"They can link to our Web page, but when people come to our site, they'll still be asked for a password." That's the final word of the editor of the newspaper. Ah well.
Here are both the questions that were asked and my particular answers. See if you can identify where I shamelessly use Black and Burns lines in my answer.
The other people who were quoted in the article were Albert Mudrian (Decibel editor, author of "a history of death metal", heh), Per Nillson (Scar Symmetry), Amy Sciaretto ("a music journalist who writes for several publications and works for Roadrunner Records"), Frank Harthoorn (Gorefest), Loana dP Valencia (Nuclear Blast USA publicist and Dreams of Damnation vocalist), Chris Black (Superchrist), and Zak Tell (Clawfinger).
1. Do you think music critics are biased against metal music?
If we're talking music critics in general, of course they are, and they should be. When the public faces of heavy metal over the years include characters like 'reality TV star' Ozzy Osbourne, Motley Crüe, Limp Bizkit, and maybe Marilyn Manson, there is no reason to feel that heavy metal is the equal to any other genre of music. When this music is mass-marketed, that marketing is directed at rebellious kids and adults that still wish they were kids. Whether major labels packaged heavy metal that way to begin with, or whether it's the mainstream music critic that branded the music that way, or whether that truly is the majority of heavy metal's audience, I don't know.
2. Is metal music considered less intricate or not as sophisticated as other forms of music?
You'd have to be a pretty hardcore jazz or classical music snob to not consider heavy metal to be intricate. I don't think that is a problem, and one of the complaints I hear from "normal" people is that heavy metal has too much going on at once. Beyond instrumentation, I don't know that heavy metal is very sophisticated. Any particular band could be, but in general heavy metal musicians are pretty straightforward in their expression, and because it's seen as a youth-oriented or rebellious form of music, the perception becomes reality as the music is made by teenagers or directed at teenagers. Angst isn't very sophisticated, and rebellion is something you're supposed to grow out of.
3. The mainstream press (major newspapers, the Associated Press, National Public Radio) reviews new music, but rarely seems to review new metal albums? Do you feel the press is hostile to metal or doesn't understand metal music?
The maintream press does not understand heavy metal. Hell, I don't think half of the metal press does. It is a genre that keeps on going even when nobody's looking, and it covers so much ground that even dedicated followers find it difficult to keep up. Even when heavy metal is in the press, there are always more bands playing unpopular styles that are ignored by the press in favor of the bands playing the popular style of the time. When the mainstream press decides to cover heavy metal, all we can really do is count the mistakes, cringe at the necessary gross generalizations, and hope they at least spell the names right. Heavy metal as a genre has at least 36 years of history, the majority of it under the radar (how many professional music journalists can state, based on their current knowledge and not research, why Into the Pandemonium and Scream Bloody Gore are creatively relevant to the more popular heavy metal bands of today?).
Heavy metal is not relevant to the audience of mainstream press, so why should the mainstream press care? Does anyone specifically interested in music coverage use their local paper, or NPR, as a resource? The first thing any serious music fan learns, whether their preference is heavy metal, jazz, rap, industrial, or whatever, is that the mainstream press can never do more than scratch the surface of any particular form of music. If you go in-depth into a genre, you aren't a mainstream media outlet anymore, you're genre media.
Heavy metal fans sure are hostile towards mainstream media though. We're never satisfied. We live this music. If heavy metal does not receive coverage in the press, we're being ignored and treated like we don't exist, so we're unhappy. Well, we act unhappy but celebrating our "outsider" and outcast status is the one thing all metalheads agree on. Seriously, you can't ever find a single subject (or band) that heavy metal fans can agree on except the outsider thing. It's part of what drives the search for newer, more obscure, more difficult music. "Oh crap, my favorite band is getting popular! I need a new favorite band so people don't start thinking I'm normal!"
Yet if there is coverage, it's not like the poor reporter is likely to be a metalhead himself, and if he is he doesn't have the space to tell the story, so metalheads end up getting angry at the shallow coverage, and we feel like we're being misrepresented to the world. The "wrong" band is getting coverage. The only way to win at covering heavy metal is to stop covering it. Even then you'll get the complainers. "Why did you stop writing?" aarrghh...
Then again, if metalheads ever really became satisfied, there would be no heavy metal. We are a subculture of Destroy-Erase-Improve, and if there is nothing to destroy or erase, there is no reason to improve, and heavy metal would be a relic of the past instead of the constantly evolving/mutating art form it is now.
