Not surprised.

The imagery and the aggression involved in the music can make it seem daunting and somehow damaging, but the metal community is surprisingly chill and friendly, and, sometimes, just so damned silly.

E.g. here's Slipknot's singer live in concert singing the SpongeBob Squarepants theme song, because the audience really wanted him to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5OLtoY70AI

Or, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the Devin Townsend signing this thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z1isK2MYWI is not the same Devin singing this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsd4ZkFVOHY

IMHO this is about metal heads knowing that each of them is a bit silly, different and strange in their own way. But still able to hang out and have fun doing that. Also I would say that metalheads are generally less aggressive that other people. It may be connected that you are able to just channel that aggression in headbanging during concert :) If we are talking about concerts: knowing the fact that you are not exactly 100% normal and still be able to sign the lyrics with hundreds of other people, this feeling of unity, awareness that you are not alone, it is great. Especially in the current world when useless internet points, in a manner of likes, are to many humans source of feeling about themself. We are after all social creatures. Being accepted is very important to us.

If you want some more humorous metal, check out the band “NanoWar of Steel”. It’s great.

All their songs are humorous, but for example they have a song with Joachim from Sabaton called Pasadena 1994. It fits the “war metal” style of Sabaton, but instead the song is about football. (https://open.spotify.com/track/65i7HQAWy3ZlSTEyWWFoPN?si=kUm...)

First he went to Rome to see the pope, now SpongeBob. I’m beginning to like him.

Thank you for the links - I can't stop replaying Love

Metal is just a giant community of really nice people pretending to be mean. Bikers are mostly the same as well. By contrast I've found hipsters to mostly be quite mean people pretending to be cordial.

This all somehow reminds me of a roommate I had in college. There were 4 of us and he was a physics major who was incredibly distant, straight laced, and stand-offish to the point of feeling like he was somewhat sociopathic. He always had an mp3 player and headphones on, whose contents we could only speculate about. One day he was gone and left it on his bed, so of course we had to have a listen - mostly tongue in cheek joking about it undoubtedly being some sort of screeching death metal type stuff. Somehow it was rather even more terrifying when it turned out to be endless 50s era happy-go-lucky tunes.