Lots to talk about here. First of all, the award for Best Metal Performance went to Megadeth for "Dystopia". I was pleased with this. The other contenders were Periphery, Baroness, Gojira, and Korn. And frankly, all but Korn probably deserved to be in this category. I would have loved to see Gojira win it, and Baroness's song was one of the catchiest of the year, but Megadeth's album was damn good. It is too much to expect the Grammys to give the award to an underground band like Gojira, so the Megadeth victory was not at all surprising. Once I saw the nominees, I knew who would win.
But that obviously was not the whole story of the night. There were all of the slights. For one, Megadeth took the stage to a Metallica song. Metallica performed, but with Lady Gaga. Orange is the New Black actress Laverne Cox introduced the performance, but neglected to name Metallica. And then, James Hetfield's mic did not work for the first half of the song. Honestly, I do not think any of the issues were intentional, though they were frustrating. Frankly, I thought the Lady Gaga/Metallica performance was quite impressive. She sounded good singing for Metallica, and I have always respected her music, though not really enjoying it.
The Grammys have never really known what to do about metal. That was obvious from the very beginning when Jethro Tull beat out Metallica for the first Best Metal Performance Grammy. Now, the award is not even televised on the actual program and there have been a long list of questionable choices. I don't think this year's issues were intentional, but they are new additions in the Grammy Awards long history of incompetence in handling metal music.