4. What about audiences: Does the general American public have a cultural bias against metal? If so, is it because it's seen as less-evolved or culturally dangerous? Why is metal less prominent and, say, gangsta rap, which is just as violent as the most violent metal album?
I think the American public has less of a cultural bias against heavy metal than they would if they knew much about it. There are a large number of bands that do not hide the fact that drugs are an integral part of their creative process. The amount of anti-Christian bands in heavy metal can not be counted. There are murderers that are making heavy metal music (and are sadly idolized by the fans) today. Can you imagine music fans not waiting for a release date of an album, but the release date for their murderer hero? R rated movies can't even be graphic anymore but legions of bands have lyrics (and album covers) as explicit and graphic as possible, dealing with mutilation and rape. There is a distinct National Socialist movement in heavy metal. Every category of degenerate and sleaze can be found, with a following, in heavy metal. The bands that get publicized are often only those that do not directly deal with this type of material, or that deal with it in a way that can be portrayed as not serious.
Being involved in heavy metal, as a fan or as an artist, does not mean you support or are involved with any of these things, but it does mean having to be grouped with these people. If all of this was treated as the norm for heavy metal (and it is in the sense that it is always present, somewhere, and not difficult to find if you are looking), if anybody important was paying attention, I think heavy metal would have a rather serious problem existing at the level it does.
But that's heavy metal at its worst. Heavy metal at its best still challenges mainstream culture in all areas. In a culture that tells us to be sociable, patriotic, kind, God-fearing, reserved, and open-minded, heavy metal shows us that it is possible, and possibly better, to be misanthropic, questioning and outright suspicious of all authority, self-indulgent, agnostic, outspoken, and resolute. It challenges and condemns "correct" thinking and is powerful enough on its own terms that a single album can balance out many years of parenting, teaching, and social conditioning. Music is powerful, and heavy metal will promote the individual to choose his own values in a world hellbent on defining "good" and "evil" while preventing actual thought and dialogue about it. That scares the hell out of "respectable" people. Yet this is the same spirit that motivated scientists to follow actual research at the risk of being branded a heretic in years past, it motivated the colonies to rebel against England, it motivated the French Resistance in WWII, it motivated the Civil Rights movement to happen in this country. Heavy metal is never as high-minded or important as any of that (not even close), but change and progress begins with challenging what is "normal" and being willing to fight it and throw it away if it is found wanting. Heavy metal is certainly about that, if nothing else.
As to why heavy metal is less prominent than gangsta rap, I have no idea. I don't know the music, the musicians, or anything about the industry behind it, and I'd need to know that to make any sort of comparitive statement. I have a better question: Why do we find more angry white guys making rap than we do angry black guys making heavy metal?
5. Not counting the metal press, is it hard to interest the press in metal bands?
For the general music press, advertising dollars creates interest. For the mainstream press, really, should they care? Is a heavy metal band really news if they don't start a riot or burn down a church or beat their wives or something? Cannibal Corpse was mentioned by Bob Dole during his Presidential campaign, so they were news in 1996. Is there a point for a non-metal publication to do an article on them because they have a new album called Kill coming out?
6. Do mainstream newspapers/magazines review metal albums and concerts? If so, what is their attitude towards metal?
I only have experience living in Atlanta, Orlando, and Vasa, Finland. I didn't much read the daily paper in Atlanta (it sucked in every way except the comics), but the alternative weekly paper there didn't touch heavy metal at all. Orlando's paper would review heavy metal concerts if they appeared at large enough venues (House of Blues) to appear cool enough, and the tone was always along the lines of, "Oh, those wacky kids and their loud music." In Finland, heavy metal bands have been able to top the charts for a decade so a heavy metal concert really is no different culturally than any other rock concert.
7. How has metal evolved? Is the music more intricate and diverse than it was 20 years ago? Or is the music simpler?
Heavy metal always evolves. With three and a half decades of bands being proud of their underground status, there are many examples of weird people making weird sounds, which then influences others... We are at a point where the words "heavy metal" mean nothing without further explanation. There are still bands that play like it's still 1970 and the first Black Sabbath album just rocked their world. There are bands that disavow Sabbath, Maiden, and Judas Priest as pop rock crap and try to burn the world down with their brutal metal. There are bands that treat heavy metal as a philosophical and musical journey and will make a song so long it barely fits on a CD. Then there are those that just rock out. Nobody reading this, not an everyday person, not a heavy metal fan, not an industry professional, and not even myself, can really understand the variety of music available under the banner of "heavy metal". There is not enough time in the day to hear it all, even if we could find it. There's always something new and different, there's always something missed from years past, and somebody is always preparing something new and daring for release tomorrow.
