In response to someone's question about the purpose of violence in metal and the aesthetics of metal, I explained (dialogue simplified down to monologue):
"Yeah, I know. From a distance, it wouldn't seem like there's any difference between one form of angry-sounding music like punk hardcore and another like black/death metal. But to me, there's always been this subtle difference in the context of the emotions. Alot of metal doesn't sound simply 'angry' or disgruntled to me - it's aggression is often not directed at some particular thing, like corporations or the police (like in punk). It's almost like it's aggressive without being angry. I usually don't appreciate simply angry-sounding music because I'm not an angry person... but I can understand the need to act aggressively too. Aggressive without being angry. Cold and detached in a way, like Lovecraft's Old Gods that care not for human suffering, just like the natural world (the real world). That's why metal is truly psychotic music, as it's feeling are like they're not coming from a human being. When you hear the music, it doesn't sound human, does it? That's why the vocals sound the way they do. The perspective of metal is definitively inhuman, that's why it seems so foreign, that's why Mad At Your Girlfriend songs don't classify and that's also why it can get so stupid sometimes, as the musicians themselves have trouble intuitively thinking in the genre's terms. That, and the overbearing aesthetics are it's most noticeable trait, so that's what receives the most attention and emulation. But what really makes the genre (of 'death'/'black'/'doom', not so much 'speed' or 'heavy') worthwhile is that it is one of the few forms of music that thinks this way and paints the picture that it does. It offers this inhuman - psychotic - perspective on things that I don't see most anywhere else. Everything quintessentially metal seems to be a logical extension of that."
I don't think I said all that, but that's most of what was going through my mind when I attempted the explanation.