CrowleyHead

Well-known member
I don't get it either but I respect how unpretentious about music metallers (that I've known) tend to be.

Insofar as they don't feel compelled to go beyond "it rocks" as a response.

Obviously I'm not saying metal musicians aren't pretentious because they sometimes dress up in wizards robes and so on...

Oh Corpse, you sweet innocent spring child...
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
metalheads are some of the most pretentious music fans on the earth. I used to play DAF and regis bits when i used to drink with em. 'But it's just 1/4 bar loops!' lol fuuuuck off.

also this explains why so many of them in terms of dance music actualy like psytrance as well.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
You mentioned the "you're my guitar hero" bit in the Clash song ("Complete Control", right?), Padraig

The thing about shredding though - it seems to me as non-fan - is that it is just as meta in its own way as that Strummer ad lib

all the shred solo is saying is "I'm your guitar hero" - they are eruptions of flash for flash's sake

guitar solos until the advent of shred generally had some kind of expressive purpose - like the soliloquy in the midst of a drama - or at least they were developments of the melody

but with shredding, you feel the sole purpose of the solo is to announce that it's a solo

and often it seems like you could transpose a spurt of shredding from one song to another song without it really making much difference

i guess a key break, or stage in the evolution, is when the solos in metal stop having any relation to blues - and the Paganini thing you mention kicks in (interesting that Satriani and Vai are both of Italian ancestry although it's Malmsteen that's the one who was actually influenced by Paganini right?)

but you could be an expressive rather than masturbatory guitar soloist without having much or any relation to the blues - Tom Verlaine, the Edge, the dude in the Meat Puppets
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
well, a few things

masturbatory v. expressive is a false dichotomy. when exactly does expression become masturbatory? is there some specific level of technicality, prolificity, "flash"?

you also seem to be making a bunch of weird value judgments about purpose, utility, artifice

like, why is flash bad? why is it worse than "developing the melody"? would you make a similar argument about blocky rave-stabs and uplifting pianos in ardkore?

and how is the Edge's (or Kevin Shields's) pedal set-up not masturbatory? like, a lot of notes is bad but a ton of layers/fx is good? really, neither is good or bad, just to point out it's a silly argument.

it's true plenty of King-style atonal shredding could easily be transposed between songs, but you could say that for popular motifs in virtually any music. how much drum choppage in jungle, how much post-punk angular guitar skronk, is basically interchangeable? is it a point against them?

every genre has sonic markers - shredding is indistinguishably part of the current running from the harder end of thrash metal (Slayer, Dark Angel) thru proto-death/thrash (Possessed, early Death) thru classic death metal ca. 1987-1992 or so (after which death metal splits in a bunch of directions). go listen to Altars of Madness, Morbid Angel's 1st LP and probably the quintessential death metal qua death metal record, and tell me the shredding isn't intrinsic to the music. not just the notes but the way they're played, and the techniques - dive bombing, pinch harmonics, etc - used. you'll also notice that the lead/fill/solo line is blurred - there are shredded scalar fills all over the place.
 
Last edited:

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
the truth is that very, very few guitar solos are memorable, shredding or otherwise. very few solos of any kind are memorable. that's why say Marquee Moon is so unusual.

tbh it really comes across - like dissensus in general - you're just aesthetically/philosophically opposed to heavy shredding guitars, just don't grok them.

which is fine ofc. there are things I don't grok. but, I gotta object to this bizarre utilitarian argument, from the foremost champion of ardkore.
 
Last edited:

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
and btw Meat Puppets are a bad example of "expressive" guitars not closely connected to the blues

for example, here they are in 1985 covering Sabbath, ZZ Top, and Good Golly Miss Molly

but also they're basically psyched out alt-country ("cowpunk") and I mean, it's definitely not not the blues

if you want an SST-type example you'd be a lot better off going with D. Boon
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
when the solos in metal stop having any relation to blues
this tbf true - that is a big part of the "sea change" I discussed, the shift to atonality and dissonance - vs. Iommi just going nuts in pentatonic

I just disagree that it's in any way a negative evolution. it's not negative or positive, it just is.

I will say the difference, for me, between heavy shredding guitars and Vai/Satriale is that the latter is what blissblogger is accusing, literally just some dude solipsistically going look how great, with no purpose outside that. whereas King/Hannemann lineage shredding - while certainly not immune from excess - is part of a sound, aesthetic, a greater whole. granted the line between the two isn't always sharply defined, but I think as a rule of thumb it's whether the shred is in ultimate service of the riff or not.

this is also why Van Halen is one of the few (partial) exceptions to Malmsteenism. those dudes, at least sometimes, were able to - aided greatly by the charisma of David Lee Roth - incorporate his virtuoso schtick into songs greater than the sum of parts
 

luka

Well-known member
the truth is that very, very few guitar solos are memorable, shredding or otherwise. very few solos of any kind are memorable. that's why say Marquee Moon is so unusual.

tbh it really comes across - like dissensus in general - you're just aesthetically/philosophically opposed to heavy shredding guitars, just don't grok them.

which is fine ofc. there are things I don't grok. but, I gotta object to this bizarre utilitarian argument, from the foremost champion of ardkore.

this is what i keep pointing out to you though. you are from an alien tribe, aesthetically speaking, you are the enemy. that doesn't mean we can't build alliances in all sorts of other areas. but in terms of music you are from that other tribe of apes on the far side of the drinking pool.

a good friend of mine is an american and aesthetically he is also the enemy. a good way to encapsulate this is that he told me he heard Hendrix after hearing much more technically accomplished players, one's who got it right, so that Hendrix seemed like a disappointment. so sloppy!

so in that sense he is the enemy but we are friends and accomplices across a whole range of other areas.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Most of the music we love is American though let's be reality

Or are you talking specifically about American Caucasians?

Rappers have dodgy taste in non rap music though. Maroon 5. Coldplay. Adele. This is what I see rappers recommending.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Been listening to some of ILXs favourite albums of 2017 and I definitely can't see many of their top 10 picks getting anywhere near a dissensus top 10.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
hey hey don't lump me in with some prog or whatever geek - no offense - who doesn't get Hendrix

plus we have plenty of areas of crossover - jungle etc, 80s electric R+B. idc about modern rap but I like the rap craner likes. and so on.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
but also how u gonna suggest England isn't heavy guitar freaks? how you gonna deny your heritage?

you guys produced Sabbath ffs. Zep, Hawkwind, Napalm Death, Electric Wizard.

friends tell friends the truth - England's heavy guitar legacy has a much greater footprint in the world than jungle etc ever will.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
also tell your - no offense - lame Hendrix-denying friend, who I'm sure is otherwise a wonderful person

no he wasn't the most technical or cleanest (he was always on a fuck-ton of drugs, for one). his songs are mostly whatever and he doesn't a single classic album or even one you'd want to listen to the whole way thru. all he did was reinvent the electric guitar so thoroughly that he was single-handed Year Zero for electric guitars. if like guitars and you can't hear it in Machine Gun or 1983 A Merman or his full-on noise rock national anthem (true kvlt origins of shred) or Smashing Amps, well, idk what to tell you.
 
Top