As a young metalhead, I fetishized the old school. While my friends were getting into the new Nile or Marduk, I was going apeshit over Seven Churches and Darkness Descends. But sadly, my initial forays into old-school metal were sparked by the scorn of the worst types of dudes: Metal Historians. You know the type—grizzled veterans who hate kids today because they “don’t know their history” or “they weren’t there” or “they probably haven’t even listened to ____ yet”. I was on my way to being one of these dudes by 17. And sure, I still enjoy my history as much as the next guy—I will sometimes drunkenly brag about making it out to that Kreator/Destruction show at L’Amour when it was still around in Brooklyn—but these days, I can’t stand those guys. Whenever I hear someone bitching about the albums it takes to be a real or true fan, I’m disgusted. These used to be the new kids, and now look at ‘em, talking about Emperor the way old guys talked about Judas Priest before them. The more things change . . .
For me and many like me, metal has always been there, in its entirety. Metal music exists in a weird fault in time where the gods and classics of the old world exist in strange proximity with new and far different methods of aural extremity. Because of that, the Historians’ point of view is valid. If some deathcore band’s album isn’t as good as Slaughter Of The Soul or Fabulous Disaster, then fuck it, no matter when any of them were made. What the Historians hate, really, isn’t the music, it’s that it’s no longer hard to get into, or be into, metal. This is because of the Internet. The web is a huge ever-present sounding and sharing board, where the international tape-trading of old is done instead with the click of a button. This creates two new breeds of listener. First, there’s the cross-genre metalhead, who accepts all varying forms of metal because he can access them for free. Second, there is the previously unthinkable: the casual metal fan, the guy who digs hard on metal but never believes in a tour shirt-wrapped tribe that he has to be a part of.
The casual metal listener throws on some Mastodon or Naglfar between Arcade Fire albums and wears a Slayer shirt now and then. Why not? It’s easy! Albums are now nebulous digital entities, varying series of vibrations that ripple through the electricity on our computers. CDs straddled the halfway point—they were physical music, could feature endless enjoyable listening hours, but were at the end of the day mirror discs off of which music was magically lasered. A record is a pure physicality of music—bumps dragged by a microphone needle, either a primitive recording device or the most futuristic washboard known to man—while the mp3 is entirely ethereal. On the one hand, this movement from physical to digital is a tragic loss, because we become detached from the object-importance sense of music, the love of not just a song but the physical shard that holds it: the case, the slip, the broad flat cover. On the other hand, discovering music via digital download provides a truly subjective experience. There is no object here, no square foot of cool album art, no song credits or The Band Would Like To Thanks. There’s just the music, just the sound of these notes in your head, in the air.
The old school is about records, and that’s not what a record is about. A record isn’t nebulous, it’s hard and black. Morbid Tales isn’t a ball of colored empathic light, it’s a blade. Classics have their place, and those records that deserve it should always be printed on vinyl, if only so that after the apocalypse oxygen miners can find that music in a physical item. That’s all vinyl is at this point—a fascinating relic. To have that square of art on your shelves used to stand for how far you’d come as a creature, the same way that having some illuminated Chaucer on your shelves stood for culture back when people wore seven layers of underwear and drank tea like motherfuckers. They’re cool—fun to look at, good for the cultural memory, and endlessly useful (don’t forget, you can’t roll a joint on an mp3), But that packaging, the possession of that object, only makes us antiquarians. Because the modern fan knows that the naked music is all that a band can really be judged by and that’s easy to access at any given time.
What this has also done for modern fans, I feel, is stripped the importance from the slipcases worn by the people in the scene. Remember Saxon’s “Denim & Leather”? Great riff, stupid song. “Denim and leather brought us all together / It was you that set the spirit free . . . ” The face-forward sentiment here is decent (we all had the look, but you had the fire in you), but I’m pretty sure the band was actually promoting something shallower here (fuck yeah biker jacket, fuck yeah jeans). More to the point, the whole brought-together-by-fashion thing is an old concept. These days, only assholes really care about what you wear to a show, and it seems like most people know that. Sure, everyone takes a crack at someone’s stupid haircut or ridiculous heels, but at the end of the day it doesn’t matter. Long hair or short hair, tight or baggy, it’s all just sweat and screams and distortion when the lights go down. This understanding widens the limits of what constitutes posers, making it acceptable to wear whatever the fuck you want so long as you have the attitude. Yeah, man, his whole Buddy Holly outfit thing is a little ridiculous, but the dude fucking LOVES Nifelheim.
