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Rocktober 13 will be the second anniversary of one of my favorite games from this console generation. That got me ruminating.

Before Brutal Legend, I thought metal was kind of stupid.

It was like rock and roll but with more makeup and less harmony. The only people I knew in high school who liked it in a non-ironic sense were the kids who wore those jointed metal-finger claws — or would have if they weren't banned from the premises.

I couldn't find much appeal in the half-screamed lyrics, black t-shirts with adolescent attempts at satanic imagery, and the mind-blowing melodrama.

I listened to Motorhead a few times in middle school, but that might have been a result of my mild obsession with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.

To me, metal was, at best, a cheesy relic out of touch with the world.

Apparently, the world was the problem. After I played Brutal Legend, metal finally made sense.

 

The title's unexpected fusion of slash-em-up, real-time strategy, and car combat disappointed some hoping for a God of War-like experience with headbangers instead of harpies — and not without reason. But even if I hadn't enjoyed the way the game played, I still would have been mesmerized by its perfectly ridiculous world of noise, blood, and fire.

Tim Schafer, head of Brutal Legend's developer Double Fine, has seemed like more of a world-smith than a game designer ever since I played the cheekily morbid Grim Fandango, his final project at LucasArts.

His brütal fantasy made me realize that metal isn't for us modern-day, arts-patronizing, ground-walking mortals. It's for god-damned vikings wielding axes hewn from the teeth of slaughtered titans — and beefy roadies with flowing mullets.

Maybe those high-school kids with the scuffed-up boots and long, greasy hair had something burning inside themselves, commanding them to ride, pillage, and slay. Maybe my well-meaning parents had managed to keep it all from igniting within my own soul.

But Schafer put a Zippo to it all, and the encore act is still going.

When I hear good metal now, I don't try to incorporate it into my world of collared shirts, measured eye contact, and RSVP cards. I go back to that place where it made perfect sense.

Maybe not all the musicians picture fire-spewing engine blocks and hot amazons made-up like Gene Simmons when they play their songs, but I sure do.