Like a lot of music critics, I don’t like metal. It’s not that I don’t like it, exactly; I just don’t get it. Those Cookie Monster vocals growling about ghostly warriors from ancient cities, buried beneath rubble eons ago — all lost on me. And during metal’s formative years, the ’80s, I was listening to post-punk bands like the Replacements, not Warrant.
But lately, like scores of other music critics, I’ve been getting into some “hipster-metal bands,” so named because guys like us — guys who drool over Arcade Fire and drop Velvet Underground lyrics into everyday conversation — listen to them. Real metal dudes hate people like me. And that certainly includes D.X. Ferris, my co-worker and author of a new book about Slayer’s Reign in Blood, which is apparently some sort of classic metal album.
Ferris and I recently squared off over some of hipster metal’s biggest bands. Our exchange is below. Seems we reached some common ground. He hasn’t called me a “poseur asshole” in days. — Michael Gallucci
Mastodon
Gallucci: Mastodon’s breakthrough album, Leviathan, is a concept record based on Moby-Dick. The cover art features a giant whale capsizing a boat. There’s actually a song called “I Am Ahab.” The Atlanta band followed up Leviathan with Blood Mountain, another concept album — this one about some pretty horrible woods-dwelling creatures. Somehow, the music sounds exactly like those concepts.
Ferris: Even credible music fans make music appreciation an intellectual exercise: English teachers say Moby-Dick is good; Mastodon must be good. You embrace Leviathan based on Mrs. McGinty’s recommendation, when you should have checked it out, because “March of the Fire Ants” from the previous album, Remission, ruled. Metal dudes do it too. They figure Leviathan ruled, so Blood Mountain must rule too. But it’s pretty turgid.
High on Fire
Gallucci: I actually like parts of their latest album, Death Is This Communion, even though I picked up only a third of what singer Matt Pike is going on about. The cover art — a horned beast holding some skulls — made me wonder: Who falls for this devil shit? But it rocks pretty hard, especially for three guys.
Ferris: First, the guy on the cover is no more the devil than Warrant is metal. Second, once again we see the association effect: Steve Albini recorded High on Fire’s previous CD, Blessed Black Wings, one of the most grind-your-face-off albums ever recorded. Albini was in Big Black and recorded Nirvana, so High on Fire must be OK. You’re only giving Death Is This Communion partial credit, when, in fact, the album’s every bit as solid as Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black.
Isis
Gallucci: I like pretentious music. I like when bands stretch their ambitions and the lengths of their songs. That’s why I’d rather listen to Angels & Airwaves than Foo Fighters. Isis writes seven-minute tunes called “Firdous e Bareen.” I have no idea what their songs are about, but they’re built on a sonic landscape that comes pretty close to prog at times. Still, all the tracks tend to sound the same after about 20 minutes/three songs.
Ferris: If you don’t like metal, how can any metal you choose to like be good? Isis is typically lumped in with the instru-metal movement, which is a series of overlapping bands that are all indebted or connected to Neurosis, whose true metal cred is tenuous at best. But Isis is not metal, especially its latest album, In the Absence of Truth. It’s prog-emo, and vocal songs like “1,000 Shards” are particularly lah-dee-dah. There are no feelings in metal, except murderous rage and assorted anger.
Queens of the Stone Age
Gallucci: QOTSA are the proto-hipster-metal band. Writers who previously spent most of their time finding new ways to gush over the Magnetic Fields were all over this band in the late ’90s — presumably because frontman Josh Homme looked like a frat guy (no funky facial hair or visible tats) and had a sense of humor (metal dudes don’t). Plus, they play stoner metal, which is descended from Black Sabbath, a group that hipster metal fans used to hate, but now adore.
Ferris: QOTSA aren’t metal; they’re moody alt-rock that’s a little dark. Hipsters like them because they thought Homme’s previous band, the virtual Sabbath tribute Kyuss, was cool. And Queens is less threatening — like post-Black Album Metallica. Queens fans think it’s real dirty throwback rawk, but they can’t handle real tetanus/tinnitus-inducing riff revivalists like Down.
The Sword
Gallucci: These Austin longhairs also come with the stoner-rock tag. There are tons of sludgy guitar riffs and twin-shredding solos, but singer J.D. Cronise has more in common with the guy who sang in Blue Cheer than a circular-snack-loving Muppet. Still, the Sword’s latest album, Gods of the Earth, includes a song about “Fire Lances of the Ancient Hyperzephyrians.” I have no idea what that means.
Ferris: See? All this elaborate mythology and not one word about “Hail Satan”? Ancient Hyperzephyrians? You can’t just make shit up. True metal bands like Nile draw on 5,000 years of established mythology, pagan and otherwise. And what does the Sword come up with? “Uh, dood — we’re, like, the Sword and stuff.” It’s good rock, but when it comes to metal, it’s really the S-word.
This article appears in Jun 18-24, 2008.
Why don’t you worry less about what the “scores of other music critics” are doing, stop trying to name drop and be cool, and think for yourself?
Hack.
If you respond, be sure to throw in an Arcade Fire reference.
Why don’t you worry less about what the “scores of other music critics” are doing, stop trying to name drop and be cool, and think for yourself?
Hack.
If you respond, be sure to throw in an Arcade Fire reference.
What the hell is this junk? I mean the “conversation”, not the music. What are you two going on about, seriously? It sounds like you printed out 15 reviews from Pitchfork, cut them all up and rearranged the words. If it’s metal, it’s metal. If it’s rock, it’s rock. Not post-aggro sludge punk. Not Emo-infused latte Metal. No wonder the music biz sucks – trying to figure out all the stupid “labels’ makes you want to puke.
There was metal before there was hairsprayed stadium rock and this is what it sounded like. The cookie monster thing only took hold well after that was over (and it was doomed to be short-lived because it really lacks in the versatility department).
Hipsters don’t want to be identified with the things that were cheesy or stupid about metal, so they’ve started playing it the way it was meant to be. Good, heavy, well thought-out music played by talented people.
The only thing that makes you an asshole is that you are embarrassed to say you like metal.
Hipsters are assholes, like the writer himself. Hipster Metal is just another attempt for high-on-themselves music nerds to pigeon hole a group into some category. And Ferris while closer to the mark on metal (I liked the post-Black album reference) is also a high on himself music nerd to assume his definition of metal is somehow the only right one… even though metal began in the 60s and 70s and ibclude the likes of Deep Purple and Steppenwolf. Metal was around well before the likes of Slayer, lets not recategorize everything just to identify metal with speed volume and angst.
You guys are dorks
Sorry, what? Isis, “prog-emo”?
Have you fucking listened to anything off Celestial, Oceanic or Panopticon? “Deconstructing Towers” and “False Light” are two of the heaviest songs I have ever heard, and christ, I listen to Electric Wizard, Black Sabbath, Sleep, Sunn O))), Meshuggah, Opeth and so on. And they’re in no way fucking emo. Emo’s characterised by whiny, angsty vocals and punk-influenced music. Isis’s vocals are raw, low-end, well-nigh incomprehensible roars and bellows, and they’re used VERY sparingly anyway (I make it an average of 10 lines for a 7 minute song).
Sure, they may not be metal in a conventional sense, but take a listen to “False Light” and tell me in a maximum of two words what other genre label better sums it up.
Anyone who could write either of the following has no business discussing metal:
“metal’s formative years, the ’80s”
“There are no feelings in metal, except murderous rage and assorted anger.”
(^Also redundant.)
So I wouldn’t take either of their opinions seriously…
Reads as though it were written by college freshman.