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Thoughts on 2021 metal


markm

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I finally started organizing my albums from 21 for the Listmania thread and had some thoughts on the metal I purchased. Don't want to clog up that thread, so I'll just post them here. I’ve had enough time digesting all the music I bought at the end of 2021 and through January. I really need the time to think and evaluate so I’m not just obsessively purchasing music without some level of mindfulness.

Been writing lists with for a few years now like many of You. I write these lists for myself really to come back to to remember my reflections years down the road. It helps me remember shit if I want to make a point or pull from a list from a given year....keeping track of albums from year to year or decade.

 I do enjoy the forum communities I’ve involved myself with. I enjoy thinking about music, rationalizing my consumption of albums and looking for connections. Yeah, I enjoy the discussion and the analysis. So here goes…

Well, I’ve been vocal about my stepping back from the hampster wheel of new metal for several years now reaching a loggerhead dam in 2021 for a variety of reasons. One being that I spent less time critically listening with other areas in my life taking precedence. The other is I’d rather spend time listening to music I own than searching for new music. 

Over the last few years (since 2015 or thereabouts) I’ve felt metal has become stagnant. Then, without fail, at the end of the year I find a slew of new music that changes my opinion. Every year, my curmudgeonry is upended by creative artists that find fresh ways to interpret old genres and to push boundaries. 

Now, as I look at 60+ albums both metal and non-metal ( notwithstanding a good deal of classical music that took up much ear space in 2021),  most of  my metal, purchased in December, I’ve put in the time listening to evaluate. 

I’ve got a nice rotation I’ll listen to driving to and from work and all of it goes into a 2021 playlist that I’ll live with for much of 2022 and beyond-looking to create a heavy music stew with a myriad of flavors. 
 

 

I hate the idea of buying music just to keep up. But I do enjoy being part of the discussion and following trends in heavy music. That said, it's important for me to be able find music that I hope to return to in years to come rather than just listening to music in the moment without coming back. Mostly, I enjoy following my muse as they say letting my intuition lead me in all sorts of different directions. But I ask myself questions like these:

  • Do you go back and check what you were listening to 2-5-10 years ago?
  • Do  you routinely revisit albums?
  • Do you have many albums that you listen to a couple of times, then put away for ever?
  • Do you lose track? Or is it just random? 

These are rhetorical for me. So I make my little lists.  And then try to go back. It's partly why I like physical media. The visual and physical qualities help me revisit like books in a library. 

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I have been trying to go towards the @markm method for a number of years now. I find way too much on music I really don't care much about after a few spins. I do occasionally go back and spin the odd purchase because I see it on the server and think "wonder why I bought that". Then it goes back to the bottom of the abyss until some random time in the future. I'm much more picky about purchasing physical media, so I am trying to apply the same logic to digital purchases. Works most of the time. I've bought much less on bandcamp in the past 2 months than usual. Some of that is due to life getting in the way though. I've also figured out how to play my bc wishlist through my server and they don't "time out" like they do on the app, so I get to spend much more time with an album before I purchase which helps me make better decisions.

I do want to spend more time with what I already have as well as explore other genres that I enjoy. So my focus hasn't been exclusively on new metal of late.

18 hours ago, markm said:
  • Do you go back and check what you were listening to 2-5-10 years ago?
  • Do  you routinely revisit albums?
  • Do you have many albums that you listen to a couple of times, then put away for ever?
  • Do you lose track? Or is it just random? 

1) Not really. I'm bad at keeping track of my lists. Just remembered that Sargeist album I had on my list a few years back when Surge posted a split with them yesterday. I need to organize them better so I can keep track. I also need to purge or archive some of the shit on my server so I'm going to the good stuff more often.

2) Absolutely, but it's more random "what am in the mood for today" instead of intentional.

3) Probably 40% of my server. Those are the ones I'm trying not to buy going forward.

4) Yeah random.

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On 1/31/2022 at 6:39 AM, markm said:

But I ask myself questions like these:

  • Do you go back and check what you were listening to 2-5-10 years ago?
  • Do  you routinely revisit albums?
  • Do you have many albums that you listen to a couple of times, then put away for ever?
  • Do you lose track? Or is it just random? 

These are rhetorical for me. So I make my little lists.  And then try to go back. It's partly why I like physical media. The visual and physical qualities help me revisit like books in a library. 

I do go back and check previous lists from time to time, but not specifically too see what I was listening too. I'm more likely to check old lists when prompted by a discussion or question from others, but my lists are no where near as detailed as some and they are all sorted in one file.

I'm always revisiting before I finalise any list. I don't often have more than 20 or 30 albums to listen to at the end of the year so it doesn't take that long

Albums that have been put away forever are usually done so because I didn't like them, it's happened to a few over the years.

I don't really keep track of things that closely but at the end of the year I do check RYM or the like for albums that were released to see what I might have missed or forgetting was released that year.

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3 hours ago, markm said:

I find some of it (certainly not all), repetitive, samey, lacking in varied musical ideas, devoid of distinctive, memorable songwriting -frankly some of it is just uninspiring.

It was always like that though. Everyone always looks at the bands from the past and acts like everything coming out at the time was unique and amazing because that's the stuff that made it to the top. Everyone knows Slayer because they're Slayer...you don't know about/remember the probably 200 other bands that heard them and tried to mimic their sound because those bands most likely never got past the demo stage. So unless you worked for a label, or knew a guy who knew a guy, you never had access to their music, so it may as well have not existed. Now though, you personally actually have access to a bands entire output, from demo to however long they go...access to pretty much every band making music. So you get to hear it all...the great, the good, and the copycats going through the motions. So of course it looks like there's more derivative shit today then there  was 30 years ago...your access to music has been expanded.

