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Why is "Metal" constantly being bashed by "real" musicians?

RNV

RNV

Apr 13, 2010
1,151
12
Loxahatchee, Fl
Disclosures
fEARful (I endorse them, not visa versa)
#1
I have been on this forum for a while now, and I can't understand the animosity towards metal. Sure, I love the jokes about the spikes and being mindless souls and whatnot, but to personally bash a genre and say that the music is talentless is ridiculous. I listen to several styles of music with metal, big band swing, ska, and rockabilly being my favorites. Now I admit being a much better drummer than bass player, but the question applies to both if not all instruments. I just would like to know what makes non metal bassist so much better than someone who plays metal? Is it the fact that you play other people's music several times a month to people who are at that bar regardless if your band is there vs. a different band? Do you like the fact that changing the arrangement to a song is switching from the album to live version?

I know it seems that I have gone on the attack. Perhaps. It just seems that the ones who bash and ruin the threads with legit questions about playing metal always seem to be in weekend cover/bar bands.

Its true that EVERY genre has it's steaming piles of dung, but I don't really care for any of The Doors hits. Should that mean I should hate the doors? I'm glad I look deeper into their catalog. I love that band.
 
#2
Personally, I find the image that metal tries to push is the first part that bothers me, although not to a huge degree. What bothers me most is when a song or album pushes out token metal that presents tried and stale riffs, obnoxious growling vocals about tired subjects and -ugh- a rapid-fire double bass drum from start to finish.

I've got a few metal bands in my library and whether or not they make it to the permanent list is if I can discern some sort of groove to it. Ex: I can put on a Meshuggah album and bob my head for all 24 minutes of the track.

If all they're trying to do is something fast and repetitive with little variation or experimentation then they probably won't make the cut. Put a little soul on it.

As QOTSA said, "give me soul or show me the door!"

I hate Metallica, but really dig Megadeth.
 
#3
I think part of the problem is that a lot of what is now called "metal" has evolved into just playing loud and fast with no real substance. Many of today's "metal" bands have lead singers who just scream with no sense of melody. The guitar players, bass players and drummers just want to play as fast as possible. I enjoy older metal such as Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc. As for today's metal, I can do without it.
 
#4
Yeah, but Kiss and Alice started the dark imagery, yet you can walk into any bar on the weekend and hear Kiss and at least "18" by Cooper being covered by bands. The 80s glam was exactly as you described, and I love most glam bands, as was grunge, which I don't care for. Anytime a genre picks up popularity, the labels start to sign everyone who sounds like the current hot thing. It is the demise of all genres of music. Some just seem to split of into something different to survive, while other fizzle out.

P.S. Megadeth > Metallica
 
#6
I never got too far into metal, aside from a few core bands. Folks would have me listen to bands but they never caught on.

I somehow managed to work security at the Rockstar Mayhem Metal festival or whatever it was called back in 2009, right at the corner of the side-of-stage gate where the guitards and drummers took the ...nice... looking women backstage for a few minutes and had their pathetic and sad boyfriends come asking if I'd seen them - I didn't care for more than two or three bands. I think just being there interacting with the crowds was more fun than the music, for me anyways.

For the Slayer set I got/had to stand in front of the gigant wall of subwoofers. I nearly threw up - thank God for ear protection. And who on in their right mind puts Slayer before Marilyn Manson? Manson was awful.
 
#7
I dunno, metal is so much more diverse than it was 20 years ago, and yet you still have to dig to find the really good bands. There is some AMAZING music being made out there - DevilDriver, Mastodon, Silent Civilian, and Fear Factory all have relatively new albums that are just mind-blowing. And all four of those bands are "mainstream" metal! There are more bands that you have to dig a bit more to find, but are totally worth it. And metal can be anything from blastbeat insanity to wildly complex technical masterpieces to slow dirges. Metal can be Black Sabbath or Cynic or Cannibal Corpse, and they all play together nicely. So yeah, there's hate for certain types of metal, sure, but all of it? I would think the vast majority of TB can find something they like that could fall into the "metal" category.