There’s the idea that this is the problem—that the digital age gives nonbelievers access to so much that they never truly love the music they hear, leading to false metalheads who have tons of records but don’t like any of them. That’s shortsighted. If anything, the Internet is the ultimate appeasement for both old and new metalheads alike. The Historians can hear some of the new stuff out there while finding long-forgotten relics that have been uploaded to cyberspace, and Amateurs can learn about underground classics they may never have heard of otherwise. And honestly, it separates the wheat from the chaff, casting away the terrible albums that folks used to shell out up to 20 bucks for because the cover looked cool. The sad fact is, if the drug-addled ADD sufferers of the modern scene aren’t paying attention, it’s a band’s job to be so good that they have to.
The digital age, at the end of the day, has made being a metalhead a choice. Labels are everywhere in culture, so to adhere to one means making a concerted effort to support its most perfect incarnation in your mind. Metal is in its very nature intense and unequivocal, a genre and culture built on the idea of vitality of self. That is the one defining, objective trait of the genre—a belief in the grandiosity of life and the desire to take things further, higher, louder. It’s easy to appreciate that from afar without allying yourself to that culture, and that’s a noble path in its own right—this isn’t for everyone, and I’d rather deal with a tourist than a poser. But these days, when you take on a title, you choose to make yourself an envoy of the thing that, at its core, makes the most sense to you in the world.
The old school was awesome, but it always held a level of obligation, like old-timey religion, where the emphases were laid on the stupid physical traditions. It’s a time that the Historians lord over, but that many of them remember for all the wrong reasons, the outfits and the machismo and not the fucking music. It’s all wafers and water to them. To be a fan today is to have options, to let you define yourself, to look past all of the history and the fashion, and focus on the power and the choice. Fans can go back and study the traditions, either in an attempt to understand them or in aesthetic reverence of them. That stuff is easy, because it’s there, physically, waiting for you if you want it but not hurting you if you don’t. Not fully knowing yourself, however, is always a tragedy. It’s important to remember where you’ve been and what you’ve done, but at the end of the day, what matters most is who you are. And if who you are is as simple as merely a snapshot in history, as being alive the day Practice What You Preach came out, well then, good fucking luck. Not me.
You know what the sad thing is? The Historians did help me, in a way. By being utter dickheads and making me self-conscious about what I didn’t know, they actually forced me to find some of the albums that greatly affected me. What kept me from becoming one of them, though, was sin—sheer musical gluttony. See, I want it all. I want old-school thrash and funeral doom and flurries of northern darkness and bludgeoning gore hymns. I want a shade of blood for every emotion I may ever have. There is no time period where my heart decides to halt its progress and revel only in the past. While I love the songs of my youth, it is the metal of today that always interests me the most. And I want the music first, before the artifacts. I want to hear it, to feel it thunder through me, to let my heart and brain make it what it is. I am not a Bay Area throwback or a Williamsburg hipster or any one type of fan, I am all of them depending on whenever the fuck I feel like it. I’m Scab Casserole, it is 2012, and I am a metalhead.
. . .
“I want a shade of blood for every emotion I may ever have.”
Thank you sir, for elucidating something I’ve always struggled with. For me metal is a huge, wide and varied genre. The reason I try to look in all the different sub-scenes, etc, is to find nuggets of gold from each that resonate with me. I have my preferences and certains tyles cut me deeper than others, which I think is the same for everyone, but you’re right, we don’t just have one emotional state – or at least, I pity anyone who does.
Thankfully I have found something in (or at least tangentially related to) metal for almost all the ways I feel.
This article hurt my head. What was the point of this?
bitching about people bitching about music.
Nice discussion. A few more mental signposts and a stronger central theme would have made it easier to follow, but I like the points you made.
What follows is my response – it is also an edited from an entry appearing on my blog in the next few days…
Scab Casserole’s article falls into the trap set by sociology and articulated by Kahn-Harris over a decade ago even as it tries to move beyond this paradigm: it limits its construction of a metal head to a consumer within scene boundaries. This is something picked up on by many of the site’s readers who are keen to point out the persistent diversity running through metal even during the halcyon days which a certain generation chooses to fossilise, encase in nostalgia and worship. Just as with cars, rock, literature and family values, according to this perspective, it was all better in the old days.
Indeed, the most interesting point about this article is the discussion it spawned . I suppose my only contribution is this: I believe it is about time that given the technological level of the societies in which we currently live, metal heads as critics, consumers and observers articulate their contributions via what matters in metal the most, music.
There is still a role for metal writing and I believe Invisible Oranges functions as a possible site. There are many others too, but it would be fascinating to see a situation in which metal heads acted like jazz musicians and commented on the melodies, rhythms and “brutal-ness” of their peers by way of musical articulation. You did that melody that way? I hear you and I raise you this way… etc.