3 hours ago, markm said:

I think some of the guys who listen to predominantly raw material, get skewed and begin thinking that-only raw or low-fi recording techniques can do justice to metal

It depends on the music. Do I want to hear black metal being released with a highly polished production? Hell no...because atmosphere plays a big role in black metal and cleaning it up makes it sound artificial. Do I think technical or melodic styles of metal should have a raw production? Again, hell no...because whether it's the over-the-top musicianship or the pop music melodies, that would take away what's central to that type of music by burying it under a layer of fuzz. The key is to have a production that works with the music's strengths

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On 1/31/2022 at 6:39 AM, markm said:

 

  • Do you go back and check what you were listening to 2-5-10 years ago?
  • Do  you routinely revisit albums?
  • Do you have many albums that you listen to a couple of times, then put away for ever?
  • Do you lose track? Or is it just random? 

 

 

1. I listen to all my music even if it was what I was listening to in the 1990s.

2.  Yes I do revisit albums though sometimes more and sometimes less.

3. If I only ever listen to something once or twice and then never again, I sell or give away the album.

4. No I don't lose track because I own physical media.

 

 

As for production, I think over polished production kills metal and especially more rhythm orientated extreme metal like death metal.  It doesn't have to be lo-fi production either. 

 

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2021 wound up being a good year for me finding new music to enjoy. I really appreciate what you guys have added to the forum and I've found a good deal of stuff through your posts. Haven't had this steady of a pipeline into new music since I left social media. If you'd asked me at the beginning of the year what I thought my favorites would be at the end, I would have been wrong. I didn't connect with a lot of the stuff I was looking forward to, and at the same time I found a ton of joy in unexpected places, including from some bands I'd written off. Spent a lot of time using headphones, working at home, and frankly just stuck at home going stir crazy, so it makes sense that most of the new metal that really caught my interest throughout the year was complicated, cerebral, and kind of escapist. I also had a lot of work to do on my own music, which always torpedoes my listening time. There was a big chunk of time in the middle of the year where my ears were fried and I had almost no time for anything else. Didn't get back to thinking about new releases until sometime in the fall.

I've been consistently into metal for a little over 30 years now and I have a lot of special albums and favorites from that whole span of time. Some of them have fallen into disuse, but I always spend a lot of time with previous years' music. Not in any disciplined way. I just listen to what I'm in the mood for. And there's still so much I haven't heard; I frequently have more fun discovering some random older stuff than I do digging through reams of new releases. Gotta say I strongly feel markm's complaint about bands being repetitive, samey,etc. To my ears a lot of the new stuff I hear is playing it unforgivably safe, doesn't matter how much they "go hard" and sound like they "mean it", and so there are a ton of albums I really don't give a fair chance to. If the first few minutes make me want to jump off my roof in boredom I will frequently not continue. But I want to like new music, and success begets success, and I've also been betrayed by my own snap judgements enough that I don't trust them anymore either.

As far as sound quality goes, it's been great to hear bands go from flailing around in a struggle for clarity to really being able to achieve whatever they wanted. I think some uniqueness fell victim to "good recording technique" over the years but that's been getting better lately too. I think it's wonderful that bands have so many mix options now. I wish more of them would do something cool and new with the options instead of pulling some ready-made sonic template off a shelf, but whatever, if it sounds good it is good... it's not like 1995 when it took the money for a real studio to sound ok, or 2005 when you could listen to different snippets of five albums by five different bands and they all sounded like part of the same song. I do like a lot of old and trashy-sounding stuff but I don't valorize it. Obviously the sound should fit the music. There's a pretty wide range of possibilities. If I've learned anything over the past couple of years, it's that I have absolutely no idea how I'm going to feel about any of this a year from now.

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8 hours ago, markm said:

Those of us veterans of the trade have a long story of our trip through the metalsphere to 2021. I'd love to hear any of the posters journey, I know you have one....Everybody's got a story, don't they? Here's mine in a nutshell....

I’ve been discussing, debating and generally bullshitting with all of the metal-fi transplants for years and I’d like to say here it’s been my great pleasure coming to these forums, commiserating with the friendly, intelligent group here on the metal forum. Thank you for the work cultivating this forum! 

Like the GG, I find the present era a playground for fans of heavy music  but, I obviously come from a different perspective. What I love is the diversity of metal.

I don’t really care about genres, it’s just soundwaves hitting my ears. In fact, I'll grab oddball albums that I probably wouldn't listen to in their entirety very often just to add some texture to my playlists. Shit, now that I think of it, I think I'll grab that Helloween album I was crapping on earlier in the year for some goofy fun. Or some eccentric prog. Shoot, I'll throw on some over the top symphonic horror like Epica-fuck it-that girl can sing her ass off. 

In the beginning....

 My story is really of a guy who got hooked into rock and metal in my high school years in  the 80’s surrounded by modern rock kids and had few peers that loved metal and then drifted away in the 90’s when thrash and hair metal ran their course and alt metal became redundant. Years later, sick of hearing Creed and Limp Bizkit on the radio, I realized I still liked to rawk and returned to the pursuit of new music in the digital age in the early 2000’s.  

I remember getting on Stonerrock.com back in 2002 or thereabouts and finding Chad Bowar who was the editor for About.com’s heavy metal page. Every month they’d post their best albums of the month.

