Reclaiming (or Replacing) Metal

[Forbinator]

It tells me that they are dabblers who aren't interested enough in the music to explore beyond the superficial. The good stuff has always excluded these people.

The word "hipster" implies that they listen to their music ironically or to impress people, which may occasionally be true, but I think my "dabbler" hypothesis is far more plausible.

[Veritas]

If they're not listening seriously, then they may as well be listening ironically. Identifying a group with one of its subgroups might have a tinge of troll to it, but hey, it works.

[Forbinator]

I guess so, sort of like calling a liberal a communist.

[aquarius]

Some ideas about how metal could expand/develop

• Longer meldies
• Attention to variation and development of melody
• Cyclic and recurring use of themes
• Cross-pollination of themes across the album
• Think outside of the song/album idiom
• Deconstruction
• Increase interplay of instuments
• Decrease constant use of instruments
• Emphasise consistancy of music and its formative concepts

[Cargést]

You just summed up my thread, man.

[istaros]

Some ideas about how metal could expand/develop

• Longer meldies
• Attention to variation and development of melody
• Cyclic and recurring use of themes
• Cross-pollination of themes across the album
• Think outside of the song/album idiom
• Deconstruction
• Increase interplay of instuments
• Decrease constant use of instruments
• Emphasise consistancy of music and its formative concepts

That's one solution. The other is to head in the other direction, and emphasize passion instead of compositional proclivity. It sounds simpler, and in a sense it is, but it's also much more difficult to get a grasp on, since there's no obvious tools that have that effect directly. I think the best thing that can happen for metal is that its creators just stop fucking trying to justify it out of an emergent boredom/embarrassment/"maturity."

[Cargést]

Why not conjoin passion and composition?

[istaros]

No reason it can't be. Just offering an additional insight

[Conservationist]

Some ideas about how metal could expand/develop

• Longer meldies
• Attention to variation and development of melody
• Cyclic and recurring use of themes
• Cross-pollination of themes across the album
• Think outside of the song/album idiom
• Deconstruction
• Increase interplay of instuments
• Decrease constant use of instruments
• Emphasise consistancy of music and its formative concepts

Interesting. A good list, but still a laundry list. Here's my edit:

• Longer meldies
• Attention to variation and development of melody
• Cyclic and recurring use of themes
• Cross-pollination of themes across the album
• Increase interplay of instuments
• Decrease constant use of instruments
• Emphasise consistency of music and its formative concepts

[/quote]

I removed some redundancies or ideas from the past generation. Here's a couple more:

• More variation in mode and scale to mimic a wider range of moods
• Write actual poetic content again
• New ideological sheath, discarding Satan/wolves/winter/gore
• Focus on producing moments of calm absence instead of returning theme

This can be done with existing bits, as Beherit showed us on their most recent.

It's basically a way of saying that the music needs to learn more music, learn more art, and be more about real things.

Metal now is a second-generation copy of a second-generation copy. We let the shitheads in.

[Veritas]

Guide to making good music:
- listen to good music
- learn how to play music
- make good music

Don't worry about how you're doing it, just do it. If you have personal quality, and you have a basic idea of how to make music, then what you make will have quality, whether it's a symphony or a bunch of 3 minute lo-fi black metal folk tunes. Take in as much quality information as you can, whether musical, literary or otherwise, learn the skills required for the creation of physical manifestations, and let your intuition do the rest of the work.

The problem with metal today is that the people making it suck. Basically we need to get the people who are able to make good metal to start making it again.

[Jim Necroslaughter]

I think the Metal Spirit could be translated into other forms of art like literature or architecture.

[Cargést]

Do the lyrics not count as "Literature", when removed from the music?  I'd quite like to see some Hessian prose (fiction), aside from the short bits I write from time to time.

As for architecture, I think much has been done to showcase Hessian architectural possibilities through album covers.

 
 

Tall, spiky things with demonic carvings/statues.  Basically Neogothic with a slightly more "evil" tinge (as befits the music, which is almost exactly the same).

[Jim Necroslaughter]

personally, I think metal lyrics are awesome.  even the caveman style like Beherit or Immortal.  I love that they use the same symbols and phrases over and over.  there's something Zen-like about the repetition.

I've always thought poets should stick to the traditional symbols like sun, moon, night, day, rivers, mountains, eagles, lions.  In other words, the exact opposite of comparing the sunrise to an etherized patient on a table. 

I don't think there are any metal lyrics that have the strength to stand by themselves without the music, though.

it would be important for Metal Literature to not be TOO literal in its translation from the tradition of the music and its lyrics.

off the top of my head, the most metal piece of literature would have to be Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell or maybe even the Book or Revelations.

[Conservationist]

Food for thought:

When Slayer busted out Satanic lyrics in the 1980s, they were taking the cue from Angel Witch, Judas Priest, and Black Sabbath and making mythologies of the world's end. They were revealing our inner bankruptcy and what we should be paying attention to, but instead of ranting out details like angry leftist punk bands (all leftists are delusional: anarchists, communists, democrats, socialists, libertarians, communitarians, and even apolitical humanists; humans are NOT more important than nature or the order of the cosmos) they looked at the big picture.

Now it has been cloned to death. It went from mythology to orthodoxy during the last days of black metal, and now it's as Politically Correct as saying "but democracy will cure them" whenever you read about a revolution. It's overdone. If you want to fight Christianity, this is not the way. If you want to find a better life, this isn't helping. All you're doing is becoming caricatures of yourselves.

http://www.anus.com/metal/about/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=321#comm

Notice the lack of endorsement of Christianity, and a definite non-endorsement of Satan re-hashing.