When did Doom Metal/Black Metal and the like become "hip" and why?

I thought this revive was gonna be about this
http://blackmetaltheory.blogspot.com/

http://www.publicassemblynyc.com/events/view/1148

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 11 December 2009 01:12 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha... what the fuck. i guess black metal's over.

― audacity, hubris, overweening pride! (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Friday, 11 December 2009 04:32 (13 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Shit, that looks great, I'd go!

― twice boiled cabbage is death, Friday, 11 December 2009 05:26 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, I'd go, it looks interesting.

― A. Begrand, Friday, 11 December 2009 05:28 (12 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The guys over at DFFD were so pissed off with hipsters ruining BM that they turned the thread into a 10 page discussion of NWA and Public Enemy instead. ILX woulda been proud.

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 11 December 2009 15:59 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think this means us death metal partisans can claim victory now

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Friday, 11 December 2009 16:15 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

til next year

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 11 December 2009 16:21 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Remind me again who got their arses kicked in the DM vs BM poll?

― Soukesian, Friday, 11 December 2009 17:10 (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

WINNING METAL ISN'T A FUCKIN NUMBERS GAME, SOUKESIAN

― audacity, hubris, overweening pride! (GOTT PUNCH II HAWKWINDZ), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:12 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Scott or j0hn :) will be here in a min to say ilx is full of hipsters so of course BM won the poll

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:41 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's kind of exactly the point - BM won the poll = BM is trendy, of course it did

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:42 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

:)

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:44 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

iirc most of the DM votes came from US ilxors while BM came from euros.

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:44 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I aim to please xpost

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:45 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

can re-poll after the wire runs some article about slept-on death metal, it'll get loads of votes then

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:45 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i know DM was the most commercially successful form of extreme metal in the states in the early 90s, it's basically the bread and butter metal for a lot of people after the thrash generation got old ;), but was it ever actually hip? I dont mean hip as in elite circles of demo tape traders in the late 80s but hip as in actual hipsters like the NY hipster types who are into BM?

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:48 (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

actually i might start a separate thread on this.

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:48 (0 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

And why are some sub-genres hip and others aren't?

Or is doom/BM not really hip at all? Does Thurston Moore professing love for BM mean it's hip?

Blame it on Sunno)))?

it was a long time coming imo - from early on indie types were interested in black metal but it used to take a lot of work to actually find out what was what. as soon as the internet democratized information, curious people could become experts overnight, or expert enough to find stuff that suited their tastes. can't really get down w/conflating doom & bm though, I think the doom-among-hipsters thing is a pretty diff. phenomenon

agreed.

i'm so over black metal. me and my friends stayed up all night last night doing duster and vibing off the totally rad buzzing of the radiator in my loft, whatever.

i find a lot of indie types who like bm like doom and drone and come from noise or folk backgrounds. Foxy digitalis and wire readers i guess. Dunno how pitchforkers got into it tho unless p4k writers were reading foxy d and it came from there.

and i repeat this

i know DM was the most commercially successful form of extreme metal in the states in the early 90s, it's basically the bread and butter metal for a lot of people after the thrash generation got old ;), but was it ever actually hip? I dont mean hip as in elite circles of demo tape traders in the late 80s but hip as in actual hipsters like the NY hipster types who are into BM?

I have a theory. Black metal became hip because the early 90s version of it had a punk rockness to it; it was crude, poorly recorded, 123go stuff. This appeals to the lazy, lo-fi, one-take side of indie rock people. Death metal, on the other hand, is intricate, difficult music, frequently of great precision - it's hard work and sounds like it. This puts off indie rock people, who are drawn to sonic casualness, whether real or feigned.

there's also the gourmand vibe of black metal - "this band from tasmania that's actually only one guy who lives out in the middle of nowhere, records all his stuff onto an old tascam, no-one's ever met him -- his early tapes are the most incredible thing ever!!" - that agrees nicely with the indie need for exclusivity, access to secrets, a feeling of being informed. whereas death metal, I mean, let's be honest indie types, a lot of those death metal dudes are the guys who used to beat the shit out of us in high school, and it's weird to see dudes like that making music, which for indie/gettin-our-asses-kicked kinda dudes is coded as a realm to which we have/had access but our tormentors do/did not.

at a certain point i think we just have to accept that in the internet era all kinds of ppl like all kinds of shit and quit worrying about "hipsters" or whoever invading whatever musical clubhouses we've built for ourselves.

what about those of us who fell for black metal because of the awesome song-structures, performances and sonics

i.e. helg3son bringing law AS USUAL

BM is for fucking conformists

As an indie/punk type I can agree with some of what unperson's saying, particularly this part "the early 90s version of it had a punk rockness to it; it was crude, poorly recorded, 123go stuff.". What initially attracted me more to black metal than death was definitely the raw nasty distorted sounds of the classic stuff. I do like some death metal but it tends to be the more dissonant or grind-y stuff, I'm not really into technical death metal.

ditto death metal tbh, some of that stuff is about to open like the fourth wall to me, also unperson there is such a thing as intricate BM *drops DHG and DSO like elephant-bombs in the hizzouse*

"This puts off indie rock people, who are drawn to sonic casualness, whether real or feigned."

That sounds about right. Pforkers generally despise or are indifferent of the likes of Mastodon, Opeth, Mars Volta, Gojira, anything that touches on death or prog. OTH, Nachtmystium, which has strong prog influences, seems to be an exception due to being black metal, hence the glowing 8.9 rating. Not sure if Enslaved would get a similar free pass if they didn't simply ignore them.

To be fair, plenty of other non-indie types have an aversion to anything that's too "technical," like a friend of mine who now listens mainly to power and black metal.

i mean are you equating hipsters with people that like "indie rock"?

what about those of us who fell for black metal because of the awesome song-structures, performances and sonics

yeah but LJ unless I remember wrong you were super interested in BM before you knew anything about the song structures and stuff - the sheen of it was intriguing to you. I can get down with that! but I think it's a big part of how black metal has become this indie kid playground: there's a sort of narrative attraction + some similar sonic concerns. and M@tt I think "people just like what they like" - cool, if the whole subject of how people become interested in stuff & what drives them, motivates them to be interested in this & not that is boring to you, hey awesome! for some of us it's an interesting subject ok?

Why is this question being asked now? Doom metal/black metal isn't hip anymore.

it's all about neil young now

i find the aesthetics of all extreme music to be highly interesting; BM is perhaps more accessible and 'poetic' in its isolationist mountain-scaling spirit-of-wolf sonic grandeur (and BM has probably of all the metals embraced the openly avant-garde or ambient sides of music most freely) but DM's insane clusterfuck broth is something i eventually aim to wrap my head around

btw as we're namedropping the song 'steg' on that last trelldom album has come on my ipod shuffle loads recently and guess what it may be trad-BM and it may play out the same riff for 7 minutes before changing but guess what it's feckin' awesome

I mean there's a distinction to be made between "indie kid" and "hipster".

also i wouldn't call myself an indie kid! i may be deluded but i wouldn't call myself an indie kid.

I got into metal after getting into free jazz.

When I listen to Death Metal, I feel like I'm engaging more often with a sonic tradition that arose from the earth primordial to send early man into spiritual convulsions around his campfire.

I don't know too much black metal, but it only rarely has done anything like that for me. Black metal often seems to come from the same place as open mic nights and burlesque shows. At the moment, I can't why I feel this way.

"I can't explain". (It will require further listening and thought)

Renfests and shit, you know?

LJ is an indie almost adult

at a certain point i think we just have to accept that in the internet era all kinds of ppl like all kinds of shit and quit worrying about "hipsters" or whoever invading whatever musical clubhouses we've built for ourselves.

― eight woofers in the trunk sb'n down the block (M@tt He1ges0n),

yes but im not worried about hipsters invading clubhouses (j0hn and co think im invading their clubhouse anyway lol) im just asking why do people think like this.

because people like clubhouses?

and its not just doom/drone/BM it's for any subgenre that's become hip and why haven't others become hip.
But obviously hip is subjective. These genres are hip in some circles and not others. Dragonforce and girly goth metal like Nightwish are hip amongst some people but probably not with critics so much.

oh and i see j0hn replied on the old thread so I shall repost his answer here

i know DM was the most commercially successful form of extreme metal in the states in the early 90s, it's basically the bread and butter metal for a lot of people after the thrash generation got old ;), but was it ever actually hip? I dont mean hip as in elite circles of demo tape traders in the late 80s but hip as in actual hipsters like the NY hipster types who are into BM?

well, famously, Peel was into grind. thurston moore and some others IIRC were namechecking DM a little, I think moore's been pretty interested in "extreme" metal from pretty early on. and some of these death metal guitarists are total tone merchants, it's one of the reasons I'm a death metal partisan - there's plenty of black metal guitarists who get amazing tone of course but there's also the sort of autopilot Boss distortion into Boss delay black metal sound that just bores me to tears - and there've always been some from-hipper-circles ppl goin "seven churches is fucking amazing." but anyway yeah - I mean, getting "hip" used to take a lot more digging, but within some hip circles I think there were plenty of artsy dudes seeking out Eaten Back to Life and Mental Funeral and sarcofago or even krisiun and so on.

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Friday, 11 December 2009 17:55 (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hah, xpost re: grind

I have a theory. Black metal became hip because the early 90s version of it had a punk rockness to it; it was crude, poorly recorded, 123go stuff. This appeals to the lazy, lo-fi, one-take side of indie rock people. Death metal, on the other hand, is intricate, difficult music, frequently of great precision - it's hard work and sounds like it. This puts off indie rock people, who are drawn to sonic casualness, whether real or feigned.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Friday, December 11, 2009 6:05 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark

for the most part, yeah. and I'd say this goes for grind too. critical acceptance, crossover appeal with noize dudes and punx/indie folks for the exact same reasons.

but what's weird is that there's also plenty of crude death metal that doesn't get written about. something like autopsy hits a lot of the same buttons, imo.

maybe because this isn't really the death metal norm? (i.e. there's nobody at darkthrone's level that sounds as punk they do in the death metal world)

...just waiting for someone to come back at me with, "but obituary are punk as fuck!"

and in a way, yeah they are. but you know what I mean.

...I hope?

xpost

j0hn & pfunkboy yeah it's a good discussion, it's more i have a reaction to the word "hipster" anymore...

i mean...jeez though...this goes back a ways too, though...extremer metal and punk have been basically merged since, jesus, like 85-86 in a lot of ways?

so if you think indie rock is an extension of punk, and at least "classic" indie was in the U.S., then isn't this just more of the same?

i dunno - it seems like it isn't that much of a leap from liking Black Flag and hardcore or punk with the sped-up polka beat to liking death metal.

maybe we're just too old?

xpost:

yes. but the leap to liking darkthrone must be that much easier then, right?

when i was a kid i couldn't even barely understand the difference between why CoC and DRI was "punk" and like Exodus or Kreator was "metal" or whatever

xp - i'm pretty much an amateur/dilettante in a way when it comes to this - which could very well place me in the "hipster" category, though I'm too old, I think, to have ever been an "indie kid" - but stuff like Darkthrone and Immortal to me sound quite similar to Death Metal only with different vocal styles and production values, and I like them in the same way.

For all the leaps from punk to metal and vice versa its funny how metalcore has never been hip. It might be a commercially successful subgenre but it never crossed over as hip to the general public (yeah i know that's a different sort of hip ) like nu-metal did. In the way that disco was huge and seen as naff by loads,hated by critics, but really hip amongst the general public.
Though I am glad metalcore never got as big as nu-metal as its fucking awful mostly.

general public and "hip" are kind of in opposition though.

but stuff can become hip amonst the mass buying general public. Like disco was like I said. I suppose hip and hipster are separate.

linedancing was hip amongst a huge part of the general public and not just the usa either!

Aside appros of nothing:

As an outsider, I'm amused by the amount of genre hair-splitting that goes on among metal fans. Is this funeral doom metal, or drone doom metal? Yuck, you got your brutal death metal in my progressive death metal. The black metal of my youth was so much more fun than this depressive black metal. Screw your factions, lets make blackened death metal. No, you!

How much simpler it all was in the days of mods vs. rockers.

is there really a difference between "hip" and "latest fad" or "flavour of the month"?

i thought we were talking about hipsters and not the general public.

xxpost:

yeah, metal is a lot like electronic music in that respect.

Yuck, you got your brutal death metal in my progressive death metal.

hip vs. hipster is really muddying the waters!

well sarah like most threads we can expand on the subject and go off on different tangents then come back to LOL Immortal eventually.

pretty sure most everyone was talking about hipsters. tho I guess cradle of filth have nu-metal level pull w/teens. (or did at least.)

xxp - yeah, but if we're not clear on what phenomena we're talking about, the resulting discussion could be pretty dysfunctional.

Are we talking about a particular class of "hipsters" that previously were classified as indie kids, or are we talking about people from other "non-mainstream" musical clubhouses getting into metal?

xxp - yeah, but if we're not clear on what phenomena we're talking about, the resulting discussion could be pretty dysfunctional.

it's ilx! Everyone justs posts how they like. Just wait until Geir posts in this thread!

internet democratising everything also means u can effectively exhaust genres more quickly than ever before so to fill the gap ur left hunting round for genres u might have otherwise before disregarded

very true.

you know it is precisely the fact that you all are discussing this that has dampened my nascent enthusiasm for metal, in general.

i ~think~ i might like doom-y stuff in that i like earth and kyuss and whoever (am i doing this right?), but the metal dorks' hyperawareness of OTHER PEOPLE getting into THEIR thing is a huge turn off. esp since it seems like a lot being a true metalhead or non-hipster seems couched in the idea that if you weren't into metal when you were an angry or disaffected teenager, any interest you now have is just a put-on

Plus is anyone going to
http://blackmetaltheory.blogspot.com/

http://www.publicassemblynyc.com/events/view/1148 ?

though democratising might not be the best term - more like being able to download just about everything for free.

tht's the new democracy

xp - gbx - yeah, i think we're in the same boat - i just got over that arriviste stigma and decided to like and express my like for things regardless. If that means I'm a "hipster," I don't care.

sounds like poser talk to me.

(j/k)

i am a poser and i don't care.

metal was soooooo not cool when I was an angsty teen. this was definitely part of the attraction.

yeah ditto, i guess. what strikes me is that you'll encounter the same anti-poser sentiment in, say, hip-hop or noize, but it doesn't seem as thoroughly institutionalized as it is in metal. unsurprising, given extreme metal's historical association with the fringe (satan! murder! drugs!).

when I was an angsty teen, I definitely felt like there was a punk - metal divide, and on the punk side, it was acceptable to like new wave, goth, industrial - but metal was a different clubhouse.

xp alan: exactly. metal is/was a safe place for a v particular kind of teenage (<--- important!) weirdo.

that also was on the football team - from my experience.

If BM and Doom were really hip then why aren't the xx loving hipsters posting here saying how they love it? ;)

are there hipsters on ilx?

honestly a big part of why i didn't get into metal sooner (i was weaned on hard rock, ffs, the progression would have been a natural one) is because, in the middle american high school, listening to metal meant buying into a lot of other stuff (imo at the time). whereas a person could listen to ANYTHING else with the same enthusiasm and not have to buy a bunch of black t-shirts.

If BM and Doom were really hip then why aren't the xx loving hipsters posting here saying how they love it? ;)

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, December 11, 2009 1:34 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i know you're kidding and that this is obvious, but: more actual metalheads think thoughts like this about pussy indies than whatever the inverse would be.

(at least that's how i envision the universe)

goths bought a bunch of black t-shirts, too.

If I had liked & let it be known that I liked metal during High School, I would have run a serious risk of getting beat up for it-- by the metalheads.

^^^

goths didn't do much beating up of people.

As it was I only had to be verbally harassed for having spiked hair and wearing 'The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts' T-shirt.

i mean, not ~really~, but when i was in high school a lot of the metalheads were kinda hesh-y

what is "hesh-y"?

i know you're kidding and that this is obvious, but: more actual metalheads think thoughts like this about pussy indies than whatever the inverse would be.

Actual metalheads think about the scorching flames of HELL!

the quality of being like a hesher

yeah, but what does that mean?

i know you're kidding and that this is obvious, but: more actual metalheads think thoughts like this about pussy indies than whatever the inverse would be.

I take it you mean indiekids ignore and look down on metal mostly? I'm sure that's mostly true but it wasnt always the case during the grunge years. OK that might just have been UK/Europe as im well aware metal was a really bad word during the 90s hence the need for the prefix for Nu-Metal - signifying it had nothing to do with metals past. (bizarrely of course Nu-Metal was created by UK magazine Kerrang)
But anyway for a brief period in the early 90s indiekids here who read NME/MM listened to Alice In Chains,Pearl Jam,Soundgarden,Smashing Pumpkins,RATM,RHCP etc when they wouldn't previously go near "heavy" bands.
Maybe (older) hipsters liking doom/BM does come from growing up with grunge? Melvins for instance are loved by both camps.

i know you're kidding and that this is obvious, but: more actual metalheads think thoughts like this about pussy indies than whatever the inverse would be.

Actual metalheads think about the scorching flames of HELL!

Oh and a lot of people got into doom via stoner rock which was kinda at its most hip in the late 90s, which clearly came partly from grunge.

yeah, but what does that mean?

A hesher is but a worm. A worm who tries to make himself metal in the aluminum of a beer can, in the copper buttons of a denim jacket, in the steel of a muscle car.

xp: re: hesher:
like a townie ... outer-suburbs lower-working-class
like the white folks you see on Cops. basically the Coastal version of a redneck

and as i said earlier, an awful lot of people crossed over to doom/BM via "folk" like dead raven choir/wolfmangler. Those certainly changed my mind about BM(along with hearing Weakling because i liked The Fucking Champs, obv i was already long into doom.

some of us are older than the generation that "grew up" with grunge. We grew up when hair metal was on the charts in the US, and equating that with "metal" could easily put someone who would appreciate Darkthrone, Napalm Death, black metal, death metal, doom metal, what have you, off the general category.

I would say Melvins are the white elephant in the room here.

^^^ xp to sarahel

anyway my present liking of metal is really just me picking back up the trail that I veered off from when I got my first Huskers, Minutemen, Black Flag and Pups records. The year before that, my favorite shit had been stuff like Blue Oyster Cult, Molly Hatchet, Aqualung and Twisted Sister, yr basic hard rock diet that would have surely led to NWOBHM and thrash if those options weren't physically dangerous in that environment.

