Thoughts on 2021 metal

[SurgicalBrute]

2 hours ago, markm said:

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....

That's an apples and oranges comparison between two bands trying to achieve two completely different aesthetics. I mean, what exactly should a well oiled one man bedroom project whose developed his craft sound like?

More to the point, even if they are bad at being a one man band, or their music sounds derivative of bands who did it better, how is that any different from the dozens and dozens of bands who attempted to ape someone like Twisted Sister or GnR and pulled it off poorly?

My argument isn't that shitty, do-it-yourself, one man bands don't exist, or that every band out there right now is putting out quality material. I'm saying, I think the argument your making about how much harder those old bands worked, and how much better prepared they were when they made it, is being filtered through a distorted set of rose colored glasses. When you look back it's far easier to see the successes because you never really had the opportunity to see the failures. These days, you have mostly equal access to both the best and the worst, so you're not truly making a fair one-to-one comparison of past and present

To put it another way, It's like comparing only the top players of the past, like Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle, to not just the top players of today, but also every scrub double A player of today as well, and then saying...the players of the past were better

[GoatmasterGeneral]

A well oiled one-man bedroom project should probably go lie down and sleep it off first before turning on the 4-track to record and display his craft to the world.

*rimshot* 

I'll be here all week folks, be sure to tip your bartenders.

[FatherAlabaster]

3 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

A well oiled one-man bedroom project should probably go lie down and sleep it off first before turning on the 4-track to record and display his craft to the world.

Hey, I resemble that remark.

[Dead1]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

A well oiled one-man bedroom project should probably go lie down and sleep it off first before turning on the 4-track to record and display his craft to the world.

Who uses 4 tracks these days?  It's all computer based recording.

 

But I agree with you sentiment.

[AlSymerz]

New tech is where it's at! I've got an 8 track and a reel to reel recorder which I took out of the old man's shed years ago when he wanted to give them to the Salvos.

 

[markm]

I'm not arguing for well oiled one man black metal machines, I'm really just saying there were systems in place, infrastructure if you will,  and a public who had an appetite for destruction that created a more fertile environment to grow and develop talent. These systems provided a kind of filter which no longer exists.

Of course  metal was young and the choices were fewer. I love today's array of genres and the creativity but the volume is daunting to say the least and requires wading through vast streams to self filter the wheat from the chafe. And as I've said before, the process of discovering new music without it being completely scattershot is inefficient.  

I mean, I'm just speaking for myself and my experience. And, it' not like I'm not going to stop looking for music or anything, I'm just saying from my perspective it's too much. It's like being in a sandbox and randomly grabbing a handful of tens of thousands of grains of sand and casting your lot with those grains. But at the end of the day, I find the music I find through various sources and spend time with those grains that I connect most with. 

Financial success isn't a reality right now. The day of the rock star is long gone. I have no idea. Maybe being marginalized is good. Music for the outsider, inaccessible and repellant to the 99. But you need enough interest to keep the art and culture sustainable.

So many of the established artists are getting old. It would be interesting to look forward 30 years and see if metal survives with a thriving underground, small but large enough to sustain a "scene" or if it dies out after generations of people who have no real interest in aggressive guitar based music. 

 

 

 

[SurgicalBrute]

1 hour ago, markm said:

I'm not arguing for well oiled one man black metal machines, I'm really just saying there were systems in place, infrastructure if you will,  and a public who had an appetite for destruction that created a more fertile environment to grow and develop talent. These systems provided a kind of filter which no longer exists

...that's where I'm (respectfully) disagreeing with you though. You're right that there was a filter, but all that filter did was keep you unaware of what was going on behind the curtain.  All those white noise bands that you don't like sorting through now...they were always there. The only difference is that, back then you were presented only with whatever bands a label wanted to give you. These days, you have access to the whole pipeline. Those bands you liked back then, there's a good chance they were going to stand out whether that filter was in place or not.

Now I get how that original system probably seems appealing. After all, it is a lot less work to find bands. The problem is, that system is built completely on the idea of record labels being the taste makers for music. You're assuming that the cream rose to the top, got snatched up by labels, and you were only getting the best. I'm doubtful of that reality. If there's one thing you can count on in life besides death and taxes, it's that when there's money to be made, a corporation will beat a dead horse until there's nothing but dust and bones. Quality is secondary to riding trends, and we've seen time and time again, labels will snatch up any band that can hold an instrument to get as large a piece of the pie that they can.

