Not really, the elements that make metal worth paying attention to are rooted in the classical rather than rock tradition.
Fortune Small Business and... The End Records
- Thread starter Jim LotFP
- Start date
Not really, the elements that make metal worth paying attention to are rooted in the classical rather than rock tradition.
Helm
Maybe on Luna
Intentions are important but not to be put to trial as if we're the knowledgeable judge. I suspect half the time even what artists say about their music should not be trusted as if they were so able to convey the finer aspects of artistic communication, they wouldn't be musicians, they'd be critics (though extremely erudite Heavy Metal musicians are often encountered). I believe what I feel from it.
If results matter then, then bands like SGM or Estradasphere or most of The End's lineup are decidedly not Popular music at this time. It is only in a microscopic metal-subculture way that these bands are more well-known than say, Crypt of Kerberos and enjoying more popularity than them. It's like comparing an ant (random underground death metal band) to a wasp (Estradasphere) to god (Justin Timberlake) in terms of scale, and saying the wasp has sold out.
Now Lordi... Lordi are an important case (more like a fat pig compared to a wasp), and Jim is right to be worried.
What makes Heavy Metal worth the attention is passion, honesty and vision. These are not exclusive qualities to rock, classical, or any other genre in my opinion, though the explosive mix and quantity of them is hard to match elsewhere. I too have little interest in the generic almost-hard-rock bluesy Heavy Metal and I am inclined towards weird music by weird people, but still I believe the distinction you're making above is artificial and does not serve well if we are to apply it to Heavy Metal bands we'd both find to enjoy. Heavy Metal is contradictive, it's not modern classical composition as some would like it. It's leathers and spikes and a lyrical exposition on determinism at the same time. The condradiction is inherent and life-giving.
Popular music outside of the classical tradition has never been truly passionate, honest or visionary. It can't be, because it is, ultimately, only about money.
Metal and ambient music escaped that trap by reviving the classical tradition of complex, structuralist music and by being defiantly anti-commercial in a way that no pop forms (including rock) have been. The 'passion' of other forms of music is feigned, the 'honesty' is a front, and only music in the classical tradition has EVER produced any vision beyond the moment.
Metal and ambient music escaped that trap by reviving the classical tradition of complex, structuralist music and by being defiantly anti-commercial in a way that no pop forms (including rock) have been. The 'passion' of other forms of music is feigned, the 'honesty' is a front, and only music in the classical tradition has EVER produced any vision beyond the moment.
Album sales aren't the issue, and never will be. The issue is one of function. Estradaspheren functions like pop music, and, like pop music, it's appeal will always be one of novelty and ego, regardless of the 'intent' of the 'artist.'
Helm
Maybe on Luna
I am sorry I'll have to severily disgree on the lack of passion and vision outside of classical music, and not offer much in terms of a counterargument. It is simply such a far-fetched claim I can only guess stems from teminological misconstrusion (what 'passion' is, what' classical' is, so on) and I am not prepared to enter such a debate at this time. One hopes he talks a common language with someone until they have evidence they don't.
About 'functioning' like a pop group, that's just trial of intention, stated roundaboutly and I will also not humour that approach. Popular is what becomes Popular, and the pressure and effect of popularity on something otherwise meritorious is more interesting to me than preepmtively dismissing it on the grounds of it now being popular.
About 'functioning' like a pop group, that's just trial of intention, stated roundaboutly and I will also not humour that approach. Popular is what becomes Popular, and the pressure and effect of popularity on something otherwise meritorious is more interesting to me than preepmtively dismissing it on the grounds of it now being popular.
'Pop' may have originated as a shortened form of 'popular,' but its usage has always been about style and approach, rather than being an absolute measure of units moved. The internal workings of music, rather than current tastes, determine what is 'pop' (though certainly not what is popular). The outstanding feature of 'pop' music - regardless of its particular form or the number of albums it sends off the shelve - has always been a reliance on broad gestures and reductive means of signification. It is the internal simplicity (without respect to aesthetic flourishes) of pop music that is both the source of its appeal and the source of its artistic ineptitude.
Zealotry
fruit of failure's loins
- Feb 28, 2006
- 203
- 0
- 16
Really?
So I guess that means Celtic Frost, Kreator, early Bathory, Slayer, Dark Angel, Pestilence, Entombed, Autopsy, Motörhead, Manilla Road, DarkThrone, Possessed, Bolt Thrower, Asphyx, Carcass... none of these bands are worth listening to, huh?
I swear, that anus.com revisionist history is downright comical sometimes.
Zealotry
fruit of failure's loins
- Feb 28, 2006
- 203
- 0
- 16
Utter nonsense.
