Lost in all the Grammys brouhaha over Kanye West is an injustice that certain music fans find even more objectionable than Beck > Beyoncé. Since 2007, the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance has gone to exactly the bands you’d expect it to — Slayer twice, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, etc. — with the exception of this year, when the likes of Anthrax, Mastodon, and Motörhead lost to Tenacious D’s “The Last in Line.” It’s a perfectly fine cover of a pretty good Dio song, and Jack Black and Kyle Gass’ love of metal is genuine, but it’s not emblematic of anything; “Last in Line” won because Grammy voters have heard of Jables and Rage-Kage.
Here’s what Noisey had to say:
The Grammys’ utter cluelessness when it comes to music with heavy riffs is fun to bitch about, but when you think about it, it is also pretty f*cked up. The fact that Tenacious D actually won this thing speaks to the greater attitude society holds towards heavy metal. To have chosen Jack Black and Kyle Gass as a representation of what the music industry considers the pinnacle of the genre’s achievement for the year is to say that the most they expect from heavy metal (and the people who love it) is a dumb, crude, laughable piece of sh*t. At least Jethro Tull could wail on that flute.
Harsh, though at this point, should we expect anything different? It’s the Grammys, after all, the same voting body that declared Herbie Hancock’s slight River: The Joni Letters objectively better than the pop masterpiece that is Back to Black by Amy Winehouse. Meanwhile, Mastodon’s Brent Hinds showed up to the Grammys on Sunday wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers jersey and he immediately started f*cking around on the red carpet.
There’s also this tremendously awkward interview:
Brent Hinds, treating the Grammys with the respect they deserved.