An Op-Ed Written By Sabbatha Ashvale
An opinion on gatekeeping, false authority, and the future of metal culture
How Media Gatekeeping Is Suffocating the Scene It Claims to Protect
Modern metal media often mistakes silence, nostalgia, and gatekeeping for authority and in doing so, actively suffocates the future of the genre it claims to protect.
Why does metal media insist on ignoring the very bands keeping the genre alive?
Bands Are the Culture: Media Is Infrastructure
Let’s get something straight.
Metal does not exist because of magazines, blogs, playlists, or websites. Those things exist because of bands.
Metal exists because artists take risks, lose money, tour in vans, sleep on floors, and pour their lives into records that might fail. It exists because musicians choose art over comfort, again and again.
Media’s role is not to sit above that work like a judge handing down approval. Media exists to document, amplify, and contextualize the art.
When outlets forget that, they stop serving the scene and start serving their own image and metal has never been about image.
The Olde Garde Obsession Is Creative Stagnation
Constantly resurfacing the same legacy acts feels safe. It flatters nostalgia and guarantees clicks.
But it also freezes metal in time, starving emerging bands of oxygen and training audiences to distrust anything new.
Honoring history is vital but living in it is cowardice. Silence as Status Is a Lie
Somewhere along the line, “radio silence” became a strategy. Ignoring bands became a posture.
It isn’t.
Many outlets go silent because they believe engagement looks desperate, gratitude looks amateur, and warmth undermines authority.
So they don’t comment or reshare. They don’t acknowledge bands who amplify them. That silence isn’t editorial integrity. It’s detachment cosplay.
Real authority comes from discernment, not distance and metal can’t survive on absence.
The Human Cost: Why Bands Remember
Bands remember who showed up and who followed through. Those who amplified without being asked. Who treated them like collaborators, not content.
They also remember who vanished the second the article went live. Media forgets bands. Bands do not forget media.
Who’s the Scene For, Anyway?
Media should participate in the ecosystem, not hover above it. Growth does not require emotional detachment.
Authority is not built by ignoring people. It’s built through consistency, taste, and respect. Gratitude isn’t weakness, it’s cultural literacy.
If metal media wants authority, it should stop pretending silence is power and start remembering who the music is actually for.