I assume you've either never actually heard any of the bands in question, or are simply whitewashing facts that bury your ridiculous argument.
Just for entertainment purposes, can you give us specific examples of what you would consider to be commercial, and uncommercial, seventies rock.
Every single one of these bands has a MASSIVE classical influence, with the exception of Motorhead (a band significant for its influence, but not its actual music). Do you not even own a pair of ears?
Commercial:
Yes
Genesis
Boston
Deep Purple
Pink Floyd
Non-Commercial:
King Crimson
Brian Eno
Tangerine Dream
Judas Priest
Straddling the line:
Rainbow
UFO
Helm
Maybe on Luna
I think you're misinterpreting what anus.com guy says (his usual claims of neo-classical intricacy or whatever in a random death metal band) for actual, intentful following of classical mode of composition and studied tradition. There's actual cases like Gorguts, where Luc has composed serialist compositions for small orchestras and whatnot as part of going to school for music, but it's a very small part of the scene.
Every person that has ever listened to a single classical rendition with interest and liking and a lot of times, and then later went to compose a song holds the same 'MASSIVE' (?!) classical influence as Celtic Frost do. Which is not much.
Most musicians don't think a lot about why what they've written and liked, is how it is. I remember the Atheist frontman saying in an interview he read Anus.com's critique of his work and he forwarded it to his friends and said 'guys check this shit out! It makes us look cool, we didn't even know half of these words!' to paraphrase.
Your error is common, and it's easy to arrive to it after reading such sources. I suggest examining an interpretation of music for what it is, not attributing it as truth to the original intention of the band. Bolt Thrower has as much a direct, intentful and cultivated classical influence as does Timbaland.
I'm not even gonna touch the 'FOR MONEY!'/'FOR CLASSICAL!' distinction and how many of the great pieces of classical music (up to and including contemporary classical composition) have been created for very large amounts of money etc... it's just an argument that while 'easy to win on the internet' I've just no interest in.
Every person that has ever listened to a single classical rendition with interest and liking and a lot of times, and then later went to compose a song holds the same 'MASSIVE' (?!) classical influence as Celtic Frost do. Which is not much.
Most musicians don't think a lot about why what they've written and liked, is how it is. I remember the Atheist frontman saying in an interview he read Anus.com's critique of his work and he forwarded it to his friends and said 'guys check this shit out! It makes us look cool, we didn't even know half of these words!' to paraphrase.
Your error is common, and it's easy to arrive to it after reading such sources. I suggest examining an interpretation of music for what it is, not attributing it as truth to the original intention of the band. Bolt Thrower has as much a direct, intentful and cultivated classical influence as does Timbaland.
I'm not even gonna touch the 'FOR MONEY!'/'FOR CLASSICAL!' distinction and how many of the great pieces of classical music (up to and including contemporary classical composition) have been created for very large amounts of money etc... it's just an argument that while 'easy to win on the internet' I've just no interest in.
Zealotry
fruit of failure's loins
- Feb 28, 2006
- 203
- 0
- 16
ahahahahaahahahahahahaahahahaha
Wow.
Okay. I'm done with you. From now on I'm only arguing with people who know what the fuck they're talking about.
While my first reaction to reading this was indeed along the lines of "bwahahaha," instead I'd like you to back this up. On the surface, saying that Carcass or Bolt Thrower has a "MASSIVE classical influence" seems absurd.
Also on the surface, it would seem that bands like Deep Purple and Yes had/have far more obvious classical influences than the bands mentioned as having this influence (Kreator?), yet you tag them as "commercial." Obviously you're talking about something different than I'm hearing.
I'd like to understand your perspective and reconcile the different between what you're talking about and what I'm hearing.
Not really. Possessed, Kreator and Slayer are all on the record as saying that Bach was a major influence (and it's obvious to anyone who knows what they're listening for). It's never been a question of directly imitating any particular classical style. Nor is it necessarily a matter of consciously being influenced by classical composers (though, in the case of most of the better bands, composers like Bach, Beethoven and Wagner are definite touchstones, and are generally cited as influences).
There are three areas in which the classical element shows most obviously in most of the better metal bands. The first is tonality. Metal tends to be modal, diatonic or chromatic, like classical music, and is rarely written in the pentatonic scale so typical of rock music.
Most of the better metal bands are much closer structurally to classical music than to rock. This is true at both a mechanical and conceptual level. In rock, instrumental music functions largely to provide rhythmic emphasis and harmonic shading to the dominant (vocal) melody line). In metal, as in classical music, the melodic element is carried within the instrumentation, and the vocals either provide a doubling of the dominant melody, a secondary melody, or (in extreme metal), an additional percussive element. Metal also makes use of many techniques found in the classical tradition, but not within rock music, most notably modalism, polyphony and counterpoint.