Back then it was a lot of stoner metal (Fu and Magnet-I'll never forget those binges we had together), doom and post metal and new discoveries every month. Albums like Leviathan, Dopethrone, Ghost Reveries, The Illusion of Motion, Oceanic, Surrounded by Thieves and Through Silver and Blood led me to open the Pandora's box of extreme metal. 

Sure, a lot of it was mainstream as it comes, at least in extreme metal. There was Opeth and Enslaved and prog through the lens of death and black metal, post metal (and post everything else, really), power metal, gothic,  beauty and the beast symphonic tripe, metal adjacent, the explosion of female fronted wicca stoner doom, At-Dark-Amon Amarth-Tranquility-of the gates melo-overdone-deth, meloblack, atmo-never-eding-black, atmospheric/folk/Pegan/viking  everything, math metal, metallic hardcore, entombedcore, OSDM, hard doom, blackened sludge (can I get a hell's yeah Lord Mantis), second wave Nordic black, brutal technical death (meaning shit like Nile but not techdeth if you please), Sunn0))) inspired hordes of drone, avante-weird-fuckery,  DSO and the dissonance clones……a never ending sea of Mary Poppins wonderland for the damned. 

But time waits for no one and the devil will have your soul....

Jump forward to 2012, my collection outstripped my Ipod’s capacity and I decided to look into audio solutions. So,  I began putting a little stereo and dedicated headphone set-up. I joined Head-Fi’s metal forum where I got schooled in fidelity, metal, dynamic range and compression. 

One of the poster's, Alex was passionate about demanding quality audio recording in metal with dynamic range and he founded Metal-Fi.

Cards on the table....

So there lies my biases, a wide range of styles that include plenty of mainstream bands along with extreme metal and experimental, genre-shaping-shifting artists as well as adjacent metal. Full stop, I like music that’s well recorded and sounds good. 

Now, along the way to audio paradise, The Goat General formerly Whitenoise came in and shook things up with his insistence on listening to raw, underground music. He ushered in a new era at M-F and along came many of the ne'er do wells we have here now, all of whom found a voice and an audience-at least in me. I’m a big fan of all you guys. 

These guys have been great for my listening as I’ve enjoyed peppering my collection with more underground works. But as the more progressive and diverse listenership at Metal-Fi drifted elsewhere, I feel an obligation to stand my ground and advocate for well recorded good sounding music with dynamic range. 

The Absolute Sound....IMHO there doesn’t have to be a divide between raw and production values. Music can have an edge and be well recorded. And it’s happening with more extreme cavernous or at least intentionally raw or brutal---fill in the blank-sounding bands-looking at you Blood Incantation and Cerebral Rot-well done boys-DR: 12-thank you very much!

Truth-I like plenty of raw music these days, but wouldn’t want to make a steady diet of it anymore than I would with post progressive sludge. 

Naturally, as a guy who gravitates to more then more popular (ahem, vetted) releases, I have a few minor quibbles with the low-fi-we-like-raw-fisting crowd. First, it's great live. I’d go back to MDF in a heartbeat. The visceral thrill of brutal DM should be heard live. 

But....oh you know there has to be a but.....with all of the self-released material, I feel like many of these artists would benefit from collaboration-working with additional ears giving constructive criticism and input. Like, uh, dude that sucks.  

Dead used to post about the show circuit and studio system that he was involved with in OZ. And I think he has some legitimate points, being that back in the day bands would spend time cutting their teeth in clubs working to get recording contracts. They'd really have to hone their craft, then would be and forced to collaborate, compromise, edit and ultimately produce better material. 

Today, left to their own devices, we find some brilliant work but often we find artists doubling down on their excesses and would benefit from some serious proofing.

To be sure, some of those excesses are fantastic. There's something to be said about making strong artistic choices and sticking to your guns.  I get that. And they have charm. But I find some of it (certainly not all), repetitive, samey, lacking in varied musical ideas, devoid of distinctive, memorable songwriting -frankly some of it is just uninspiring. Yet there are gems to be found which is why I keep one eye open for the. It's prolly what keeps most of us in the game. Keep 'em coming! 

Today-I have to admit, after several  years of exposing myself to the land of the goat, my biases are actually moving away from slick modern production which is a completely different animal than production values and dynamic range. Two separate things-heavy/raw, visceral completely separate from SQ, fidelity, etc. 

I think some of the guys who listen to predominantly raw material, get skewed and begin thinking that-only raw or low-fi recording techniques can do justice to metal. And, it’s all good.  It’s simply a preference. 

But let’s face it, humans are tribal. We have an instinct to protect and defend what we perceive as ours against outsider threats. This is mine and that is yours.

Me, I don’t have any issues mixing peanut butter with chocolate. Or for that matter, eating cotton candy. 

After all, terms like poser and hipster are just words meant to trivialize other kinds of  kinds of culture you don't like. But they don't add much to the conversation. 

So coming full circle, I've grown to love a lot of rougher, dungeon-y, putrid sounding filth. Some people just want the most brutal, primitive sounding material that they can find. I’ll take a small percentage-it does have a place. My argument is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Now, where's my new copy of Deafheaven. 

 

Now that's the old thoughtful stream of consciousness Marky Mark kind of post that I remember reading a lot more of back in 2016/17/18. I've missed that, glad to have you back. 

I think my love of distortion is informed by my living through the 60's and 70's. Electric guitars and amplifiers were originally invented in the 1930's but they only became mass produced after WWII. But even these were low gain at first only boosting the signal about 5%. Wasn't until the mid 1960's that high gain amplifiers became commonplace. Also the concept of high fidelity came into existence around that same time.

