A: No they are pure rock fury.

Are the stripes metal? Depends on what you call metal. If you think of it as music, well then no - they probably aren't. But you don't think metal is just music do you? I mean you post on a forum for Christ's sake, I would hope you're smarter than that.

For too many years Metal, and its fans, were outcasts. Freaks banished to the outskirts of normal society and forever relegated to the painful label of pariah. But for their love and suffering they were given the free shots of confidence and bravado in every double-bass machine-gunning fire, and every red hot forked lightning-like solo. Metal made you an evangelical, a born-again preaching the good word of Chromatic scale and everything it could deliver.

To a keen ear, the seeds of metal lie everywhere, just waiting, and giving a sweet but short taste to any fertile mind just waiting to bask in the glory of bent, overdriven notes. Not just in the sound, but in the message, and the motive. Who has listened to Immigrant Song and didn't wanted to skull-**** a dragon? Who turned in horror to their first listen of Crazy Train and by songs end wasn't a converted zealot in the war on mediocrity in music and society together?

Metal is a fire in the soul, an adrenaline shot to the heart, a line of coke in the nostril. It gives you the game-changer to upset impossible odds.

So are the White Stripes metal? Sure, they have some obvious candidates like Little Cream Soda, but don't go for the obvious - you're better than that.

Do you remember where you were in 2003? Did a car roll by with decibel 11 thunder blowing out car speakers? Did some lit-up DJ bound into the microphone after some grunge piece of **** to announce he had the new White Stripes track? Or maybe it was your grandmother, who rose from her ancient grave, resurrected like Lazarus by the soul-shaking riff of jacks Airline?

I don't know where you heard it but I know you heard it. Deaf people behind Communists Iron curtain heard it. And while I can't say how or where, I can say what. What it did to you. How you felt. Because at the end of the day there are only three weapons any man really fears. Thor's Hammer, Deaths Scythe, and the 6-string of Mr. Jack White.

When those opening bass notes of 7 Nation Army, like the war knells of the coming apocalypse, come blazing from speakers, amplifiers, or headphones we all fancy ourselves invades. We're cutting off the heads of natives and showering in their blood. When that song comes on the animals run in fear and the women all becoming pregnant. So are the White Stripes metal? Is steel metal? Are flying V guitars metal? Is a leather-clad demon with a septum piercing, and a face of tattoos metal?

you god damn right they are.