I have so many fond memories of my first heavy metal festival. It was Download 2012, and I was 15 years old. Metallica headlined, playing their landmark Black album in full for its 30th anniversary, and it was my first exposure to one of my future favourite bands, Trivium. But just as important as the music I heard that day was the sense of acceptance I felt when I was there. Outside of that field, my shaggy hair and my penchant for noisy riffs were looked down upon; inside, everybody looked like me. It seemed like some kind of paradise, and I went home feeling empowered.
I’m far from the only person who’s had an experience like this. It’s easy to dig up interviews with everyone from Metallica’s James Hetfield to Judas Priest singer and gay icon Rob Halford about how heavy music champions the misfit – or at least it’s supposed to.
This week, Marilyn Manson was confirmed to support Slipknot in front of 90,000 people at Wembley Stadium next July. He was booked despite the wave of sexual misconduct allegations levelled against him, plus a lawsuit from his former assistant alleging physical, emotional and psychological abuse that’s set to go to trial in November 2027. (The singer denies any wrongdoing, and in 2025 a four-year investigation into his alleged crimes was dropped with no charges filed.) If metal is supposed to uplift the downtrodden, then putting a man accused of wrongdoing by more than a dozen women on one of Europe’s biggest stages feels like the antithesis of everything the genre stands for.
Manson, whose real name is Brian Hugh Warner, retreated from the public eye after the start of the allegations against him in 2021, but he returned in 2024 with a new record deal and a string of high-profile tour dates. He’s far from the only allegedly problematic figure to have recently made a successful musical comeback. Chris Brown, who in 2009 pleaded guilty to felony assault of his ex-girlfriend Rihanna, and Ye (formerly Kanye West), who made a string of antisemitic statements in 2022, are playing massive venues. Earlier this month, the Guardian published an op-ed about Queen of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme’s cosy image rehabilitation after he kicked a female photographer and his ex-wife accused him of domestic abuse.
Metal, with its long-established identity as a dangerous and anti-mainstream force, appears to be particularly lenient with this kind of figure. The news of Manson touring with Slipknot came three months after Pantera supported Metallica on their second night at the 62,500-capacity London Stadium. In 2016, Pantera singer Phil Anselmo faced widespread backlash for raising his hand and screaming “white power!” onstage at a charity concert. He eventually apologised, but in 2017 gave an interview where he called some of his detractors “phonies”. None of it stopped his band from reuniting to much celebration in 2022. In November, Nuclear Blast Records, the same label to which Manson signed in 2024, will release a new album by Anselmo’s other group, Down.
In February, As I Lay Dying are poised to release a new album. The band split in 2014 after its sole constant member, singer Tim Lambesis, was sentenced to six years in prison for soliciting the murder of his ex-wife. Then, in 2024, everyone bar Lambesis quit the band, and some disturbing video surfaced online where he’s seen flipping a table that another ex-wife was sitting at. (The former couple have each accused the other of abuse.) As I Lay Dying’s latest single, aptly entitled Polarized, has amassed 560,000 YouTube views in two weeks regardless.
Those figures are wildly outdone by US metalcore band Falling in Reverse’s track Joseph: currently one of the hottest songs in metal, boasting 20m YouTube views in two weeks, boosted by guest spots from Slipknot’s Corey Taylor and System of a Down’s Serj Tankian. This is after frontman Ronnie Radke became a lightning rod for controversy, having made a number of transphobic comments on social media, and contorted the backlash into part of his image: the cover of the band’s 2024 album Popular Monster bears his mugshot after a 2012 arrest for domestic assault. (The charge was dismissed in court in 2014.)
As far as pushback against these artists goes, the most consistent voices have been the disappointed fans on social media, who have dominated the announcement of the Slipknot/Manson tour to the point that the BBC and NME have reported on it. However, in previous instances, these disaffected cries have been drowned out by ticket sales: Manson’s tour of the UK in February 2025 completely sold out. Even more disheartening has been seeing other artists play along. Arena-fillers Five Finger Death Punch attempted to launch a Manson rehabilitation narrative ahead of their summer 2024 tour together, guitarist Zoltan Bathory saying it was OK because Manson is now “clean and sober”. Lamb of God toured with Pantera in 2023 and 2024: singer Randy Blythe apparently didn’t see any irony in doing this, then in 2025 called Elon Musk a “fucking asshole” for raising his hand in a similar manner to Anselmo’s gesture.
Of course, metal has never entirely been the post-judgmental utopia I experienced at 15: there has long been a drought of female representation and hate has found pockets in underground subcultures such as the Nationalist Socialist Black Metal scene. But in 2026 – with some of its biggest artists being accused of heinous acts against vulnerable people, only to return as popular as before, possibly more – the genre has never felt more fractured or unwelcoming, its inclusive messaging never more hollow. If I were to walk into my first metal festival today, see Falling in Reverse or Marilyn Manson play to thousands of fans, then go home and look at their histories, there’s a very strong chance I’d never go to a second.
