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“Music was better in the old days” is a common refrain. This is due to several reasons. Music subcultures like metal are often territorial. Old-timers are suspicious of newcomers. In metal, one must earn one’s stripes. People compete to be “old school.” Also, nostalgia is a powerful force. Every generation laments the music of the next. People inevitably fall back on the music of their youth.
I am well aware of these forces. Many of my colleagues’ reference points calcified long ago. When they talk about punk, they start with The Clash and end with Green Day. They have no idea about hardcore punk and its rich history since the ’80s. I don’t want to be like that. So I sometimes check out what the kids are listening to. I don’t have to like it, but I feel like I should know about it. After all, much of the music that I like, especially aggressive kinds, stems from youth. The first album is always the best, right?
But I may have reached the point where I don’t understand kids anymore. Emo, the Victorycore kind, I could get. It was basically pop punk with metal influences. Metalcore, the good cop/bad cop kind, was a heavier version of emo. But deathcore and screamo crunkcore from the last two years — I don’t get it. Sure, some bands actually do deathcore well, as in combine death metal and hardcore.
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This newer stuff, though, with symphonic keyboards, auto-tuned vocals, and hip-hop affectations is neither death metal nor hardcore. It is abysmal. Winds of Plague (pictured up top) may be the worst band I have ever heard. They arrange keyboards, breakdowns, and riffs so randomly, they unknowingly reference Burroughs’ cut-up technique. On an art project level, their album Decimate the Weak is hilarious. I have not laughed at music so hard in a while. But it’s depressing that it will be the “old school” for today’s kids.
Has youth music ever been this bad? Most of the music that I liked as a kid still holds up. Some hair metal doesn’t (Poison), but some does (Mötley Crüe). The thrash and death metal of my teen years all remain classic. Hip-hop fetishizes the early ’90s as much as death metal does. (Ice Cube and Ice-T would eat Soulja Boy alive.) Even the pop music that I loved — Janet Jackson, Young MC, early Guns ‘n’ Roses, to name a few acts — most of it does not embarrass me. (Technotronic does.) My biggest youthful misjudgments were industrial metal and ska. Those have not aged well.
Perhaps one explananation for the awfulness of youth music is the long tail phenomenon. Chris Anderson explains it in The Long Tail
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The long tail might explain why kids flock en masse to bad music. When I grew up, culture was more mediated. It was easy to like music because it had gone through much filtering, albeit from corporate sources. Now anyone with Pro Tools or GarageBand can put music on MySpace or YouTube. Much more information clogs the cultural bandwidth now. Kids spend a lot of time on MySpace, music’s biggest long tail aggregator, so MySpace drives their tastes. It makes things easier to go viral (and for things like screamo, low-grade hip-hop, and toilet-grade -core to mate). Before, communicating with other fans of something required writing letters or joining a fan club. Now all that takes place instantly on MySpace.
So kids perhaps unwittingly collude in debasing their tastes. Labels prey on this. They fund knock-offs of knock-offs, milking trends dry before moving on the next one. Do Century Media execs actually listen to Iwrestledabearonce or Blessed by a Broken Heart (pictured above)? Can Metal Blade tell their deathcore bands apart? The main point of business is making money. In that respect, today’s Twitter and Facebook-savvy labels are brilliant. (Well, maybe not, given downloading. The word “sieve” comes to mind.) They have the kids squarely in their sights. Kids may have bad taste. But blaming kids who don’t know better is unproductive. Someone has to manufacture the objects of such taste. Filling the world with crap is one way to make money, I suppose.
first thing to say is, damn dude, i love the expositional writing on this site. i'm really glad i found this place.
more relevantly, i'd have to say i think that, like any subject, more experience breeds more wisdom. we've all enjoyed and supported some really shitty bands in the past but eventually they're grown out of. people who dig soulja boy most likely never grew up with albums like cop killer or straight outta compton. kids who obsess over attack attack(there's a '!' somewhere there) never heard reign in blood on a brand new cassette tape.
unfortunately the recording-industry-as-we-knew-it has become an epic failure and things have changed dramatically. it's become incredibly easy to record music and find an audience, yet the filters have not caught up. nobody gives a flying fuck what some money-hungry record exec wants to promote anymore, but any knockoff band with a pretty myspace page and br00tal-cool t-shirts can gain a following.
we've all asked for it.
but…….. it's not necessarily a bad thing. we've longed for choices. now there's a bajillion variations and hybrids of every genre. the tradeoff is that now we have to sort through the shit to find the real gems.
most of us have probably become pretty jaded. nothing new that comes out can ever touch the excitement of anything that came out during the heyday of our musical evolution. as we've all developed our particular tastes, we're just looking for new bands to conform to our ideals of what music should be.
as far as the continuing commercialization of music is concerned, i think that entire model will fail very quickly. pop music isn't as marketable as 'indie' music so it seems to be inevitably doomed (as we know it). i think the next model to be exploited (commercially) will be twitter/facebook/iphone app-friendly superstar artists who will further the illusion of integrity through accessibility. there's always going to be leeches trying to make money regardless of medium.
Funny that you posted this today because just yesterday I was realizing that I'm finally getting fucking OLD because I just DO NOT get this shit, and if one of these kids was my daughter/son or younger sibling, I'd think they were an idiot for dressing that way/listening to such garbage, ha, ha…
Ditto. Never felt older in my life than reading all the stuff about Attack Attack! and Brokencyde that's been up on the net recently. And it's kind of fucked me up, too. I mean for God's sake, I can watch old video of G.G. Allin taking a dump onstage and go "Okay, I understand where that "artistic" notion comes from." But then put on the newest video by awful shit like Confide and it's like I'm seeing aliens…
Yeah, good piece. I wonder when brokencyde get oldschool props like say, slayer do today, what a world that will be.