(tho i'm not even 30 yet)

xp - sexydancer - I'd only heard the term once before from someone that grew up in Washington State, and I was confused about what she was referring to. I'm just wondering whether it's specific to a particular region, or whether I just happened to grow up in a region where this term wasn't used.

honestly, i'm kinda using the term retrospectively---not sure if i heard it before going to lol college in NE

I never heard hesher till after I left minnesota in 1989.

wait, no, i did: in the pages of POWDER magazine, haw

New England or Nebraska?

but once i pulled what the word meant from the context, i was like 'ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i know that guy'

xp i am also a despicable ivy, sarahel

they talk funny in that part of the country.

There was only a couple of people i knew at school that was into metal (same goes for "indie" most were into U2/INXS/Guns n Roses/Bon Jovi/Pet Shop Boys/Erasure/Queen/Dire Straits and whatever was in the charts in the mid to late 80s) Only a couple were into hair metal, a few others liked Slayer,Megadeth etc. I think i was put off metal as i hated hair metal.
I had a cd player n stuff but i wasnt "into" music. I occasionally listed to peel or tommy vance just to hear something that i wasnt fed up with hearing, and i also liked some classic bands like the stones,sex pistols and the like but actually "getting right into music" that didn't happen til Nirvana, that opened up a whole new world of music that I had no idea that existed really.

I do know that in the 90s playgrounds in the high schools round here got divided into "the rockers/metallers" and "the beautiful people" who were into mainstream chart stuff (which includes club stuff.) No idea what it's like now, but emo's seem to be as popular as nu metal/goth was.

xp: I'm from Washington too, and remember "hesher" being thrown around in the late 80s-early 90s to describe "metalheads" or people who resembled Cliff Burton.

The year before that, my favorite shit had been stuff like Blue Oyster Cult, Molly Hatchet, Aqualung and Twisted Sister, yr basic hard rock diet that would have surely led to NWOBHM and thrash if those options weren't physically dangerous in that environment.

― vadnais heights is cougartown (Jon Lewis), Friday, December 11, 2009 1:50 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"physically dangerous" overstates the case in my own experience, but this is basically OTM. I listened exclusively to KQ and 93X. i would've continued to do so were it not for two major radio events: 93X became the EDGE, and REV105 happened.

yeah - from kingkonggodzilla's evocative description, I can definitely say I went to high school with a number of dudes like that.

The metal dudes were the only (non-ethnically determined) outsider group at my St. Paul high school besides the punk rockers. The only proto-goths I knew were from the suburbs. There were like 2 New Romantics.

wait gbx you are also from twin cities (KQ)?

some of us are older than the generation that "grew up" with grunge.

well i was 18 when grunge hit, but like i said, i wasnt really "into" music til then.
I guess i grew up with hair metal but i hated it, but it was a lot easier to ignore/be unaware in the uk. It's not like those bands got top 10 hits ,got played on radio and most people did not have access to MTV. Guns n Roses were the exception. I wouldn't really have been aware of hair metal if one of my best mates kept buying it.

1990s Olympia WA had a generation of Melvins-obsessed "hipsters" (or riot-boys or Nu Punkers) ... Karp, Mukelteo Fairies, Behold the Prophet No Lord Shall Live, Fucking Champs, etc

Honest answer:

Pretty sure the whole current dilletante/hipster/indierock embrace of black metal/doom/kvlt started with Dave Grohl doing the Probot record on Southern Lord which gave them instant cred among dorkus Sufjan losers and a much bigger budget to actually promote stuff like Sunn, Earth, and get records like that serviced to indie rock writers by indie publicists and whatnot

I'm pretty sure it started before that. Grohl was probably doing it to ride along on it's wave. That record truly flopped though, so it didn't do him or anyone involved much good.

JL: yeah, live in MPLS through 3rd grade, out to h4stings for high school. away to the east coast for college, several years in the west/chicago, back in mpls

current status: hungry, poser

don't forget JOHN ZZZORN dude

he attracted a different kind of dilettante/hipster than the ones Whiney is describing.

we are talking historical hipsters tho.

hipsters that maybe needed an intellectual "in" to metal

yeah but Whiney's Sufjan losers are not the same hipsters that pay attention to John Zorn, are they?

xxxxp yeah because before SST defined my 1985, KQRS defined my 1984.

Zorn/early Boredoms could be key here, really. 'Where can I hear more shit like this'? 'Try your local metal grocer's freezer!'

can i remind hipsters and troo metalheads to nominate and vote NOMINATIONS THREAD for ILX METAL ALBUMS Of 2009 (Closes December 20) - non rolling metal regulars welcomed to warm themselves by our blackened pyre of statistics, so plz Vom and Note

xp - but are these the same people that pay attention to the doings of Dave Grohl and Sufjan? Whiney come back!

I feel like there is some crossover among them, but there are separate types of hipsters.

don't forget the "art world" fascination with metal.

There are good and bad reasons for snobbery about metal. Growing up in the South, a lot of metal fans around me in Kentucky really were dumbass racist jock rednecks. But it also crossed over into the D&D store / computer programmer / math league / gamer nerds that those jocks would beat up. So the power fantasies in metal can serve two audiences (power lifters getting pumped before their workout, and wannabe Columbine kids dreaming of striking back). I was into hardcore when I was growing up in the eighties and metal was "the enemy" until slowly but surely . . . it wasn't. Black Flag's "My War" was so Sabbath-like that most punks/hardcore kids I hung out with also listened to Black Sabbath, and while people laughed at hair metal, kids in the scene knew that Metallica's "Ride the Lightning" was cool, Carcass' "Reek of Putrefaction" was cool, Venom's "Possessed" was cool, etc. I was not into things that blatantly called themselves "crossover" ala DRI or SSD's sellout album, but an album like Corrosion of Conformity's "Animosity" was pretty solidly in both hardcore and metal camps. So . . . I've been into metal since Samhain's "November Coming Fire" tour, and I don't feel all that threatened by the accusation that black metal is "for hipsters"- I think if somebody is late to the party that's not necessarily their fault or something. The point is to be discriminating about what you like on its own terms rather than in terms of the bodycount/glamour/hype. I got "Filosofem" from my friend Kris Force when her band was signed to Misanthropy records and I just remember that the first time I heard Burzum there was immediately something really special about it that was emotional and hard to put into words. Am I just another "hipster" because I don't exclusively listen to metal always and only? fuck that. I think it's a false choice as far as death metal and black metal. There's great records in both camps, and derivative crap in both.

sarahel

Using the vague definition of "hipster" meaning "someone who is primarily into indie rock instead of metal" (as my metalhead friends who call me a hipster generally do)

Yes, Zorn/Boredoms-gateway-metal dudes are like an older generation of hipster than Southern Lord/Vice photo book/Matthew Barney nu-indie hipsters

So the power fantasies in metal can serve two audiences (power lifters getting pumped before their workout, and wannabe Columbine kids dreaming of striking back).

Yeah - I'd say that is accurate.

I got "Filosofem" from my friend Kris Force when her band was signed to Misanthropy records

Is this Amber Asylum or a different band? Or am I mixing up people again?

I think it's a false choice as far as death metal and black metal. There's great records in both camps, and derivative crap in both.

same here.

it should also be noted that Justin Broadrick from Godflesh used a drum machine and sported short hair and a hoodie way back inna late 80s.

xp - Whiney - I think the former is "my generation"

xpost

yeah Amber Asylum

oh and obvious point but I would say that Aquarius Records in San Francisco is a great case of people who were always into tons of weird and cool music and obviously a "hipster" epicenter and they have always supported black metal and doom, so if you're looking for who put this stuff into hipster bloodstreams, AQ is one contender on the West Coast at any rate. Cinematically, Harmony Korine's "GUMMO" soundtrack did the same for NYC and stylists/fashionistas, I reckon.

What put me off BM for the longest time was the neo nazi connotations. I know I'm not the only one.

Considering Aquarius stocks Chunklet magazine - "hipster" epicenter is quite apt.

aQ might cater to hipsters but the guys behind it are def long term metal fans, who also like other stuff, like most of us here on ilx posting to this thread really.

I think the neo-nazi connotations are an attraction for the "art world" types--fantasies of an all-white, all-male universe.

Yes, Zorn/Boredoms-gateway-metal dudes are like an older generation of hipster than Southern Lord/Vice photo book/Matthew Barney nu-indie hipsters

i'm younger (29 next month), but i definitely am coming to metal via an interest in jazz/noize

xxp - duh, one is not one's audience.

A lot of hipsters are actually drawn to it BECAUSE of the neo-nazi connotations. Look how we deify they openly racist eugenics fan Varg Vikernes ON THIS VERY BOARD as a hero.

i definitely am coming to metal via an interest in jazz/noize

same here + "brutal prog"

xpost:

we do?

He's the one in the picture with the photoshopped cat, right?

liking burzum the band and burzum the dude are obv two very different things, if that's what you're getting at...

the dude in the picture w/the cat is v cute in that picture.

He's the one in the picture with the photoshopped cat, right?

hahaha. you will have to be more specific. this if the internet after all. ;-)

also: hipsters have been acting like heshers for a decade now (PBR, wolf t-shirts, partying hard), it seems natural that some would grow up and get into REAL METAL

"are you being an ironic hersher, man?"

"I can't even tell anymore."

I'm pretty sure it started before that. Grohl was probably doing it to ride along on it's wave. That record truly flopped though, so it didn't do him or anyone involved much good.

(a) agreed, I don't think Probot was that big a deal for more than like a week
(b) I'm really intolerant of stuff like this tbh, I don't even see where this 'wave' exists - the idea that Grohl had anything to gain in the 'credibility' stakes, circa 2004, by doing songs with King Diamond, Kurt from DRI and Max from Soulfly is just bizarro world to me. I am a hundred miles from feeling like I need to jump to Dave Grohl's defence but I get really het up by this narcissistic thing where people are all 'well this guy has sold eight-figure sums of albums but he's still glomming onto my music, how about that!'

what are the current supposed crossover 'hipster' metal albums out of curiosity

http://tanakamusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/vargcat.jpg

Yes!

yeah how do i get started on this poser business

also in general can we cut all the side-stepping around the word "hipster" like it's some ugly "other." I'm so goddamn tired of everyone on ILX being like "I'm fat/old school/unfashionable/nerdy so I'm not a hipster." Jesus christ, we all post on a message board where people deconstruct the meaning of the word "balearic" and transcribe gucci mane lyrics and call Dirty Projectors "boring normal indie" and brag about the blues 78s they found at estate sales. Enough with the posturing already, ffs

Deathspell Omega is pretty awesome.

yeah no fronting I'm a hipster I just want to kno to what to listen to I can get my card renewed

so*

also in general can we cut all the side-stepping around the word "hipster" like it's some ugly "other." I'm so goddamn tired of everyone on ILX being like "I'm fat/old school/unfashionable/nerdy so I'm not a hipster." Jesus christ, we all post on a message board where people deconstruct the meaning of the word "balearic" and transcribe gucci mane lyrics and call Dirty Projectors "boring normal indie" and brag about the blues 78s they found at estate sales. Enough with the posturing already, ffs

quit posing, basically?

man, deathspell omega IS pretty awesome.

xp - Whiney - yeah, it's kinda like saying, "I'm not bourgeois, I'm only middle class."

i'm like 20 min behind the convo because i'm using crappy bolt bus wifi

but general "hipster-approved" metal in 00s was obv, Mastodon, Boris, SunnO))), Earth, Torche, Nachtmystium, etc

There was a short wave did decade that actually went by "hipster metal" because dudes looked like indie rockers and had no chops: Danava, Saviours, The Sword,

Obv, the best hipster approved metal record is Mastodon's Leviathan

i own 2 blank dogs records on vinyl, i am a hipster.

1. Denial — ppl in williamsburg
2. Anger — ppl in chicago
3. Bargaining — maybe if i cop to liking blink 182 ppl will stop calling me hipster
4. Depression — what is even the point of buying this metal record, i'll always be thought of as a despicable hipster 4ever
5. Acceptance — whiney g whinegarten

I get really het up by this narcissistic thing where people are all 'well this guy has sold eight-figure sums of albums but he's still glomming onto my music, how about that!'

hey that's not what i was doing. I think you know me well enough to know that.

but general "hipster-approved" metal in 00s was obv, Mastodon, Boris, SunnO))), Earth, Torche, Nachtmystium, etc
...
Obv, the best hipster approved metal record is Mastodon's Leviathan

mea culpa

add me to that acceptance category - i think i was the first to cop to it in this thread, actually.

Nate Carson should weigh in here, too.

nate was a hipster before any of us who heard all these bands before anyone else and booked their pre debut shows in attics/art gallerys in Portland ;)

1. Denial — ppl in williamsburg
2. Anger — ppl in chicago
3. Bargaining — maybe if i cop to liking blink 182 ppl will stop calling me hipster
4. Depression — what is even the point of buying this metal record, i'll always be thought of as a despicable hipster 4ever
5. Acceptance — whiney g whinegarten

amazing!

he also gets up half an hour before going to bed
xp

xp - i wasn't calling nate a hipster, to be clear, just acknowledging that he'd have insight on the issue.

there's also the gourmand vibe of black metal - "this band from tasmania that's actually only one guy who lives out in the middle of nowhere, records all his stuff onto an old tascam, no-one's ever met him -- his early tapes are the most incredible thing ever!!" - that agrees nicely with the indie need for exclusivity, access to secrets, a feeling of being informed. whereas death metal, I mean, let's be honest indie types, a lot of those death metal dudes are the guys who used to beat the shit out of us in high school, and it's weird to see dudes like that making music, which for indie/gettin-our-asses-kicked kinda dudes is coded as a realm to which we have/had access but our tormentors do/did not.

this seems totally otm, except that in high school i was a nerdy metal kid into thrash & death, mostly pretty chopsy stuff. any metal-leaning bully-types listened to pantera & slayer, which i liked too.

xp to Kerr: yeah it's not you rilly but that guy has been into the bands whose members he was working with on 'Probot' for pretty much longer than both of us put together, for that reason I choose to believe his intentions were sincere y'know

Grohl probably was a "hesher" in high school.

now hold on there pardner, I get pleasure form the art of Varg Vikernes, but I don't co-sign with his racism.

Obvious point, could invoke Wagner or D.W. Griffiths here too, but:

I love Patricia Highsmith's novels, but I don't agree with the opinions she spouted in her alcoholic anti-semitic letters to her friends.
I think Rick James' "Give it Me Baby" is funky and sexy but don't support burning prostitutes with crack pipes.
I admire the prose of Sir Thomas Browne and Jean Bodin but don't support the verdicts they returned at seventeenth century witch trials.

Because I teach the artwork of the 16th & 17th centuries, a deeply doctrinaire time of radical religious extremism and the espionage/security states and torture practices that went with that, I am perfectly accustomed to loving the artwork of people with completely toxic and icky and oppressive views, so to me it's just not hard to admire the sound of Burzum records while realizing full well that his ideology is preposterous. As a homo, I'm quite aware of the homophobic views of the first generation of Norwegian black metal bands (cf. the murder of a cruising middle aged gay dude described in "Lords of Chaos") and I'm not giving black metal some kind of "get out of ethics free pass" or just looking the other way.

Going out on a limb, I'd say that the fantasies of hatred in the music are a part of its appeal because they constitute an extremism without limits which is auto-immunizing for the consumer who is an anti-racist/philo-semitic/PC/lefty "hipster" precisely because those views *aren't* acceptable: it's no different from watching slasher films or documentaries about sharks, you are in awe of the lack of restraint that other beings permit themselves and their capacity to reach amoral / immoral stances that you don't for a moment regard as possible or desirable for yourself. I think the consensus of secular modernity is so pervasive that black metal becomes by that very fact ironically wildly compelling because it constitutes a declaration of virulently atavistic beliefs which have been so effectively banished and exorcised from liberal multicultural discourse that they show up as quaint and hopelessly exotic to people who are safely in art world chattering classes environments like NYC and SF. But in fact of course racism/Anti-Semitism isn't actually exotic or out-of-place in America at all, (why do you think Sarah Palin chose the thorougly black metal name of "Trig" for her child anyway?).

not that it ~really~ matters, but i just realized that at my school (in my year), we had "skaters" instead of heshers. none of them really skateboarded much, or well, but they did all wear carhartt jackets and listen to pantera and party a lot. the real metalheads were in my honors classes (and band) and generally not-threatening, but the skaters were like the public face of metaldom to me, and i wasn't interested. (actual skateboarding i thought ruled, and i was always disappointed that none of them seemed to have any interest in it)

I realise this might be shining more of a light on myself than is wise but the reason I feel really prickly about 'hipster' being used as a pejorative about every last fucking thing is that none of the stuff I listen to that supposedly comes under this umbrella has ever increased my social standing or to the best of my knowledge led anyone to look more favourably on me or... anything like that

But in fact of course racism/Anti-Semitism isn't actually exotic or out-of-place in America at all, (why do you think Sarah Palin chose the thorougly black metal name of "Trig" for her child anyway?).

Because she had aspirations that he would actually understand and pass trigonometry?

oof what is with this thread. pfunkboy be trollin'! it's almost 2010 people!

hahaha. close thread.

now hold on there pardner, I get pleasure form the art of Varg Vikernes, but I don't co-sign with his racism.

If you ever give dude or his label any money, you're essentially co-signing racism imo

didn't we already cover the fact that part of what enabled metal to be popular among "hipsters" is the ability to download it for free off the internet?

re: burzum

especially since--unlike wagner--dude considers racist dogma as an essential part of his art.

guitars -- too African!

xpost:

does he? even the older records? I genuinely have not heard that but I'm sure he could have said something to that effect.

Grohl probably was a "hesher" in high school.

― sarahel, Friday, December 11, 2009 8:47 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well, he was in the DC hardcore band Scream at 19, so he must've been a punk in high school...though wiki says one dude from St Vitus was in Scream at that point so maybe they'd gone a lil metal.

Are analog or PCM synths more racially pure?

Just becuz Varg sez so, it ain't necessarily so. Though as an musician with conceptual baggage galore I am loath to admit it, as a listener I'm not just obligated to take any artist's ideas about what they think their art is about seriously, and that goes double in the case of a savvy media manipulator / attention whore like Varg. People who are good at getting attention are going to keep doing that, and saying calculatedly offensive stuff is a guaranteed way to do that, but Varg lost credibility re: his own work a long time ago. One can enjoy the art despite the prick who made it.

