What defines 'alternative' metal

[HamburgerBoy]

How? Die Kreuzen is often considered alternative rock, why wouldn't Voivod be considered alternative metal?

 

[Omni]

A lot of what you posted is clearly intentional misinterpretation to suit your ridiculous argument.

As I stated earlier, multiple genres of music can have elements in common without being the same genre of music. The article that you've chosen as your proof makes no mention of the band that you're using as the flagship of your argument for this very reason.

 

[CiG]

Have this argument with Fenriz, not us.

 

[EternalMetal]

Well, at least he isnt resorting to ad hominem attacks to prove his point. Genre distinctions are at best convenient labels to describe music, so there really is no definitive way to use them. Though I think depending so heavily on a tenuous genre such as 'alternative' isnt such a good idea, HB has shown evidence that his point isnt completely without merit.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

A lot of what you posted is clearly intentional misinterpretation to suit your ridiculous argument.

As I stated earlier, multiple genres of music can have elements in common without being the same genre of music. The article that you've chosen as your proof makes no mention of the band that you're using as the flagship of your argument for this very reason.

What article? You mean the Wikipedia article you just posted in absence of an argument on your part?

Have this argument with Fenriz, not us.

I don't have anything against Fenriz, but black metal is the one sub-genre where you can't take anything from its creators at face value. Since Quorthon it was built on bullshit and posturing, people denying influences, forcing shitty ideologies/manifestos into their music, trying to cultivate an image and consciously appear distinct from anyone else. The Norwegian scene was basically a bunch of misanthropes that probably dreamed of sucking the collective genitalia of New York arthouse types as they conspired in their shitty little record store about how to out-shock everyone else. If they were an American group they would have just gone Columbine instead. By and large, talentless try-hard losers and posers of the worst kind.

Besides, I'm willing to admit that Darkthrone is a black metal band entirely on the metal side of things. I'm talking more about all these prefixed and supposedly-experimental bands that really just fool metalheads with their terrible and limited taste in non-metal.

 

[Baroque]

You're probably right, definition wise, but no one but you calls it that. It just means there is a flaw in the definition. The definition should reflect the more common usage of the term.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

It means that there's a double standard. M-A types pride themselves on a clean lineage where heavy metal (and doom metal) had three main, "pure" branches in thrash, death, and black metal. These are often seen as entirely distinct from each other (even though people are starting to admit that the latter two were just lo-fi thrash metal up until at least 1986 or so). Then after the early 90s, the typical view is that metal had reached its "logical conclusion" as people like to say, death metal filling out speed and brutality, black metal filling out atmosphere and whatever else. Metalcore and deathcore? The one (bass)drop rule. Nu metal? Rapping in MY metal? Hell no. Blackgaze? Well, Pitchfork likes it so it must be screamo.

The problem is that the black metal lineage is NOT pure. Everyone can acknowledge the influence that hardcore punk had on early extreme metal so that's an exception, both in thrash and grindcore, but putting that aside, there is nothing in non-metal remotely like Altars of Madness. The riffing style came from basically two decades of metal's evolution. I'm not a death metal fetishist, but the classic period is some of the most pure and immediately identifiable metal out there. The latest of the first-wave/earliest of the second-wave of black metal can almost claim the same; I would never deny that DMDS is a pure 100% Aryan metal album. But once you move away from that and move into a world where monotonous strum a-strum a-strum riffing is OK as long as it's has the right black metal image, you may as well just cover Husker Du or Killing Joke and call it black metal.

And don't even get me started on the post-Scandinavian "gothic metal" aka The Sisters of Mercy tribute acts with heavier guitar distortion. The average band playing some new, European-borne style of metal in the 90s has less in common with metal than Slipknot.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

And fwiw I don't really care that much about whether people want to call all of that stuff metal or not, but they could at least be honest enough to not be the same kinds of people that treat Faith No More or Soundgarden as if there isn't a trace of metal to be found. Metal + non-metal = alternative metal, that's the simplest and most consistent definition. I mean, shit, doesn't Anathema and crap get radio play in Europe anyways? It's just a bunch of self-hating American cuckolds fetishizing a different kind of alt.

 

[CiG]

Fenriz isn't like that, remember that Black Metal thing he did where he went through the tree of influences to the genre etc?

Anyway, I don't mind arguing genre definitions at all, it's just that for me Black Metal is what it was in the 80's and the very early 90's, which for the most part is directly traceable to Heavy Metal, Speed Metal, Thrash Metal, Speed Metal and Hardcore Punk, you could well be right with Black Metal after the 80's.

Show me where "alternative metal" makes sense on the first Sepultura and Sarcofago albums, the first Sodom mini-LP.
You said that Venom originally played pure Heavy Metal, yet I hear a lot of U.K. Hardcore and some Motorhead, yet you act as if Venom having a Hardcore influence is a bizarre claim or something?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

fwiw I was going off on a bit of a tangent when getting into the 90s stuff. When I said this originally...

That's a fact bro. Everything interesting in 90s black metal had already been done in the 80s.

