. And that refusal is itself deeply political.

This is so disappointing...is it ok to still listen to their old stuff and just pretend that they broke up after Master of Puppets?

You can, but you should know deep down that most of their lyrics are just “bandwagon rides” and pretentious.

Seems kinda weird to pick on Metallica. None of their music strikes me as anti-colonial or revolutionary. I suspect that if the band wanted to air their politics, they'd do it on FOX news anyway. Their fans are all genX white men; they'd be fools to "come out" as liberal, much less revolutionary.

And who cares about Metallica? They only have one good album and it was released in 1984.

Also, they come across as tools. They’re the last band I’d want to hear politics from.

Though I will disagree, their music is fantastic. Even short hair Metallica has great songs.

Gotta take the heat off of Sheeran.

At most they were an anti-cold war, anti-nuke band, not so much with modern politics.

Everything post-Mustaine has been extremely mid at best

I’d argue that’s a loud but unpopular opinion

You don't need to have “anti colonial” tag to speak about Palestinian children being slaughtered live on front of your eyes.

Also i disagree that all their fans are white men (whatever the fuck that means), i think Metallica is or maybe was a big global band that have enormous fanbase all over the world (literally).

The message the article tries to deliver is basically calling out fuckface Hetfield, as he is going political (in a negative way) with his recent pesudo-love and anti-politics rhetoric.

Personally, this situation would fall into issues I have with other bands/authors/popular figures and how I handle their material. If I own copies of their media, whether on CD or downloaded files or physical books, I will continue to listen to or read it if I do enjoy it. I will no longer purchase anything new, stream on any platform, or borrow anything from the library as a way to show my non-support.

An example: I loved Coraline by Gaiman. That guy is a gross creep, but I already own a copy of the book and the Blu-ray, so I keep my copies and do not purchase anything I do not already own.

Edit: fixed some grammar because I’m a dork

Metallica lost me with the Napster shit. No moves on their part since then have corrected that course.

Metallica infamously got Napster (the original music download site) shut down, which empowered the RIAA (and later the MPAA) to go on an anti-piracy crusade, which locked down access to a lot of media.

Granted, the RIAA has been fighting that fight for decades, but it was the legal justification they needed (and public support from one particular band) to start targeting individual people to make examples of. I remember they sued some grandma who didn't know how computers work because her teen grandchild downloaded an MP3 to her computer. They put her in debt for the rest of her life. They went after children too.

And this was around the time that torrenting started, which was a convenient way to download data on the Internet without over-taxing a singular computer. But because media pirates were using the new format to share music and movies, the RIAA and MPAA targeted torrenting itself as a tool of piracy, which limited its use professionally. To this day, thanks to them, torrenting is pretty much exclusively viewed as a way to pirate illegal content.

Fuck Metallica.

They have always been posers. Less metal than a BYU Glee Club.

I stand by it idgaf

It'd be weird if you backed down from an internet fight in 30 minutes

🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🦜

It’s how I expect all my internet fights to go.

It is self-inflicted because Hetfield chose to be a massive hypocrite on stage by giving a little speech about not being political while shitting on Macklemore for being political.

If he had taken the apolitical option to keep his mouth shut and just play the music, then I'd agree it's weird to randomly single out Metallica. They've always been bootlicking hypocrites, it's nothing new.

📠

Posers

They have always been awful people (even if I do enjoy their earliest albums)

Their documentary is a painful two hours of the whiniest, most insufferable, overprivileged, man babies. If you ever think the Napster bullshit was a temporary blip, there’s ample evidence that the rot goes all the way through:

https://youtu.be/eTeat_IN0SU?is=lPkgJq-_WWxE-gtH

Metallica died with Cliff Burton

Let it happen naturally: all you have to do is pay more attention to the things Hetfield and Ulrich say and do, then their music will become nauseating. Or don't and continue to enjoy them, who cares.

Lucky for me I was a Megadeth fan and ignored Metallica over the Mustaine drama when I was a teenager, so when they went mask-off over Napster I locked in my opinion that they suck.

Olivia Rodrigo is more metal than Metallica

Gaiman didn't do any of the real work on teh film, so feel free to enjoy it

The Sandman is what hurts me, but again, he just wrote the words and made the story. There were lots of other people involved and they arn't creepy assholes

Mustaine is a rightwing douchebag, so its all shit

Yeah I stopped paying attention to him and Megadeth when he went all super-christian.

Had James just not brought it up, it wouldn't be a problem. I don't think that bands are required to bring up politics and defend a side. Sheeran had his hand forced and at that point had to pick a side, and he fucked up. The only reason Metallica is getting scrutinized is because Jamie boy had to make some dumbass comments about not getting political while taking a shot at Macklemore. I was at a concert last weekend, and no bands said anything to draw themselves into a political discussion, and they're not in the headlines now. It's simple.

And justice for some

They don't even know how to treat their own members with dignity and respect.

Specifically, the rich white folks.

Did anyone expect Metallica to be principled? They're copyright trolls for decades, something tells me moral backbone isn't their strong suit.

Who's getting their political takes from celebs or artists? Stop.

Yeah, but at least for streaming it, I worry about any royalties that may go to him, so I just avoid that risk since I have it on disc. I feel your pain 💚

I still have disturbed on my lifting playlist, but I’ve dumped gaiman and die antwoord. Regardless, it was pirated anyways

Plenty of apolitical people do. Is it a good idea? Prolly not. Has that stopped them before?

Her music isn't my cup of tea, but I absolutely love everything she stands up for and what she does.
Metallica knows a lot of their base are probably MAGA and I bet most of the band vote MAGA. Fuck those assholes.

Metallica stop being relevant when they started suing everyone proving that their lyrics had no bearing on reality and their greed knew no end.

Ot is not cowardness to bring the topic. He is simply a genocide supporter

It is not even political to be anti genocide

Why bringing the topic to begin with ? He clearly threw shade on Mac for no reason

100% get it

Fire, bad!

Ever spoken out loud to another human? Probably most do.

I got that reference

I think it's a bad idea to let later knowledge ruin music.. usually (yes there are some exceptions..don't read about the band Lostprophets...). Metallica is a band of idiots with bad selfish opinions. That doesn't mean they didn't make good art decades ago.

What did Disturbed do?

I liked both but as others said, both bands have bad political opinions. I think you can still enjoy music while knowing the creators are not great people. As long as they're not murderers or rapists or something awful like that.