I'll be the dissenting voice. I am 37 and I like Blessed By A Broken Heart's album a lot. I also really like this new band on Sumerian called I See Stars – they mix screamo, deathcore, techno, and T-Pain style vocoder/Autotune vocals… and it all works. I like crazy keyboard solos in the middle of metal songs – if Children of Bodom can do it, why can't I See Stars or Blessed By A Broken Heart or Winds Of Plague? I don't get Brokencyde or Attack! Attack! or Iwrestledabearonce (I actually really hate the latter band), but I hate Psyopus, too – saw them open for Atheist on Sunday night and it was one of the worst things I've ever seen/heard. They should break up right now, and take Cephalic Carnage with 'em. The ideas these bands are working with aren't bad ones – it's just execution that's the difference. BBABH and ISS do it well, the others don't. It has nothing to do with age, yours or theirs.
And shitty music has always found its way into the marketplace. Sure, you remember the three or four or five really good '80s hardcore bands, but do you remember the eight hundred horrible, faceless hardcore bands that were on the same 19-band bills? No, you don't. Time filters away the sludge. Same with thrash or death metal or anything else. There were eighty terrible bands for every good one; always have been. The worst thing you can do as a listener isn't dismissing new acts out of hand; it's tricking yourself into thinking it was better back then. It wasn't. Look at the nostalgia for early '70s hard rock. The bands that got big deserved to – Grand Funk Railroad and ZZ Top and the others were great. But the second-tier bands were a little less great, and the generic clones that sprung up in every country were just lame. But there are whole labels now devoted to reissuing long out-of-print albums by heavy-blooze bands that never deserved to be heard by anybody but their parents and friends.
I think the Internet has a lot to do with this as well. When I was a kid, there was shitty music, just not as much of it. Instead of dealing with a few copycats you now have hundreds thanks to the exposure a band is able to get on the Internet. If the Internet ended today, lots of shitty music would go away.
Someone is definitely buying this stuff. I opened up the new issue of Revolver with Suicide Silence on the cover and saw meaty features on Brokencyde and Iwrestledabearonce, along with a "25 under 25" feature packed to the gills with stuff like Attack Attack and The Devil Wears Prada.
Phil Freeman OTM about the cyclical nature of trends. Once one terrible band gains a foothold (often through insidious marketing), it opens the floodgates for a Biblical torrent of less adept and interesting clones until the trend dries up and we all move on to the next thing or reject it and start listening to old blues 45s
Sure, you remember the three or four or five really good '80s hardcore bands, but do you remember the eight hundred horrible, faceless hardcore bands that were on the same 19-band bills? No, you don't. Time filters away the sludge.
I have to agree with that sentiment to some extent. I remember between 1997 and 1999 there were a million bands riding the old school hardcore revival. Many of those 7"s I have but when you look back how many of those bands stick out from that time? How many of those 7"s could I play and be able to name the band? Not very many.
The only thing different today I suppose is that when bands sucked in the 1970's-80's-90's they hardly made it out of thier own scene and if they did they didn't last long. Today you can get so much exposure without any of the work so there is no need to improve to break out.
I want to say the bar on quality has been lowered by the kids today too but I honestly don't know if that's just my own jaded kid inside clouding my judgement.
One would hope that kids would use the shitty bands as a launching point to exploring what we might consider the quality bands they are missing out on, I don't think that is the case though. I just don't think it will happen, they are too content with what's being shoveled to them. I have tried many times to get some friends I have in thier early 20's to listen to music that I've recommended to them and it's like pulling teeth. I've given up.
The Path Less Traveled Records said…
I think the Internet has a lot to do with this as well. When I was a kid, there was shitty music, just not as much of it. Instead of dealing with a few copycats you now have hundreds thanks to the exposure a band is able to get on the Internet. If the Internet ended today, lots of shitty music would go away.
That's another great point. When I was young I didn't have the immediate exposure that the internet provides and I wasn't able to just download everything for free, maybe that made me and a lot of the older people here a lot more discerning on what we wasted our hard earned money on. There were a lot of shitty bands out there but for the most part you only had to deal with the locals and the occasional label mistake. The labels acted a filter for the most part.
The Long Tail phenomenon is really interesting. Great post. I have to agree that I don't think brokencyde will get old school props, at least not from even a small consensus. Also, going through my parents' old records is good evidence that even the fabled '60s and '70s were glutted with terrible bands that only got a record deal because they jumped on the Muff Fuzz bandwagon with enough proximity to Hendrix.
Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any less annoying when kids get really into terrible shit.
I just don't think it will happen, they are too content with what's being shoveled to them. I have tried many times to get some friends I have in thier early 20's to listen to music that I've recommended to them and it's like pulling teeth. I've given up.
That's because kids are fucking stupid. I work with this idiot who is really into metalcore (though brags about how he saw Pearl Jam back in the day–in 2006) who went to the Testament show when they last came through town, stuck around for the shitty metalcore openers and then left once Testament came on because "their singer is fat". So fuck 'em.
Also, going through my parents' old records is good evidence that even the fabled '60s and '70s were glutted with terrible bands that only got a record deal because they jumped on the Muff Fuzz bandwagon with enough proximity to Hendrix.
Aw man, I completly forgot how that shit. What about all the Beatles copys, most notably The Monkees? It proves that big labels are always out to make a buck. What was nice back then though is that after coming out, flopping and disappearing, they really disappeared. Today, the internet saves everything. That picture of Winds Of Plauge will be around forever.
