Controversial opinions on metal

[Krow]

If by "metal breakdown" you mean "be annoyed" then yes.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Judging from your recent posts, you're probably just annoyed by the vocals like the death metal wuss you are.

EDIT: And regarding doom, I know a lot of people make an exception for Christian lyrics if they present a fire & brimstone kind of image, but even there I have to ask why? Candlemass' Samarithan is the only post-Epicus song that gives me chills like the debut does, and ultimately it's about helping the poor and going to heaven for ones good deeds. Doesn't make it preachy, doesn't contradict any fundamental rule of metal, doesn't keep it from being an amazingly impassioned song even though (afaik) they have no religious motives on a whole (Black Stone Wielder has a more anti-Christian bent from what I can tell, for example). It's just a vivid and emotionally/spiritually-charged story that manages to be uplifting and undoubtedly metal. There's no reason that positivity and religion can't work in a metal framework.

 

[Krow]

Why do you keep calling me a wuss exactly? Aren't you the virgin that wants to be gay and let's his friend do odd shit to him even though its crossing boundaries you don't want? Goddamnit I'm letting gay eeyore troll me.

I like doom metal as much as any genre period, just not Trouble's first three. Manic Frustration and Plastic Green Head are easier to listen to.

Also, samarithian is probably my absolute least favorite candlemass song tied with black dwarf and I'm not just saying that to contrarian, its obnoxious at best.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Why do you keep calling me a wuss exactly? Aren't you the virgin that wants to be gay and let's his friend do odd shit to him even though its crossing boundaries you don't want? Goddamnit I'm letting gay eeyore troll me.

I like doom metal as much as any genre period, just not Trouble's first three. Manic Frustration and Plastic Green Head are easier to listen to.

Gay eeyore

Their Def American stoner rock period easier to listen to than their earlier thrash-riff-packed maniacal-Wagner doom albums? I had no idea. Wuss.

Also, samarithian is probably my absolute least favorite candlemass song tied with black dwarf and I'm not just saying that to contrarian, its obnoxious at best.

Because of the lyrics?

 

[SomeGuyDude]

Plenty of Christians are angry and misanthropic, believing that everyone else is going to Hell.

However, I make a distinction between Christian metal and metal that happens to be Christian. The former is mostly derivative rubbish that strives to be the "moral" substitute. On the other hand, we have Virgin Black, who have Christian beliefs but don't follow organized religion.

This is basically it.

All I ask is that the message of the music follow its form. You can't try and smash the gospel into abrasive metal and you can't try and sound hardcore and nihilistic with upbeat melodies. The former case just SCREAMS of people trying to "trojan horse" religion on people and the latter is just dumb.

I don't care, in the abstract, what anyone believes. Believe in Jesus, Allah, Vishnu, Odin, Ra, Jupiter, or nothing at all, but if you're gonna make art it helps if the intention behind it is lined up with the stylistic choices, otherwise it comes across as terribly disingenuous.

My beef is not with Christians who make angry music. Christianity, like any belief system, doesn't preclude negative emotions (after all, we're all human). But like... this shit.



If you obey my commands
You will remain in My love
Just as I've obeyed my Father's commands
and remain in His love.

You are full of fucking shit if you're telling me everything is all tits and gravy with that song having those lyrics. I do not believe for a single second it's about the "bombast" and "passion". Passion is meaningless without knowing what the passion is for. Passion all by itself is meaningless unless I know what you're so passionate about. A song where a guy is really passionate to have sex with his newborn child is not going to be a song I want to listen to, regardless of how amazing the lyrics are. A rockin' metal song with sick riffs and great vocals that's about killing all the gays in the world is not a song I want to hear. End of story.

 

[matt schrauben]

If you obey my commands
You will remain in My love
Just as I've obeyed my Father's commands
and remain in His love.

You are full of fucking shit if you're telling me everything is all tits and gravy with that song having those lyrics. I do not believe for a single second it's about the "bombast" and "passion". Passion is meaningless without knowing what the passion is for. Passion all by itself is meaningless unless I know what you're so passionate about. A song where a guy is really passionate to have sex with his newborn child is not going to be a song I want to listen to, regardless of how amazing the lyrics are. A rockin' metal song with sick riffs and great vocals that's about killing all the gays in the world is not a song I want to hear. End of story.

I have no issue with it whatsoever. If that's your deal, fine. To each their own. But to claim anyone who disagrees with your view is "full of shit" is just stupid and narrow minded. People listen to metal music for varying reasons.

EDIT: Bottom line,

You see Christian lyrics + agressive music = dishonest/not genuine. Fine. I disagree, but whatever.

