The "Definition of Metal" Project

[zabu of nΩd]

Voting on something like that is completely pointless. You can't resolve controversies without discussion. And besides, there's no guarantee that the majority of people voting wouldn't be complete idiots without any idea of what metal really is.

 

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

I don't particularly want to tbh, but I'll make judgments if people present some "borderline" cases. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I don't particularly want to tbh, but I'll make judgments if people present some "borderline" cases. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about

Now all may rejoice. The Great Seer is among us.

 

[Cythraul]

We can, but I think we should be careful not to draw too much of a line between them and act as if they are necessarily interdependant. Many influential bands admit to writing lyrics as a secondary concern and I think most great metal bands are primarily instrumentally gifted musicians who wrote lyrics to conform to the conventions they saw themselves as writing within.

It's probably true that lyrics are a secondary concern for the vast majority of metal bands, but I still think it's important to ask why certain lyrical/conceptual conventions exist in metal. There's a good reason besides mere convention that metal bands do not write lyrics about breaking up with one's girlfriend. As far as I'm concerned, the difference between metal and other genres is not just aesthetic, but also conceptual. It should at least be considered but if nobody's interested in doing that for our purposes I guess there's nothing I can do about that.

edit: If the definition were up to me it would take into account what the music means, not merely what it sounds like. I don't really know how in-depth vihris-gari wants to get, but I find just surface level aesthetic analysis unsatisfactory.

 

[Vossyrus]

edit: If the definition were up to me it would take into account what the music means, not merely what it sounds like. I don't really know how in-depth vihris-gari wants to get, but I find just surface level aesthetic analysis unsatisfactory.

I think taking into account the meaning of the band's music would complicate things immensely, and it would be greater open to an endless amount of varying interpretations, and not to mention it's highly subjective. Bands create music for numerous different reasons and not all bands have a real purpose or a meaning behind their music and I don't believe metal necessarily does a whole, or at least in terms of offering something that is exclusive to metal. Some people feel that black metal incorporates an incredible amount depth from a non-musical standpoint with ideology, philosophy etc. This may be true in some cases but a lot of it is just self-convinced and contrived bs.

 

[Cythraul]

I think taking into account the meaning of the band's music would complicate things immensely, and it would be greater open to an endless amount of varying interpretations, and not to mention it's highly subjective. Bands create music for numerous different reasons and not all bands have a real purpose or a meaning behind their music and I don't believe metal necessarily does a whole, or at least in terms of offering something that is exclusive to metal. Some people feel that black metal incorporates an incredible amount depth from a non-musical standpoint with ideology, philosophy etc. This may be true in some cases but a lot of it is just self-convinced and contrived bs.

I don't see how this task would be a whole lot more difficult than defining metal with regard to aesthetics. Art forms are systems of symbols. Symbols have meanings and associations. It's all clearly there in the music, imagery, and lyrics.

 

[Necro Joe]

I've always been fairly sceptical of claims that it is possible to extract a meaning from a work of art that is independant of its effect on the viewer/listener/whatever. Or rather, if it is possible to come up with a linguistic component that 'explains' a peice of music, I'm not sure whether I would see that as helpful. Art is not merely coded communication that can be deciphered and discarded, how we respond to it is IMO more important in defining its 'meaning' than any symbolic interpretation.

 

[Zephyrus]

Interpretation is far too vague to objectively pin it down to say "this is this genre because this is the meaning it conveys to the listener."

 

[waif]

I don't think we'll get a decent definition out of the meaning to the listener, especially since metal is so varied.

 

[Einherjar86]

Wow. An awesome thread, personally.

I wonder if it would be helpful or interesting to try and create a "metal family tree" of sorts. I think it would work better if we traced a course of influence for certain metal bands. Therefore, such a tree would not be chronological, but influential to metal throughout the decades.

For example:

SABBATH- Led Zeppelin,Jethro Tull- Cirith Ungol,Manilla Road
\
Deep Purple,Uriah Heep
\
Iron Maiden,Judas Priest

Etc... (unfortunately the diagram doesn't appear correctly when I post it; sorry if it's confusing)

This is by no means complete, and I'm not sure if people would even completely agree with this line of influence, or if people even think such a diagram would help. Personally, I think that a metal band must trace its influence back to Sabbath. That is not to say that the first metal band they heard was Sabbath; merely that Sabbath was the first metal band. Then you could say that certain other influences help to shape their sound. For instance, Zeppelin and Tull could certainly stand as influences to epic/folk metal bands. Deep Purple and Uriah Heep possess some power metal/traditional metal influences. If anyone wants to add on to this or make changes, feel free. Likewise, if people think this is a dumb idea, feel free to say so or ignore it. I was only thinking it might help.