That's because kids are fucking stupid. I work with this idiot who is really into metalcore (though brags about how he saw Pearl Jam back in the day–in 2006) who went to the Testament show when they last came through town, stuck around for the shitty metalcore openers and then left once Testament came on because "their singer is fat". So fuck 'em.
What an ass. I wouldn't even know how to bottle up my urge to kill him.
This is sorta condescending to young music fans with discerning taste. There's plenty of "good" music out right now, a great deal of the good metal is highlighted right here on Invisible Oranges… anyone with discerning taste and an internet connection knows what's up. Not all young metal fans are into brokeNCYDE.
Similer to the 60's mop top record deals, back in the 80's if you could play a keyboard and gel your hair you could get a record.
More people need to listen to Archgoat.
What's kinda worrying for me about that Testament story is that they were second rate in the eighties after the first couple of records but now with all this thrash revival shit that's going on the original bay area bands are enjoying retroactive deification. Even fucking Protector from Germany were a more inspired and meaningful band than Testament with their watered down Metallica worship thing. But here someone will come and tell me that Testament circa Souls of Black changed their life, anything's possible.
I think there's two forces colluding here: 1) patience as an aspect of listening to music is on the run. Greg Anderson alluded to this in the recent IO interview and I think the influence of that phenomenon can't be overstated. Nothing brews or seeps (to use two tea metaphors) anymore. I can't complain about the vast amounts of info that are now available but goddamn it, what happened to listening to the one new album you got that week over and over making damn sure you were "getting it" before deciding to move on?
Coupled with that is a growing sense of not knowing what music is for. What do we do with all these fits and starts of perfectly loud music chunks? Do we heal or reflect or even smile?
The rise of Brokencyde and Attack Attack! make perfect sense to me in light of all this. Personally, I think you have to have faith in culture just doing what it does. If there's truly substance to be found in those artists, it will be sussed out. And if not, it will recede. Given the societal symptoms that gave this music its rise, it'll recede FAST.
While I think it is a slightly snobbish arguement, this reminds me of a recent interview on Bill Maher with Billy Bob Thornton.
His arguement with someone he knew regarding current music was a challenge for her to seriously write down people or bands that came from 1980 to present compared to the people and bands he could name pre-1980 that would be remembered one hundred years from now. Obviously he could name hundreds including bands still going today and she couldn't name a lot.
The sad part is I have seen online responses to that arguement naming bands that are around today that I haven't even heard of today let alone someone 100 years from now. Everyone wants to think that what they listen to is something that is timeless and will live forever, Thornton included.
I guess my point is that time (should) filter out the crap, even if people today think it's the greatest thing ever.
Good point by many here that bad music has always existed.
"Time filters away the sludge" is a good point. But so is "Today, the internet saves everything." See Facebook, which alters natural cycles of people entering and exiting each other's lives. The Internet interferes with filtration by time.
joseph – Condescension was what I wanted to avoid, but perhaps it's unavoidable with an argument like this. Up to a point/age, kids aren't to be blamed for their tastes. I was just as clueless as a kid as kids are now. There just seems to be more crap available to them now, and more opportunities for them to embrace it.
Off-topic, re: Testament: Souls of Black did technically change my life, as that was the first Testament I ever heard. It's not the best Testament record, but I also feel it gets an unfair shake now.
Well a record that serves as a gateway to get into metal changes your life but not due to it being amazing in itself. Point stands, Testament are revered now but 10 years ago they were considered second-rate by a lot of people. Short memories effect, and especially with thrash which is a genre where riffs are abundant so people are easy to please and don't think a lot about aesthetics and honesty and vision.
Actually, the scariest thing is when you find kids that like the same crap you did when you were that age. Especially when you're still into that stuff as an adult. It's fun to talk to them at first, but then, even in a best-case scenario, you start to feel like the older "cool guy" who hangs out at the all-ages club and hits on jailbait. Makes me want to get drunk.
All I'm saying is, it's not necessarily a bad thing when I don't get what kids are into.
The vast majority of music has ALWAYS sucked. The benefit of age allows memory to filter away the trash. Go look at the Billboard charts from any era and you will see piles of crap outselling any of the established canon from the time period. Even within our more fringe genres- 80's hardcore and crossover had a very high shit to quality ratio. But, for every DRI we remember, there are 10 Uncle Slams that we (hopefully) forgot.
There are no good old days- just the nostalgic filtering out of shit not worth remembering.
Also, nobody has yet pointed out the obvious: kids enjoy Winds of Plague because half the band members look like fighters from Tekken. That's understandable! It would be a draw for me too, if I liked the music more.
Anonymous said…
Also, nobody has yet pointed out the obvious: kids enjoy Winds of Plague because half the band members look like fighters from Tekken. That's understandable! It would be a draw for me too, if I liked the music more.
Maybe. Or is it that the female in the band showed her breasts online? That can get all sorts of free press for you.
I saw Winds of Plague at Summer Slaughter in Philly this year. They came on right after Dying Fetus (which is a huge insult to DF by the way). They tried really hard and used more smoke and lighting than any of the other band, but the audience just stood around drinking beer waiting for the next band to come on. The only people who were into it were a few high school kids. In a couple years winds of plague will be gone and Suffocation and Dying Fetus will still be there.
"kids enjoy Winds of Plague because half the band members look like fighters from Tekken" – That shit is hilarious
Great post and ensuing discussion.
I had to go over to myspace and check out Winds of Plague (awful, just awful) and Brokencyde (awful but at the same time funny as hell).
But I had to think about my uncle, who turned me on to great 70s music, who was appalled when I discovered Killing Joke and, later, Soundgarden – to him it had all been there before and he hated what Soundgarden added to Sabbath and Led Zeppelin (and Killing Joke in their early efforts). To him it meant that his memories of great original music that he cherished where being debased by lesser bands.
