Agreed, the community can be irritating and divisive.
Heavy metal is an extremely diverse field of music. Deep purple is categorically “heavy metal”, as is cattle decapitation and (some of) Sum 41. That being said, they’re EXTREMELY different in style.
The most irritating comments I hear are
1 - “ThAt’S mEtAlCoRe, It DoEsN’T cOunT, same goes for deathcore”
And
2 - “nu/alternative metal isn’t metal”
Responses
1: are you really telling me this
Isn’t metal?
As to no#2
Just because it isn’t conventional doesn’t equate to music not falling under the category of “heavy metal”. I’m not a fan of nu metal, but go listen to the first two albums released by Linkin Park. They have breakdowns, growling/screaming vocals, heavily distorted guitars etc.
For anyone who remembers sum 41 as mainstream pop punk (i.e “in too deep”)
Sum 41 broke through and became popular via pop punk singles/one or two albums dedicated to this sub genre. But as a whole they’ve been quite experimental in nature and taken far more risk than say, blink 182. As a result I think they’re actually a better, more well rounded and less bland sounding band
The majority of their current releases cater towards melodic hardcore and/or hard rock.
Single taken from most recent album
Metal thread