Yes, it's a lot more work to find the bands you think are actually quality, and I get that's a pain in the ass, but at the same time I would say, having music available to you that isn't subject to someone else's whims is an overall gain

[Dead1]

30 minutes ago, SurgicalBrute said:

 

Yes, it's a lot more work to find the bands you think are actually quality, and I get that's a pain in the ass, but at the same time I would say, having music available to you that isn't subject to someone else's whims is an overall gain

That was available in those days but you had to go deeper underground ie independent record stores or even tape trading.

I too prefer the filter.  I listened to a lot of new thrash metal albums last year - save 1 (Enforced) they were all largely superfluous, cookie cutter, forgettable  and the world would not be any worse if they had never been made.  Ironically they were all listenable albums but instantly forgettable.

It's the same with many other established genres.  

Modern metal is a cottage industry of excess and oversaturation. 

 

[AlSymerz]

Shit, for a minute there I thought you had said modern metal is cottage cheese. And I wonder what you'd been lsitening to that was lumpy, disgusting and smelly.

 

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

5 hours ago, Dead1 said:

Who uses 4 tracks these days?  It's all computer based recording.

But I agree with you sentiment.

Actually I had no sentiment, that post was nothing more than a bad "dad joke" play on words for "well oiled" nothing more.

But since you bring it up, there are some primitive retro recording methods still being used in the raw black metal sector of the metalverse which most mainstreamers will never hear. Analog and 4-track is still a thing, an esoteric niche thing maybe, but still a thing. Just like kvlt bands releasing their shit on cassette tapes only in 2022. There will always be a small segment of the music world that craves old shit and the old ways. There are even a small handful of actual recording studios that have analog boards. Digital recording has been very widespread for a long time, ubiquitous you could say, even well outside of the mainstream. But the market saturation is not 100%, there are still some holdouts.

 

5 hours ago, markm said:

I'm not arguing for well oiled one man black metal machines, I'm really just saying there were systems in place, infrastructure if you will,  and a public who had an appetite for destruction that created a more fertile environment to grow and develop talent. These systems provided a kind of filter which no longer exists.

See here's the problem with that. First of all let me say I can understand why people like you and Deadovic and many others are content with the filtered approach. It saves you heaps of time and you are content with the results, win/win. You feel confident that the best stuff there is to be found out there will be present in the small subset of music that manages to filter all the way down to you the end user. You don't ever consider that some of the very best stuff out there could instead be in the subset of stuff that is getting filtered out on your behalf and will never even get the chance to trickle down to you or anyone else and see the light of day. 

So the one size fits all filter system that can work quite well for some, will not work quite so well for others, and it just doesn't work at all for still some other cantankerous malcontents like me. Because control freaks like me are not willing to relinquish control and place the very important and very personal task of selecting the pool and then vetting our potential listening options into the hands of others. Not even if the others were my own handpicked goat mafia that had undergone months of rigorous training under my own personal supervision could I be comfortable delegating this delicate task. Because as much as I love those guys, no two of us would pick all the same stuff. I NEED to be the one doing my own filtering, this task is simply too crucially important to be trusted to anyone on the planet other than myself. I'm the only one who can filter for me. Not you, or Navy, or Surge, or Zack, or FA, or Hungarino and not even Marko, much less some corporate dickhead in a suit who doesn't know his asshole from a freshly dug hole in the ground. Because on top of the fact that that dickhead has absolutely no taste in music whatsoever that dickhead also has an entirely different agenda than I do. He is not thinking "Gee which of these bands might Brian enjoy listening to?" He is thinking "Which of these artists do I think would give me the best chance of making some money?" See the conflict there?

Think of it this way: how would you like it if I were to personally listen to a dozen albums a week and then I alone got to decide for you each month which 20 albums out of those 50 I was going to allow you to hear, and I alone decided which ones were to be permanently discarded as inferior, never to be heard from again? How would that work for you? What if my laboriously compiled and carefully curated end of year lists were the only albums you were able to hear each year, you couldn't listen to anything else and those goat metal albums I selected were literally all you had to pick from? You know me pretty well by now, right? And of course you trust that I know what I'm doing and that I have your best interests at heart, and that I would never steer you wrong, right? I promise to do a good job and give you all the best albums. There could never be something that I thought was crap that you might actually happen to really like, could there? And if by some miracle there was, you wouldn't resent me for throwing the baby out with the bathwater and keeping it from you, would you?

