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What is metal for you?


Holy Terror

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Maybe its a matter of generations and the space we live in. I know here in our country there was a large "true or not true" debate in my teenage years when metal subculture was flourishing. Yeah, it later became trolling, but i still see this with younger generations. People that didnt listen to certain genres, didnt dress in a certain way and acted a certain way, were excluded. Ive been listening to metal for about 12 years now (started when i was 13), and ive had experiences with all of these people ive mentioned. And not just a couple of them. You could even see a type of "cliques" forming when you went out to an alternative place.

And as for stereotyping and prejudice goes and the embedded traditional values in people, that stands for metalheads as well as "normal" people. Plenty of them seem open minded when in fact theyre not. But i just expect more from a person that feels excluded from general society, at least i expect them not to exclude other people or other subcultures, minorities and so on, since they have experience with such things. Sadly its mostly just about finding your group and not caring about anything else.

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It's a shame that's been your experience. Funnily enough I started getting into metal around 12-13 thanks to my cousin. We stopped hanging out and so I was left to my own devices for years. I joined this place in 2011 and have encountered friendly, open-minded, people. Similarly meeting other metalheads (mostly around my uni actually) has yielding positive results. It could well be that my experiences are extremely uncommon though which would be a shame.

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Heh i have few metalhead friends. Most of my company was the exact opposite of metalheads and they accepted me for being the weirdo in their group. : D

Well i dont know, since all of you have great experience, maybe its just me. : D I am a bit anti social thats true as well.

And yes, you are friendly open-minded creepers.

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Just don't surprise Macabre at his gardening (or go anywhere near Australia) and you'll be fine. :D

This is a lot like a discussion we had a while back, I think in one of the threads about "posers". I still think it's mostly an age issue. The older you get, the more people around you will have all of that personal identity garbage figured out and not feel threatened by others who don't conform to exactly the same standards.

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Yeah thats probably it. The problem was that i had the "personal identity garbage" figured out (or not at all, didnt care much really) when i was younger so i never really connected to a certain group of people, even if we had similar taste in music. Adds up that i dont just "let things slide", when i figure out some peoples limitations (them stereotyping too much, stuff like that) i just stop hanging out with them or lose interest.

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I've never really had issues with people. I like to think I'm a pretty smart bloke but I'm happy to have dumb conversations a lot of the time. I think personal interaction is a little bit of give and take most of the time. That's probably a discussion for another thread I should think. By the way don't know if it's been mentioned to you yet but the moderators here are myself, FatherAlabaster, and BlutAusNerd. Along with our grand overlord and site admin DilatedMind we're the people to turn to if you're having any issues at all. We'll do everything we can to solve them if/when problems arise (and they likely will the site is undergoing an upgrading and restructuring right now).

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It's the middle of winter down here. Cold (14 degrees celsius), windy, and raining is the order of the week. I don't really like winter that much - horrible weather for the cycling (I ride a tandem for obvious reasons). Spring and Autumn are great for that but I love Summer the most. Nice and hot perfect for heading to the beach.

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Complete no go. Rollerskating is stupid anyway. The important thing is that I'm not letting my vision impairment stop me doing what I want to in life. There's a solution to virtually any problems one may face in life and those presented by vision impairment are really quite easy to overcome. Plus it means getting a badass black labrador/retriever to help me out and he's a serious chick magnet :D.

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  • 4 months later...

Metal means a great deal to me.  Firstly, it is ramified into various sections and I prefer Stoner/Doom metal.  I listen to Orchid, Electric Wizard, Cathedral, and Uncle Acid.  It is heavy, raw, and the mediocrity of mainstream pop cannot hold sway over it. It is enduring and consistantly pays homage to the early 70's riffs and approach.  Stoner and Doom is so indicative of this approach.

It is never affected by 'trends' and its followers tend to be intelligent and well-read people.  I also like how some bands, like Electric Wizard, weave their lyrics around what influences them.  Such as a passion for HP Lovecraft and 1970's British Horror films.  Jus Oborn has admitted that on many occasions. 

The whole image of metal sums me up perfectly.  The whole retro-feel of it is basically timeless.  I know that sounds quite paradoxical but it is timeless.  Metal has brought us all together here, for example, to this forum.  And it is like a huge, international brotherhood (and sisterhood).

