:confused: How the hell does it butcher the atmosphere? When I have the metal going I'm way more immersed in the game than when I have the pipradio turned off and a real life radio on because, to me anyways, the 50's era music svcks so bad it annoys me. I simply can't listen to it. That's not helped much by Mr New Vegas looping the same five crappy songs endlessly. At least with Three Dog it was bearable as he tossed things up a bit, despite his pathetic library, though even then I replaced the library with rock after a couple of playthroughs.
The atmosphere, for me, is butchered way more when I don't replace the music than when I do. When I don't replace it I oft end up turning on some sort of real life radio, and the constant DJ pvssyr and real-world commercials for weight loss pills and mesothelioma lawsuits shatter the atmosphere of the game. The game is so well built that it doesn't need crappy period music to set the atmosphere. It does that fine all on it's own.
Fair enough, I'm not attacking your right to listen to whatever you want, but: the aesthetic of the game is a world that never progressed beyond the cultural norms of the 1950s. It's Norman Rockwell, white picket fence America gone bad, this is a world where the sixties counter-culture never happened. Heavy Metal is a genre of music that didn't exist until the late sixties at the very earliest (more seventies really). So personally I'd find it incredibly jarring, much as I'd find listening to techno or hip-hop whilst playing jarring for the same reasons, despite being perfectly happy listening to either in another context. But you can listen to whatever you like, it's your game to do what you like with.
I don't listen to the radio much myself, but I love the ambient music in the game so for me it's no biggie.