Controversial Metal Opinions

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Controversial Metal Opinions

I can't get into those guys' date=' but I will say this: some people seem to think that if a band started off with some commercial "core" influence, then if they later drop some of that and go in a more purist "death" or "thrash" direction, they're just trend-hopping and they lack artistic integrity. It's like commercialism is a brush that tars you forever. I don't necessarily agree; I think a lot of these bands started off pretty young and their tastes probably evolved after they got pushed into the spotlight. The market right now seems geared towards selling "legitimacy" (whatever that really means - integrity? sincerity?) as part of a band's image. Funny how that works... it feels like the bands that try a different approach are seen in the same light a politicians who flip-flop, like you're supposed to nail your colors to the mast and never change your mind about anything. I've been a musician for at least two-thirds of my life so far... It doesn't really work that way. I'm glad the industry took such a hit, because I think they were driving that genre-specific mentality.[/quote'] You're right, but almost every time these guys do change and move into a less poppy and more "true" direction, they do so in the most empty and banal way possible. They don't usually change away from mallcore or deathcore, they just adopt some death/thrash/black/grind/whatever aesthetics while retaining the same feeling. Death metal is not chugging riffs, black metal is not tremolo riffs, grind is not blast beats, and thrash is not palm muting. Those are just things you may find in those genres, ways of expressing the feelings, moods, and atmospheres that are communicated by those genres. It is the feeling that unites these bands into genres, not superficial characteristics, otherwise Dick Dale would be the first extreme metal musician. Most of these bands are merely adopting some of those aesthetics, that doesn't make them thrash/death/whatever. This is why bands as aesthetically diverse as Dark Tranquillity, Gorguts, Dying Fetus, Nocturnus, Merciless, Entombed, Cynic, Grave Miasma, Order From Chaos, and The Chasm can all be called death metal, it's all about the point of the writing, the path you take to get there varies from artist to artist, in addition to what you find when you get there. Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[deathstorm]

Jayke. Do you agree with me. That some bands are scare to experiment. Because there fans will them a sellout I don't get either fans cry sellout. If production. Of a certain is more polish. Using protools. Explain that as well.

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Controversial Metal Opinions

Jayke. Do you agree with me. That some bands are scare to experiment. Because there fans will them a sellout I don't get either fans cry sellout. If production. Of a certain is more polish. Using protools. Explain that as well.

Sure, experimentation can be scary for anyone, but only if you're worried about what others think of your music. At the end of the day, you have to be true to yourself, otherwise why are you making music? Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[RelentlessOblivion]

The answer to BAN's question is: To make money (see slipknot)

[FatherAlabaster]

Jayke. Do you agree with me. That some bands are scare to experiment. Because there fans will them a sellout I don't get either fans cry sellout. If production. Of a certain is more polish. Using protools. Explain that as well.

Almost everyone uses Protools or something similar these days. I don't think computers are the problem. But they make things a lot cleaner-sounding than they used to be on tape, and of course you've got digital editing and digital tone creation. So I think a lot of bands/producers wind up creating something that's too sterile and perfect. It sounds fake. Some people like it, others (like me) react to it poorly. Sometimes bands really have sold out, but the truth of that is really in the songwriting, and I think my personal bias is a bit unfair. I still associate overly clean production with money, but the fact is you don't need anywhere near as much money as you used to, to get professional results. The problem I have with the modern sound is that a lot of bands wind up sounding too similar. Even if they don't copy and paste the same tones and drum sounds, they wind up with something so close that it could have almost come from the same session. I like stuff that has a little more character. Thankfully that kind of thinking seems to be coming back around.

[FatherAlabaster]

The answer to BAN's question is: To make money (see slipknot)

That's an oversimplification, and there are any number of working musicians and producers who don't seem to have respect for people's product unless it's making money. And you can't keep going as a touring band if the money's not coming in. The "artist" seems to be the last one to get paid. People don't seem to think of music as a job at all outside of the industry. David Draiman put up a "letter to the fans" talking about how he'd have to postpone an upcoming tour with A7X to be at home with his newborn kid. Half the comments were "props to the dude for putting family first" and the other half seemed to be "he's letting us down and it's a stupid decision". I think both sides miss the point, which is that he's taking time off his job to be with his kid - that simple. It's something almost any parent would want, and he's lucky he can afford it. I have to balance my family life against my music every day, and I'm not even making any money with it! In the end I agree with you that music should be its own reward, but who are we to say that it's not that way for some guys just because A) we don't like their music and they're still making money with it?

