Friday, July 25, 2008
Metalcore is the converse of Thrash
Thrash is what happened when the speed of hardcore punk met with the riffage of heavy metal. Speed metal also formed during the same era (c. 1982-88), under a similar formulation, but with conceivably more focus on riff development, so both genres of thrash and speed metal are closely intertwined.
And then you have metalcore.
Metalcore is a blending of hardcore and metal, but not in the same way as you would find in thrash or speed metal; the formula is the converse. It was originally an attempt to put the simple riffing behind hardcore punk into a lengthier heavy metal song, and was conceived among the crossover bands of the 80’s. It is basically death metal’s younger, naive uncle who had missed out on over 20 years of music development, and had its growth stunted, yet came from the same common ancestors. Not even music personified had contraceptives to prevent metalcore from happening.
Fast forward to 2008, and you have metalcore, arguably at its height in popularity, but it still has the same formulas it departed with from the 80’s that it never bothered building upon. But it did become more melodically aware. In fact, it has so many ties to the melodic death metal (or Gothenburg) movement that the two are very similar. Not coincidentally, the bands of both genres are marketed next to one another and headline the same shows.
Despite all of the time that passed since its inception however, metalcore failed to transcend itself.
Death metal, especially later on after its beginning, opted for a non-human and larger-than-life perspective, and wished to express the very essence of these perspectives in music. Pretentious? On the contrary. Metalcore stuck with the me’s and you’s and the rest of the pronouns for its limited views it inherits from some of the punk of old, and the alternative and popular music of the present day, and as such, only needed to express the superficial with simple music. Assuming that the human perspective is superior than more abstract topics is an assumption of pretense.
The experience of metalcore is a lot like jogging in place: You expend a lot of energy, but you get nowhere from doing so. All you get out of it is the effort you expended.
Death metal is much more like running a marathon. So much more energy is expended than just jogging in place, but in the end, you will get the thrilling experience of having completed the journey afterward, and the effort it took only makes it that much more rewarding. You’re never in the same boring place you began, either, and you have a better perspective of what may come next.
Friday, July 18, 2008
TEH METAL CLUBHAUS
So you wanna be one of the cool kids? You think you’re fucking awesome because you listen to the latest bands on the cover of Metal Maniacs? THINK AGAIN. You’re a pice of shit because you’re not part of the Club666: Extreme Metal Clubhouse. And you never will be.
That’s right, you’re not fucking invited. Queer.
We don’t give a spiraling shitstream if you want to be a part of it. You simply aren’t as cool as us.
Face it, even if you like some of the same bands we do, like Opeth and Cryptopsy (and we don’t), they just suck. I mean, we have to formulate our own unique opinions, right? Otherwise we’ll look like conforming sheep. If you want to be part of the club, you have to form your own opinions. If they’re the same as ours, we’ll call you a sheep. If they’re different, we’ll call you a reactionary fag for trying too hard to be unique.
You know why we don’t care that much about our clubhouse? Metal sucks, it’s just a bunch of fat hippies who like to wear black band shirts, yell loudly, and play really fast with the same notes over and over again. We just listen to it and have a club for it because it’s better than hanging out with those scene kids. Actually, it’s not… their music is very passionate and cool, and I respect that. At least it’s not pretentious like Gorguts who tried to make their music sound like classical or some faggot shit like that.
But I digress.
This club isn’t here because it’s about discussing metal like it’s an art or something gay and smug like that. There’s places where pretentious faggots like you can go discuss the merits of metal like the homosexual armchair philosophers you are, and Club667: Extreme Metal Clubhouse isn’t one of them. This club is here because you’re not a part of it, and we’re better than you just because of that fact.
“And why is the club so important then,” you may ask.
Let’s put it bluntly: Everyone wants to rule their own little empire on the internet from their basement command center in their parent’s house. Even if it does no good for everyone else, you can’t criticize it because you’re not part of it.
Go back to playing Gaia and listening to Metallica, kid. We’re in the BIG LEAGES.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Hip irony sucks.
http://everything2.com/node/1401320
What makes [ironic hipsterism] a rebellion at all? It is an attempt to defy stereotype, especially hipster stereotype. Categorizing oneself under a certain label requires taking on a series of pre-defined tastes. The goth vests in black, the prep listens to Dave Mathews Band, the neo-hippie wears hemp necklaces, and so forth. To refuse to have one’s tastes defined by one word involves adopting haphazard, unpredictable styles; co-opting objects considered unacceptable by any subculture–particularly hegemonic hipster culture–is an act of resistance. The postmodern aspects of this trend are at once evident: the hip is un-hip, and vice-versa. To reject the current hegemony one must accept and bask in consumerism, if only superficially. Deviancy requires partaking of mass culture. Living in society today involves a bombardment of advertising and popular forms; it is perhaps natural to take on chunks of popular idioms and construct an identity based on contradictory bricolage. The move towards irony can be interpreted as an end to claims of authenticity; everyone recognizes the pretense behind every art form and expression of selfhood; if one can purposefully construct an identity based on material objects, nothing is real, so we are obliged to bring silliness to the forefront.
This is dangerous nihilism: one takes the devaluation aspects of nihilism, but instead of constructing or confiding in sound values after making a clean slate, they just sit there and fill the slate with as many random things as possible, until it becomes as useless as when it was empty. While viewing everything as pointless, one engages everything as pointless, then one’s life becomes pointless and replaceable, like the products they choose.
As with any rebellious subculture, once everybody engages in it, it becomes hegemonic and is no longer rebellious. I.H. is unique in that it becomes bereft of meaning once it attains any subcultural status. The ironic hipster syndrome is the dying gasp of resistance in our postmodern society; every wave of hipsters since the Industrial Revolution has disdained kitsch, but the only resistance offered today is through it. It represents the penultimate method of rebellion against commercialism and that rebellion’s utter defeat.
Why go through such an endless, pointless resistance against the frivolous with the frivolous? Why not reform this empty culture?
Or rather, they should settle with a solid, established, eternal culture that you can’t buy, like the culture of one’s ethnic background, instead of pointlessly “rebelling” against vapid consumerism by distastefully engaging in it head-on, ironically — I mean, hypocritically — enough.
Though this seems to be difficult to do with the multicultural nations, so no wonder such a “rebellious uprising against commercialism” has developed. Rebel against modern decadence by taking part in your true, traditional culture.