I see a band playing music they love, and adding an aspect of their lives they hold dear, their beliefs, in the mix. In my book, that's about as geniune and honest as you'll get.

You don't see it my way, I don't see it yours. Fair enough.

At least we see eye to eye on Celeste. Dude, been listening to them all day.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

I have no issue with it whatsoever. If that's your deal, fine. To each their own. But to claim anyone who disagrees with your view is "full of shit" is just stupid and narrow minded. People listen to metal music for varying reasons.

Sorry dude. I flat out don't believe you.

I do not believe that anyone absorbs ANY kind of aural or visual with no regards to the emotions invoked by its composition. You're claiming that when you listen to music you have absolutely no emotional connection to it. That you just sit dispassionately to the side and rate it for its passion and "bombast" but not WHAT is being represented by it.

Musical choices such as key, tempo, and dynamic are, like the colors and brush strokes of an artist, chosen to evoke certain feelings. When a piano composer writes in a minor key, there's an implied melancholy to it. When a vocalist is shrieking, there is an implied agony. That's WHY these sounds are alluring: they bring to mind a given aesthetic, whatever it may be. When you hear a Moonlight Sonata, you experience different emotions than when you hear the Rondo Alla Turca. Even if you don't understand Latin you know what kind of feeling O Fortuna is intending to present.

Ironic counterpoint can certainly be employed in music. A songwriter might write haunting, personal lyrics and wrap it up in more uptempo music in order to convey a message, or in a movie a scene might use background music that clashes with the visuals for similar reasons, but those are stylistic choices and the incongruity is INTENTIONAL.

What pisses me off is when an artist just slaps a given sound on top of the message they're trying to get across for reasons OTHER than that the sound is appropriate FOR that message. Black metal isn't generally focused on misanthropy, suicide, and nihilism because some council got together and made the decision by fiat. The Lords of Music didn't divide up the sound spectrum via committee hearing and decide that Gospel music would take THESE sounds and death metal THESE sounds. It's because the styles inherently hit our brain in certain ways. The minor key melodies evoke sadness, the harsh vocals present pain, the distorted production conveys distress.

Like I said, it doesn't matter WHAT direction it goes in. If you play for me a gentle and pleasant jazzy piano piece and add lyrics that are an ode to Lucifer and about bloody animal slaughter I'm gonna tell you that idiot did it wrong, too. Pull the lyrics out of music ENTIRELY, listen to PURELY instrumental music and are you gonna tell me that nothing, NOTHING imparts a mood upon you? NONE of it??

It pisses me off because music is ART to me. The whole tapestry of it. From the moment we as a species started noticing that certain sounds were pleasant to our ears we discovered that when put together in certain ways they begin to draw emotions out. That's why there are keys in the first place, why certain harmonies work and some don't. You don't need to have a degree in music, or even really know what music IS, in order to know that dissonance is jarring. Someone with no music background can hear a song and intuitively know what its "home key" is (seriously, play someone a song like the US national anthem and have them guess which note it should end on, people just KNOW which one). It's been demonstrated that people can hear the pentatonic scale and know what notes come next in it. Check it out:



How did they do that? Was it because someone explained to them what tones go in a pentatonic scale? No! Because music gets into the brain in a primitive, very BASIC way. You don't need to be TOLD that major keys sound pleasant and minor keys sound sad, that a minor second is unpleasant or that the "ti" note on the scale just doesn't feel complete until it hits "do". It's the science OF sound. Christian metal that wraps up stylistic choices which are built up from dark emotions around a pile of "praise Jesus" lyrics are doing so for reasons OTHER than that it is a marriage of sound and statement. FUCK that.

If someone tells me that the message behind music is irrelevant, I assume they're either lying to me or so incapable of truly absorbing music that they don't even understand what they're listening to and are just impressed by hearing vibrations.

EDIT: keep in mind dude, I'm seriously, truly, GENUINELY not trying to insult you in any way. This is just a topic I am SEVERELY passionate about and can get worked up VERY easily over.

 

[matt schrauben]

I'm unbelievable passionate about music too. I play it, breathe it, live it. It's the reason I responded to your post to begin with because I strongly disagreed with your reasoning. I still do. I can listen to a band like Alcest or Celeste and still be moved by the music even though I have no clue what their music is about (don't understand French), and that was my point to begin with. So to claim I'm claiming I just sit by and have no emotional connection to the music I listen to IS insulting to me. People connect with different things in different ways.

Nonetheless, this is obviously something we won't see eye to eye no matter what. So I'm done.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

That's my POINT though. You don't need to understand the lyrics to appreciate the music because the composition draws certain emotions, does it not? How can you then state that it's not possible for composition and message to have an incongruity to one another?

