Impure Metal: How Underground Heavy Metal Became Mainstream Heavy Music

[Jim LotFP]

Wasn't it Chuck S. who coined the term "real metal" instead of "true"?

Didn't Chuck also claim that Cynic was not metal and that they were confused people? Or was he talking about Atheist?

*shrug*

 

[Occam's Razor]

That's another good point: Some of the things I listen to ARE not metal in an original sense (if that exists), but I like them - like Tool or big band jazz, but I would never claim that to be metal...just judging from the music. Then you have things that are musically swerving from metal, but close to it concerning "attitude" (we had that discussion going about Comus).

Problem is: the concrete definition of that wobbly thing called metal.

Another problem rising from the variety of preferences: people wanting to sneak bands into metal that are not, but they want them to be because they like them and need to justify that in front of their metal-friends. That's also where a lot of that "cross-dressing" comes from Dave refers to.

After all - is it still necessary to make up these drawers for different styles of music. Does it take the quality from real metal if it is not named that way?

 

[Jim LotFP]

Problem is: the concrete definition of that wobbly thing called metal.

Notice I never gave a musical description for heavy metal in Scum.

Another problem rising from the variety of preferences: people wanting to sneak bands into metal that are not, but they want them to be because they like them and need to justify that in front of their metal-friends. That's also where a lot of that "cross-dressing" comes from Dave refers to.

Well, take Sculptured. Elements of heavy metal, but they play with it and crash it around a bit (did you ever hear their cover of the song Iron Maiden?).

Hammers of Misfortune seem to weave in and out of heavy metal within a song, have songs which are totally metal, and then have songs which have nothing to do with heavy metal. Kayo Dot, who knows what to call that.

How about Arcturus? Is Sideshow Symphonies really heavy metal? What about Aspera Hiems Symfonia? What about Alone and Chaos Path off of La Masquerade Infernale? But the band did that Disguised Masters crap.

... then there's the ridiculous situation of death metal creating a scene where Iron Maiden is a "glam band", "death metal" is just a "jogging suit scene" according to the old black metal elite...

The problem is, comparing dick sizes to decide who is really metal and who is more metal than the next guy is ridiculous and I think it would kill heavy metal as an art form if it couldn't grow.

I don't know what the answer is, but you can usually tell who is in it for the music and who is in it for the trappings of success (even if just on an "underground" level).

After all - is it still necessary to make up these drawers for different styles of music. Does it take the quality from real metal if it is not named that way?

It takes the ease away from marketing music.

 

[DBB]

I don't know what the answer is, but you can usually tell who is in it for the music and who is in it for the trappings of success (even if just on an "underground" level).

I thought about having a section where I talked about what I meant by the word heavy metal and metal and quickly gave up on that idea and went down the road I did, because I know what I think it is (this probably came out in the article anyway to a certain extent), but could not craft a definition comprehensive and flexible enough to cover my backside. Reminds me of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's quote from a famous case about "hard-core pornography" in 1964:

I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.

edit: One thing that has become apparent to me over the past eight months of writing though is that the New York Times 1991 headline “Heavy Metal: It’s More Than Music,” has to be part of the definition. Before I just was blithely going along not really thinking about much beyond the music (lyrics were a factor, since I have always avoided the “dead fetus on a popsicle stick” bands) and then when I really began to think about what was going on around me as part of the writing process--things changed. A lot of things I could ignore beforehand began to grate on me and altered how I looked at the world of metal. It is not just about slapping metal on something and presenting it as such, but there are certain intangibles beyond the music that have to be taken into account--something I knew at one time but got lost in the shuffle over the years for various reasons.

 

[Occam's Razor]

did you ever hear their cover of the song Iron Maiden?

Yes, also have the "Apollo..." album...you know, I like wind instruments...

Hammers of Misfortune seem to weave in and out of heavy metal within a song, have songs which are totally metal, and then have songs which have nothing to do with heavy metal. Kayo Dot, who knows what to call that.

Hammers is all metal, except for the song-structures maybe...and the multiple vocal approach...maybe just because it is so unpredictable, some might say it's not metal (from a RH-review: hippie rock and kraut-prog influences???)

How about Arcturus? Is Sideshow Symphonies really heavy metal?

Whatever, but I can't get into the new one somehow...

Not to forget the latest Sigh album: total headbanging music with Beach Boys vocal harmonies and Farfisa organs...

 

[Laeth MacLaurie]

A couple of thoughts:

1. His nearly exclusive focus on heavy and speed metal obscures the overall history the genre. It's like he's barely aware of what accounts for well over half of all metal output (and more than that if we're talking about the stuff that's creatively vital).