“Historians” = hispters’ anti-thesis…?
@ Necrodorf:
The prose is about being a metalhead today. More mature now, as compared to being an amateur 20 years ago. And the mister does it incredibly well.
“The old school was awesome, but it always held a level of obligation, like old-timey religion, where the emphases were laid on the stupid physical traditions. It’s a time that the Historians lord over, but that many of them remember for all the wrong reasons, the outfits and the machismo and not the fucking music” (…) “It’s important to remember where you’ve been and what you’ve done, but at the end of the day, what matters most is who you are.”
Couldn’t agree more!!
wow only two posts before we got to “this is too many words for my brain, why even bother posting it?!” Impressive!
Haha, yeah, oh well.
Dunno, just feels weird that he spends so many words reducing the old-school to this really narrow simple-minded version in order to fit his article. He talks about all the rigidness and hard-set customs of the old school…. what? There was plenty of variation back then too, from grubby thrash dudes to super-serious black metal to political people to jokers. Even people with short hair! There were redneck types, serious artist types, those who liked classic rock, those who listened to classical….. Ironically, a good portion of the innovation was back then too.
It just all comes off laced with really subtle insecurities because he hung out with assholes back in the day. It’s like a set of rose-tinted glasses switched to their opposite setting.
Not to hear a Historian tell it. Leather, denim, long hair, spikes and bullet belts on EVERYONE. Back when metal was good, before the influx of posers and false-metal types who flocked…to…metal…because…of the cachet it…held? Because everyone wanted to be a metalhead?
Never mind. You probably don’t even know who Ostrogoth are.
It’s all a myth contacted by levis to sell more denim jackets. Punks and metalheads always got along. “Whiplash” is about riding a rollercoaster. There was never any backlash against “false metal” until Euronymous. Zines never feuded with larger publications over covering real metal bands. Bonded By Blood is just a band from California. There’s no such thing as a poser. Everyone is special and we are all one when the lights go down.
I think the writer is spot on about old-school metalheads. I play in a fairly popular old-school, traditional metal band, and the older fans often make comments like I dress too much like a punk dude and not enough like a ‘metal-head.’ I respond that it’s not 1985 anymore so they should get lives. The old-school fans are genre-obsessed nit-wits with too much time on their hands. I LOVE saying things around them like ‘Well, Raven never really made it becaue they just weren’t a good band.’ The old-school metalheads have a very unreasonable attitude towards ANYTHING new. I think a lot of the old-school metal musicians are also secretely very insecure now because they level of musicianship in metal is SO MUCH higher. There are 18 year old kids who can blow them off the map.
as i recall, in the mid-80s, growing up at boarding school and living in a small village at a time when my only, and i mean ONLY, ways of getting information on bands was kerrang! every fortnight and metal hammer once a month, meant that identifying with the world of metal through ‘the stupid physical traditions’ was a very real and vital thing- wearing the t-shirt and the denim and leather wasn’t an ironic nod to saxon; it meant, for me, that i was part of a lifestyle which only one or two other people in my life had any understanding of- others at school and home were completely unaware of what metal was other than what they saw me wear and play- there were absolutely no casual listeners of metal in my world so i stood out as a complete anomaly- it really was a different world then
and even though i am a lover of the digital age and all it offers, surely there is some truth in the idea that having to search for music, in the big city stores or by writing to distros or bands, actually having to decide whether to buy an album or not because it is an import and costs £20/$30 and if you wait, it might be gone the next time and you’ll never see it again, buying the duds that sit like rotten fish on the rack, some of which you persist with because a large proportion of meager funds went on it and, after a while, it begins to make sense or forever remains a mystery-all this is a richer and more rewarding experience than never leaving your chair while clicking a mouse, never paying for any music, only ending up with stuff you’ve ‘pre-approved’, having so much that you just can’t immerse yourself in it all- i’m guilty of all of this and i don’t know if things are better or worse now than they were, only that, like so much in life now, it ain’t necessarily always a good thing to have unlimited choice- how do you decide? where do you stop? how can you ever be satisfied? i guess that is what being a person, let alone a metalhead, is nowadays in the developed world- unheard of levels of choice with no chance of satisfaction or contentment
or not
Backed. The pigeonholing of the old school needs to stop. Those people paid a much higher social price to be metalheads. Have some respect, whipper snapper!
^This, indeed.
