The Introductory

Hello, my Name is Will; I am a student at the University of South Florida located in Tampa. I am your typical college student, you know, scraping by on a job that a monkey could do while still getting the same pay as a monkey, mooching off of my parents to the Nth degree, the usual. The one catch in this scenario is that I am a metalhead, a very active one at that. I am also the creator and current president of the Heavy Metal Enthusiast Club at USF.

The reason why I have created such an organization and been working so hard to make is successful is quite simple: ignorance. Constantly people discriminate against fellow enthusiast and me because of how we dress, mannerisms, and actions in public. I do not hold it against them; I just think they do not know what exactly the genre represents merely because the media misleads the general populace to believe otherwise.

I have talked to many people many years my senior about the genre, which was got me into it in the first place. I worked in a hole-in-the-wall restaurants full of rejects, druggies, and ex-cons (yeah, that is another reason for the degenerate stereotype, the mass majority that actually are that bad) who refused to let me listen to anything but classic rock or a band named Lamb of God. Eventually I learned to love these things and started to go deeper into researching it for myself. I found out one of the usuals of the restaurant used to be a roadie for def leppard (A big hair metal band in the 80s) and I talked to him about it. He amazed me with how many bands he told me he had smoked out with (I should mention now that this man is a really old hippie who was completely burned out). I did not believe him until one day when he brought the pictures of him standing next to the band. At that point he brought me a couple of their CDs and I started to build my way up through the decades on the genre.

I went to USF where I met my now good friend Justin Gogas who had just started the Heavy Metal Enthusiast Club at UCF. He along with many members of that club taught me many great bands within the metal genre, specifically from Justin a band named Strapping Young Lad. After a year without Justin’s leadership in that club, though, it was slowly taken over by elitists’ metalheads (another stereotype within this sub-culture you will come to know) and they started to turn away the curious folks, such as myself. When I ran out of money, I moved back home and attended Polk Community College for a year, never forgetting how much I loved that club.
Before I left UCF, I had told Justin how awesome it would be if we had two clubs in two separate major universities, and if I tried to pull if off, would he help me. He said he would and 2 years later I am at USF with a new organization that is thriving thanks to Justin’s ingenuity, my stubbornness to not give up, and a bunch of eager metalheads who want friends who get what the music and culture are all about.

I am making this blog to show, you, the reader, of whom I am hoping I have intrigued a bit as to what I am talking about, what the metal sub-culture really is. If you have a friend who does windmills randomly in the kitchen, has severe hearing problems due to listening to really loud music, owns nothing but band t-shirts, or cringes when you play something off the radio, then I highly suggest you keep reading.