originally written by Craig Hayes
This is the second installment in a five-part series. In Mainstreaming Metal, LR scribe Craig Hayes looks back on his experiences as a beacon for underground heavy metal within the confines of a mainstream-centric publication.
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A lot of the commentary cannonballs fired at writers covering metal in the mainstream suggest that they/I/we are frauds. Of course, there’s plenty of hipster, poser, and sellout shrapnel packed into those little mischief-making missiles, and I’ll get hit with all of that in further parts of Mainstreaming Metal. However, right here, it’s the overarching offence of fraud that’s in the gunsight.
Generally speaking, I don’t really care if someone wants to question my credibility because I wrote about metal for the mainstream website PopMatters. I bought my first metal LP at age 12, in 19-fucking-83, so that officially makes me too old, fat, bald, and lazy to enter into a debate about whether I’m allowed to write about metal.
That said, the more I think about what I wrote during my time in the mainstream, the more I think those folks firing the cannonballs make a pretty good point; because I was, kind of, a fraud.
I didn’t tell lies, embellish claims, or pretend to be a kool kat kvlt kommando during my time in the mainstream, but you could definitely make a case that I fraudulently depicted, or at the very least, misrepresented, the metal scene to onlookers.
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ACCIDENTAL DECEPTION
I spent most of my time at PopMatters writing insanely long-winded features, reviews, and columns, where I generally (and uber-excitedly) discussed underground bands. That was fun, for me and my three regular readers, but the problem is–and this is where my fraudulent behaviour gets shuffled right to the top of the deck–I never spent that much time covering any unimaginative or truly awful metal bands.
There are reasons for that. Firstly, I got to choose who I wrote about free from any editorial constraints or pressures. So what I did to fire up the neurotransmitters and write every day was concentrate on bands that I thought were making the most interesting noise. Secondly, I was always aware of the size of PopMatters’ audience. So, while the musicians I was writing about might not even have been aware that PopMatters existed, I still wanted to put them onto a big stage.
Were either of those acts fraudulent? Well, put ‘em together and you’ve got all the makings of some clearly biased coverage, however good-natured my intentions were.
To be fair, I did actually engage the cogs of critical thinking when writing. I wasn’t afraid to tear an album apart that I thought deserved it, and any flattery I dispensed was backed up by a thought-out explanation as to why a band or album deserved that praise.
However, in concentrating on writing mainly positive reviews overall, I unintentionally found myself feeling more like a propagandist than someone providing a true portrait of metal. Admittedly, the role of the music writer today is often seen as sorting the wheat from the chaff for the reader–ie I want to talk about albums I like, you want to read about good releases, so it’s a fair trade. Also, we know the media is filled with writers supporting their interests by carefully choosing what to cover and what to omit. So, what I did, and what plenty of other writers are doing, isn’t unusual or underhanded.
Still, I can’t help thinking that while it’s hardly spreading misinformation by writing primarily positive reviews, add them all up, and you’ve still got a giant misrepresentative mountain.
I think that presents us with a few potential problems in the mainstream. If I, (or really any of my peers) are only highlighting the best releases, then it might well suggest that metal is immune from criticism. It might also suggest that we’re hiding our failures away like we’re embarrassed, maybe pretending that they don’t exist at all, and it might look like metal writers, such as me, are just toadying scribes.
Whatever the case, metal takes enough knocks for being dumb. So, if writers like myself don’t spend enough time acknowledging, let alone criticising, poor works in the mainstream, then what does that say about us to outsiders?
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A CONSPIRACY
The mainstream media gets accused of a lot of things. My favorite? That it’s lurking about secretly conspiring to steal our bands. I can let you in on a little secret in that regard, it’s really not. There’s no denying that bands are hyped sky-high on many an occasion, but the majority of mainstream media editors know next to nothing about metal, let alone who to promote as the buzz band of the moment–they rely on their writers to do that for them. Most mainstream sites are solely interested in whether a writer can provide engaging content to draw in readers in, and hopefully that comes from a knowledgeable perspective. That’s about it.
