For years, Nuclear War Now!’s forum has been the haven for life dropout D&D neckbeards searching for some form of friendship and community. But according to website tracking metrics, the site has seen a massive decline in it’s traffic over the past 6 months. While viewership of metal sites can rise and fall unpredictably on metal sites, the above statistic should frighten anyone who cares about keeping their site relevant. Sites with active forums should be doing much better than your the average blog-style metal site, so the numbers above show an unforgivable descent into irrelevancy.

But given that the site is predominantly frequented by war metal fans that have no regard for actual music, the crash in interest also proves something far bigger: war metal, as a sub genre, is in its last days.

This is a welcomed revelation as war metal was the nu metal of black/death metal and was ultimately worthless. With virtually no innovation, creativity, or direction for over 20 years, war metal became the lowest IQ form of extreme metal. The fact that Beherit was more interesting, creative, and musically varied than every single band to follow it throughout the decades to follow is an absolute disgrace to every band that’s followed in their footsteps.

While the surface-level viewer might see war metal as “the most underground/kvlt/extreme/unlistenable of all genres,” the truth is that it was only marketed as such and done so very effectively as the bank account and new production facility of Cali soyboy Yosuke Kanishi will clearly indicate. By offering a product that appears “totally not mainstream haha!” Kanishi was able to efficiently trick kvlt status seeking basement dwellers into mass consumerism using the same marketing tactics as thrift shops. Essentially this created a record label and forum that was ultimately the thrift shop of metal– reissues (refurbished releases) of random bands from 20 years past that could be marketed as super underground when really they were just empty of creativity and technique. By assumingly being “not trendy” war metal became one of the trendiest metal genres of our time and the go to for the metal derivatives of the modern hipster.

“Bu… But war metal is evil!” Really, then why does Nuclear War Now! have an Instagram account?

Musically war metal is a hilarious deception because if you alternate the grooves of their atonal power chord riffs, you’ll get nu metal riffs. Most bands even match the nu metal guitar tuning of A! But war metal fans have no idea they’re listening to nu metal with different drums and vocals because they only care abut the aesthetics. In all reality most of Black Witchery’s riffs were originally on Korn’s Life is Peachy which subconsciously tickles the nostalgia of their fans without them realizing how or why.

In an age where Von is taking big money for rock star tours, where Blasphemy albums are marketed as vintage thrift shop essentials, and where black metal shows feature 90% war metal bands, any prestige or credibility war metal and it’s original bands once had is gone. War metal fans are the modern equivalent to the JNCO jeans wearing clowns of the 90s. They are the permavirgin autistis of metal that grew from infants that would have been left in the woods to be eaten by wolves in the Pagan times.

Celebrate the death of war metal, repent if you ever liked this garbage, and enjoy some classic war metal riffs below:

Tags: black witchery, blasphemy, cash grab, consumerism, hipsters, losers, Nuclear War Now, thrift shops, von, War Metal, Yosuke Kanishi