MaxFaust

Splendid. It would seem I was somewhere around the right track. This is why I added that "non controversial on genre" bit. It gets tedious very fast when, say, the discussion turns to whether Limp Bizkit (sp?) is a real metal band. I don't care what they are ... nor do I worry much about "new people getting the wrong idea". People should pick whatever they like, and try to enjoy their time. So ... 18,000 new releases last year? Damn.

I tend to think in terms of Venn diagrams. That is to say "circles of meaning". If we suggest that there is a large circle that is "hard rock" ... then we might go on to suggest that there are also smaller circles, such as heavy metal, glam, punk, stoner rock, etc. that go within this larger circle. They may even overlap here and there. Shit got really interesting when I ran into a most peculiar argument though: Much of modern metal shouldn't even be called rock, according to an old friend of mine. It's more like jazz, or funk, or some kind of experimental shit that exists outside of all proper genres. Which is precisely what they used to say about "prog rock" back in the 70s: It wasn't proper rock music. There was too much weirdness.

For reasons not important here I got involved in a "do you remember 1980" type of discussion, somewhere else on the Wonky Wonder Web. As it happens, I do in fact remember 1980. Long story. Never mind. My point here ... and the question I wish to raise ... is, does anyone know anything about "relative release frequency" throughout the years? As in, how many acknowledged (non controversial on genre) metal releases have there been per year since 1980? Is this something somebody has bothered to research? And, if so, are the data available to the general public, somehow, somewhere? You would think this was a typical "Martin Popoff" problem ... but I simply have no idea. No clue where to look. The afore mentioned discussion stranded in pointless speculation about how many more releases of metal albums there are today than in the legendary year 1980. My feeling -- which may not be worth shit when it comes down to it -- is that more new stuff is being released per week these days than per year in and around 1980. It's simply no longer humanly possible to listen to "everything metal" any longer, because the day doesn't have enough hours. Sacrifices have to be made. Anyway, anyone in the know?

Hello. Happy new year. I think the word you might be looking for here is theatre. As in, whether or not the show has enough of whatever X-factor it is that makes people want to sit through it. Perhaps even discuss it among themselves after. As a performing artist, you're walking on a thin line. Your audience doesn't care about "the real you" ... they want the rock'n'roll. It can be every bit as embarrassing when people start going "profound" as when they go berzerk in the costume department. At the end of the day, it's probably a bit like dating. You put on something nice to show respect for the event, but you don't try to dress up like you're "off to see the wizard" (although I suppose people are into all kinds of weird shit in that department). This costume thing has been a problem since like forever. Or at least those parts of "forever" that seem familar to me. Remember Spinal Tap?

OK ... this went sideways, for which I am to blame. My apologies to the OP ... and anyone else that were feeling insulted. I shouldn't have worded myself like I did, as this most certainly doesn't help to get my point across, it only pisses people off. I know better. Really. It's just that I tend to get carried away some times ... and this "humanities vs. science" issue is a sensitive (and volatile) one. In the interest of full disclosure: I am in the hard science camp. It pisses me off whenever sociologists, psychologists, criminologists, and whatnot, claim to be practicing "science". This is patently false. "Humanities" is of course a worthy field of study, perhaps even some taxonomic gridwork, but science it ain't. My argument? Using the scientific method is of course laudable ... but approaching a field of study from a kind of "General Theory of Relativity" angle when you ought to consider it under the auspices of "Quantum Field Theory" isn't going to cut the mustard. Obviously, this will immediately confront us with some uncertainty issues. Basically that any human individual is essentially unknowable. "Knowing yourself" is a tall order for sure. Knowing somebody else? Forget about it. You can "know" someone your entire life ... which will not stop them from saying or doing things that make you question everything, like, WTF dude, where did that come from? Being young means being naive to people's motives. Hell, even old people can be really blind like that ... but who benefits from all these "studies" you keep hearing about all the time? In what ways do they benefit? The main source of political nourishment for most crackpot fringe asshats who are hating on gender, race and that sort of thing, is the field of "studies" ... that they can carry with them into debates and present as scientific corroboration of their points of view. Particularly when it comes to the question of what is and what isn't "normal" (and hence "democratic" by virtue of majority consent). Anyway, that's my position, clarified as best I'm able to. Again, sorry about the left field language above. I shouldn't have done that.

Okay ... this isn't personal, so let's get that out of the way. Fuck this, fuck that, those are only figures of speech. But let's get right to the meat: What can be known? How can it be measured? Who gets to standardize and effectualize this infomation? Obviously, if "we" are going to have mathematical standards, we have to first get to the point of standardized mathematics. What is the meaning of this symbol? Where goes what and why?

