As I’m sure you’ve noticed, our planet’s rotation through the toilet that is our universe continues to gain significant momentum with each passing year. Nature hates us, most of us are broke, those lucky enough to have a job often hate it, shitty people continue to attack good people, that sneaky country over there is up to something, we’re getting sadder and unhealthier, cops are going buck-fucking-wild, and pretty soon we’ll be seeing ads for Verizon directly on the moon.
Metal is up the creek, too, if we’re to believe everything we see and hear through social media. And for the love of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the rest of the Smurf village, why wouldn’t we? Fans are even more upset about the current state of our genre than they were in… Well, I guess 2014. But the bees storming most folks’ bonnets bear a striking resemblance to the same ones that have been sending arms flailing since the get-go: Who’s allowed entry and who’s not, and just who the hell owns the lawn.
Here’s a quick fact worth mentioning before we move any further: Rebellion, conflict and pushing boundaries have always been necessary pieces to the heavy metal puzzle, and opposing forces both inside and outside our camp will always endure. This is beneficial to keep in mind whenever people jump out of bed with both arms swinging about why modern bands suck, old bands are unnecessary, hipsters need to pound Drano, etc., because however hard you decide to push, it’s only a matter of time (usually seconds) before someone pushes back with equal or greater force. Thanks, Newton.
The internet is extremely fertile ground for allowing things to get insane quickly, and I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that it would be refreshing if people could refrain from jumping from “here I am eating my Honey Nut Cheerios” to “YOUR BRAIN IS LITERALLY MADE OF BURNING GARBAGE” in two seconds flat. Thanks, internet.
IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH HEAVY METAL IN THE MODERN AGE?
First of all, yes, of course there is.
Second of all, there’s something ostensibly wrong with virtually everything at all times until the end of time, including this editorial. That perfect kid of yours will get a D- in geometry, physical education, chemistry, or all of the above. The villains in Game of Thrones aren’t as likable as they were in the first two seasons. Your favorite dive bar “on the wrong side of the tracks” will eventually have people sporting Google glasses and ordering shots of Fireball with a PBR back. Etc., etc., etc. We like to bitch; that’s what truly separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. Then again, maybe dogs have their own secret internet where they spend an inordinate amount of time moaning about the fact that these dogs should be howling more, those dogs should be howling less, and that the howling prevalent today has somehow lost its way compared to the old-school way of howling.
This much is certain: Blaming mankind’s most invaluable tool since the wheel ain’t gonna fly. Condemn the shooter, not the gun, right? But for all the wonderful benefits and amenities the internet has delivered to so many, it has also opened an unending floodgate in terms of efficiency and gratis (legal and illegal), and that truth has exacted a damning toll on the music industry essentially since the day we hung up the modems in favor of broadband.
For the purpose of this particular bluster, the spotlight will focus on the idea that much of the issue we’re faced with today has less to do with who’s on the lawn, whose lawn it belongs to, and what’s getting plopped on the lawn, and more to do with how we’re choosing to maintain the damn thing as it continues to stretch from one side of the globe to the other. More specifically, how the ultimate convenience aspect of the modern age and an ever-expanding, leveled playing field affects bands, fans and the media.
BANDS: JUST WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE
Modern convenience and a leveled playing field can be a godsend for many bands, particularly those in the underground (a term that now seems to equate to “any band with less than 1000 followers”).
Back when dinosaurs still skanked the globe, a few Cro-Magnon would gather and punch out a rough demo, shop it out to a handful of labels, pray they’d get enough of a sniff to land some genuine studio time, and then fish the final results out to media outlets in hopes of netting enough attention to award them a more permanent deal and an opportunity to hit the road with twenty cases of Löwenbräu. It was a hierarchical system that was far from flawless, but at least it was a fairly black & white arrangement that gave bands a clear target for moving up some sort of ladder. We’re humans; we like ladders. Ladders give us access to cushy afterlives, executive bathrooms, correctly sized shoes, the store’s last remaining Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon Lego set, and sweet high-dives.
Today, traditional ladders are far less decisive in an industry where the idea of making a living is a fucking joke. As such, one-time looming obstacles can be (and often must be) hurdled with a little extra ambition and the convenience of a computer connected to wi-fi. Even the unripe bands that could benefit from a little extra time in the toaster oven can gofundme enough cash from friends and pitiable family members to land after-hours studio time – record labels be damned. Play your cards right, and you might have enough left over for a sick Christophe Szpajdel logo and a knock-out album cover from an artist who’s equally hungry for exposure. Add the convenience of being able to track down a near endless supply of avenues for getting your album reviewed in a positive manner, plus the simple means to push said coverage through multiple social media angles, and wham-o: If it looks pro, acts pro and campaigns pro, then it must be the next Iron Maiden, Show No Mercy or Orchid.