Agreed…if I had a nickel for all the times I had to either a) find a Metal Circus or Kerrang or Hit Parader to find new shit, fans, or merch; b) go to a shitty Wherehouse or some other shitty record store to find new metal tapes, only to find they don’t have them or pulled them cuz they were deemed offensive; c) get pulled in to the principles office cuz of “suspicion” i.e., wearing a denim jacket with patches on it and a Slayer t-shirt; d) get cursed for long hair and fucked with by jocks; e) suffer thru both hair metal and nu metal f) etc, etc. We older Hessians paved the way for you, and just because your name happens to be Scab Casserole doesn’t mean you get a free pass.
P.S. Having the internet has been huge, if only for the fact that I can find all the old shit you couldn’t find back then. If that’s living in the past, fuck it. I find most metal, and a large chunk of what’s posted on this site, to be crap.
“Remember Saxon’s “Denim & Leather”? Great riff, stupid song.”
Yeah, sorry asshole but you don’t have the attitude.
That is a typo. It’s meant to read, “Remember Saxon’s “Denim & Leather”? Great riff, super-sweet song.”
+1
So let’s see: Scabby is just getting into metal about the time his friends are listening to NILE and MARDUK – late 90’s at least – but he’s asking people to “remember Denim & Leather” like he was there back in the day and saw through the superficiality of it all.
Nope. You’re out of your league, kid. Back to the dugout. Do not fuckin’ entry.
You’re gonna go far kid. I smell a career in marketing or…music PR
These quotes immediately leap to mind:
“…it’s all just sweat and screams and distortion when the lights go down.”
“The sad fact is, if the drug-addled ADD sufferers of the modern scene aren’t paying attention, it’s a band’s job to be so good that they have to.”
No it isn’t, and no it’s not. Fuck marketing and fuck PR. Long after IO has evolved to the point where its set no longer intersects with that of metal, long after its bubble has floated away to intersect with more monetizably fertile genres, metal will continue, grumpy and “elitist” and growing in ways that will always confuse PR hacks.
There’s been a definite change in how people encounter new music today and in theory it is ‘easy’ to discover the most obscure of underground metal or any kind of music really but despite that I don’t think that means that metal is as ‘cool’ as some people seem to imply that it’s become. I have probably an equal number of friends who share the same love for metal as I do and my friends who aren’t interested in metal certainly don’t think that my tastes are ‘cool’. I have a friend who always tells me that I’m “obsessed with death” and sometimes I feel as though I live on a different planet to some people who know nothing of what I know about and I know nothing of what they know about. “Do you live in a cave or something?”.
The digital age brings its own difficulties, it’s just that they’re a different kind of difficulty to those that were seen a while back. There’s so much shit to filter through and there’s so much crap shoved in your face that to really find your niche and appreciate it and grow with it takes definite dedication. It’s easy to have a watered down sense of ‘identity’ now, but to really know who you are and what works for you properly today definitely means something, I think.
totally with you on this.
My overall impression of this article was it’s a call to belittle anyone who is honest about not liking something new. Almost hippie, “hey, lets all get along man” bullshit. I reserve every right to give the stink-eye to some kid who likes Black Dalia Murder over Cannibal Corpse.
And yet, this gem pops up near the top…
“The casual metal listener throws on some Mastodon or Naglfar between Arcade Fire albums and wears a Slayer shirt now and then. Why not? It’s easy!”
How exactly do you establish “facts” like this, and doesn’t this exact same mentality reek of the exclusion the story speaks of???
Also, the length is too much and overall between the hipster comments and other broad brush strokes smacks of “Me thinks the lady doth protest too much!”
If you honestly get this worked up over the subject matter, and truly believe you are some sort of oppressed metal warrior…maybe look into volunteering at homeless youth shelter or battered women’s shelter, you know, where people with real problems live in the margins…either way, something other than writing boring whine pieces!
or reading articles on metal blogs?
Backed. Though I find these discussion to be healthy for us, in a broader sense there is war, famine, poverty and injustice out there. People need to simmer a little about their precious societal labels.
“Yeah, man, his whole Buddy Holly outfit thing is a little ridiculous, but the dude fucking LOVES Nifelheim.” – if you have ever said this, or anything even like it, please kill yourself now.
lol
“Seven Churches On Vinyl Or Fuck Off”
I would love to see Larry LaLonde wear that shirt.
Dude, why are the readers of IO so critical? There’s only 5-7 articles of any kind on here a week and you STILL talk shit?
Thanks for taking the time to share with us! Nice alias.
What the fuck is wrong with people? The point of the article, although not particularly well-stated, is to discuss what it means to be a metalhead today compared to what it meant to be a metalhead 20 years ago. The article isn’t about bashing old-time metalheads. It’s about bashing the elitists who think they’re better because they found it first. I agree it’s a little too accepting of hipsterism, but there are some very good points here, even if they’re not stated explicitly:
- In fact, casual metal listeners do exist today (and not all of them are hipsters).
