Genres and Subgenres in music

[ShredHeadJHJ]

True, what I said there was sort of "tongue in cheek" about inventing a genre. All those crazy genres are still a big play on words though. Like I said there's about 40 words that can be mixed & matched to make a Metal Genre 101...

Black
Doom
Death
Power
Core
Technical
Progressive
Thrash
Thrashened
Blackened
Thrashened
Gothic
Extreme
Math
Depressive
Ambient
Post-
Speed
Symphonic
Folk
Viking
Industrial
Melodic
Heavy

Ect., ect. You get the picture. I'm just saying that people can come up with crazy combinations & they stick, when in reality it's not always necessary to do all that to categorize a band. There are a ton of bands that have their own sound anyways, so it's tough to compare them to other bands in a ceratin genre. Megadeth are a decent example of this I think.

 

[SentinelSlain]

This is a good observation. It is very safe to stay withing your genre boundaries and play decent, standard music. I'll admit I definitely enjoy genre staples, but often the best bands are the innovators or the bands who can fuse things together well.

Which is kind of what I said:

Is it just me or are they pretty stupid. I mean they just seem to exist so that crap bands can have more respect than they would normally for being average in that genre and copying the more important bands in it.

It makes the band sound like they are doing a set job rather than being creative if they give themself a really set genre.

 

[Jreg]

Genres in themselves are highly useful tools for classifying, categorizing, exploring, interpreting, explaining, and analyzing music. On the other hand, it also has a detrimental effect to the music itself, in that these rigid categorizations create in the artist's mind a sense of rigidity and boundary, so that the artist is no longer writing heavy sounding guitar-based music or even "Metal" music, but rather a "Thrash Metal album" or a "Death Metal album," which pigeonholes and stagnates the creative process. It puts the artist in a frame of mind that stunts growth and creativity and evolution. Of course this is not universally true, but it is undeniable that this mentality has proliferated throughout music as a whole, let alone simply Metal.

Yeah that's pretty much was I was thinking. Genres and categorizations have a definite upside, and they almost seem necessary in the internet age where it's much easier to pro-actively find what you want instead of picking out the best of what's being spoon-fed to you. But no language or social construct can substitute for the actual experience of hearing music itself, and when treated as if they CAN, the categorizations can shape the creation and consumption of music just as well as the music can shape categorizations.

Not that it's absolutely devastating when that happens, but the thing is that music is a (more or less) concrete artistic statement created by 1-6 people or so. Labels and categorizations are not. They are the general public's overall consensus in verbally describing what they hear, and the process isn't universal or systematic. In fact, the resulting descriptions are frequently inconsistent, contradictory, inaccurate, misleading and sometimes just dead wrong (the way music is often tagged on Last.fm and RYM testifies to this). If you check out new music without the aid of any such genres labels, then I guess none of that matters and, frankly, my hat goes off to you. I, on the other hand, do use them at least some of the time to find new bands, and it's annoying how I occasionally will let a few choice descriptive words turn me off to a band without even hearing them. That's my big problem with genre labeling.

 

[Belligerent]

I'm going to go on a mini rant here.

I have never ever understood why people get so pissed off by people using genres and subgenres. Is it so heinous that some of us want to describe the music we listen to more accurately? Saying "death n roll" or "melodic thrashcore" or whatever is far more descriptive than saying "metal" or even "death metal". When I want to learn about a band, getting specific genre(s) is very helpful and I really don't see why people don't like descritpive genres.

Exactly. When I try to describe an amazing band like Thurisaz to someone I like to get descriptive. Thurisaz,Atmospheric/Black/Doom/Folk.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Thurisaz is pretty unique, I don't actually know what I would call them for a genre...

 

[Mort Divine]

I'd just stick with crap.

 

[Belligerent]

Crap would be Pain of Salvation. Thurisaz would be something fresh and innovative that simple minds like yours cannot comprehend.

 

[The Butt]

I'll quote myself from the black-sabbath.com boards.

Simple genre classifications (such as black metal, death metal, or even "prefixes" such as technical or melodic), as much as people will not want to admit it, are needed. Like, if your friend asks you what genre "Arsis" is for example, because they want to explore more music like it, you can just say technical death metal, as opposed to "heavy metal music with guttural vocals and complex tempo changes".

It's shit like "post-metal", "alternative music", and "mathcore", that do nothing but confuse me.

 

[The Ozzman]

Post-metal/rock are stupid titles.

 

[The Butt]

Post-metal/rock are stupid titles.

Yeah, I don't like them either.

But the thing I posted above was in response to someone who didn't even like the simple genres like death metal. His philosophy was that the only two musical genres were "good music" and "bad music", and anything else was incorrect.

 

[SentinelSlain]

Which isn't really what I was saying. I was talking about really long ones and ones like you said that don't really help.

I personally don't like the ones ending in core other than hard core because I don't have a clue what the core bit is about. I'm probably being stupid though lol. I also think Core sounds a bit rubbish.

 

[Vimana]

Genres describe a large group of bands, they shouldnt be too specific

In my opinion there are too many genres. I don't think something should be a genre if it only consists of 1 or 2 bands. Like "Sleaze Rock". I read about it, the only "Sleaze Rock" band is GN'R. And genres like "Gothic Punk". The only "Gothic Punk" I've heard of is Aiden. I saw a Punk page and there were a million different types of Punk on it that sounded pretty retarded

 

[CAIRATH]

I personally don't like the ones ending in core other than hard core because I don't have a clue what the core bit is about. I'm probably being stupid though lol. I also think Core sounds a bit rubbish.

The core suffix comes from the hardcore genre. Genres like metalcore and grindcore have their roots in hardcore music.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Seriously. Get over the core thing you bunch of faggots...

 

[CAIRATH]

Bit overzealous on the 'core defence there? No one has said a single negative thing about hardcore/metalcore or anything in this thread. The only thing being discussed is genre names, what they mean and whether they serve a purpose.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

I'm sorry if you took my post to imply a defense of the music somehow.

 

[CAIRATH]

I don't know what the fuck else you mean by it. It just seems like an entirely random comment in the context of this thread. But carry on then.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

It means that I am honestly very tired of people writing off entire genres of music (not to imply necessarily a defense of the ACTUAL SOUND here just fyi) due to their names. What a trivial thing to call me out on. Did I beat up your dog or something?

 

[CAIRATH]

Heheh, whatever dude.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

Right back at you, if you're going to complain about my random points with equally random nitpicking.