But a band’s proficiency with present-day technology isn’t hurting metal, even if it is flooding the market with eternal contestants. Blaming bands for producing too much music is lunacy. If you play an instrument and have the cunning necessary to make a finished product, do everything in your power to get that music out there, even if you have the sneaking suspicion that your music might suck. Have you heard Pure Fucking Armageddon? Horrible. But it was ground-breaking in its own unique way, and now you can buy Mayhem thongs and baby onesies directly from their website. The issue will never be the bands, even during an age where Viking-themed groups somehow manage to sail out of Malaysia.
FANS: GET OFF YOUR DEAD ASSES
The convenience of the modern age has probably done the most good (at least on the surface) for the fans of heavy metal. People of any age, background or whereabouts can fill an entire collection and experience a sense of metal fellowship without ever needing to set foot outside the front door.
There used to be a time when people in exceedingly non-metal environments lead isolated headbanger lives where they became marked in the village as “that soft-spoken, gothic fellow with the bloody t-shirts.” Nowadays, literally anyone with an internet connection can live and flourish as a metal fan with as many friends as a facebook account will allow. Hell, you can even hide your supreme metalness behind a grim alias as to not worry your wife, husband, parent or boss about your newfound obsession with listening to “Sodomator of the Doomed Venus” twenty times a day. We now exist in an age where Ryan Adams could (and quite possibly does) covertly spend hours a week scrolling through the NWN forums, and no one would be the wiser until he walked onto a stage wearing a Reflections of the Solstice longsleeve.
But is leading a metal life exclusively online wrong? Not necessarily. I suppose it’s akin to playing Second Life, but with less virtual hand-jobs. The truth is, however – and yes, we all know this – you continue to slaughter the rare baby rhino that is the metal band money-maker if you don’t occasionally get off your fat ass and support the music when it hits within striking distance of your home. As convenient as it is to feel a sense of camaraderie by doing little else than exchanging 140 character quips with folks like @Satans_Apron and @Bloodrinking_Dad on a Friday night, this pales in comparison to occasionally stepping away from the goddamn computer and letting a band kick your head in from the stage. Your face added to a crowd will further stoke a band’s fires and let them know that they’re still connecting with their fanbase, and you’ll be able to put cash directly into their hands for records, patches and other squirrely treasures – a beautiful thing that simply must happen more often.
The notion of a leveled playing field for fans is less of an issue, unless you happen to find it face-meltingly annoying that one in every five newcomers immediately carries him or herself as an expert simply because they’ve managed to burn through ungodly stacks of albums in an impressively short amount of time. Has spending time as a student of the genre really become such a misery? I vigorously salute those who aren’t afraid to learn the game starting from the ground up.
MEDIA: IT’S TIME FOR A FULL OVERHAUL
As much as it grieves me to admit, the media end of the spectrum has experienced the grimmest aftermath of modern convenience and a leveled playing field. There are far too many outlets covering far too many bands far too often, and the shift toward quantity at the expense of quality has essentially toileted the whole affair. The numbers continue to increase with each passing year, even as countless outlets continue to struggle with finding new, significant roles during an age when the public and journalists often hear new music at the very same time. No one needs ten different sites and five different vlogs telling them whether or not they should pay attention to an album they’ve already had the luxury of streaming for themselves.
Many sites have long since implemented changes that parallel the industry wide “Speed is King” axiom: Get to it first, report on it quickly, then burn holy rubber toward the next juicy tidbit. In a churn & burn world, news feels more like gossip; song premieres get thrown toward outlets guaranteed to cast the quickest, widest net; and dry, bush-league reviews get hobbled together in a wild sprint to be the first to catch whatever eyes are left that aren’t glutted beyond capacity.
But instead of figuring out new, interesting ways to write about metal, many places continue to depend on the easy kill of dimly dissecting the insane amount of albums that come down the chute on a weekly basis. Velocity has shifted the ultimate objective toward being THE go-to source for expertly rooting out the next “hidden gem” that lies obscured from most like some elusive video game Easter Egg. That’s all well and good – spotlighting the underground is a noble cause – but much of what gets saluted in an eternal storm of Album after Album after Album of the Year Contenders often doesn’t have the legs necessary to keep people listening for much more than a couple months.