2. It seems to me that there's an explanation for this sort of thing built into the nature and structure of modern culture and cultual mediation. We have now had nearly 100 years of modern popular music, mediated primarily not through rare live shows in concert halls, but through radio and recording (and, more recently, television and the internet). The move from music as a concert driven experience to music delivered electronically has had profound structural effects on that nature of music, which in turn fudamentally alter what music gets made.

The most obvious effect has been the commodification of music. The ease with which music can be packaged, marketed and sold removed many of the entry barriers that in centuries past seperated the wheat from the chaff and prevented dilettantes, dabblers and dead weight from accessing music as a career option. The economics of the old system of mediation to cultural elites through a very limited number of prestigious live venues. When people are able to experience music as art only a few times a year (or maybe a few times a month, at most), there simply is no room for mediocrity (as there is, for instance, on a cd shelf). This ensured a consistent level of artistic excellence and provided an incentive for continued dedication and the maturation of talent that simply no longer exists in the electronic age.

Commodification replaced the artistic excellence with a new imperative: making as much product available to as many people at the highest possible profit margin. The consequences for quality are manifest, but there are other, less obvious results as well. Commodification and saturation placed new demands on the industry. Electronic mediation placed a premium on novelty and marketing; music was absorbed into the "Next Big Thing" cycle of the advertising world, and while there were far, far more windows of opportunity which artists might enter through, each window was also far, far more narrow than had been the case in previous eras. As a result, the other lasting legacy of the commodification of music has been the near complete absorption of music as a cultural expression by the wider culture of youth.

This music-as-youth-culture paradigm shift has implications for the failure of metal to escape the pop culture dungeon it formed in protest against. The reaction of youth (in any generation) to the world it inherits is predictable and well-understood: disillusionment, alienation, anger, revolt. All of these are conducive to the stirrings of artistic creativity. But their very nature sows the seeds of their (creative) demise. Anger is powerful, but untempered by any positive ideals and vision, it is profoundly brittle and completely unsustainable.

Speed metal is a classic study in what happens when the fire of anger goes out. Many artists simply disappear, others, disillusioned by the process, become what they hated and "sell out." Most of the rest take the path of the silent "sell out" and cynically pander themselves to the anger of their audience, descending into self-parody as they hang on to the ashes of their fame by turning their music into some sort of auto-catharsis for emotions they themselves no longer feel.

Even the truly transcendent artists, those with vision to accompany desire and ideals to go with anger, end up being consumed by the system. No matter how much they hate it, if they wish to expose their art to the world, they have to play at least loosely within the rules of the game. There is no time for patient development, for the slow mining of creativity. If you've got the lightning, you have to bottle it now or no one will ever know it existed. Beethoven's 9th was the culmination of a lifetime of artistic and personal growth. Hvis lyset tar oss was the culmination of 3 years of fevered work by a kid barely old enough to be out of college. Beethoven went triumphantly into the night, escorted by 10,000 admirers. Varg Vikernes went into prison exile after stabbing a former friend to death. Perhaps there is no better symbol of what we really ought to do with metal.

 

[Laeth MacLaurie]

Not heavy metal mags like BW&BK apparently, who put that Roadrunner United thing, not an artist, on the cover of #93.

BW&BK has credibility outside of its own tiny readership of mulletheaded hoser rejects?

 

[Laeth MacLaurie]

Anyway, to denigrate Goat Horn as raping the past and utilizing “retro-thrashers” to tar the band as inauthentic opportunists (which is what the term retro-thrash signifies to significant contingent of critics) and give 3 Inches of Blood a free pass because they incorporate some metalcore into their sound is insanity and reveals how precarious of a ground heavy metal inhabits in today’s “extreme” scene and how the forward-looking, ground breaking ethos has a great deal of contempt for trend-free heavy metal.

What you and much of the old-school crowd miss is that there is no fundamental difference between 'retro' thrash and the bigger, better, newer heavy riffs and ass kazoo set. It's the same thing in different packaging, a social marker substituted for actually having something worth saying. It's all shit and the people promoting all of it are adolescents (a state of mind, not a temporal waystation) more interested in preserving the social viability of the "scene" they're in than in promoting music that doesn't suck.

 

[Laeth MacLaurie]

Wasn't it Chuck S. who coined the term "real metal" instead of "true"?

It was also Chuck who made a career out of marketing dumbed down versions of the ideas of others for stupid children. If nothing else, metal has improved in the new millennium because that worthless cocksucker is dead.

