Metal fans come in all shapes and sizes, but they all share one thing in common, their passion for the music
When most people think of metal fans, they often think of a stereotypical image of people with long hair, piercings, and tattoos, throwing up the horns. While a lot of people attending a metal concert do look like that, most of them don’t when they are doing their day job.
Metal might have a very specific look, but just because you wear a tie day-to-day, doesn’t mean you don’t belong in the mosh pit on the weekends.
The same rules apply to celebrities. It’s easy to judge them by what they wear or the roles they play and assume they would stick out like a sore thumb at a Slayer concert. The reality might surprise you.
Many household names are huge fans of the same metal bands as the rest of us, and in this article, we’ll be looking at celebrity metal heads you might never have guessed.
Demi Lovato
Singer, songwriter, and actress Demi Lovato got her start on Barney and Friends before moving on the Disney Channel and is the winner for 13 Teen Choice Awards. With all the Disney and Purple dinosaurs, you might assume her personal soundtrack might be wall-to-wall pop, and you would be dead wrong.
In an interview with Front Row Live Entertainment, Lovato revealed that she is a huge fan of bands like Job for a Cowboy and Bring Me the Horizon and spoke of her experiences seeing gigs by Unearth and Dimmu Borgir, who are celebrating 25 years making music. She also once lost a shoe in the pit and is a Brazilian Ju-Jitsu practitioner, so perhaps not the stereotypical Disney princess after all.
Next time you are at a concert, keep your eyes open, you never know who will be in the pit with you
Nicholas Cage
Ok, so we could pretty much tell you that Nicholas Cage was into anything and you’d probably believe us, but the story is that Cage’s son, Weston Coppola Cage, got his dad turned on to metal.
Weston actually has is own teenage metal band, Eyes of Noctum, and, as part of that, he got his dad to listen to, and eventually love, bands like Darkthrone and Satyricon. Elder Cage also has the pretty solid rock credentials of getting into a public fight with Motley Crue’s Vince Neil.
Kristian Nairn
It’s pretty well known that Kristian, probably most widely known for his role playing Hodor on HBO’s Game of Thrones, spends a lot of his free time as a progressive house DJ. He DJ’d for the BlizzCon 2016 anniversary party and provided the soundtrack for the BlizzCon 2018 closing festivities.
What a lot of people don’t know is that Kristian is a huge metal fan and a pretty damn accomplished guitar player. At the Hellfest Open Air Festival in Clisson, Kristian got the once in the lifetime chance to jam with one of his favorite bands, Megadeath. The big man was easily able to keep up with Dave Mustaine, Dave Ellefson and the rest of the gang on a run through of “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due.”
Liv Boeree
Olivia “Liv” Boeree is, among other things, the only female player in history to have won the World Series of Poker and the European Poker Tour, a Maxim model, a TED talker, and a huge metal head. She’s not called the “Iron Maiden” because of her resemblance to medieval torture equipment.
A huge fan of bands like Metallica and Children of Bodom, Liv is an accomplished guitar player in her own right and plays for gothic rock outfit, Nemhain. Her position as one of the best female poker players on the planet has meant she has also gotten to meet metal royalty like James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, and Slash.
Some of the most unlikely people love metal, from Disney child stars to world leaders
Joko Widodo
It’s not often that politicians break the PR mold to give you an insight into their real passions, but the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, is not shy about his love of grindcore.
The President has been spotted attending Metallica shows, has been invited on tour by Megadeth and has repeatedly expressed his love of his favorite band Napalm Death, telling Indonesian news outlet AFP “rock is my passion.”
As you can see, metal isn’t really about what you look like, it’s about what you love. So the next time you’re in the pit, take a moment to look around you, because there is at least a small chance that you’ll be headbanging with the President of Indonesia and Nicholas Cage.