As a kid in the 1960's the practice of distorting the guitar signal to create a bigger fatter warmer sound was a fairly new concept, and this explains why the late 60's was when "heavy" music really got going. I was a fan from the beginning. So I've had it locked in my head from the time I was a young kid that distorted guitars are good, clean guitars sound bad. As you move through each decade after the 60's the state of the art technoloogy used to reproduce and distort guitar signals was continually advanced right through the turn of the century until we got to the point where they could pretty much make heavy music sound like just about whatever they wanted to.

I approach my filthy goat metal in much the same way as I've always looked at guitar amps and guitar tone: the more fuzzy and distorted it sounds (within reason) the better I like it. That goes for the individual guitar & bass sounds as well as the overall production, dirty = good, clean = bad. I would even take that a step further for me personally, I have always gravitated towards bands that sounded rude, crude, rough, hard, sloppy, and raw rather than anything smooth, clean and polished. This goes for bands of any genre, any era, be it rock & roll, acid rock, garage rock, punk rock, blues rock, hard rock, heavy metal, right up through thrash metal and death metal and my beloved blackened goat metal. Just give it to me down & dirty.

I have always had trouble appreciating genres and bands that employ clean guitar sounds, and this is a big part of why I appreciate black metal's fuzzy lo-fi production so much. Not that it's actually "lo-fi" anymore, they make it sound that way on purpose. Partly as an homage to the rough sounding early black metal bands like Bathory, Mayhem and Darkthrone, and partly just because many of us feel it just sounds better and it fits the harsh evil music better that way. When bands like Archgoat or Inquisition for example release albums that sound markedly cleaner & clearer than any of their previous efforts it confuses and disappoints a lot of us. Takes us some time to come to grips with the new sound, because we wanted more dirty evil filth.

I'd say you're right, there doesn't have to be a divide between rawness of sound and production values. But yet I find that like it or not many times there just is. There are lots of bands these days that attempt to straddle that line between rawness and clarity. More than a few have managed to pull this off successfully, but I find that a greater number will fall short and land further from the middle, more to one side or the other. So they're nominally separate things, but not completely separate imo. It's really not easy to be well and clearly recorded and still manage to sound rough, raw and evil. Because try as they might, too much production clarity almost always takes away from the overall filth factor at least a little.

Fortunately I don't personally feel that music has to be recorded pristinely and clearly for me to be able to hear what the band is playing. So if I am able to make out the guitar riffs that the dude's playing, and I like and can hear the guitar tone, and I can maybe hear some drums and hopefully some bass in there somewhere as well then I'm satisfied, that's really all the "production" I need. Even if there's some "fuzz" I have come to not only tolerate but actually appreciate what that fuzz adds to the overall sound and to the feeling the music gives me. I'd agree with you that excessive amounts of compression are a bad thing but luckily the more underground black metal and punk filth I tend to favor avoids a lot of that studio polish and trickery for the most part. I'm not one to marvel at the sound of lushly recorded DR-14 albums the way some of you do anyway, I'm more likely to marvel at the wonderfully sick and filthy sounds some bands manage to capture on a relatively low budget. It's not easy to achieve that perfect balance of raw, filthy and evil as fuck and still have it be clear enough to hear what all the instruments are doing and actually make it sound heavy as well.

But like you said Mark, all this is simply a preference, a choice. There's no right or wrong and I certainly don't expect everyone or anyone to share my preferences for filth, the rest of the world can listen to whatever they please. Black metal in the modern era, along with various forms of crusty hardcore influenced metal seems to provide me with the best bang for my buck in dirty filthy rough sounding music, so that's why I listen to a preponderance of black or blackened metal over all other sub-genres combined. And then within the black metal sub-genre I do my best to filter out the generic impotent namby pamby stuff and focus on the nastiest, filthiest and rawest sounds I can find. That's what does it for me, I have no idea why this is and I don't really care.

Before I go I would also like to add Marky Mark that I feel like sometimes you appear to go to unneccessary lengths to "defend" or even apologize for some of your more dubious non-metal or non-filthy goat anus infused listening choices against perceived attacks that never come, and won't be coming at least not from any of us. We don't care what you listen to or where it falls on the goat anus scale. No one here thinks you're a pansy or a poseur or a hipster or has ever judged you or berated you in any way for listening to any of the plethora of diverse non-goat approved selections you've posted over the years. You do you my friend. Take as small a percentage of goat filth as you like. We'll still be here for you when you're ready for more recos.

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7 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

 

11 hours ago, markm said:

 I find some of it (certainly not all), repetitive, samey, lacking in varied musical ideas, devoid of distinctive, memorable songwriting -frankly some of it is just uninspiring.

It was always like that though. Everyone always looks at the bands from the past and acts like everything coming out at the time was unique and amazing because that's the stuff that made it to the top. Everyone knows Slayer because they're Slayer...you don't know about/remember the probably 200 other bands that heard them and tried to mimic their sound because those bands most likely never got past the demo stage. So unless you worked for a label, or knew a guy who knew a guy, you never had access to their music, so it may as well have not existed. Now though, you personally actually have access to a bands entire output, from demo to however long they go...access to pretty much every band making music. So you get to hear it all...the great, the good, and the copycats going through the motions. So of course it looks like there's more derivative shit today then there  was 30 years ago...your access to music has been expanded.

11 hours ago, markm said:

I think some of the guys who listen to predominantly raw material, get skewed and begin thinking that-only raw or low-fi recording techniques can do justice to metal.