Well that's how I feel. You wouldn't like that deal with me picking your shit any more than I could stand to let you pre filter what I got to listen to. I am 100% confident that anyone else other than me would not be able to filter correctly for me. I know I would be listening to a lot of garbage and I'd miss out on tons of what I would think was the best stuff if someone else was doing the filtering for me. And remember, the music industry filter system in place back in the day that some of you seem to be such fans of was not optional, it wasn't something one could just opt out of if they weren't happy with it. It was just a one size fits all filter for eveyone in the world, for better or worse, whether they liked it or not, take it or leave it. Buy our product or kick rocks. Your only other option? Make your own music. 

I can't fathom how this could possibly be spun as a good thing or in any way seen as better or more desirable than letting everyone have access to basically everything so they can just choose their own favorites. Because this way at least you can observe people's tendencies and track records and then choose who you might want to let do your filtering for you if that's the way you want to go, while the rest of us control freaks retain the freedom to do it manually if that's the way we want to do it.

[markm]

17 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

...that's where I'm (respectfully) disagreeing with you though. You're right that there was a filter, but all that filter did was keep you unaware of what was going on behind the curtain.  All those white noise bands that you don't like sorting through now...they were always there. The only difference is that, back then you were presented only with whatever bands a label wanted to give you. These days, you have access to the whole pipeline. Those bands you liked back then, there's a good chance they were going to stand out whether that filter was in place or not.

Now I get how that original system probably seems appealing. After all, it is a lot less work to find bands. The problem is, that system is built completely on the idea of record labels being the taste makers for music. You're assuming that the cream rose to the top, got snatched up by labels, and you were only getting the best. I'm doubtful of that reality. If there's one thing you can count on in life besides death and taxes, it's that when there's money to be made, a corporation will beat a dead horse until there's nothing but dust and bones. Quality is secondary to riding trends, and we've seen time and time again, labels will snatch up any band that can hold an instrument to get as large a piece of the pie that they can.

Yes, it's a lot more work to find the bands you think are actually quality, and I get that's a pain in the ass, but at the same time I would say, having music available to you that isn't subject to someone else's whims is an overall gain

It's all good-we're having a friendly debate. 

I don't pretend to have the answers or even be "right". I'm not even saying the music was necessarily better. I'm trying to look at it from an organizational standpoint. I'm looking at the system as a whole-does it work for the artist and consumer from nurturing and growing and developing talent all the way to providing a service and product to a public that actually wants said product? Does the system work? Is it functional? Is it fair to both artist and consumer. Surely not to the artist.

It’s a theoretical debate and a mute point given the huge changes in technology and the music industry. For one thing, people aren’t interested in aggressive guitar music en masse as they were when I was young. Streaming has of course completely upended album sales, otherwise Mastodon, LoG, and Gojira would all be millionaires.  Or maybe not, metal doesn’t fill stadiums anymore. 

Cleary, there’s a difference between the more upstream underground that I’ve traditionally listened to post 2,000 and the real underground you and GG mostly post.  I do listen to a fair amount of stuff that's not simply the popular blog darlings but many of those would be in genres I don't believe you frequent-experimental, droney, avantish, etc.

But just thinking of the well known artists-the Opeth/Amon Amarth/Dark Tranquility/Katonia/Marduk/Nile/Bohemoth/MDB/HOF/EW/Ihsahn/Enslaved's/Neurosis' of the metal world-Many if not most of  these artists--are on some kind of label and more often than not have production  credits whereas as GG often points out, most of the bands you all tend to post are are self released and self produced and one would presume have a much smaller audience than the anointed extreme metal artists who, themselves, have a small audience. 

The former, I should think, operate in a more systematic, strategic fashion and are interested in something we might agree on has to do with an element of "success" (in a free market sense) much more than a lot of these other bands you guys bring forth that are truly under the radar. For them, there probably isn't any "system" that they would want to work with. They're the sort of anti-anti of the metal world complete with their misanthropic, anti-social imaging,  many seemingly prefering anonymity, obscurity, mystery even than participation in any system that has winners and losers.

