We shouldn’t be surprised, should we? The nominees for the Grammy Award For Best Metal Performance were announced this afternoon, and they were – to put it politely – predominantly boring. Metallica’s 72 Seasons, Slipknot’s Hive Mind, Disturbed’s Bad Man, Ghost’s Phantom Of The Opera and Spiritbox’s Jaded are the five contenders for the big gold gramophone in 2024. It’s a list of names that should represent the most gifted, relevant and beloved bands in all of heavy music today. Instead, it’s a mostly uninspired series of former winners that broadly reaffirms not the musical excellence of those named, but the apathy (at best) or contempt (at worst) the music industry’s biggest awards ceremony has for the metal scene.
Of course, saying “The Grammys are getting heavy metal wrong” is about as revolutionary as saying “The world keeps on turning.” Ever since the Recording Academy started recognising hard rock and heavy metal in 1989, they’ve been messing it up, with the ghost of them giving a prize to Jethro Tull over Metallica still haunting the institution. However – with the world of metal currently full to bursting with bands that are both making innovative music and on the cusp of breaking through – this continual misunderstanding has never been more inexcusable.