 

[DBB]

His nearly exclusive focus on heavy and speed metal obscures the overall history the genre. It's like he's barely aware of what accounts for well over half of all metal output (and more than that if we're talking about the stuff that's creatively vital).

The words “heavy metal” in the title should have given you a clue as to what to expect. I had thought about including an introductory section that would have had a short section explaining when I was referring to “metal” that it should be read as “heavy metal” and the abbreviated form was used at times to inject a little variation into the text. I discarded the idea due to time constraints and figured that there was no need to lead people by the hand—but I guess I was wrong. This is an 18,000 word monograph and not a 350 page book—I was not making an attempt to be comprehensive, merely picking one critical moment in time and showing some of the effects it has had on the present.

As for my ignorance of most black and post-early 1990s death metal, I stand guilty as charged. Genre definitions and boundaries are idiosyncratic and incredibly difficult to nail down, but I consider thrash and traditional metal to be the primary forms of heavy metal that were in existence before the collapse of the early 1990s and lump them together in this article. Some old-school death metal bands are also considered honorary members of the heavy metal pantheon in my book and this may be being a bit too elastic for some—but so be it. In many ways, I think a band such as Amon Amarth has much more in common with Manowar than Morbid Angel, but we could go around and around about such matters until the melting ice caps swallow us up. Nevertheless, I believe that there are a significant number of people who would recognize these boundaries as something that resonates with their world view, so I do not think it is an outlandish approach.

“stuff that’s creatively vital” Is this a backhanded insult about the music I choose to focus on or a reference to the current cocktail-conversation crop of noise, ambient electronica, drone, and weak riffed post-rock that that elitist critics writing for the New York Times and Salon.com consider to be the new wave of heavy metal? As an aside, I received the Chicago Metal Factory Events Letter in the e-mail today and in the list of all the “metal” shows coming up was a listing for a Stereolab concert. Dark, dark days ahead…..It is almost as if metal is becoming “desperate” again and latching on to any other form of music it can to remain a viable mainstream force.

The most obvious effect has been the commodification of music. The ease with which music can be packaged, marketed and sold removed many of the entry barriers that in centuries past seperated the wheat from the chaff and prevented dilettantes, dabblers and dead weight from accessing music as a career option. The economics of the old system of mediation to cultural elites through a very limited number of prestigious live venues. When people are able to experience music as art only a few times a year

This is just high-brow hogwash. Earthy and honest music has been a fundamental part of the lives of the people for centuries on end, and the haughty aristocrats of taste and refinement have been trying to stamp it out for just as long:

In the summer, arrayed in particolored costume, and with a harp or viol across his shoulders, [the minstrel] ambled on a gaily-caparisoned mule from town to town and from castle to castle. His song was introduced and followed by feats of agility and legerdemain, and was accompanied with such crude music as he could command. His themes were the miracles of the saints, the stories of Scripture, or perhaps more frequently, the legends of later heroes. At the country fairs and in the market places he gathered an appreciative crowd, and in the feudal castles, whose monotony, except in actual warfare, was broken only by tournaments, he was the most welcome. High and low, old and young, glowed with enthusiasm as he sang of the prowess of Christian warriors….The success and popularity of these jongleurs attracted unworthy followers and imitators. These low fellows, unable to obtain entrance to courts and baronial halls, donned grotesque dresses, stationed themselves in market-place or village green and supplemented their verses with coarse buffoonery, feats of legerdemain, tricks with monkeys, and doggerel appealing to a vitiated taste. It was to no purpose that Philip Augustus and Saint Louis banished them from the country, or that the poets, finding the honored names of trouvère and troubadour trailed through the dirt, angrily denounced them as bastards, and ceased to provide them with verse.

The Drama: Its History, Literature and Influence on Civilization, vol. 7. ed. Alfred Bates. London: Historical Publishing Company, 1906. pp. 3-6.

These “bastard” minstrels and jongleurs were singing about things the “mainstream” did not want to hear about.

Speed metal is a classic study in what happens when the fire of anger goes out. Many artists simply disappear, others, disillusioned by the process, become what they hated and "sell out." Most of the rest take the path of the silent "sell out" and cynically pander themselves to the anger of their audience, descending into self-parody as they hang on to the ashes of their fame by turning their music into some sort of auto-catharsis for emotions they themselves no longer feel.

This is all fine and good—but I could say that speed metal dissipated because I let loose with some defcon one flatulence and it would hold as about much water. Philosophical angst without any evidence or facts to back up your argument makes the statement above just so much mumbo-jumbo. Planned obsolescence enforced by money-hungry executives, abetted by status-seeking journalists and acquiesced to by star-struck bands was the reason why thrash and heavy metal went into decline. The market for this was not going to grow much larger, so it was time to introduce a new product line. You can go back and read the sections covering this event again and maybe return with something concrete to say about that, instead of this existential rambling.