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Controversial Metal Opinions

That's an oversimplification' date=' and there are any number of working musicians and producers who don't seem to have respect for people's product [i']unless it's making money. And you can't keep going as a touring band if the money's not coming in. The "artist" seems to be the last one to get paid. People don't seem to think of music as a job at all outside of the industry. David Draiman put up a "letter to the fans" talking about how he'd have to postpone an upcoming tour with A7X to be at home with his newborn kid. Half the comments were "props to the dude for putting family first" and the other half seemed to be "he's letting us down and it's a stupid decision". I think both sides miss the point, which is that he's taking time off his job to be with his kid - that simple. It's something almost any parent would want, and he's lucky he can afford it. I have to balance my family life against my music every day, and I'm not even making any money with it! In the end I agree with you that music should be its own reward, but who are we to say that it's not that way for some guys just because A) we don't like their music and they're still making money with it?

Nobody said that artists shouldn't be rewarded for their work (I'm of quite the opposite opinion actually, which is why I always pay for albums, what they make is work and they deserve compensation for it), but if making money is your main motivation, art is probably the wrong way to go about it. Music should be of deeper topics and motivations than something so shallow and temporal as monetary gain. Do I want people to like my music and buy what I have created? Absolutely, but I do not create it for this reason, I create music for personal fulfillment and self expression. I would not change my music to attempt to sell more of it; if people don't like it for what it is, that's fine, but at least it's my unique creation that doesn't click with them. I would not sell something as my own that I did not believe in, that I did not pour myself into, regardless of how much money I could make doing so. We can only speculate as to the motivations of any given artists, but from what I've observed, there is an extreme difference between the motivations of pop musicians of any genre and musicians who create music for themselves in any given genre. Ironically, it is typically the true artists that go unnoticed (same goes for any other artistic medium besides music) while those whose only goal is mass appeal are successful at doing just that. Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[deathstorm]

Thanks alabaster and jayke. For answering my question

[deathstorm]

Why are bands releasing. Stuff on vinyl who stills listen to vinyl. In this day and age also who stil has a old record player laying. Around that still works

[RelentlessOblivion]

There's a nostalgia factor involved but also cd doesn't necessarily have the same audio quality as one gets on vinyl. It does drive up the cost a bit though. Cost is really the main reason I don't own any vinyl records.

[FatherAlabaster]

People call it "quality" but in terms of sound reproduction there's nothing vinyl can do that a cd can't; I think it just comes down to different signal paths sounding a different way. Tape was probably the worst in terms of accurate sound reproduction, but I still like the way tape sounds. I know lots of people with turntables. Vinyl sells really well at shows. People with actual CD players here in the city are in the minority; literally every single person that I hang out with up here listens to mp3s instead.

[RelentlessOblivion]

I prefer physical copies, I like being able to pick up something and look at it, you don't get a booklet and artwork to look at with downloads (well you do but the artwork is so small it defeats the purpose).

[FatherAlabaster]

@BAN you're right that we can only speculate; I think we speculate too much. I'm guilty of it too, I'm one of the first to dismiss things as overhyped commercial bullshit. You know I basically share your opinion. You've heard my music and you know where I'm coming from. I'm playing devil's advocate here because I think we oversimplify and make unfair assumptions about people; that our criticism of their music comes a bit too close to criticism of their character, for one thing ("what kind of awful, fake person could possibly be willing to put their name on such an inferior product?"). There are lots of roles to play in the music industry. There are folks who would rather be out playing but discovered a knack for production that has evolved into a decent job, so they have to make a choice between playing their own stuff and working on other people's projects (Peter Tagtgren, Steven Wilson, the guy from Daath, the guy from Fit For An Autopsy). There are people who make a living as session musicians who are perfectly happy with that and just love playing. There are people who have found a way to express themselves adequately in an industry-accepted format, who are perfectly capable of being true to their own vision while remaining a profitable commodity. We have this ideal of the "band" as a group of collaborative composers with some sort of "vision", who create new things and test "the boundaries". It's great, it's still something I want to have, but I think it's naive. I feel like it's too easy to pick on (insert band name) for being "too commercial" or writing "pop songs" or being "sellouts". If we're gonna pick on them in a serious way, rather than just having fun bashing them for laughs, the critique should have more substance, and it should go beyond whether or not we like it for whatever reason, or feel that they're "just trying to make money". I don't feel like metal music criticism has evolved past the point of people justifying their individual tastes and hoping to inflict them on others. In the end, maybe we're right and a lot of this stuff that sounds like empty soulless garbage really is just empty soulless garbage; but snap judgements and knee-jerk reactions are often looked up to, in the metal culture I'm familiar with, as hallmarks of taste. It's not just in metal. I think that staking one's claim to whichever side of whatever polemic, and then defending it to the hilt, is an expected, widespread, normative behavior these days. And I think it's a problem. I want to see more nuance.

