Would any woman actually wear this shirt?
. . .
We all know what this means. Some of us are guilty of it. Some of us feel no guilt about it. Some of us think others should feel guilt about it.
I was in the latter camp for a while. Then I started shifting to the first camp, and then the second.
I’ve thought about this issue for years. It’s impossible not to when one writes about music. For every album one reviews, there’s a person (or a hundred) who says, “I prefer their old stuff”.
My mental framework on this issue has remained constant for years. My personal tastes have not, so my position along this framework has changed.
. . .
Here are my two general principles regarding “I prefer their old stuff”.
1. For bands that operate through raw intensity, the old stuff is better.
2. For bands that operate through technicality and/or melody, the later stuff is better.
. . .
The reasoning behind these principles is simple. Raw intensity thrives on youth. As bands age, they lose a step. Also, raw intensity only goes so far as a modus operandi. Usually after three albums, it starts repeating itself. Thus, you often see bands transitioning from principle 1 to principle 2. They start “growing” and “exploring new ideas”. Kylesa and Nasum are examples of this.
Technicality and melody – songwriting, really – are crafts, however, that take time. If a band’s material is complicated, it often takes it a record or two to acquire the chops and tightness to do it service. Shadows Fall and Between the Buried and Me are examples of this.
Of course, exceptions exist for these principles. In the raw intensity camp, later Converge is better than early Converge. In the technical/melodic camp, early Helloween is infinitely preferable to later Helloween.
One trump card for these principles is production. If a band becomes successful and moves up the record industry chain, it often gets bigger budgets that result in sterile production that renders newer stuff inferior to older stuff.
Another is mastering. In the past five years, the majority of metal records, whether raw and intense or technical and melodic, have had over-loud, over-compressed mastering that, for me, automatically renders newer stuff inferior to older stuff. The newer material might be superior, but I have such an allergic reaction now to over-compressed mastering that it often ruins quality material for me.
My tastes have shifted from technical/melodic to raw/intense. For what I like, the earlier stuff is usually better.
I find no triumph or shame in that. Go with your gut, and let the chips fall where they may.
Totally. I agree. Especially since I don’t dig the too technical and too melodic stuff. The best ideas usually surface at the start too.
Total agreement on this one. A band like Toxic Holocaust would be ruined with cleaner, more compressed production. Also look at Exodus, as Gary Holt’s playing is very clean and technical, and benefits from this newer way of recording. Look at what they have released in the past 8 years. Record like Tempo Of The Damned and such, squash the sound Exodus had on albums like Fabulous Disaster and Impact Is Eminent.
I feel like this is true of all bands that split along these lines. I prefer Andrew Bird’s later work, but I prefer Deicide’s earlier work.
A possible counterexample?
What about a band like Anaal Nathrakh? I don’t like their old stuff better and they improved their technical capabilities, though I don’t think they lost anything in intensity…
This seems to be a pretty accurate theory, and I agree about the Converge exception. That might have to do with the fact that they started so young and so their “older stuff” was them still trying to find their footing (and Kurt still honing his production skills.) Many consider Jane Doe their peak and thus their peak in intensity as well (their newest is arguably their most technical so you might get an overlap in rules with Converge.)
These technical death metal/deathcore kids need to take a production class from Billy Anderson and Steve Albini on what and what not do when it comes to production.
You should do another column that tries to differentiate “older stuff” from “newer stuff”. Is Seasons in the Abyss older stuff? It came out 10 years after Slayer formed and it’s their 5th album.
It looks like for huge bands from the 80’s, there’s also”middler” stuff: seasons, black album, countdown, chaos A.D., practice what you preach, The Eye, Draconian times etc. for me, personally, this is my favorite period by a band. Maybe it’s because by then the band haven’t aged too much yet but already had mature compositions and good quality production. But maybe it’s just because I’m a sucker for 90’s metal – MTV influenced, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-solo-chorus, hooky, catchy metal is the best.
“Raw intensity thrives on youth. As bands age, they lose a step.”
Tell that to Napalm Death!
That’s all well and good if you omit Napalm Death’s 1993-1999 output…godawful!
that’s a great topic, and a great article. the mastering issue is so true.
there’s also the emotional moment when a band gets to be known (and loved) by its listener. I think Anathema’s best work is Serenades, and Paradise Lost’s is Icon, and in great account ’cause those were the albums when I found the bands. ‘newer’ audiences that discover them from later works may have different opinions from what’s best – but for those who lived an earlier moment, there’s always a nostalgic “in my time stuff was so much better” feeling. that mixes, of course, music and one’s own life.
