The Purpose of Metal

[Thoth-Amon]

I said NO DODENS LEAVE ME ALONE

HOME SWEEEEETTTT HOME!!!

 

[King Richard]

fuck, i have to go to work

 

[Thoth-Amon]

fuck, i have to go to work

 

[entanglement]

I don't really believe that art really has a purpose. It should be a personal expression of an artist and nothing more than that. If other people can find a purpose in that (by for example enjoying it) then that's great. But it should never be the purpose to begin with (or atleast not the main purpose). If a band or artists makes music purely so other people will enjoy it then they're more of an entertainer than an artist in my mind (which is infact the category that I would put a lot of pop music "artists" into).

The sole reason that an artist goes out to express himself through his work is satisfaction, either through happiness or relief or possibly even a rant. The third person appreciates this piece of art for his own satisfaction.. his own need/desire (depending on that person) towards that particular art form. I believe there is that motive behind the creation of a piece in order for it to be a true 'expression' of the artist. When that motive changes shape into something materialistic, or the artist's point of view changes its location from his/her own mind, forgetting his own desire for expression and starts finding moulds in the shape of other humans' needs, to fill, we term that artist as 'sold out'. Or perhaps any mainstream artists we see being awarded out there. The thing most worth being disliked about the music out there today is the suffix 'business' in that popular expression. It's not a business and its not an industry. It's pleasure to one of the five senses. It's beauty that provokes imagination and makes you contribute to that instance of expression.

And that is where, for me, metal steps in. It's music for the sake of expression of the performer. And that shows when a metal performer doesn't crave for mainstream success and sticks to the underground scene, a quality rarely found in any other genre's lesser known artists.

Excellent point, Cairath. I wish I could change the topic of this thread, but it would have been better asked this way:

"Why Metal?"

 

[entanglement]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...MESE:IT&viewitem=&item=130081241301&rd=1&rd=1

Told you.. Its hard to sell that around here.

 

[Hell Awaits Us All]

The sole reason that an artist goes out to express himself through his work is satisfaction, either through happiness or relief or possibly even a rant. The third person appreciates this piece of art for his own satisfaction.. his own need/desire (depending on that person) towards that particular art form. I believe there is that motive behind the creation of a piece in order for it to be a true 'expression' of the artist. When that motive changes shape into something materialistic, or the artist's point of view changes its location from his/her own mind, forgetting his own desire for expression and starts finding moulds in the shape of other humans' needs, to fill, we term that artist as 'sold out'. Or perhaps any mainstream artists we see being awarded out there. The thing most worth being disliked about the music out there today is the suffix 'business' in that popular expression. It's not a business and its not an industry. It's pleasure to one of the five senses. It's beauty that provokes imagination and makes you contribute to that instance of expression.

And that is where, for me, metal steps in. It's music for the sake of expression of the performer. And that shows when a metal performer doesn't crave for mainstream success and sticks to the underground scene, a quality rarely found in any other genre's lesser known artists.

Excellent point, Cairath. I wish I could change the topic of this thread, but it would have been better asked this way:

"Why Metal?"

great post

rarely do you see anybody making uncompromised, intelligent music anymore in the popular music scene (with the exception of some artists like mastodon)

 

[Death Animal]

Or was it... DR. FEELGOOD!

And he say
sleep all day
party all night
and Drink very hard.

 

[CAIRATH]

The sole reason that an artist goes out to express himself through his work is satisfaction, either through happiness or relief or possibly even a rant. The third person appreciates this piece of art for his own satisfaction.. his own need/desire (depending on that person) towards that particular art form. I believe there is that motive behind the creation of a piece in order for it to be a true 'expression' of the artist.

I agree, my explanation was purely from the perspective of the public. Art absolutely has a purpose for an artist, the purpose of expressing themselves. I just don't think art should be imbued with an inherent purpose for the people view/listening it by the artist himself. They can attach their own purpose to it if they choose to do so.

I don't really agree that the lack of seeking mainstream attention is something specific to metal at all though. And metal has its own share of mainstream oriented music that clearly is being made to sell rather than serve as a form of personal artistic expression.

At best I think the aesthetics of metal lend themselves better to remaining underground because it is more visceral (loud, heavy, violent, etc.) which also makes it harder to get it to become "popular". But just because any given rock, electronic or hiphop album is accessible enough to be played on the radio for the mainstream public doesn't mean the artist made it with that intention. And most artists don't make it with that intention obviously, since only like *0.0001% of all music outthere actually gets radio airplay.

* I made that statistic up obviously, but you get the point.

 

[Valerie]

Well, a number of metal bands can be quite musically and and technically complex, which for me as a musician, is a good genre of music to study and play to help improve my skills, which it has. The only other genres of music that are that diverse and complex are jazz and orchestral/chamber music. There are basically endless variations, which is great. Other than that, I can't explain why I actually like how the music sounds. I just do. I grew up listening to what my dad listens to, which is basically classic rock and some jazz and blues (he's a musician as well). I started listening to some modern rock, then discovered death rock and gothic rock which I fell in love with and still like to this day. That progressed to harder things, I liked a bunch of grunge bands, a couple of which are even considered metal (Soundgarden and Alice in Chains), and naturally that progressed to even heavier music.

