Oh, no. We're doing some bald-on-bald crime today, everybody.

Hi. Anthony Fantano here, Internet's busiest music nerd. I hope you're doing well.

Today, it's time to dive into some drama coming out of the metal world this week. As you may or may not know, recently, there was a pretty crazy and interesting concert bill that happened in the UK. A farewell performance for the one and only Black Sabbath, arguably the greatest metal band in most influential metal band of all time. And this show not only featured Black Sabbath itself, but also a star-studded bill of different musicians coming together for a variety of Black Sabbath covers and renditions.

Honestly, the whole thing seemed pretty sick. Reminded me of back in the day when I was a teenager and I got to catch Black Sabbath live during an OzzFest tour, and that was the first time they were playing together again in years. But I digress.

Look, most of these covers and performances that happened on the bill seem to go over pretty much without a hitch. No drama, no technical difficulties or anything like that. That is until we had one Mr. David Draiman of Disturbed fame step up to the stage, and his appearance on stage seemingly was met with a lot of booing, a lot of negative reactions.

There's been a lot of questions and discourse around why exactly that might have been. I mean, I can say from my own perspective, having covered David on the channel recently, it may have something to do not just with his outspoken support of Israel in their ongoing military efforts. I would call it a genocide.

This doesn't just merely come down to David having ties to Israel and being proud of his heritage. No, there are literally photos of him signing bombs that most likely were going to be dropped on innocent people's heads in Gaza.

Now, David's response to these boos and coverage of these boos has also been interesting. He has alleged that there There weren't really that many boos to begin with, and boos in certain video clips that have gone online have been enhanced to basically intensify the booing.

Now, from the handful of clips that I've seen, it doesn't seem that whatever booing there was was so consistent that it was just blaring throughout the entire audience. How much booing you heard may have depended on where exactly you were in the stands, in the crowd. I mean, in most of the clips, honestly, the audience's reaction to David seemed mostly underwhelming. And in this clip, the performance is shockingly bad.

@leonardo.guerrero87 "Shot in the dark" featuring Jake E Lee's Red Dragon Cartel Disturbed Dave Draiman from the Ozzy Osbourne Black Sabbath una presentación inolvidable #backtothebeginning ♬ sonido original - Leonardo Guerrero037

What is going on with that guitar?

Still, though, what clips of booing we have seen, and the coverage of said booing, has led to David really crashing out on social media a bit. What tweets you can see of this firestorm from David on your screen right now, we're a bit difficult to dig for, because these days, pretty much all of David's social media feed is like "marijuana" and also "ra, ra, yeah, yeah, Israel. Drop those bombs, baby."

Now, again, from my perspective, what booing there was at the concert most likely has to do with that very vocal support of a country that, in a lot of respects, is pretty isolated on the international stage right now, outside of America loving it due to its military actions which have been repeatedly condemned by the UN, by the WHO, by Doctors Without Borders, and dozens of other human rights and aid organizations.

So yeah, again, vocal support for such heinous and condemnable acts may, in fact, be why some people aren't such a big fan of David Draiman right now. But if you go on his social media, a lot of his responses to all of this, of course, put this squarely on him being Jewish and him being proud to be Jewish.

"Death, death to IDF. Every citizen of the state of Israel has to serve. So we're saying that the majority of world Jews should die? That's what you're saying. Good luck with that. Iran saw how easy that wasn't." - David Draiman

Look, I'm not going to come on here and gaslight David about some of the really messed up and toxic and awful and sometimes far-right ideologies and perspectives that infect some sects of the metal community and world. For sure, there be some racist metal heads out there. But simultaneously, this is not David's first rodeo here. He has been a figure in the metal world for years now, one who I've actually seen live on a few occasions. I'm sorry to admit that. I will admit that.

Anyway, during the instances where I did see Disturbed live, I did not see people booing David or taking him a task for being Jewish. And in fact, he has been very proud and open about his Jewish heritage for quite a long time. And in addition to that, he wasn't even the only Jewish metal musician on stage that day and evening for the Back to the Beginning festival and performance bill. And as far as I know, there's no Black Sabbath audience booing Scott Ian off the stage clips on TikTok or anywhere.

So I don't know. I mean, as much as I know that there are terrible people with heinous perspectives out there in the world, some of which may be in front of a stage where David or Disturbed are performing at some point, personally, I might just chalk this up to David signing freaking bombs and then posting it onto the internet. I don't know, David. Did you think that maybe fans of the band that wrote "War Pigs" doesn't think signing Boms is cool or super dope or neato?

Plus, on top of it, his social media feed is demented. Like with this recent retweet he did about New York mayoral primary winner Zohran Mamdani, with somebody saying about him, "He's as bad as critics say." because he dared to tweet "Rashida Tlaib is my hero, not only because she's a Muslim, a democratic socialist member, and a champion for Palestine. It's because she did what we're now trying to do, rally the multiracial working class around a socialist vision for justice. Solidarity from Astoria to Detroit."

Oh, my God. The horror. The absolute horror. What are we going to do? Oh, that's so scary. You mean somebody wants to build a political movement oriented around justice and working class consciousness and community and togetherness? Oh, no. Yeah, super scary. Interesting to see the things that David thinks are scary.

But yeah, there you go. David Draiman being corny once again. Let me know what you guys think about this silliness down in the comments. I'm absolutely positively sure that you will.

Anthony Fantano, Forever.