It depends on the music. Do I want to hear black metal being released with a highly polished production? Hell no...because atmosphere plays a big role in black metal and cleaning it up makes it sound artificial. Do I think technical or melodic styles of metal should have a raw production? Again, hell no...because whether it's the over-the-top musicianship or the pop music melodies, that would take away what's central to that type of music by burying it under a layer of fuzz. The key is to have a production that works with the music's strengths

To the first quoted point, I've been saying for years that everyone tends to think that most music in the sub-genres they're less involved with sounds samey and devoid of distinctive and memorable qualities. Not sure why this isn't simply understood by all. I've read people say time and time again that it's only upon repeated listens that many of us can really begin to fully appreciate and enjoy even much of the music that's very dear to us. So I'm not sure why anyone would think they could just have a quick listen to something that wasn't in one of their preferred sub-genres and think that they had picked up on everything that piece of music had to offer.

It's like I'm not the biggest doom metal guy, I just dabble in it a little now and then, it's not something I listen to every week or even every month. So pretty much every doom metal album sounds almost exactly the same to me on the first go round unless or until I spend some time with it and try to get to know it a bit. But I do own some doom metal so clearly some of it does penetrate my thick skull and set itself apart. And it's the same thing with thrash metal or that disso-black that Doc listens to, or the disso-death that's quite popular in some circles, or progressive death, or retro 80's style heavy metal with the high pitched vocals, or any one of a number of other sub-genres that I'm only casually interested in that I don't spend much time with but many other people seem to really enjoy. We all find music in the sub-genres we spend more time with to be much more accessible. It's like we train ourselves to listen to certain kinds of music and we've learned what to look for.

I've always been fine with the fact that many if not most people's take on the majority of the music I love is that it's samey and boring and devoid of musical talent. Doesn't mean that's true, just means they're not into it. It's exactly the way I might think a band like Ad Nauseam's music is completely devoid of any musicality and is nothing more than pointless angular inaccsessible disjointed noise. Yet I've seen at least four people whom I interact with and respect and have some musical overlap with (both on and off this board) who count it among their absolute favorites from this past year. So obviously there's something more to be found within than what I was able to gleen from a couple of quick Youtube samples, which was basically nothing. And it's the same thing with Pyrrhon or Portal or Krallice or Gorguts or Meshuggah or lots of other bands that I can't decipher. I think I just haven't learned how to listen to that shit yet. The only reason I go back to any of it is because every now and then some little tidbit gets through to me so I think with more exposure there could be some hope.

 

As to the 2nd quoted point, if I've let myself become "skewed" then I think I can live with that. I wasn't born listening to these raw and inhospitable forms of blackened goat metal, it has been an acquired taste that I've been working on for well over a decade now. I started my musical journey in the 70's and 80's listening to some pretty mainstream stuff like most eveyone else of my generation. I was angry as hell the first time I came home from the record store with a bunch of extreme metal albums in 2004 and I couldn't get into any of it because of the harsh vocal styles I was totally unaccustomed to and unprepared to hear. It blindsided me. Strangely enough melodeath ended up being my gateway into extreme metal, bands like Hypocrisy, Dark Tranquility, Kalmah and Opeth. And then came bands like Dismember, Grave, Dissection, Necrophobic and Unanimated. And once I got my sea legs under me it wasn't very long at all before I started down the rabbit hole of black metal and underground filth. Because being me, that's what I was drawn to the most.

Once you get accustomed to hearing this stuff on a daily basis for many years it's like other forms of metal just aren't enough for me anymore. Thrash and mainstream death metal sounds like easy listening to me now, they're too light. It's like I've built up both a tolerance and a love for the more brutal, evil, primitive sounds and now the more tame forms of metal just don't give me the same thrill anymore like they used to. I can still go outside of metal and listen to mellower stuff, and I do regularly. But it seems my filthy goat metal has ruined me for the more garden varieties of extreme metal. So now apparently I'm skewed. Only the roughest, rawest and most primitive sounding stuff will suffice. But I'm ok with that.

No idea where I go from here, have I bottomed out and reached my limit? Will I start regressing back the other way? Will I implode at some point and just get sick of music altogether? I don't know, but for now I feel like I'm in a good place. This is the most strongly connected I've ever felt to the music I've listened to at any point in my entire life since I began listening to music 50-something years ago. That's why I'm gathering my nuts and stocking up for the day when the goat metal filth renaissance inevitably comes to an end and I'll be forced to hibernate for the long winter. I look at my metal purchases like my metal IRA. Gonna keep on contributing to it tax deferred for as long as I possibly can, and then it will have to sustain me through my twilight years. 

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Just posting to acknowledge that I read most of the foregoing. An expansion on many points raised before, but eloquently elaborated upon nonetheless.

2021 seemed just as good a year as any. I really lose track because I don't have a preferred genre. So long as it has a -metal suffix.

Production is important. I like it clear, but real sounding. Topically, just sent mixes off to Damian Herring for mastering, who I only know of because of Metal-Fi and winning some dynamic range award back in the day. The whole dynamic range thing does seem to have achieved an awareness in the metal community. Many choose to ignore it and it is not the be-all-end-all but deserves some airtime as a topic.