For that matter, does buying Burzum t-shirts on Ebay that are bootlegs made in Mexico City in which not a penny goes to Varg or any of his white buddies co-sign with racism too, or is it just a co-sign with globalization?

argh typing too fast

should read "a musician", and "I'm just not obligated"

Tell that to the owners of that church you burned down imo ;)

xp to Kerr: yeah it's not you rilly but that guy has been into the bands whose members he was working with on 'Probot' for pretty much longer than both of us put together, for that reason I choose to believe his intentions were sincere y'know

oof what is with this thread. pfunkboy be trollin'! it's almost 2010 people!

Hey I don't troll! Yeah I admit the thread isn't exactly 100 % serious but some do think it's worth discussing and there was no thread title covering this point so i thought it was worth starting.

Yes i realise scott wasn't being serious either.

well i successfully predicted who started this thread

yeah but youre already on record as one of my haters

METAL for ART-metallers

That Billy Corgan and his thought-through opinions

I can see how Nirvana (and, being more reasonable, possibly Smashing Pumpkins) might have been pretty alarmed at the thought of having a bunch of jockish types jumping on something that might have in part been created in kind of opposition to that... with the benefit of hindsight it seems more like some spotty indeterminate sweaty conglomerate but the lines were prolly a lot clearer in 1991

xxp no dude im not but your thing with "music" for "hipsters" is bordering on bizarre

This has been lovely btw but I'm off to a dubstep night, I intend to come back more self-aware

Huge Friggin' Sunno))) Piece In NYT Magazine/Heady Metal/It Was Bound To Happen/Metal For People Who Don't Like Metal/Can I go Now?

xps
because i call the xx hipsters and started this thread?
ok

What are the Hipster Albums of 2009?

i mean i guess this just didn't satisfy you?

I'm gonna stop calling them hipsters and start calling them crayons. While acknowledging that I myself may be a crayon.

i guess i am just wondering--who do you consider to be hipsters, and why is their music taste so interesting to you

dude that above thread was a thread to slag off the xx after all the fawning ilm has done over them this year.

wtf none of this type of music is cool

^^^ GAY

i've always found the ilm aversion to the word "hipster" incredibly bizarre. hipster's a blanket term with no 100% clear meaning, and it's potentially pejorative, so i get why it might rankle, but people here freaking foam at the mouth about it like it's some kind of horrible slur. so strange.

it's reasonable to talk about the early-adopting, open-eared, art & culture following, trend-curious demographic, especially since so many music fans & writers fall into it, to some degree or another. that vague group's ever-shifting tastes (or maybe curiosities?) seem an important factor in determining what gets talked about/hyped up at any given moment.

therefore, if you DO follow music and culture in a general sort of way, it becomes an interesting thing to talk & think about - the way trends come and go. imo. anyway, i get the impression that metal has sort of faded from the cultural eye this year. 2007/2008 seem in retrospect like the crest of a wave that'd been building for most of the decade, and it's been relatively quiet since. some interest in mastodon, wolves in the throne room & sunnO))), but nothing like you saw a few years back. few new bands being offered up for mainstream attention/consumption.

my definition: "early-adopting, open-eared, art & culture following, trend-curious" people. especially those that are young, live in cities, like to party, have some money to blow. students and young arts/communications types. YOU KNOW.

hey, i'm just happy that the prices for old psych and krautrock vinyl has gone down. i listen to old metal on tapes so i'm good.

yeah but a lot of that old psych still sells for what it was doing several years ago. The super expensive collector stuff anyway, which somehow i doubt you would be buying, Scott.

LOTS of stuff has gone down in price. which isn't great from a selling perspective, but from a buyer's point of view it's good. krautrock that was going for big buxx is going for peanuts now.

ook how we deify they openly racist eugenics fan Varg Vikernes ON THIS VERY BOARD as a hero.

A verging on A+ trolling here C

iirc many people have called Varg their personal hero on this board.

we SATANIFY him surely

we condemn him as our antihero and excommunicate him to ILM where the grass is green and the lava is yellow

hey, i'm just happy that the prices for old psych and krautrock vinyl has gone down. i listen to old metal on tapes so i'm good.

― scott seward, Friday, December 11, 2009 10:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

really? that's good news, stuff had gotten pricey for a minute

I gotta admit tho I don't listen to his music no matter how good it is because fuck that fuckin guy

as has been made apparent ITT, i am no metal head and only know varg from that roxy thread about him being loose. but what i've learned about him is enough for me to feel pretty comfortable giving him a pass because fuck that fuckin guy

roxy is to blame for everything.

i guess i always figured there must be a bunch of stuff that's similar in tone and style to him that's just as good w/o the baggage? or is he like super important and unique?

he's like the VU of black metal. he only burned down a coupla churches, but every kid who heard about it formed a black metal band.

and burned down some churches on the internet.

he is super important & his musical vision at its highest is kinda undeniable it is sad to say. his particular strain of assholism is also some of the most annoying to deal with because it's this sort of insular self-perpetuating wrongness; it appeals to lots of smart people who need to have some belief system that's impenetrable, that can't be countered, that answers any criticisms before they're made. me being me (i.e. Catholic) I won't listen to stuff that comes from that kind of ideological bent, I have a hard time even listening to Wagner, who really is comparable to Buruzm insofar as 1) if you like that style of music, you kinda can't deny how good he is at it & 2) the ideology's kind of inseparable from the product, so if you listen, you are giving assent to the ideology to some extent

I know saying that pisses off a lot of people whose argt is "I just like the sounds" but I don't think there's really any such thing as just the sounds but I can dig that there are ppl who don't agree & are not fascists

hipster's a blanket term with no 100% clear meaning, and it's potentially pejorative, so i get why it might rankle

good job answering yr own question!

but seriously if u define hipster as "early adopter" you're essentially asking why did metal become popular and i think the internet, the fantastic press/metal media that still manages to survive, and the strong marketing of relapse/southern lord probably drove most of that.

(what I mean by "i.e. Catholic" = I have this idea that proximity to noxious ideologies can sort of seep into you without your consent)

thx j0hn so like he's like as important to that stuff as, like the ramones or sex pistols is to punk essentially?

i'm actually listening to some of this on lala.com right now, it's from some burzum anthology....

i don't really know if i like it

it's a weird soundtrack for new super mario bros. wii for sure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98ew0VtHmik

thx j0hn so like he's like as important to that stuff as, like the ramones or sex pistols is to punk essentially?

don't know if I'd go that far but the best burzum stuff is kind of in a class by itself, yeah

okay that makes a lot more sense...before i guess, not knowing shit about it...it's like when i remember dudes being like "oh no seriously the first skrewdriver record before they were nazis is really good i swear" and then i heard some and i was like "c'mon there are exactly like 150 punk records like this that are just as good and why the hell would i listen to skrewdriver?"

I remember NWOBHM bands were very trendy a few years ago... maybe the fun wore off and hipsters turned to something stronger?

^^ Also, Mayhem, is a bit more seminal for the BM genre than Skrewdriver is to punk to say the least...

I reserve the right to be a dilettante about all genres. I've picked up and put down metal fairly congruently to the years when it's been hip- listened a lot as a kid in the early 80s. Got annoyed when Quiet Riot showed up and instigated chart metal. Made it seem like kid stuff, while Dead Kennedys and Black Flag were "mature". Was annoyed by My War on it's release. Public Enemy got me to check out Slayer. Stared listening avidly again in '88 with Grindcore. Lost interest again around '93 as Rob Zombie/Ministry moved in. Nu Metal annoyed me enough to prevent me from digging deeper. It has consumed about 30% of my listening for the last few years, seems like it will remain lively to me in perpetuity now.

I definitely date the current hipster metal era to the release of Leviathan. There was a lot of press around that record, and I remember feeling compelled to call up my local college radio metal DJ and request it to see what the fuss was about. And he said, "Jeez- you're like the third person who's requested it tonight. What's going on?" His show was an anomaly at the station when he started in the early 00s, but I think he was made music director a few years ago.

FALSE TO DEATH METAL!

first time i heard the phrase "hipster metal" was definitely Saviours and stuff like that. Black Metal got called Nigel Metal ages after that.

I don't know how much I'm a hipster; I certainly overlap in some ways but am too old, fat and uncool in others.

I was into metal as a kid, from middle school through the end of high school especially. What I really loved was industrial metal, but I dug Morbid Angel and Sepultura and Metallica and Therapy? too, as well as the general slate of grunge bands like Soundgarden and the Melvins. I liked "alternative" or "indie" bands too, but metal was always there. And my friends who were into music were all like that too, whether it was the guy who ran the Elbow Room getting me into AmRep bands or the guitarist for some garage rock band who always put Deicide on his mixtapes or the college radio DJ that worked at our magazine who turned me on to both latter-day Bowie and bands like Emperor and Immortal. I got more into noise and hardcore punk and drifted away from straight metal, just because it seemed so stuck in the same sounds. I managed to hear Kyuss and Fu Manchu and liked them, but didn't really keep up with the larger scene, in part because it felt like dudes who were really into metal only listened to metal, and there was so much other great stuff going on, and the local metal bands, well, they kinda blew, at least the ones doing straight metal.

But I'd missed a lot of great stuff, and after I stopped really writing about music, I started talking to friends again, folks who had also been big into metal earlier in their lives, or kinda still were, or who knew new bands playing metal… And that's coincided with the hippening of metal. And I think, at least for the hipsters I know, that it goes along with the general arc of hipster interest, where it's something that was loved unironically when I was young, and now I can love it with a bit of distance and a bit of understanding that something can be ridiculous and great and pompous and bombastic and self-involved and still be incredibly fun and compelling. That a bunch of other people are having the same experience isn't that surprising to me, even if I'm not sure it accounts for the greater interest.

the zorn thing upthread was v v otm in regards to how i remember metal reentering the cool kid club (lol i am old) but also mr. bungle was a huge gateway to metal stuff - although the other big factor here in the early 90's is stuff like monster magnet and grindcore and am rep, all of which were huge in the conversion factor for the time

thinking that the same stuff is going on now, but i am too old to know exactly how - theres something similar to ye olde fascist chic here too, the dangerousness of the ideas in black metal (uh for people that are dumb enough to still basically equate it with neonazi garbage) still yanks the chain and leads certain peeps in, the same way boyd rice and foetus and half of the old guard industrial types did back in the day.

wow i can tell by re-reading that particular blur of gibberish i just typed that my brain is kind of bent from sailing the high seas of retail all day. eh, it still makes sense to me. kind of.

oh and also i think that by picking the metal that its ok to like, the particularly aggravating portion of cool kids or hipsters or whatever get to thumb their nose at all the other purportedly dumb metal, so you get op ed pieces lolling at folk metal or pirate metal or thrash revival stuff like municipal waste, which just allows more elitist establishment of being a tastemaker - which is what i have decided teh dreaded hipster term really means, at least to me.

interesting talk about modern metal and stuff here:

http://invisibleoranges.com/2009/12/metal-albums-of-decade-consensus.html

well, more interesting than ilx threads on metal anyway.

oh and also i think that by picking the metal that its ok to like, the particularly aggravating portion of cool kids or hipsters or whatever get to thumb their nose at all the other purportedly dumb metal, so you get op ed pieces lolling at folk metal or pirate metal or thrash revival stuff like municipal waste, which just allows more elitist establishment of being a tastemaker - which is what i have decided teh dreaded hipster term really means, at least to me.

fucking truthbomb, I think this is the thing I hate most about the indie-approved metalsphere: how it brings with it the indie rock need to point at music outside the designatedly-approved stuff and say "lol that's dumb" - as if any of the bands dudes are championing have even one record as good as Wishmaster in them

Yeah, appreciating big dumb metal with nothing but complete sincerity is the big leap the indie crowd can't seem to bring itself to make.

and we can presumably tie this in with the "frontin' on loving corn dogs/bacon/etc" stance, right?

are you saying ppl don't even like the metal they say they like?

btw if anybody otm'ing the "indie-approved metalsphere" argument is thinking of something other than "metal that is reviewed on pitchfork" please let me know.

averse sefira weighs in

call all d this was an issue long before pitchfork would review any metal albums at all.

Yeah, appreciating big dumb metal with nothing but complete sincerity is the big leap the indie crowd can't seem to bring itself to make.

The scope of that leap is different for everybody, btw. I'm turning 38 next week, and I've been listening to metal since '82, but it took me till May 2008 to take the plunge and discover that yes, indeed, Manowar are pretty fucking awesome.

so when did it start? what was the first indie-approved metal album?

btw lol @ averse sefira, i guess they are mad that i paid money for their record in a store? oh well i guess it will piss them off more if i continue to enjoy it. but fuck them in any event.

the last thing i need is some corpsepaint wearing jackoff from texas telling me what i'm allowed to listen to.

xp c.a.d. - was that question directed at me? I was only trying to draw a parallel to another ilx contemplating hipsterdom thread.

yeah i thought you were questioning whether "indie ppl" saying they liked ANY metal meant they were frontin

ha ha it will piss purists off even more when I finally finish my soft black truth black metal / house crossover record.

if it were black metal/idm crossover they'd probably love it.

yeah i thought you were questioning whether "indie ppl" saying they liked ANY metal meant they were frontin

naw man it's mainly when indie dudes are all "oh yes the best metal is the metal that reminds me of loveless by the way do you have any grey poupon" that people get pissed

also as I'm guessing boiled cabbage knows pretty much 100% of the troo norwegian dudes were v. into house & rave

my soft black truth black metal / house crossover record.

would buy!

lol i don't know of any metal that sounds like loveless but uh ok

well of course not i didn't mean to imply that anything could bear comparison to loveless i mean let's not be absurd here

naw man it's mainly when indie dudes are all "oh yes the best metal is the metal that reminds me of loveless by the way do you have any grey poupon" that people get pissed

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Saturday, December 12, 2009 4:00 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

^^^irl lol :D

I had a drunk conversation w/ a friend trying to figure out why I can't get into most metal I seek out turns out I just want metal to be punk, and that I am not so much a total pussweed but just sorta retarded.

xp ohhhhh burn

just funnin tho dude you know what i mean, c'mon

start these at the same time. mashup city, man:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVGUjSHQmlA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZIVqa9P3v8

lol in retrospect i can see why my post could have been read as a superlative abt loveless but let me personally assure you i did not mean it that way.

i think i'm just not sure what metal gets compared to (something like) loveless?

i mean i suppose i could just state my position clearly: if there are people out there rejecting certain metal types on intellectual grounds alone then fuck them they're just retarded. otoh, i tend to feel as though a lot of "indie ppl" have either a) not investigated genres such as trad death metal or thrash due to various constraints or b) have investigated those things and decided that they're just not a good match.

i think i'm just not sure what metal gets compared to (something like) loveless?

ok, well, what i mean it's there's a whole subset of black metal (velvet cacoon is sort of my posterboy for this even though I actually dig them) that's sort of artsy projekt-with-an-edge sounding stuff which while cool enuf is hardly the ne plus ultra but let a couple indie guys start writing about anything where the pedal chain throws some chorus in instead of sticking to yr standard distortion/delay and they tend to get all "here at last is true innovation is a genre more famed for its CHURCH BURNINGS AND MURDERS LOL!!1! than for music of substance" etc etc & it tends to bring out, we've had this discussion before, the "hey you know it's cool if you don't actually like the genre but insisting that only the outliers are worth a damn is kind of insulting & narrowminded" - in this area I have a lot more love for doom cats than for others because you almost never find some doom guy goin "fuckin' moss is awesome but black sabbath can't hold my attention, really not experimental enough" or some bullshit like that. you know?

don't know if its been mentioned, but indie/hipster types are also always attracted to stuff that they can actually PLAY. and that is a very narrow range of stuff. cuz they don't usually know how to play an instrument all that well. so, the one man basement bm drone stuff is practically designed for them to dabble with/be interested in. and its why there has been a veritable tsunami of not only indie bm stuff, but one man "dark" guitar drone stuff.

see also: one man bedtronica, one man noise fx stuff, one man fractured folk outsider jandek "alternate" tuning stuff, one man ambient software stuff, etc, etc.

bored slackers with limited skillz be looking for fresh meat in other words. it's all good. keeps them off the streets anyway.

scott otm and this also explains somewhat why the indie rock/death metal crossover is nearly zero. shoot, I get asked a lot "so why don't you make a death metal album?" and the answer is "because I couldn't stand in with those dudes on guitar for sixty miserable seconds even if I devoted the next two years of my life to practicing scales." black metal is largely about feel; you can catch that feeling in a lot of ways. the bar is set a lot higher for playing death metal.

which is not to say that black metal isn't often played by dudes who can really shred. immortal & absu are both on some incredibly-high-level-of-technique stuff.

so there are people out there who are like ONLY into the one-man usbm "projekt" stuff? this is news to me.

hey you know it's cool if you don't actually like the genre but insisting that only the outliers are worth a damn is kind of insulting & narrowminded

this i totally get tho i would add for people with a limited amount of time to get into music it would be real easy to learn abt usbm and miss the original, scandanavian stuff completely. they tend to be really aesthetically different too. but again, i'm hard pressed to believe that everyone is so dismissive, as opposed to just being ignorant (and i don't mean that negatively) of certain things.

immortal & absu are both on some incredibly-high-level-of-technique stuff.
two of my favorites - does this mean I'm not actually a "hipster"?

i'm not sure to what extent i buy the "technique/technicality" argument though there is probably something there. it's probably more simple--just people being attracted to weird outsider loner types, whether they can play or not. i hate the vast majority of that kind of stuff btw. i mean one of the things i liked about averse sefira was that they sounded like an actual band and not like xasthur or something.

i think most non-musicians really have no idea about technique. musicians that can play some stuff but couldn't play death metal (i.e. me) i would hope respect that those dudes often put their skills to good use. maybe ppl are still into rejecting "technique" in general but again that's pretty retarded.