I guess, when hearing the young ones, we old folks often feel the same:
I can't complain about the vast amounts of info that are now available but goddamn it, what happened to listening to the one new album you got that week over and over making damn sure you were "getting it" before deciding to move on?
I often find myself getting caught up in a Huxleyan future where I feel enormous pressure from an information rich society to be informed as to the breadth of an art form. Jesus, IO's year-end posts tear me apart – there are so many music recommendations to which I will never be able dedicate an appropriate amount of listening "sink-in" time. It bugs me that I feel guilty giving a week and a half to the latest Blut Aus Nord, and all the while I possess large amounts of evidence that, for me, this is the most fulfilling way to enjoy music.
Anon, your uncle is kind of right. Heavy music has been letting down Sabbath and Zeppelin for decades now. But he was wrong on Killing Joke (the early stuff, anyway). That's some fresh blood right there.
1st off…what an intelligent and well written site where even the comments are heads above half the e-journalist around. Thanks to all!!!
Such a complex issue, really, based on age…
There are so many records that I enjoyed from when I was young until the age of 25 or so that I will still listen to and enjoy today. Since then it's more like use once and destroy. I'll still preach to my friends that (?) is the best cd in years but after my 3 week love affair I'll rarely touch it again. Even you only brought up "good" music up through the late 80's/early 90's. I assume that this is a response to the glory and lower stressed days of youth versus the faster paced mentally challenged and repetitive days of middle age.
based on media…
Some say the size, beauty, sound, and substance of vinyl were part of the appeal. I agree that this applies to the intial impact but I still buy vinyl today and don't replay much of anything after the honeymoon is over. Cassettes allowed the sound to travel with you so you listened to more of what you wanted to hear and less of the radio and this is where things started to change. In addition they allowed you to make your own mix and now you were even less prone to listen to a whole album. Cd's took this up a notch with the ease of use and even if you had the original cd in it was so easy to skip the "lesser" songs. The internet, downloading, myspace…faster and simpler yet. No risk, no commitment, no marriage, no honeymoon. I have never even once listened to half the crap that I have downloaded over the years because there is just too much! It, new music, rarely has the chance to actually be a memorable part of my life. Live music is about the only place where I can really get that "wow factor". (Sunn O))) the other night…WOW!) I would compare the whole scenario to porn. When you were 15 and could hold it in your hand (c'mon now…the magazine) it was different. You were younger, more impressionable and naive. There were maybe 20 or 30 pictures an issue and now you can see 100's of pics of 100's of women in an hour. It just changes it all on so many levels.
I'm going to stop rambling and just say this…liking the music that kids are listening to and understanding kids are completely separate concerns. They could like what "we" or "you" like, they just choose not to.
Since this is my first reply I could ramble on even more (how could he possibly?) but hope that I've made at least a couple thoughtful observations.
Thanks again for such a wonderful diversion!
i'm actually going to say it's not complex and just say this…it's a generational thing…i don't know if these bands suck, but I remember being younger and alot of classic metal guys who liked Accept didn't dig Slayer or even Metallica for whatever reason. By time death metal hit, you had the thrashers who "didn't get" the vocals, and then almost ridiculously, black metal created a divide with death metal, and so on and so on….
point is this…we have the internet…chances are, there's a TON of bands from the time you grew up you still haven't heard yet…or at least their complete discography…focus on that…let these kids, however goofy it might seem to us, have some fun…
i can only imagine what parents thought when their kid brought home their first Skinny Puppy record in 1985 or whatever LOL…same thing here…
In October, Winds of Plague are playing a one-off show in New Zealand on a double bill with Suffocation. I kid you not.
As horrible as some of the bands are that you mentioned we currently live in a time when the best selling music is spoon fed to the masses.
American fucking idol received more votes than the presidential election. Think about that for a moment. What ever "act" wins that stupid show is pretty much given a number 1 record. The climate for popular music overall is a huge bowl of shit.
Look at Billboard. Black eyed Peas, Taylor Swift, Hannah Montana!!! The fact that a kid has found something with heavy guitars is a fucking blessing. If someone younger can find these shitty bands chances are they will stumble upon something great sooner or later.
"Testament vs. Shitty Metal Core?" What about shitty metal core vs American Idol or something like Pink? I know what's better in that case.
If someone is curious enough to step away from the spoon fed shit and grab a 'Attack Attack!' CD chances are they will find the good stuff.
I know my first heavy record wasn't Raign In Blood or 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions'. You grab Theater Of Pain and Parents Just Don't Understand first…and don't say you didn't.
As long as there's popular music, there'll always be bands that will try to out-extreme the other, and like folks have said, the availability of so many different kinds of music to young people worldwide means that the lines between genres are just going to get blurrier as time goes on. It just really started to accelerate as the post-Napster generation started to come of age.
And for the record, I get a bit of a kick out of Iwrestledabearonce…I like the triteness of the album, plus the cut-and-paste aspect of that stuff (Burroughs fan that I am), but Cosmo's right, I don't think any of these kids in these bands know what they're doing at all. Interviews with IWABO have them coming across as complete dunces.
"90% of everything is crap"- Theodore Sturgeon. Most kids listen to crap for the same reason that they drink shit beer and don't appreciate good wine. In the latter case, it's because their palates are undeveloped. In the case of the former, it's their brains that are undeveloped. I see it every day.
Yeah, Winds of Plague is unlistenable.
I think it's wrong to generalise the 'kids of today' as having bad taste. I think the correct generalisation is that the kids of any era have not yet experienced enough music to hone their music filtering skills. This makes them susceptible to latching onto to bands for reasons that aren't inherently musical, and are more about image than content.