I was thinking Napalm Death the entire time when reading the main post. Then saw the comments. I think today (and really since 2000) ND delivers clean production and raw intensity – in the studio releases and live in concert, and that is rare. Shane Embury is 42 and the other mates are 40. Nice.
Fantastic topic. I enjoyed the article, Cosmo!
Smells like ILM in here.
i prefer your older articles.
Interestingly, after a cursory think about this, it seems that black metal (at its best) seems to transition between the two stages, angry and intense when young, structured and melodic when older. Marduk for example are a key example.
Interesting. Good article. Technical and melodic.
This article misses the most important reason older material is better for old HM bands. And perhaps almost as importantly doesn’t speculate on and why later material is better for new HM bands. Technicality is coincidential completely to the factor.
In the ’80s the first (and often second) record by a band was material that they’ve woodshedded to perfection, that has been extensively tested in local live shows, that has sometimes been worked and re-worked by new people until the band got their stable ‘official first’ lineup. Sometimes these songs are the results of 5 or more years of iterative progress.
And then they get signed, successful and their company is pressuring them to match that level of quality within one year of the first record’s release. Some bands can manage it for a couple of more records and then it’s diminishing returns (or some times, a hiatus, change of musical direction and either return to quality for a couple of records or a spiral off of towards irrelevancy).
Examples of masterful debuts of unmatched brilliance that have been in the works for years: Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Melissa, Winter Kill, A Social Grace, HEart of the Ages, Life Cycles
(also notable when discussing technicality that for example ‘Life Cycles’ by Sieges Even was considerably more technically difficult to perform than any of their latter records, same with ‘A Social Grace’ by Psychotic Waltz and many, many other examples).
The reason newer HM bands mostly peak around second or third record is exactly because nobody (big) has to sign them to release what would otherwise would have remained as demo and rehearsal tape material in the ’89s. Home recording being what it’s becoming the sound difference between a demo and a small-print record is negligible too. Small bedroom record labels are eager to jump on the ‘next big thing’ in its infancy to fully capitalize on it later and will take your half-decent bedroom black metal recording and make a debut album out of it and print it in a hundred copies for good or worse. This sort of ’speculative’ record releasing is the reason we have so many active metal bands right now but not as much great HM to show for it as one would have expected.
Some bands stick with it and become better and at record three or so we get the musical prowess that would have gone into their first record were they to exist back in the ’80s.
However all things are not equal. This is a very important distinction that not many people have explicitly noted: the 00’s third-record-debut (excuse the awful term) is different from the 80’s debut in that it has been prefaced by two other weak releases. Before you go ‘well, duh’ think about what that entails: logo, artwork, song names, lyrics, photography, the whole aesthetic essence of the band has been iterated two or three times publicly (unlike back in the ’80s where demos were unofficial releases and much of their essence was replicated+augmented for the actual debuts) before they actually get to write their musical magnum opus. This leads to the strange situation where a modern band is making spontaneous music that looks, reads and feels awesome on their first records but sounds like crap / is performed sloppily and then they put out well-performed and composed records with aesthetics and meanings that feel tired and formulaic.
The body and mind of a band need to age at the same rate. Keep your bedroom recordings inside your bedroom and only put out a debut album when everything is on the same page, make a statement and if it’s a potent one it will live through the ages. It only takes one great record to become immortal. HM is not about ’sustaining a career in the music industry’ it is a Quixotic foray into realms of fantastical senselessness. Keep your vanity releases to yourself (and your circle of friends). If your band’s name starts with “M” you should only allow yourself to put out a record when you feel it can be placed next to Mercyful Fate’s Melissa with some degree of self-assuredness. Same for all the other letters in the metal alphabet (I guess besides “Z”? HM bands whose name starts with Z can put out whatever crap they want).
“That’s all well and good if you omit Napalm Death’s 1993-1999 output…godawful!”
While those albums may not have been as vicious as their earlier and later stuff, they are actually pretty good. Especially “Fear, Emptiness, Despair.”
Helm raises a good point. I see this “signed too early” thing all the time in young bands now.
On the other hand, it’s sort of perversely commendable that labels are giving bands the freedom and time to “find themselves” two or three albums into a career. That’s due not to intention but to market competition forcing early signings, but it’s an interesting byproduct.