What's not "hip" in 2009? Honestly.

j0hn it's always weird to me when you talk about indie rock as if it's some kind of "other" that yr not involved in....

fucking truthbomb, I think this is the thing I hate most about the indie-approved metalsphere: how it brings with it the indie rock need to point at music outside the designatedly-approved stuff and say "lol that's dumb"

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Friday, December 11, 2009 6:12 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

but everyone draws lines that way! metal dudes draw lines between what's cool/acceptable/real and what they imagine is false/lame/hipster. lines get drawn between eras, styles, attitudes, clothes, whatever the fuck. and the distinctions indie ppl make are maybe different, but not in kind. the line yr drawing between people who have a right to metal and people who don't seems way more bogus than some strawman hipster's attraction to loveless-metal.

i mean, say some kid grows up digging mbv and godspeed you black emperor and whatever else fits on that continuum. and then one day he hears jesu and is blown away. and so he gets really into that kind of ambient, drony, shoegaze metal. his love is legit. he's got just as much right to his opinion regarding what's cool and what sucks than some professional knower of all metal. plus he can probably speak more comprehensibly and usefully to people coming from an indie/shoegaze background than someone who's whole deal is metal and is used to talking to an audience of serious metalheads.

as far as the "outliers" thing goes, i think the weird outliers and pop sellouts tend to be my favorite bands/artists in almost every genre and this has pretty much always been true.

it's so sad when people just wanna fight instead of unite

yes but im not worried about hipsters invading clubhouses (j0hn and co think im invading their clubhouse anyway lol) im just asking why do people think like this.

autogoon fules to thread. ;^)

It's like when i remember dudes being like "oh no seriously the first skrewdriver record before they were nazis is really good i swear"

Isn't that just a case of people feeling powerful for breaking a great taboo in owning a record by a notorious artist, but, like, it's totally okay because "they weren't Nazis then"?

You could nearly argue the same about black metal in the early '90s among the majority of the hipster crowd. Might we be giving them too much credit for recognising the raw musicianship, etc, and not just jumping on the taboo bandwagon because "they burned churches, man!"

j0hn it's always weird to me when you talk about indie rock as if it's some kind of "other" that yr not involved in....

yeah well I mean that's probably what carries me over the bend with this stuff -- it's like, indie ppl of the early 90s vintage sorta talked a big line about being interested in actual music rather than its trappings; in being chiefly interested in content ( as vs. presentation, presentation being conceived as inclusive of everything extraneous to the music itself). presumably, if you carried this ideology out a little further, that'd make for a more open aesthetic stance: being receptive to music on its own merits instead of "demanding" (scareword there, no-one "demands" anything any more than I'm saying anyone has a "right" to anything) that that a music be relatable to one's own usual milieu before one will condescend to lend it an ear. same thing drove me nuts circa '95 when the whole indie world was gushing over that egon schiele album by the rachels: it was like, wait a minute, zero interest in chamber music at all but suddenly somebody from the louisville clique is into it and you're really moved -- but only by their record, heaven forbid you actually dig up the Trout quintet or something? whatever works I guess but if that doesn't lead to some exploration of actual classical music then your aesthetics are severely narcissistic imo, and I think that's a phenomenon worth calling out.

anyway I was thinking about this some more and I think there's also this: it tends to take a while for innovation to leap across genre boundaries. '92-'95 (siegbran can correct me if I've got my years wrong) was a time of near-constant innovation in metal. but it was also kind of a spike for indie bands, who started getting big dollar contracts, etc., and were content to make records mainly in their own genre. after that peaked, I think people in that scene (the scene which would eventually spawn/give way to "hipsters") started looking afield: they got really into synths for a while (hello "post rock" article late '95), and then they got kind of introspective & mellow, and then in the past five or six years they've sort of wanted to get louder. (this timeline could be total bullshit btw ok, I'm just thinkin out loud) Which may coincide with the age of the crowd getting younger, new people on the scene who're younger and have a higher tolerance for louder music & less insular-scene baggage than long-timers, maybe. Anyway, if getting louder is what a crowd wants, metal's a school still sorting through the impact of an insanely creative period a little over a decade ago, plus there's the exoticism of exploring new worlds. so that might account for the hipness. what gets me goin' is when the exploration of an interesting genre comes with the insistence that it's really at its best when it sounds less like itself.

yes but im not worried about hipsters invading clubhouses (j0hn and co think im invading their clubhouse anyway lol) im just asking why do people think like this.

autogoon fules to thread. ;^)

― the not-fun one (Ioannis),

You probably need to start an elitists clubhouse thread for that as I dont think it's very likely the autogoon crew are reading a thread about metal.

don't know if its been mentioned, but indie/hipster types are also always attracted to stuff that they can actually PLAY. and that is a very narrow range of stuff. cuz they don't usually know how to play an instrument all that well. so, the one man basement bm drone stuff is practically designed for them to dabble with/be interested in. and its why there has been a veritable tsunami of not only indie bm stuff, but one man "dark" guitar drone stuff.

Mick Barr can play,Mick Barr can shred, yet Krallice still get decried as hipster/nigel metal despite being fucking awesome.

averse sefira weighs in

The one thing worse than hipsters are elitists

I've posted that "manifesto" over at DFFD to see how many posters there agree over the next few days (watch everyone there call me a hipster as usual btw)

without elitists you wouldn't have any of the awesome metal you like. they built the genre, whether you like them or not.

i mean, say some kid scruff in Glasgow grows up digging mbv and godspeed you black emperor and whatever else fits on that continuum. and then one day he hears jesu and is blown away. and so he gets really into that kind of ambient, drony, shoegaze metal

*Waves, cheerily*

his love is legit. he's got just as much right to his opinion regarding what's cool and what sucks than some professional knower of all metal

Well, yes, in an ideal world. What happened with me, though, is I realised very quickly that there was a small but vocal minority for whom that "professional knowledge of all metal" was absolutely essential, and not something they seemed keen to share with neophytes, so I thought, fuck it, I'll just work out what I like as I go along.

I've been lucky to have a few good people -- not least the starter of this thread -- point me in the direction of good stuff along the way, but probably because I've actively avoided the metal "community", my own understanding of the genre divisions etc is blurred to hell. Ultimately, there's "stuff like this that I like" and "stuff like this that I don't": one day I'd like to appreciate a bit more about that, but if I can't do that without someone sneeringly accusing me of being a hipster/indie dilettante/"Nigel"/whatever, fuck it: I'm confident enough in my own critical faculties not to give a shit.

For what it's worth: I can absolutely understand why there are metal dudes who feel this way. It doesn't make them right, but I do get where they're coming from. Ultimately, though, this:

at a certain point i think we just have to accept that in the internet era all kinds of ppl like all kinds of shit and quit worrying about "hipsters" or whoever invading whatever musical clubhouses we've built for ourselves

is dead on.

without elitists you wouldn't have any of the awesome metal you like. they built the genre, whether you like them or not.

if by elitists we mean "people whose first, and often only love is metal" then yeah ok--still different from what that guy is expressing (which is probably the most despicable viewpoint someone making their music commercially avialable could have)

you didnae grow up in glasgow you falser ;)

xpost

you didnae grow up in glasgow you falser ;)

Au contraire! I did a fuck of a lot of my growing up -- especially musically -- in Glasgow. You don't have to be a teenager to be growing up :)

Oh, and re Averse Sefira: I suppose it would cheer them up that I'd never heard of them, and that on this evidence I disregard them completely, as Molesworth might put it.

They strike me as people who probably need cheered up a tad. Hope this helps, lads.

acceptable: burzum (is a nazi, but doesn't talk shit about noobs)
unacceptable: averse sefira (one of the best bm bands working, less nazi but hates on noobs)

'k

well see I'm half-noob but only a quarter jewish

they hate everything after 1990 not just noobs

ATTENTION: To all weekenders, hipsters, novelty seekers, scenesters, and assorted parasites of the underground – we, the purveyors and fans of metal pre-1990 are taking back our music from you scum. It was never yours, you don't understand it, and we don't need your permission, approval, or support to continue. You idiots have done nothing but bastardize and trivialize it for almost a decade and we are sick of it. You allowed nu-metal and metalcore to happen. You allowed a cartoon band to release the “biggest selling death metal album of all time”. You take from us and offer nothing in return other than complaining and self-impressed criticism. The veterans are coming back in droves, and their music is not for you. Everything you think you know is once again irrelevant. You are irrelevant. Prepare to be marginalized like the non-people you are. Find a different genre to exercise your neuroses. There is no place for you at this table any longer. Fuck you. We're taking it back.

so everything after 1990 is false and scum? you have to have been into metal for 20 years to be real? Or only like metal before 1990? J0hn im sure lots of your fave albums came after 1990.

I don't rilly know Averse Sefira so I just read an interview with him at A.N.U.S. and he sounds super interesting tbh! Even tho I think that lil blog post is bollocks (might not have been the same guy I dunno). He also said Pain Teens were one of his favourite Texas bands - lol indie noizer

john find in any thread where i said burzum was acceptable

i just want to be really clear on that because i don't listen to burzum for the same reasons you yourself have laid out.

no I know that dude!

so everything after 1990 is false and scum? you have to have been into metal for 20 years to be real? Or only like metal before 1990? J0hn im sure lots of your fave albums came after 1990.

umm dude I just linked their post with IIRC the note "averse sefira weighs in." I'm sympathetic to their bombast insofar as I can't stand the sort of "now that we've arrived en scene, this music is suddenly interesting" attitude of the very crowd who couldn't be bothered to rock Sons of Northern Darkness when it was blowing metal minds in '01, and I think their extreme is a tonic to the aesthetically dull-as-toast opinion "it's all just music, man! music is for everybody!" which is probably good for passive listening but doesn't yield much in the way of discussion/dialectic

xxp what a load of shit that averse sefira blog is. if you're still persisting in this kind of pathetic, closed-ranks tribalism past your teenage years, you need to take a serious look at yourself.

"now that we've arrived en scene, this music is suddenly interesting"

Yeah but no-one would ever say or think this

I'm sympathetic to their bombast insofar as I can't stand the sort of "now that we've arrived en scene, this music is suddenly interesting" attitude of the very crowd who couldn't be bothered to rock Sons of Northern Darkness when it was blowing metal minds in '01

on the other hand: in retrospect, pitchfork probably made me feel like just as much of a noob when I was starting to get into indie rock for not knowing about Dinosaur Jr. or whatever; just that they did it with passagressive snarkasm rather than blood and caps lock

xpost: no actually this is how EVERYONE thinks all the time, because how can something be interesting before you've heard it, obviously you have to start somewhere, etc etc

not sure how "don't even bother to engage with us unless you meet x criteria" yields much in the way of discussion

I read it in a different way to you I think xp

final point on this then i'll shut up but if wrath from averse sefira (whose real name and email i just discovered and am strongly tempted to contact) really feels that way i would hope he take the next logical step of pulling his records out of stores and only selling them to people at shows who look metal enough for him or can answer some kind of quiz or something.

He plays in a black metal band, this is the kind of thing they do

or to put it another way, that's how he breaks it down to an extent

not sure how "don't even bother to engage with us unless you meet x criteria" yields much in the way of discussion

Er, yeh, I was going to say:

but doesn't yield much in the way of discussion/dialectic

Well, no, but neither does the minority-metal attitude of dismissing great swathes of new/young/whatever listeners because they happened to be born in the 1980s/weren't making devil horns in their prams/just happen to be interested in music rather than, y'know, fanatical about it.

Fuck, man, I'd love more discussion/dialectic where metal's concerned, but that's the fucking problem: half the time it seems to come down to no more than "I was here first, fuck off".

john actually as i was considering your markedly small-c catholic taste in music i am kinda surprised you have any sympathy for this line of reasoning

or to put it another way, that's how he breaks it down to an extent

― imo better blues (DJ Mencap), Saturday, December 12, 2009 11:21 AM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

true and i'm not particularly surprised (tho it seems like he's a bright enough guy to have a more nuanced position) but it pisses me off because again as i've been saying he apparently would prefer that i hadn't paid 15 bucks for his album and that's just kind of really insulting.

john actually as i was considering your markedly small-c catholic taste in music i am kinda surprised you have any sympathy for this line of reasoning

lol I'm also large-C Catholic and am always drawn to/more sympathetic to ideologies & aesthetics that favor clear lines - I think it's within those sorts of lines that most of the interesting work (both artistically & critically) gets done

you people need professional help for your indie guilt. i've never seen anything like it. or fear and trembling or whatever it is.

also:

Well, no, but neither does the minority-metal attitude of dismissing great swathes of new/young/whatever listeners because they happened to be born in the 1980s/weren't making devil horns in their prams/just happen to be interested in music rather than, y'know, fanatical about it.

it doesn't? I'm enjoying the back and forth here and assume anybody else on-thread is, too, otherwise why bother joining in?

but I mean like:

true and i'm not particularly surprised (tho it seems like he's a bright enough guy to have a more nuanced position) but it pisses me off because again as i've been saying he apparently would prefer that i hadn't paid 15 bucks for his album and that's just kind of really insulting.

look, let's be clear. when a person makes a statement like the averse sefira shot across the bow, they hardly ever mean it. it's sort of a dialectical ploy: what if I said this? what other opinions might come up against it, what thoughts might come out in reaction to it, how might sympathetic people be driven to respond? which isn't to say it's 100% provocateurism; there's the kernel of truth (the initial wave was really interesting and new; the music isn't interesting and new any more; only by returning to the original spirit of this-and-not-that can the music be interesting again, which I do agree with). but I think the main purpose of a statement like that is to inspire or provoke. and to bring lols.

I'm enjoying the back and forth here and assume anybody else on-thread is, too, otherwise why bother joining in?

Yeh, absolutely enjoying THIS THREAD but a) it's a lot more good-natured than a lot of these discussions; b) I still feel there's probably a more interesting discussion to be had, involving people who know a damn sight more than I do, that's being obscured by "na-na-na, I was here first". Maybe not, though :)

Also how exactly do any of you suppose they are going to "take the music back"? Just a bit of rhetoric let's be cool

I'm also large-C Catholic and am always drawn to/more sympathetic to ideologies & aesthetics that favor clear lines - I think it's within those sorts of lines that most of the interesting work (both artistically & critically) gets done

Total 100% co-sign on this (raised Catholic too, though haven't been in a church for non-funereal reasons for over 20 years). I am a big believer in "this is what we do/that is something we do not do" aesthetic philosophy. Willful eclecticism is masturbatory; throwing obstacles in your own path, disciplining your creativity into line with an irrevocable set of rules and standards that must be met is the way to go. Quick 'n' easy example: I love jazz, but I don't go to metal shows hoping the band will start jamming or improvising or experimenting; I want the chorus to come right where it ought to be, and sound as much as possible like it does on the album. So does everyone else there. It's about ritualized catharsis.

but I think the main purpose of a statement like that is to inspire or provoke. and to bring lols

Hmm. To me it reads more like a great big "FUCK OFF", and I get the impression I'm not alone in that. It also has a subtext, which I'm picking up as "I am a humourless twat who needs to get out more", but -- again -- musical and social prejudice breeds musical and social prejudice :/

yeah but do you not think there's value both for the speaker & the target sometimes in being told "fuck off"?

one nice thing about having a somewhat concealed identity (not to mention several forums where you can go on, at length, about anything you like) is that you can indulge your desire to "inspire or provoke" by speaking out in favor of "elitism" aka fascism (see the a.n.u.s. interview)--if he really wanted to "discuss" he would turn on the comments on his fucking blog.

oh I don't think it's fair to conflate aesthetic elitism with fascism, now, is it

read the interview

I am a big believer in "this is what we do/that is something we do not do" aesthetic philosophy. Willful eclecticism is masturbatory; throwing obstacles in your own path, disciplining your creativity into line with an irrevocable set of rules and standards that must be met is the way to go.

couldn't disagree with this more... sometimes direct, strictly codified music is what's called for, but more often than not I'm far more fascinated and compelled by things that exist in the no man's land between formalised genres, by artists that roam freely between worlds, by work whose nature isn't immediately obvious.

yeah but do you not think there's value both for the speaker & the target sometimes in being told "fuck off"?

In all seriousness: yes. However, when the context is something of -- let's face it -- minority artistic interest, and when the boundaries (esp given Matt's v salient point about the great leveller that is the internet) are becoming blurrier by the beat, it strikes me as a corner that's maybe not worth fighting so hard. Especially when -- regardless of Averse Sefira dude's intentions -- the upshot is a whole lot of people going: "You dick."

Anyway, fuck it, I'm off to see Depeche Mode :)

"HOW DARE HE LISTEN TO METAL WHEN HE LIKES DEPECHE MODE. FUCKING NIGEL. Etc."

i want a show of hands. how many of you people take medication for anxiety?

scott do you know you don't have to read the thread if it's not entertaining to you? just throwin' that out there. I mean given your anxiety over people's anxiety levels I hardly think your particular glass house is a great place from which to be throwin' rocks.

scott i'm not really sure who you're making fun of?

In all seriousness: yes. However, when the context is something of -- let's face it -- minority artistic interest, and when the boundaries (esp given Matt's v salient point about the great leveller that is the internet) are becoming blurrier by the beat, it strikes me as a corner that's maybe not worth fighting so hard.

I mean the thing here is this: look at the Dadists, or the symbolists, or the early post-structuralists. All these movements enter their stage of violent & awesome generativity by saying "everything that's not us is totally fucking lame." Not by goin', well, here's my little contribution to the vast sea of literature, not really fussed about where it fits in, y'know, it's just a little something. in the case of Dada, things kick off with a manifesto. I am pro-manifesto. manifestos are ridiculous, but light a fire under something. I tend to HONOR THAT FIRE.

I think the only thing that J0hn,Phil and I have in common are being brought up Catholic.

"HOW DARE HE LISTEN TO METAL WHEN HE LIKES DEPECHE MODE. FUCKING NIGEL. Etc."

i'm not anxious about anything or anybody. it's just that ilm baffles me sometimes. like, i just don't get where people are coming from at all. i read and i read and it's like another language or something. not everybody. i get where you are coming from, john. i dunno, it's probably just me. and you are right. i should stay off the metal threads. i'll just stick with my own thread. (cuz they piss me off too and i get irrational and i really do like the majority of people on ilm. and the majority of people on this thread. so, i don't want to get like that.)

A thread without scott is a thread that lacks something (ie scott)

Willful eclecticism is masturbatory

It'd be interesting to know how this is so yet "ritualized catharsis" is somehow not. "Masturbatory," that is.

the Dadists, or the symbolists, or the early post-structuralists.

and i'm sure being in the OG black metal scene was equally rad, but that was 20 years ago. so these guys should either be doing something completely different or admit that their baby is out in the world now.

Willful eclecticism is masturbatory; throwing obstacles in your own path, disciplining your creativity into line with an irrevocable set of rules and standards that must be met is the way to go.

sometimes you discipline your creativity by throwing obstacles in your own path and seeing if they result in something new and interesting.

