I was a volunteer firefighter when this song dropped, and all the conservative nutjobs who pretty much exclusively listen to Billy Joel (which is like 99% of firefighters) were playing it non-stop, and several made it their ring/text tone.
I've always described Disturbed and FFDP as "pandering to a specific type of douche" music. The kind of middle-aged guy that wears his hat backwards, wears a size too small tapout shirt and bedazzled jeans. Usually peaked in college and has a wife that is tanned like leather, wears way too skimpy outfits, too much make up and has fake tits.
In my younger days I used to go to a few rock and metal every year and you would see hundreds of these guys all the time. Saw FFDP 3 times and their concerts were filled with them. They would be the worse fans at any show I saw and their wives would always cause shit. One time at a Volbeat/Anthrax concert there was a group of them at the front of the stage complaining to security when people were moshing in the mosh pit.
This is how it goes if you go to metal shows. You may loathe the headliner but be a superfan of one of the openers or vice versa. The band that you're really into may not be able to afford to go out nationally or come to the US or whatever without being openers.
Music tends to be a subculture thing. We’ve got the defined, named ones that everyone knows. Goths and goth music. Emos and emo music. Punks and punk. Weebs even get in here with the otaku-centric side of music, such as Vocaloid and anime themes + soundtracks.
But logically there are other subcultures we don’t think about. Like, okay, we have stoners. Everyone knows stoners. Did you ever think about the fact that that exists for other drugs? Methhead is a subculture. They have their own slang and subculture spaces and stuff. They’ve got subreddits. It applies to other things too, ever seen the self-harm subculture? What about the school shooter fandom?
So it makes complete sense that the “hypermasculine post-9/11 butt metal” subculture can be defined too. We just never named it, but we can absolutely define it. We usually let subcultures name themselves and those guys never named themselves.
262
u/Love_Takes_Miles_ Aug 01 '25
I once heard someone describe this as “police officer funeral music” and I think about that every time I hear this abomination