But the interest there is in the ‘metal as a reality show’ angle, I fear. It’s in following the public record of what should have never been public. Just because labels and bands are willing to show (sell us) the early awkward finger paintings of what would perhaps later become master painters doesn’t mean they’re interesting as good art. They’re only interested as a retrospective annotation to the great work that (most often) never comes.
When a band puts out a truly great record or two there’ll be label interest to put out an ‘Unreleased/Best of’ with demo tape tracks and whatnot (and yes, there’ll be people that’ll like the demo tracks more than the debut perfected versions and that’s understandable when you go to demo tracks FROM the perfected versions). They just shouldn’t be the first presentation of the band. Not for any other reason that there’s simply too much mediocre metal around and the signal to noise ratio is getting worse and worse.
All that said I must admit to some flame-baiting hyperbole in the post above: It’s no skin off of my back if bands want to put out three or ten or twenty records before they perfect their art, really. Signal to noise, sure, whatever, it’s not like there’s any aspect of popular culture that doesn’t suffer from this, why should ‘extreme music’ be any different? The great records will eventually reach those interested through word of mouth as it always was the case. It’s just a matter of knowing whom to listen to (that’s an issue of metal journalism then, not the practices of bands and labels).
Nice article, Cosmo.
I feel the same way about the mastering/compression issue, it usually just ruins the album for me, depending on just how loud it’s mastered and how good the material is.
One example for the “their old stuff is better” that fits with your theory would be The Haunted. Their first 3 albums are all great in my humble opinion, and after One Kill Wonder, they just were never the same. They lost the intensity and ferocity, and were never quite the same.
I like the good ones and I don’t like the bad ones.
Looks like I’m in the minority on this point, but I must say I tend to enjoy modern sounding records better than stuff from the 80s and early 90s. The supposedly over-compressed sound is preferable to me. I suppose this has to do with the fact that I was born in ‘81, meaning by the time I got into metal the recording industry was nearing its transition from analog to digital. There are exceptions to the rule, as some of my favorite artists of all time still utilize tape in the studio, at least for the actual recording (not so much mastering). Overall, however, I like when an album is LOUD.
On a different note; Helm, you should really start your own blog. I visit this site relatively often – at least a few times a week – and each time I am genuinely impressed with the comments you leave. You are clearly well educated in all things metal and your writing ability is second to none. Thank you for putting the time in to comment here.
There aren’t any “laws” or rules that apply to this. One has to go band by band.
It really is a case by case basis. Helm mentioned HEart of the Ages, which is indeed phenomenal, but I’m in the camp that says that In the Woods… never slowed down. This is in part due to them taking two years to release every album, and breaking up a decade or so into their career. A band like Dream Theater, on the other hand, reached their peak with Awake and A Change of Seasons, and then declined to the point where only avid fans like me are willing to care about each new release (although I’m in the pro-Black Clouds camp).
About the In the Woods… example, I consider ‘Omnio’ weaker than both ‘Heart of the Ages’ and ‘Strange in Stereo’. That the latter is such a departure from the former would suggest that perhaps the band felt likewise but in truth this isn’t the case. As I understand it, In the Woods… consider ‘Omnio’ their masterpiece even today. It could be due to extra-musical memories or because of the lyric work (which is wonderful), I don’t know, it just seems odd to me.
The interesting thing is that they abandoned the pagan metal they perfected on ‘HEart of the Ages’ exactly because they were honing and perfecting it before release (checking ‘Isle of Men’) for some years, which ties is somewhat to my overall point. Would we need two or three variations of ‘Heart of the Ages’?
That’s sort of my problem with the sophomore effort. It’s a slightly more melodtramatic (and short-toothed) variation on ‘HEart of the Ages’. The vocals are weaker and some songs (particularly ‘Weeping Willow’) are under-composed in my opinion. The odd, slightly detuned sound doesn’t help. I wouldn’t call it a retread but it certainly seems like a transitional album to me. That they then took time off to come up with the eclectic brew of ‘Strange In Stereo’ (an enduring artifact of the metal ’90s if there ever was one) is very commendable. If only more HM bands had similar trajectories.
Not that HEart isn’t without its problems. Specifically ‘Mourning for the death of Aase is instant-skip for me due to the out of tune female vocals, even all these years with this record, which I consider ‘desert island’ material, I can’t stomach it. The band was reportedly not happy with it either and hence the remake in ‘Three Time Seven on a Pilgrimage’ which, sadly, I find extremely overdone vocally. It’s like ‘The Great Gig In The Sky’ being ruined for similar reasons.