The former, I speculate would like to operate in a system that allows for an element of success- more exposure in the extreme metal world that would provide them a means to support themselves and provide a (hopefully) growing fanbase with music. But such systems as well as supply/demand don't exist or so it seems.

I have to  wonder if there is  a better business-artist model for both artist and consumer. 

[markm]

.....other than Bandcamp and social media...

[navybsn]

3 hours ago, markm said:

 Mastodon, LoG, Opeth. 

Saw all 3 of these guys in the past year. While very likely not millionaires they're not hurting. Still draw a considerable crowd. Hell, the death-core psuedo nu-metal fest I was dragged to in September had 50,000 fans there most of which were under the age of 40 and generally had no concept of pre 2000 metal (at least those I talked to). Indeed heavy music isn't dead, but I think the days of 1-2 bands filling stadiums are past us. Leaving aside economic debates, the vast number of ways to consume music these days and the huge selection of artists would certainly play a part.

[markm]

40 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Saw all 3 of these guys in the past year. While very likely not millionaires they're not hurting. 

Well that's good to hear. 

[SurgicalBrute]

6 hours ago, markm said:

Mark says a lot of words 😁

Okay, well lets look at some of this...does the current system nurture, grow, and develop talent? To that I say, did the old system really do any of those things? I know you seem to believe it did, but did it really? How many bands from that time period were actually nurtured in comparison to the ones that were manufactured or railroaded in directions they may not have wanted to go, because a label was chasing a trend? How many were allowed to grow and develop as opposed to the ones who were dropped like a hot potato, never to be heard from again, because they didn't get over and a label wanted nothing to do with them? Now, recently I had to take a statistics course, and we were told to track down a stat block of our choice. I managed to find an article where the author had done some analysis on Spotify listening habits based on song popularity, and it showed two interesting things. One was that something like 1% of songs get roughly 99% of the attention, and the other is that after a sharp drop off from those songs, popularity generally levels off and stays pretty consistent. In other words, even though it may be niche, in this day and age of streaming the majority of bands actually find their audience. I would say that's a system that's not only much more open to letting artists grow and develop their talent in whatever way they personally see fit, it's a system that clearly works to get it's product into the hands of the public whose actually looking for it.

Now more specific to metal, I'd also point out that a lot of those bands you're talking about only get to bigger labels after a combination of a great deal of buzz already existing deeper in the underground, to the point those labels are basically betting on a sure thing and the fact that more often then not they get poached from smaller labels, who were the ones who were actually willing to take a chance on them...and yes, some of them are both willing and now able to take advantage of access to better production, but I can't count the number of bands who have stupidly done this to the complete detriment of their sound. Hell, just compare some of Dark Tranquility's early albums with Osmose to their later Century Media releases and tell me which you think sound better.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

5 hours ago, markm said:

It's all good-we're having a friendly debate. 

I don't pretend to have the answers or even be "right". I'm not even saying the music was necessarily better. I'm trying to look at it from an organizational standpoint. I'm looking at the system as a whole-does it work for the artist and consumer from nurturing and growing and developing talent all the way to providing a service and product to a public that actually wants said product? Does the system work? Is it functional? Is it fair to both artist and consumer. Surely not to the artist.

It’s a theoretical debate and a mute point given the huge changes in technology and the music industry. For one thing, people aren’t interested in aggressive guitar music en masse as they were when I was young. Streaming has of course completely upended album sales, otherwise Mastodon, LoG, and Gojira would all be millionaires.  Or maybe not, metal doesn’t fill stadiums anymore. 

Cleary, there’s a difference between the more upstream underground that I’ve traditionally listened to post 2,000 and the real underground you and GG mostly post.  I do listen to a fair amount of stuff that's not simply the popular blog darlings but many of those would be in genres I don't believe you frequent-experimental, droney, avantish, etc.

But just thinking of the well known artists-the Opeth/Amon Amarth/Dark Tranquility/Katonia/Marduk/Nile/Bohemoth/MDB/HOF/EW/Ihsahn/Enslaved's/Neurosis' of the metal world-Many if not most of  these artists--are on some kind of label and more often than not have production  credits whereas as GG often points out, most of the bands you all tend to post are are self released and self produced and one would presume have a much smaller audience than the anointed extreme metal artists who, themselves, have a small audience. 