On 1/30/2022 at 7:39 PM, markm said:

I hate the idea of buying music just to keep up. But I do enjoy being part of the discussion and following trends in heavy music. That said, it's important for me to be able find music that I hope to return to in years to come rather than just listening to music in the moment without coming back. Mostly, I enjoy following my muse as they say letting my intuition lead me in all sorts of different directions. But I ask myself questions like these:

  • Do you go back and check what you were listening to 2-5-10 years ago?
  • Do  you routinely revisit albums?
  • Do you have many albums that you listen to a couple of times, then put away for ever?
  • Do you lose track? Or is it just random? 

These are rhetorical for me. So I make my little lists.  And then try to go back. It's partly why I like physical media. The visual and physical qualities help me revisit like books in a library. 

I too hate the idea of musical "keeping up with the Joneses." If the neighbour buys a flash new car I just say "sorry, I didn't realise you had such a self esteem problem." 

1. No surprise that, yes, I constantly go back to return to something I enjoyed, no matter when it was released. The way I listen to music now, since March 2020 lockdown started, is to have a bandcamp collection downloaded to my work computer. And just browse through it every time an album finishes to find the next. I never remove anything but have to admit some get continually passed over. 

2. see 1.

3. Yes. Effectively. If I went to the trouble of buying from bandcamp then I am invested and will give it multiple listens....but if it never clicks I am unlikely to go back after the first few weeks.

4. Since all recent purchases are right there in the "music" folder I don't lose track as such, and I'm unlikely to delete an album forever from the various un-sync'ed storage devices. But what I choose to listen to is often pretty random.  

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On 1/30/2022 at 12:39 PM, markm said:

I hate the idea of buying music just to keep up. But I do enjoy being part of the discussion and following trends in heavy music. That said, it's important for me to be able find music that I hope to return to in years to come rather than just listening to music in the moment without coming back. Mostly, I enjoy following my muse as they say letting my intuition lead me in all sorts of different directions. But I ask myself questions like these:

  • Do you go back and check what you were listening to 2-5-10 years ago?
  • Do  you routinely revisit albums?
  • Do you have many albums that you listen to a couple of times, then put away for ever?
  • Do you lose track? Or is it just random? 

I too detest the notion of acquiring new music purely because it's a shiny new toy and all the other kids are talking about it. The rat race of keeping up with every new thing that comes out is tiresome and it's disappointing that many metal fans these days approach music the same way they do fast food. Empty calories that merely taste good and are immediately forgotten about. On to the next meal...

1) I definitely do still listen to stuff that I was listening to 2-5-10 even 20 years ago but I don't necessarily approach it in that way. Meaning I don't think to myself "what was I listening to in 2014?", but rather "what's a good album in my collection that I haven't spun in a while?". The year it came out is irrelevant.

2) I try to make a habit of revisiting stuff and not focusing on what's new. My listening habits are most often mood based, so it could be something from last year or 30 years ago, but as mentioned above I try to devout time to music in my collection that hasn't been played in a while. What's the point in acquiring a vast collection of music if you're not gonna actually listen to it all?

3) Yep, I own quite a few albums that I got bored of pretty fast and are now just sitting there collecting dust. I mentioned the "rat race" of checking out new music above, that greatly factors into this. On average though, most albums I've acquired that have been cast aside are usually ones I didn't listen to all the way through before purchasing. Just check out one or two songs and think "Yeah, this sounds siiiick!!!" and then after a full listen it doesn't blow me away as much. Or maybe something won't impress me upon first listen, but others are raving about it, so I'll pick it up thinking that It'll click with me at some point, which does happen from time to time. More than a few of my favourite bands and albums didn't resonate with me when I first heard them. It's a tricky thing to maneuver, that's for sure.

4) I'm not entirely sure what this one means. Do I lose track of what? Is what random?

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6 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

That's why I'm gathering my nuts and stocking up for the day when the goat metal filth renaissance inevitably comes to an end and I'll be forced to hibernate for the long winter. I look at my metal purchases like my metal IRA

You do realize that it's far more likely you'll be dead about a 100 times over before something like this possibly happens, right? We live in a world where, in the year of our Lord 2022, you can still find bands making music like disco, polka and...(dear god, why?)...Nu-metal. While the number of bands doing it may ebb and flow over time, the chances that you wake up one day and can only find metal bands who play progressive techdeath is pretty damn unlikely.

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Thanks everyone for the thoughtful responses. GG, I probably do bend over backwards sometimes because I know it's easy to personalize things. Also, I wanted to say from the get-go that it's a tightrope of having criticisms of the raw black/death while still enjoying a fair percentage of it. 

On the subject of clarity vs fuzz, part of the equation for me is being able to hear the details. I wonder sometimes with cruder production, if the details simply aren't there or if they are sacrificing details that do exist for the lower fi sounding mix....probably works for raw black and cavernous OSDM, but  I think of a lot of modern death metal or anything that's a little more technical being congested and confused and hearing details can be important...

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20 minutes ago, zackflag said:

I definitely do still listen to stuff that I was listening to 2-5-10 even 20 years ago but I don't necessarily approach it in that way. Meaning I don't think to myself "what was I listening to in 2014?", but rather "what's a good album in my collection that I haven't spun in a while?". The year it came out is irrelevant.

I try to make a habit of revisiting stuff and not focusing on what's new. My listening habits are most often mood based, so it could be something from last year or 30 years ago

Fucking this...

I doubt I could tell you everything I have in my collection off the top of my head, or even that I return to all my music equally, but the two things Zack says right here are absolutely dead on. I do like to revisit stuff that I haven't listened to in a long time because a lot of time I did buy it with good reason, but I just haven't gotten back around to it in awhile. Part of having a large collection, even if a lot of it is digital, is that even if you really like an album you can't give everything equal attention. Even in the smallest collections, where it's only just your "must haves" some stuff is just going to naturally fall to the bottom of the pile...I think that's just how people are wired.

