In my music hobby as a guitarist, I've been involved in heavy rock and classic blues bands, played in a classical guitar ensemble, and did some sessions in a jazz setting. More recently I've been guitar tech and roadie for my son who plays in a metal band.
By far, the nicest people I have come across have been in the metal scene. I've been invited around to try gear, and been offered the lend of more gear from heavy metal guitarists.
My former co-founder in my business is a fan of extreme Northern European metal, and she is one of the nicest people I've met.
There is a lot of social batesian mimicry in adopting a "vicious metalhead" image (or any other image from a band). I would expect a sexual agressor adopting an innocent "boys-band" image (agressive mimicry in this case), underdogs trying to pose as "I'm richer than you, b*ch", and common people trying to identify him/herselves with a strong badass image or a more exciting life. Admiring the opposite of who you are is in the root of any fandom.
There's a weird rule of opposites which can happen with music. I think people often take up art and music as a form of healing, so there's some kind of reaction vector involved. Lots of people who take up Irish Trad are tortured souls or have "thorny" sides. Also, the corpus has a lot of happy sounding songs talking about truly horrible things.
(One of her albums is called Ultraviolence)
I'm about 10 years older now, and have traded in that sound wall, for a different kind. As an "adult" (Is 29 adult, probably not) I can get that same feeling listening to people like Lawrence English, and Tim Hecker, who are most assuredly not metal at all but produce much denser layers of frequency that would put any metal band to shame. I mostly just listen to jazz though, which takes a severe bit of concentration, attacking the "ADHD" from a different angle. Forcing me to follow a phrase through, for fear of it becoming noise.
Wimps and posers, leave the hall. --- Manowar, Metal Warriors
(Age and cardiovascular fitness matter more, but tt the time we were all young and relatively fit).
It's not 100% true, but I find that it tends to be.
Pretty sure that's everybody.
vctms is a metalcore band
jfac is a deathcore band, esp during the doom ep era
deathcore being a combination of death metal and metalcore
actually, none of the bands you linked are metal
that doesnt invalidate the fact that metalcore isn't metal, since it's rooted in punk hence, metal core
Extreme metal rooted from Discharge. Sounds close enough anyway. Crossover thrash isn't metal because it has punk on it, too?
Regardless, this is just pedantry.
Yeah, that's totally closer to punk than metal...
As you point out, there are a number of subcultures, some of which are generally wholesome and aesthetically sound. For example, Manowar fans are usually intelligent, driven, and extremely muscular.
I love walls of sound, I love intensity that feels like it takes a surplus of cognitive bandwidth (ADHD) and gives it a little bit of resistance to tug against, almost like those various rubber stress toys. I think most metal fans hear lyrical gruesomeness as something between fantasy and a cause for more empathy than anything else. And let's be real, a lot of it is flat out unintelligible. It's an aesthetic.
Most of the metalheads I know are absolute teddybears. I listen to some pretty heavy stuff (see links), but the other day I cried at a dog video, and recently had to turn off the police scanner at the mention of a particularly sad crime. Mosh pits look scary but there's a shared ethical framework. Injuries happen, but they're almost never due to malice. Somebody falls down, you pick em up. Bigger people stomp around keeping the peace and returning lost shoes, aha. It's bounded, consensual violence – just like a martial art.
Exceptions exist – there are church burners and skinheads, but they tend to cluster in their own sects and you don't get mixed up with them accidentally.
https://youtu.be/E9z-Tipz5JQ?t=40
https://youtu.be/Y037ZIKckIY
https://youtu.be/9YkSki1qbLA