I meant that in addition to alternative influence, there was influence from lesser-appreciated speed/thrash bands of the 80s. Sepultura and Sarcofago are pretty much purely death/thrash-derived early black metal. I fully acknowledge their contribution to a style of metal distinct from both American death metal and thrash metal,

And I was implying that I might be ignorant to the influence of hardcore on Venom; tell me what I'm missing there, because I don't really hear much direct influence. Although now I'm listening to War is Hell on YouTube and this is actually a lot heavier than Welcome to Hell, and I can kind of hear a comparison in a way regardless. So I could be mistaken, for all I know Venom got most of their sound from hardcore. But as I've said from the beginning, hardcore has always been the exception. Motorhead being an early influence on both hardcore and metal helps to make them cousins. But then that still brings up the question of why so many metalcore bands are rejected.

 

[CiG]

Well, in the end that's to me the thing about Black Metal, is that it's not directly sourced from any one or couple of set styles, it's why it's said that there wasn't a Black Metal "scene" in the 80's, yet there was a Death Metal scene, a Doom Metal scene etc.

It's a patchwork of bands associated with each other based on feeling, emotion.

Don't know the real answer to the Metalcore (I assume you mean "mallcore" and not Metalcore like Bloodlet, Starkweather etc) question, never cared enough to work it out in all honesty.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

There were certainly black metal scenes. Its later development meant that some of them didn't exist until the internet age, which is of course why you don't see localized scenes at all to the extent you would in the 80s. More importantly, most of what makes those bands lumpable is their aesthetic, not their music.

And I don't mean mallcore. I mean, how is this not metal:




But this is:




?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Like, if that Hanging Garden song is black metal, so is this.

 

[Slayed Necros]

I really couldn't care less about this discussion, but man, that Hanging Garden song is abysmal. Fuck DSBM.

 

[Omni]

What article? You mean the Wikipedia article you just posted in absence of an argument on your part?

Oh, you mean the article that I posted after you didn't understand that alternative was a genre of music already after I stated that calling black metal alternative music was a bad way to describe its differences from other metal for that exact reason? That's literally what happened.

I stated that using the word "alternative" was a bad way to describe it based on that and you literally asked what alternative means in relation to music like a tool.

There is no need to form an entire argument around you asking what "alternative" means.

 

[Baroque]

It sounds like hbb is trying to say that death metal is the purest metal and everything else is alternative metal in some capacity. But death metal has roots in thrash and grind core so it has 'alternative metal' influences too. At that point alternative metal becomes a useless term. Just call it metal, all of metal was influenced and evolved from rock and punk and classical etc at one point or another. Again no one uses the term alternative metal in that way. They use it for bands like Alice in chains or soundgarden or maybe metallica's load and reload etc. why create your own definition when there is already a widely accepted one (though maybe it hasn't been written down properly)?

As for death metal being the purest form of metal (least outside influence) that may be true. But again I don't think you'll find one person who calls darkness descends anything other than thrash metal, no alternative involved at all.

 

[Omni]

His argument is bad and his attempt to patronize people who actually know about black metal by conceding that Voivod (a band that he likes) is also alternative metal is a shitty way to try to hide the fact that he's doing it out of contempt for black metal in general.

 

[The Ozzman]

M-A considers Faith No More 'alternative metal'. That's probably somewhat accurate but that's a band that is hard to identify..

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Oh, you mean the article that I posted after you didn't understand that alternative was a genre of music already after I stated that calling black metal alternative music was a bad way to describe its differences from other metal for that exact reason? That's literally what happened.

I stated that using the word "alternative" was a bad way to describe it based on that and you literally asked what alternative means in relation to music like a tool.

There is no need to form an entire argument around you asking what "alternative" means.

I'm not saying that calling black metal alternative metal is an established usage of the latter. I'm saying that by the definition of alt metal, a lot of black metal should count if there's to be any consistency. My argument stands; music indistinguishable from black metal in terms of riffing, pre-dating established "black metal", exists, and it came about by and large in the alternate scene.

It sounds like hbb is trying to say that death metal is the purest metal and everything else is alternative metal in some capacity. But death metal has roots in thrash and grind core so it has 'alternative metal' influences too. At that point alternative metal becomes a useless term. Just call it metal, all of metal was influenced and evolved from rock and punk and classical etc at one point or another. Again no one uses the term alternative metal in that way. They use it for bands like Alice in chains or soundgarden or maybe metallica's load and reload etc. why create your own definition when there is already a widely accepted one (though maybe it hasn't been written down properly)?

As for death metal being the purest form of metal (least outside influence) that may be true. But again I don't think you'll find one person who calls darkness descends anything other than thrash metal, no alternative involved at all.

As I said, I make an exception for hardcore because it was so fundamental to the development of extreme metal. It pre-dated most alternative rock anyways, and was also influenced by early metal like Motorhead to boot. An album like Darkness Descends has virtually no hardcore in it even if it wouldn't have existed without it. Written in Waters, on the other hand, is 50/50 metal/non-metal.

 

[Omni]

Indistinguishable according by what measure?

That's like discussing a lot of people unfamiliar with metal can't tell the difference between Slipknot and Morbid Angel. After all, they do actually share some similarities.

Your argument is fundamentally flawed and conparing the two or even trying to claim that black metal is alternative music is stupid.