You guys are putting waaay too much thought into this.
Do you think Lemmy, Ozzy, and Nigel Tufnel spend hours in front of their computers typing out mini-essays justifying their music?
No, they don’t. They rock out.
It’s Heavy Metal.
It’s awesome.
If other people don’t like it, fine.
YMMV (>_<) VMMY
(thanks for the emoticon, Scissorjack)
Goddamn right.
That’s not what I got from BPC’s post. Jackmannii said he thought that “inaccessible” meant “crappy”. BPC gave a few examples of music that most everyone will agree has serious merit that is or was inaccessible for large groups of people.
Bottom line, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I see a lot of great stuff in a lot of metal bands. You don’t see it. That’s fine. But to denigrate an entire supergenre of music is just ignorant.
Admittedly, some people use the term inaccessible to cover for bad art. For example, I remember an aquaintance trying to turn me onto an artist who considerd himself in the “Noise” genre. It was, quite literally, a stereotypical techno beat with a few change ups, with static over the top of it, and it was a 6-CD album, with each CD being a single long track. When I asked him about it, he said it was just inaccessible, and when further prodded, he admitted that he really just liked the drumbeat, and the the artist apparently released one of these multi-CD albums every 6 months or so. So, yeah, that’s an example of it being used poorly.
However, I think the jazz example just a few posts up is an excellent example. Or to borrow another moment from history, the stereotypical adult response during the early days of rock and roll becoming popular. It was often classed as loud, talentless music, satanic, and all sorts of other stuff. And yet, I think we’d be hard pressed to find anyone who still thinks the rock genre is all talentless, crappy music.
Or perhaps a an example in another genre, consider the culinary arts. Some people are perfectly content to eat hamburgers all day and, even if they do go to the restauarant of a well respected chef, they won’t really understand why the food is so expensive or what makes that chef so much better than some other chef. Simply put, they don’t have the palette to appreciate those complexities that that chef adds. There’s nothing wrong with that, but the moment they start saying that chef is overrated or terrible just because they can’t discern the flavors and textures, they’re arguing from ignorance.
Now take that and bring it back to music, where I’ll try to explain something like Meshuggah to someone. They do all kinds of unusual time signatures, scales, and polyrhythms, and to an ear that isn’t able to discern those things it can easily sound like the drummer and guitarists are either not doing anything special or are playing randomly. Thus, to them, all of that complexity is utterly lost and the music is inaccessible. But to an ear that can discern it, it’s very cool stuff.
Just that several genres are sorely misrepresented by the common stereotype. Metal is particularly bad because a significant portion of the genre is all about creating an atmosphere that doesn’t seldom lends itself to catchy tunes, and so the few bands that do get mainstream exposure, are generally not representative of what the genre has to offer. It’s tiresome when I mention metal and people more or less assume it sounds like Slipknot and/or assume I’m some kind of satan-worshipping, brooding, social outcast.
Not such a bad argument, either. If I see that a lot of intelligent people like something that I was inclined to dismiss at first, then of course I’ll go back and reevaluate it - that’s only fair. The world would be a very boring place if we dismissed out-of-hand all art that made us uncomfortable, or that we didn’t like at first glance.
Here’s the kids of the Chicago School of Rock performing [Number of the Beast](Iron Maiden - Number of the Beast - Chicago School of Rock).
Lots of dicks in this thread.
Yeah, it kinda is. You just don’t get it.
It took me a while too. The first time I heard the CD “Ride the Lightning” I found it way too harsh. I spent a little while working up to it over softer titles (mostly Rhapsody of Fire CDs) and then started craving Fight Fire With Fire and other harder tracks. First time I heard Behemoth, I was aghast at how overpowering the voice was, how devoid of melody the mix was… And then about a month later I reheard the track and it captivated me completely. It does happen, and just because some people don’t get it doesn’t make it bad music.
(I completely realize that it’s possible to misuse this argument and that some music really is “bad”, but this isn’t the case with most extreme metal)
There will always be those who hear “this music/movie/artwork is crap” as “you are crap for liking this”. A rock music critic in our local weekly arts/community newspaper who has built his reputation around drawing this reaction from folks whose favorites he skewers. People are prone to different tastes, and the more obscure they are, the less likely I will be deluged with stuff I don’t like (the odds of growly metal voices coming at me from TV ads are low).
I once knew a neonatologist, who when he wasn’t dealing with sick infants loved to tune in professional wrestling events. There are WWF aficionados who wax eloquent on the virtues of their “sport” or “entertainment” or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be, and pity those who don’t “get it”.
Whatever.
There must also be different thresholds of appreciation for things that are turn-offs on first exposure. With music, I find that if I at least find it interesting or promising on first listen, there’s a reasonable chance I’ll really like it eventually. If my first reaction is “man, this stinks”, the odds of ever appreciating it are near zero (I continue to give Radiohead* a chance in Ipod shuffle mode, but the outlook isn’t good).
*whaddaya mean, they’re not death metal? 
People who defend metal like the OP often claim the high technical aspect of certain subgenres of metal.
As a former metal fan, I don’t deny this. But who can listen to a whole album by Necrophagist or Obscura ? More than 5 minutes and it gives me headaches.
The problem with growling or screaming vocals is that every guy who’s ever dreamed of being a frontman thinks he can now be lead singer for a metal band. The fact is that those types of vocals take just as much talent to pull off as regular singing. There are a LOT of shitty singers in metal, but the ones who can do it right are amazing. Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth is one of the best out there, IMHO.
But, you’ve got to go back a few years before Led Zeppelin to find the true primogenitor of heavy metal. (click " & modern music" tab)
Attributes:
Massive sound: example
Explicit emotion: example
“Galloping” riffs only a top tier virtuoso can handle: example
Dark themes: example
…even some metal-looking guys who play it: example
I can. I like Necrophagist’s Epitaph better than Onset, and am eagerly awaiting their new album, but I’m not sure if Christian Münzer is playing on it or not. IMO, he was a key part of the band’s better sound.
But then he jumped ship when Necrophagist seemed to be a done deal, and he did the same thing for Obscura: making their 2nd album, Cosmogenesis much better than their first. Omnivium is even better than that.
I like the music a lot, but I know that a part of the appeal is that I play guitar, and technical death metal, like really complicated jazz, sounds like it would be fun to play.
I don’t think this is true (beyond the last two sentences; Akerfeldt is a god). Seriously, have you ever tried just shouting and screaming for an hour? Even ignoring the problem of “does this sound good” (it usually doesn’t unless you do it a very certain way), at the latest by the end of a 30-minute half-set, your vocal chords are going to stop working with you for the next day or two. And then your career is going to have some serious issues. There is a very specific technique to metal singing; it’s not that easy.
I think you two are agreeing with each other rather than disagreeing?
On a related note, what’s with all those umlauts that two out of three metal bands have to use all the time?
There’s more content in 10 seconds of Type O Negative than in the whole Necrophagist’s discography :D.
But more seriously, why can I enjoy any Death album from the beginning to the end, while I can’t with those new techno-death bands ? (I make the connection because Chuck Schuldiner was basically the godfather of that subgenre - for that matter, I remember Necrophagist covered “Crystal Mountain”) Am I an old fart ?
There are worse places that you could put a lot of dicks.
Not sure contemporary metal bands are still doing this. In fact, the last time I noticed an unnecessary umlaut in music was on a recent Lady Gaga song.
Sorry, as you obviously understand I’m not into contemporary metal. Let me rephrase since I’m still wondering about that, though:
“On a related note, what’s with all those umlauts that two out of three metal bands had to use all the time?”
OK now? 
