Unpopular Metal Opinions

Yes and no. They were highly rated in their day for good reason. However, they were indecline before they split. The poor performances by Anselmo, the band's break-up, and the less than impressive post-Pantera music tarnished the reputation somewhat.

They do get too much dickriding though.

Yep.

Shitty people, but the occasional dose of pompous OTT power metal is fun.

Agree, but I don't reckon that's gatekeeping. It's more about being decent human beings.

Hope this doesnt count as necroposting, love me some hot takes. Here's a few.

• Pantera are violently overrated and if Dimebag hadnt been murdered they likely wouldnt see the amount of dickriding they get. 
• Max Cavalera should have retired at the very least 10 years ago, that man has nothing interesting left to say.
• Venom is not Black Metal. Venom has never been Black Metal. Venom will never be Black Metal. I do not care that they coined the term and I do not care that the First Wave of Black Metal sounded different to later examples of the genre. Venom were a shitty gimmick take on what Motorhead were doing and do not belong in any Black Metal discussion outside of the topic of influences. They are also rubbish.
  
• Chris Barnes is a disgrace and he should just retire entirely from music in general.
  
• Manowar fucking suck!
  

I'm also going to disagree with some of you - gatekeeping is sometimes good actually, necessary even. Like for example the people claiming that politics should be kept out of Metal, pointing at bands like System of a Down or Rage Against The Machine and saying shit like "you should stick to making music and stay out of politics". Those people need to be mercilessly gatekept until they either learn or leave. (note that I am only being slightly sarcastic) See also anyone claiming that women/minorities/etc have no place in Metal.

Me too.

Unpopular opinion 2: The two Ripper-fronted albums are quite good - they're even better than a couple of Halford-fronted ones.

Unpopular opinion 3: 'In Search of Sanity' is the best Onslaught album (the others are good too).

Unpopular opinion 4: John Corabi is a much better singer than Vince Neal, and the Corabi-fronted self-titled album is my favorite Crüe album.

Unpopular opinion 5: It's okay to like glam AND thrash metal.

Unpopular opinion 6: 'Battle vest'/'battle jacket' is a stupid name, and a lot of the things we metalheads do and say are actually kinda dumb too (like saying 'Hails' as a greeting or calling eath other 'brother').

Unpopular opinion 7: I'm not really a Cannibal Corpse fan (don't dislike them, just never really got interested in them)

Unpopular opinion 8: I like 'Necroticism' better than 'Reek of Putrefaction' and 'Symphonies of Sickness'.

Unpopular opinion 9: Manowar became a joke decades ago, and I have no interest in them anymore.

Unpopular opinion 10: There's no such thing as true metal or false metal

Unpopular opinion 11: 'St. Anger' isn't that bad.

Unpopular opinion 12: I like the four last Death albums better than the first three ines (but I do like the first three ones).

Unpopular opinion 13: Elitism and gatekeeping in metal is stupid, and there should be just as much room for, say, people of color, women, trans people, and gay people as there is for sweaty white guys in the metal fan community, and it's really annoying that a lot of metal elitists have injected talking points from the American culture wars into their gatekeeping. Fuck those assholes!

Unpopular opinion 14: While not a big fan of these genres, they're still metal: nu metal, alternative metal, metalcore, deathcore and gothic metal.

Unpopular opinion 15: Some of the Tony Marting fronted Sabbath albums are better than some of the Ozzy fronted ones.

Iron Maiden: first two Dianno albums are UNDERRATED; TNOTB, POM and Powerslave are properly rated, everything after is OVERRATED. 

Randy Rhoads guitar work has never been matched since. He was truly unique and original. The two albums with Ozzy rank as high as ANY Black Sabbath albums. 

Dream Theater - like many bands was creative and original to start with but since Scenes From A Memory have simply been regurgitating same ideas to ever dwindling success. 

Any band that uses growling vocals is unlistenable to me.  Seriously, Opeth's music sounds really great, but the growling vocals just make it a non-starter for me.  And the songs without growling vocals seem...dull?  To be fair bc the growling vocals kill me am not very familiar with the catalog. 

Mike Patton is the most accomplished vocalist who's ever tackled metal - but you can say that about him and many genres of music. 

Guns and Roses are and always were a decent but not great rock band.  Axl's vocals sound pretty shitty looking back. 

Judas Priest's most popular albums, Screaming For Vengeance and Defender's of the Faith, are among their worst. However, their entire catalog is a staggering library of consistent metal. 

Queensryche's run in the 80's was an innovative and high quality metal as you'll find. 

Virtually every metal band owes a debt to Rush. 

Soundgarden is a band I feel like I should like more but any time I start listening to them I soon find myself wanting to listen to something else.  

James Maynard Keynes side projects (A Perfect Circle and Pucifer) have been more interesting than his Tool stuff for since Lateralus. 

I'm probably the opposite. I find screechy black metal vocals highly off-putting. It's probably because I started with death metal.