Can someone explain heavy metal to me ?
I hear it and it makes me uncomfortable. I'm trying to listen to more of it (like pic related, which
I really enjoy). But what is the actual purpose? I can usually never understand the lyrics, especially when metal singers have demonic sounding vocals. Are you just supposed to enjoy the demonic vocals? Is the heart of metal sounding demonic/crazy/spooky? What is the philosophy of creating heavy metal music? (if there is one).
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You listen to enough metal, youll eventually start being able to decipher the lyrics. Goatwhore is pretty easy to understand.
stop listening to """"""extreme""""" metal that's just muzak noise made by manchildren and start listening to the actual heavy stuff like early acts that were blues inspired. no blues = no heaviness
at some point you get used to the singing style and it starts sounding like lyrics, until then yeah it's difficult. It also seems your narrowing down metal to death growls which is definitely not the only kind. Whatever the case, the metal you seem to be inferring to appeals to extreme emotions that other genres can't really touch as well as metal can.
a lot of heavier metal literally is just growling, pretty often the vocals will be used as an instrument instead of for lyrics. it's really an acquired taste.
Most of it is just fun, especially live. People who take metal too seriously are retarded. Also, watch some music videos or live videos of metal bands performing. I get that the whole "demon" voice thing can be off-putting, but seeing a normal looking human performing that vocal style really humanizes the music and makes it less intimidating. Its just a guy screaming lol
Like Black Sabbath ?
Metal is a very wide genre. The "demonic" vocals are part of metal's identity. Although, you don't need harsh vocals.
I enjoy it because it makes me feel good, bad, energetic, and calm. There's an artist and a sound for all the emotions I want to feel. It's not all anger and hate (although that is prevalent).
I'm not really that good at convincing people since more articulate people will just tear me apart but... I'll always like metal. I'm sure if you give it time you'll come to like it as well, OP.
It's literally the opposite
Tech death is a fucking joke. Dickhead white trash kids playing arpeggios as fast as they can.
Listen to Burzum, Melvins, Acid Bath, Obituary, Cathedral
Falsies out
>Listen to Burzum, Melvins, Acid Bath, Obituary, Cathedral
i can almost see the soy oozing out the screen
OP as a fellow slint lover and post-punker, the best way to 'get' metal is to go to a live show show of a band you like or heard is good live.
I couple years ago I saw envy, Deafheaven, and Tribulation. Which was when it sort of clicked for me personally. I just recently saw Bell Witch and Primitive Man in tour which was awesome, small venue and they played Mirror Reaper in full.
I pretty much mainly listen to Doom and Black metal, and their subgenres. Which I think are the most appealing to me personally. Especially going back to a lot of favorite punk music, I see many parallels that are a little hard to articulate but make sense to me.
I'm ready for everyone to call me a soyboy but if you do your dick will shrink.
No one asked for this but some random favorites of mine:
>My Dying Bride - Turn Loose the Swans
>Weakling - Dead As Dreams
>Harvey Milk - Special Wishes
Also I listened to the OP pic and it made my brain melt while I was driving home
I'm not going to call you a soyboy but holy fuck Spiderland is a trash album. It amazes me that people legitimately like it. Its so ridiculous that it almost feels like a massive inside joke to pretend to like it.
yee
Honestly I don't know how to explain it to you if you already hate it. Personally I think it's GOAT tier in terms of rock albums. The entire atmosphere, the lyrics, the pacing, the interplay of all the instruments. When I first heard it I was basically whatever about i, but after listening to it a few more times it made way more sense and I've loved it ever since. Most records that are worth it, I think take a long time to digest for me. It's only 39 minutes, which is the perfect length, it builds up to the end as well. It just feels really fucking cohensive and like a ride.
I'm not sure exactly why you think it's bad, it could be for the same reasons I think it's good. idk
but it's good for you, also it doesn't ooze
OP you just gotta find what subgenres appeal to you, nobody loves all of them.
To each their own user. I find the singers voice and vocal delivery obnoxious and all around bad. It's so lo fi and garage rock sounding that I'm surprised you're about to pick out all of the detailed instrumentation. The drummer is pretty good but the tone they got with him is awful...
I don't think you're going to be changing my mind in this one, user. I'm sorry.
The knuckledraggers on this Laotian tea-drinking forum will hit you upfront with some Lithuanian ambient war metal recorded with turnips and released on limited-edition turnip format (3 copies total) and call you a soyboy if you aren't trve and kvlt within 10 seconds, this is because they are insecure dweebs. With metal, you have to start with the gateway bands, feel out what you like and don't like and go from there, slowly acclimatizing yourself to things like blastbeats and harsh vocals in the process. Slint's actually not bad as starting points go, they had elements of noise rock which has plenty of abrasion on it's own.
>Can someone explain heavy metal to me ?
It's music for people that aren't giant pussies like you.
I bet you think the police keep you safe at night.
Acquired taste, like most things in life. You just don't get exposed to it normally so you'll need to consciously overcome that initial hurdle.
brb getting on my soapbox
Why do people always assume metal is death growls and Satan? Like holy shit do 5 minutes of research, learn a brief history of the genre. And by 5 minutes, I literally mean 5 minutes. That's what I did when I started getting into rap, and oh damn would you look at that, now I have an idea of where it came from and a couple of the seminal artists.
It's like walking into Disney World through the loading dock by the dumpsters, and then calling the whole thing trash because your first 5 steps were next to a pile of garbage. Explore the thing before you apply labels to it.