- Today, the challenges are different–now, you have to filter out too much music rather than work to find good new material.
- The metal uniform isn’t as important as it used to be. (Though unstated, it’s also true that many metalheads have actually grown up and have to function in a modern employment capacity.)
- “Historians” (as the writer describes them) were assholes then, and are assholes now.
- Metal has always had good and bad albums/bands, whether it’s 1982, 1992, 2002, or 2012. Age doesn’t necessarily equal quality.
Feel free to disagree with these points if you wish, but to do so would make you wrong.
I hope your children die in a car fire.
Your trolling efforts have really gotten a lot less clever the last month or so.
This Attorney guy has nothing to do besides posting the longest and most boring comments ever.
He should start his own blogspot blog and stay there.
And I hope you, someday, somehow finally experience a woman’s touch.
I’m sure he’s got a mother. Does that count?
hilarious!
FMA,
My wager is that the article hit a little ‘too close to home’ for some of the commentators.
Kramer: My wager is you went to town on both these young fellers while Nightwish played on laptop.
http://photos-a-7.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs175.snc1/6575_518570488830_40902282_30927336_3681782_n.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1250182675577
Your hero GrimKim would be proud.
Love the earring / goatie combo too.
Exactly
Sure people are critical, but not every article gets negative feedback like this.
This article reeks of someone who’s actually just over-eager to flex their amateur anthropology skills (the same impulse that drives someone to write about “tribalism” in the metal scene etc., or analyze the “delicate patch combinatorics of metal vests”) , making somewhat flimsy categorizations and declarations just to fill up space.
OK, now that you’ve elucidated your point, I see what you’re saying. Fair enough.
Err, but there IS a great deal of tribalism in the metal scene (and that’s what many people love about it). That has good and bad aspects of it — one bad aspect is that everyone is continually trying to define what “is” or “isn’t” metal just to make sure their own place within the tribe is secure…
Hey, I agree. You missed the point though. I meant that this article seems like it’s trying to kinda fit into that particular amateur-scene-anthropology category of writing, except he’s not working with strong enough material to make a strong point.
For the record, whining about metalhead discrimination on the Internet is not metal.
NecroDorf: Ahh, gotcha.
Interesting insight overall, but i think there’s an obvious oversight here…and that is, we mature and change and broaden not only the music we listen to as we get older, but the people we hang around. So as much as being in your teens and dealing with the “historians”, these people too grow up and/or fall away and you find yourself dealing with more open minded people in your mid 20s and onward, the same as you might throw on that Nicky Minaj song right after Carcass in your “workout” playlist.
A-Fucking-Men
You probably had to be a “metal historian” in the late 90’s because that was a particularly awful time for metal. Not to say that there weren’t great albums being made — this genre is far too broad — but overall, the energy of the early 90’s back to the beginnings of the genre was much more powerful than the over-polished sounds prevalent in that era.
THAT’S A REALLY FAIR POINT–THE NEED TO BE A HISTORIAN BEING PROMPTED BY HOW METAL IS TREATED IN A GIVEN ERA. THE 90′S WERE ROUGH ON METAL, SO BEING A HISTORIAN WAS THE ONLY REAL WAY TO BE TRUE. I BUY THAT.
Using someone else’s screen name is kind of a stupid trick, and I doubt it’s going to fool anyone. Aren’t you tired of trying to troll this site by now?
…IS THIS REPLY TO ME? DUDE, I DON’T TROLL SHIT. I’M SCAB CASSEROLE. I WROTE THIS MOTHERFUCKER.
Personally, I will ONLY wear a viking helmut to metal shows. with Pigtails.
this is the single biggest comment debacle since the last time someone mentioned Liturgy… oop, damn.
The Historian is someone who fetishizes a past for metal that never existed. It’s record collector nerdiness wrapped up with hipster obscurantism, coated with a persecution complex and illustrated by Frank Frazetta. This is not to be confused with a historian, who preserves metal culture for future generations. Bazillion Points is good about this.
All of the chest-thumping over this article is hilarious because the whole idea of posing and falseness is fallacious. Metal was never a high-status form of music, and identifying yourself with metal was never going to make you cool to anyone but maybe other metalheads, if they decided you weren’t a poser. Bands like The Black Dahlia Murder aren’t “false”, they’re just shitty. They’re shitty because they don’t play music – they play metal, if that makes sense. They’re just putting riffs and blast parts and grunts together because that’s what you do. Knowing the history of a musical form isn’t strictly necessary to enjoy it, but I think it does add something when you can see how the form evolves and how new artists reference older artists lyrically and musically, contributing to a larger tradition. But as a musician, without that you’re just aping a style based on surface features.