 

[metal_wrath]

Purposes of Metal:

Bonding, Heat Convection, Building, Storage, Barriers, Manufacturing Instruments of Death and Torture etc...

 

[metal_wrath]

The purpose of metal to me is it's complex aesthetic applications and usage of minor harmonic devices, not to mention exaggeration of overall death aspects and aggressive verbiage resulting in a complex aggro-narrative while playing a improvised jazz-inspired ascending riff over a dynamic 4/9 drum fill...

 

[Gold]

the purpose of metal is to prove santa does exist

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Okay, this is going to sound really nerdy, but I've always found this quotation from Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles very insightful regarding rock music in general (though it seems to apply more to metal than to other rock genres):

"I was enchanted by the world of rock music--the way the singers could scream of good and evil, proclaim themselves angels or devils, and mortals would stand up and cheer. Sometimes they seemed the pure embodiment of madness. And yet it was technologically dazzling, the intricacy of their performance. It was barbaric and cerebral in the way that I don't think the world of ages past had ever seen.

Of course it was metaphor, the raving. None of them believed in angels or devils, no matter how well they assumed their parts. And the players of the old Italian commedia had been just as shocking, as inventive, as lewd.

Yet it was entirely new, the extremes to which they took it, the brutality and the defiance--and the way they were embraced by the world from the very rich to the very poor.

Also there was something vampiric about rock music. It must have sounded supernatural even to those who don't believe in the supernatural. I mean the way the electricity would stretch a single note forever; the way harmony could be layered upon harmony until you felt yourself dissolving in the sound. So eloquent of dread it was, this music. The world just didn't have it in any form before."

--The Vampire Lestat

To me, metal is the language of excitement. Nothing else gets my mind closer to the sensations of danger, power, and awe. ...Of course, I've never tried any hallucinogens or hard drugs, but I think it says something that metal is as 'intoxicating' as it is without actually directly interacting with your brain.

I can't say music ever really helps me in solving life's mysteries or answering profound questions. It can, however, put me in certain states of mind where I notice subtle, hidden meanings in life, or where I feel in touch with my past, or become more sensitive to my place in the universe. Music's a good way of accessing very specific emotions and thought patterns which are otherwise hard to achieve.

If you think about it, it seems that dreaming, meditation, drug use, and art (i.e. metal) all kind of serve the same purpose - just various forms of mental 'archaeology'. It's one thing to gain understanding about the world through study, travel, and interaction with others. A lot of the time, though, this information and experience just gets stuffed away in the brain, in a dormant state, only to later be dug up and processed in a way which really makes the bigger picture come out clearer. That's why it's nice to access these various states of mind.

I like how my topic got more and more broad as I went along. Anyway, that's my take on things. Hope someone found it interesting.

 

[Hatebreeder]

I was mostly attracted to metal in the first place because of the high-end virtuosity that I had been looking for in music that I could find in no popular music. Also, it felt more organic and mystical, two traits that I crave in music. It also displays a strong supernatural songwriting sense and the members of most metal bands are playing the music because it is what they feel and is not a product of label pressure and following cultural trends. I also grew up on film scores, classical music and game soundtracks, so I have always had a penchant for classical/renaissance/medieval-sounding minor key musicality, and metal has a very high concentration of this. I started out only liking more epic stuff like power metal and atmospheric black metal, but I discovered that I got more out of metal that created ambiance without synthetic elements, which is why I love black metal as one of my favorite genres. It also lets me transcend reality by providing a soundtrack to my philosophical thinking.

Or maybe I'm just a subconscious nonconformist, I've always tended to lean that way.

 

[Hell Awaits Us All]

that sounds more like metal than rock music

rock music nowadays = fucking homos crying about their girlfriend/other equally pathetic teenybopper issues over the same regurgitated super generic melodies

@ gari

 

[Hatebreeder]

that sounds more like metal than rock music

rock music nowadays = fucking homos crying about their girlfriend/other equally pathetic teenybopper issues over the same regurgitated super generic melodies

@ gari

Seriously, rock music used to be about empowering people and getting up to take action. Now it's depressive bullshit that all writes from the same songwriting handbook. Fuck it all.

 

[Hell Awaits Us All]

it is unreal how we can go from pink floyd to nickelback

that is astonishing

 

[zabu of nΩd]

that sounds more like metal than rock music

rock music nowadays = fucking homos crying about their girlfriend/other equally pathetic teenybopper issues over the same regurgitated super generic melodies

@ gari

Yeah, this pisses me off. And it's fucking everywhere. Why has our society turned into a large herd of wrist-slitting crybabies?

I can listen to most normal rock up until somewhere in the '80s. Even when people used to write depressy relationship songs back in the hippie days, it at least didn't sound depressy because they were playing in blues style (I realize the oxymoron in that, but to me blues doesn't really sound depressing).

 

[Hell Awaits Us All]

when the fuck did teeny boppers and moronic scenesters start controlling the music industry??

I just don't get it

 

[zabu of nΩd]

when the fuck did teeny boppers and moronic scenesters start controlling the music industry??

I just don't get it

MTV didn't help. When music videos became big, a lot of people started liking bands more for their looks than for their sound. Production and image are still huge selling points to this day. Sad.