In the meantime, here is a hypothetical angry chronology for you:

Overkill Horrorscope 1991 Atlantic

Metallica S/T 1991

Val Azzolt, VP/GM of Atlantic Records holds contract (lives) over bands heads and tells Overkill to try to tone it down a bit

Overkill I Hear Black 01/01/1993 Overkill’s “Black” album I remember thinking that this was alright way back when but haven’t heard it in a very long time and the only album I don’t currently own—so maybe I wasn’t all that impressed

Vulgar Display Of Power Feb 25. 1992 Atlantic Makes Val Azzolt a lot of money

W.F.O. 1994 Atlantic He gives the band the green light to make a thrash album with a stylized Chaly on the green cover

Called Wide Fucking Open for a reason:

Bang bang bang bang bangin' on yer skull!
Eatin' everything is sight, but still I don't seem full.
Complex man in a simple world got the means,
Got the know how to rape me...

In the park sharin' the same bench,
Not far apart but still,
I could never love you.
Supersonic hate.

Obviously, Bobby Blitz is wallowing in a bed of roses here.

But as I said this is all hypothetical.

Varg Vikernes went into prison exile after stabbing a former friend to death. Perhaps there is no better symbol of what we really ought to do with metal.

He could not even do the time in a low-security prison with scheduled leaves—weakling.

 

[Laeth MacLaurie]

The words “heavy metal” in the title should have given you a clue as to what to expect. I had thought about including an introductory section that would have had a short section explaining when I was referring to “metal” that it should be read as “heavy metal” and the abbreviated form was used at times to inject a little variation into the text. I discarded the idea due to time constraints and figured that there was no need to lead people by the hand—but I guess I was wrong. This is an 18,000 word monograph and not a 350 page book—I was not making an attempt to be comprehensive, merely picking one critical moment in time and showing some of the effects it has had on the present.

As for my ignorance of most black and post-early 1990s death metal, I stand guilty as charged. Genre definitions and boundaries are idiosyncratic and incredibly difficult to nail down, but I consider thrash and traditional metal to be the primary forms of heavy metal that were in existence before the collapse of the early 1990s and lump them together in this article. Some old-school death metal bands are also considered honorary members of the heavy metal pantheon in my book and this may be being a bit too elastic for some—but so be it. In many ways, I think a band such as Amon Amarth has much more in common with Manowar than Morbid Angel, but we could go around and around about such matters until the melting ice caps swallow us up. Nevertheless, I believe that there are a significant number of people who would recognize these boundaries as something that resonates with their world view, so I do not think it is an outlandish approach.

Half a page where "I don't really know anything about those subgenres" would do. Jackoff Jim may pay you by the word, my friend, but this is a messageboard, no need to clutter it with needless verbiage.

You make a leap of a decade between the collapse of speed/thrash as a commercially viable entity (it hadn't been creatively since 1986, but that's another story) and the rise of the new crap that passes for metal without any reference to the music that dominated the underground during those intervening years. Sloppy, to say the least.

“stuff that’s creatively vital” Is this a backhanded insult about the music I choose to focus on or a reference to the current cocktail-conversation crop of noise, ambient electronica, drone, and weak riffed post-rock that that elitist critics writing for the New York Times and Salon.com consider to be the new wave of heavy metal?

I'm speaking retrospectively. Black and death metal have proven over their history to be by far the most creatively fruitful subgenres, yet you ignore them to focus on a very narrow cross-section of speed metal bands.

As an aside, I received the Chicago Metal Factory Events Letter in the e-mail today and in the list of all the “metal” shows coming up was a listing for a Stereolab concert. Dark, dark days ahead…..It is almost as if metal is becoming “desperate” again and latching on to any other form of music it can to remain a viable mainstream force.

The last creatively significant movement in metal died for all intents and purposes 10 years ago. Does it matter who fucks the corpse?

This is just high-brow hogwash. Earthy and honest music has been a fundamental part of the lives of the people for centuries on end, and the haughty aristocrats of taste and refinement have been trying to stamp it out for just as long:

Popular music (including the underground) in no way represents a continuation of the old folk music traditions. It takes place within the context of formalized commodification; there's always an element of monetary gain and gloryhounding present. Folk music was created solely for the internal enjoyment of local communities (though, even here, most was populist toe tapping crap, with a few scattered works of genius thrown in).

These “bastard” minstrels and jongleurs were singing about things the “mainstream” did not want to hear about.