Plus I bet none of y’all know who Oliver Magnum and Hammers Rule are. Posers.
This.
The Historian as described above reflects a specific type of “metalhead” (though “scene-queen” is probably the better term), similar to the type who troll comment sections like ours. He or she (usually he, since it stems from issues of emasculation) operates from a place of fear and insecurity, though he would never, ever admit that, no, because human failings, amongst other things, are deemed (by him) false. Now, in order to preemptively ensure that no one recognize these failings, his primary defense is to lash out at any perceived weakness in others and to establish a dynamic that means any criticism of his negativity obviously implies weakness on the part of said complainer (who is usually labelled “pussy” or “fag”). Insecurity is masked with a permanent sneer, though it’s not like it’s fooling anyone. But the most entertaining thing about these types is how much they point out “hipsterism” as the ultimate enemy of metal, and yet they are the ones who literally obsess about what is and isn’t cool, and are the first to denounce anything they deem beneath them. They twist the terminology around so that they can constantly persecute this threatening non-presence, but in essence, these people embody the ideal of this imagined concept of hipsterism far more than any kind of sweater-wearing, bespectacled bogeyman.
The reason this post generated such a nasty response is obvious. Nerves were struck.
Wash Jones. Expert explainer of all things, but especially: http://i41.tinypic.com/33y6iqt.jpg
Zing.
It’s OK. That’s what today’s metalhead looks like. Nice hair. Button down. Pen to pursed lips in reflection for think piece coming to deadline, slippers, etc. Didn’t you read this article, man?!
This article is pointless. This discussion is something you’d expect to hear while in line for a show. Regardless of your age, background, and interests, what defines you as a metal head is irrelevant. I’ve seen metal heads come from all walks of life, both then and now. Honestly, I would rather see an in depth article on a band or review of a label or series of releases rather than a post about people bitching about people bitching about music.
I feel like most of the posts on IO have been going to shit (Bring back Cosmo!), and this one isn’t particularly thought provoking, or terribly interesting in anyway, but I can relate to a point.
Honestly, the whole vinyl/CD/MP3 debate has been so played out, but I do agree with the fact that you can’t roll a joint on an mp3, and physical media does have more of a connection.
I completely agree with the last sentence though. I’ve got Animals As Leaders living in harmony on my iPod with Skagos, Devourment, Flobots, John Coltrane and even Cee Lo Green. The internet didn’t only make metal more accessible, but also all music. I mean, I first and foremost consider myself a metalhead, because that’s where I began, and this is the genre I enjoy the most (I’m one of those cross-genre metalheads mentioned), however I’ve also branched off into many other genres. Hell, if the internet didn’t exist, I’d probably still be listening to Crowbar, Draconian, and My Dying Bridge; pigeonholed into the sludge/doom subgenres.
I wouldn’t be checking out Wovenhand and all the other Gothic Americana folk/country bands, if it weren’t for the interwebs. That’s a good point.
Exactly, the whole “if you like that you can’t possibly really like this” position is such bullshit and it needs to die. Years ago if you liked thrash you weren’t welcome in punk circles and god forbid someone be into both black and death metal. As they say “good tunes is good tunes”, if I want to listen to Godspeed You! Black Emperor on the way to a Ghost show, or put a Fever Ray track on the same mix with some Burzum, why should anyone give a fuck, it doesn’t make my appreciation of those bands any less valid than the guy who only listens to 4th gen underground black metal tapes. I mean really, who the fuck cares?
NO ONE pigeonholes baby into the sludge/doom subgenre corner!
Maybe I misspoke, because in addition to sludge/doom, I was into Linkin Park as well.
OBVIOUSLY Linkin Park is the superior band.
Seriously though, I was a baby, I was fuckin’ 13 years old.
I’m happy to see this piece, even if I don’t necessarily agree with all of it. I like the fact that it’s riling people up and making them think about the way they define themselves as a “metalhead.” A lot of metal fans don’t like their scene to be studied, analyzed or (god forbid) intellectualized, but I’m not one of those.
Yes, we are still reeling from the intellectual depth of “great riff, stupid song.”
Might be better if you stick with commenting on warcraft and candle making or something. I’m sure there are some up and coming bands who would appreciate not being called thrilling by people over 40.
Oh hey, I can reduce an entire article to one sentence too. Metal is important, and is worth getting angry about on the Internet.
