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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 5353544" data-attributes="member: 19675">I beg to differ: the exceptions are telling.  Hard rock that is within the mainstream (IOW, getting actual play on radio & TV) tends to be almost purely heavy blues.  The few rock guitarists who actually venture into metal territory do so almost exclusively in their solos, not within the body of the rest of the song.Punk is still a fairly niche genre, with true (new) punk bands struggling to sell Gold.  Sure, pop-Punk like Green Day has done well- often charting on Billboard and hitting Platinum, but I don't know a single true punk who considers Green Day and their ilk to be representative of Punk as a whole.  As for the older punk bands hitting Gold or Platinum?  Well, honestly, it took decades for them to do so.  That's hardly mainstream- that's old punks replacing worn out tapes & LPs; that's old punks raising their kids on the real thing. So they're not surprised by the diluted stuff- they'd still choke on the real thing.To make a comparison, this is like saying Everclear is a soft drink because you can dilute it to the point that it doesn't cause your eyes to pop out and your throat to feel like you just swallowed an acetylene torch.  Everclear w/soda water being a mild thrill doesn't mean that the pure stuff isn't damn near poison.As in, we know that there are people in rap who have done drugs and committed crimes in the past much as they sing about today?We have that in metal, even in the purely US bands.As in there are people in rap experiencing repercussions for doing what they're singing about?  IOW, gun crimes, drug crimes, sex crimes and other anti-societal acts?Again, we have that in metal as well.  Lots of drug ODs in the past decade, even among the youngsters.  A few homicides, too.Hell, I've been on tour busses and been offered the proverbial mound 'o' white powder & a girl for the hour.  (Yes, I did decline.)The difference is mainly that its the high-profile rappers and the low profile metal bands that are skirmishing with the law.  Which means the rappers make national news, while the dramas of the metalheads are usually only found in your local police blotters or in media outlets devoted to rock & metal.My point was about popularity & acceptance within society, not locale- the GOO being an example of a shrine to mainstream music.  Country as a genre still sells big.  A top-notch solo C&W artist can sell huge numbers of tickets across the USA; ditto for a great tour package with a solid cross-section of C&W artists (including ones you've never heard of).Big metal shows are largely found in countries like Great Britain and Brazil- in the US, there hasn't been but one majorly successful multi-act metal tour for a decade or so- Ozzy's Ozzfest- and it tends to draw the big, mainstream metal names only...big enough to have name recognition outside of their genre.I'm in D/FW, Texas.  We love rock & metal...but not like we used to.We used to have the Texas Jam every year; its dead.  Judas Priest's tour last year- which, among other things, presented the entirety of British Steel played live- played our Nokia Center, not a stadium.  Ditto for a multi-band metal tour that passed through here last year.We had a couple of dozen nightclubs catering to the metal scene, and we had a local publication- Harder Beat- which actually had international circulation.  HB is a year gone, and almost all of the metal clubs have been replaced by strip joints and Mexican dance halls.</blockquote>

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