As opposed to speed metal, which was singing about the same liberal politics and hedonistic lifestyles the mainstream embraced. You're deluding yourself if you really believe speed metal stood for something the mainstream feared.

This is all fine and good—but I could say that speed metal dissipated because I let loose with some defcon one flatulence and it would hold as about much water. Philosophical angst without any evidence or facts to back up your argument makes the statement above just so much mumbo-jumbo. Planned obsolescence enforced by money-hungry executives, abetted by status-seeking journalists and acquiesced to by star-struck bands was the reason why thrash and heavy metal went into decline.

Come now, your "evidence" isn't any better. "Metallica wanted more money, and hired Bob Rock, therefore Avenged Sevenfold." Labels and press agents don't mean a hill of beans if the creators of the art themselves are not complicit in their own demise. And why are they complicit? Because the anger that motivated their rejection of the rock star path is gone.

Besides, your theories don't address the silent sell outs of the vast majority of bands who didn't radically change course, but instead simply churned out faceless albums in a parody of the style until finally drying up and blowing away, as well as ignoring the primacy of structure over individual actors (none of this is unique to heavy or speed metal, it happened to hardcore and punk and rock 'n roll before it, and to death and black metal in its wake). The cause of death is always the same; youth culture and youth rebellion fail because they have no sustaining force beyond their own internal dissidence. Once established, that dissidence becomes the new orthodoxy and the pattern repeats. The illusion is to think that metal is somehow different.

He could not even do the time in a low-security prison with scheduled leaves—weakling.

Because, after all, nothing says "weak" like breaking out...

Idiot.

 

[Jim LotFP]

1. His nearly exclusive focus on heavy and speed metal obscures the overall history the genre. It's like he's barely aware of what accounts for well over half of all metal output (and more than that if we're talking about the stuff that's creatively vital).

Black and death metal are irrelevant to the article's subject. The brief mention they do get merely highlights the silliness of considering "extreme metal" and anything fundamentally different than "heavy metal".

Jackoff Jim may pay you by the word

This is funny.

The ease with which music can be packaged, marketed and sold removed many of the entry barriers that in centuries past seperated the wheat from the chaff and prevented dilettantes, dabblers and dead weight from accessing music as a career option. The economics of the old system of mediation to cultural elites through a very limited number of prestigious live venues.

You imply that you would prefer if old rich people (or government) dictated who is able to make music, what music they make, and where it is able to be performed.

Commodification replaced the artistic excellence with a new imperative: making as much product available to as many people at the highest possible profit margin. The consequences for quality are manifest, but there are other, less obvious results as well. Commodification and saturation placed new demands on the industry. Electronic mediation placed a premium on novelty and marketing; music was absorbed into the "Next Big Thing" cycle of the advertising world, and while there were far, far more windows of opportunity which artists might enter through, each window was also far, far more narrow than had been the case in previous eras. As a result, the other lasting legacy of the commodification of music has been the near complete absorption of music as a cultural expression by the wider culture of youth.

Commodification also allows music to evolve and develop new ideas at a far more rapid pace. I'd be pissed off if the music I listened to was stuck in the year 1995, let alone 1950 or 1850. If widely-heard music had to go through some sort of cultural elite, it would stop dead in its tracks. Of course, such evolution does create a lot of junk music, but there is absolutely nothing stopping a truly inspired and creative individual from creating music and making it available in the current system.

This music-as-youth-culture paradigm shift has implications for the failure of metal to escape the pop culture dungeon it formed in protest against.

Without music-as-youth-culture, rock and roll, heavy metal, or any evolution of heavy metal, would not exist in the first place.

Popular music (including the underground) in no way represents a continuation of the old folk music traditions. It takes place within the context of formalized commodification; there's always an element of monetary gain and gloryhounding present. Folk music was created solely for the internal enjoyment of local communities (though, even here, most was populist toe tapping crap, with a few scattered works of genius thrown in).

So in the end, the only difference between popular and folk music was access to the performance?

Speed metal is a classic study in what happens when the fire of anger goes out. Many artists simply disappear, others, disillusioned by the process, become what they hated and "sell out." Most of the rest take the path of the silent "sell out" and cynically pander themselves to the anger of their audience, descending into self-parody as they hang on to the ashes of their fame by turning their music into some sort of auto-catharsis for emotions they themselves no longer feel.

It's not an issue of genre, but of individual (or small partnership) motivation.

Even the truly transcendent artists, those with vision to accompany desire and ideals to go with anger, end up being consumed by the system.

Only if they allow themselves to be. Usually, they are upset that their vision is not giving them the rewards and recognition that crappy music gives to crappy artists, so they alter their art to get what they think they are due. But they'll have released some amazing material before they get to that point.