Haha! You certainly stepped on some sensitive toes here (don’t know if that’s an expression in US or England, it is in Sweden). Funny.
I think it was extremely well written, so thank you! I agree with most of it even though I usually complain about new metal but I still find great new stuff here and there so I try to keep an open mind.
THIS BLOG HAS TRULY GONE DOWN THE SHITTER EVER SINCE COSMO LEE LEFT. FUCK THIS HORSESHIT ARTICLE, AS WELL AS 85% OF ALL THE OTHER RETARDED BULLSHIT THAT INVISIBLE ORANGES POSTS AS OF LATE. YEA, I AM HATING. DEAL WITH IT AND GET FUCKED!!!!
Dunno about the rest of the peanut gallery, but I make fun of shit like this because it’s conceptually muddled and poorly executed, not because the murky overwritten content hurt my fucking feelings.
I feel the only way this blog gets any hits is by putting out articles like this now, thru pseudo philosophic meanderings and muddled logic. Cosmo always stated his writing rules, and damn if I can see any evidence of it now. He also was up front about his tastes, and even though he didn’t share the same age with everybody, motherfucker knew how to explain it in two paragraphs, and had you agreeing with him in three. These dudes TRY too hard, or by default, go for some sort of Kierkegardian “either-or” duality, which brings out the hatin’. The point is, this article had NOTHING to do with “being a metalhead today”. WTF does that even mean?? It’s easier than ever to subscribe to/identify with any micro genre you want, and easier than ever to flip to something else when that gets old/unhip. The people that take offense to shit like this, as far as we know, didn’t. I don’t hold it personally against someone if they’re born after 1986, but I have found that their tastes are fundamentally flighty. I too can hem and haw about how I always stayed true blah blah blah, but the fact is I listened to other shit too, how could I have not? But in the end I wasn’t a “casual listener” but a hardcore fan. And fandom brings it’s own set of rules–it’s “easy” to deride Saxon lyrically and not think critically about it. That’s the easy part. The hard part is to listen to all their albums and then make fun. If you can, then you’ve earned it. That goes with all bands. The problem’s stated right in your opening paragraph: “I fetishized the old school.” Reducing it to mere fetishism is the clue right there, and then you drop two records no one can argue with, but it’s clear you didn’t put the homework in. That’s the fear, or perhaps more clearly, what exposes you as a musical tourist.
Cosmo [...], motherfucker knew how to explain it in two ,paragraphs
Walk the talk, Jason. Use ‘em or risk being meme’d with a “wall of text, did not read”.
Paragraph breaks notwithstanding, Jason’s comment seemed a lot more reasonable and on-point to me than your last one, droid.
Perhaps metal fandom should be approached using the model of graduate study – if you can’t pass a comprehensive exam on metal, you don’t get to be a fan. How else are we going to make sure only people who should hear this music do?
Actually, most metalheads I grew up with didn’t even sniff a college classroom, they were too busy sniffing trucker speed and listening to Pantera, waxing their Camaro or impregnating the locals. But I like the analogy, as I always preferred talking to people with IQ’s over 70 rather than some Heavy Metal Parking Lot wastoid who couldn’t string together more than 5 syllables. I don’t know which category you fall into, but I read you loud and clear.
Obviously, the metalheads you knew weren’t fit to call themselves metalheads. I mean, I bet not one of them could tell you why The Soundhouse Tapes is better than No Life ‘Til Leather, even though neither one of them were all that good, at least not until someone bootlegged them on vinyl.
These are important matters, and worthy of discussion.
Sorry, did I miss something? I was busy listening to metal.
Do you have clearance to do so? I mean, we don’t even know your official position on the collected works of Running Wild.
Wait, what? So I shouldn’t buy vinyl? I’m confused… Is it ok to wear my Hellhammer shirt even though I was only just born in 82? Are you saying only concerts are viable, but just download the album? I just wish I (still) had a record store in my town! Let alone one that carried metal. Oh, I also wish gas was cheaper so I could drive to the nearest big city to go to a record store just so the grizzled vet that has been working there since 1993 can mock my physical music choice. But alas all I have is online distro’s and blogs and forums.
I will not miss record store clerks, ever. I fucking hated those people. Buying Mercyful Fate’s Melissa at FYE in 2001, the clerk said he “went through a phase” like that, too. Fucking cunts.
Whoa… FMA, ever think that one of those cunts was the reason that Mercyful Fate was even in stock for you to buy? I’ve been working record retail for over a decade and do my best to keep my metal sections as diverse and fully stocked as possible. There’s all kinds of shit that I bring in that I think is just that, shit, but I know it’s gonna make someone else happy. I owned a Mercyful Fate CD once too. Owned and once being the key words. I’m not gonna defend that guy suggesting that metal, or maybe just Mercyful Fate, is a phase was a smart thing to say though. That’s some dumb shit, don’t insult the customer. Save your comments for the people who buy the stuff you think is gold.