750 pages of shyte later, the United States still have a muppet regime. Seriously? Donald Trump? Get the fuck outta here! He's not fit to run even a hotel, let alone a casino. But that's not what's on my mind. I'm worried about the future of musical recording, not the lives of individuals. I care not at all for the USA --may they all soon die, preferably in a painful way -- but I will work to keep the brand name Pink Floyd in ship shape. I like Pink Floyd. They should be kept alive, if for nothing else than as just as a standard for others to be measured against. Please keep studio recordings alive.

Human nature is not a thing that human independent individuality should be measured against, in a right and wrong kind of way. Yet this is happening all the time, often for political purposes. Other than that, please go fuck yourself. Imagine Gavrilo Princip asking "please explain exactly how my personal suffering is affecting the lives of millions" ... or Adolf Hitler ever feeling a moment of doubt about his heroic mission. Who cares in the aftermath? Those who clean up only care about the nature of the mess. There is never going to be "peace".

It's interesting that "October Rust" (Type O Negative) and "Spiritual Black Dimensions" (Dimmu Borgir) are "eternal" albums that I will keep in my list ... fuck the genres and the special interests discussion. What I tend to do when confronted by a new genre like this is ask what represented them in the 70s (or even the 60s). If they have nothing they don't really exist. However, it's a fact that I own records by Theatre des Vampires and things like that ... such as Death Squad SS (highly rercommended!) ... which qualifies in this genre, according to its parameters. So I respect the desire to have your own country or whatever ... it's just not economically feasible at this point in time. In MY opinion (which counts a lot to me!), the basic premise of "gothic metal" is a fail. The emotional indulgence of "being gothic" is anathema to the spirit of creativity. It all boils down to a wankard the tankard blow it all up kind of party ... but the issue is real enough. So what's a "Gothic" album from the classical age like? I'd search for Savannah Breeze and that sort of thing ... but the real issue is that there just weren't enough tear soaked fucking children back in the day. You had to support yourself. Make a living, That sort of thing. (This may be different today. I wouldn't know. I stopped caring in the 90s.) Like I'm sure many will do ... I suggest Arthur Brown as a starting point here. This will put "gohic metal" at an age which is close to that of metal itself, in terms of when the genre came to be.

The premise of your study is flawed. You're assuming that there are things that can be known about human nature. This is incorrect. However, you're doing very useful pseudo-scientific gatherings of data that may later become politically useful, particularly to parties who wish to justify measures taken against the free flow of information. What you think you're observing is basically just a mirage ... but what you're actually doing is giving dictators more free ammunition.

The New Wave Of British Hair Metal (NWOBHM) started when Motorhead released the album "Overkill" in March 1979. In hindsight, the very concept seems little but a fanciful way to promote Iron Maiden ... but people are the monkeys that they are so they like to make up shit and give it names. If a lot of them agree, this becomes "the truth". Either way, the NWOBHM was pretty much over by the year 1982. The principal surge was in the year 1980 ... before "big money" had its attention shifted in this direction.

A gift that just keeps on giving is "Where owls go to die" (or something to that effect) by Rivers of Nihil. What a tremendous fucking album!!!

AC/DC has alrerady said it best. On a personal note, I think the highway leads as much "away" from something as it leads "towards" anything.

