The Uncredible

[bassbeyondreason]

Surely power metal is the least credible metal subgenre?
Especially the ultra-polished Euro stuff:


Must confess a fondness for the arcane 80's d&d stuff though:

[luka]

Almost all the musos I know love metal of various konds. I think cos it's technical?

[sadmanbarty]

Almost all the musos I know love metal of various konds. I think cos it's technical?

Musos always end up at jazz, metal or classical music (usually the former two because classical music’s only really for people bummed by prefects at posh schools).

Like jazz, in metal you’re going to hear very technically accomplished musicians playing things very fast (tony Williams 5 stroke ride cymbal, those double kick drums in metal). You hear modes in both. I bet you get the occasional odd time signature in metal like you do in jazz. Maybe lots of quartal chords like McCoy tyner does.

Theory music.

[Trillhouse]

I was looking at the album of the year aggregate site https://www.albumoftheyear.org/ratin...t-rated/2019/1 and there seem to be quite a few metal related albums high up in the list. i'm completely disconnected from such things but it looks like something of a renaissance / purple patch.

[Corpsey]

Metal is good instrumentally sometimes what undoes it is the vocals which are 99% trash

Just to undercut this statement I propose that one of the best metal songs ever is for whom the bell tolls by Metallica

I hate most of their songs but that one tape into my Aryan village burning DNA

[version]

I was looking at the album of the year aggregate site https://www.albumoftheyear.org/ratin...t-rated/2019/1 and there seem to be quite a few metal related albums high up in the list. i'm completely disconnected from such things but it looks like something of a renaissance / purple patch.

I've noticed this on RYM over the years. There's usually at least one metal album in the top 20 for any given year.

[padraig (u.s.)]

not block quote the whole thing but to respond to all of it

i live for riffs (a rave stab is basically a riff when it comes down to it)

I've heard you say this before and it isn't, in that sense

the intent is different, the kinesthetic sense is different, the drugs are different

I do know you're on extended record as a fan of 70s hard rock and I don't disagree that "something else had to happen", and of course it did

but there's a point where you - both literally and as a synecdoche for dissensus generally - get off the heavy guitars train, unless they're of a particular (artsy) type

hardcore punk and all that follows has almost nothing to do with the blues - it is punk (which did have blues - it's sped-up Chuck Berry riffs) stripped of blues, as well as groove, etc

I'm not really trying to get into the weeds on blues or blues-rock anyway

the true innovation of hardcore, beyond speed and the intensity of its teenage idiot energy, is liberating composition via the power chord

this also happened in metal which took it one step further via (like Schoenberg) the chromatic scale

Morbid Angel is essentially a more extreme Slayer who were essentially but more extreme Judas Priest, but also

besides faster, more distortion, whatever, there's a fundamental shift from melody to atonality

[padraig (u.s.)]

the salad days of death metal (ca. 87-92 or 93) were de facto avant garde in the same way grime was

[padraig (u.s.)]

I think what kind of harsh, or extreme, or whatever, guitar music is "cool" and isn't is down to attitude and/or marketing more than anything else

[padraig (u.s.)]

which is unsurprising, I guess

[padraig (u.s.)]

Like jazz, in metal you’re going to hear very technically accomplished musicians playing things very fast (tony Williams 5 stroke ride cymbal, those double kick drums in metal). You hear modes in both. I bet you get the occasional odd time signature in metal like you do in jazz. Maybe lots of quartal chords like McCoy tyner does.

Theory music.

oh I just saw this

yeah there's truth in that

metal unlike jazz isn't inherently muso - there's an entire schools of metal that are renowned specifically for their perceived simplicity, in the guise of rawness etc

i.e. Hellhammer, lo-black metal demos, slam death metal (imagine an entire genre of just breakdowns; yes it's terrible, but also popular), etc

but there's plenty of muso nonsense

there's an entire "technical" death metal scene unto itself, and it's pretty relentlessly awful, basically dudes masturbating with guitars, but it certainly exists

[padraig (u.s.)]

Massive Attack and Portishead suck as well.

lolll fair enough

[padraig (u.s.)]

I don't have time rn but if I do over the weekend I'll do powerviolence and/or early death metal primers to show exactly what I'm talking about