My experience almost exclusively reflects chain stores, because we didn’t have any independent stores where I grew up and I didn’t know about any while I was in college (my college was in a small town near Lincoln). I’m not saying that you, personally, are a cunt. But just about every record store clerk I’ve run into has been, with the exception of the indie store I went to in Norman, OK last year. Most of them hold their tongues, but the rest of their face and their air of superiority is a little harder to hide.
Anyway, I doubt some clerk is the one doing the ordering at FYE.
^*are* a little harder to hide
Metal since ‘87 and I fucking love Arcade Fire… Sigur Ros was probably the best live show I’ve ever seen… Must we only listen to metal to own that label? I realize this is tangential to the main theme of the post, but felt compelled to comment.
Ruining days again… I manage and work for a chain store. HMV. Sorry that only the indies have offered you decent experiences. For me, they’re where I’ve received that kind of condescending treatment. I find they’re the ones with the arrogance ’cause they cater to an elite or specialisy clientelle. I have to deal with EVERYONE, so there’s no point in me waving any superiority banners. I deal with equal amoints of snobs, elitists and completely braindead people who want that guy with the hat, you know the one, he’s on the YouTube. I don’t pick fights, I just congratulate the winners who make excellent choices and are happy to get what they wanted. This FYE that you speak of sounds terrible. Hope you can still find somewhere to shop aside from ONLY online. I enjoy getting mail but the shipping… ugh.
On a side note, I once worked with a jazz snob who helped me to learn nothing on the job. The other resident jazz know-it-all wasn’t snobbish and actually got me heavily into jazz by recognizing my tastes and catering to it. I try to follow suit from that example and to this day still order in and purchase more items than most of my staff. I talk about music constantly and while sure, I’m always quick to judge, I have so my many friends and co-workers who love what they love that the conversations never get boring and my tastes never get stunted. Any clerk who gave you shit attitude was collecting a paycheck for a staff discount, and fairly, you labelled them cunts. I didn’t take my job for the minimum wage and discount, I took it to be surrounded by music.
Sorry to be on the defensive, most people are quick to judge me for what I do and I hate the elitist mentality. I want my customers to be happy, not intimidated by or angry with me.
I’m glad to hear that not all record store clerks are like that, and also that you recognize there’s a good reason for the stereotype (no pun intended).
Holy Fuck! They still sell music in music stores?!? There’s still music stores??! Get the fuck outta here!
You should have been there during Vietnam or the civil rights movenmet. You should have felt what it felt like when Metallica was a name spoken in dark corners. You should have been there you young worm. Any metalhead or punk rocker who puts that on you is a douche. Any rock n’ roller or new waver who puts that on you is a tampon. Sure, emo-metal is out of control and needs to be stopped, but so did glam, so did grunge, so did alternative, black, death, music and life itself. FTW. I’m an old bastard and I still think Motley Crue rules. Leviathan’s version of “My War” also rules. Do what thou wilt, shall be the law of the land. You younglings do what you want and say what you will – judgement will befall you. Find Maiden or Motorhead, I don’t care, but stay true and stay metal!!!!
Motherfuck. You guys see that? Rock and roll itself just walked through here, and ya’ll almost missed it.
I like old school and new school. Your article misses the whole point of history. Just as in any history, what is coming out culture-wise is tied to what is going on at the time. That is my chief complaint of listeners that refuse to admit anything good has happened before their time. That’s just sheer ignorance.
You lie. My mother hasn’t liked any good albums since Queen’s “A Night At The Opera.”
I only listen to post speed glam folk metal. But you’ve probably never heard of it.
Seems obvious that this article was written by a non-musician. I’m okay with many of the points made, but suggesting that a lack of community is okay clearly comes from the mouth/mind of someone who is not steeped in metal as a musician would be.
Thank you man, I totally know your feel. Your just like me…you fucking (DESPISE) hipsters.
And you know why Saxon fell off the map? Because they just weren’t that good. Judas Priest is a great band; Saxon . . . not so much. That’s why Priest can still pack arenas and Saxon is lucky to play a 500 person club.
Whenever a pain-in-the-ass, old-fart metalhead complains about so-and-so band being forgotten, I respond that maybe they deserved to be forgotten. Nothing better than watching their eyeballs pop out of their heads. If any of them could actually fight, I think they’d take a swing at me.