Manifestos are awesome and I fully intend to include one in the sleevenotes of my own first album (article one, point one: IF YOUR FINAL TRACK INDEXES AT HALF AN HOUR LONG, IT IS HALF AN HOUR LONG, IT IS NOT A 5-MINUTE COP-OUT WITH 23 MINUTES OF SILENCE THEN AN ACOUSTIC BALLAD AT THE END)

...but manifestos are very personal things, and should be met with other, slightly different manifestos within the same broad context. The poststructuralists couldn't agree on anything!

Also anyone who sincerely thinks this 'manifesto' is especially characteristic of the views held across the big wide spectrum of BM should probably take a match to that strawman - really, it reads like a parody of the genre's attempts at elitist linedrawing and, on some level, quite possibly is one

xp - your manifesto could be the album.

that'd be lazy

wasn't suggesting you wouldn't actually record music - it would be a musical manifesto.

nah i meant that that^ would be lazy; songs have gotta be about more than themselves

no. they don't.

Would it be cruel to suggest LJ making an album with no music just a manifesto might be for the best? ;)

well, that's an interesting one, actually. some of the greatest songs HAVE been manifestos of sorts (21st Century Schizoid Man for instance)...a whole album of pure manifesto ('BEHOLD; THIS IS HOW YOU CONSTRUCT A CENTREPIECE') would be a bit silly.

I mean it's possible to make an album that HAS a clear musical manifesto (lol BM) but if each individual song is nothing but an expression of that manifesto, a song whose every lyric, every sentiment was to the effect that THIS IS HOW IT SHOULD BE, then that is surely showing AND telling, which is bad?

Unless it was set to music that was interesting and enjoyable, in which case it would be good

the lyrics could be in a made up language.

I guess. I don't know what I'm trying to argue. I'm arguing against a ridiculous position, and one that sarahel didn't intend. Hence my position is ridiculous as well. She meant that the album provided a manifesto by mere showing; I assumed telling as well; I assumed it was an explicit rather than an implicit manifesto and argued myself into a corner. Songs should be about music, the joy of music, the joy of narrative, rather than just their own justifiable existence. I don't know.

Like, for me, a manifesto is generally a written document outlining perceived truths. To claim that an album is a metaphorical manifesto is dangerous. Sometimes it's just one person's or band's interpretation of good music. That's not a manifesto. Maybe it is. Argh!

Scott please come back

"Quick 'n' easy example: I love jazz, but I don't go to metal shows hoping the band will start jamming or improvising or experimenting; I want the chorus to come right where it ought to be, and sound as much as possible like it does on the album."

Me, on the other hand, I like Acid Mothers Temple. And prog metal. And insane live solos. And new parts added to songs because the band has been touring long enough to fuck with them. Because otherwise, why would I go see a live band that sounds exactly like they do on the album I've already got?

"the Dadists, or the symbolists, or the early post-structuralists."

No, not really. I mean, first off, the Dadaists weren't ever a coherent movement, manifesto aside; the New York Dadaists and European Dadaists had distinctly different character. Not only that, but the artist that did the most interesting work within Dada was Marcel Duchamp, and he was only fleetingly associated with them and mostly used their theoretical work as a tangent to things that he was already working on (a rejection of retinal art, readymades, etc.). On the other hand, the strongest argument for THIS IS ART and manifesto energy came much earlier, from Joshua Reynolds, who basically ran art criticism in England in the 1700s. His "Grand Style," based on neo-platonic idealism, was pretty stultifying all told. It was the rejection of his philosophy, first in realism then in impressionism, that broke through the morass of European painterly aesthetics and presaged modernism. When you look back at the history of art, the closer you study any movement the more you realize that it was not cohesive, coherent or concrete, and that the gains that came from any manifesto came from rejecting prior strictures and experimenting away from them. You've drawn exactly the wrong lesson from manifestos, at least regarding its applicability to metal—instead of trying to reclaim the historic roots, which is aptly tied in with fascism (and trying to distance metal from fascism takes a willful blindness), if you wanted to tie their arguments in with manifestoism, they should be rejecting those historical roots and attempting to create something new and unbeholden. Instead, you're trying to support a reactionary argument with revolutionary texts.

Every manifesto band should start with Nation of Ulysses.

instead of trying to reclaim the historic roots, which is aptly tied in with fascism (and trying to distance metal from fascism takes a willful blindness)

Care to clear up exactly who/what you're talking about here?

xp I love the NOU to death but if you want people to actually believe you mean what yr saying and not shrouding everything you do in wilful obfuscation they are not the best model to follow

Ian Svenonius was the Sassiest Boy in America!

"Care to clear up exactly who/what you're talking about here?"

Oh, easy. Fascist art (outside of Futurism, which is kind of a weird edge case), especially Heroic Realism, is anti-modern, with a big focus on recalling myths of yore. Combine that with rhetoric like Averse Sevira's, which posits authority, purity and is explicitly reactionary, and you have the basis for a lot of the fascist aesthetic (especially when you combine that with the idea of returning to the old ways by force). While not metal, you can see this treated ironically and explicitly by Laibach.

And I realize that there's a fair case to be made for metal being an inversion of fascist forms due to its explicit emphasis on degeneracy and debauchery, but I tend to think that most of that still takes place in a very traditionally moral presentation even if the ostensible aesthetic argument is a negation of that moral form.

It's also fair to say that metal's really broad, and that different bands—songs even—have different foci and emphases, but I don't think that it's out of bounds to mention fascism—separate from elitism—in a genre where we were just talking about Varg a minute ago.

I hope that cleared it up. Sorry if it didn't.

you have a degree in something don't you

in metal!

i read cannibal (corpse)

"you have a degree in something don't you"

In journalism! With a poli-sci minor!

i was just funnin

anyway, i am now listening to crack the skye and i don't care what all of this metallers think

Yeah that all figures but I do think you're using a pretty broad brush here (as you more or less admit) - actual vocally fascist bands are a tiny minority in metal and the 'ancient myths' crew don't comprise that much larger a subsection. Black Sabbath don't (imo) answer to any of the characteristics you cite; I guess you could make an argument for the genre's implicit advocation of manly virtues and employment of strength (through eg volume and speed) being essentially fascist but by that logic you could say it about a bunch of other music. If you said that techno was inherently fascist I suspect people would have a word

gay fascist muscle disco

'Der Mussolini' is a jam for the ages

Not only that, but the artist that did the most interesting work within Dada was Marcel DuchampTristan Tzara

fixed

When you look back at the history of art, the closer you study any movement the more you realize that it was not cohesive, coherent or concrete, and that the gains that came from any manifesto came from rejecting prior strictures and experimenting away from them.

yes, and this is one of the (many) uses of all manifestos/didactic-proscriptive aesthetic stances - they reestablish boundaries to be knowingly bucked/resisted, instead of some dull aesthetic ground on which to say, I'll dabble here, I'll dabble there, whatever, it's all one, genre is meaningless, etc, etc. No freedom without strictures, this is well-trod ground not only generally but between you & I on this board!

Tricky part about throwing around which band/artist believes in what is that there's so many different ideological strands. There's *actually* neonazi stuff like Blazebirth Hall and Satanic Warmaster, and then there's *racialist Nordic pride* people who don't get nostalgic about Hitler/Quisling but who do sing in a knowing way about pushing out the intruding hordes and thinning out the weak and who seem to long for a historical rewind when their nation was "pure" (i.e. pre-Christian and all white pagan cultures let you have your racism and your nationalism too). To me, "Satanism" as a stance is another weird wrinkle in the whole she-bang, because blasphemy requires a Christian colonization to have happened- so paganism and Satanism are conceptually incongruous (as lotsa writers about the occult, from "Drawing Down the Moon" on, have pointed out ad nauseum). But the stance of embracing "evil" has to be figured out too- if these people are eager to describe what they are up to as somehow "evil" (and some are, some aren't) then that implies a kind of deliberately hysterical stance in the eyes of some (Christian, multicultural, liberal?) "other" for whom they show up as evil. And yeah, you can cash out a Satanic stance in many ways too ("satan" as just a confused Christian label for older animist nature-gods is one way, LaVey style radical individualism is another). The point is that it's intellectually lazy to just sling phrases like "nazi" and "racist" at an entire scene when there are lots of shades of difference afoot. But I can understand that even sensing that some major players are up to that (or worse, playing the am-i-or-arent-i game ala NON and Death in June in the goth industrial scene) can be enough to make some people pay enough attention to work out who is really an asshole and who is just kind of an asshole and who is a standard issue misanthrope and who is a pretentious idiot.

duh, should read "NOT want to pay enough attention to figure out"

Nine Ounce Nails

Not only that, but the artist that did the most interesting work within Dada was Marcel DuchampTristan Tzara

just wanted to correct that mistake.

yes, and this is one of the (many) uses of all manifestos/didactic-proscriptive aesthetic stances - they reestablish boundaries to be knowingly bucked/resisted, instead of some dull aesthetic ground on which to say, I'll dabble here, I'll dabble there, whatever, it's all one, genre is meaningless, etc, etc. No freedom without strictures, this is well-trod ground not only generally but between you & I on this board!

but is it requisite that these strictures and stances be proscribed from above or outside? If the dabbling results in work that is coherent and compelling in itself, then what?

i find a lot of indie types who like bm like doom and drone and come from noise or folk backgrounds. Foxy digitalis and wire readers i guess. Dunno how pitchforkers got into it tho unless p4k writers were reading foxy d and it came from there.

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, December 11, 2009 6:01 PM (Yesterda

this is the most otm thing 4 me, i don't pretend to have an open ear for any metal at all but stuff like sun o))) does crop up in the same constellations as I dunno burning star core, emeralds, espers

J0hn is totally on point about Tzara.

Also I guess I was/maybe-still-am one of those people who fell for Leviathan post-Pitchfork review (but also post-J0hn's thorough endorsement of Mastodon, I mean, maybe some people will not see this as any different, but with Pitchfork then just dabbling into metal reviews and with J0hn having been seasoned with metal salad dressing since maybe birth I don't know, the latter pushed me over the edge). Beforehand I was the guy who really loved Slayer at age 12 but then got into "serious" "emotional" "cathartic" "philosophical" indie rock and my quality of life severely diminished, so I was looking toward the old ways, for the truth perhaps inherent in their arbitrary and scattered machinery.

I don't think it ever occurred to me that Leviathan was good because it was somehow "separate" from its genre's trappings, nor was I content with the indie-canon-approved metal, but my standard operating procedure is to: 1) love genres for all they are and all they are not, and 2) excavate their red centers for all the good things they may hold. Had I not done that, I wouldn't be into Morbid Angel and what kind of life is worth living without Morbid Angel.

Also half the reason I love black metal is for its ambient and hypnotic qualities, which may be just as bad as digging it because violent guitar snow = sweet Loveless memories.

I am a big believer in "this is what we do/that is something we do not do" aesthetic philosophy. Willful eclecticism is masturbatory; throwing obstacles in your own path, disciplining your creativity into line with an irrevocable set of rules and standards that must be met is the way to go.

couldn't disagree with this more... sometimes direct, strictly codified music is what's called for, but more often than not I'm far more fascinated and compelled by things that exist in the no man's land between formalised genres, by artists that roam freely between worlds, by work whose nature isn't immediately obvious.

― m the g, Saturday, December 12, 2009 12:32 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

i don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. i think it's possible to set your boundaries and rules in between formalised genres and not be wilfully eclectic. i imagine 'wilfully eclectic' epitomized as like, "so we're gonna have a klezmer verse that goes into a surf rock chorus, with a gregorian chant coda." unperson is otm about the bounteous, fruitful joys of a focused imagination though, there is a lot to be wrung from the confines of a single style.

i came to listening to doom 100% through noise. if you go to noise shows even semi-regularly chances are you'll end up hearing a doom band.

file that under noise scene clichés, even.

if you go to noise shows even semi-regularly chances are you'll end up hearing a doom band.

love this

sometimes it's a one dude doom band

you can identify those because the bass drum strapped to their back is really really huge

did they have a dyson?

they tend to use hoovers in my neck of the woods.

leave your son out of this

??

you know i cant keep these fantastic running jokes healthy and nurtured without some help from the involved parties

tbh ur way 2 hung up on that partic joke tho

i believe in a little thing i like to call "commitment" when it comes to my hilarious escapades tbh

i dont get it

onwards and upwards people, lets talk more about those jerks who listen to the stuff i like

It always comes back to Dan with you, doesn't it?

This thread has occasionally been an interesting read. A few comments I've had while reading it, but missed the chance to post earlier:

I'm way more interested in discussing what 'artsy types' like about metal, than what "hipsters" do (music is just another fashion accessory). Artsy Types (which is what I believe most ILM readers are) I give the benefit of the doubt to as being people who genuinely love the fuck out of music, and have taken the time to think a lot about why they themselves like it. So, this thread can either be about why we think some dick who read Sunn0))) was awesome in a 2006 issue of Vice thinks metal is awesome, or we can just post why we ourselves love metal. I think the latter would be a better read.

I think one of the main reasons black (and doom) metal might be more appealing to non-metalheads boils down to the generally slower tempos. This kind of relates to another reason which is simply the aggression factor. Even comparing early DM and BM, the feeling I get from DM is that these bands want to pummel their audience with their sound. It's cathartic for a person who has a lot of bottled up anger to go nuts and mosh at a DM show, or headbang and beat their fists on their steering wheel like a loon after getting fired from Pizza Hut or whatever (try it sometime!). BM has always struck me as a type of music that either wants me to sink into a pit of darkness, horror, and hatred (that high-pitched BM voice is just nasty sneering hatred imo). My point is that I think the two genres tend to speak more to different temperaments. Sure there is crossover, there's some pretty angry sounding BM, and there are some great BM/DM crossover groups who do both (DSO), but this is how I tend to see it, and it's why I think fans of indie-rock might be more drawn to the theatrical villainy of a lot of BM than the roaring sonic brutality of DM.

I also think it's interesting to see people take offense at the blog post by the BM guy who I am not yet familiar with. This is painting with a broad brush, but: People who devote their lives making this kind of music are not happy well-adjusted people for the most part. This guy probably WAS pissed off when he wrote it. To make convincing and effective metal, you have to mean it - at least be able to channel it while you are writing it. This is why, for me, groups like Krallice fall flat. It's all style with no feeling. These dudes might be exorcising demons or purposely dwelling in darkness to make this music for us, so I guess I tend to forgive them if they lash out and say stupid or reprehensible shit once in a while.

that's a pretty thoughtful post, but I just wanted to mention that you start out talking about Artsy types, and then talk about "fans of indie-rock" in a way that seems like you're saying artsy types = fans of indie rock, when if the issue is why do "fans of indie rock" like Doom and Black Metal, then why not just say that, as opposed to cloaking it, in a sense with terms like "hipster" or "artsy types" which are different categories, though with some overlap.

it also, might be worth saying that Doom Metal seems a lot more connected to a classic rock lineage that indie/rock fans can "get" without having to spend a weekend on wikipedia and soulseek maybe

The first Whitney Biennial I ever attended had all this stuff with "gothic" and "death" themes. I feel like that was around the same time I also noticed that metal was becoming hip. I'm not sure exactly what year it was. But the whole phenomenon also probably comes partly out of a generation of (mostly) dudes that grew up themselves on Metallica and Slayer and Megadeth and/or later liked heavier indie stuff like Slint, Don Cab, Shellac, etc.

You're right, sarahel. The term "indie-rock" kind of screws me here, and I wish I had re-used "artsy types" in that sentence instead, because it applies.

In my aging mind, "indie-rock" is basically all rock that isn't played on the top 40 - everything from stuff like Animal Collective to Pissed Jeans to Gospel. I wanted to write something about the avant-gard "weird music/aQ types" relationship to metal, too, (which is probably the group I most belong to even though I loved death metal as a teenager), but I was tired of writing the wall of text and forgot.

abbreviating BM & DM is fine and all but it's kind of confusing when we're now talking death metal and doom metal.

it also, might be worth saying that Doom Metal seems a lot more connected to a classic rock lineage that indie/rock fans can "get" without having to spend a weekend on wikipedia and soulseek maybe

― plaxico (I know, right?), Sunday, December 13, 2009 11:24 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

^^^^^^ otm. you'd have to be already somewhat in the know about metal to have heard Death or whoever, but who hasn't heard black sabbath?

I wanted to write something about the avant-gard "weird music/aQ types" relationship to metal, too,

Yeah - that's the group I'd probably put myself into, which is why I closely read your wall of text.

This guy probably WAS pissed off when he wrote it. To make convincing and effective metal, you have to mean it - at least be able to channel it while you are writing it. This is why, for me, groups like Krallice fall flat. It's all style with no feeling.

i dunno about this man....like you can kind of read any amount of feeling/lack of feeling into music like this. wrath is pretty clearly on a heavy intellectual tip abt metal, whereas the guys in krallice seem to be mostly like "yeah we just play what sounds cool."

Not my type of Thread, but I have a few comments:
*Krallice are like listening to a jam session. No emotion, throwaway vox, no songs...crap, imo.
**In fact, many of the established euro Black Metal performers do indeed have normal lives, school teachers being a common occupation( lol, Atilla taught high school physics and math, i think). On occasion in the socialist system of the scandanavian countries, to stay plugged into that social benefits and all, performers have had to pass on tours to take mandatory jobs( as in the successor band to At The Gates,I forget their name and, in fact, their music.)
In fact, most musicians in any genre have day-jobs, is that not so? This includes members of old Thrash bands( in Testament, the vocalist worked at times as a truck driver) , Death Metal(Deicide) , Black Metal (Wrest worked in an ink shop) and so on and on. It's hard to make your living from music if you playanything not totally commercial( and even there, a couple of the Jacksons work 9 to 5, so they say.) To me, that desire to create one's art, without immediate compensation, is a fine thing, one that gives me hope for the future, which is pretty had to find.
***As for 'artsy' or 'hipsters': who but a child would think in terms of those categories? :)

That there smiley face means j/k.
Meaning, I'm a 'lumper', as opposed to a 'splitter', as they say in taxonomy.

I'm kind of interested to hear the new Krallice... I haven't decided to hate them. It just doesn't even occur to me to listen to them when I need a dose of evil hateful metal. I agree that they seem like a bunch of skilled musicians jamming out and having fun - that's just not the approach to black metal that I am listening for.