 

[MasterOLightning]

We haven't discussed drumming much in this thread. The way drums are played in metal vary significantly from rock drumming. It's easy to clearly explain the differences, whereas it can be tough to explain rock guitar vs. metal guitar without relying on "I know it when I hear it."

Double bass runs and blastbeats generally do not occur in any other genre. Double bass runs creep into prog rock, but typically just in those bands with some heavier leanings, i.e. Rush or Tool. I don't think you have blastbeats in anything else, although I've been told they show up in some j-rock.

Both devices serve to de-emphasize certain beats. Blasting removes the 2 & 4 downbeat emphasis of rock and jazz by putting equal emphasis on each beat. And double bass runs get rid of syncopated rhythms based around 1 & 3. Some combination of these, or other beats with no downbeat emphasis lack the "danceability" of rock or pop music. Instead, you get headbanging of course, which results from a steady pulse on every beat.

The above devices are more advanced, but the same basic idea is contained in simpler forms. A simple stomp beat with bass on 1 & 3 and snare on 2 & 4, as found often in every genre of metal, from Metallica to Burzum, is the foundation of headbanging. And, when this pattern is sped up, there you have blastbeats - a natural development born out of efforts to get more extreme.

Metal drumming often shuns syncopation, at least to a much larger degree than rock and jazz. This is especially evident in fills, which very frequently consist of steady eighth or sixteenth notes played around the toms, or just on the snare. This is mainly true in the early forms of genres, but bands move away from this in efforts to not sound like their predecessors.

 

[waif]

I don't think there's anything you can say about metal drumming that will apply to all metal and only to metal...

 

[MasterOLightning]

No, but there are people who break conventions for the sake of doing so. This is true of every aspect of every genre of music, if not every form of art. To adjust definitions to accommodate the outliers who push definitions is failing to recognize the true forms. What I said holds true for most metal, and does not largely apply to other genres. I won't claim it's the final word on the topic, but I am right.

 

[waif]

A lot of metal uses typical rock or punk drumming.

 

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

Really only black metal does tbh, and it is of course used in a very different context.

 

[Cythraul]

I've always been fairly sceptical of claims that it is possible to extract a meaning from a work of art that is independant of its effect on the viewer/listener/whatever. Or rather, if it is possible to come up with a linguistic component that 'explains' a peice of music, I'm not sure whether I would see that as helpful. Art is not merely coded communication that can be deciphered and discarded, how we respond to it is IMO more important in defining its 'meaning' than any symbolic interpretation.

You're complicating things way too much. Music is a vehicle for expression and expression carries with it meaningful content. That content is not tantamount to whatever anybody listening to a piece of music may glean from it emotionally or cognitively at any given time. Who cares if somebody thinks 'Play That Funky Music White Boy' is dark and nihilistic? Such an attribution is simply inconsistent with the symbolic conventions of Western music.

 

[Necro Joe]

So what happens when something doesn't fit into accepted 'symbolic conventions'?

 

[skeptik]

Metal, just like every other form of music, just like every other fine art, et cetera down the line, is subject to the institutional framework in which it is viewed, and is in essence a very historical construct. It continually changes, evolves, and adapts, so any rigid, static definition of 'Metal' that can't account for this can't possibly be valid. A band like Deathspell Omega or Drudkh is no less of a Metal band than is Judas Priest or Black Sabbath, though they probably would not have been viewed as such if they were the ones to have been around in the 70s. In fact, their very existence depends upon the historical progression of the genre, so a definition of Metal, if such a feat is even achievable, would have to be open and adaptive to be able to incorporate further progressions in the genre.

Also, I strongly agree with and support Cythraul's post regarding expression. It is very important to view music, and art in general, as expression, and the artist's expression and interpretation very much is at the forefront in interpreting that artist's work.

 

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

How do you know (objectively) what artists are expressing unless they make it obvious through lyrics (a lot of metal bands do do this though)? Or do you mean something else? I too feel it's important but I'm getting a very lackluster feeling of how.

 

[skeptik]

Just because you may not know doesn't mean that it's not valid. It simply means that you don't know, and the closest approximation is merely guesswork. It's like an artist making a very abstract painting but never revealing the meaning behind it until he's on his death bed. Does the painting not have that meaning simply because nobody in the public knows it? It is very possible to have a work of art in which the intention behind it is simply unknown and unrecoverable. It's unfortunate, but possible, and I'm sure it's occurred countless times.