Kids want to associate themselves with bands that project an image, that they want to identify themselves with. That reference to Tekken is about powerful an image as I can imagine a 14yo wanting to project!
In time, all the kids will realise that the image is hollow, and the music is where the real power is, and they'll adjust their loyalties accordingly. In the meantime, I'm sure the 14yo market is much easier to target than 30-something metalheads who sure as hell already know what they like. If I were a record exec with a taste for easy money, I know where I'd be looking.
I blame the following culprits for this glut of idiotic garbage…
First and foremost, the internet
Victory, Ferret, and Trustkill
Jesus
video game culture
Girls Gone Wild
mainstream top 40 hip hop
the 24 hour cable news cycle
people who steal music and don't actually buy the records after stealing it
Mix all of those shitty tasting ingredients and you get extremely shitty pop culture amalgam garbage.
In terms of record label complicity, Earache has sucked for almost 15 years, with very few exceptions…they are desperately trying to play catch up on this nonsense, fuck 'em! If Metal Blade and Century Media need to put out these shitty bands in order to keep bringing folks quality by Goatwhore or Intronaut respectively, then good for them for turning a VERY SMALL profit from stupid teenagers who won't give a shit about this music by the time they hit college!
I feel the same way about BBABH, Winds Of Plague and iwabo as I did about Limp Bizkit, Korn, etc. around 10-11 years ago. I scratched my head then as a 26 year old and do the same now. This new stuff is the rap metal of the current generation.
liv33vil – very astute points about physical media, and the time/effort investment they require. But good albums still require such investment. There's just more cultural noise around them now.
catatonic – you answered a question I had. Evidently Metallica and Slayer, old-school as they seem now, were new-school at one point. Interesting to see that they got received as such. Some things never change.
Matt – good point about kids gravitating to bands because of the image they project. Thing is, adults do that, too – especially with metal.
Astral Zombie – you forget that Jesus, or at least God, listens to Slayer. Remember when Victory and Trustkill were actual hardcore labels?
Sean – I dunno, I could kind of see the logic, however asinine, behind nu-metal. But this nu-nu-metal doesn't even have an ounce of groove. They're just riding the same cheap 808's and synths as today's Top 40, groove-less hip-hop. Winds of Plague make Korn seem like Parliament.
The worst aspect is that stuff like Winds of Plague seems so calculated to me. They're proficient enough to hit the self-aware reference points of an 'extreme metal band' so it becomes like an awkward inside joke. Kind how Kanwolf writing black metal about black metal conjures similar facepalmy feelings in me. Winds of Plague seem like a band that is *about* Winds of Plague. Even Korn, if memory serves, were about their singer having been sexually abused, at least! The worst pop culture phenomenons are those that have a blatant recursion at the core of their attraction.
"Look at Billboard. Black eyed Peas, Taylor Swift, Hannah Montana!!! The fact that a kid has found something with heavy guitars is a fucking blessing."
I like this point, Neckdeep. And I think that happens sometimes. However, I think more times, people are just following a trend (heavy guitar or not). A friend of mine started with Backstreet Boys, moved onto KORN, then Dimmu Borgir, now Iron Maiden. I wouldn't say his seduction is complete, but he's on his way. The problem with this is that there were a lot of wasted years in there due to all of the distracting influences. Even though those more extreme bands are not exactly mainstream, they are still part of a rather large movement. It feels like a part of his selection process includes influence from a popular point-of-view. Thus, all those years of heeding such influences has not taught him how to think about music. They've taught him how find acceptance while finding music. Trying to fit in (sadly) is one of the most compelling reason for a kid to buy music. The ability to honestly tell yourself that you are buying an album because it moves you is a rare thing indeed. It's even rarer at a young age.
I'm interested in how people listen to music these days.
When I was young and poor (instead of old and poor) I would save up, buy an album, listen to it until it was encoded on my DNA, then I would eventually be able to buy another album and repeat the process. Just because I bought something new didn't mean I retired the old, I just added to it. Somewhat cheaper options (I love eMusic)on buying music have allowed me to acquire much, much more music. More music than I could ever hope to listen to, much less appreciate. I could conceivably listen to most albums I acquire two or three times before moving onto the next thing. However, I refuse to listen to music this way because it robs the music of it's potential to affect me. I'd much rather listen to one album 10 times than 10 albums one time. Glutting ourselves only leads to superficial experience, after superficial experience, erodes our abilities to concentrate, and robs the artists we have invested in of the opportunity to touch us. That's why buying music makes sense. Investing money into music implies an expectation of the artist. But that investment can only pay off if we invest more than money.
I learned this lesson way before the internet hit. Columbia House taught me this. I remember joining that club and excitedly ripping open that introductory shipment. Metallica, Sepultura, Judas Priest, and Anthrax all cascaded from that box. I devoured some but not others. In fact, I never really learned to appreciate Anthrax. I had tried listening to them but was more interested in the others and was too excited about them to pay Anthrax the attention it probably deserved. The more music we have, the more this happens. Don't let this happen to you.
Cosmo-Do you remember the first Trustkill release???
Land Of Greed…World Of Need, a benefit Comp. of bands like Avail, Lifetime, Outspoken, Undertow, and Sparkmarker covering the Embrace lp for Food Not Bombs!
Also…in my haste I accidentally left Orange County off that blame list!
Helm – A band about itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. The first Metallica record was essentially about them coming to kick your ass. It's great when they namechecked themselves in "Whiplash." Also, a previous commenter here said something along the lines of "black metal shouldn't signify anything, it should just be." I agree with that to some extent. But, yes, self-reference is bad when it's calculated and not genuine.
