HALESTORM Drummer Brushes Off Grammy Win Hate

If you missed it earlier in the week, Halestorm won the lone hard rock/heavy metal award at the Grammys this past weekend. For some reason, metal musicians came out of the woodwork to complain about this, as if the Grammys have respected metal forever and suddenly decided to snub the genre. The most vocal was Shadows Fall drummer Jason Bittner:

This tweet has since been deleted, but Bittner wrote:

“And the metal Grammy goes to…… R u fucking kidding me? This is worse than 1989 and the Metallica debacle!”

On his Facebook page, Bittner later elaborated:

Well I know I'm gonna get a lot of shit for this but I just don't care anymore…. How the FUCK does Maiden, Megadeth, LOG, and my "other family" ANTHRAX lose the Grammys to ________ (not gonna say the name)!!!! Shit is rotten in the music business and this proves it!!! And I thought the Jethro Tull thing in 1989 was bad enough but this beats it hands down!!!

Not enough exclamation points!!!!!!!!!! Alex Skolnick also added to the drama:

Personally, I don't see the big deal. Yes, it's great to be recognized, but as somebody who has decryed the Grammys forever, I can't get offended when the nomination board that picks the bands that have the most name recognition decided to grant the song with the most mainstream appeal the nod. It's no sweat off my back, and I was actually happy for Halestorm.

Now, Halestorm drummer, Arejay Hale, chimed in on all the supposed hatred, saying he's not really losing sleep over it:

“We still don’t believe it. I’m still waiting for someone to tell us that we were punked. I know a lot of people get up there and say they’re shocked and didn’t expect to win, but I’m here to tell you, we were shocked and in no way did we expect to win! When you look at who we were up against, I know it’s hard to make sense of, and I think we may have been as surprised as everyone else.

Honestly, I thought Lamb of God would’ve won. What’s interesting is that they influenced the song we won for. We love Lamb of God, in fact all the other nominees are bands we grew up looking up to. There were such legendary artists in that category and maybe we’re just the ones that got picked to represent the new guard, but that’s not our call.

I learned a long time ago that you have to embrace the hater, because it means that the band is getting bigger. Like Nickelback, I love them and I see people hate on them and all it says to me is that they have become massively huge, and what’s wrong with that? So if people have to take the time to say something hateful or mean for whatever reason, it means the band is growing more and more and that more fans are finding out about us and that’s a valuable thing.”

Wow, finally…somebody actually admits to liking Nickleback. That makes one.

Either way, I commend Arejay for taking the high road with this one. Calm down metal world, nobody cares about the Grammys. In fact, Decibel editor Albert Mudrain put it succinctly in a Facebook post recently:

To all the good metal folks actually caring about the Grammys, please, just stop. Clearly, the Grammys do not care about you.

Cheers to that!