A far more pertinent question might well turn out to be 'Why are there fewer heavy metal bands in general'? Face it, it's a dying genre, one that - like jazz - will always have a small and narrow consituant audience (also known as a 'niche market') but will have little to no real effect on the course of the musical mainstream that it once was the vanguard of.
Here are three rather interesting facts.
* - Starting in 2001 and continuing for many years after that, turntables outsold guitars in music stores. (and that's a solid 10 years past when turntables stopped being used for home music).
* - This year, for the first time in their history (going back to 1991), Soundscan noted that old music (defined as releases more than two years old) was outselling new music across all rock genres.
* - This year EDM was far outselling rock considering all releases old and new.
Metal bands that used to sell out 2000 seat houses are lucky to get booked in 1000 seat houses, bands that used to play 500 seat clubs are lucky to find a 200 seat club that will book them, and the few big metal tours that are doing well seem to be well beyond dinosaur status, sucking on oxygen between songs instead of joints and gulping down tea and water and not swilling beer. And, at that, such tours are doing well only as part of a package with 4 or 5 bands sharing a stage that 5 years ago any of them would have sold out all on their own.
Anymore it's just nostalgia.