Miskatonic – Good point about the quantity of music decreasing the quality of its experience. The Internet makes old-school CD clubs seem tame. Also, note the WASTED YEARS in getting to Iron Maiden.
Astral Z – I am not OG enough to remember the first Trustkill release. But here is a very interesting article I came across about Josh Grabelle and Trustkill, including that comp.
http://www.static-void.org/Zine/Frames.asp?id=0⁡=Trustkill.asp
For me, I think the generation gap does play a role – there are things about these groups that are made possible both by the Internet and a sampling/cut-and-paste appropriational aesthetic that weren't true before. On the other hand, there are plenty of new metal and hardcore bands doing cool, interesting things and completely failing to suck, so it's not like all modern heavy music sucks.
Sure, groups like Brokencyde, Attack Attack!, Blessed By A Broken Heart, Blood On The Dance Floor and Winds of Plague are shitty and awful. But as others have pointed out, there have always been shitty and awful bands. These bands are just shitty and awful in some new specific ways, and that attracts our attention.
I don't necessarily think they're any more representative of the modern state of youth culture than Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, or even stuff like Keel and Winger were. They're just mediocre bands who are able to capitalize on what angsty teenagers are responding to. Blessed By A Broken Heart, as new as they are, didn't always have this ironic glam-metal schtick. They started off as straight-up eyeliner, girlpants, white belts and scene hair metalcore, and dully and poorly played at that. There's always an element of opportunism with these bands (although Brokencyde might really be that stupid, I don't know). They're empty musical calories, as so many bands before them have been, and their fanbases will either be replaced or will dry up, which is why we aren't all still listening to Static-X or even FireHouse. As people grow up, their tastes grow up.
I think what makes any of these bands so offensive is how reliant they are on genre tropes. Hardcore got boring as more and more bands drew all of their inspiration from other hardcore bands. Metal went the same way. In each case, revitalization occurred eventually, but the shittiest bands are the ones who just assemble their songs out of the parts the genre demands. With groups like Winds of Plague or Attack Attack!, you're getting this weird-ass mixture of bits of different genres (though WoP mostly just sound like someone took shitty death metal riff salad and grafted it to Cradle of Filth's keyboards to me) that manages to suck in a new and unexpected way, making it almost offensive instead of just dull. Getting screaming vocals and auto-tuned boy-band vocals in the same song just says to me that these groups, like all groups, are stealing from other musicians, but are doing so uncritically, thoughtlessly, and indiscriminately. Which makes it seem like they don't care. Which is the most offensive part of it.
The kids that listen to metal these days have their downloading and guitar hero and all this bullshit that is just readily available to them. They didn't go to local hardcore shows and see kids with Entombed patches and be like "who the hell are those guys?" They just Googled them.
There was no growth period, starting with thrash or heavy metal and working up to the more extreme styles. They just pulled some Matrix type shit and boom, they instantly knew what heavy music was and how it was supposed to sound. Sure they have 1000's of metal records that probably go unlistened to on their hard drives, but that's besides the point.
It was given to them, or rather, they took it and bastardized just about everything with their sledgehammer sense of nuance. That's why it is so hard for most people my age to legitimate their appreciation for the genre. But some of us did grow up listening to metal and make it our duty to continue to refine our tastes with the aid of the metal blogs like this one.
Yes, you're getting old, we all are. Most of this sounds like a technophobic rant about how "there's just so many choices these days." your references are picked wholly from the current Century Media roster. your problem is not that the kids are all making crappy music, its just that you're looking for it in all the wrong places. Century Media, and also Relapse or Hydra Head, are just too old to find continued relevance in today's music. they're the establishment that the kids are flailing against. so you here your "screamo crunkcore" and you think that it has some purpose other than as a product specially made to make 30'ish ex-hipsters feel like they're still "way out there." i bet you're a mars volta fan.
In my opinion, nostalgia is just "easier" for many.. easier to emulate, because in all of it's somewhat already "formulaic glory" it is a tested element among a mass of people.
in part – this nostalgia has {d)evolved into the music "scene" that you catch yourself questioning…
it is a product of circumstance as it is a product of utter lethargy when it comes to creating truly "new" music..
the people that are aware of the "old school" are trying too hard to emulate it, and the people unaware, are trying too hard to become part of it..
i generally find today's music un-inspired, and generally lazy;
the classic symptom of this laziness and un-inspiration, in my opinion, is emulation over innovation, music scenes are created out of revivalist fetishist attitudes instead of peoples' sincere ability and need to create new, interesting, great music. It's understandable that this is a "(un)natural evolution" that is often blamed on "coinciding with the times,"[as sometimes it might] but the fact that we are in the most regurgitated state of music right now, whether it be metal or other-wise, is pretty indicative of this fact..
there have definitely been many bright lights that shined through, but they are the minority – and how many of them can you truly say have been a completely new 'product' [ meaning - they didn't include old members from seasoned bands ]?
a certain sincerity lacks from the last 10+ years of music that has been "spewed" upon us, and i think that the current congestion of the
neon-colored-shirt-hip-hop-trucker-hat-wearing-slanty-hair-cut-coy-fish-tattooed-monotonous-breakdown-filled-tight-pants-synth-programmed-drum-replacement "public works" are anecdotic of that in-sincerity..
i can only hope that the fittest will always survive and surface over the "bad", and that new great bands will always be seeked out and the momentum of luck, circumstance and talent will carry them through, but with the age of mass media saturation, it becomes increasingly complex and tougher for those bands to surface…
a lot of great posts here.. i went and listened to Winds of Plague and they were not as bad as I thought they would be (still bad, of course, but not a Brokencyde level of bad). That style of music doesn't do much for me anyway. From the photo, they look like douchebag famewhores, so its hard to listen to without having that image prejudice your opinion. I doubt they will ever be considered classic; is Limp Biskit going to be selected for the Decibel Hall of Fame any time soon?
ultimately, metal is such a wide genre full of sub-genres, and there's no way that you can like all of them. when i was a kid into thrash I couldn't tolerate traditional-sounding NWBHM (now i love it).
as for the screamo-crunk stuff, how popular is it really? Are that many kids really into it, or is it just a faddish Internet thing like the keyboard playing cat? Will it be around this time next year?
