FoxxyBrown1111 said:
I had the same stereotypes before I got into it again. If you go deeper in the issue, you´ll find out metal has one of the finest vocalists (Kiske, Dickinson, Halford, Sammet, Tate, "Ripper" Owens, Dirkschneider, even Tornillo has something likeable in his voice, to name a few), and skilled musicans. And their songs are more telling than the usual "I feel blue Baby, love me, lalalala, and what else...".
I am not going to say that metal doesn't have some fine vocalists and some technically brilliant musicians. But to borrow from somebody who I've forgotten but who can write on the subject better than I, the problem with describing something as "technically brilliant" is that you're not describing it as simply "brilliant". That the statement of brilliance has to be qualified instantly brings a level of doubt. I did, once upon a time, like metal. Nowadays the modern technical stuff does nothing for me, there needs to be something memorable that I can latch on to, because if I want pretentious slinging the hands all over the fretboard I'd just rather listen to Yes, and if I want the kind of music to listen to when I'm really angry, then bands like Big Black, the Jesus Lizard, Shellac or Killdozer will suit me better, although less technically skilled (well, actually, not sure in Shellac's case, they are phenomenal musicians, they just show it more through control and timing). I just never get any urge to listen to metal, and it doesn't help that most of the people I know who like it simply listen to absolutely nothing else, rendering discussions of music with them frustrating, since they make references solely to things I either don't know or don't care for. For me, Helmet (original incarnation) are what I want from a metal band. They stripped away all of the extraneous BS and just gave us furious anger and great riffs to get hooked into. And yet, they were brilliant musicians - John Stanier has shown some insane drumming skills with Battles, and Page Hamilton was a jazz guitarist.
Thanks god it´s like that. Because if they´d become mainstream, it becomes Metallica* = "pop metal". IOW, the death of true metal...
* Don´t get me wrong here: Until 1990, Metallica were metal gods.
Metallica suck and have done for a looooong time. To be honest, for me metal is like goth; very good at first, but once there was a set of rules for how to make it, it became bad, formulaic, the imagery went from distinctive to corny and often even unintentional comedy, and what interesting subgenres were created became so obscure they required far too much effort to check out than they were worth. For goth, that happened in about 1985 (bands like Bauhaus were great; bands like the Mission and Fields of the Nephilim are not). For metal, for me, it happened at the tail end of the 70s. Black Sabbath? Hell yeah. Deep Purple? Bring it on. But there's a reason This Is Spinal Tap came out. What's horrifying is that Van Halen's "Jump", for me the absolute dirt worst of the genre, actually came out 2 years after Spinal Tap.
Correct. I had more in mind cry-babies like Aguilera, Beyonce, and others who seem to die in pain when they "sing".
The thing that's scary is that both of those are actually pretty decent singers, they have good range, but any skill or individuality is pummelled out of them by soulless production and the current insistence that every singer use the same style of voice and singing, that just makes every singer indistinctive.
I would agree. At least until circa 1990...
I used to say the same, I have always had a soft spot for records like "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold us Back", but I have developed a bit more of a taste for the early-to-mid-90s stuff. A lot of gangsta rap leaves me cold, but the early NWA and affiliates' records are really well-produced, and the first Wu-Tang album is genius. Kool Keith is the greatest rapper of all time, and Dr. Octagonecologyst is perhaps the most out there rap album ever.
Fully agree... and let me add: Rap isn´t even singing. It´s "poets" who (try to) talk to some backround noise & backround beauties doing the refrain (IOW sing one sentence over and over during one "song"). Music? It has nothing to do with that...
Now now, that's unfair. What is the definition of "music"? John Cage did a lot of experiments on the subject. Repetition and simplicity in melody is still music; take an album like Tangerine Dream's "Zeit" - over an hour with very little in the way of melody or change, and yet it's an atmosphere you can get lost in (or get bored of inside 5 minutes, depending on if you're in the mood for it). It's just that hip-hop tends to define itself more by the production and the words, rather than the guitars and drums interplay.