Found Metal Friday!

My new heavy metal horror novel An Augmented Fourth comes out this June.

To mark the occasion I'm going to bring you '"Found Metal" on Fridays.

Found Metal is pop culture stuff I’ve dredged up from the corners of my mind and mother internet that aren’t explicitly heavy metal in and of themselves but nevertheless they still possess that unnameable thing that makes something metal. Some things just have that connotation with them and it’s hard to say exactly why. Metal is one of those things that’s impossible to define exactly but you know it when you see it.

Today's found metal is pizza. Because pizza is metal. …and I’m not sure why but I’m certain that it is. At first I thought maybe this was just a personal connotation, that for some reason I was seeing a bond between the two when there wasn’t one. I was wrong.

There is a bond and everyone sees it. They just won’t admit it. Every type of music has a perfect pairing or a one true pairing (OTP for my fanfic kids) whether it’s punk rock, gangsta rap, Swedish line dancing cabaret; there is a food that works the best for each of them. Works when eaten while listening to the corresponding music as well as food that best represents the fanbase and qualities of said music. Pizza is metal on all accounts.

I’m not saying that people who don’t like metal can't like pizza. Everyone likes pizza. Even if you say you don’t like pizza, secretly you like pizza. Maybe you don’t love it, but you like it. I’s impossible not to. ...it's pizza. So yes, punkers, hip-hop enthusiasts, techno rave kids, everyone likes pizza. But pizza isn’t the perfect food for any of those styles. Having a slice while listening to Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool doesn’t work as well as macking on a pie while blaring Master of Puppets.

It just doesn’t. Sorry, I’ve been to the lab, I’ve checked the beakers, the results have been tabulated. Pizza also represents metal listeners in a lot of ways. Pizza has European roots that have been totally bastardized with American influence. Pizza can be as commercial and soulless as a cardboard slice from Chuck-E-Cheese or as delicious and soulful as a stuffed crust pie from Pizza Hut.

Alright, I’m just yanking you there but there is of course some amazing authentic and some equally awesome Americanized pizza from all sorts of non-chain restaurants. Or even better, some homemade stuff made with the freshest ingredients. But no matter what, good, bad, stuffed crust; it’s all pizza.

And speaking of stuffed crust, the sheer muchness of pizza, the more is more approach, the excess of toppings, the weird novelties having to do with injecting crust with all manner of unnecessary filler, all smacks of metal's excess. Even the simple average pizza is an assault on the senses when compared to other subtler foods; all of this reflects metal music’s lack of subtlety. And not only in a bad way. Sometimes subtlety is called for but sometimes bombast is what’s needed. Pizza and metal hold nothing back and that’s why we love them. Also you can throw anything on top of them, anchovies, pesto sauce, Fred Durst, and it remains pizza/metal. It might be godawful but it’s still metal.

Forget what gatekeeper snobs have told you:

There is no false pizza.

So my question is: if pizza is metal, which I feel I’ve proven without a shadow of doubt that it is, what are other musical genre’s food pairings?

I don’t feel like an authority enough to say Atlanta hip hop is_______

Ska punk is _______

Glam rock is _________

So what do you think?

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Found Metal Friday!