GrumpyRocker

There's an awful lot of music around that claims to be metal. This stuff is often noisy, tuneless crap and nothing like real metal. Real metal - whether lighter melodic NWOBHM or super heavy black metal - still features musical qualities. After all, these are sounds created by musicians and behind the distorted guitars everything can be expressed on the musical stave.

But much of the noise pedalled by kiddy rag Kerrang and MTV these days is not just devoid of artistic merit - it's just not metal. Unfortunately many of the eejits making this racket seem unaware that they are as metal as The Jonas Brothers. For their education and yours I present the following guide to knowing whether you are metal or not.