I think the first krallice album was fantastic... though I wouldn't even think of them as black metal, apart from the fact that that's how they're marketed. far too clean and technical for BM. I see them within the ongoing mick barr saga rather than any standard metal continuum. it's ocrilim with great metal drumming. yes please.

Krallice are a weird case. The new album sounds fantastic; a really rich group sound, terrific bass presence, separation between the two guitars even when playing unison riffs, etc. But you're right, it doesn't have the hard-to-pin-down black metal "vibe." It's more like listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra than Mayhem. I don't get in a mood for Krallice often.

Re day jobs, I like asking musicians what their day jobs are. Johan Hegg from Amon Amarth drove a truck until the band's third or fourth album, I forget which he told me it was.

xp Yeah a pretty big chunk of the last Ocrilim album more or less previewed what he was looking to do in Krallice

I put Trembling Bells on earlier this year and asked Alex Neilson what his day job was (he'd just asked me the same) and he was like "uh I'm a drummer" - I kind of lazily assume that almost no-one is getting paid off their music nowadays but his stints with Bonnie Prince Billy etc probably get him by

(sorry, back to the metal)

He used to work in Volcanic Tongue.

OT:
IMO, Mhavishnu was far, far more structured and with greater emotional depth than Krallice.
They also played the single most fantastic set which ever I heard, opening several decades ago for Emerson, Lake and Palmer ( hot, at the time) in SF at Winterland.
The rest of the audience was as blown away as I , booing and chanting 'Ma-ha-Vish-Nu' throughout the first two songs by the headliners.

i think. Krakow might be able to confirm.
xp

he did, yes.

tbh I always wonder what the people who work in VT do for a day job.

I heard a rumour they hide stuff through the back until they're OOP then sell at a high price..

Okay, just read through this behemoth, and I have a few thoughts (note: will be using hyperbole and exaggeration to make my points, so let's please not quibble):

First of all, I don't really understand all the people who are arguing that "hipsters" don't exist, because anyone who lives in NYC or SF or LA can attest that they most definitely do. However, something that hasn't been brought up yet is that it isn't just about musical taste, it's about the full aesthetic package: how you dress, what you're into, personal philosophy, et cetera. So if "twentysomething dude in skinny jeans and a flannel shirt with unfortunate 70s facial hair and an old person driving cap drinking a 40 of PBR and reading Vice magazine while in line for a screening of The Apple, " doesn't sound like an exaggerated version (or male equivalent) of you, you probably aren't a hipster.

That being said, I think that there is a definite connection between music fans' personal aesthetics and those of the bands they listen to (as touched on above with jock and nerd metal). The dudes in Isis and Torche and Wolves in the Throne Room and even Mastodon look a lot more like your "average" hipster (and most likely have similar philosophies) than the scary muscular guys with long hair and black T-shirts that you find in death metal bands. I mean, I go to a lot of shows and live in Los Angeles, which is nice because we get a large variety of bands here and also have a large variety of people. Even within traditional metal circles, there isn't a ton of crossover between the East LA thrash kids at Destruction and the IT nerds at Blind Guardian and the dirty bearded guys at Shrinebuilder -- although you are likely to see a lot of the same people at thrash and death shows, but that's because the two genres aren't very far apart. Obviously this is a big generalization, and there are exceptions who like a wide range of things (like, apparently, me), but people just tend to go for things they feel a connection to. Even if Pitchfork readers haven't seen pictures of the band members themselves, the album art and song titles and such probably strike a chord (I mean, let's face it, a lot of the more hipster-approved bands have more of an indie rock look to their material), and since it's made by people with similar tastes, it's just naturally more appealing. It goes back to the tribal thing, I suppose. I mean, I think that's why The Sword became as popular as they did -- they look like indie rockers, as opposed to, say, Slough Feg, who looked like old-school metal dudes.

So, I don't think it's entirely about people hearing the music and going "hey, I like this." I think there are, even if it's a subconscious thing, external factors feeding into it. And I think that hipsters are just the natural audience for that sort of music in the same way that disenfranchised working-class kids were the natural audience for Black Sabbath. That extends to black metal bands that are "hip" for the same reasons that people have mentioned above: USBM/ambient black metal is usually made by artsy, misanthropic guys who have a DIY mindset.

have been thinking about the distinction j0hn makes between aesthetically boring and interesting approaches to the music & art. agree that narrow-mindedness can be very useful, intellectually and aesthetically, in refining and purifying one's own artistic practice. that is, i understand why artists would (and perhaps should) be fanatical in pursuit of what they do.

and i can see why die-hard fans might share that attitude, deifying what they love and shunning anything that threatens to pollute it. it makes sense in both these cased to pitch the aesthetic as quasi-patriotic litmus test: "what do you believe in, and what will you stand for?"

but outside the context of one's own art and/or super-fandom's clubhouse, i don't see what might be even vaguely interesting about such a stance. as intellectual argumentation, hardline formal orthodoxy is a stultifying dead end. imo, manifestos are only intriguing to the extent they issue a challenge to conventional understanding - an opportunity for radical transformation of the known.

and i'm kinda repulsed by the contempt for and apologizing about "indie" in this thread. some people like indie rock. and sometimes they get curious about other stuff. so what? metal has not been ruined by early man records or positive pitchfork reviews.

i mean, i understand why one might sneer at half-assed copycat crap, and to the extent that indie lacks a formal core, it's maybe more susceptible to dilletantish dabbling than other genres.

J0hn's fascination with manifestos and orthodoxy reminds me of the movie Videodrome, and the line about it being dangerous, it has a philosophy.

lol, true. and there's something appealing about intensity of belief & purity of purpose. he's right that very little results from complacent, accepting equanimity.

well, sure - if you're complacent, why create anything, right?

So, I don't think it's entirely about people hearing the music and going "hey, I like this." I think there are, even if it's a subconscious thing, external factors feeding into it. And I think that hipsters are just the natural audience for that sort of music in the same way that disenfranchised working-class kids were the natural audience for Black Sabbath. That extends to black metal bands that are "hip" for the same reasons that people have mentioned above: USBM/ambient black metal is usually made by artsy, misanthropic guys who have a DIY mindset.

yeah jeff you are totally right in most of your post and i think the secret ingredient here is just what ppl are getting exposed to via the outlets they learn about music from--i'd say a couple of sites, writers, and record labels have done a great deal to get those types of kids matched up with that music. whereas other metal subgenres just really haven't been marketed to the same crowd. maybe those genres take more getting into or are less related to the other nonmetal music commonly found among hispters--for sure it is a small leap from postrock to isis.

sure, but i meant in relation to one's dialectic approach. i tend to push this blase, "hey, it's all just taste, people are different," line, where j0hn's an absolutist. it's arguable that his approach creates conflict - and thus potentially interesting results - where mine minimizes it.

also re j3ff on hipsters:

what you say is true, but i was thinking earlier that it might be helpful to consider hipsters not a distinct class of actual people, but rather an impersonal aspect of pop culture. i.e., we're all hipsters to the extent that we follow pop culture and are swayed by trends & fashions, but none of us can be fairly reduced to "the hipster" (a kind of cultural boogieman).

i mean, trends come and go and people are affected by them. we should be able to talk about this without invoking and demonizing a strawman soulless fashion victim.

isn't invoking and demonizing a strawman soulless fashion victim one of the mainstays of ilx, though?

some people actually CAN be reduced to "thee hipster" and i know this because i have met them

one thing i love about nyc punk in the dolls mode is how happy they were to receive the attention of soulless fashion victims

The thing is, hipsters ARE a distinct class of people, and that's the point that I'm trying to get at. In the same way that there are metalheads and punks and mods and goths, there are people who have very clearly bought into that subculture. I'm not trying to use "the hipster" as a straw man or demonize people who have embraced that style, but I don't buy the "impersonal aspect" argument. Maybe the problem with the term is its vagueness (i.e., hippies and beatniks were considered hipsters at one point), but the modern use of the word are first to a specific subculture. Probably one day there will be a more precise word like hippie or beatnik, but until then, hipster is the best terminology we have.

in the sense that: it was apparent that their tastes and sensibilities were heavily informed/mediated by popular opinion, and not the result of much introspection. i mean, isn't this the focal point of everyone's demonization of the strawman hipster, anyway? like j3ff's hypothetical bearded moviegoer---he's despicable not for what he's wearing or what he's doing, but because his appearance and behavior are both dictated BY FASHION and not by personal discrimination. we hate hipsters for the same reason we hate palin-loving rubes: they're "in favor" of something for reasons they can't actually articulate. it's just that with blinkered conservatives, we can amplify our distaste because they don't even like the same stuff as we do, while the hipster dbag DOES, so we wring our hands.

anyway:

but outside the context of one's own art and/or super-fandom's clubhouse, i don't see what might be even vaguely interesting about such a stance. as intellectual argumentation, hardline formal orthodoxy is a stultifying dead end. imo, manifestos are only intriguing to the extent they issue a challenge to conventional understanding - an opportunity for radical transformation of the known.

formal orthodoxy as an imposed restriction at the outset of some process: classic
formal orthodoxy as an imposed restriction to the development of said process: dud

xp basically what j3ff said

in the sense that: it was apparent that their tastes and sensibilities were heavily informed/mediated by popular opinion, and not the result of much introspection.

but this isn't hipsters, this is like, most people

we hate hipsters for the same reason we hate palin-loving rubes: they're "in favor" of something for reasons they can't actually articulate.

and "we" think it's important to be able to articulate why we're in favor of things.

i guess, yeah? i mean the "we" in question here is a strawman ilxor making judgements about other strawmen, but basically, yes. i think that when ppl revile hipsters their disgust is rooted in the fact that sometimes people are just like "i dunno, i just like it! it's catchy!" when they talk about their cultural choices (as it were) and that raises the hackles of horrible overthinking cultural critics (hey guys!). and so, yes, CAD, you are also correct: that DOES apply to most people. because, if i am not mistaken, ilx spends a lot of time hating on "most people"

i'm totally with you, j3ff. was only offering the "impersonal" holy ghost version of hipsterism to circumvent the pointless bickering the term invariably occasions. but yr right. they are a real group of people, with a distinct culture and media that serve it.

one problem with the term is that though it applies to a specific group (or several groups, or a matrix, or whatever) in the here and now, it's always in transition. maybe the here-and-now hipsterdom yr thinking of will ossify into a subculture that persists past its fashion moment, but for every era, there's a new breed. hell, for every city, there's a regional variety. or two, or more.

personally, i think of hipsters as people who are in tune with (and perhaps in thrall to) the fashions of the moment. but i don't judge, and fashion can be a hell of a lot of fun.

what city do you live in?

i.e., i don't think that to be interested in fashion and perhaps to express your tastes in a fashion-conscious sense is necessarily to be thoughtless or unsophisticated. often quite the opposite...

i guess, gbx. i mean i've never really thought about it that way. i don't begrudge anyone their choices if they're just like "it's catchy"--i do judge when there's a lot of fronting, posturing, and poorly reasoned argumentation used.

not sure to whom yr question was directed, sarahel, but i live in seattle

btw cntndrzer otm acting like "hipster" is a monolithic group is silly

i think that when ppl revile hipsters their disgust is rooted in the fact that sometimes people are just like "i dunno, i just like it! it's catchy!" when they talk about their cultural choices (as it were) and that raises the hackles of horrible overthinking cultural critics (hey guys!)

see i thought "hipsters" were the ppl who said w/confidence that the shins would change your life--it would not be particularly controversial to say the shins have written a catchy song or two!

so w/r/t metal then yeah if "hipster metal fans" are confidently saying that 5th-gen arty u.s. black metal is the best of breed when they don't know/understand mayhem or immortal than yeah that could be a problem. but does that really happen a lot?

xxp - it was directed at you.

if ppl are saying they hate fake-ass, neurotic poser dickweeds, then yes, me too. but i don't think of them as hipsters or indies or whatever. just fake-ass neurotic posers. and they exist in every scene/culture/whatever.

i don't begrudge them either! i think ACTUALLY CARING about people's musical/filmic/etc tastes is sorta ugly when exercised in the non-internet world, but i take it seriously enough in my own life that it's fun to hash out on, you know, ilx.

and you're right: it's the fronting and posturing that is most irksome, ~especially~ when it appears to lack any kind of rationally structured argument. which, again, points to what i imagine ppl dislike about hipsters: they don't REALLY care about their enthusiasms, they're just boring automatons that like whatever it is you (you being a cool and sexy urban 20something) are supposed to like. the hipster strawman isn't any more offensive or insidious than the NJ guido or the metalhead or w/e, it just hurts more for ilxors (i assume) because it's a little closer to home. like "i actually LIKE Boris and fixed-gear bicycles!" (both true in my case!)

yes, seattle. one step behind, but seriously considering gaining on you at some point. how comes?

catchy tune thing was imprecise---i do actually mean the person that tells you that the shins will change your life. and i also like the shins sometimes!

I don't actually dislike hipsters - if we are classifying them as people that like things because they are fashionable, or popular, or are what their friends like, and may not be able to articulate why they like something. This is pretty normal behavior. I don't know if it's really healthy to actively dislike it. It's interesting - to me - to consider how they come to like something or what about that thing is appealing - but hipsters are like pigeons to me - vaguely slovenly creatures that travel in packs that are part of living in a metropolitan area in the US.

i don't actually dislike most people, but here we are, on the internet

the internet is people.

heston.gif

Hey guess what this is the first GIS result for

http://obviouslycloe.com/img/galleries/drawings/venting/hipsterpigeon.jpg

^^ San Francisco

one thing i love about nyc punk in the dolls mode is how happy they were to receive the attention of soulless fashion victims

<Phil's punk rock rant>

This is because first-wave NYC punk was made up of soulless fashion victims; the Ramones partially excepted, it was a bunch of art students and music critics jerking each other off. When the first wave of records all stiffed commercially, though, the critics figured out there was no percentage in hyping the thing anymore and wandered off while a few of the crasser/smarter musicians got more and more commercially friendly in (sometimes moderately successful) attempts to make a living. In the meantime, the DIY punk ideal made its way out to flyover country and to the scuzzy teenaged younger brothers (and a few sisters) of the first generation, and hardcore was born. Except hardcore had no critical support because punk of any stripe was already stamped "Not Commercially Viable; Ignore/Revile."

</Phil's punk rock rant>

mmmmmaybe. electroclash also seemed happy to receive the attention (free drugs, regrettable favors) of fashion victims. to its credit.

electroclash also seemed happy to receive the attention (free drugs, regrettable favors) of fashion victims. to its credit.

Have you always been Pacific Northwest-based? Because maybe from a distance it's not that easy to see, but this is how the New York rock scene has always operated, and always will. That's why there are so few really good bands from New York. It's much more about your pants and shoes than your sound out here. The bands that strive to make genuinely worthwhile music (think Swans) in a fashion-rejecting way are always much better received in other parts of the country or the world than in NYC itself.

i lived in ny for a while, but have MOSTLY always lived here in seattle. and i have always suspect that the fashion friendliness of the NYC scene helps explain why there are so MANY great bands from there. fashion scene adapts to anything, insists on surface appeal, mutates constantly - all good for pop.

not a swans fan (too humorless), but love the VU, sonic youth, blonde, pussy galore, suicide, NY dolls, dead boys, talking heads, laurie anderson, lcd soundsystem, black dice and tons more - all arguably fashion victims. plus shit late 70s disco, paradise garage era. was new york that made grace jones a star. hell, i even like that one strokes record.

"I have always suspected..."

plus i never saw the swans as fashion rejecting. fashion rejecting in nyc circa 82 would have been like, sensitive folk with prog touches and flute solos. evil goth death dirge noise rock had major fashion cred at the time, iirc. at least that's what the village voice told me.

Can't be bothered to read this entire thread but would the facetious (but correct) answer to the original question be "it hasn't"?

I'm getting more and more confused about what a hipster is. I guess the people I consider hipsters are people from like 21-early 30s, who live in major cities and go out a lot, therefore getting in at the ground level of new trends - often through word-of-mouth - which makes them actually hip as opposed to late adopters who are just wannabes or "poseurs", and actually probably pretty good for the careers of the bands they latch onto.

They are annoying to scene types (and music nerds like me) mostly because they are fair weather fans, jumping ship to the next trendy thing as soon as they feel like the current thing is losing energy. (And because they tend to get drunk and IM and talk loudly to each other throughout shows.) Metal scene elitist types call all outsiders hipsters, just like they did when I was a teenager, only back then it was "poseur".

Can't be bothered to read this entire thread but would the facetious (but correct) answer to the original question be "it hasn't"?

haha, I personally am only taking ILX's word for it. the hip types I see in SF seem way more into La Roux remixes and shit like that, but I don't go out much so maybe I'm wrong. Plus I guess SF isn't exactly the frontlines of hipness.

can you be poor and a hipster? it seems like to qualify for hipster you have to be slumming or condescending on some level, and you can't slum/condescend if you are actually that poor.

BTW what was that sociological study that found that most metal fans tended to be affluent? (I dunno if they broke down by subgenres)

xp uhhhh no that's kind of not true at all

Your definition of hipster doesn't really work for this discussion, rockapads, because we are discussing the specific sort of hipster that would listen to black metal, not some sort of ur-hipster. The guy that we're talking about is the flannel-wearing mustache dude that I talk about upthread.

plus it can't just be ALL young, urban out-goers, cuz most such people don't wind up at divey shows by obscure bands, and wouldn't want to. most young urban go-outers just want to go to horrible barn-like bars and pay tons of money for weak drinks in order that they be effectively able to shriek at cabdrivers come 2 am. or so it seems. hipster is the subgroup that's into arts and culture stuff.

and i don't think affluence is the whole of it, though the desperately impoverished don't seem to have much free time/money for club shows.

