Metal Reviews

I remember when I was a young lad growing up in the 1990s and genres really mattered.

E.g.
Glam/Mainstream/Grunge guys

Thrash Metal guys (who morphed into Death Metal/Grind guys)

Black Metallers (out there on the fringe).

A lot of people (BUT NOT ALL) I knew didn't mix genres. If you were Death Metal/Grind you just listened to Death Metal/Grind.

Today it doesn't seem to really matter.

It's quite acceptable for someone to like Darkthrone and Rhapsody of Fire! In fact I knew a guy who sang for a Death Grind band who also loved Stratovarius.

Metal has kind of gone through the same changes that Western society has:

1. Nationalism/Genreism - dedicated to your country/genre

2. Multi-culturalism/"multi-genre" - embrace all cultures/genres.


I still don't like Black Metal but I respect it for it's influence on extreme music.

Genres are just labels to give music confinement of some kind of specification. Whenever we take away "defining" music and listen to it as waves of sound, it is then that we have succeeded in the art of appreciation. Let's not consider the likes of Lady gaga music, shall we?

Were groups really that segregated? I really can't imagine that, beyond the fact that probably the listening of music wasn't so accessible. If you listen to thrash and don't have that much interaction with black metal then you're not going to listen to it.

And trying to compare this to larger notions of multiculturalism and the like is going to be an awkward stretch.

At least in my local area it was segregated.

The segragation went as far as "I listen to Guns N Roses and you listen to Motley Crue." The pure Black Metallers were completely segragated and in some cases even hostile towards the other Metal guys even up to the mid-2000s.

As for the wider world, who knows. The Internet wasn't so prevalent then.

I do remember that segregation was present on some of the early forums I went to ala Megadeth Bulletin Board.

Megadeth fans being close-minded? I wonder where they get that from...

Ho ho

I think you are projecting a bit here, dead1, based on your own comments recently about coming to appreciate black metal's place (while still not caring for it).

This forum was once largely populated by black metal people (basically when the site moved towards the end of 2004); however, a lot of the people once identified with black metal on the forums here either seem to have disappeared (Eisenfaust, Skartasis, Tyrion and CotB to a lesser extent), radically altered their tastes and then departed (former reviewers Daniel and Misha) or branched out beyond black metal into other things (Goat, Kaatharian, and Rio instantly come to mind). People that were into the genre heavily back then tended to be very unstable musically, some left metal completely, some shut out all other metal, some became very, very open-minded without entirely giving up the genre. I'm not sure what that meant, but I definitely noticed it compared to other fans of metal.

The genre still seems, in my mind, the most exclusive of metal genres, based on the exhaustive debates regarding American black metal and the prevalence of long time forumites like Ken, Noodles, and Wally that have said they just don't like it. You also have attitudes like Steve's originating out of that older elitism mentality of black metal people (and in his case, underground brutal death metal).

I would generally agree with you that the other genres 'get along', and perhaps black metal isn't as 'othered' as it once was, but it still seems like a slightly different beast.

I don't understand how people don't like black metal who are into extreme metal.

It's way better than most death metal.

It's easy.

Looking for a more pure perspective

Death Metal - heavy, often groovier, catchier.

Black Metal - tinny sound, grating, often monotonous (though to be fair a lot of DM is monotnous).

Mind you I listen mainly to older Death Metal: Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Gorefest, Atheist, Pestillence, Morbid Angel (A-D), Malevolent Creation, Edge of Sanity, Entombed etc. Before the CDs went bang, I also liked Monstrosity and Massacre.

My newer Death Metal stuff is limited to things like Kataklysm, Bloodbath, Immolation and groovier sides of Aborted.

Interesting stuff.

I think maybe it's a case of non-BM people embracing Black Metal perhaps?

Yeah... bm really isn't comparable to other extreme metal genres the way grindcore is derivative of death metal, for example. Like compare Bergtatt to Obituary; very different sounds and goals imo.

And I think black metal is much more open to experimentation and diversifying itself even while it can sometimes be conservative and elitist. It has both sides of the coin with bands like Ulver doing whatever it does, Enslaved becoming super proggy, or Burzum doing those albums like Daudi Baldrs.

black metal doesnt have that bassy oomph

Very well put, Emperor. Beyond BM seems to be: ambient/electronica and ultimately classical musique. I dived into classical music for 4 years and I still love it like I did the first day I heard Vivaldi. However, Classical just made me appreciate Metal massively more. I did not disconnect with Metal at all. I also explored a wide range of fields in Electronica. Like classical it's a fascinating world of sounds. After that came Jazz. I own about 80 Jazz albums and I love them. None of them reach the might of Metal though. I mean it's excellent for a healthy diet in music as I have said many times before but I am a good example on the forums that came back to Metal no matter what I discovered. I am listening to more extreme stuff than I did several years ago and much darker in nature. What I'm trying to say is that Metal is infinite passion for the music. It's unfortunate that people have left this wonderful place. I'm glad that you haven't changed, Emperor. That Steve couldn't keep his mouth shot nor did he have the manners to keep a decent conversation going. That's too bad.

I'm probably going to be listening to Metal 10 years from now and will for the rest of my life. The extreme diversity in Metal, the heights of emotion and expression, and many more things are Romantic in nature. So they're very much Classically influenced.