It’s always struck me as curious that a mainstream site like Pitchfork is endlessly picked on for covering metal. Sure, I’ve heard the trendy tastemaker argument about Pitchfork’s supposed sins, but the fact is, under Brandon Stosuy’s tenure as a writer and now editor for the site, Pitchfork has gathered some knowledgeable metal writers backed by an editor with a long history of metal fandom. That combination is a rare occurrence in the mainstream media, and while you’re well within your rights to gripe about the opinions expressed on Pitchfork (as much as anywhere else), you should remember that the alternative looks much worse.
Where mainstream editors know nothing about metal, there’s an extra element of trust placed in writers to provide well informed reporting. Of course, putting faith in writers to do just that is clearly problematic, not just because that’s where the excited hype enters the fray, but also because we’ve all read mainstream coverage of metal riddled with factually inaccurate tales too. That’s one clear deficit of some mainstream sites handing off the responsibility of metal coverage to those presumed to have a knowledgeable perspective. Erroneous information does get printed as gospel truth, and to make matters worse, many publishers show no accountability or any inclination to fix that problem. That’s left up to those willing to take the time to correct errors in the commentary box, while the mainstream machine just collects the hit and click, and quickly moves on to the next story.
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FAIRY TALES
Obviously, metal is all about blurring fact and fiction too, but if we’re only highlighting releases that fall within the B to A+ ratio, then it’s a fantasy we’re constructing. I might have ripped the guts out of a few albums in my time, but I still played my role in helping to write a fairy tale on occasion. And while the web is filled with enough content to fry the synapses a thousand times over, and negative reviews might not be everyone’s first choice to read, at the very least, pointing out the dross as well as the delights makes for a more self-aware and realistic representation of metal.
As mentioned, with the growth of blogs and a media world desperate for fresh fodder every day, there is confusion about what a music writer’s role is today. Are we here to uncover the treasure, hide the turds, or to take the reader by the hand and save them all the legwork?
When I was a young metal fan there was no internet, and half the fun was scouring magazines and zines, discovering bands on my own. Nowadays, reading habits have changed. We’re encouraged, online at least, to flit from link to link, to consume and move on. I guess every writer has to choose how they’ll guide the reader through that jungle. However, although I never lied about any of the albums I enjoyed, I would completely understand if someone gauged my recommendations (or those of my similarly positioned peers) as suspect. Because seemingly every album I ever wrote about was either a gold or silver medalist.
In this day in age, with so much web content shoved in our faces, confidence in a writer’s opinion counts for a lot. So, if we’re presenting metal in the mainstream, then I think we need to be accurately portraying its strengths and weaknesses. Then readers can have faith that when we’re emphasising the best works we’re doing so from a trustworthy standpoint.
Clearly, that won’t satisfy those who think metal shouldn’t even be in the mainstream, but it would certainly be a good start in repairing any false trails that have been carved out.
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NAIL IN THE COFFIN
I know all the excuses about why many writers aren’t spending time critiquing so much as just feeling under pressure to create content. Writers are busy, life is busy; who’s got the time or inclination to be writing reviews of bad albums, and who’s got the time to read them? I used all those excuses myself, repeatedly, but there’s clearly an art in writing about why an album fails, and we all know that such reviews are often just as enlightening as any positive write-up.
Sadly, that’s an art that’s disappearing from view, lost in the milieu of endless click-baited filler, and while what I did in the mainstream wasn’t dishonest, it could very easily be seen as misguided (or providing another nail in the coffin of actual music criticism). I certainly deserved any of the condemnation sent my way for fraudulently representing metal in the mainstream, even if fraud never even entered my mind while I was there. It’s the one criticism thrown around about mainstream coverage of metal that always makes me think, “Yeah, fair enough,” but while I’m 100 percent guilty of that charge, I’m also in good company.
In the next part of Mainstreaming Metal, I’ll to step out from the mainstream and into the metal sphere, and I’ll look at how what I did in the mainstream was in no way unique to that domain.