Those are valid arguments ... coming from the privileged "hindsight" position ... from whence we are able to observe things that have happened in history with a kind of distant clarity that's never really experienced as such by those who are present when the actual shit goes down. For instance, what does "plagiarism" mean? Case in point, the first (self-titled) album by Rush ... which upon its release was considered a "Led Zeppelin rip-off product" by a number of critics ... and that seems both harsh and unreasonable in hindsight, but you can sort of understand what point they were trying to make, at the time, in that "the sound" is somewhat similar, or at least so much so that it's fairly likely that people who like Led Zep will also like said Rush album (and of course also all the others that were accused of riding on the coattails of Zep's commercial and artistic success, at the time). It seems rather obvious that development in music is a lot about "cross-pollination" ... that is to say, musicians picking up ideas from other musicians, by way of listening to their music and finding inspiration in that ... and when a bunch of people seem to be aiming towards the same relatively narrow interpretation of some aspect of "the sound" that were originally created by some artist, that which we call a "genre" crystallizes into manifest form (particularly if and when this includes a lot of enthusiastic fans). When you get old, like me, you will see things differently. Instead of seeing for instance "power metal" and "grindcore" as two distinct genres, you might rather think of them as same-same, but different expressions of the same basic business idea, which is "rock'n'roll". Then you might move on to think of the entire "hard rock" genre as a species of its own ... with its own distinct history ... which brings me back to the admittedly somewhat tongue in cheek "footnotes" argument: Nobody will seriously bother to argue against the common idea that "metal" was invented by Black Sabbath ... but even they existed within a continuum of ideas. (Let's not forget that Robert Plant and John Bonham were both Brummies, meaning that all of Sabbath and all of Judas Priest, but also half of Led Zeppelin, were of the relatively same age and background, from Birmingham, UK ... meaning that it's hard to argue against the importance of that specific city in our line of business.) With regards to Whitehead, as mentioned in the OP, he was of course no fool. He never meant to say that Nietzsche and Bergson, Dilthey and Gadamer, were all the same ... three blind mice stumbling along the footpath laid down by Plato ... yet that was exactly what he kind of did, which, in an imaginary stand up comedian club for philosophers, would have everybody thrown into a fit of giggles. In my opinion, the "rock star" aspect of metal is at the very least a template that were created by the Zep. They had an attitude which were ever so slightly slightly larger than life ... and the audiences ate it all and asked for seconds. Nobody who are of an age and disposition to go and experience the Zep live on stage in their prime, have been unaffected (give or take the occasional blowhard, because there's always somebody) by the magic. You need to count among them a lot of people who would later go on to become major influences themselves. Such as Paul Stanley from Kiss ... and let's just have it out and on the fucking table: No matter what people may think of Kiss, it stands as undeniable that they were a heavy influence on MY generation, including (but not limted to) people who went on to become musicians themselves (and are today between 50-60 years old) ... who later said, in an interview, that he saw the light. He understood what he had to do. When Paul Stanley saw Led Zeppelin live on stage, the seed that was later to become Kiss got planted. Perhaps it would have happened either way, this or that, but it's a fact that this is the story told by Paul Stanley. He credits the Zep for making him want to become a rock star. Anyway, I'm babbling ... but this is the "deep" department, so you get what you came here for. Tony Iommi also have a story to tell, which is -- importantly -- that his major source of inspiration for his guitar playing was Hank Marvin. That had me go "but of course" when I first heard it. Tony uses lots of fuzz and drop tuning and whatnot ... but his overall "picking" is not at all unlike that of Hank Marvin. It's funny, really, who influenced whom, to do what, when and where. Take for instance Lemmy. A hard core rocker if there ever was one. He said time and time again that his personal influences were the old guard. People like Elvis, Little Richard and Eddie Cochran. He wasn't necessarily that much "into" any of his contemporaries, although he said of course ideas are floating hither and thither. C'est la vie. It stands to reason, such as I see these matters, that the "rock star" template was laid down by the Zep ... and enthusiastically replicated by those who would later follow ... but saying this isn't the same as saying that Led Zeppelin was a total product (although many say so) ... because there's no denying their talent. However that may be, I'm not really concerned with "being right" (I hardly ever am) but I like to discuss ideas. Me liking metal (and/or the greater genre of "rock'n'roll") is a matter of the heart, of taste and preference which originates in parts of me that I neither can nor will even try to explain. It is what it is. And that's all it is. Just some quirk, some funny bone that gets tickled just right by the fuzz ... which has me going "oh hell yeah" where others will go "OMG that's awful!" even though we are observing the exact same thing. De Gustibus Non Dispotandum, said the Romans. There's no accounting for taste. Many years ago. I was in a band called MDK. ("Mother Daughter Killfuck") I'm fairly certain that none of us would have thought any of what we were doing were even remotely related to Led Zeppelin. Our principal idea was to be harder and heavier than everybody else ... which is about as uncommon as trying to stack and groove the E-A-B chords during a blues jam (just listen to any Allmann Brothers live recording). However, I'm not even sure I'd be as much into "music" as I am if it weren't for heavy rock and metal. Seriously. I do of course like the 1812 overture and whatnot ... Wagner and Shostakovitch ... but that doesn't explain my taste for rock. There's something else, something more. Like a spiritual thing. Like connecting, with something, somehow. The famous click. Am I making any sense now? I'm trying to fish for that "click" moment. Like when you just know. Like when it's def: "This is some sick shit man! This stuff kills!" You can feel it in your bones. It just hits that spot. It all falls nicely into that groove ... which some say were created by Led Zeppelin, for nefarious purposes of varying orders, such as polluting the youth of America or bringing about the fall of the British Empire ... but those people were never good thinkers to begin with. I should end now. Literally, this is written during a break from writing something else, which is more in the region of 1000 pages, so I'm already in the mindframe of "writing a lot". However, I hardly ever think I'm "right" ... it's rather a question of being a little less wrong every time. Or circling the target like a drunk person trying to perform at a bow and arrow game. Your one and only possible advantage would be awareness. You know where you are and what you're doing ... so carry on. You may not be helped. It's swim or drown now, dear. Sorry about the inconvenience but enquiring minds want to know.