...and yes, much of that is entirely mood based. There's been plenty of times I've tried albums or bands, and I can tell almost instantly when the reason I'm not giving it a fair go is because I'm just not in the right headspace for their particular style. It's one of the reasons I like to keep a rough list of things I listen to throughout the year...because sometimes I reserve something future. I do that with the stuff I have as well..."I'm in the mood for some Norwegian style black metal...what do I have that I haven't listened to in awhile".

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26 minutes ago, markm said:

If the details are there, I want to be able to hear them while not sacrificing grunt.

I'd agree with that, but I'd say production is much more important to me depending on the style. Atmo black could go either way, Archgoat style beastiality needs a certain production, instrumental jazz/funk (like the Delvin Lamar Trio I'm spinning at the moment) has to have pristine production, etc. As long as it fits the music and doesn't overshadow, I can usually deal with it.

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2 hours ago, markm said:

f the details are there, I want to be able to hear them while not sacrificing grunt.

Yep. And not just for metal.

But as far as metal goes, if I can't hear the bass I lose interest. That's just me, but it makes a lot of what would be otherwise appealing lo-fi BM uninteresting for me, and it's another reason to hate dungeon synth.

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1 hour ago, Thatguy said:

Yep. And not just for metal.

But as far as metal goes, if I can't hear the bass I lose interest. That's just me, but it makes a lot of what would be otherwise appealing lo-fi BM uninteresting for me, and it's another reason to hate dungeon synth.

As a bass player, I endorse this statement. Bass players are people too y'know....

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2021 saw me falling back into that "must find everything new" trap somewhat which just tires me out real quick as get overloaded with music.  Definitely mellowed out in 2022 already just kind of letting music find me as opposed to me actively going looking for it.  Dudes over at Metal Academy keep me busy with the monthly features section and me pulling together the playlists for the thrash shit on their Spotify keeps me current and also allows me to get nods of nostalgia in there as well.  I tell them they all drive me fucking mental with their endless 'Top Ten' lists of whatever the hell they like but that's because I just don't have the patience for lists as much as I used to.

Also learned last year to listen to music when I want and not just because I think I should.  Sounds dumb, but I can drive somewhere and not listen to anything if I really don't want to.  I do not have to put music on every time I enter my lair / office at home but at the same time some days I really find music goes well when I am working and other times my focus is terrible with it playing.  I think 30 years of near constant music listening has led to some form of burnout and feeling what I listen to is now a more refined art form where less is sometimes more but some days less is not enough.  Guess I have learned to be more instinctive with my listening. 

 

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1 hour ago, navybsn said:

As a bass player, I endorse this statement. Bass players are people too y'know....

Are you sure? I thought the bass player was only there to help the drummer get the chicks?

39 minutes ago, MacabreEternal said:

Also learned last year to listen to music when I want and not just because I think I should.  Sounds dumb, but I can drive somewhere and not listen to anything if I really don't want to.  I do not have to put music on every time I enter my lair / office at home but at the same time some days I really find music goes well when I am working and other times my focus is terrible with it playing.  I think 30 years of near constant music listening has led to some form of burnout and feeling what I listen to is now a more refined art form where less is sometimes more but some days less is not enough.  Guess I have learned to be more instinctive with my listening. 

 

I can relate to that, it wasn't that long ago that I learnt the same thing. For a while I thought it was a mood thing and those times where I didn't put something on I just couldn't find the right music for the mood. But eventually I realised it was more about finding times where I didn't need to fill emptiness with sound. I used to hate being alone with my thoughts, especially when I was in the truck for long hours with nothing else to do than steer, but these days I can happily live in my own thoughts from time to time, the key is remembering when to come out and rejoin the world.

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3 hours ago, markm said:

Thanks everyone for the thoughtful responses. GG, I probably do bend over backwards sometimes because I know it's easy to personalize things. Also, I wanted to say from the get-go that it's a tightrope of having criticisms of the raw black/death while still enjoying a fair percentage of it. 

On the subject of clarity vs fuzz, part of the equation for me is being able to hear the details. I wonder sometimes with cruder production, if the details simply aren't there or if they are sacrificing details that do exist for the lower fi sounding mix....probably works for raw black and cavernous OSDM, but I think of a lot of modern death metal or anything that's a little more technical being congested and confused and hearing details can be important...

 

I do enjoy hearing about how other people approach listening to music. I realize that lots of other people listen the way you do and want to hear those details, but I'm not a details guy, I'm a big picture guy. I do understand that the details can add texture and depth to music but for the specific types of things I listen to the most of, the details just aren't that important to me. I'm looking for massive visceral impact not subtle details. You hit the nail on the head there when you said, "probably works for raw black and cavernous OSDM" and as you know that's largely what I listen to. My black metal's not all "raw" but most of it's certainly "busy" or primitive.

I foucus on the riffs and the guitar tone first, those are far and away the two most important features for me. This is why for music that's not "riffy" in the traditional sense, I can sometimes lose interest because I don't really know how to go about listening to music that's lacking riffs.

After that there's the evil atmosphere and the vocals I suppose would be tied for the next most important things I look for (bad vocals being a potential non-negotiable dealbreaker) and then with all the rest of the elements while I want them to be there, I'm content to let them all blend together into the background for me. So while I'm not necessarily seeking out a fuzzy production, a fuzzy production can work for me as long as the guitars cut through and make themselves heard.