The former, I should think, operate in a more systematic, strategic fashion and are interested in something we might agree on has to do with an element of "success" (in a free market sense) much more than a lot of these other bands you guys bring forth that are truly under the radar. For them, there probably isn't any "system" that they would want to work with. They're the sort of anti-anti of the metal world complete with their misanthropic, anti-social imaging,  many seemingly prefering anonymity, obscurity, mystery even than participation in any system that has winners and losers.

The former, I speculate would like to operate in a system that allows for an element of success- more exposure in the extreme metal world that would provide them a means to support themselves and provide a (hopefully) growing fanbase with music. But such systems as well as supply/demand don't exist or so it seems.

I have to  wonder if there is  a better business-artist model for both artist and consumer. 

I want to start first by saying that I'm not a musician, I've never been in a band, and I don't want to speak for anyone else or put words in their mouths. But...it seems to me that there is a certain segment of the underground metal world that has accepted that due to their extreme nature there will be no real chance for any kind of mass appeal or "success" in the tradtional sense of the word. And I believe most of these dudes in these underground bands make music mainly for the love of the music. You said it yourself, actual metal doesn't fill stadiums anymore, it has trouble even filling up mid-sized clubs. Real metal has become a niche genre now, relegated to the outer fringes of the outskirts of the commercial music world.

I remember a conversation I had with a good friend of mine Bob at MDF some years ago who expressed incredultiy that even a band like Immolation who were relatively big fish in the underground metal pond had to keep their day jobs because they couldn't make a decent living just as musicians. Bands like this are not in the minority, this is just the way things are nowadays. Black or death metal musician is not an actual career choice in 2022, it has been relegated to hobby status. Once these dudes have accepted that rockstar is no longer a viable option for them, I think maybe it frees them up to just put aside all their silly unrealistic dreams of fame and fortune so they can concentrate on making the music they really want to make.

Personally I've always found it kind of silly that so many mainstream musicians have made tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars and have managed to figure out a way to milk the success train for decades just on the backs of a few cool tunes they wrote once upon a time many years ago anyway. While the underground dudes making the best music toil away in obscurity for peanuts. But then I guess no one ever said life was going to be fair.

[markm]

Yep, fair enough guys. It is what it is. There is a lot of heavy music of many types to be enjoyed. That is something to celebrate. 

[FatherAlabaster]

Regarding some of @markm's ruminations above - I think people will keep on being creative with whatever media/styles they have available to them. I've personally heard predictions of the impending death of guitar music and the idea that "metal is just sonics" floating around for over 20 years now, and I know there were some famously wrong predictions along those lines way earlier. The thrill and challenge of virtuosity and live performance isn't going away, and guitar is a ubiquitous, accessible, affordable instrument suited to basically any skill level, so I don't think it's in any danger of disappearing.

As far as the future of aggressive music, well, who knows? Part of the goal is to be rebellious and part of being rebellious is doing something different. I get that in some contexts, going back to older styles can be the "different" thing to do... I feel like that's where a lot of the energy behind self-consciously retro music comes from. A lot of it's even pretty good. But I heard a fun quote about innovation earlier - "the young devour the old". Ultimately I hope kids will keep on making new, weird angry shit. Not like there isn't plenty to be angry about, after all. Whether or not it falls under the umbrella of "metal" is kind of secondary. I probably won't like a lot of it but that's not important either. 

I really love the styles of death and black metal that were (relatively) popular when I was growing up, but I gotta say - for my own ears - I disagree with a lot of you when you talk about newer bands doing the same thing better. I do hear some exciting new takes on old ideas, but the ones that connect for me are few and far between. Even when all the ingredients are there, sometimes the songwriting pisses me off, like I can hear how much cooler the songs could have been with a little more effort. Ultimately it's my problem: I'm looking for something different out of art than what they're offering. I know better than to expect anyone to share my feelings. But it sets up a clash for me internally because it's so close to something I could really enjoy, and I think that makes some of that stuff all the more disappointing.