No matter how much they hate it, if they wish to expose their art to the world, they have to play at least loosely within the rules of the game.

Yes, they have to record it and make it available. That's it.

Beethoven's 9th was the culmination of a lifetime of artistic and personal growth. Hvis lyset tar oss was the culmination of 3 years of fevered work by a kid barely old enough to be out of college. Beethoven went triumphantly into the night, escorted by 10,000 admirers. Varg Vikernes went into prison exile after stabbing a former friend to death.

"Went into prison exile." Interesting way to phrase that.

Do you think Vikernes would have recorded a damn thing, ever, if music was controlled by "the entry barriers that in centuries past seperated the wheat from the chaff"?

Idiot.

You obviously think Dave's work is worth calling attention to and discussing because you linked his article and gave your opinions in several forums. Or do you make it a habit in wasting such time on idiots?

 

[Planetary Eulogy]

Black and death metal are irrelevant to the article's subject. The brief mention they do get merely highlights the silliness of considering "extreme metal" and anything fundamentally different than "heavy metal".

They're not irrelevant to the subject. He's trying to leap 10-12 years into the future without covering the music which dominated metal in the intervening years, music which shaped the character both of metal and of the music that passes for metal now. It's like talking about the origins of WWII by jumping from Versailles to 1 Sept., 1939 with no mention of what came between.

You imply that you would prefer if old rich people (or government) dictated who is able to make music, what music they make, and where it is able to be performed.

As opposed to now, when this doesn't happen? At least in the old system, the 'rich people' promoted artists on the basis of talent, as opposed to promoting based on whether they think they can sell a lot of records to the sort of mouthbreathing retards that like Fiddy or Opeth.

Commodification also allows music to evolve and develop new ideas at a far more rapid pace.

Sure, it forces novelty, but it doesn't allow for exploration or anything that makes art great. There will never be another musical artist of the caliber of Beethoven, not because genius no longer exists, but because the system will never give it time to grow and develop naturally.

I'd be pissed off if the music I listened to was stuck in the year 1995, let alone 1950 or 1850.

The only reason this is an issue is because recorded music creates constant exposure, which leads to boredom. If you're not constantly subjected to music that all sounds exactly the fucking same, the need for constant novelty (not the same as innovation, of course, but it feels the same to idiots, which is why Ulver still has a career).

If widely-heard music had to go through some sort of cultural elite, it would stop dead in its tracks.

Not at all. The classical tradition produced 1000 years of unbroken innovation before the advent of recording technology, with nary a minute of Cannibal Corpse.

Of course, such evolution does create a lot of junk music

And almost no eternal music either.

but there is absolutely nothing stopping a truly inspired and creative individual from creating music and making it available in the current system.

But there's a whole system between an artist and meaningful creative development. The system doesn't allow for patient growth and development, so greatness remains almost completely unattainable.

Without music-as-youth-culture, rock and roll, heavy metal, or any evolution of heavy metal, would not exist in the first place.

I'd trade every artist popular music ever produced for one Beethoven or Mozart freed from the restraints of the current system.

So in the end, the only difference between popular and folk music was access to the performance?

I see that reading comprehension isn't your strong suit. The real difference is that folk music was shaped only by the needs of the community and the creator, while popular music is shaped by the pressures of the commercial system (even when the artists do not play ball with the system).

It's not an issue of genre, but of individual (or small partnership) motivation.

And these cannot be understood outside of the structures in which they exist. Individuals have no fully independent existence, so acting as if they do is to simply wallow in error.

Only if they allow themselves to be. Usually, they are upset that their vision is not giving them the rewards and recognition that crappy music gives to crappy artists, so they alter their art to get what they think they are due. But they'll have released some amazing material before they get to that point.

What's this "usually"? Very few artists radically alter their music for commercial purposes, most simply slip into repeating the forumlas that brought them to prominence in the first place. It's just as much of a cop out, of course, and brought about by the same loss of anger and passion.

Yes, they have to record it and make it available. That's it.

And sign contracts to get it distributed and all the compromises and infighting and bullshit that comes with dealing with a label. Otherwise, you're left with music that no one will ever hear.

Do you think Vikernes would have recorded a damn thing, ever, if music was controlled by "the entry barriers that in centuries past seperated the wheat from the chaff"?

Absolutely. The old system excelled at finding and cultivating genius. It just sucked for people who lacked transcendent talent.

You obviously think Dave's work is worth calling attention to and discussing because you linked his article and gave your opinions in several forums. Or do you make it a habit in wasting such time on idiots?

