Metal can sound good with acoustic or clean guitar if it is played really well. It wouldn't be as agressive or heavy though. I play quite a bit actually, and I play both with and without distortion (more on my acoustic than my electric). When I get time I will record some crap with the pedal I just got recently. Metal doesn't have to be distorted in my opinion, just there is a "metal" type of high gain that is generally accepted. It isn't like you can't play Metallica on an acoustic guitar or with a clean signal on an electric, just don't expect it to sound quite as heavy. The guitar solos are what would change as some of the things like pinch harmonics would not come out as well (along with some of the really fast legato playing). Distortion doesn't hide the bigger mistakes, and it responds to inconsitent playing. It isn't like if I fuck up and don't palm mute something once, the distortion makes a sound like palm muting for me or anything. If I don't do it right, it will still sound like crap. It doesn't magically fix my 1/2 step bend and make it a full step or make my vibrato smoother. It makes hammer-ons, pull-offs and trills easier to hear and that is about it.
I do know what is involved as I have friends that are DJs and it is quite a bit of management. Even when not doing excessive scratching there is some work in mixing a live set. It isn't the same as a band, group performance is more impressive as it isn't easy to coordinate a group of individuals all the time. Orchestras are even more impressive, though they require conductors. Performance is all that matters in the end after the composition has taken place. Anyone can play a riff correctly once out of 100 times then copy and paste that shit on pro-tools until you have enough to fill a meter or however long you were going to play that riff. Then you have a track for fills and such. While recording you can have multiple takes, and that is what makes live performance 1000000 times more valuable. You only have one take live, if you fuck up or do something wrong you are fucked and will have to improvise. There is no second take.