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I'm more of a hardcore-music connoisseur than a metal fan. Yes, a difference exists between the two. Since we'll never be blessed with a game celebrating breakdowns and floor punching, Brutal Legend will suffice.
Rocktober 13 will be the second anniversary of one of my favorite games from this console generation. That got me ruminating.
Before Brutal Legend, I thought metal was kind of stupid.
It was like rock and roll but with more makeup and less harmony. The only people I knew in high school who liked it in a non-ironic sense were the kids who wore those jointed metal-finger claws -- or would have if they weren't banned from the premises.
I couldn't find much appeal in the half-screamed lyrics, black t-shirts with adolescent attempts at satanic imagery, and the mind-blowing melodrama.
I listened to Motorhead a few times in middle school, but that might have been a result of my mild obsession with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.
To me, metal was, at best, a cheesy relic out of touch with the world.
Apparently, the world was the problem. After I played Brutal Legend, metal finally made sense.
The title's unexpected fusion of slash-em-up, real-time strategy, and car combat disappointed some hoping for a God of War-like experience with headbangers instead of harpies -- and not without reason. But even if I hadn't enjoyed the way the game played, I still would have been mesmerized by its perfectly ridiculous world of noise, blood, and fire.
Tim Schafer, head of Brutal Legend's developer Double Fine, has seemed like more of a world-smith than a game designer ever since I played the cheekily morbid Grim Fandango, his final project at LucasArts.
His brütal fantasy made me realize that metal isn't for us modern-day, arts-patronizing, ground-walking mortals. It's for god-damned vikings wielding axes hewn from the teeth of slaughtered titans -- and beefy roadies with flowing mullets.
Maybe those high-school kids with the scuffed-up boots and long, greasy hair had something burning inside themselves, commanding them to ride, pillage, and slay. Maybe my well-meaning parents had managed to keep it all from igniting within my own soul.
But Schafer put a Zippo to it all, and the encore act is still going.
When I hear good metal now, I don't try to incorporate it into my world of collared shirts, measured eye contact, and RSVP cards. I go back to that place where it made perfect sense.
Maybe not all the musicians picture fire-spewing engine blocks and hot amazons made-up like Gene Simmons when they play their songs, but I sure do.
