I presume Jim and Dave will be pleased.
Who is this “Dave” of which you speak?
So, they have THE GALL to publish this whole roundtable debate about "Hipster Metal", and not once specify why they need to talk about this, and why they all defend Kemedo and The Sword.
It is utterly ridiculous on many levels. I find it humorous though. Not surprising…for all their cutting-edge and enfant terrible posturing
decibel is a mainstream magazine and must maintain a fabricated “underground” and “independent" identity in order to remain credible, so my article does exist in their world but it is not of their world. It actually reads like a coordinated and choreographed response to my article, but it is stilted and herks and jerks due to a chair intentionally left empty around their table.
The article is a hoot though and they are bunch of tools:
Brian Slagel: By the way, in case you don’t know this already, Lars from Metallica is a huge Sword fan. He loves them.
How the hell anybody in their right mind could still trot out Ulrich as an individual who would boost a band’s credibility at this point is beyond me. As far as I can see, moving beyond what I may think, he is one of the most reviled music personalities in recent memory. It is staggering how out of touch these people are…
John Darnielle in response to Kory Grow commenting on how metal fans scared the crap out of him:
That is why I used to wear a suit and tie to my metal shows, because then they would assume that I was a label rep and leave me alone.
And he claims in the article that there is “no such thing as a hipster.” These people are fools and the article just ends up digging them in a deeper hole for anyone paying close attention. After the initial shitstorm on the Internet, but before the “false metal” article appeared, one review (not going to take the time to dig it out or look it up) opened their meditation on all this that came to no conclusion with the astute observation that “hipsters love nothing more than a game of dress-up.” Something I’ve seen time and time again. Hell…the last time I was in Chicago, I had to let a guy decked out in a zoot suit style outfit know that his backhanded and ironic comments about my Dio shirt were not appreciated nor welcome.
Darnielle is a hipster through and through. It is a term that people are very familiar with and it has definitional boundaries that can be hazy at times, but that is life—what is more than apparent on the street is difficult to translate into words.
Anyway, as a public service and because it is a damn informative and interesting read here is an article on what could be called “hipster hunting.”
This is a shortened version of the original article:
Part I
Part II
Meanwhile, really interesting profile about one of my favs in the 90s. Monster Magnet's Dopes to Infinity (which I presume Dave hates)
I wouldn’t put quite that strongly.
Infinity is a fine album, but much of the rough and ready charm and wild and manic energy that made
Superjudge Monster Magnet’s real high point is absent on
Infinity, making it a buffed and spit-shined follow-up to a superior prior release.
What the hell a rock ‘n’ roll album is doing in a “pantheon of extreme metal" is another matter entirely though…
The previous entry was The Rollins Band
The End of Silence, and I do hate that crap.
It is interesting how
decibel is doing the same thing that metal magazines did in the early ‘90s when grunge/alternative was slyly pawned off as heavy metal. Only a matter of time before something like Nirvana, Jesus Lizard, Big Black, or Slint is inducted into their “hall of fame.”