On a macro-structural scale, most metal post-Slayer (and Mercyful Fate as well) has been built around linear, narrative styles of arrangement reminiscent of classical music, but not of the stripped down verse-chorus arrangements that are the bread and butter of rock music. Even when metal makes use of a verse-chorus format, it typically does so in a heavily modified form that still internally reflects the classical influence.
Rock music and other pop forms are heavily circumscribed in their range of expression. The basic structural forms and limited array of tonal techniques mean that rock bands deal mostly in broad gestures - a single mood or idea explored without variation. Metal, like classical and ambient music, tends towards a form of artistic structuralism, with meaning signified not by a direct one-to-one correspondence between lyrical and musical content (as in rock and pop), but by the placement of lyrical and musical elements within the larger structure of the song.
It goes without saying that the warrior ethos and Will-to-Power elements that form the heart of metal's conceptual framework echoes the heroic and epic strains of the classical tradition, rather than the party hearty hedonism of rock (which isn't to say that metalheads don't party, just that metal subordinates hedonism to and sublimates it within warrior idealism). Bottom line: there's no way to honestly talk about metal without placing it in a neoclassical context.
Helm
Maybe on Luna
It's mindblowing for me and extremely closeminded to attribute 'pentatonic scale' to rock n' roll and everything else to our very smart and neo-classically recontextualized Heavy Metal, the true heir to classical composition. Do you think that musicians not in our particular idiom only have five frets every octave in their guitar? I don't even like the Beatles, but if you persue their catalogue, you'll find every one of those aspects you attribute to classical/HM composition in variable amounts in their songs.
Same for Kraftwerk. Or Reinassance. Or the guypsy band that's playing drinking music in a pub somewhere. In fact, when it comes to musicianship, width of musical knowledge and general familiarity with the history of music, your average jingle writer has a better take on it than your favourite metalheads. This is why often - even the actual HM musicians say this about themselves, I remember a Deuce/Wardog interview where the guitarist said as much - most HM musicians call themselves 'Heavy Metal musicians' and not just musicians, or artists.
We love a very idiosynchratic genre, why not love it for what it is and not what fake self-importance charges we invent for it? It's the opinion of the sheltered metalhead, cultured in a revisionist and simpleminded (not to mention possibly propagantist) environ that he can only see Wagner in Demilich and not in Fleetwood Mac, or whomever else. When also probably when asked to outline what exactly the aspects of Wagner's composition that they encounter in there are, they come up with 'uhh... it's multi-part and epic!'
It's interesting because I largely agree that Heavy Metal is ambitious and does all these things (usually reinventing the wheel by accident or by propulsion), and it does them much more often than a generic top40 pop band would. But to hold sovereign domain over them while everything else is simpleminded and made for the evil money is just absurd. I've heard a capella vocal trios performing folk music with much more ambitious harmonics than Morbid Angel ever attempted.
Slayer plays a melodic minor scale on a song. Slayer then, without clear concept of traditional composition at all messes around with it to make it sound more 'evil', adding a few accidental steps between the scale, a tritone here, a diminished second harmonic there. Suddenly they're the heirs of Bela Bartok in a proud tradition of this magical classical music made in the service of SPIRIT and never of profit that doesn't even exist in the first place. Mercyful Fate enjoys writing multi-part music with little meso-structural repetition (something easier to do than write a concise repeated pattern song) and suddenly they're serialist composers. Somebody in Massacra decides "hey, wouldn't it be COOL if we add another 'ka-WANG!' (because they don't actually know musical notation speak to say eighth and a rest) at the end of this riff to make it all sound more unbalanced?" and suddenly they're neo-classical. Why not just love the music for how it happened, probably through endless solitary bedroom guitarplaying where the instrument dictates the posibilities as much as the intention of the musician, through the sheer magic that occurs when passion and vision amagalmate in a humid basement where Manilla Road jammed?
Same for Kraftwerk. Or Reinassance. Or the guypsy band that's playing drinking music in a pub somewhere. In fact, when it comes to musicianship, width of musical knowledge and general familiarity with the history of music, your average jingle writer has a better take on it than your favourite metalheads. This is why often - even the actual HM musicians say this about themselves, I remember a Deuce/Wardog interview where the guitarist said as much - most HM musicians call themselves 'Heavy Metal musicians' and not just musicians, or artists.
