Metal is a world of its own, and even listeners who grew up hearing Led Zeppelin or Quiet Riot on AOR radio rarely combine an appetite for difficult ideas with a continuing passion for such music. Rock intellectuals prefer "alternative," even rap, and their disdain rankles the metal faithful. As one of those rock intellectuals, however, I remain unconverted. The intensity of its phallic narcissism has few parallels outside X-rated movies, toilet art, and (oh yes) rap.
For many of us, metal's classical affinities are the very thing that renders it unlistenable--that as far as we're concerned, the instrumentally dexterous, rhetoric-drenched, and often melodramatic approach to meaning the two musics share is what rock and roll was put on earth to save us from.
If you read his old columns, he used to go into meltdown mode over Reagan and Bush.
Blake Bell
>turbo autism >the columns
Gavin White
>Rock intellectuals
Jackson Watson
>rock intellectuals >phallic narcissism
does it get any more "wew lad" than this?
Logan Torres
Those were truly braindead columns. Trump must remind him of those virile metal barbarians he has nightmares about. :^)
Zachary Hill
Now see here. He has deep-seated insecurities that he projects onto metal and politicians.
Kayden Anderson
Why is he so pathetic, and, perhaps the worst thing of all, why does he expose himself publicly in such manner?
Aaron Reyes
Nu Male--The Column
Samuel King
Master of Puppets [Elektra, 1986]
I feel at a generational disadvantage with this music not because my weary bones can't take its power and speed but because I was born too soon to have my dendrites rerouted by progressive radio. This band's momentum can be pretty impressive, and as with a lot of fast metal (as well as some sludge) they seem to have acceptable political motivations--antiwar, anticonformity, even anticoke, fine. But the revolutionary heroes I envisage aren't male chauvinists too inexperienced to know better; they don't have hair like Samson and pecs like Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's the image Metallica calls up, and I'm no more likely to invoke their strength of my own free will than I am The 1812 Overture's. B-
Joshua Perez
hey, robert christgau was the original nu male. show some respect
Jose Nelson
Too bad. He kind of liked Ted Nugent in the 70s. I bet he doesn't now for reasons you may easily guess. :^)
Angel Walker
"Punk was rubbish. The reason they embraced punk was because it was rubbish and the reason they embraced rubbish was because they could control it, They could say 'Oh yeah, we’re punk so we can sneer at everybody. We can’t play our fucking instruments, but that means we can make out that this whole thing is some enormous performance art.' Half the kids that were in punk bands were laughing at the art establishment, going: “What a fucking bunch of tosspots. Thanks very much, give us the money and we’ll fuck off and stick it up our nose and shag birds. But what they’d really love to be doing is being in a heavy metal band surrounded by porn stars."
Samuel Cooper
>and not because I was raised liberal, because I wasn't, but because I took Corinthians 13:13 literally--I was advocating for multiethnic immigration at age fifteen
Landon Brown
Christgau is almost a walking stereotype of the New Yorker who's never set foot outside of NYC and doesn't realize there's anything to the west of the Hudson River.
Ian Cook
Is it just me or does Christgau have a lot in common with Trump?
>born in the 40s >German ancestry >from Queens, moved to Manhattan as an adult >built a career on bullshitting and pretending to be an expert on things he's not >everyone else in his business hates him
Noah Hughes
He's the master of elegantly saying absolutely nothing at all.
