Much as I love the title From Beyond, I think an altogether scarier title would be “From Within.” The things that really get you are the ones you can’t see because they’re behind your eyes. Metal got blindsided by one of these in the last decade.
What happened was that black metal ran out of ideas, and death metal ran out of energy, in about 1995 or 1998 depending on who you talk to. What came after that was metalcore and nu-metal, which are so close in compositional style — both very much closer to rock than metal — that we group them together as nu-core.
The response of metal was unfortunate. Ignoring the advice of sage elders, the metal fans who remained circled the wagons and insisted on ideological purity. No, not of the kind that excludes stuff incompatible with metal, like rock and rap. But literally, a hell-bent desire to repeat the past nearly exactly as it happened.
It’s like tourism. Charlemagne fought here, so you stand here and take a picture. Leonardo da Vinci sketched here, so you eat pizza here and Instagram it to your colleagues back home. Metal tourism involves pretending you’re Darkthone and it’s 1991 for the first time and you’re being a massive innovator by coming up with a new sound.
Except you’re not. It’s 1999 or 2013 and you’re in a bedroom with garage band, making another recombinant album for another recombinant audience. They’ll praise it to the skies for two weeks, then drift on to something else because basically it’s generic, and then popularity becomes a game of making people like your stuff by being their internet buddies.
This kind of toxic environment gave the Full Moon Productions bulletin board such a bad name the label basically quit. FMPers could be counted on to buy lots of records, but that’s like 1000 per pressing, and since they’re so elite and rare, spend a lot of money on them. Other than that, it was favoritism, infighting, backstabbing, and other pointless activity.
Now, in the unlikeliest of places, Nuclear War Now! productions forum has come to face the same problem — and it’s dawning on metalheads that this isn’t limited to a specific place or time, but is a universal human failing like hipsterism:
From the Devil’s Tomb was pretty good imo, but of course the tryhards will disagree. These fags change taste like underwear. Just look at the recent Wrathprayer thread. Now it is “overrated”, but a year ago these same poseurs were worshipping it like it’s the best thing ever since sex. – Candlemass
The vitriol picked up speed:
I’ve come to understand this board is full of kvltist wanna-be’s who are in fact a bunch of hipsters trying to follow trends to appear “elite”, though only a fractional minority truly “gets it”. Thoth
This post isn’t designed to mock the NWN board, or even the FMP board, or the people involved. They’re important because they’ve been perceptive enough to notice something that’s gone wrong with the metal community: it went within, and in doing so, lost its sense of what made it great. Now it’s the emotional equivalent of burnt-out old men, either repeating the past or cynically making derivative crap because they can sell it.
Our future lies beyond these barriers.
Tags: bitterness, cracked plate, hipsters, metal, Satan
do you dig bmpz? do you dig riffs? do you dig drumz? if so you rule and you will dig this. the reason Metal rules is because it rules, hard. the riffs are really something, they talk in foreign tongue, perhaps yiddish? whatever it speaks, it speaks it well. i mean justice MIGHT jam this if it was on tape and you told him it was a rehearsal demo but even then, the production is too good for fades. but fuck them because to most of us that rules and the production fingers my ass. I recommend Metal to non bitches, homophobes and justice, maybe fade and wilton too, Metal features riffz, bpmz and riffs, . If you don’t like real Metal never come back on the site again because you are gay and honestly if you are that gay i wont help you because i do not support that lifestyle!
Bro i got a band we play at 240 bpm’s!! Thats fast!! We’re the new face of metal!!
i enjoy reading your reflections brett, nice cave of philosophy i may say.
I couldn’t agree more with this thread but i see people all the time claiming the same (me included, and i am not an old pal who lived the ’80s but totally hate the new wave) and no one think about what really matters, METAL. I don’t care who the fucks likes it or not, you will always be coming across with a great metalhead somewhere, we recognize each other, we know who took this train long ago and will never get off even in hell, and who are the ones that keep on getting every train steps in front of them.
hipsters (whatever this label means, posers i guess) will always be around, i haven’t lived the 80s but clearly they were there too (as sadus demo claims) now they have been multiplied but the good metalheads tribe will always prevail. Sells will rise, rereleases of ’80s demos that no one care in that time too and people will buy those, i did it and i will be doing it, i don’t have too much money but i love it, some will just buy them and resell them instantly through ebay cause the did not like it cause they were not into it… so we don’t have to worry. Good heads are always there… not exposing themselves does not mean they don’t exist nor they are dying.
i’m glad to know there’s people worrying about this too, the time will pass as always did.
cheers!
Onward into countless battles! The next thousand years are ours! Join us… we are the future!