Can't be bothered to read this entire thread but would the facetious (but correct) answer to the original question be "it hasn't"?

umm...no.

https://www.thewire.co.uk/images/artists/sunn_o/originals/302cover.jpg

The thread title is asking a question about "when". I would say the answer is 1997. That is the year that this came out:

http://www.urc.ac.ru/LuckyGarage/tonguebath/tot/tot7/gummo.gif

and it put this tracklisting into circulation for hipsters everywhere:

1. Absu - "The Gold Torques Of Ulaid"
2. Eyehategod - "Serving Time In The Middle Of Nowhere"
3. Electric Hellfire Club - "D.W.S.O.B (Devil Worshipping Son Of a Bitch)"
4. Spazz - "Gummo Love Theme"
5. Bethlehem - "Schuld Uns'res Knoch'rigen Faltpferd"
6. Burzum - "Rundgang Um Die Transzendentale Säule Der Singularität"
7. Bathory - "Equimanthorn"
8. Dark Noerd - "Smokin' Husks"
9. Sleep - "Dragonaut"
10. Brujería - "Matando Gueros 97"
11. Namanax - "The Medicined Man"
12. Nifelheim - "Hellish Blasphemy"
13. Mortician - "Skin Peeler"
14. Mystifier - "Give The Human Devil His Due"
15. Destroy All Monsters - "Mom's And Dad's Pussy"
16. Bethlehem - "Verschleierte Irreligiosität"
17. Mischa Maisky - "Suite No.2 For Solo Cello In D Minor Prelude"
18. Sleep - "Some Grass"
19. Rose Shepherd & Ellen M. Smith - "Jesus Loves Me"

whoa

Nah, black metal was still really underground back then. Going to shows in sleazy clubs, it was mostly teenage metal heads and Mexicans (those dudes love this shit for some reason, and god bless them for it).

In the early 2000s the scene got a little more mainstream, with dorky kids and their parents showing up with med kits and shit in case of "moshing", and in the mid 2000s is when the hipster wave took over (ironic metal shirts on Bedford Ave! Noise/drone bands go black metal! etc.). So, in the chronology of things, I think the hipsters were the last to the party. and what a damn good time they missed.

/Can't be bothered to read this entire thread but would the facetious (but correct) answer to the original question be "it hasn't"?/

umm...no.


--a full circle lol (J0hn D.)

dogg I say this as a former wire subscriber but: NO ONE READS THIS MAGAZINE

like if yr litmus test of hipitude is the wire then you are far, far away from the mainland

the whole hating on hipsters thing is 100% knee-jerk, fun-hating bullshit tbh. and this thread is a pretty good example of why! seems every attempt at a logical explanation just boils down to everyone admitting "well, by hipsters i really just meant douchebags. my sister's dating a guy who wears skinny jeans: he makes a great curry!" the reason people just keep whining about it forever is cause no one knowingly accepts or wears the title. hipsters are an elusive false-enemy to snobs and grouches with no one better to pick on, just an ambiguously defined punching back with no one really willing to defend em.

the only person i know IRL whom i can have a full and frank and wide-ranging conversation about DM or BM w/ is my own younger brother

hipster enclave, london england

all my friends are former punks or goths who now listen to either indie-rock or techno.

yeah, I wouldn't be shocked if the "hipster's into black metal!! oh no!" were just people who liked it when they were teenagers and grew up, and then looked back. It takes a special personality to stay into metal past age 16.

It takes a special personality to stay into metal past age 16.

Yes, I'd agree it does, but I'm kinda looking at that from exactly the opposite perspective as you, I think; I find that an affinity for the aesthetic challenges metal throws at you are kind of a prerequisite for me giving a shit what someone thinks about art in general.

That Gummo soundtrack is perfect. My friend and I loved Bethlehem in the 90s, so overly dark and funny. We also met Mortician at a show in some shithole club in Randolph, NJ ... he was there with some prostitute. Good times.

yeah just for the record I don't use the term "hipster" and have for years been saying that its chief purpose rhetorically is to identify the person using it as cooler than the target of his ire

that said it gets hard to retain rhetorical purity in the face of the constant use of this strawman so I may have caved on this very thread! sooner or later usage defines the word but I think "hipster" is pretty useless. I usually say "indie ppl" or some variant in the metal-and-its-newcomers discussion, because that's what I mean: people who come to metal from somewhere out in the indie hinterlands (UK or US, makes no diff in this construction, can't speak beyond those scenes) & who imo tend to think metal is best when it sounds more like the music of which they have grown restless. which, having been thinking about this more than usual since this thread started: my complaint about that is that it seems such a conservative, uncreative, really counterproductive aesthetic stance. isn't the whole point of seeking out new musics that they not conform to one's own stale (else you wouldn't be looking beyond them) confines? obligatory anecdotal example: when I first heard Celtic Frost's Tragic Serenades EP, the thing that floored me about it was that it bore no resemblence at all to the 80s alternative soup I'd been enjoying for a couple of years (Factory Records stable; paisley-goth like the Sisters of Mercy; Cabaret Voltaire; Valor-era Christian Death). It was a world apart. That was the whole point, kinda. It carved out its own space. As do imo all metal bands worth their salt; it's what makes good acts good. They don't sound like JAMC-slowed-down-and-on-different-drugs/Bad Brains at 16 rpm/what have you. Whereas to me a fair bit of the Norgazey bedroom black metal just sounds like MBV through a different lens (& without the budget), and so much doom (I'll make a big exception for Moss who I really dig & for Khanate even though I consider them a major Swans bite) just sounds like "here's my take on one of those first four Sabbath albums." which imo the best thing for such a whole described scenario is somebody preferably a metal musician saying "you don't fucking get what any of this is about."

you don't fucking get what any of this is about.

but i kind of just find this really objectionable? like, who are you, mr. metal musician, and why are you attempting to define for me things which i'm perfectly capable of defining on my own?

like i don't think you're wrong about doom but entire subgenres have sprouted from less inspired fields than the first fourth sabbath records

or two put it another way--i really respect well-done genre exercises (tho i lol @ any rhetoric making them out to be more than that)

that seems fair. tho, i came to nozie stuff via ILM and a taste centered around like the stones and lol indie luna/flaming lips/whiskeytown/miles davis. it appealed because it was bracing in comparison, and sorta alien w/o being alienating. metal now seems less weird and out there because i sorta skipped it on the way to more fringey/abrasive/loud/whatever stuff. i don't know if this is what anyone else has done, but given the distance i gave it as a teenager, metal is now less threatening both sonically and culturally.

xp to j-hn

but i kind of just find this really objectionable? like, who are you, mr. metal musician, and why are you attempting to define for me things which i'm perfectly capable of defining on my own?

Because (and this is a whole discussion I don't have time for right now) metal is about more than the sound. It is internally defined because it is the sound of a community (in an EMP paper several years ago I described metalhead-dom as being like the Sioux Nation, which has no offical land but/because members carry it around with them in their heads), so attempting to impose your own definitions on it without being "of it" is a lot like telling someone you just met that they've got their religion all wrong.

Nah, black metal was still really underground back then. Going to shows in sleazy clubs, it was mostly teenage metal heads and Mexicans (those dudes love this shit for some reason, and god bless them for it).

― Spectrum, Sunday, December 13, 2009 7:17 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

sure, but the twice-boiled cabbage is on some serious shit. gummo = 97, lords of chaos = 98, that's point zero for the mainstreaming of this stuff. sure, mainstream hipsters didn't glom on immediately, but ppl outside the inner circle started to notice, listen & talk.

prior to that, kyuss, sleep, melvins & monster magnet active and influential in the 90s. nebula lp w/ mark arm vox on sub pop in 99, 1st high on fire in 00. man's ruin at the peak of activity an influence around turn of the century. stoner thing has NOTHING to do with black metal and is peripheral to serious doom, but related and popular among non-metal types.

southern lord starts up in 98. a few years later, sunnO))) and khanate start to draw attention from noise & art music types. in the 00s, southern lord does everything in its power to bring black metal to the record-buying masses.

lords of chaos reprinted & sleep's jerusalem reissued as dopesmoker in 03, and that seemed to coincide (roughly, give or take a few years in either direction) w vice mag interest, w every band in the universe getting a "black metal" logo, and w whitney artists appropriating metal iconography in "interesting" ways. 1st om lp in 2005.

so attempting to impose your own definitions on it without being "of it" is a lot like telling someone you just met that they've got their religion all wrong.

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Sunday, December 13, 2009 7:59 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

see, but it's not. it's more like telling someone you just met that you like different music than they do.

i totally agree on the "metal = identity" thing, but that someone with a particular metal creed disagrees with me is of no consequence to me, no matter how seriously they take their shit. metal creeds disagree with each other, for crissakes. plus i couldn't care less what some uptight christian thinks of my spiritual beliefs.

that someone with a particular metal creed disagrees with me is of no consequence to me, no matter how seriously they take their shit.

Gosh, I wonder why metalheads can occasionally seem distrustful and resentful of outsiders? "Yeah, yeah, you put up with massive social stigma, lowered economic opportunities, etc., all in support of/tribute to a music and accompanying whole-life aesthetic that means something major and serious to you - whatever, bro! Love that spiky logo! LOL!"

im pretty sure me (a casual listener) listening to metal and an actual metalhead listening to metal is like, galaxies apart in terms of what we each get out of it.

people who come to metal from somewhere out in the indie hinterlands ... & who imo tend to think metal is best when it sounds more like the music of which they have grown restless. which, having been thinking about this more than usual since this thread started: my complaint about that is that it seems such a conservative, uncreative, really counterproductive aesthetic stance. isn't the whole point of seeking out new musics that they not conform to one's own stale (else you wouldn't be looking beyond them) confines? obligatory anecdotal example: when I first heard Celtic Frost's Tragic Serenades EP...

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, December 13, 2009 7:51 PM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

but yr experience isn't necessarily universal. i came to metal slowly, after hating it by association for much of my youth (except iron maiden, who i couldn't deny). in college, i had metalhead friends who turned me on to metallica & voivod. loved melvins, buttholes & flipper from way back, and they primed me for sabbath and other heavy music crate digging. got into the stoner thing in the 90s, that opened up into doom & sludge as the decade wore on, and black metal a little later on, with the rest of the hipster pack.

in spite of that, i'm basically indie. i have been since like 1983. i'm definitely not a metalhead. i didn't turn to metal to leave anything behind, and while i initially liked the metal that made sense relative to the indie/punk stuff i already liked, i didn't stop exploring there.

suspect a lot of indie ppl yr talking about have relationships w metal that are complex and legit, even if they aren't "true".

Gosh, I wonder why metalheads can occasionally seem distrustful and resentful of outsiders? "Yeah, yeah, you put up with massive social stigma, lowered economic opportunities, etc., all in support of/tribute to a music and accompanying whole-life aesthetic that means something major and serious to you - whatever, bro! Love that spiky logo! LOL!"

― neither good nor bad, just a kid like you (unperson), Sunday, December 13, 2009 8:09 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark

that seems a tad hyperbolic - no offense. i'm not saying metal people don't have every right to get irate about their shit, but that doesn't make metal their exclusive property. no matter how much they've suffered for their hairstyles.

sometimes i go to punk rock record store and realize that actual punk people would not consider anything i listen to punk rock, and that whatever they do listen to, i think is bad yelling.

― a dimension that can only be accessed through self-immolation (contenderizer), Sunday, December 13, 2009 6:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

me, in another thread. punk ppls have suffered as much, worked as poor, smelled as bad, and bled as true for their musical faith as metalheads, and they therefore have just as much right to get aggro about indie creeps stealing the flame. but they mostly don't. they slag on indies and sneer at their records, but they don't have the theft-paranoia.

that seems a tad hyperbolic

Welcome to the internet.

Seriously, though, I really don't have time to hash this out at the length it deserves, but a big part of the "hipster metal" thing is class-based and that's too often forgotten by folks on message boards. Metal is fundamentally a lower-class music, like country used to be, or like norteño is in the Latin community. And metal fans have made certain sacrifices to display their love of metal. Long hair, weird facial hair and extensive tattoos are gonna pretty much guarantee you never make it beyond a certain socioeconomic stratum in America. So the headbanger vs. fairweather-indie-kid thing in a lot of ways boils down to townies-vs.-college kids. It's a conflict that has roots deeper than musical taste.

x-post

i am really, really going to need evidence for a lot of that. besides, i don't think many people are attempting to "impose definitions" and those that do can easily be ignored. a lot of us just want to attend a show or buy a record and say that we enjoy it.

like i don't want to fuck up anyone's subculture but last time i checked metal albums were sold in the same store where i pick up all my albums.

yeah but most ~mainstream~ (<--strawman) ppl would lump the punks in with the hipsters nowadays

xp

Really obvious maybe, but there have always been fuzzy boundaries around who is the audience for certain metal bands, and maybe this phenomenon of "repressive tolerance" (i.e. "in general I don't like genre X, but band Y really is the exception, I love them") is not new. Frinstance, I can recall a show a long ass time ago in San Francisco at the Haze Theater that was Crash Worship, Sleep, K. K. Null, Slug, and Amber Asylum. That was a "gathering of the tribes" kinda bill that blurred together people into metal / industrial / chambergoth / noise and it seems to me like the eclecticism of that moment is also going on now but with different bands and different genre tags. Sleep was always a band that attracted people from the margins of other genres. Neurosis too- they've always had an "arty" / goth / industrial fanbase in addition to having straight metal fanbase.

Could somebody draw up a list of arty quasi-black metal bands and or side projects from noize dudes, no-wave types, etc.?

(i.e. off the top of my head Hatewave, Orphans, Ashpool, Black Boned Angel, Krallice, Liturgy- does Dead Raven Choir count here?)

i do realize i used "define" upthread and that it obvs "define in relation to me and my likes/dislike" not "define and impose onto others who i freely admit are more knowledgeable than i am"

Could somebody draw up a list of arty quasi-black metal bands and or side projects from noize dudes, no-wave types, etc.?

xp - does Behold the Arctopus fit into that category?

http://www.blogcdn.com/www.noisecreep.com/media/2009/03/hipster-metal-200-031109.jpg

Could we change the title of this thread to the text on that sign?

This whole fixation on the horror of hipsters on ilx seems to me like an example of "not mom" syndrome. Like, in a movie like Invasion of the Body Snatchers where a character bears certain traits of Mom or some other loved one, but it is not in fact that person. It's like hipsters are some sort of pod people that mysteriously materialize in our world, and engage with similar cultural products that we do, but they are not us.

Long hair, weird facial hair and extensive tattoos are gonna pretty much guarantee you never make it beyond a certain socioeconomic stratum in America.

Does this equate to being actively unable to join the middle classes, though, or just certain kinds of white-collar work? I'm asking out of interest I guess cos that would be the case in the UK - the idea that you've set yourself up to be broke as fuck for life because you grew a big beard and got a stupid sleeve tat isn't at all set in stone, you just might have to focus on employment somewhat in the 'creative class' whatever the hell that is. Also setting people with "long hair, weird facial hair and extensive tattoos" up against hipster metallers strikes me as a narcissism of small differences thing

plus people don't do this kind of thing by accident. the vast majority of folks who cultivate personal styles that might exclude them from certain workplaces know the trade-off they're making. dockworkers & line cooks are allowed to be covered with tattoos but bankers & management candidates aren't? well okay, but that doesn't make industrial, punk and metal the exclusive province of dockworkers & line cooks. and most of the hardcore metal dudes i've known have tended to dress fairly conservatively anyway. they go for long hair & goatees, hoodies & band shirts, but that's about it.

"not mom" syndrome otm

tbh, i don't think there's any way or reason to talk about hipsters on ilm. can't see the can for the worms at this point.

and yet

like i don't want to fuck up anyone's subculture but last time i checked metal albums were sold in the same store where i pick up all my albums.

they are now! the subculture that built the genre (if we're talking about from thrash/crossover onward) had a hell of a time getting stocked by anybody - they were outside the normal chains of distribution. tape trading & mailorder was the only ticket in, and there was a time when even getting stocked in stores was kind of a sign that you'd left the community in some way. (similar phenomena exist in many musical subcultures/genres afaik.)

it's easy to say to that: "well, that's not the case any more," which is self-evidently true, but that's missing the point: the "clubhouse" that M@tt decries upthread isn't something thrown together idly for kicks & lols. it's a social space consisting in no small part of fuckups & outcasts & people with problems, and which gives such people a place for expressing socially unacceptable aggression. and, as phil points out, there's a socioeconomic aspect to the whole thing - the hesher outfit is torn jeans & dingy bandannas because that's what happened to be on hand. but my point was, anyway, "they're sold in the same record stores" ignores the history of how the music was shared & preserved & advanced -- across the entire world -- mainly via tapetrading & self-printed zines until a few labels & distros started putting a network in place, which was its own thing entirely e.g.

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/3374/draksenmx8.jpg

haven't had a chance to sort thru the flurry of posts since I was keeping up with this on friday, but can I say...

I think one of the main reasons black (and doom) metal might be more appealing to non-metalheads boils down to the generally slower tempos. This kind of relates to another reason which is simply the aggression factor. Even comparing early DM and BM, the feeling I get from DM is that these bands want to pummel their audience with their sound. It's cathartic for a person who has a lot of bottled up anger to go nuts and mosh at a DM show, or headbang and beat their fists on their steering wheel like a loon after getting fired from Pizza Hut or whatever (try it sometime!). BM has always struck me as a type of music that either wants me to sink into a pit of darkness, horror, and hatred (that high-pitched BM voice is just nasty sneering hatred imo). My point is that I think the two genres tend to speak more to different temperaments. Sure there is crossover, there's some pretty angry sounding BM, and there are some great BM/DM crossover groups who do both (DSO), but this is how I tend to see it, and it's why I think fans of indie-rock might be more drawn to the theatrical villainy of a lot of BM than the roaring sonic brutality of DM.

*ding ding ding*

Putting aside class differences and such, I think the reason why metalheads have such an adverse reaction to hipsters is a simple one: hipsters came to the genre by making fun of it. They wore Motorhead and Iron Maiden T-shirts ironically, flashed the devil horns at things that were not devil horn-worthy, and made goofy faces while playing Judas Priest on Rock Band. And through that, a lot of them discovered that metal was actually pretty sweet, but at that point the damage had been done. It's like if some dude came to your party and ridiculed everyone and was generally a jackass, and then was like, "hey, this party is actually pretty cool, can I stick around?" You'd be, shall we say, suspicious. And, as pointed out above, metalheads are touchy when it comes to their music to begin with.

500+ posts and most of ilx arent even posting on this thread who would normally if it didn't have "metal" in the title. huge great long posts that aren't by tim finney. This is old skool ilx!

Putting aside class differences and such,

I thought the US didn't have a class system unlike that horrible old UK?

In the early 90s (in the UK at least )i think metal was accepted a bit because of grunge. Maybe in the US people didn't want to be associated with "metal" so became alternative, but here in the UK i think ppl saw the grungy alt stuff as just another kind of metal. Most of the people i knew who hated grunge slagged it off as badly played metal and the like. Most people here seemed to still like metal while listening to alternative. At least initially. After all Kerrang and RAW kept covering metal bands.
Metal Hammer of course thought about dropping the Metal bit from the title and yet now on the cover of their shitty metalcore mag they have the cheek to say Defenders Of The Faith

Reviews like this also didn't help: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5143-leviathan/

"I thought the US didn't have a class system unlike that horrible old UK?"