You might be willing to OVERLOOK the message if you like the music enough (certainly people do it with Burzum and Arghoslent), but I am standing rock-ribbed that it's impossible to claim that music and message have no relation to one another.

But okay, if you're done with it then i suppose we'll move along.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

This is basically it.

All I ask is that the message of the music follow its form. You can't try and smash the gospel into abrasive metal and you can't try and sound hardcore and nihilistic with upbeat melodies. The former case just SCREAMS of people trying to "trojan horse" religion on people and the latter is just dumb.

I don't care, in the abstract, what anyone believes. Believe in Jesus, Allah, Vishnu, Odin, Ra, Jupiter, or nothing at all, but if you're gonna make art it helps if the intention behind it is lined up with the stylistic choices, otherwise it comes across as terribly disingenuous.

My beef is not with Christians who make angry music. Christianity, like any belief system, doesn't preclude negative emotions (after all, we're all human). But like... this shit.

If you obey my commands
You will remain in My love
Just as I've obeyed my Father's commands
and remain in His love.

You are full of fucking shit if you're telling me everything is all tits and gravy with that song having those lyrics. I do not believe for a single second it's about the "bombast" and "passion". Passion is meaningless without knowing what the passion is for. Passion all by itself is meaningless unless I know what you're so passionate about. A song where a guy is really passionate to have sex with his newborn child is not going to be a song I want to listen to, regardless of how amazing the lyrics are. A rockin' metal song with sick riffs and great vocals that's about killing all the gays in the world is not a song I want to hear. End of story.

Yeah, that song is pretty silly. I can agree that there is a disconnect between the lyrics and music, but my point is that there doesn't have to be one. I didn't say that passion is an automatic win in my book, just that it's an important quality for me and something that metal often provides me. I think it's funny that you bring up child rape as something that would turn you off all the while praising the "evil" factor and approving of Cannibal Corpse's lyrics, though.

 

[[)eadmund]

If it's done right I really enjoy a contrast between the emotions music evokes and the subject matter of the lyrics.

 

[Pitiless Wanderer]

Agalloch's clean vocals are pretty terrible.

 

[Funerary_Doom]

However, I make a distinction between Christian metal and metal that happens to be Christian. The former is mostly derivative rubbish that strives to be the "moral" substitute. On the other hand, we have Virgin Black, who have Christian beliefs but don't follow organized religion.

I agree with this. It's one thing to use metal to praise Jesus or whatever, and it's another thing all entirely to be Christian playing metal. I have no issue with the latter.

In regard to lyrics, it really depends. I use to think lyrics didn't matter, but at the end of the day it seems they only matter if i can understand them (yes, this isn't the best way to go about it, but whatever). If the vocals are rather clear and what is being said i disagree with or something, it'll definitely take away from the experience.

 

[Eligos]

I agree with SDG's lyrical matching concept, especially as someone who writes lyrics. You should know where I'm coming from on this too, matt. When you're working on a new piece, are the lyrics that you (or your vocalist) write based on the emotion evoked by the music?

My band's music is spacious and contemplative, so I write lyrics that are spacious and contemplative. If a jazz pianist were to write Satanic lyrics, he'd have to wrap it in a jazz syntax. Like hey, I was born and raised on the streets of Harlem, it's a dog eat dog world out there, I'm a self-made man to a fault, walking down a left hand path to higher vision.

 

[CF87]

Agalloch's clean vocals are pretty terrible.

I like some of Agalloch's clean vocals and think they're fitting for the music. Is John Haughm a good singer, no.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

I agree with SDG's lyrical matching concept, especially as someone who writes lyrics. You should know where I'm coming from on this too, matt. When you're working on a new piece, are the lyrics that you (or your vocalist) write based on the emotion evoked by the music?

My band's music is spacious and contemplative, so I write lyrics that are spacious and contemplative. If a jazz pianist were to write Satanic lyrics, he'd have to wrap it in a jazz syntax. Like hey, I was born and raised on the streets of Harlem, it's a dog eat dog world out there, I'm a self-made man to a fault, walking down a left hand path to higher vision.

Precisely. I would heavily argue that those who claim that lyrics don't matter are doing so because when they can't understand them they simply "assume" that the lyrics match the mood of the song. When you listen to Celeste (for foreign language) or brutal death metal (for incomprehensible lyrics) you just assume that what you're hearing is appropriate for the tone of the piece.

Obviously people can appreciate music in a language they don't understand, but that's precisely BECAUSE the music itself evokes specific emotions and not understanding the lyrics frees the listener to pinpoint the emotions, which can be a benefit in the eyes (ears) of many. I remember hearing Rammstein's "Du Hast" translated to English in high school and we all laughed our asses off and agreed it should stay in German, for the simple reason that the lyrics are so inane that the language barrier helped put up a little wall.

