Sumeet said:
Some random person including something that may or may not be pop music in what they consider "metal" does not have any impact on you or anyone here, and in no way makes it harder for any of us to listen to music that we enjoy.
I will disagree.
(edit: Eighty thousand people showed up for the Lordi show yesterday, not the two hundred thousand number some people were throwing around)
And remember none of these people (or at least not enough to make a difference in voting) voted for Lordi in the Eurovision contest. You can't vote for the country you're currently in.
Some Eurovision stats from its website:
"This year, the number of viewers for the Semi Final were 35% higher than in 2005 and for the Final, were up by 28%."
So all those estimates of "one hundred million viewers" based on past years? Hah. We're around 128,000,000 viewers, really.
"In France, average market shares reached 30.3%, up by 8% over last year's figure. Other countries that showed a rise in average market shares, include Germany with 38.7% (up from 29.8%), UK with 37.5% (up from 36.9%), Spain with 36% (up from 35.5%), Ireland with 58.3 % (up from 35.3%) and Sweden, which reached over 80% compared to 57.8% in 2005."
In Sweden 80% of all televisions in use (and who knows how they measure this these days) during the time Eurovision was on, were turned to Eurovision.
But Sweden had a large increase, and they gave 12 points to Finland. Ireland gave 12 to Lithuania and 10 to Finland (heavy "protest" vote there, interesting.) Spain gave Finland 10. UK gave Finland 12 and Lithuania 10 (again...). Germany gave Finland 10. France gave 8.
So all of the places they mentioned as having significantly greater interest voted for Lordi in their top three places, the most heavy increases giving the full 12 points to Lordi.
As interest in "heavy metal" rises, the industry behind heavy metal is going to fall all over themselves to make it more accessible to every single person on Earth. This doesn't simply mean MTV exposure, better distribution to stores, and the like. It does mean some people are going to get very famous and very rich.
It does mean people picking up a guitar and noodling around can see such fame and fortune as a possible outcome for them.
So what are they going to decide to play? Music that means something? Or music that will facilitate their fame and fortune?
Yeah, there will still be genuine bands out that that become successful. You know. Well,
wildly successful by the standards of anyone in the heavy metal community in the 90s (or even right now, not too many million sellers hanging around heavy metal, are there?). But most of the bands becoming successful under the banner of "heavy metal" will be the equivalent of the most painted and boring of the 80s glam scene.
There will be the bands that bitch and complain. (like Flotsam and Jetsam complaining in a magazine interview in the 80s that their record label needs to do more for them because they'd sold a pitiful 150,000 copies of their album). You'll have the large magazine asking ridiculous questions to bands that aren't (currently) geared towards mass acceptance (see bands like Kreator and Sepultura in the 80s having their success compared to Metallica's).
We'll probably have our new versions of "SPECIAL REPORT: Why is concert security so dangerous to headbangers?"
And a number of them will reach a certain popularity with their anti-commercial stance and their cool music, and decide they want more, and change for the worse to be friendlier.
Now, all of this is going to be harder and heavier than the 80s equivalents. Whoever are the new generation's glame metal equivalents, they will be tons harder than the Wingers and such.
But remember, all commercial spikes and trends come to an end. If heavy metal is following the pattern of the 80s (and I think it is) as far as popularity, then the end will come quickly and decisively. A new trend (which will be musically related yet quickly distance itself from metal) will take over, and the entire heavy metal scene will collapse on itself. A few holdovers will still have careers, even more bands will shift to still seem "cool" with the new style, and most bands, with even the
possibility of respectable record sales gone, will simply disappear.
Whatever heavy metal survives this, we wouldn't recognize it now. Every single thing we listen to will be "old news" and out of date for the new heavy metal underground to emerge from the ruins. It will be nastier and hostile to the old influences for awhile. No guarantees that anybody into heavy metal now will be able to stomach it. No bands that will be part of keeping that tradition alive exist yet. None of the record labels that will finance and publicize the movement exist yet. And the bands that serve as the core influences for this new future movement are probably just now releasing their first album or two, probably considered pure crap by our standards. But fuck all if anyone's going to know it until they've already gone sour and bands are talking about their "early" stuff.
A lot of words to say: Heavy metal hasn't learned a thing.
And I don't know if I'm up for all of the work it's going to take to sort through all this shit to find things I can enjoy.
So yeah, I think it's a big problem for the mass market to get hold of what they think is real "heavy metal." It won't hurt my ability to listen what I like now, but it's going to be so much more difficult to find more of that in the future. And I'm a fucking nitpick who has had a hard time of it the past few years anyway.
Somebody save this post and let's compare it to how things have gone in about ten years or so.
