Metalheads aren't stupid

When I was in school I had a job at a liquor store. It was a fun job because I got away with a lot of things that most employers would deem "grounds for termination" and now that I think back on it, my boss probably would have as well, but he was barely around.

I remember one day I had a 3 Inches of Blood CD playing over the store's speakers. If you know about metal than you know this was a pretty brazen choice of music, especially at four in the afternoon on a Saturday when the elderly where coming in to get their bottle of wine for Sunday dinner (it needs to be noted that at this point Colorado liquor law stated that package liquor stores were not allowed to be open on Sundays).

The store got pretty busy and I couldn't get out from behind the register to change the music if I had wanted to. As I was ringing up one woman she noticed the music and told me that she had just seen a story on CNN (i think) that reported that the average metal-head actually possesses an above-average IQ. I didn't find that too surprising because she essentially complimented my intelligence whether or not she agreed with my choice of CD.

It has long been my belief that metal-heads are smarter than the general public for a few reasons:

-Metal-heads tend to reject the mainstream media in general

-Metal music routinely uses less-common time signatures (i.e. 6/4, 3/4) and change-ups in tempo, not to mention an abundance in polyphony which loosely parallels it to classical, which leads to...

-Metal music is typically fast and difficult to play, so the practicing metal band is typically comprised of very talented artists/metal-heads, especially drummers and guitarists

-Metal music is comprised of a diverse collection of subgenres so the average metal-head is typically exposed to a variety of contrasting styles within the main genre, however this is typical of music in general. Metal gets a bad rap on this one

These are generalizations, of course, but I think that this issue needs to be highlighted because I am a metal-head and I want to make that known.

I thought of this a bit earlier and I tried searching for the story on cnn.com but came up with nothing. I also tried google and got nowhere credible.