We love a very idiosynchratic genre, why not love it for what it is and not what fake self-importance charges we invent for it? It's the opinion of the sheltered metalhead, cultured in a revisionist and simpleminded (not to mention possibly propagantist) environ that he can only see Wagner in Demilich and not in Fleetwood Mac, or whomever else. When also probably when asked to outline what exactly the aspects of Wagner's composition that they encounter in there are, they come up with 'uhh... it's multi-part and epic!'
It's interesting because I largely agree that Heavy Metal is ambitious and does all these things (usually reinventing the wheel by accident or by propulsion), and it does them much more often than a generic top40 pop band would. But to hold sovereign domain over them while everything else is simpleminded and made for the evil money is just absurd. I've heard a capella vocal trios performing folk music with much more ambitious harmonics than Morbid Angel ever attempted.
Slayer plays a melodic minor scale on a song. Slayer then, without clear concept of traditional composition at all messes around with it to make it sound more 'evil', adding a few accidental steps between the scale, a tritone here, a diminished second harmonic there. Suddenly they're the heirs of Bela Bartok in a proud tradition of this magical classical music made in the service of SPIRIT and never of profit that doesn't even exist in the first place. Mercyful Fate enjoys writing multi-part music with little meso-structural repetition (something easier to do than write a concise repeated pattern song) and suddenly they're serialist composers. Somebody in Massacra decides "hey, wouldn't it be COOL if we add another 'ka-WANG!' (because they don't actually know musical notation speak to say eighth and a rest) at the end of this riff to make it all sound more unbalanced?" and suddenly they're neo-classical. Why not just love the music for how it happened, probably through endless solitary bedroom guitarplaying where the instrument dictates the posibilities as much as the intention of the musician, through the sheer magic that occurs when passion and vision amagalmate in a humid basement where Manilla Road jammed?
Zealotry
fruit of failure's loins
- Feb 28, 2006
- 203
- 0
- 16
It's amazing how some people who have never studied music in their lives fancy themselves qualified to distinguish who influences what.
This bullshit isn't reflective of any deeper understanding of music history or music theory - this is nothing more than wishful thinking from some pseudo-intellectual jackass whose idiotic, pseudo-scientific take on race theory makes him insecure about enjoying the music he does, so he invents a revisionist history of that music in an effort to convince people that he's listening to something that's not, in fact, firmly rooted in 'my pals music.' It's no different than their repugnant smear campaign against Chuck Schuldiner because of his Jewish heritage.
If you're that insecure, you can fuck off and listen to some other shit. Replace all your Kreator albums with MZ.412 and Blood Axis bootlegs for all I care. I'm sure the band would rather not have people like you in their fan base, anyway.
And for the record, the bands most heavily influenced by classical in this thread are all on The End Records - SGM, Unexpect and Sigh.
This bullshit isn't reflective of any deeper understanding of music history or music theory - this is nothing more than wishful thinking from some pseudo-intellectual jackass whose idiotic, pseudo-scientific take on race theory makes him insecure about enjoying the music he does, so he invents a revisionist history of that music in an effort to convince people that he's listening to something that's not, in fact, firmly rooted in 'my pals music.' It's no different than their repugnant smear campaign against Chuck Schuldiner because of his Jewish heritage.
If you're that insecure, you can fuck off and listen to some other shit. Replace all your Kreator albums with MZ.412 and Blood Axis bootlegs for all I care. I'm sure the band would rather not have people like you in their fan base, anyway.
And for the record, the bands most heavily influenced by classical in this thread are all on The End Records - SGM, Unexpect and Sigh.
Name a single Beatles song that ISN'T a simple verse-chorus arrangement. How about one that uses counterpoint, polyphony or modalism - you can't because they don't exist. There's certainly a higher level of musicality in some of the early Beatles records that
Krautrock emerged from the ambient movement, which, like the best metal, draws heavily on classical influences.
Folk music has always operated outside the patterns of commercial pop - like music in the classical tradition, it has benefited from developing prior to and independently of the industrialization of music. Metal in many ways is a hybrid genre that fulfills both the public function of music in the classical tradition, and the 'private' function of folk music.
In fact, when it comes to musicianship, width of musical knowledge and general familiarity with the history of music, your average jingle writer has a better take on it than your favourite metalheads. This is why often - even the actual HM musicians say this about themselves, I remember a Deuce/Wardog interview where the guitarist said as much - most HM musicians call themselves 'Heavy Metal musicians' and not just musicians, or artists.
Alternately, it could be because Demilich and Wagner share a common idealism, structural lexicon and occasional tonal references, while Wagner and Fleetwood Mac share, well, nothing.
Similar threads
