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Well, I guess I should start this blog by stating some facts about myself.
Name's Logan. I'm 6'8'' 280 lbs. Quite a large man. I live in Cornwall Ontario, and I am about to turn 18 January 20th.
This blog is mainly for the discussion of musical taste.
First of all, I wonder, my sister is into all this music like "My Chemical Romance" "Paramore" etc, all these bands that somehow got popular. I would really like to know what is your opinion on all these mainstream artists.
Now, I am a huge metalhead, so that clashes with me even more. My tastes range from As I Lay Dying, to Burzum, to Abysmal Torment, and beyond. I love it all. Thrash, Brutal Death, Metalcore, Black metal, you name it, I love it. But what really has been pissing me off is the lack of respect everyone seems to have towards the entire metal scene. Can anyone comment on this?
I'll end this with some... well musical recommendations.
Corpsing - The Stench Of Humanity.
This band plays a weird atmospheric Death metal, mixed with black metal, etc. It's more experimental then most. The production REALLY hurts it, but it still somehow turns out good. It's like... Naglfar mixed with Morbid Angel mixed with Meshuggah.
Fractured Insanity - When Mankind Becomes Diseased
Playing a style of Brutal Technical Death Metal, most people will not enjoy this. But if you look deeper into it, you'll see the beauty and quality of this. For fans of Abysmal Torment, Devourment, hell even Deathcore.
Virulent Blessing - ...As Creativity Turns Into Lunacy
An Experimental Death Metal band. It's almost like Corpsing, but with much better production. The CD is very hard to find though.
And to warn anyone who loves Death Metal... Stay away from Waking The Cadaver. It's the biggest piece of shit band on this planet.
 
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I'm more of a doom metal, black metal, and post-rock kinda guy, but I'll give my opinion as to why the general public hates metal. I think the lack of respect for the entire metal scene is attributable largely to people's own stereotypes about music genres derived from listening to MTV trash all day long. Within metal, there's just such an endless amount of deviation that most non-metal listeners will never really realize, and which, though it may sound pretentious, doesn't really exist in alot of other genres. They'll just have heard really popular shit like Cannibal Corpse, Slayer, and popular shitty nu-metal. Years ago, having only been exposed to the aformentioned types of metal, I too assumed it to be a cesspool of awful music angsty teenagers use to assert their failing masculinity with dramatically low growls, ultra-downtuned and overdistorted guitars, and violent lyrics. Basically what I'm trying to say is that the average MTV pop drone only hears the most inaccessible sides of metal and is largely ignorant to the vast amount of experimentation and variation in the metal "scene". The immediate associations they make with metal are things like nazism, gore, rape, violence, melodramatic teenage angst(lolslipknotlol). So they lump all metal together as total shit. Pretty much everyone I know who listens to metal didn't start with ultra-extreme bands, those are a little hard to approach when you're used to Nickleback or whatever the hooligans are listening to these days. Did you like Cannibal Corpse the first time you heard it? I thought it was revolting!
I didn't take metal remotely seriously as a form of real music, I thought it was just an equally shitty alternative to the radio-friendly utterly unprofound trash I'd listened to before. It took some exposure to less extreme forms like Opeth, My Dying Bride, Anathema, and Fear Factory before I started realizing that maybe metal had more artistic integrity than I'd thought. Now it's 75% of what I've listened to for 2 years :D
Also, I'd like to add, anyone who says "remember when metal was cool?!?" is a total faggot.
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lol, well. The way I see it is as soon as someone hears Death Growls or Black Metal shrieks, they suddenly think the music is shit, that it requires no talent. People at first don't seem to look past that to see any musical integrity, and are just stuck on that.
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youre my new bestfriend mcr and paramore are the worst thing that ever hit this planet
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is awesome32263 Posts
"Musical Taste" if we refer to the same thing, is something that it's acquired. Every person has it's "pace" in discovering bands and genres.
I hate this mania we as people have of feeling music prophets. People discover styles, bands, songs or whatever and have a necessity of letting everybody else know. Usually when you start liking a genre/song/band you have them in some kind of pedestal (at least for a while) and thus, offer it to the rest as that.
