Journalism Portfolio/Reviews

Mercury Prize Article

This is about how Bring Me The Horizon weren't allowed to be nominated for the Barclaycard Mercury Prize. The opinions expressed in the following article are purely of my own (Jade du Preez) and no one elses! 

Mercury Prize Article

Rock and metal music has had a blind eye turned on it purely because it stands out as a genre. The fans of metal are different and unique people who deserve to have their music choices played on radios and their types of bands to be nominated for well-known music awards. Bands like Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeath and Anthrax, the bands that shaped the music we listen to today, are being forgotten. The fans of metal and rock can say that they have a close relationship with the artists that they listen to and some even say that the bands saved their lives because their music helped these listeners through depression, periods of self harming or even bullying by telling them that it’s ok to stand out from the crowd. You don’t see that closeness with the artists that play on the airwaves now.

The Mercury Prize has stated in their own words and on their own website (www.mercuryprize.com/about.php), ‘[which] celebrates recorded music of all genres.’ They prize themselves for awarding British and Irish talent ‘of all genres’ but only present awards to the people in the current charts not including the rock and metal charts. The Barclaycard Mercury Prize website also states that ‘the music on the album is the only thing taken into account.’ This shows that they don’t listen to anything that is said in magazines and newspapers but exactly how much of the albums do they listen to? How many metal bands did they listen to when picking the lucky twelve albums that then get whittled down to one? Did they even bother listening to Bring Me The Horizons, 2010 album, There Is A Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A Heaven Lets Keep It A Secret? The album sold 3,600 copies in the first week after its release and got to number 17 in the U.S Billboard Charts, number 13 in the UK Album Charts, number 1 in the Australian Album Charts, UK Rock Charts and the UK Indie Charts. Don’t they deserve at least a nomination for everything they have accomplished?

Bring Me The Horizon and metal music are still being ignored by mainstream music listeners because they believe that only their taste in music is good enough to grace the current airwaves. Well listen here Barclaycard Mercury Prize; we believe that our type of music deserves an award, and you’ve just upset a lot of metal fans. We, the metal fans, will support our music until the end, because we are true die-hard lovers of metal.