[FatherAlabaster]

I prefer physical copies' date=' I like being able to pick up something and look at it, you don't get a booklet and artwork to look at with downloads (well you do but the artwork is so small it defeats the purpose).[/quote'] I'm not talking about the difference between physical copies and downloads. I don't own a cd player aside from the drive on my living room computer; so I have to make mp3s or wav files if I want to hear the music on anything but my crappy computer speakers. I rip a lot of CDs. High quality mp3s are ok but they don't have the same detail in the treble frequencies, because the super high end is one of the things that gets thrown out to make the files so small. But CD quality audio is totally capable of producing anything we're capable of hearing. You can download a FLAC file and it'll have the same audio information as a wav even though it's smaller, because nothing is permanently thrown away. Everything else is differences in signal chains, or differences in people's unquantifiable opinions.

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Controversial Metal Opinions

@BAN you're right that we can only speculate; I think we speculate too much. I'm guilty of it too, I'm one of the first to dismiss things as overhyped commercial bullshit. You know I basically share your opinion. You've heard my music and you know where I'm coming from. I'm playing devil's advocate here because I think we oversimplify and make unfair assumptions about people; that our criticism of their music comes a bit too close to criticism of their character, for one thing ("what kind of awful, fake person could possibly be willing to put their name on such an inferior product?"). There are lots of roles to play in the music industry. There are folks who would rather be out playing but discovered a knack for production that has evolved into a decent job, so they have to make a choice between playing their own stuff and working on other people's projects (Peter Tagtgren, Steven Wilson, the guy from Daath, the guy from Fit For An Autopsy). There are people who make a living as session musicians who are perfectly happy with that and just love playing. There are people who have found a way to express themselves adequately in an industry-accepted format, who are perfectly capable of being true to their own vision while remaining a profitable commodity. We have this ideal of the "band" as a group of collaborative composers with some sort of "vision", who create new things and test "the boundaries". It's great, it's still something I want to have, but I think it's naive. I feel like it's too easy to pick on (insert band name) for being "too commercial" or writing "pop songs" or being "sellouts". If we're gonna pick on them in a serious way, rather than just having fun bashing them for laughs, the critique should have more substance, and it should go beyond whether or not we like it for whatever reason, or feel that they're "just trying to make money". I don't feel like metal music criticism has evolved past the point of people justifying their individual tastes and hoping to inflict them on others. In the end, maybe we're right and a lot of this stuff that sounds like empty soulless garbage really is just empty soulless garbage; but snap judgements and knee-jerk reactions are often looked up to, in the metal culture I'm familiar with, as hallmarks of taste. It's not just in metal. I think that staking one's claim to whichever side of whatever polemic, and then defending it to the hilt, is an expected, widespread, normative behavior these days. And I think it's a problem. I want to see more nuance.

I try not to make character judgments based on music, because I'm friends with many people that like music that I don't, and I know lots of people who have similar taste in music that are assholes. Music is not analogous to character. There are jobs to be had, as there is money going into the business side of it, but it seems to always make it down to artists last. Producers, labels, and various tour expenses will always exist, the band is merely left with what remains after everyone else gets their guaranteed fees. Having another role in the business, like a job at a studio or a label, can help keep you involved in the industry and help fund your band (you used Peter Tagtgren as an example). Some people are indeed just musicians and not writers, and playing the music their way to someone else's song is plenty common, my point was that if you are writing or playing, your motivation shouldn't be financial (which would be misguided in this genre anyway). You're also correct that people fling a lot of shit, and only have broad reasons without personal opinion for why that shit is being flung. I try to backup my claims with definite reasons as to why I don't like something, the reason still being my opinion, but at least it's one that could have some potentially objective content. For example, my usual gripe with Scar Symmetry is it sounds like they're trying to please everyone, they have these jarring and contrived transitions between pseudo-death metal to the most saccharine pop-"metal" passages that don't flow at all, and neither side of their sound is done particularly well IMO. Another example of a band displaying many shallow characteristics and aesthetics of a sound (or multiple sounds in this case) and missing the point of why they're used. Maybe whomever reads that won't agree, but it's better than the stock "no there fecking ghey d00d, fag not tr00 shit bro". You're definitely right about people not giving music outside of their comfort zone a chance, and that being looked at as something along the lines of "scene credibility" or respectable taste. I used to be that way, afraid to tread outside the metal waters, and I missed out on a great deal of music for a long time. There's a big difference between knowing what you like and being closed minded. I will typically check out black, death, thrash, and doom recommendations more readily than power or progressive metal recommendations, even though I like bands in those genres as well, I just don't listen to it as much. That's no reason to ignore those recommendations entirely, nor recommendations from outside genres I typically listen to (I can't imagine not having heard bands like Swans simply because they weren't metal). Fuck that, give stuff a chance. Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[RelentlessOblivion]

