"At the same time, the industry, instead of trying to reach kids' natural curiosity and innocent idealism...

"At the same time, the industry, instead of trying to reach kids' natural curiosity and innocent idealism, decided instead to make money by appealing to everything cowardly, stupid, and brutal in the rock audience. Heavy metal, for all its symphonic bombast, is a real rock-and-roll style, but with a handful of exceptions, its content is egotistical at best and nihilistic at worst. Meanwhile, nostalgia mongers of every stripe as well as schlock-pop hitmakers turned AM radio into the refuge from intelligence that fools had always believed it to be."

i'll throw a party when this fucking nematode dies

#triggered mealfag

I don't understand why he cares so much. Metal is the one genre that completely quarantines itself.

>Metal is the one genre that completely quarantines itself
Nowadays, not in the 70s-80s when he wrote that.

Music critics are all leftist hipsters who think rock should be the vehicle for Marxist revolution.

Why is this hack still alive?

>mfw Iron Maiden got included in with all the one hit wonders into his Meltdown section without receiving a word of criticism
>mfw Pantera just got a bomb symbol, meaning the album he listened to is irredeamable
>mfw he liked Metallica and their politics but was against their muscled image
>tfw he's against metal in part because he's against classical music which metal draws from

Metalfags got put in their place. Finally, all the pasty nerds got TOLD where to shove their joyless, reactionary beta uprising fantasies by a Harvard-educated rock critic.

South of Heaven [Def Jam, 1988]
>The slower tempos will please their target audience and diminish their joke appeal for outsiders. The lyric sheet will please their target audience and make outsiders laugh at them. (Two consecutive lines: "Impulsive habitat./Bastard sons begat your cunting daughters.") For guitarniks, anti-abortionists, and target audience only. B-

Live: Decade of Aggression [Def American, 1991]
>praise the Lord--I can hardly understand a word they're singing ("Hell Awaits") *

You can tell by these reviews alone that he knows his job and that he's worth reading.

He gave a B to the one Megadeth album he reviewed (So Far So Good So What) because he liked Dave's politics.

>mfw Iron Maiden got included in with all the one hit wonders into his Meltdown section without receiving a word of criticism

Ditto Judas Priest.

God bless Christgau. It's also kind of hilarious how he gets shit for actually having his own ideals and not praising shit that "should be" loved. He's a critic's critic. If you don't like it that means he's doing it right.

>God bless Christgau. It's also kind of hilarious how he gets shit for actually having his own ideals

Except he's not. All music critics are a hivemind, which means punk/alternative/Springsteen=good, metal=bad.

Ozzy Osbourne

Distinctions Not Cost Effective [1980s]

I have no interest in his albums, but I appreciate how he mooned the PMRC every chance he got. And his egg-frying scene in Penelope Spheeris's "The Decline of Western Civilization: The Metal Years" is a classic.

Christgau is the man who pissed off Lou Reed and Sonic Youth so much that they mentioned him by name on their records. Reed accused him of being anal and a foot fetishist, and Sonic Youth claimed he's old and should be forgotten about. In 1983. And 30 odd years later, people are doing the exact same thing on a Japanese shunga forum. Really makes ya think.

Btw, I'm sorta tempted to buy his autobiography, having read his entire page back to back. Just can't get enough of that 70s hip daddy style.

yeah hivemind

it's not like they all say metal is trash because it's actually bad

no, that couldn't be the case

He attacked Judas Priest several times in various columns/reviews without mentioning them by name.

>tfw watching Christgau trigger the fuck out of metal and progfags on Sup Forums

always fun

Michael Gira mailed him a bag of cum and there was some other dude who punched him out at a concert.

where the hell do you get a bag of cum from

I wish I could get his Creem stuff, and Bangs' too. I'm not paying for rock criticism tho.

I'm...pretty sure you would jerk off into a plastic baggie.

These reviews come to mind. You totally know he's talking about Priest in here.

Night in the Ruts [Columbia, 1979]

This opens with a promising song about their career called "No Surprize." Then they edge ever closer to the flash guitar, dull tempos, and stupid cover versions of heavy-metal orthodoxy. No surprise. C+

No Remorse [Bronze, 1984]

The critics who used to call Motorhead the worst band in the world had a point, which may be why Lemmy's high-speed metal has now turned into the thinking person's headbang. The stuff is so pure it's almost rarefied: no operatic declamations, no schlocky guitaristics, no satanism or medievalism or sci-fi or sexist s&m. Just aggression, violence, noise. Lemmy doesn't even bellow--his voice is more a hoarse, loud, one-note roar. This tasteful two-disc best-of-plus-four (new and definitive: "Killed By Death") is the first Motorhead product praised by Headheads since No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith, eight of whose eleven songs it includes (the eight best, too). Unless you've got an extra Y chromosone or beat your meat till it bleeds, you likely don't need it on a regular basis. But it'll sure come in handy at those precious moments when you want nothing so much as to smash somebody's face. A-

>This opens with a promising song about their career called "No Surprize." Then they edge ever closer to the flash guitar, dull tempos, and stupid cover versions of heavy-metal orthodoxy. No surprise. C+

He could also be talking about Van Halen.

Gira's just an asshole. Christgau gave his debut a B+ and was cautiously optimistic about it, which I doubt many other critics were at the time.

So he's a good troll.

he's an ideologue and his criticism is pure rhetoric

Vespertine [Elektra, 2001]
>I liked this a lot better once I heard how it was entirely about sex, which since it often buries its pulse took a while. Sex, not fucking. I'm nervous so you'd better pet me awhile sex. Lick the backs of my knees sex. OK, where my buttcheeks join my thighs sex. I'm still a little jumpy so you'd better pet me some more sex. How many different ways can we open our mouths together sex. We came 20 minutes ago and have Sunday morning ahead of us sex. Or, if fucking, tantric--the one where you don't move and let vaginal peristalsis do the work (yeah sure). The atmospherics, glitch techno, harps, glockenspiels, and shades of Hilmar Om Hilmarsson float free sometimes, and when she gets all soprano on your ass you could accuse her of spirituality. But with somebody this freaky you could get used to that. English lyrics provided, most of them dirty if you want. A-

Yep, it's just pure Marxist-Leninist agitation.

Come in and Burn [DreamWorks, 1997]

Speaking as someone who enjoyed Rollins' spoken word twofer "The Boxed Life", which recalls a lab assistant's job among other homely pursuits, it should come as no surprise that this thrash-and-churn is his metalest metal yet. It's more surprising that Spielberg and Katzenberg chose to make him their flagship rocker--for all his cult cred and corporate clout, he was off the charts in a couple of weeks. As pathetic as it is for aging Spinal Taps to fabricate an adolescent despair they remember mostly from groupies and fan mail, it's even more pathetic never to feel anything else. C-

Load [Elektra, 1996]

The good thing about being old is that I'm neither wired to like metal nor tempted to fake it. Just as I suspected, these Johnny-come-lately-meet-the-new-boss-same-as-the-old-boss-es can no more do grunge than they can double-ledger bookkeeping. Grunge simply isn't their meter. So regardless of what riff neatniks think, this is just a metal album with the songs shortened and the tempos slowed, which is good because it concentrates their chops, and bad because it also means more singing, which they can't. C+