I don't want to sounds like Mr.Know-it-all because I do this myself a lot, but I think we/I should try to shut up let them hear whatever they want to. If any day they come and ask for what you like or recommendations, then thats another story.
Provoking and making football teams out of bands is something that I don't think should be given any further discussion :p
Myself I can't stand death or dooms, unless its somehow symphonic, like Dimmu Borgir. I prefer prog metal, some power (no dragons & fairies silly cliches though). Katatonia is a doom metal band, a little repetitive. Lamb of god it's good if you like Sepultura & Cia, they should find new sounds though too. Power I find Angra unknown by most people, but it's definitely recommendable. Pain of Salvation / Dream Theater / Threshold are good prog metal bands, but they usually mix styles, so if you are looking for pure metal you should stay away from those.
Classics are always good: Testamente, Megadeth, Maiden, etc.
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I've always been aligned towards Avant Garde metal and music myself (Kekal/Gire/Unexpect/etc, Sigh is probably my favourite), although I've amassed such a massive collection over time of every genre in Metal imaginable. Grind/Death/Doom/Symphonic, I've got Terabytes. Drowsy overall has given a fairly comprehensive answer of why Metal is avoiding, although I'll throw in there the more experimentation aligned side of any music is often marginalised enough from the average listener due to the depth of influences upon which they draw.
Mind you, I just snicker and keep walking. There's usually redeeming qualities in every genre, despite their inherent elitisms and failures. As for MCR/Paramore, I think the current 'emo' stereotype has simply become enmeshed with the viewpoints of these bands. It's a grave irony, given the attitude and aesthetic of traditional emotional hardcore bands.
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You know, I love music and like testing new genres and stuff, but to be honest, for some reason I'm not too thrilled to try music by bands with names such as "As I Lay Dying", "Fractured Insanity" or "Waking The Cadaver".
I don't doubt what they do is of great quality if you were willing to get used to "death growls", but I find the attitude they convey with their music sad. I'll stick to Billy Joel.^^
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Musical Taste is complete personal and completely subjective. The only thing objective in music is the ability to play in ryhthm. If a band can do that, they are "good".
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is awesome32263 Posts
You mean objective. And though taste is subjective, music is not.
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Right, but of course music is subjective, beyond basic rhythm. How do you expect to objectively claim that metal is better than blues, for example? Or that G major is a better chord than D major? It just doesn't work.
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It can be more complex and together with knowledge of music the desire for complexity arises, meaning that the experts will all favour complex music. Whether that means that complex music really is better is another matter.
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I think metal is very popular today, but the stuff that is on top is more watered down. But I think you see Lamb of God, Mastodon, Atreyu fans everywhere. Metal has definitely made its comeback compared to the 90's. Interestingly, I think metal's comeback is rooted in the nu-metal wave of the late 90's, and in the alt metal of bands like Disturbed and Linkin Park. But today I think metal is definitely big. Does that mean death metal is big? Not at all, but I think even it is experiencing a wave of much more attention than it was getting in the early 2000's and late 90's.
I think much of the growth in interest in the more underground metal has to do with the internet. Now people are able to explore sounds that they never would have been able to before.
My taste in music is varied. I like a lot of 90's alternative music, classic rock of the 60's, the music of J.S. Bach (as a musician, he is my favorite composer to play), jazz (bebop, free jazz, and avant-jazz), death metal (a current favorite genre - favorite bands are like Gorguts, Portal, and Cryptopsy), postrock/ambient/experimental (another favorite genre - esp Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Shalabi Effect - this is also the kind of music I tend to play), and experimental/avant garde music in general.
I don't think the general public has an ear for complexity or strangeness. Music is treated as a commodity, and like any commodity, its purpose is to flesh out one's identity (you aren't who you are anymore - you buy who you are). The purpose isn't to be mind expanding or particularly interesting. It just has to be listenable and fit the image that the consumer is going for.
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One thing that cracks me up are people who say they listen and enjoy "everything." Invariably this means they like whatever is on MTV/VH1, and maybe the 2 or 3 biggest radio stations. So they like some mainstream country, mainstream alternative, maybe some hiphop, and maybe some rock. This amounts to "everything."
