In theory, metal is today's real rock and roll--the music of the people. It's basic, it's rude, kids love it...

In theory, metal is today's real rock and roll--the music of the people. It's basic, it's rude, kids love it, parents hate it. But the closer you look, the stupider and more delusory it seems. Metal isn't basic--it cultivates a pseudo-virtuosity that negates content. The dreams it promulgates are usually foolish and often destructive. Eighty per cent of the "people" who like it are male, and 98% of them are white.

Other urls found in this thread:

robertchristgau.com/xg/vr/decline-118.php
youtube.com/watch?v=kVSQnsuTs-g
youtube.com/watch?v=WOd0o969C2Y
youtube.com/watch?v=w95RRpnk8iI
youtube.com/watch?v=xdO9SzDd3OU&list=PL2A5872E744FE7F05&index=3
youtube.com/watch?v=W4Cro2yxRjw
youtube.com/watch?v=wZtWAqc3qyk
youtube.com/watch?v=utqWrkVEQvI
youtube.com/watch?v=qz4TkW7Q_GE
twitter.com/AnonBabble

i'm not gonna bother checking if thid is a real quote or not

This mildly scratches the metalhead.

It's true desu
Metal promises "complexity" but delivers none of it
It's vapid wank with nothing of substance.

dumb tripcunt

How am I wrong?

It is.

robertchristgau.com/xg/vr/decline-118.php

>Metal promises "complexity"
That's where you're wrong. In your attempt to bash an entire genre, you make an incorrect assumption.

>dismissing an entire genre
Why do people listen to this dude again?

Nonw of that is theoretical (in the musical sense)

>the greatest metal album of all time
>it's the violent delusions of a bellowing macho cuckold

You don't say.

metalfags promise complexity. not metal.

it's trap now.

What do you mean?

He's 100% right

Christgau is an old fucker who grew up in the 50s and he thinks all rock songs should sound like Rock Around The Clock. That's his problem; he has an extremely limited idea of what the genre can be.

>No metal is complex hurr durr
>HOW AM I WROONG!!??

shut the fuck up and listen to voivod

He's got some fair points. I don't know why he writes in that ridiculous style though. Promulgates? Was this to prove that Rock music critics were just as intelligent and "serious" as any sort of "high-art" critic?

Whatever he's old now.

Trap's the music of the people. It's basic, it's rude, kids love it, parents hate it. But the closer you look, the stupider and more delusory it seems.

Yeah there has never been a Metal band with complex music or arrangements. Good job faggot.

Correct.

>Whatever he's old now
He was only in his 40s when he wrote that.

youtube.com/watch?v=kVSQnsuTs-g

>Eighty per cent of the "people" who like it are male, and 98% of them are white.

it's cringe shit like this that i wish christgau would leave out of his work. one, it's completely baseless speculation, and two, it's stereotypical, blatantly insinuating that people of ethnic minorities just don't listen to metal

the genre as a whole doesn't promise anything. some musicians might say their music is, but that doesn't somehow group them all into the "vapid/pretentious" category

Voivod fits pretty neatly into Christgau's point

I agree for the most part, but he's irrelevant tbhonesto familia

How is AAL complex?

>only in his 40s
>ONLY
Oldfag plz go

Name one metal song that's not edgy bullshit or appeals to 13 year olds. You can't.

>the music of the people
No
>It's basic
No
>kids love it, parents hate it
No
>But the closer you look, the stupider and more delusory it seems
No
>it cultivates a pseudo-virtuosity that negates content
No
>The dreams it promulgates are usually foolish and often destructive
No
>Eighty per cent of the "people" who like it are male, and 98% of them are white
Probably, but this isn't a bad thing

also LMAO at the quotation marks around people

metal is huge among latin americans

Doesn't old age start at 60+?

I assume you've already heard Maudlin and it wasnt complex enough for you?

Guitar and drum parts are complex and difficult to play, they regularly use difficult rhythms, chord changes, progressions, and riffs.

and here we see the hilarious outcome of the pernicious trend Christgau saw in the '80s

shredfags must be the biggest pseuds in all of music

Correct.
>difficult to play
That's not complexity, that technical difficulty.
What about them is complex?
When I think complex, I think of different things.
This is complex: youtube.com/watch?v=WOd0o969C2Y
This too is complex: youtube.com/watch?v=w95RRpnk8iI

How is AAL complex?

He's 13. To a 13 year old, 30 is elderly.

OK that Autechre isn't very complex.
I really mean this one:youtube.com/watch?v=xdO9SzDd3OU&list=PL2A5872E744FE7F05&index=3

Don't disrespect the dead.

metal fans are usually not very intelligent, they have a different definition of complex. A LOT OF STUFF = complex

Me and my friends enjoyed this, but we analyzed it and the majority of their stuff is just pentatonic riffing more or less. Also, they use fucking backing tracks.

