Some Stranger Things fans have shifted against Metallica in a seeming shot at “canceling” the vet metal band after discovering more about their history.
Metallica got an increase in listeners over the past month when one of their songs was featured on Stranger Things 4.
Displaying the most delinquent clash of heavy metal and cancel culture, the Metallica backlash was booted up this week with a video made by TikTok user Serena Trueblood. She hosts a fan page on the social media platform called “Is Your Fav Problematic” that covers various musical artists.
Metallica has been gaining extreme numbers of new Gen-Z fans as Munson (Joseph Quinn) rips to their music in the latest volume of Stranger Things. And while Gen-Z is quick to find interest in the classics, they are even quicker to find a reason to all of a sudden cancel Metallica.
Watch the video here.
In the discovery of Trueblood’s Metallica installment, some of the audience responded with regret for their recent Metallica investments. They seemed to be some of the same new fans urged by Stranger Things’ use of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” in a critical scene. On TikTok as well as Twitter, others defended the band. In July, Metallica accommodated its new listeners.
But what is cancel culture? AP News deems the term a “buzzword that creates more confusion than clarity” before defining it as “a mechanism where a chorus of voices, amplified on social media, tries to silence a point of view that they find offensive by trying to damage or destroy the reputation of the person who has given offense.” Dictionary.com dubs it the “practice of withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive.”
Nevertheless it’s explained, in her video, Trueblood presses Metallica about their past actions caught on photo or video, including when associates such as former bassist Jason Newsted appeared to do Nazi salutes onstage. She also displays footage where Metallica appeared to make fun of the death of Kurt Cobain after the Nirvana singer’s 1994 suicide. (One includes Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine, but he was already out of Metallica at the time.)
Trueblood additionally declares Metallica singer James Hetfield kept Ice-T’s Body Count off a 1992 Metallica tour with Guns N’ Roses due to the hip-hop artist’s race. She includes a classic MTV News clip proposing the source of the rumor as Guns N’ Roses’ Axl Rose.
Inherently, Metallica fans on Twitter reacted in droves to Trueblood’s video. One tweet summarized, “The fact metallica welcomed and defended all the new fans that came from the stranger things fandom and they’ve gone and THROWN IT BACK IN THEIR FACES…”
But another seemed to counter in support of Trueblood’s take, saying, “Metallica fans proving they’re racist lmao.” Yet another replied to the drama, “Search Metallica cancelled… all about racism etc.” See more Twitter reactions down under the video.
Surplus in rock and metal have communicated out against cancel culture. They include Disturbed’s David Draiman, Twisted Sister’s Dee Snider, System of a Down’s John Dolmayan, KISS and Kelly Osbourne. Premature this year, Sharon Osbourne sought to show duplicity within the idea of cancel culture by saying, “If Hitler were alive today, they would give him a TV show.”
