"Heavy metal is about riding the horse of life with your sword, mowing down difficulties with inner strength, and building up your own destiny. Chopping off (metaphorical) heads, conquering problems, beer mugs and women. Heavy metal is about living to the full, and dominating life .
Hipsterism is about being cool, blasé, intellectual and ironic. Entertaining one's peers with comments and references about pop culture. Having a strong sense of fashion style, but not losing the intellectuality. It is also edgy, classy and tattooed."
I'm not sure I really enjoy either of these definitions. That first one might feel true for power metal, but it's not anywhere close to the proper definition for black metal, doom, grindcore, crust (if we call that metal), or stoner. One doesn't chop off heads and chug beer listening to Xasthur. No one's riding the horse of life while Sunn O))) blares over the speakers.
This is a huge article, I skimmed it and honestly... I didn't care. It was just too damn long for me to read what says one of two things: it's cool that metal and "hipster art" aesthetics are combining sometimes (in which case I agree) or it argues for purity (in which case I don't). It's enormous and longwinded and seems full of just baseless assertions ("metal is retro now", what?).
IMO, it's good that hipsters have grabbed metal, and just as good that metalheads have grabbed at hipster music. People forget it's a two way street. It's not all about snotty Starbucks artists co-opting black metal riffs, there are also heavy-ass bands borrowing from post and shoegaze. This isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. It gives us MORE music to love, and more VARIED music. Who wants to hear just a long string of bands who learned how to write riffs from old Morbid Angel albums?