Remember when Victory and Trustkill were actual hardcore labels
I remember. Those were good times. Makes me sad.
I agree with everyone regarding the ubiquitousness of terrible music throughout all time periods. I also agree with everyone regarding the information availability provided by the internet.
I think there's a next step to be taken in understanding this phenomenon, though. The direct access to target markets offered by the internet enables labels like Century Media to bypass the filter of music critics and radio DJs to give teenagers exactly what they want to buy. Critics used to have a much more relevant place in defining a larger cultural landscape. Now, memes and mores fly across computer screens.
Here is an article about movie marketing that discusses many of the same concepts in a slightly different context:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/19/090119fa_fact_friend
As someone who is more confused than upset by "what the kids are listening to," etc., this article was a very engaging read.
Also, Cosmo, if you think Winds of Plague is hilarious, consider Chiodos.
You stole my memes, you jerk!! At least give me a link:
http://metalinquisition.blogspot.com/2009/01/screamo-crunk-cultural-primer.html
Brokencyde = Limp Bizkit
yeah I was going to say…saying that you could at least understand nu metal or rap metal, but this stuff doesnt even have a groove is like saying the crap from our day was better than the crap from today. I agree with you BTW, I could at least wrap my head around the existence of limp bizkit and korn at the time. but thats because I was in my late teens at the end of the 90s and shit was still being marketed to me. now on the eve of 30 I have no fucking clue whatsoever what the kids are listening to and I dont engage pop culture (american idol, mtv, reality tv, warped tour etc), so I have no idea what the hells is going on. also the point about Hydra Head and Relapse being out of touch is totally true. those labels and their fanbases have grown older concurrently. it makes complete sense that the kids would look elsewhere. those are labels that make music for pretentious 20 and 30 year olds (like us). to me attack attack sucks in exactly same way that limp bizkit does, only I dont recognize these kids anymore and their music seems foreign and aggressively bad in a new way. I'm sure people who were 28 and 29 in 1997-8 saw limp bizkit and were like "what the hell is wrong with these kids today?" I know I would have. bottom line is I'm fine with being old and out of touch if what im missing is attack attack and brokencyde.
"What's kinda worrying for me about that Testament story is that they were second rate in the eighties after the first couple of records but now with all this thrash revival shit that's going on the original bay area bands are enjoying retroactive deification. Even fucking Protector from Germany were a more inspired and meaningful band than Testament with their watered down Metallica worship thing. But here someone will come and tell me that Testament circa Souls of Black changed their life, anything's possible."
What a misinformed comment. I'm sure Testament sound just like Metallica, especially with the jazz, classical and Middle Eastern influences that Metallica never had. I'm sure when Steve DiGorgio, Dave Lombardo, James Murphy, Gene Hoglan & John Tempesta decided to join Testament, they weren't thinking they were "2nd rate." If a band has galloping palm-muted open-E's, does that instantly relegate them to "Metallica clone?" Protector? Give me a fucking break. I suggest you stop beating the Souls Of Black horse and actually listen to their other material. Plus, how many thrash guitarists were as recognizable/unique as Skolnick? Your argument holds no water IMHO, but everyone is entitled to one.
Listen to Practice What You Preach and then two 80's Metallica albums and tell me they didn't follow the same formula. Onslaught, Mortal Sin and more than a few other bands wanted to be Metallica too at one stage.
Sorry if this topic is a bit old.
I agree with alot of things said so far, but I really don't think it's an age thing. I think age has a part to play, but I think genre and general sound has quite a bit more to with why music sucks so much, and the dumbing down of society in general. I'm 22 and my musical tastes have changed dramatically in the last 5 years, but i struggle to listen to any music created in the last 5 yrs. Metal has become mainstream and veered off into some very messy stuff.
Theres plenty of heavy (thrash, death, black etc) metal bands that are shit, but of course there are a good number that are very good, in quality and popularity. but the newer spawns of metal (not sure if i'd classify them as metal) such as screamo, hardcore etc, I can't name any bands that are remotely good, but many are very popular.
Although re-hashed death metal bands (winds of plague)are not ideal, i'd prefer them to a new style of "metal" that makes me want to punch a teenager.
This is the reason I listen to drum n bass and trance as well as the old gods of metal. For me, metal is dead.
Victory actually had some decent bands there at the beginning. I'm thinking Bloodlet (who I saw on tour with Entombed and they killed the joint dead with a killer set), Deadguy (the template for DEP and others), Integrity, Cause For Alarm, etc. Too bad the label got so mired in crap as it continued.