Leprosy by Death. Which is predictable, it's one of my all times.

Meh. This is an old canard that attracts opinions from a bunch of fucking kids who weren't even there when the shit hit the fan. The concept NWOBHM itself was an invention ... but it's never the less very interesting to hear how "thrash mertal" was a genre waiting to be born out of that early 1980s sound. You should probably not waste a lot of time on trying to "understand" what happened ... only accept that it was that moment in time and space, that required heavy metal to make sense.

The only interesting angle left in this thread is whether one may cover the other in this respect ... meaning that you can hide a lack of "personality" within the discipline of some very competent musicmanship. Or you can hide your lack of real talent behind an affinity for working the audience ... which is a real thing that takes real talent, to be sure, but it's got fuck all to do with music. Either way, it remains a question where "talent" really comes from and what it's all about.

I happily bought the Covenant album with a C rather than a K ... which is very geeky.

My current five big bands are Death, Vader, Emperor, King Diamond and Gojira. Or those are what I play the most anyway.

Alfred North Whitehead is famous for a number of things ... but all we need to focus on here and now is that he once claimed that all of western philosophy is little but a series of footnotes to the work of Plato. Was he right? Did he have a point? WTF is this even about? Amusement value dictates most of all that people do. In the world of rock, the kick value. Or impact. There's no denying the fact that once every blue moon there's something which seems to hit "everybody" ... which may or may not be a real mystery, but there's no denying the fact that if an artist sells a lot of records, the whole shebang is going to include a respectable bit of cash that's up for grabs. Anyway -- The question here is whether all of "heavy metal" is little but a series of footnotes to Led Zeppelin. I don't care who you are or where you're from ... it's a fact that everybody who decides to really get into the music of Led Zeppelin seems to have some sort of Blair Witch reaction to the whole idea. They get lost. They don't come back. They see the light. Who knows? Point is that there's no getting around Led Zeppelin if you want to understand why heavy metal came to be. They have it all down. Every trick in the book. Every lick, every groove. They've been there, done that. What is the entirety of metal music if not a series of footnotes to Led Zeppelin?

We got a little stuck in the Mercyful Fate thing. Be that as it may, say any motherfucker whatever they like, MF is "traditional metal" in the best possible way. I'm saying this in an age where even Iced Earth is considered traditional metal ... and fully remembering what a kick it was to discover Melissa for the first time, in 1983. (It might have been 1984 though, when I first heard it. It gets fuzzy trying to remember all the shit from that long ago. Nor does it much matter anymore.) Perhaps the "message" gets confused with the "music" ... because Melissa was radical in its blatant "satanic" style for its time ... even though that path had been explored quite a lot before, only not as musically satisfying. A band like Witchfynde comes to mind ... although most will probably say they were NWOBHM. Here's something I think is "classic" in the traditional metal sense:

Another town another place, Another girl, another face, Another truce, another race, I'm eating junk, feeling bad, Another night, I'm going mad, My woman's leaving, I feel sad, But I just love the life I lead, Another beer is what I need, Another gig my ears bleed, We Are The Road Crew Another town I've left behind, Another drink completely blind, Another hotel I can't find, Another backstage pass for you, Another tube of super glue, Another border to get through, I'm driving like a maniac, Driving my way to hell and back, Another room a case to pack, We Are The Road Crew

That band -- Shadows Fall -- may be a little inspired by Sepultura. Which is far from the worst thing that you can be inspired by, but it's also not what I personally find interesting ... so I'll give it a 5/10 for being able to rock and roll, above the minimum standard. Here's what I bring to the slaughter:

Aye. I am. Which is probably why all those black metal boys like me so much. There's nothing admireable about the human race. We're basically just stupid monkeys, not even smart enough to recognise the good shit that we've got. So we fuck it up and turn it all to worthless crap. Again and again, with the idiot dance of "success" and sieg heil to the industry and corporate mindlessness. BTW ... the word "occult" means hidden. As in hidden from sight, from the obviousity of rational thought and logic. In many ways, sex is occult ... because it's a thing that's hidden and feared, something that everybody has to figure out for themselves, what it means and how they wish to relate to it, but it's an important thing to most people so it will not be denied.

I don't mean to sound as if the old stuff is worthless. Fuck me if I do! The problem is rather that I know a lot of guys who got stuck in their perfect loop, like when they were young and good looking and all the music was radical and impressive ... whereas now they are fat and gone, working with some bullshit that destroys the earth, whilst trying to deny their own kids the pleasure of discovering rock'n'roll on their own terms. But what can you do? That's how life rolls. You will see.