15 years ago I'd had my fill of all the cleaned-up modern-sounding DM I felt was being spoonfed to me, and I remember being on the Khold forum posting about how all I really wanted to hear was more stuff like the first two Grave albums. Be careful what you wish for, maybe? Lots of water under the bridge since then, and lots of different music under my belt. In the last few years I find myself more and more appreciating the truly new ideas I hear again, the ones that challenge me a bit, the ones I learn something from. I know Goatmaster has said before that he doesn't really get that, he's not looking for personal growth through music, he just wants to have a good time. Maybe a lot of other people feel that way.

That's never been enough for me. I've been playing guitar and other stuff and recording myself for almost 30 years now. I got serious about computer recording 20 years ago when I started my first "real band" in college. "Bedroom" solo DIY recording is my lifeblood. When I talk about learning something I'm not usually talking about some abstract sense of personal discovery, I'm talking about stuff that's personally relevant to me as a musician. New ideas, new ways of thinking about things, something to aspire to. But then, if I feel like I get it, and I make use of those ideas a handful of times, I begin to feel like I'm spinning my wheels again. One of my many failings as a visual artist and a musician is that I'm rarely interested in mining the same vein for very long. The creative process is a demanding and fragile thing and it's easy to get knocked off track. I need that sense of challenge and discovery to keep me engaged. I despise everything I've done that sounds like it's just "good enough", where I know I rushed it or didn't develop it as much as I could have, and when I feel like I'm hearing that in some other music, well then, that music can fuck right off too. It's not objectively right or fair, it's just how it is for me.

So man, yeah, 2021 was a real trip. I spent months in my home studio (converted bedroom, natch) recording parts and mixing an album for one of my bands, and didn't really get to come up for air until sometime in the fall. What a treat it was, then, to find something as different and adventurous as that new Kayo Dot, or something as well-developed and deeply felt as that Voices album. Even At The Gates, to my utter surprise, finally stopped selling themselves short and put out the best thing they've done in over 20 years.

Pithy conclusion with kicker to make it seem like I have an overarching point.

[markm]

49 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Regarding some of @markm's ruminations above - I think people will keep on being creative with whatever media/styles they have available to them. I've personally heard predictions of the impending death of guitar music and the idea that "metal is just sonics" floating around for over 20 years now, and I know there were some famously wrong predictions along those lines way earlier. The thrill and challenge of virtuosity and live performance isn't going away, and guitar is a ubiquitous, accessible, affordable instrument suited to basically any skill level, so I don't think it's in any danger of disappearing......

 But I heard a fun quote about innovation earlier - "the young devour the old". Ultimately I hope kids will keep on making new, weird angry shit. 

I really love the styles of death and black metal that were (relatively) popular when I was growing up, but I gotta say - for my own ears - I disagree with a lot of you when you talk about newer bands doing the same thing better.....

 

15 years ago I'd had my fill of all the cleaned-up modern-sounding DM I felt was being spoonfed to me, and I remember being on the Khold forum posting about how all I really wanted to hear was more stuff like the first two Grave albums. Be careful what you wish for, maybe? 

 

Great post....highlighted some of your thoughts that resonated with me. BTW,  your visual art amazing. Are you a fulltime working artist?

[FatherAlabaster]

9 minutes ago, markm said:

Great post....highlighted some of your thoughts that resonated with me. BTW,  your visual art amazing. Are you a fulltime working artist?

Thank you man. The work isn't steady enough to call it full-time... I guess I'd call it part-time or gig work. It's what I can do from home. Some weeks I'll spend 50+ hours on a piece, some weeks more like zero with all the family stuff. And sometimes (like now) I play hooky to work on music. I'm hoping to use more of the downtime between illustrations to make paintings I might be able to sell at the gallery. Still hoping and occasionally pushing for that career I thought I could have, you know?

[markm]

1 minute ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Thank you man. The work isn't steady enough to call it full-time... I guess I'd call it part-time or gig work. It's what I can do from home. Some weeks I'll spend 50+ hours on a piece, some weeks more like zero with all the family stuff. And sometimes (like now) I play hooky to work on music. I'm hoping to use more of the downtime between illustrations to make paintings I might be able to sell at the gallery. Still hoping and occasionally pushing for that career I thought I could have, you know?

Absolutely from a guy who pursued an acting career many years ago. You're super talented. Much repsect.