The topic is an interesting one, despite his inept handling of it. Far too interesting to let it die just because some dork who still hasn't recovered emotionally from the success of Nirvana tries to bury it under 45 pages of fingerpointing and masturbatory self-congratulation.

 

[Occam's Razor]

It was also Chuck who made a career out of marketing dumbed down versions of the ideas of others for stupid children. If nothing else, metal has improved in the new millennium because that worthless cocksucker is dead.

Yeah, he definitely made a fortune out of "marketing" that. What ideas did he steal exactly, and how did he dumb them down? - Don't say Paul Speckmann or Possessed now (the eternal debate about who invented death metal - Schuldliner never claimed to!) or I have to laugh...

Calling dead people cocksuckers is not so classy...

 

[Jim LotFP]

They're not irrelevant to the subject. He's trying to leap 10-12 years into the future without covering the music which dominated metal in the intervening years, music which shaped the character both of metal and of the music that passes for metal now. It's like talking about the origins of WWII by jumping from Versailles to 1 Sept., 1939 with no mention of what came between.

But the article isn't about *metal* history in general, it's about how metal gets diluted and watered down by outside forces. It compares what happened in the early 90s against what is happening now. It highlights how Metallica's grand grab for cash is that shocked people is now The Black Dahlia Murder's business-as-usual with nobody batting an eyelash.

He didn't touch on the Columbia-Earache fiasco, which is the only valid item I would think fits both your criticism here and what Dave was focusing on.

As opposed to now, when this doesn't happen? At least in the old system, the 'rich people' promoted artists on the basis of talent, as opposed to promoting based on whether they think they can sell a lot of records to the sort of mouthbreathing retards that like Fiddy or Opeth.

Yes, it happens now through corporations and record labels, but such things are irrelevant to people interested in music as art. An individual can record without financial backing, he can publish his music on tape, vinyl, CD, MP3, or however he wants, he can sell those items to individuals or distributors as best he can. No "rich people" or corporate interference necessary.

Not at all. The classical tradition produced 1000 years of unbroken innovation before the advent of recording technology, with nary a minute of Cannibal Corpse.

Bullshit. You can't claim that no musician in 1000 years pandered to an audience and that only innovative, ingenious music was made.

I see that reading comprehension isn't your strong suit. The real difference is that folk music was shaped only by the needs of the community and the creator, while popular music is shaped by the pressures of the commercial system (even when the artists do not play ball with the system).

Just for shits and giggles, explain to me the difference between "the community" that shaped folk music and "the commercial system" that shapes popular music.

And these cannot be understood outside of the structures in which they exist. Individuals have no fully independent existence, so acting as if they do is to simply wallow in error.

Individuals may have "no fully independent existence", but they have the full capability of arranging different sounds in specific order, they have the full capability of then presenting that music to other people however they think is possible. Creative freedom does exist.

... and if it doesn't, musicians today still have a much larger musical universe to draw inspiration from than anybody from the classical era.

And sign contracts to get it distributed and all the compromises and infighting and bullshit that comes with dealing with a label. Otherwise, you're left with music that no one will ever hear.

I fail to see how the old ways of doing things is any less restricting. I don't see how you can argue about commercial systems and bands that rehash their material, and then complain that true talent not being able to be heard.

Absolutely. The old system excelled at finding and cultivating genius. It just sucked for people who lacked transcendent talent.

Is your complaint really that there are no "transcendent talents" today, or just that they don't get to be as well-known as Opeth, Death, Korn, or Britney Spears? Isn't your real complaint that you have to wade through all the crap to get to what you want to listen to?

That I could sympathize with.

The topic is an interesting one, despite his inept handling of it. Far too interesting to let it die just because some dork who still hasn't recovered emotionally from the success of Nirvana tries to bury it under 45 pages of fingerpointing and masturbatory self-congratulation.

Direct quotes and references are "masturbatory self-congratulation"?

 

[Occam's Razor]

Hold on a second with your idealization of Beethoven and Mozart: Behind the latter, a largely talented person, stood a father that deftly advertised his son and literally sent him on European tours. Beethoven, Bach and many others had an immense output not only because they were talented, but because they were forced - work on clerical obligation to make a living for family with numerous children. You cannot blame the recording business only for leaving no "time to develop" - distractions have grown over the years, the more so with new media, and modern day systems don't allow the muse to unfold herself, nor do they appreciate it. Art is less worth in public, as it has been bck then: the better-off people cared for it, for others, aesthetical things were and are luxury.

After all, if you prefer the old geniuses to any modern artist, what are you doing here...I'm fine enjoying them both...