Anyone who "likes everything" simply does not have very discerning taste. I get this a lot when I'm dating women - they say they like all music. I take this as a sure sign that music is not on the table for discussion. (These people never care much about music at all.)
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Calgary25951 Posts
On January 03 2008 23:02 TheFoReveRwaR wrote:
Right, but of course music is subjective, beyond basic rhythm. How do you expect to objectively claim that metal is better than blues, for example? Or that G major is a better chord than D major? It just doesn't work.
G major IS better than D major. I think E minor owns them both though.
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United States22883 Posts
On January 03 2008 21:27 Orome wrote:
I don't doubt what they do is of great quality if you were willing to get used to "death growls", but I find the attitude they convey with their music sad. I'll stick to Billy Joel.^^
Agreed. The reason I dislike black metal is really just the lack of singing, and sometimes the lyrics. Bad lyrics from any genre annoy me, but I can tolerate it as long as I like the vocals. Maiden, Rammstein, Avenged, Atreyu, etc. that stuff I can listen to.
It's very easy to dislike MCR because of their image and I used to, but if you listen to Parade without knowing their image or who made it, it's actually a very good album, sonically. I dislike Paramore a lot more and I don't think it's very good music, but I guess it's sort of subjective.
I detest Nickelback more than any other pop music, though. The music is terrible and Chad Kroeger's lyrics are some of the worst on the planet. "Rock Star" is like a combination of the worst part of rap music with the worst part of rock music.
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United States22883 Posts
On January 03 2008 23:30 nA.Inky wrote:
One thing that cracks me up are people who say they listen and enjoy "everything." Invariably this means they like whatever is on MTV/VH1, and maybe the 2 or 3 biggest radio stations. So they like some mainstream country, mainstream alternative, maybe some hiphop, and maybe some rock. This amounts to "everything."
Anyone who "likes everything" simply does not have very discerning taste. I get this a lot when I'm dating women - they say they like all music. I take this as a sure sign that music is not on the table for discussion. (These people never care much about music at all.) See, I really do listen to many genres and I love talking music with people. Especially identifying individual talent like Chris Cornell's voice or bass rifts/drum rhythms. I guess I'm a wannabe audiophile.
It depends on whether people actually mean what they say, or if they can't come up with something else to say.
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Jibba says: "See, I really do listen to many genres and I love talking music with people. Especially identifying individual talent like Chris Cornell's voice or certain bass rifts."
I listen to many genres also, and beyond that, I am musically trained, classically and otherwise. But it is a situation where the more you know, the more you realize how little you know. I believe that most people who claim to like "all music" really know next to nothing about music, and certainly don't listen to all music - many times they don't even listen to the music they say they do.
As an example, when questioned on what genres they listen to, a lot of people will even list the label of "classical." I ask them what composers they like, and they don't know. Or if they do know (usually it's Mozart or Beethoven), they can't list a single work they like. Undoubtedly, they heard some piece of classical music somewhere (perhaps a commercial) and didn't hate it, so now this person likes "classical" music.
It's not that this is bad (to be musically ignorant - we are all ignorant of various genres) - I just think it's silly, and potentially pretentious, to say you are into something when you know nothing about it.
Does this apply to you? No idea.
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United States22883 Posts
In some respects, but mostly with the indie and underground simply because of the nature of them. Of course I'm familiar with the scene around where I live, and what friends in other cities recommend but it's much harder to find things otherwise. Still, with the internet it's much easier than ever before to search for any band name you hear of in passing and come up with their music, and I take advantage of that as much as I can.
Classical is fairly wide open to everyone, and anyone doing what you described is sort of disingenuous. I would never expect anyone's knowledge to encompass the entire realm of any genre, probably not even most of it, but people should at least be willing to try new things. There's usually at least one classical musical station in radio range anywhere you go in the country, so it's fairly easy to "try", although I can understand not being able to recall names/pieces if you're just listening over the radio.
As for me, my favorite of all time is Clair De Lune, but I'm listening to more of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Tallis Fantasia these days.
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EPT