[FatherAlabaster]

2 minutes ago, markm said:

Absolutely from a guy who pursued an acting career many years ago. You're super talented. Much repsect.

I really do appreciate that! Thank you.

[markm]

Came across this long discussion of metal that I thought was apropos of the discussion here, with a lot of analysis and charts, basically asking the question, has black metal overtaken death metal in popularity and discussing the ways defining metal has become increasingly difficult. 

https://www.stereogum.com/2174542/the-month-in-metal-january-2022/columns/the-black-market/

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Interesting article Mark, thanks for posting it. I love figures, statistics and charts, especially charts. This has confirmed what I've suspected, that since the turn of the century black metal has been on an upward trajectory in number of bands being formed and number of releases while death metal has been on a downward trajectory.

 

This chart shows the number of bands being formed in each of the 4 main sub-genres by year shown as a percentage of the total. Less than 10% of bands being formed the last few years are playing either heavy metal or thrash, black metal is streaking towards 40% of market share while death metal is holding its own in the mid 20's. Notice that black metal is the only line that's never taken a downward turn.

 

 

Total number of releases broken down by genre sorted by decade.

 

Black meal has just recently pulled ahead of death metal for good in 2014 (as far as the number of releases) and it has widened its lead every year since. Notice though how the total number of metal releases in the 4 leading sub-genres for just 25 months of the 2020's is already nearly 98% as many as there were in the entire decade of the 90's, 54,570 to 53,020

 

 

 

And to Our Father...I think that we just have very different perspectives on the role we want music to play in our lives, what with you being an accomplished musician as well as a talented artist, while me I'm just some guy with eyes and ears. You the producer, me the consumer. Personal growth has been an important part of my life, especially in the last half of it, and I do reflect and look back at how far I've come as a person over the decades. I just don't feel like listening to music has really been much of a contributing factor to my personal growth.

For me music has really always been pure entertainment and escapism. I don't want to have to work hard to understand or enjoy my music. I don't want it to challenge me (in fact I actively avoid the stuff that challenges me) because I feel life is more than challenging enough. I don't need music to be innovative, cerebral or forward thinking. Even 'derivative' which most people seem to throw around as a negative descriptor is totally fine with me as long as it's executed well and connects with me on a visceral level. I'm much more interested in the visceral aspects of extreme metal and the resulting effects it has on my brain, the endorphins or seratonin or whatever it does that gives me that powerfully euphoric feeling when I listen to certain music. That's what I'm in the game for. I don't expect or even want bands to reinvent the sub-genres that they're operating in, let them just stick to the plan and give me riffs and filth and badassery so I can bang my head and feel euphoric. 

I will say though that I don't think there is any precedent for a genre of music that has continued to grow basically unchanged for as long as black and death metal have. There have always been some progressive bands operating in these extreme metal sub-genres, but still I think it's fair to say black and death metal have flourished and grown (186,000 black, death, heavy and thrash metal releases in the 2010's) while remaining substantially unchanged for well over 3 decades now.

Obviously sooner or later something will have to give and there will be new kinds of heavy music and the old sub-genre styles will slowly begin to fade away. But I'm not sure what that will look like or if it will happen in my lifetime. For all I know it could just end up being more waves of the existing metal sub-genres, 4th wave, 5th wave, 6th wave, and what have you. But I suspect in 50 years heavy music will look quite different than it does today, although obviously most of us probably won't still be around to compare it.

[markm]

But what about the "W" question? Why.  Why the rise in black metal? I was going to come from it from a different angle. Far from being unchanged, black metal is amongst the most adaptable to tinkering. If the parameters of black metal were to include anything with the word "blackened" in the title, excluding blackened chicken and fish, why then you've got atmospheric black (a rather absurd umbrella that covers vast swaths of music), melodic black metal, Hellenic black, black'n'roll, folk black, Pegan/Viking black, raw black, progressive black, blackened sludge and doom, blackened death, black thrash, post black, blackgaze, avant-garde/experimental black metal, suicidal black metal, USBM, Cascadian black metal, symphonic black and it goes on and on.

The author of the article made the point that in the current era we have all manor of genres that push the boundaries and definitions of what exactly constitutes metal. It's easy enough to slap on some kind of black vocals and if that's the only factor classifying black metal, yeah, no doubt it's seen the most growth while I've been following extreme metal.