 

[Laeth MacLaurie]

Yeah, he definitely made a fortune out of "marketing" that. What ideas did he steal exactly, and how did he dumb them down? - Don't say Paul Speckmann or Possessed now (the eternal debate about who invented death metal - Schuldliner never claimed to!) or I have to laugh...

Calling dead people cocksuckers is not so classy...

His early career was based on cloning (in a very inferior fashion, it might be added) the work of Possessed, and his later material quotes liberally (and again, in a childish, candy coated version of the originals) from Coroner and demo-era Cynic. All completely unacknowledged.

 

[DBB]

They're not irrelevant to the subject. He's trying to leap 10-12 years into the future without covering the music which dominated metal in the intervening years, music which shaped the character both of metal and of the music that passes for metal now. It's like talking about the origins of WWII by jumping from Versailles to 1 Sept., 1939 with no mention of what came between.

Again, this is not a comprehensive history and that means it is not an all-inclusive linear history of metal in the broadest sense of the term. I chose an event and then provided some case studies of the effects this prior event had on the present—this is an exploratory piece in some respects (this is why articles are written) and is not a seamless and flawless piece of work, but something that is designed to raise points and pass along some information that I believe is important. I do have an agenda though, and I am not interested in holding hands and writing an ecumenical history of all metal that includes everyone and hurts nobody's feelings and I imagine there are other people out there who feel the same way you do for one reason or another.

If someone was to write a history of how black metal became mainstream music (the road from Emperor and Mayhem to Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir) you would have to include a detailed discussion of nu-metal in this history of black metal using your logic. It was a genre of metal that dominated metal during the time period, but really would have little to do with black metal. But you are probably one of these people who believe that any black metal not made in a dank, unfurnished basement and hand numbered with blood-tinged goat semen by the light of a candle made with the fat of a skinned wombat might as well be Korn. Again, this is an exploratory and somewhat fragmentary history of "underground heavy metal" not black metal or death metal.

As your comments above prove Laeth MacLaurie, Planetary Eulogy, or whatever the hell you chose to call yourself next time you post--many people regarded black metal and death metal as some great evolutionary leap that had revealed heavy metal to be something inferior and idiotic and did not care if bands made music after 1986, 1988, 1991 or whatever other arbitrary date you choose to deem something to be too commodified to be worthy of consideration. In the end, I think you just want me to say that the real underground is the grim, kvlt black metal of the early nineties and that after Varg went into “exile,” that metal is dead and innovation is impossible and the only thing left to do is lock ourselves up in a hovel with the curtains drawn, drink wine and touch ourselves while we listen obsessively to a copy of Hvis lyset Tar Oss and wait for the genius to “escape” (not returning from an unsupervised leave and carjacking a family is weakness of the highest order and not a daring getaway) listen obsessively to a copy of Hvis lyset Tar Oss , shedding bitter tears about what might have been.



Is using a different screen name a way to disassociate yourself from the previous statements you made or is this just the electronic equivalent of a political Astroturf-campaign--creating pseudonyms in an attempt to give the false impression that there are more people concerned about the concerns you desperately want people to have about my article?

http://bbs.anus.com/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=2&t=002178

What’s next? Are you going to start having philosophical discussions with yourself?

 

[Occam's Razor]

His early career was based on cloning (in a very inferior fashion, it might be added) the work of Possessed, and his later material quotes liberally (and again, in a childish, candy coated version of the originals) from Coroner and demo-era Cynic. All completely unacknowledged.

I give you that Coroner-reference (as an influence in some riffs, but no downright copying), but other than speed combined with technicality, I see no "cloning" of the Cynic-demos (you mean their last ones before "Focus"). What is candy-coated about songs that most musicians nowadays fail to cover in an appropriated way? - I'm thinking of everything from "Human" on...

But this behaviour of yours is quite usual for people who praise little Varg's oeuvre as complete genius - no mosh, no core, no fun, you know - and therefore no "real metal" or "life metal", as Schuldliner explained it.

He was probably not beyond criticism, but for sure a person of integrity, unassuming and honest. Go name people "declared faggots" on other boards please - as you did before.

 

[Jim LotFP]

I see no "cloning" of the Cynic-demos (you mean their last ones before "Focus"). What is candy-coated about songs that most musicians nowadays fail to cover in an appropriated way? - I'm thinking of everything from "Human" on...

I think it's a bit of exaggeration to say Chuck 'quoted liberally', and did so 'completely unacknowledged', when two Cynic members were on the album where he began showing signs of the style.

He was probably not beyond criticism, but for sure a person of integrity, unassuming and honest.

hmm.