To conclude my post metal is what metal is.  Love it or hate it, you certainly cannot ignore it.  It is not something that will ever die off but continue on long after we've expired.  The same cannot be said about the insipidness of mainstream pop. Those people come and go and vanish into oblivion.

 

 

 

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I wish I could agree with that, but metal certainly has its share of idiocy and trend hopping. I've got plenty of friends who love music but have no interest in metal. What initially attracted me to extreme metal was how good it was at expressing the anger I felt, and I suppose a lot of that anger hasn't gone anywhere, but at this point I've also been listening to metal for so long that it just sounds like normal music to me. To my wife's chagrin at times...

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You're new here so we'll let that comment about metalheads being intelligent slide... :D

 

I like music that makes me feel something. That's probably why I go in for Funeral Doom so much. Similar to FA though I've got over a decade of listening to metal under my belt so it really does sound like "normal" music to me. That being said as I develop a taste for the stranger side of metal (Portal, Ulcerate, Demilich etc) that theory is being tested.

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Not necessarily. Plenty of metal bands follow the generic verse-chorus structure. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Trouble, Candlemass, Dark Tranquillity, just to name a few. Ultimately metal's progressive nature is due to the creative nature of some musicians. It is not an inevitability however.

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     What does metal mean to me? It, to me, is a subculture built around TRUE  progression. Something with as very  little refrains as metal has is undoubtedly going to spawn some of the world's most creative and wild ideas and people, who aren't afraid to express themselves.

False. There are literally thousands of generic Helloween, Darkthrone, Suffocation, Exodus, etc... clones in the genre. For every creative act, there are plenty more that bring nothing new to the table. That's not always a bad thing, a band doesn't have to be original to be good, but it doesn't hurt their chances.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

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19 hours ago, BlutAusNerd said:

False. There are literally thousands of generic Helloween, Darkthrone, Suffocation, Exodus, etc... clones in the genre. For every creative act, there are plenty more that bring nothing new to the table. That's not always a bad thing, a band doesn't have to be original to be good, but it doesn't hurt their chances.

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

I realize that. I wasn't saying EVERYTHING is original, I'm just saying that there are some VERY original metal bands out there, and those have spawned some of the world's best musicians and songs. Also, those types of metal bands are the ones that everyone looks up too, at least MUCH more than those thousands of Pantera-Slayer hybrid garage bands on Bandcamp.

21 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Not necessarily. Plenty of metal bands follow the generic verse-chorus structure. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Trouble, Candlemass, Dark Tranquillity, just to name a few. Ultimately metal's progressive nature is due to the creative nature of some musicians. It is not an inevitability however.

I know, but, to me, it's what they do in those verses and choruses that count. Black Sabbath created a genre in which thousands of bands existed today in those verses and choruses, just as Judas Priest made one of the first "thrash metal" songs, upon dozens of other achievements, and Iron Maiden created some of the best melodies in existence, although that is subjective.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Metal is listening to music at high volumes with your friends, and headbanging. Going to shows, and going in the pit. Playing metal with your friends. Watching metal music videos. Having the music soothe your angry, twisted soul. Laughing when you hear a riff, or drum fill that was over the top awesome.

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On 31-7-2015 at 3:50 AM, RelentlessOblivion said:

Complete no go. Rollerskating is stupid anyway. The important thing is that I'm not letting my vision impairment stop me doing what I want to in life. There's a solution to virtually any problems one may face in life and those presented by vision impairment are really quite easy to overcome. Plus it means getting a badass black labrador/retriever to help me out and he's a serious chick magnet :D.

I don't mean to pry so feel free to ignore this comment if you don't want to talk about it. I'm just being curious. How much can you actually see? Is it almost blind or can you make out shapes and things? Having an assistance dog must make a huge difference. It's strange how animals can comfort and calm us where humans can't.

But to stay on topic, for me it was the emotional aspect of the music. It was the first music I heard that had deeper layers and I still feel that emotional connection, especially for the bands that I have known for a long time. Listening to them feels like coming home, and I always felt like a had a deeper connection with the artists behind it than with "regular" pop music. It's as if the artists are laying their souls bare for you and you get to live inside their world for a little while. 

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