The question of intricate vs simple can't really be answered because of the diversity. Since "Heavy metal" has not described a particular sound for twenty-five years now, we can't generalize. Some bands are simple, by incompetence or design. Some bands are frighteningly complex. Most fall somewhere in the middle.
8. Have you ever complained or taken issue with a reviewer who panned a metal album or wrote a negative or condescending concert review?
I only get angry if:
It's a reviewer in a heavy metal magazine who gets the facts so wrong that the credibility of his opinion is severly compromised. It's disheartening to realize how many people writing about metal have no grasp of the material in front of them, and they do it because they get to meet bands and get free CDs.
Or
A more mainstream reviewer compares a lesser-known band to a famous band for no reason other than both being heavy metal.
9. How big is the market for metal? Is it a niche market, or does it have broader appeal?
Heavy metal is a niche market, and any attempt to bring it into the mainstream corrupts it. Heavy metal that is created for the every day person is just rock and roll. There is a difference and it is important. Heavy metal is here for those who want it. Don't force it to go places it wasn't meant to go and both the music and its audience will be just fine.
10. Has the critical attitude changed towards metal? Some bands (Mastodon and Opeth come immediately to mind) write complex songs and are very musically talented. Do mainstream music critics lump all metal bands into the same category, or do they differentiate between bands/styles?
Coverage goes in cycles and I have to wonder how much of it is genuine grassroots popularity and how much is industry manipulation. (
http://www.lotfp.com/content.php?editorialid=38) During much of the 90s, newsstand magazines covering hard rock and heavy metal changed formats or folded. Even those trying to stay committed to heavy metal ended up featuring alternative bands and sticking people like Korn and Marilyn Manson on the cover (with "guest" writers doing those stories), even if all of the writing inside the magazine by the regular contributors was trying to fight being associated with those types of acts. Heavy metal was not suppressed or ridiculed or marginalized. Heavy metal simply did not exist in terms of mainstream music coverage. Not in magazines, not on MTV, not on the radio, not on store shelves. Headbangers Ball was canceled, Metallica and Megadeth had gone pop rock. It was all gone unless we wanted to shave our head and wear a wifebeater and pretend Pantera was cool. This is the environment that existed when I was discovering heavy metal and its history. To be metal was to resign yourself to no success, yet there were hundreds of albums being released on dozens of labels that did not compromise heavy metal one little bit.
It's changed in the past few years. Major labels are sniffing around metal bands again, new glossy mags with clothing companies advertising in them are popping up on newsstands. But it's fake. It's all just a fraud. The bands being signed, and featured, are all new (or treated as new) bands. Those who were nobody during the media blackout of the 90s are still largely nobodies, and reading these new so-called "metal" magazines is absolutely painful as the writers struggle to have credibility in a field they don't know anything about. Pick up any glossy heavy metal magazine worldwide and it'll be the same bands getting the same praise. Are you telling me that serious writers covering a cantankerous form of music are suddenly in unanimous agreement about who is best? Or do all of the new darlings simply have serious money behind them now?
If those hacks who are supposed to cover heavy metal full-time don't have their act together, why should "mainstream" critics? I can't tell you how they handle heavy metal these days because I stopped needing, and looking for, validation and musical insight from them a long time ago.
11. This last question is for a side-bar: What is your favorite metal album of all time, and why? Also, do you have a favorite recent metal album (an album released in past 5-6 years)?
I have the same answer to both questions: The August Engine by Hammers of Misfortune. It's an obscure album (their label told me they haven't even sold 2000 copies since its October 2003 release), but it is an intelligent, multi-dimensional album that stands up to anything recorded in the 36 year history of this genre. Previously, my favorite album had been Opeth's Morningrise, which is the perfect blend of serene 70s prog rock and then-current heavy metal, with more detailed guitar and bass work than they currently use. It really is just a prog rock album wrapped in metal aesthetics. It's difficult for me to name a classic album as an all-time best album, because no matter how well it stands the test of time, no matter how ground breaking it was, the music of the past is just a starting point and a steppingstone for the best music of today. A good album, no matter when it was recorded, will always be better than a bad album, no matter when it was recorded. But the great bands of today have much more history and greatness to inspire them than the great bands of the past did. Or I can just mention Rainbow's Rising album because any album with a song as great as Stargazer, and musicians as talented as Ritchie Blackmore and Ronnie James Dio, deserves to be written about in a newspaper.