Christgau has been shitting on metal since Black Sabbath S/T which came out when he was only 27.

>Dream Theater for hipsters

>muh technical skill

it's not complexity. it's just technical skill. 2bh every aal song just sounds like guitar masturbation

I don't even like AAL whatsoever or tech-metal at all, it's just an example of "complex" metal.

You're just moving the goalposts, AAL are hugely technically complex in the dictionary definition of the word. As defined by the dictionary, complex means
>a group of things that are connected in complicated ways
AAL meets this criteria clearly. Not to say that that particular Boulez piece is less complex than the AAL song, but to nitpick between complexity and technical difficulty is ultimately pointless because mechanically these words are referring to the same general concept.

>This song is complex
>No, it's just technically difficult!
It's a pointless distinction, sorry.

Where did you study music?

>ersatz shit
Never Forget

Okay, then here's another complex piece that's fundamentally different to AAL.
youtube.com/watch?v=W4Cro2yxRjw

How is it complex?

>It's a pointless distinction, sorry
It is not. You could play a C major scale at 1000bpm, it would be very difficult but not complex at all.

"lets write a dumb metal song and leave out random notes"

It's compositionally utilizing angular and atonal guitar lines against polyrhythms.

Fair point, but I think you could at least concede that there is some metal that isn't solely dedicated to playing scales incredibly quickly but is complex in other ways?

That doesn't prove anything. Your ability to digest new music completely disappears by that age Most of the critics didn't like BS back then because they were all about Christgau's age (late 20s) and already had a preconceived notion that the Beatles were the final word in rock and didn't accept anything after 1969. Actual kids at the time though ate the stuff up like Valiums.

"A man has gotten all the ideas he will ever have by the age of 25. He cannot learn anything new."

-- William James

I'd say human immunodeficient turbo folk bass is the music of the people. It's basic, it's rude, kids love it, parents hate it. But the closer you look, the stupider and more delusory it seems.

there sure is

It's not atonal, it's explicitly linked to Eb.
The rhythms are complex though.

lol

What makes music complex? I don't know music theories and am just a listener. Can you summarize what makes music complex?

>The rhythms are complex though.
complex or random?

That being said, there's nothing new or earthshattering in this music. If I want that rhythmic activity, I can turn on music from 100 years ago.

don't start with this egotist bullshit. argue with his point or don't

>entry-level accessible metal

listen up my boy
if you want to argue about complexity in metal you're going to have to better
you are, again, mistaking technical skill for complexity

If you don't think the Gorguts is complex, then effectively you don't think this is complex either: youtube.com/watch?v=wZtWAqc3qyk

(Boulez would agree with you, but I don't necessarily)

in the literal sense, random is the most complex thing there is

I don't understand why so many mealfags are obsessed with the "artistic legitimacy" of their genre. I listen to metal when I don't give a shit about any of that stuff.

>If I want that rhythmic activity, I can turn on music from 100 years ago.
that goes for all popular music

>don't start with this egotist bullshit. argue with his point or don't
He fundamentally does not understand what complexity in music is.

Right, but most popular music isn't promising or claiming complexity. That's Metal's argument.

>I don't understand why so many mealfags are obsessed with the "artistic legitimacy" of their genre.
They need something to hold on. Stupid people need that.

Actually you're incorrect, it's in C sharp.

Check your pitch training m8, it's pretty off.

I don't understand how you can even listen to anything where the vocalist is pretending to be a spooky demon and then go on the internet to argue about how it's fine art. The new wave of hipster metal has the same problem.

One thing I like about Christgau is that he is determined to find ways to appreciate popular music that don't involve bending over for music academia

This. It's like that critic in Almost Famous who tells the kid it's too bad he missed out on the Rock era and it was just the mid 70s. All the old fags back in those days wanted to believe they experienced the real deal and everything that came after was nothing.

Little did they know it would take until 2012 or so for Rock music to finally completely die.

Rock's not dead

Christgau's an annoying, condescending, dismissive guy, but he's nowhere near as bad as Scruffy, so I have to give him a pass on pretty much everything.

Scaruffi actually has good taste and knows music theory, unlike Christgau.

>it's cringe shit like this that i wish christgau would leave out of his work. one, it's completely baseless speculation, and two, it's stereotypical, blatantly insinuating that people of ethnic minorities just don't listen to metal
Didn't he write that in 1988?

He's kinda right you know. Instrumentally, it's complex yes, but I feel like the "metal" formula is overdone af. I do enjoy metal as a whole but I can't help but see a lot of similarities and stereotypes.

