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Does humour have a place in music?


RelentlessOblivion

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13 hours ago, Sabazios said:

I can't say I'd heard of either of those bands before, but Fornicator's demo was entitled "She Died on My Dick", come on if that is not intended as humour I don't know what is! The humour comes from the desire to cause maximum offence, I mean my first band was called Coathanger Abortion and we had a song called "Cot Death" and another called  "No Tears for dead Queers", none of us were homophobic at all, the title was intended to piss as many people off as possible, thus amusing ourselves... I will say that was 20 years ago now so please don't judge too harshly! I'm gonna get kicked out... :(

I gave Fornicator's full length another listen this morning, and, though I think you have a point about trying to create maximum offensiveness, there certainly appeared to be a degree of genuine perversion/dedication to theme that goes beyond merely trying to be shocking.  But that is only my impression, as I cannot back up my view with evidence from interviews! (You may be completely right the whole time!)  Bizarre Uproar is pretty serious though.

Your band sounds a bit like Anal Cunt!

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1 hour ago, Balor said:

I gave Fornicator's full length another listen this morning, and, though I think you have a point about trying to create maximum offensiveness, there certainly appeared to be a degree of genuine perversion/dedication to theme that goes beyond merely trying to be shocking.  But that is only my impression, as I cannot back up my view with evidence from interviews! (You may be completely right the whole time!)  Bizarre Uproar is pretty serious though.

Your band sounds a bit like Anal Cunt!

Yeah I was definitely influenced by AxCx lyrically, but we had actual songs too! xD obviously domestic violence is no laughing matter, at all, but the fact that I band would dare to make songs about it is kind of amusing. A bit like comedians like Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr, the subject isn't the thing that you're laughing at...

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52 minutes ago, Sabazios said:

Yeah I was definitely influenced by AxCx lyrically, but we had actual songs too! xD obviously domestic violence is no laughing matter, at all, but the fact that I band would dare to make songs about it is kind of amusing. A bit like comedians like Frankie Boyle or Jimmy Carr, the subject isn't the thing that you're laughing at...

Anal Cunt had songs!  I am inclined to agree with you other thoughts, though.

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8 hours ago, Balor said:

Anal Cunt had songs!  I am inclined to agree with you other thoughts, though.

Haha, I mean yeah the tracks on it just gets worse can be considered vaguely songs, that's my fave album by them by the way, but most of their other stuff is literally fuzz and completely random, that was kind of the point tho, the humour!

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I believe while musicians should take their work seriously and really focus on it, that there is a time and place for humor in music. For example, country/folk singer Johnny Cash took his songwriting and recording seriously, yet he was still able to write songs that were humorous to his audience (Cocaine Blues had the line “I thought I was her daddy, but she had five more”, and A Boy Named Sue would make people laugh), and goofy songs such as One Piece At A Time.

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  • 9 months later...

I'll chime in on this and say hell yes. Bands like Rammstein, Faith No More and Type O Negative were all the better for having humour in their songs and live shows. Rammstein's lead singer chasing around the stage the bands keyboardist with a fake knife before catching him and placing him in a giant cooking pot and then pretending to cook him alive was one of the funniest things I ever saw live. That sort of humour which Rammstein puts into their live shows is what helps make them the greatest band to see live.

Edited by Strawberry
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  • 7 months later...

Of course humor has a place in music! One of the silliest bands I've ever seen live was called Gardy-Loo and not only was seemingly every song they did about taking a shit, they had a guitarist dress up in a turd costume and play while they surfed a giant papier-mache turd around the crowd like you would with a beachball. They opened for Exhumed back in like 2006 and they even had a guy with a black executioner's hood on pretending to be El Duce (El Duce used to do their vocals until he died). All in all it was a great time.

There are some joke black metal projects that I get a kick out of, because I don't take myself too seriously. Impaled Northern Moonforest (Seth Putnam of Anal Cunt) and The Black Satans... also Anal Cunt was pretty hilarious with their song titles and supposed "lyrics" that Seth claimed that he had written for their "songs" (If you can call anything that Anal Cunt did a "song")

I also love the band Ween. They definitely have a sense of humor in their music, as most of their music is just making fun of other genres. The song "It's Gonna Be A Long Night" (about taking speed) was probably supposed to be taking the piss out of Motorhead (and I listened to that song religiously when I used to take speed, because I hadn't fundamentally understood that it was making fun of losers who take speed). Ween also did stuff like "The HIV song" and "Zoloft (and as someone who had been on Zoloft in high school, I got a kick out of that one as well).

I definitely think that humor has a place in music. There's nothing worse than a band that takes themselves too seriously or thinks that their art is some grand, important political statement (I'm primarily referring to Varggoth's "Aryan Terrorism" project because I will never be able to get over how the leader of Nokturnal Mortum shit out an album that was simply that awful). Taking music seriously and putting out a good product is fine, but thinking that your music is revolutionary and that you as an artist are important and have something to say that everyone needs to hear, is kind of lame. So in light of this, I like bands that do over the top, silly shit like Immortal and Arckanum just as much as I like bands that are blatant about trying to be funny (In Defence, The Black Satans, Anal Cunt)

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