To act like lyrics and music are two unrelated concepts that are only linked because they're happening at the same time is like saying a painter chooses his colors at random. If there's a clash, it should be intentional. The point should be the juxtaposition of music and lyrics, or music and vocal style. To have the two diametrically opposed to one another but act like it's totally natural indicates either another motive (like, say, trying to make religion "cool" for the kids) or a complete lack of understanding of how music works in general.

I mean, shit, it'd be like writing a slow, agonized blues song and having the lyrics be about getting a raise at work and buying a new car to celebrate.

 

[matt schrauben]

Precisely. I would heavily argue that those who claim that lyrics don't matter are doing so because when they can't understand them they simply "assume" that the lyrics match the mood of the song. When you listen to Celeste (for foreign language) or brutal death metal (for incomprehensible lyrics) you just assume that what you're hearing is appropriate for the tone of the piece.

True. When you put it that way, yeah I agree with this.

Obviously people can appreciate music in a language they don't understand, but that's precisely BECAUSE the music itself evokes specific emotions...

That's the point I was attempting to make, though. Music in and of itself evokes emotion. Which is why much classical music, which often has no lyrics at all, can move me more than a lot of music with a specific message behind it.

To act like lyrics and music are two unrelated concepts that are only linked because they're happening at the same time is like saying a painter chooses his colors at random.

I didn't mean to act like they weren't related, even though it may have come off that way. I was just attempting to say that when it comes to genres like extreme metal, I'm not listening to it for the lyrics. And when I'm buying said music, I'm not really concerning myself with it. You could argue on a subconcious level that maybe I am (I think you might have actually said something like that), and I can't say I'd necessarily disagree, because I could be unaware I'm even doing so. Nonetheless an extreme metal band using Christian lyrics just isn't going to bother me. It just isn't. Especially if I can't even comprehend what's being said (which is likely).

If there's a clash, it should be intentional. The point should be the juxtaposition of music and lyrics, or music and vocal style. To have the two diametrically opposed to one another but act like it's totally natural indicates either another motive (like, say, trying to make religion "cool" for the kids) or a complete lack of understanding of how music works in general.

I can understand what you mean here. And I can actually understand how you could interpret it as ingenuine. And I'm sure there are plenty of "christian" bands out there who are totally ingenuine (there are). But another way to interpret that is just guys playing music they love and putting what's important to them in their lyrics. Yeah, it might suck to some people, and maybe they suck at effectively putting lyrics with said music, but if the music is good, it's most likely not going to bother me. Particularly in said genre. And I think it's more of a difference in taste between us than anything here.

 

[crimsonfloyd]

On the topic of Christian lyrics and Black Sabbath, After Forever is the shittiest song of the first seven Sabbath albums, in large part because of the fire and brimstone lyrics (the riff is weak too).

*edit* relistened to Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die! and I like all those songs better as well. Also, Never Say Die is underrated. Lots of good cuts.

 

[SomeGuyDude]

I can understand what you mean here. And I can actually understand how you could interpret it as ingenuine. And I'm sure there are plenty of "christian" bands out there who are totally ingenuine (there are). But another way to interpret that is just guys playing music they love and putting what's important to them in their lyrics. Yeah, it might suck to some people, and maybe they suck at effectively putting lyrics with said music, but if the music is good, it's most likely not going to bother me. Particularly in said genre. And I think it's more of a difference in taste between us than anything here.

I'm focusing here because I think you and I came to an understanding on the other stuff (mostly thanks to my total inability to articulate my point until that last post, LOL, sorry dude).

My thing is that even if they're being genuine about it, it's still a massive clash of aesthetic and message. I'm not hating on religious lyrics (as an atheist, I unabashedly LOVE a lot of Christian choral music and bombastic symphonies), I'm hating on them being paired up with abrasive, angry music. If you're okay with "shutting out" the lyrics and just enjoying the riffs and the energy, I can buy that. But it's still jarring and unnatural.

If you're okay with just kinda "tuning out" the mismatched lyrics, that's totally understandable. That's different than what I thought you were saying earlier (once again, my bad). I'm not going into the concept of "supporting" the lyrical message of musicians, that's a different thing entirely. Like, take Burzum or Arghoslent. Not good people, but the music matches, which is a different conundrum. Same with skinhead punk rock. Some of that stuff is great, with tons of energy, but fuck the people in the band are such shitfucks that I can't bring myself to listen.

 

[The Butt]

Metal that preaches Christian ideology is generally terrible. There are exceptions but for the most part it is the case.