Saw Heaven and Hell perform yesterday. They were pretty awesome, especially Dio was in top-notch condition. If some complaining would be requires, one could find some in the extended soloing of Mr. Iommi, but even that was a very small defect...
... On the same festival was performing the latest Finnish Idols winner Ari Koivunen. He appeared on the contest as very heavy oriented and sung stuff like Iron Maiden and Deep Purple and partly because of that won. He has a great voice, but he is 22, looks like 16 and of course as an Idol his songs are written to him. I felt kinda sorry for him on saturday as most of the crownd was filled with rock-polices (or in this case heavy-polices), who had mostly come there for Megadeath or Heaven and Hell and looked at the gig with their arms crossed before them under a very judgmental mood. Due to his background his credibility among heavy fans is a bit low, although like I said he has a great voice, the songs he has been written are ok and he clearly is heavy oriented person himself...
But to the point I would like to hear some opinion about: Do you think credibility is more important in Heavy metal, than in many other genres? At least there is no other genre which has created so large number of terms for its various subgenres... If so, why do you think this is? And has there been heavy singers who have gained some popularity in your country's Idols?