I have friends for whom the drums seem to be very important, but I don't ever foucs on the drums, I just want to be vaguely aware that there are drums. Don't care if it's a drum machine or a one armed drummer or some guy off the street or whatever I just want there to be a beat to keep time. I only really notice the drums if they are absent.

Bass can be quite nice and I will focus on the bassline sometimes if the dude's actually playing anything interesting, but if they're lost in the mix somewhere it's not a dealbreaker. More important to me is that there are some bottom end frequencies present so when I'm following along with the riffs it doesn't just sound all thin and trebly. But we all know black metal's notorious for lacking bass and if the bass is just not there I'll mark points off for that, but I'm not gonna let that be a total dealbreaker for me if other than that the music happens to be really good. I think a lot of modern black metal bands have figured this out over the years that it's just better with bass and I find a lot more newer black metal albums that do have sufficient bass. Funny though when listening to other kinds of music the bass becomes much more important to me.

 

On 1/30/2022 at 2:39 PM, markm said:

I hate the idea of buying music just to keep up. But I do enjoy being part of the discussion and following trends in heavy music. That said, it's important for me to be able find music that I hope to return to in years to come rather than just listening to music in the moment without coming back. Mostly, I enjoy following my muse as they say letting my intuition lead me in all sorts of different directions. But I ask myself questions like these:

  • Do you go back and check what you were listening to 2-5-10 years ago?
  • Do  you routinely revisit albums?
  • Do you have many albums that you listen to a couple of times, then put away for ever?
  • Do you lose track? Or is it just random? 

 

As for the questionnaire....

1. Yes I find it endlessly interesting to go back and check what I was listening to 5-10-15-20-25-30+ years ago.

2. I revisit what I can when I can and I get a fair amount of older albums in my rotation but admittedly I am mostly focused on the now. 

3. Absolutely. And this was the year I finally went through and culled a lot of stuff that I had bought and forgot about. If I haven't listened to something more than once or twice in the last few years and it doesn't immediately grab me when I revisit then I delete it to make room for stuff I will listen to. Being all digiital makes this possible, the average price of a digital album works out to around $5 each which equates to like a beer or a latte. If something's taking up valuable space then I'm better off without it. I used to agonize about removing stuff that I'd paid good money for but then I realized that most of the stuff I was deleting was stuff I wasn't listening to and would be forgotten about before I'd even emptied the recycle bin, so I'd never miss it.

4. I lose track all the time. In fact I've already lost track of what this question was asking me about. Do I lose track of what?

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On 2/1/2022 at 5:55 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

I do enjoy hearing about how other people approach listening to music. I realize that lots of other people listen the way you do and want to hear those details, but I'm not a details guy, I'm a big picture guy. I do understand that the details can add texture and depth to music but for the specific types of things I listen to the most of, the details just aren't that important to me. I'm looking for massive visceral impact not subtle details. You hit the nail on the head there when you said, "probably works for raw black and cavernous OSDM" and as you know that's largely what I listen to. My black metal's not all "raw" but most of it's certainly "busy" or primitive.

 

A big part of this whole piece of details can be the gear you listen to beyond the production. For instance, I was reevaluating Ruins Of Beverast/The Thule Grimoires, an album I admire, but have struggled with due to its meandering atmospheres that test my focus. But it's a cool albums. It sounded OK on my Sonos basic house speaks and pretty muddy in my Rav-4 (no surprise) but listening on my FiiO player which has a decent DAC/amp and Periodic IEM's made the album sound so much better in terms of details. It just came alive. And same with something cavernous like Mortriferrum/Preserved in Torment, a genre which can get lost with bloated bass given room acoustics. But on a decent little head system, there's quite a lot going under the hood that just isn't that apparent otherwise. 

Some say the best $500 headphone you can buy are two $250 headphones that give you a different coloration and appreciation of different kinds of music-say one that's more forward and aggressive with slightly recessed treble that will be more forgiving of harshness and one that has fantastic detail retrieval and accuracy. I definitely want the thunder, but even if I have swap out my gear, I want to be able to hear those details when it matters and I actually think a log of extreme black and death have great details but can be hard to preproduce properly. Decent head gear helps (for me) sort out chaotic, confused extreme metal that can otherwise sound like a hot mess. 

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On 1/31/2022 at 8:23 PM, SurgicalBrute said:

It was always like that though. Everyone always looks at the bands from the past and acts like everything coming out at the time was unique and amazing because that's the stuff that made it to the top. Everyone knows Slayer because they're Slayer...you don't know about/remember the probably 200 other bands that heard them and tried to mimic their sound because those bands most likely never got past the demo stage. So unless you worked for a label, or knew a guy who knew a guy, you never had access to their music, so it may as well have not existed. Now though, you personally actually have access to a bands entire output, from demo to however long they go...access to pretty much every band making music. So you get to hear it all...the great, the good, and the copycats going through the motions. So of course it looks like there's more derivative shit today then there  was 30 years ago...your access to music has been expanded.

 

I  think about some of those bands that I came up with in the 80's that blew up like Twisted Sister or GnR's who cut their teeth playing in the L.A. or New York show circuits and came out of the box-or so they sounded-fully formed ready for prime time. Of course they were playing accessible hard rock and the public had an appetite for that kind of music but, by the time I and millions of my peers heard Stay Hungry (their 3rd album, I believe) my senior year in H.S. way back in '84, Sister had been performing since '76 or thereabouts. They were a pretty well oiled machine....vs a one man project who never plans to play live and doesn't have people around him helping him develop his craft so to speak....

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