I used this article as inspiration to check out what's "current" in metal and boy was I disappointed. I've been a hardcore/punk/metal/noise/grind fan since I was 13 years old but stopped following the scene around 2001. I still kept up with several bands (Nasum, Unsane, Napalm Death, Crisis, High On Fire) but stopped actively rooting around for new music. The current resurgence of thrash and old-school death metal, coupled with the music of OM and Jesu, got my ears interested in what's happening again. I asked a friend to compile a list of new bands who are garnering a lot of attention. He mentioned Warbringer, Revocation, Suicide Silence, Winds of Plague, and Job For A Cowboy. All of these bands are disappointing. Warbringer has a lot of youthful enthusiasm but a derivative sound, like a gussed-up Exodus cover band. They might be fun live but their albums are boring. Revocation's newest album sounds like plastic, the production is flat, sterile and their songwriting ability is weak. They have the most potential to grow into something interesting, however. Suicide Silence is terrible, as with Winds of Plague and Job For A Cowboy, I thought they were a joke at first… a teenage hipster parody of metal. Then I read that JFAC merch outsells all other death metal bands combined. These three bands are the Korn/Deftones/POD of a new generation. Five years from now and no one will give a shit about them. Timelessness will clarify the wheat from the chaff. For every Melvins there was a Tad, Gruntruck, and Stompbox.
But there is a bigger problem for me beyond these new bands and that is the new style of record production. Even great old-school bands have albums that sound like plasticized shit, super-compressed with no punch. I hate the way these records sound. When I listen to an album like "Visqueen" by Unsane, an album with no triggers and a thick, meaty sound, it is so heavy it shakes the speakers. I can crank Revocation's album all the way up and it still sounds flat, lifeless. Some bands get it, the new Kowloon Walled City and Burning Human albums sound great but others are over-produced, over-triggered, and uninspiring.
I think I'll always have my ear open to an exciting new band but at this point in my life (mid-30's), I'm not as open as I once was to music that is either derivative or poorly produced. Besides, there is a ton of great stuff from the 70s, 80s, and 90s to catch up on. I only just got into Coroner, whose music is worth more to me than all of the above "new" bands output combined.
christopher – For the most part, I agree. This site is about hopefully finding those diamonds in the rough. The bands your friend cited are certainly getting attention, but they are not the only ones. Thanks to the Internet, people are digging on all sorts of cool stuff. You just have to find them/it.
Just FYI, this is coming from an 18 year old:
Fuck you, not all of us listen to "crap," as you put it. Not all of us are stuck in the past, either. I am friends with both people stuck on the latest trend and people stuck in music from twenty or thirty years ago, in equal numbers. Being stuck in the past can be just as bad as the "long tail" you brought up.
Though I don't want to be just one of those people saying "What about ?" but I feel I have no choice
What about Gojira? What about Mastodon? What about High on Fire? These guys are going to be the "old school" metal bands, not Winds of Plague.To get mainstream on you, what about Kings of Leon? Kings of Leon are going to be the "old school" pop rock band people of my generation are going to remember, not Brokencyde or anything like that.
You have to remember, glam got just as diluted with subgenres as metalcore is now. In the end, all people are really going to remember is "hey, remember metalcore?" "Yeah, it was cool at first, but it sucked after a while." And then there's gonna be old farts like you who are gonna shout triumphantly from the rooftops (of maybe just post on their blogs) "HA! I told you!"
And I have to say that, as a forward thinking teenager now who's going to be a nostalgic old fart in twenty years, people who complain about the newest generation of bands always look at the crap and never mention the great stuff that came along at the same time. I honestly hope that, when I become the old bastard sitting at a bar talking to some other balding guy about that one time I saw Mastodon, I don't start complaing about the degredation of music as an art form. Because then I'll be no better than the guy who pissed me off by generalizing about my generation when I was a kid.
Well said, Keith. Thanks for the reality check.
Don’t mean to make a useless comment here, but this is one of the most interesting pieces on an incredibly important/neat idea. I’ve linked this page to many friends. Also, thanks for the book recommendation, it’s wonderful as well.
Please keep it up Cosmo et. al!
I was recently talking to a 20-something friend of mine, a woman (gasp!), and she said all of my ideas about music these days being stale, rehearsed, totally meaningless were totally unfounded. According to her I was simply not hearing what was so important and vital in this newer music. I’m quite willing to take her seriously, mostly because I want to castigate myself, but I also want to see/hear the truth. So the only question that remained was: how do you know when you’re generation-gapped? I guess you never know, thus the gap.
But I’m okay with that. I know what sounds good to me…I only hope it sounds good to other people my age. 
And is there any other music genre that is so concerned with age and generation as rock n roll and all of its derivatives, so youth conscious? Exactly. Make way for the young, no matter how stupid/silly they seem. We appear to be the same to them. Oh well. I’ll continue to write music for myself and for people of my generation. Fuck the young, but they would expect this anyway…and good on them.
We’ll definitely need more Heavy Metal music by people in their 30s or 40s for people in their 30s or 40s. It’s kind of ridiculous how old people pretend to still write music for some strange notion of what ‘the kids’ will like.
Winds Of Plague is one of the greatest most technical bands ever. They are extremely talented. You probably like that dumb nigger shit called rap that is the worst shit in all existence. You are just mad that you will never have talent like Winds Of Plague. Go listen to your fallout boy or all that other bullshit. I will stick with real music like Metal.
Wow you have never heard anything from Winds Of Plague if you say they are not good. That band has got to be one of the best Metal bands around with their awesome breakdowns, great riffs, and awe inspiring keyboards not to mention the great vocals. Try to make someone else believe your bullshit.
if you call your band “blessed by a broken heart”…i hope you get jumped
Fuck Shitallica, Testament’s music is way better.
Fucking overrated shitty Metallica sucks a lot of ass.
Agreed, Metallica suck, but I want to call them Vomitallica because they’re an insult to metal… shitty commercial band.
Blind Guardian OWNS Commerciallica
Metallica sucks, give me some Gojira
Please don’t think that all kids like crappy music, I am 14 years old and detest pop and rap but I listen to a lot of 60s, 70s, 80s music from the Beatles to the Ramones and def leopard so while a lot of my generation listen to the newer music not all of us do and the ones that don’t will carry this music on to the next generation.