Anyway, to actually answer OP's question, in a sense, yeah, the heart of some metal, largely death and doom, is to sound aggressive and spooked and intense as fuq. People don't go to horror movies to feel warm and fuzzy, they go to feel their skin creep and not be able to sleep that night. Same thing with metal, at least approximately. That was the philosophy that founded Black Sabbath, in fact.
OP, if you're still monitoring this shit, gimme some artists you enjoy outside of metal and I'll see if I can find some recommendations that'll help bridge the gap and get you into the genre. Off the top of my head, just go listen to Metallica, they're famous for a reason, or Iron Maiden. Dio, too, is pretty damn accessible for normies.
I think, in the end, metal as a genre is just an attitude consisting of bombastic, theatrical music with a healthy dose of rebellion. That theatricality is what separates it from Rock, imo, that and the ~brotherhood~ of metal, which is pretty gay when I put it like that, but I've found metal, being less accessible and having a reputation for being a bit of a secret club, harbors that mentality more than standard rock.
Op, don't "try to get into metal", that would make you a poser. Love for this genre is awakened in the listener the moment it is heard. You do not like metal. Be real with yourself.
great copypasta
nigga that wasn't copypasta
>I hear it and it makes me uncomfortable.
If all films were 100% pleasant to watch all the time, cinema would be a boring art form.
>Listen to Burzum, Melvins, Acid Bath, Obituary, Cathedral
Solitude Aeturnus user.
Robert Lowes voice is damn hypnotic.
Death growls aren't the only metal that exists. Although I do enjoy melodic and black metal, my favorite genres are symphonic and progressive which tend to use death growls sporadically.
>I hear it and it makes me uncomfortable
This is very understandable. The genre's best stuff is abrasive, intense, and unlike punk or noise all that's thrown at you in complex (for pop music) structures with very visceral melodic content that doesn't seem all that melodic to begin with. The approach to vocals in the more extreme metal genres is also unconventional compared to other genres. But a lot of this is stuff one can get used to through repeated listening of the genre and understanding why these choices are made.
Metal music at the end of the day is all about creating visceral experiences with melodic content that has motivic development (meaning that what's being played is built off what was there before, this is common in sonata form of classical music as well as progressive rock.) Standard motivic development requires melodic content, but just doing melody the normal way like say...Bach style multiple melodies at once or the standard "melody on top of a couple chords" that kind dominates music, neither really helps have some kind of visceral hard hitting content. Enter metal guitar riffs. Far more intricate than hard rock riffs, they offer the main melodic content to listen to but they are heavy as well thanks to guitar distortion, the percussive nature of guitar playing, and the melodies being made often of chords rather than standard individual notes. A side note for the whole "why is metal mostly just power chords they are so simple!" well that is because power chords sound the most percussive when played on a guitar thanks to the strong interval created by those notes played together. Another note would be for those that wonder about Iron Maiden who are almost always melodic with not as much heaviness, but that band tries to circumvent this through guitar harmonies where two guitars play the same thing but in different places on the guitar.
Continued in next post...
Everything else is there to support this concept. The bass guitar often plays the same thing as the electric guitars because that only boosts the sound of the riffs and makes them heavier. The drums are often very intense because they are caught up with the speed and/or heavy hard hitting aspect of the riffs. The vocals, this one's pretty important, since they aren't the front and center thing here, they are like an accompaniment to the rest of the stuff. Like, you're listening to music that's low end heavy and abrasive due to usage of distortion. What would be the best accompaniment to something like that? A soft, clear voice? Or something that sounds just as low end heavy and distorted? Similarly for a band like Iron Maiden, high pitched vocals are the best fit because they are playing more melodic sounding riffs that are also more high pitched. The structure of the music is often classical (or prog rock) inspired. If you're familiar with prog, you'll notice where prog would have fancy instrumental parts, metal rather has riffs after riffs after riffs, that all develop from one to another. This kind of structure allows each track to make many changes, and thus allows the genre to make up for lacking complexity in the number of disparate parts at any one time (eg. like how Slint will have the two guitars, bass, drums and vocals do very different things at once like on Washer) by more than making up for it in structure.
Of course there's some exceptions to a lot of this. But even those choices make sense. For example technical bands like Gorguts and Pyrrhon will often have the guitars and bass play very different things because they bring intensity through playing stuff that is unconventional, technical, and virtuous. Lots of doom plays low end music combined with high pitched vocals because the riffs set the mood of hopelessness while the vocalist expresses it. Lots of doom and black metal also play less intricate stuff to focus more on the mood.
I hope this helps. Kinda typed this up quickly while I wait for this meeting to start so sorry if something's confusing or I missed something. Metal is a very enjoyable genre for me to listen to because it can deliver content that's both interesting from a hard hitting abrasive perspective but also keep the listener cerebrally engaged through the riffs, and I also love how the bands then get to be creative with the concept of melody in music because they gotta write something that's both intricate yet also heavy/visceral. Oh and lyrics, well they don't really matter. They are entirely below in priority to everything else I talked about. It's also why I think the genre has so much appeal around the world, too.
Disagree, it's totally possible to learn to love something. That's what art appreciation classes are all about.
Poser.
Pyrrhon is sick OP you should check out their newest album here: pyrrhonband.bandcamp.com
because Sup Forums has never heard actual post-, math or noise rock