This isn't true. A lot of guys did tune out of music in the late 70s but remember that Neil Young was going around with Sex Pistols T-shirts.

Scruffy has fucking terrible taste. His favorite fucking band is Type O Negative.

Besides, Christgau does get some brownie points for being ahead of the curve on a lot of the more experimental, artsy punk bands that would later become massively influential, like DNA

>Besides, Christgau does get some brownie points for being ahead of the curve on a lot of the more experimental, artsy punk bands that would later become massively influential, like DNA
Also he was ahead of the curve on hip-hop and was endorsing rappers in the 80s when it was still an underground thing in the New York 'hoods.

>it's cringe shit like this that i wish christgau would leave out of his work. one, it's completely baseless speculation, and two

It's dumb but he wrote for the Village Voice so it was kind of obligatory to use the "anything negative must be the product of straight CIS males" schtick.

The VV was DailyKos before DailyKos.

I think it's important to note that he wrote this review in 1988, in reference to a documentary about the LA glam metal scene. The entire essay is basically a criticism of that scene alone. Consider that most of the really great artistic innovation in metal didn't happen until the 90s. There were some really innovative bands in Europe at the time like Napalm Death, Bathory, and Celtic Frost, but I doubt Christgau, an American punk enthusiast, had any awareness of them. The only great thing that was happening in American metal at the time was thrash, and for every great American thrash band like Megadeth or Cro-Mags, there was a number of awful ones.

No critics at that time knew anything outside of Anglo countries. There was some phenomenal stuff going on in Europe, South America, and Japan, but nobody here ever knew about. In those pre-Internet days, most critics had no access to anything beyond major label releases unless it was a local underground act, which is how Christgau and others all jumped on the Ramones' nuts when 98% of the country had never heard of them (Ramones S/T sold about 1000 copies).

>I think it's important to note that he wrote this review in 1988, in reference to a documentary about the LA glam metal scene.
Then in that case it's definitely spot on. The Glam Metal scene DID promise virtuosity and delievered next to nothing. Every guitarst was trying to be the next Van Halen and yet could only employ a few of his most obvious tricks. Sure some of them could solo well but even then it was just simple power chord based songs under a typical Pop-song structure.

You guys aren't getting it. What most of the rock journalists in the 70s _didn't_ like was the overbloated prog epics and California hippie triple albums. Yes, they did like 50s rock-and-roll b/c childhood nostalgia and punk came along as a welcome relief to many. Punk promised a return to the halcyon days of Elvis and Little Richard.

Though Christgau was never a fan of Van Halen anyway. He rated 1984 a B+ and the rest were B- and lower.

Note the other important piece of his column.

"L.A.'s atypically glam scene is where the hot American metal bands hail from these days, but that's a new development--of the six elder statesmen who volunteer their tarnished wisdom, only Alice Cooper got his start in the showbiz capital. Maybe that's why the old guys make so much more sense than the young ambition addicts whose mercifully truncated music is the film's ostensible subject. More likely it's that they're successful enough to have turned into elder statesmen and smart enough to have succeeded. This movie bombed because it got panned in metal's word-of-mouth underground. Nonfans will learn a lot from it."

He does acknowledge that the old guard from the 70s like Ozzy and Alice Cooper were more legit than the bandwagoning phonies like Poison.

Uh...yeah. Ozzy, Alice Cooper, and Gene Simmons were just trying to create fun, interesting music. Poison and W.A.S.P were a couple of scrubs signed by a record label and told to sound like Black Sabbath, Kiss, and Van Halen without understanding how their music worked or the influences behind it.

Most of those hair metal bands were completely boring and all their songs were exactly the same.

>power ballad
>squeal guitar rocker

All with the same exact songwriting and chord progressions.

>and knows music theory, unlike Christgau

"As much as I love jazz, I've avoided writing extensively about it due to my comparative lack of knowledge on composition."

if there's one thing you can conclude from op's word salad, it's that he hasn't listened critically to any decent metal before

For a start, you're retarded, read the fucking thread.
For a second, there is no second.

So same with Puddle of Mudd and the other shitty post grunge bands.

Christgau liked Motorhead, which is sufficient evidence that he understood and appreciated the good parts of metal

thanks for the context, because I was about to discount the quote and didn't realize that by "metal" that he was actually referring to 80s glam

>Eighty per cent of the "people" who like it are male, and 98% of them are white.
How much of a self loathing faggot to you have to be to write things like this when you are a white man yourself?

that was when being a self-loathing faggot was the "in" thing, now it's kind of like being a creationist, I give about a year until white guilt is completely destroyed

Hes such a hack

>Metal can't be complex
youtube.com/watch?v=utqWrkVEQvI
youtube.com/watch?v=qz4TkW7Q_GE