What is the deal with the metal-vest?

I am one of those persons who never understood the metal-vest. I mean I have the odd metal shirt and I used to have long hair (I'm now completely bald btw.), but I have never looked metal, and I never ever did anything to look metal, I have just never felt the need to, look a specific way, I just look how I feel.

But when I go to a show, I see all the people in "metal gear" - the vest, and it seems to me that people think that just because they are going to a metal show, they have to put on their metal uniform, or have I gotten it completely wrong?

I mean do people really like to wear their ill smelling denim-vests covered in all kinds of studs and band patches (heck some of these patches aren't even metal bands, some are just patches of bands who has a metal logo, I mean I've seen Journey patches next to Morbid Angel patches) to work and school every day?

Well the "vest" phenomenon is way bigger in Germany and the US than it is here in little old Denmark where I live, and if you go to a show in say Germany, there will be a lot more people wearing vests than people not wearing vests. And if you go to a festival like Wacken Open Air, you cannot help but to wonder if the vest wearing people get a ticket discount if they tick a little box when ordering their ticket that say: Yes I have a vest!?

To me the vests function has always been a mystery, is it because people don't have the money to buy a t-shirt from each band they like, or is it a wearable metal shrine? Personally I would like to think it is the latter of the two, but what I just don't get is, why does it have to be that ugly, and is it allergic to detergent?

The thing is that I've never felt like I needed to wear a uniform for anything, I am who I am, and I do not need to blend in with the rest, which also means that I have been to a Dream Theater show in a suit and tie (came straight from a business meeting to the show, and you can actually see me in Mike Portnoys audience picture from the Metropolis Part 2 tour from Copenhagen), and I've banged to Cannibal Corpse on the grounds of Wacken Open Air wearing a white shirt (though this time no tie). But this is not only when it comes to metal, I've just never been really good at blending in, not even when I was a corporate kiss ass or even when I was a boy scout. I don't know why, but I just never looked like the rest, even if I tried to.

So come to think about it, perhaps I'm the oddball, perhaps I'm the one who's wrong, the one who doesn't get it? But does this mean this mean I have to take a sewing class?

Written by Morten
Saturday, July 30, 2005