Rock and roll’s a great equalizer. I love Mastodon and Miley Cyrus; Prince and Parliament and Pretenders; Pig Destroyer and Pet Shop Boys; Van Morrison and Venomous Maximus; Grave Miasma and Gram Parsons; Taylor Swift and Twisted Sister (I loved the latter in fifth grade, anyway). I can’t stand the Doors, I like precisely two The Who songs, and the Arcade Fire’s music makes me want to throw up in the band members’ mouths. Any fan of popular music has similar idiosyncrasies of taste, capacities and limitations.But I’ve listened to the Doors—every last record, all the way through, more than once. I scare the cat from time to time by shouting, apropos of nothing, “You CANNOT petition the Lord with prayer!” What often strikes me about people who “don’t like” metal is how frequently it turns out that they don’t know much about it. And it turns out, just as frequently, that they are actually pretty fond of at least one or two songs I’d consider metal. So let me lay down a rule that I just made up: if you like any song by Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, or Guns N’ Roses, you’re not allowed to say you don’t like metal. Conversely, if you don’t like a single song by any of those bands, I’ll concede that you probably really don’t like metal.Those three seem like metal’s most universal bands to me, or maybe I just mean most mainstream, and I definitely mean that those were the metal bands I loved before I loved metal (comments protesting that Zeppelin “isn’t metal” will only make me roll my eyes). Throw in Sabbath—a more divisive universal, if that makes sense—and you’ve got enough lifted lighters to take a shine to contemporary metal.Non-metalheads looking for onramps—and I’ve heard from a few since my first column appeared—could do worse than start with today’s crop of bloozy Zep-a-lots and slab-of-Sabs. Listen to Witch Mountain’s “Beekeeper,” Christian Mistress’ “Haunted Hunted,” and Royal Thunder’s “Blue”—bustles in riff-raked hedgerows all, even if the vocals could be tighter. Or check Blood Ceremony’s “Witchwood” and SubRosa’s “Cosey Mo,” resin-soaked rambles from two of 2013’s best lava-lamp-friendly groups.If you’re partial to hair-powered night-rangers unembarrassed by their Headbangers Ball heritage, metal’s got you covered. Hammers of Misfortune’s “The Day the City Died” kicks Starship out of space dock, while Cauldron’s “Frozen in Fire” could be titled “How to Shred Your Jeans.” If you distilled the essences of “Sister Christian,” “Crazy Train,” and “I Want to Know What Love Is,” you’d end up with Dawnbringer’s “V.” Or perhaps Corsair’s thinner, lizzier sound is more your steez. Follow the synched-guitar bridge of “Gryphon Wing” to the warm hood of a Camaro parked down at the reservoir in the summer of ’76.One thing all these bands have in common is: their singers sing. Not always well, to be sure, but compared to Carcass and Gorguts (who made two of my favorite records this year) they’re freaking Maria Callases. I mention this because a few of my friends whom I’ve tried to turn on to metal profess an inability to get past the “Cookie Monster vocals” (I’m not sure how this trope became so widespread even among the metal-deaf). But there are plenty of bands out there whose connections to Sesame Street are tenuous at best.If people don’t want to listen to metal, bully for them, as Frank O’Hara says. But I used to dismiss it, and I wish I’d figured out sooner that I was wrong. I love metal—respectable metal like Iron Maiden and Metallica as well as “fake” metal like Poison and Bon Jovi—and like any convert, I want to share the love.Michael Robbins is the author of the poetry book Alien vs. Predator, out now on Penguin. He's on Twitter - @alienvsrobbins
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