That being said, I don't particularly care what the "majority" of TB likes or doesn't like. I think in this case, though, you're sorta picking a battle that's started on wrong terms. Ever buy a car, then realize all-of-a-suddden you're seeing that model of car everywhere? Maybe you're cueing in on the threads where people are bashing metal, but it's not like 90% of the site hates and comments on it, at least IMO.

I just would like to know what makes non metal bassist so much better than someone who plays metal? Is it the fact that you play other people's music several times a month to people who are at that bar regardless if your band is there vs. a different band? Do you like the fact that changing the arrangement to a song is switching from the album to live version?

I know it seems that I have gone on the attack. Perhaps. It just seems that the ones who bash and ruin the threads with legit questions about playing metal always seem to be in weekend cover/bar bands.
Click to expand...

:rollno:

I love metal. And I'm quite capable of playing the vast majority of what I hear, if I plug away at if for a while. And I've been in metal cover bands. So what makes you think you're better than a bassist in a "weekend cover/bar band?" You think Ryan Martinie or Troy Sanders or Alex Webster haven't played covers? You seem to have this fallacy of logic in thinking that the cover band crowd isn't capable of playing metal, and therefore hates on it. Could that be because you have a beef with the cover band folks, and need to justify it?

^ That's not really the point, but it does serve to illustrate - why is there so much hate for cover bands? What makes people assume that crappy, poorly-done blastbeat "original" (which are usually anything but) metal is "better" than a quality cover band?
 
#8
Because when many of us were "coming up" in music as musicians, Hair and Metal were the genres which spawned bands popping up in garages all over our towns...and we had to wade through the mire of guitards who played at "eleven" and told us how to play our instruments day in and day out, which in those bands was often simply the root of their chord pumped at straight 8ths or 16ths with no deviation or syncopation.
Many of these guitards seemed to be totally insecure and if a bassist had any talent, and could create a run in say Dorian mode which complimented the chordal structure and melody of the song, the guitard would often state (musically incorrectly for the record) "stick to the chord and play it straight!".
It wasn't until I started making somewhat of a living playing other genres of music that allowed me to play MUSIC on my instrument that i could get any kind of thought or closure on this concept.
I love classic metal BTW- Geezer Butler is not expected to just stick to the root note and not syncopate...just my .02...
 
#10
It is angry, agressive, passionate music, and it sounds best when played at high volume. It's mostly not very pretty, and in fact is mostly pretty abrasive. Those, and the fact that metal is seen (wrongly the vast majority of the time) as evil devil-worshipper music all conspire to give it a black mark in the eyes of the general population.

It is loud and distorted, so some musical people have a hard time picking out one musical element or another, and because they can't find it, they assume it doesn't exist. They thefore label it is incomplete, or amateurish, or musically immature, or whatever condescending label their arrogance has taught them. There are certainly more than a few metal bands that eschew melody a lot of the time, like the mighty Meshuggah, and even with their considerable talent, skill, and compositional genius, it sounds foreign and chaotic, so a lot of musical snobs write it off as immature.
 
#12
Personally, I have a hard time taking metal seriously because its everywhere. By everywhere, I mean everybody that has played for 2 weeks is in a "metal band". Maybe its just a regional thing here, but its like a plague of metal musicians, and most of them are truly terrible.

Not to say there aren't some decent metal groups out there, I just think that they are very few and far between.
 
#15
How metal would metal be if everyone loved it? I'm not sure that anyone really enters that genre seeking musical legitimacy... even if there probably is a higher bar for entry when it comes to technical proficiency.

Besides, anyone can wank around on scales at 280+ BPM given enough time. Not everyone can write a good song, regardless of the genre.
 
#18
Every once in a while someone will make a thread like this trying to defend metal, and exactly what has happened here happens every time. If you like metal (i'm in this boat too), you're best off just not trying to defend it on this forum. Some people just don't get it.
 

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