LOVE this post. BAM! Preach it. Your view of the metal scene from the mosh pit is fundamentally different than mine... yet oddly the same. I remember when the punk tradition of moshing crossed over to metal, and it destroyed metal shows for me. It was at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco, at a Primus show for their second album... probably 1990. People started a mosh pit, and Les stopped the show. "What the fuck are you doing?! Stop it man. This ain't no punk show..." and counted the song back in, and they began playing again. But that was the year that you stopped being able to get anywhere near the stage, and had to turn the room over to the pit. Despite that change, metal was still metal, and seeing someone else wearing a metal shirt, or with hair down to their shoulder blades resulted in eye contact, and that chin-up head nod. "Yo." The closest thing to a "metal" show I have been to in the last five years was Blue Oyster Cult at a fucking casino, man. But I have spent my time in a tent at an outdoor festival with Napalm Death, seen Rammstein in Slovakia, hung out with Eluveitie the one time they came to Seattle, and wished like hell I'd gone to the Anthrax/Public Enemy show that I missed. And everything in your post - including the mosh pit - still fills that metal part of my heart with happiness. There is just something universal about metal. \m/ People talk about metal fans, but never with them in articles like this.