It took me three nights to read this thread from start to finish and before I started I thought I somewhat knew metal. I've always liked metal but never gotten deep into it, just skimmed the surface with some Iron Maiden, Amorphis, Kalmah, Amon Amarth, Disturbed, Scar Symmetry, Soilwork, OLD Sonic Syndicate... and now that I've read this thread it has taught me a great deal about metal.
It was apparent immediately that metal can be hard to classify at times and down right confusing to do so.
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melodeath is not the same as melodic death metal. At least that's how I've always felt. >:D wat?
My thought on this was simply a poster being silly or stupid. Of course there must be a way to classify it!!
Everyone has seen the needless bickering in youtube video comments and I half expected some of that in this thread from the above confusion, there was a little but barely noticeable to someone skimming this thread. I however was not skimming.
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lol thats fucked up.. everyones entitled to their opinions about music man!
But this was a long thread and at this point I was thinking, stupid poster, move on.
Then came this
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I really like metal with a complete orchestra mixed in it!
It was nice to see someone define their interests in metal and not get attacked!!
But I still did not know what metal WAS. Yes its got guitars vocalists and drums commonly but how do you define it as there were bands with extra instruments or *different* arrangements such as heavy vocals, light vocals, no vocals?, heavy guitar, light guitar, etc...
DUN DUN DUN a storm is starting to brew. I won't peg the offenders here but heres the gist of it.
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Seriously. Don't shit on American metal. There's bad metal the world over.
mainstreamed metal to the point of unintentional hilarity doesn't mean there's any LESS good stuff here
discounting American metal just because we've ALSO built an industry out of hyping shitty bands
That was really just one side to the argument but I'm sure you can imagine the other.
So now I am in a pickle. Is mainstream metal still good metal? Does the hype effect quality. Is metal status given after an ongoing drawn out majority vote of sorts, with the highest number of people on one side winning? I live in a democracy so naturally this numbers determining metal status made sense.
But then all of a sudden it was a miracle!! Reason had stepped in and helped to clarify my mind.
+ Show Spoiler +Yes of course!! I am the one listening to this so I should determine it, right? But my own tastes do not determine whether a band is good or not I thought. In Flames and Opeth have had serious acclaim throughout this thread and I did not take a liking them. Not to say that they are bad just not my taste. So should I think just the metal I like is metal? Are those "pussies" Avenged Sevenfold not metal just because people say bad things(regardless of the truth or non-truth behind it).
Then there were the unknown bands.
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I thought i was one of the only people who knew them
Does popularity determine if it is metal enough to be called metal?
Surely a bands success is relevant. I mean the bigger the stage the more the demand. Does high demand trigger metal status?
And then came a comment I had thought only a little about before it was posted
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The topic title has been choosen wrong imo, why not just call it "Metal thread"
want to speak about Metal genres and then you headline it with ONE metal genre
Does whatever words accompany the term "Metal" matter, I thought. Sure they determine the style but at its heart there is a lot of similarities behind metal. Why does everyone hate Nu- Metal, is it less metal than Black Metal? It does not sound too much different given it is both this "metal" that I'm trying so hard to understand.
But what other factors could come into play, I thought.
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There is NOT NEARLY ENOUGH
This brought me back to demand in a weird way. Does the fan-base that screams for more determine how metal the music is? Do people even matter when talking about metal or is it just about the music? But more things started to reappear in the thread.
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this is just a general purpose metal thread now.
heavy metal seems too specific
Yes the fact that heavy metal was too specific was brought up again. I noticed that most of the metal was sure "heavy" by definition so ultimately I thought nothing of this the second time.
The eye of the storm was passing and here came more trouble.
+ Show Spoiler +This asshole actually got me thinking. There had sure been conflict between people about the genre of metal but none of the people outright insulted it. Is the mindset that the music that you listen to is your "metal" and everything else simply drool correct? I mean your not listening to music to listen to someone else's preferred music, you want your music. Bla bla bla the storm continues to rage
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No one needs your elitist behaviour.
one metal band in this whole thread that isn't metalcore garbage.
I agree. There is a lot of faggotry in this thread
At this point I had thrown out the relevance of others opinions of what is and isn't metal. There was so much argument over what music was good and bad. Not to say I can determine definitely what music was metal and what wasn't. The question loomed, WHAT WAS METAL? Then things changed.
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What? None of the 3 vids you posted are Metal. Unless you weren't trying to troll, its actually really disappointing that you don't understand what metal is.
This is that same elitist behavior that was mentioned before but can this guy determine what metal is? Should I worship him as a god of all things metal? It seems the only thing defining metal at this point was it's attributes. Specifically how heavy the guitar or vocals were. But here was my breakthrough. Everyone interprets things differently. Some things are heavy to some and soft to others. Sure I thought Apocalyptic Feasting was way to heavy to listen to but that was just me and it had to have at least one fan for it to be posted right? Everyone had different tastes so how could you throw other words in with "metal" to determine what metal it was? It seemed like there was way to many perspectives to consider at this point. And here was a fresh comment
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If you only like screaming mofos, dont bother listening.
Sure there was a lot of heavy vocals in the thread but that seemed to be a defining attribute of metal as the majority of artist(okay most of the artists) used these. Did it need heavy vocals to be considered X kind of metal? The idea of metal just kept getting more complicated.
Here was the bombshell that only seemed to gather my thoughts on metal into a solid statement.
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I'm sure a lot of people disagree - which is fine - we all have our own tastes and opinions.
Yes someone had said it. We all have our tastes and opinions and they often conflict. What rocks out as metal to one person sounds like a mentally handicapped person bounding around in a trashcan to another. No one person can say what type of metal a band was or how metal they were. Sure there are guidelines and determining factors but they are easily skewed or just not applicable. Now I have thrown out any subset of metal. Black Metal, Death Metal, Melodeath Metal, Melodic Death Metal(Did that first quoted guy have a relevant argument about the two terms?), Speed Metal, Thrash Metal, Doom Metal, Post Metal, Grunge Metal, Grind Metal, Heavy Metal, and any other metal I could think of all have became one. There was just metal. I no longer care what it's official term is, I no longer care what other people call it. I consider my opinion to be the only one that matters to me but I understand my opinion has little to no relevance to others. What rocks out to me is metal. Metal is my music.
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