I'm happy to give any form of music a chance and I can even appreciate certain mainstream artists despite not caring for their chosen genre as a whole. Ultimately all it comes down to is me wanting to hear more music which I like and it doesn't matter in the least which genre that music happens to come from. Like BAN I do try to explain why I don't like something. For example I dislike slipknot because their songwriting seems weak to me and their musicianship feels lazy. Add to that any metal elements of their sound are pushed to the background (which I wouldn't mind were it not for the aforementioned issues) whilst they emphasise the pop and hip-hop elements of their sound. They transition poorly between the two and as a consequence do neither particularly well in my opinion.

[H34VYM3T4LD4V3]

Re: Controversial Metal Opinions I don't mind Metallica's Black Album, and for sone reason AJFA doesn't cut it for me.

[Parker]

I don't get what the big deal is with Satyricon; second rate late comers. Immortal have also always seemed vastly overrated to me as well, but are still enjoyable.

[JBaker]

I don't like Iron Maiden much, or the classic Metal vocal style... It just strikes me as a bit cheesy, with no real bollocks behind it. This fuels my intense dislike of most speed/power metal. I guess I could also add that I enjoy some hip hop. I realise this isn't a problem for the more open-minded folk on this page, but it seems popular for metalheads to slate rap, when they're probably judging the genre by the mainstream crap: the very thing they hate about non-metal fans judging the entire genre by Korn and Slipknot. Oh, and I like Korn and Slipknot.

[RelentlessOblivion]

I think Anthrax suck quite frankly. I can't stand listening to them anymore they put me to sleep.

[deathstorm]

One band I don't care about is iwrestleabearatonce. What the hell is avent metal

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Controversial Metal Opinions

I don't get what the big deal is with Satyricon; second rate late comers. Immortal have also always seemed vastly overrated to me as well' date=' but are still enjoyable.[/quote'] Being "late comers" is hardly a bad thing, it doesn't seem like it was a problem with Nocturno when he joined the band for Nemesis Divina. Additionally, I'll take albums from Taake, Aeternus, etc... over albums from many of the old schoolers. I also feel that Immortal is a bit overrated (as is Satyricon, just arguing your point, though both are still enjoyable), but so are most Norwegian black metal bands. Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[KSMASH]

Here's an opinion that stirs up some shit in certain circles: Slam death is deathcore.

[BlutAusNerd]

Re: Controversial Metal Opinions

Here's an opinion that stirs up some shit in certain circles: Slam death is deathcore.

Slam death is what mallcore musicians aspire to sound like when they create deathcore, but that doesn't really mean it's the same. That's sort of like saying Rascal Flatts is the same as Johnny Cash. Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

[KSMASH]

Slam death is what mallcore musicians aspire to sound like when they create deathcore, but that doesn't really mean it's the same. That's sort of like saying Rascal Flatts is the same as Johnny Cash. Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

No. Many slam bands use the same techniques as deathcore, the fans of each subgenre often share the same mindset of more brutal = better, and similarly the bands often compete to achieve the most brutal grooves. The similarities are more apparent in the bands that flirt with both styles, i.e. Waking the Cadaver, Ingested, etc. (even featuring similar gore/misogyny lyrics in some cases). It's all bro-dude music, but one subgenre is arguably more on the core side. I just think they're similar enough that it's hilarious to me when I hear slam enthusiasts hating on deathcore. Also, you just turned my comparison of genres into a comparison of bands. So how about this: it's more like me saying "Merle Haggard is the same as Johnny Cash". Arguably different, but I could point out more similarities in their music than between artists of two completely different genres.