@ Helm
Funny, I love Mourning the Death… and Weeping Willow. Part of it is the fact that one thing I’m not rigorous about is vocals which are in tune. Sometimes, I like faults like that.
Generally I agree the faults are interesting and no deal breakers in HM. I don’t mind vocals wildly out of tune as long as they’re not by women endlessly vowelizing over otherwise soft music. Something sanity decaying about that for me. Now I’m thinking of the last song on the Patty Waters Sings LP. Here,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1sGHTV__Nk
enjoy.
(not to say that what Patty Waters was doing in this song has any bearing on the tone-deaf singing on ‘Mourning for the Death of Aase’, I recognise the artistry in Waters’ song, I just can’t stand in any more than I can ‘The Great Gig in the Sky’ and the similar In the Woods…/Green Carnation forays)
Jane Doe may be Converge’s most sentimental album but I really think Axe to Fall is the culmination of twenty years of hard work. I can’t wait to hear what the next twenty years brings, because it’s going to be hard to top AtF.
I think many people (such as myself) prefer the “old stuff” because thats when the hunger is there. Thats the time when a band is generally more willing to take risks and fly it up the flagpole with disregard for tastemakers. I would say that “old stuff” can be up to about 5 or 6 albums if the band has a big discography. Iron Maiden is a good example. There are always outliers though. I think Overkill’s latest is the best album they have EVER done.
The thing with bands like Overkill and Napalm is that if you hang around along enough to see yourself slip into semi-irrelevance (mid-90s for both bands), it sometimes starts that fire again, the fire to prove you’ve still got what it takes. For both bands, that paid off big time.
VOEGTLIN – “Smells like ILM in here”
Industrial Light and Magic? What’s that, you don’t have anything worthwhile to offer? How very unsurprising that you’re so predictable and boring at this stage.
I think this argument is hard to make sense of because there are too many exceptions to the rule for it to truly be a rule. I think a lot of bands’ first material is what has been brewing in their head musically for some years and when it finally gets a platform to be heard then they unload everything they had. Once that is exhausted they pluck more inspiration out of their brains and some musicians don’t work well like this. Some are more professional and operate like this better than when they had no clue what they were doing. Ulver is an easy example to make.
Ha ha. Not surprised a simple post from me is turned into something complex and provocative by you, Con-dwee.
How about: Cos’ apologia is unnecessary. People like what they like. Not everyone is going to agree and not everyone will like what you like. I’m sure I dislike a lot of what you like. Perhaps I like some of what you like. If these preferences happen to be the “old stuff,” what does that mean? Well, that you or I or “they” prefer the “old stuff.”
A band’s creativity tends to run dry after a few records. That’s just the way “things are.” There are exceptions to the rule, of course, but those exceptions tend to be bands that have ridden a formula of their own device through adolesence, adulthood, and into the colostomy bag realm. If you happen to like band X’s 10th record, then bully for you. It doesn’t make you any different than the poor bastard who only likes band X’s demos.
Only on the Internet can “a priori argument” be treated like a great mystery than demands investigation from an astute group of minds such as you and your partner-in-crime, AstroGlide.
Is that OK w/ you?
At least you had something to say, that’s all I wanted. Personal attacks on the wayside don’t you feel better having actually said something? Way to type with latin words though, big scholastic ups for that.
Also don’t you think twisting someone’s screen name is a bit playground? I suppose your “style” is to stay within the realm you’re writing and in this case it’s the internet, the biggest playground. I’m never going to like you or anything you say, that’s the way “things are.”
If anything I thought or typed appealed to you, I would be quite sad.
But I must say, I am happy to know I’ve gotten under your skin enough to where you’re compelled to type about me in the comment space before you offer anything re: the post.
Also: Complaining about my vocabulary doesn’t bother me, but it makes you look like someone who suffers from an oppresive inferiority complex.
This doesn’t have anything to do with what one likes or why great songs are great, so I’m gonna go stare at the walls and recite Latin verbs.
Well I’m glad we’re on the same page then. To me your name is something I see and immediately know I’m in for a good laugh, so thank you for being that phantom in my life I’ve been waiting for.
Poetic, even.
I thank god every day that I’m not an audiophile or sound nut or someone who gives two shits about mastering, otherwise I’d probably hate music.