We have a vague registering of class divisions the same way we have a vague understanding of geography, and to the extent that class divisions are reinforced by a certain awareness of them, they are made much more porous in the US by our general ignorance of everything.

What don't you like about that review exactly Jeff? The 'lol Isis band is boring and gay' aspect is slathered on a bit thick but aside from that it seems pretty reasonable

Did you actually read the thing? It's filled with backhanded compliments and incredibly ignorant statements that the reviewer tries to hide by couching it in "LOL indie kids don't understand metal" rhetoric.

I mean, to me it reads like he's Jane Goodall amongst the apes. When you have prominent voices of the indie rock/hipster world basically saying "metal is stupid for the most part but it's okay to like these bands because they are thinking man's metal", it doesn't really engender goodwill on the part of metal fans. I'm just trying to point out that that's another reason why metalheads are particularly rankled by the whole hipster thing.

I don't agree with some of his points of comparison but I honestly can't see anything that's transparently insincere or backhanded about that review, sorry

I accept no-one should ever use the phrase "thinking man's metal" w/o scarequotes the size of houses but I didn't feel like the whole piece hangs on that

blame Hydra Head for that I guess. But it's no different to IDM in that respect. People got pissed off by being accused of being dumb for listening to metal/techno so there's bound to be a reaction against that, so maybe even the real people to blame are those that dismiss metal/techno as being for stupid people or under 16's. Which im guessing is what Jeff think's hipster/indie fans do?

Or was the techno is for dumb drug takers just a UK thing?

and metal might've been a working class thing in the UK when it started but by the late 80s im pretty dame sure it had become middle class here in the UK at least. Several people I know who went to public school says a lot of people listened to metal, it wasn't the province of the hardman anymore but the geeky dungeons n dragons type.

Metal is more like techstep or the latter day Drum and Bass genres that removed all nuance and feeling from original DNB and replaced it with anger, harsh sound palettes and aggression. IDM wasn't a reaction to anything, more of a natural progression of the sound created by UK bedroom nerds inspired by the first wave of techno from Detroit and Germany.

But it did get the label IDM as a reaction against being "dumb" which is exactly what metal was seen as too.

This is tangential at best -- it's not so much that I think that people think that metal is for children, it's more that I think that metalheads are extremely passionate about their music, and get annoyed when people dismiss it offhandedly.

Who gave it the IDM label?

They call me the thinking man - I guess that's what I am!

The fans who wanted to be seen as intelligent dance music fans?
xp

be interesting if techno was the UK dumb-music parallel to metal in the US, given the 'death metal dudes are the guys who used to beat the shit out of us in high school' reference above. at least in my school, technoheads/ravers were the low-achieving gas-sniffers who would beat the shit out of metallers, indie kids and, well, pretty much everyone else.

maybe the media? maybe both?

at least in my school, technoheads/ravers were the low-achieving gas-sniffers who would beat the shit out of metallers, indie kids and, well, pretty much everyone else.

hehe im glad i left school in 1990. I

I cant remember what the "casuals" listened to apart from Pink Floyd for some reason.

idm a nonsense. it's called BRAINDANCE as any FULE KNO

to differentiate it from dance one does with other parts of one's anatomy. footdance. or elbowdance. or, god forbid, HIPDANCE which is clearly what those dastardly hipsters are reviled for and quite right too because hipdance could lead to dancing with parts of the anatomy which it is simply not done to mention in mixed company

metallers were, indeed, generally geeky dungeons'n'dragons types (hand up here), but from both working and middle class backgrounds.

METAL TRANSCENDS CLASS.

its as any POXY FULE KNO, get it right.

yeah the few people who i knew who liked metal/hard rock beyond appetite for destruction were definitely D&D types. Wasn't into either tbh. I got into metal via grunge I guess while metallers abandoned it for grunge. But I wasn't really a metaller anyway. So its never bothered me when metallers say im not metal.

"Going to shows in sleazy clubs, it was mostly teenage metal heads and Mexicans (those dudes love this shit for some reason, and god bless them for it)."

In my neighborhood, we call 'em Hesh-mex. It's always wild to see, like, tween dudes decked in black in the 100° heat, wearing shirts for albums that I loved in middle school. Like, "Oh, shit, End Complete, fuck yeah! Danny and I locked that into the tape deck in homeroom in eighth grade!" "¿Que?"

hey this is as good a thread to any for me to say that the band Earthless fucking RULES...

heavy stoner metal feature mario from rocket from the crypt, hot snakes....live recording here from mpls, WOW:

http://emptystapes.blogspot.com/2009/12/earthless-triple-rock.html

YES they opened for Baroness last month and they were A+ super killer. Bought Rhythms From A Cosmic Sky from their merch table and Live At Roadburn from eMusic right away.

they are probably hipster metal

I just wonder how tidily people actually fit into these categories we're describing.

The only time I had a comedy mustache within the last 10 years was due to genuine neglect of personal hygiene.

Did it look like Donald Sutherland's in Invasion of the Body Snatchers?

jon i'm tellin u you should download that show i posted, great sound quality for a boot and DAAMMM they are gooin off

It was just too long, and my mustache hairs do this weird thing when allowed to get longer than 5mm or so, where they start to curl upwards.

Anyway since the wife and I went as Axl and Slash this halloween, I've been nixing the facial hair altogether.

oh m@tt I will when i get home 2 nite. Then I will listen to it while struggling manfully to get my skinny-fit jeans off.

Earthless rule.

the roadburn set is a must

the subculture that built the genre (if we're talking about from thrash/crossover onward) had a hell of a time getting stocked by anybody - they were outside the normal chains of distribution. tape trading & mailorder was the only ticket in, and there was a time when even getting stocked in stores was kind of a sign that you'd left the community in some way. (similar phenomena exist in many musical subcultures/genres afaik.)

it's easy to say to that: "well, that's not the case any more," which is self-evidently true, but that's missing the point: the "clubhouse" that M@tt decries upthread isn't something thrown together idly for kicks & lols. it's a social space consisting in no small part of fuckups & outcasts & people with problems, and which gives such people a place for expressing socially unacceptable aggression.

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Monday, December 14, 2009 5:33 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

this is certainly true, but it's also a cult's mythology, and it's been exaggerated through repetition. i've known metalheads my whole life. people who love metal, play in metal bands and listen to very little but but metal. and very few got most of their tunes through the international tape-trading scene, even in the mid-to-late 80s. everybody had a box of weird tapes, but nobody i knew drew a line of authenticity that excluded slayer & metallica - records you could get almost anywhere in the US without massive effort. maybe not at the sam goody in 1984, but somewhere nearby. you went to the store, you bought the S.O.D. record, and then you went home and you bonged out with your friends and you listened to it.

tape trading probably meant more to people in poland & russia who couldn't get those records. and to people who for personal reasons made a point of gripping EVERYTHING, and/or only the most impossibly obscure shit (a tendency that's still strong among metal fans, even in the internet age). cuz metal blade and music for nations were up and running in the early 80s with decent distribution, earache & combat a couple years later iirc. more than anything else, tape trading seemed to allow demos to circulate for a year or two prior to bands getting their first official releases out, hyping up the fans, and working as a kind of screening system for labels.

in the early 90s, tape trading made black metal available to fans outside a few intentionally closed scenes, but obscurity & exclusion had become a big part of the point by then. and before long, the more popular BM and BM-influenced bands signed deals and got records out to whoever wanted them anyway. i'm not devaluing the tape-trading scene, or saying that it didn't help build the cult, but suggesting that this was the only way the music existed for most fans is hyperbole - revisionist & somewhat romanticized history.

and to people who for personal reasons made a point of gripping EVERYTHING, and/or only the most impossibly obscure shit

right, but a number of these people = the people who went on to form the next wave of bands.

also

last night before going to bed i read that invisible oranges discussion that scott linked. a good and informative read, if kinda depressing in an offhand way. why can't ilm have discussions abt metal (or anything it sometimes seems) that are that learned, reasonable, thoughtful, polite, etc?

i guess i didn't read this thread as being impolite.

maybe "impolite" isn't the best word. i got worn down by the bickering about hipsters (and by the bitching about the bickering about hipsters, which = ilx in a nutshell).

last night before going to bed i read that invisible oranges discussion that scott linked. a good and informative read, if kinda depressing in an offhand way. why can't ilm have discussions abt metal (or anything it sometimes seems) that are that learned, reasonable, thoughtful, polite, etc?

we must be reading different threads - I have enjoyed this one immensely, most especially when people tell me "you're wrong!" -- imo one of the best legacies of the crust-punk love of conflict is the idea that you can have a nice heated argument over stuff you care about without having to always be lovely about it

oh J0hn, you are always lovely.

Yeah I'm not sure what you want from this tbh unless it's just everyone to agree with you! I mean pretty much everyone who's checked in here is invested in the culture that's being discussed, or gives me that impression at any rate, while also being capable of looking through a wider lens

xp

xp - even though I think you're full of shit when it comes to Tzara being more interesting than Duchamp

(xp was to contenderizer)

Hey J0hn-- "you're wrong!"

--about Wagner upthread. There was a guy whose musical/dramatic pretty much seems to have been fed from the better neighborhoods of his heart/head. The noisome, totally unacceptable crap that came out in his conversation and essays really is not in evidence in the operas imo. Attempts to prove that there are 'parodies of klezmer' in the music of the amoral nibelung Mime notwithstanding.

That said I can totally understand not being able to listen to Wagner bcuz of his spouting off. Dude was an antisemite, a chiseler and an asshole. I myself can't listen with any pleasure if it's Wagner being conducted by, say, Karajan. That's just too much nazi.

re that thread:

mostly i thought it was nice that they were concentrating on the music and weren't bickering about hipsters (and whether or not they exist and who they are if they do etc. other than that, i've had a great time on this thread.

which is to say, i spoke too harshly of ilx/this thread. and i blame hipsters.

http://www.pbpulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/bodysnatchers1.jpg

everyone loves this thread and they will keep it running over the xmas season

real-life lolz @ pod sutherland

we have met the enemy and he is arhhooorrrrghrrrooooooooo

you can tell hipster metal from real metal, cuz hipsters don't have REAL EMOTIONS MAAAN

No hipster has ever felt what it's like to be chained spread-eagled to an asteroid and sent hurtling through the most congested regions of space.

Thread is lacking Nate.

No hipster has ever felt what it's like to be chained spread-eagled to an asteroid and sent hurtling through the most congested regions of space.
--Thulsa Doob (Jon Lewis)

what a disaster for hipsters

Corpsepaint, Grimmrobes, and Locust costumes make otherwise inaccessible music interesting to casual listeners.

Image counts.

Thread no longer lacking Nate.

Image counts.

As does punctuality and penmanship.

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/hm.jpg

"Thread no longer lacking Nate."

Just got off a week of tour dates and heard Herman's psychic distress call.

I don't know if I can slog through 500+ posts on this subject though.

I try to be inclusive rather than exclusive about music--unless it's getting watered down by corporate $$ which is only the case here for like Satyricon and Dimmu et al so why should I care anyway?

you know you are going to read it all.

Imagine, being unable to enjoy Wagner because of his prejudices or one's own.Tsk...tsk...

God it's like we've stumbled into some horrific parallel universe ILX where everyone is Burt Stanton.

lol

from the inviso oranges comments section:

The listed records share one thing in common: they got a lot of virgin ears interested in metal as another type of 'loud music' and so removed the arguably erroneous jock-like stigma associated with listening to crunchy distorted technical riffs and double-bass.

the "jock-like stigma" comment got me wondering: why don't jocks get called out nearly as much as hipsters, posers, christians, or any other victim historically at the receiving end of the metal horde's wrath? hits too close to home?

because I've ALWAYS hated the guys that get violent at shows and this is probably the most noxious/embarassing element in the mix for me. and you know what, it's not like there are even that many of them. most metalheads I've known are nerds. maybe this is just who I choose to be around, but it's s a vast sea of geeky computer science kids, stoners, uptight prog dudes, and other non-violent types. not too many jocks.

Jon Lewis, Wagner is writing about all the nordic legends that code as "the aboriginal culture of europe" i.e. before the Judeo-Xian menace. he is down with the cause in his themes. I can't front on his music but it's fascist stuff from stem to stern imo

God it's like we've stumbled into some horrific parallel universe ILX: where everyone is Burt Stanton

Comparing Varg to Wagner should only be a phonetic thing. Musically, one is skilled, and the other just got lucky.

the "jock-like stigma" comment got me wondering: why don't jocks get called out nearly as much as hipsters, posers, christians, or any other victim historically at the receiving end of the metal horde's wrath? hits too close to home?

― ' ( *_*) ERROR HANDLING (^_^ ) (Alan N), Monday, December 14, 2009 6:16 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark

guy in that IO discussion was referring to athletic technical dominance as a "jock-like" musical aesthetic. metal's been making goo-goo eyes at that sort of thing for quite some time.

i suppose loutish behavior is tolerated, to an extent, cuz it's in line with viking/caveman/barbarian values.

most jocks could not hang in a proper mosh pit

In my small town high school, punks, skaters, jocks, and heshers all rallied around And Justice For All. They were the great unifier and it made me so so very sad when the Enter Sandman single killed the buzz.

As for the hipster argument, I think everyone uses this word as a synonym for "poser". And I don't. Because if someone calls me a hipster, I'll roll with it. But no one could call me a poser. At least not in terms of metal pedigree.

My opinion is that everyone who uses hipster as a pejorative is either a hipster themself (and covering for it), or a fat-ass that doesn't leave their house and is scared of the thought of communities of people partying together and enjoying the discovery of new art and music.

xxpost:

you think so, j0hn? upthread you yourself said that death metal is music made by people who beat the shit out of people like us in high school... sounds like jockish behavior straight outta revenge of the nerds to me.

In my small town high school, punks, skaters, jocks, and heshers all rallied around And Justice For All. They were the great unifier and it made me so so very sad when the Enter Sandman single killed the buzz.

Heh, when I was in high school it was the Master of Puppets era, and the jocks were too busy listening to Slippery When Wet to care for Metallica, which us headbangers were all perfectly fine with! Were insular to an almost paranoid degree back then, it's comical thinking about it now.

crazy weird dudes who hang out in the parking lot and don't show up to class > jocks (where > = "are more violent than")

there's plenty of beefy jock dudes into dm too tho tbh

the wagner thing is hard for me to sort out. he was obviously a raging anti-semite, and late in life seems to have become a believer in white/aryan racial superiority. but i don't think there's any consensus regarding the presence of these ideas in his operas. and his interest in pre-christian myths has more to do with his interest in creating a unified, democratic, leftist germany than with nazi-style messianic, racist super-nationalism (though i suppose the two things are difficult to separate). after all, he seems to have become more amenable to christianity as he became more racist.

in my high school, the jocks were way more numerous than the metalheads/heshers/stoners, and more likely than any other group to beat you up. plus they crossed over with the farm kids, who also tended to be big and to enjoy a good fight. metalheads were more about the fantasy of violence and toughness, though when they did fight they weren't in it for fun like the jocks.

metalheads were more about the fantasy of violence and toughness, though when they did fight they weren't in it for fun like the jocks.

That's pretty dead-on.

that was also the case in my high school years.

in my high school (Texas) the jocks and shit-kickers were kind of unified against the metalheads/punks/goths/skaters (who were the minority) "satanists", "freaks", "fuck-ups", etc. Jocks and shit-kickers liked to fight (and bully the freaks); the other groups liked to vandalize shit, skip school, get fucked up, and generally to get out of our tiny town to hang out in the city as much as possible.

i didn't really notice jock types listening to metal until metallica sold out, but maybe that's just where i lived.

jocks at my highschool liked the doors and the grateful dead

the "jock-like stigma" comment got me wondering: why don't jocks get called out nearly as much as hipsters, posers, christians, or any other victim historically at the receiving end of the metal horde's wrath? hits too close to home?

You wacky americans with your jocks. Call anyone a jock in scotland and you would get your heid battered in!

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/ProductImages/HighStDonated/1_2008/67645/large_78d4d94eea794437b6bbc03c49a35b96.jpg

So yeah, I guess there was a class issue back in the day

The Dandy (and The Beano,Topper,Beezer etc) were Scottish comics, made and printed in Dundee by D.C. Thomson. Home too Oor Wullie and The Broons.

And I'd love to see the american reaction to an oor wullie /broons comic strip!
JINGS CRIVVENS! It's A Favourite BROONS Poll!

I think the american reaction would be, "lol whut?"

or ... "Is this like Andy Capp or something?"

there's so many different types of metal that it's beyond stupid to pin it to "jocks" or "heshers" or whatever

also everyone liked Metallica and Pantera in my school, even the D&D geeks.

both "jocks" and "heshers" liked metal at my high school. I think the social categories were a bit more porous.

yeah like Dr. feelgood, GnR, and The Black Album (and weirdly, Painkiller by Judas Priest was unusually popular) were like the common ground of everyone....where i liked nirvana and some more jock friends of mine wouldn't like nirvana and faith no more and jane's addiction, but we all met in the middle there....and also we all like NWA and 2 Live Crew and Too Short and shit

also, at a certain point you kinda have to get over high school shit IMO

ideally, as soon as possible after completing high school.

hahaha.

we have a spinoff ile thread now Is it cool to be all into Nordic myths and NOT be a Nazi?

(and weirdly, Painkiller by Judas Priest was unusually popular)

that is a bit strange

strange but pretty awesome.

I was "over" high school by the second year, unfortunately. :(

Ha, my relatives in England sent me copies of Beano, Dandy, and Topper all throughout my childhood. Loved that stuff.

Sounds like you had a great childhood!

xp - sorry those names just remind me of this:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3445/3367272692_00bc5af1be.jpg?v=0

(and weirdly, Painkiller by Judas Priest was unusually popular)

that is a bit strange

― Pfunkboy : The Dronelord vs The Girly Metal Daleks (Herman G. Neuname), Tuesday, December 15, 2009 5:24 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i'm from a very very small town so sometimes little quirks can develop, not too many people...I remember friends that played football saying they all used to get psyched up in the locker room to Painkiller....

heh, a friend once said that "all guns blazing" would be his wrestler intro song.