What? Judas Priest Is Not Death Metal?
Cartoon Metal
The Simpsons is usually a smart and well informed show, they even have lots of references to complicated mathematical enigmas (the show is apparently written by math geeks) and all kinds of celebrities have made a guest appearance. Nevertheless, they made a big mistake in the last episode which was featuring Judas Priest: a character in the episode referred to the band as ‘death metal’, something which didn’t sit well with Judas Priest’s fans and überfans, and Bart Simpson had to apologize in his usual old-fashioned classroom punishment, writing a hundred times on the blackboard ‘Judas Priest is not death metal’.
The funniest part of the story is that the band, whose song ‘Breaking the Law’ was used in the episode, didn’t even comment – they probably don’t care at all – but fans, man the fans, they were not tender! Stereogum’s Michael Nelson wrote:
‘As I’ve said before, it drives me fucking insane when TV shows or movies make big, dumb, inaccurate references to metal for the sake of milking cheap laughs. I don’t care if you want to have fun at metal’s expense, but if you brazenly mix up black metal and death metal — and the essence of the joke hinges on getting that reference right — well, that’s just lazy writing and it deserves to be called out and mocked relentlessly. But that’s totally pardonable compared to calling Judas Priest a death metal band. Not only do Judas Priest predate death metal by a solid decade, they sound absolutely nothing like any bands in that entire genre. Which of course you already know because everybody knows that. Well, not everybody, apparently.’
When did Metal fans start taking themselves so seriously? I guess since forever. I read some tweets menacing to not be watching the show anymore, or saying stuff like ‘Calling Judas Priest death metal is like Calling Mac Miller Gangsta Rap’… ‘I thought it was bad when South Park called Slayer death metal, but this is a whole new level of ignorance’, … ‘Judas Priest were called “death metal’ on the Simpsons, which is like calling The Simpsons’ a documentary’… Metal Insider was really tough too, writing, ‘it might have been a good idea to not call a 43 year old song that gets played on classic rock death metal’.
Jeeeesus! Metal fans, get over it, and especially get a life, does it really matter? Do you know how many subgenres have been described in metal? More than 25 according to Wikipedia! Don’t you think this is pushing the nomenclature a bit too far? So, Judas Priest is not death metal, and, without taking any risks, I would just say they are heavy metal.
