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Does humour have a place in music?


RelentlessOblivion

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  • 3 weeks later...

I like humor in music. Even more, I like when things go chaotic and schizophrenic and really weird with things like Circus of Dead Squirrels, Pryapisme, Mr. Bungle and much more. I don't like taking myself too seriously. On the other hand, it's great to hear deep emotional stuff. Someone mentioned Katatonia, they certainly have some great moments. But, I don't like hearing one single atmosphere on the whole album. It can be boring. :)

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As a massive funeral doom fan I disagree. If the atmosphere evokes emotions it is seldom boring. Longing For Dawn's 'Between Elation and Despair' for example never bores me with it's bleak, depressing, atmosphere. On the other hand bands who don't take themselves seriously can become boring if the music isn't up to scratch. Case and point steel panther have mildly amusing lyrics but their music is terrible.

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Ok, you're right. I was watching it purely from my perspective. I was just thinking, it's not like I never listened dark, bleak music or something with sense of despair/melancholy etc. In that way, for me I think that it used to be interesting to me to listen to that kind of atmosphere, but in the recent years I became more interested in light stuff. I don't say that I think that dark, negative emotions are not valid, I just think that I should like to hear both positive and negative emotions in music. Sometimes metal music can be rooted in darker themes, and I like to think that we could give a chance to some positive stuff. I just want to say that I like both, depending on a mood. :)

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I was really just pointing out that for every Carnivore, Type O Negative, and Devin Townsend that executes humour well there are a plethora of generic sounds failing to justify potentially hilarious lyrics. Of course the same can be said for atmospheric bands. Mournful Congregation's "The Book Of Kings" for example is the most boring album still in my collection.

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  • 4 months later...

I think there's definitely a place for it. AC/DC's lyrics, especially with Bon Scott were definitely tongue in cheek. There ar eplenty of metal bands that don't take themselves 100% seriously, and they're better because of it. I saw Hell supporting Saxon once, and the singer's in between patter was side splitting, and made the difference between me thinking their music was OK, to loving them as a band. Wolf Hoffman is hilarious with his onstage grimaces, but I love them, and they are part of what he is. And who doesn't/didn't like Spinal Tap? (showing my age there). And if I may blow my own trumpet ever so slightly, my second novel Cold Steel on the Rocks  about a metal band looking for pirate treasure is most definitely chock full of humour.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Pete was great, love his interviews where sometimes you can't even follow if what he said is serious or not. I like Devin Townsend approach, I think it's possible to create things that are as heavy and chaotic as "City" and "Alien", but also make a super funny song like "Satan's Ice Cream Truck". 

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  • 5 months later...

I think music and comedy mix.

As long as it is natural for the band, I do not see a problem... Music is an art...

Compare it to painting, some people like to paint sad clowns (why?), and some people paint a white square... Humour is present anywhere. It will attract different crowds... 

I like humour and funny people.

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  • 5 months later...

I'd say that music is one of the many things possible in reality. Anyone who has an idea of making a combination of sounds and lyrics will end up making some sort of music. The only content limitation a piece of music can truly have is the limitation of what is realisticaly possible to create. Anything that comes to one's mind, when they make a piece of music, can become a part of it, thus the music is a medium through which any idea/thought can be expressed. In the end, through the music one can try to spread humour, happiness, sadness, meaningfulness, meaninglessness and anything else they get an idea of incorporating into it.

But maybe the question is more about the fundamental definition of music, of what the word music should represent. Should it represent a specific combination of sounds and lyrics(or maybe no lyrics at all), which is in my eyes more a subjective opinion, or should it represent any combination of those, no matter how trivial it is(e.g. somebody records 10 peoples coughs and says they've made a piece of musical art)? I think the content of a combination of any sounds doesn't characterise it as music, but the sole fact that it contains sounds characterises it as a work of music.

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  • 2 months later...

Humour can sometimes have a place in metal, but for me not often. It works really well in a rock band like Steel Panther, who are simply hilarious and surprisingly engaging, but I always found the joke stuff in Type O Negative as fairly annoying, especially late in their career. Give me 'October Rust' over the god-awful 'Dead Again' any day. 

But yeah, I don't think humour should be entirely excluded. Certainly there's a lot about metal that's funny - as has been pointed out in this thread. 

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I like Dead Again. I'm not on board with the preachy aspect of it, but I enjoy the goofiness. They were always fairly goofy,really, and it was an acquired taste, didn't click with me for years. Oddly, although October Rust was the album that really won me over as TON fan, it's become my least favorite of theirs. My favorite is World Coming Down... oh, the humanity...

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18 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I like Dead Again. I'm not on board with the preachy aspect of it, but I enjoy the goofiness. They were always fairly goofy,really, and it was an acquired taste, didn't click with me for years. Oddly, although October Rust was the album that really won me over as TON fan, it's become my least favorite of theirs. My favorite is World Coming Down... oh, the humanity...

It's testament to how great they are as a band that many have different favourites of theirs. 

'October Rust' would still to this day be in my top five all time albums. It's the perfect gothic metal romantic album if you ask me. 

As for 'Dead Again', my friend and I many years ago held a ritualistic burning of the cd and its artwork to cleanse his property of its evil and terribleness hahaha. Good times. 

I also prefer the digipak re-release of 'Bloody Kisses' that has the joke songs removed. I guess I sound like a pretty humourless guy but I tell you that's not (normally) the case!

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Aww... you burned Johnny's only TON studio drum performance? :( Dead Again definitely had to grow on me. I also have the Bloody Kisses digipak, somewhere. I used to be much more into goth stuff in general. I still love some of that stuff... and I mean, Swans is one of my favorite bands ever, you can't get more humorless than that.

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