And hey, I ain’t here just to point fingers at the competition; we’re all in need of repair. There’s enough favorable stuff being released by perpetual bands these days that a joint like Last Rites can shift the overall goal further and further away from any semblance of metal criticism into outright metal celebration. (Sidenote: Craig Hayes covered a lot of this in the midst of his fantastic five part piece “Mainstreaming Metal.” Read it HERE.)
For the most part, we choose to praise the goodness of our genre, but tack LR alongside the umpteen other joints doing similarly and you suddenly need three fucking jobs just to be able to afford all these Gold Star records. Here’s a simplified math breakdown:
Last Rites reviews approximately (5 records per week) x (52 weeks) = 260 album reviews. Being generous, let’s assume that approximately a third of those reviews are negative (thank GOD for Chris Redar) – that leaves roughly 175 recommended records per year from us alone. Granted, within that number there are genres that might not be in your wheelhouse, but even shaving off an additional 100 to make it a clean 75 is bordering on the preposterous when you consider the cost associated with picking up that many records in a 12 month span.
Yet many sites continue to rumble down the same old ruts, mostly because it still feels pretty damn good to give back to our genre in our own little way. But to what end? Oftentimes it seems like a lot this effort ensues for no reason beyond some hope that the bands we respect will catch a quick glimpse of us respecting them.
The really good writers – the ones I wish the public would make more of a conscious effort to acknowledge – are the ones who find ways to make you think differently about a record, or challenge you to step out of your comfort zone and bring a new style of metal (or music in general) into your life.
WHAT CAN BE DONE
Having said all this, one of the things that quickly springs to mind in an effort to wrap things up is the fact that most everything dragged under the microscope here is fairly obvious, or even old hat. These are certainly not issues exclusive to heavy metal. Still, it’s healthy (and necessary) to lift up the carpet every now and again to re-examine the things we conveniently sweep away from the light.
One important distinction to keep in mind is the fact that the issue is actually “heavy metal in the modern age” and not heavy metal itself. Metal will never need fixing, because thankfully, it is a force that’s larger than the individuals who choose to channel its strength. It will outlive you, it will outlive me, and it will survive all the Babymetals, Gategates and disparaging Ginger Baker remarks that get thrown in its face until the End Days. For every indie-rooted band that chooses to dilute the formula further, there will always be an opposite reaction dragging things back into the primordial ooze, and vice versa. The beast has long become self-aware.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold ourselves accountable for how we choose to maintain the lawn, however, and allowing elements such as the conveniences of modern technology to run amok unchecked can quickly lead down a path where Congestion begets Saturation begets Who the Hell Cares Anymore.
As mentioned, faulting bands for their ability to create – no matter the amount – is absurd, as is the idea of limiting who gets to throw heavy metal their support. The most palpable change should come from the media and how we choose to communicate and affect further development. We are the ones who take the worst advantage of the extreme convenience of having a near endless supply of music thrown our direction, and we are directly to blame for leveling the playing field to the point where a band’s worth seems largely determined by whether or not we were able to uncover them faster than the next site.
The first step to a solution is actually quite simple: Slow your roll. Spend more time with albums before you commit to writing about them. Think more about integrity when your fingers hit the keyboard. Take the time to study the roots of the genre and understand how and why things developed to where they are today. Don’t always let an album’s release date dictate what you should be covering: If you suddenly find yourself crushed by a Nemesis Divina, Stained Class or Slumber of Sullen Eyes, put down some compelling words about the experience and don’t worry about what gets released next week.
Media is an integral component to heavy metal, and despite the fact that it sometimes feels as if people have stopped caring about reading altogether, we should still be more mindful of what we’re putting out there for the public eye. Be creative, be compelling, do your homework, and don’t be afraid to be critical. And for the love of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, don’t get into the writing/publishing game if you think there’s some semblance of glory or a paycheck at the end of the rainbow; we mostly just pat each other’s backs and get paid in floating dandelion seeds.
MONEY ALWAYS GETS THE LAST WORD
If you’re wondering why an article centered on the issues of living in the modern age of heavy metal didn’t spend more time on the obvious disfigurement that is money flow, it’s because that end of the fence is so rickety and rotten that I can’t even figure out where to begin throwing tears. I do know that if you somehow think you’re deserving of a medal of honor for not swiping albums but continue to exclusively stream new releases through joints like Spotify, you’re still fucking bands raw. That’s obvious at this point, yes? The only difference being you don’t have to slink off in the cover of night to a rancid motel to do the screwing.
The system is broken beyond repair, and we simply cannot go back to the way it was. There are a lot of people out there doing a lot of work for zero pay, and eventually – hopefully sooner rather than later – some big brain(s) will figure out a new method for making sure artists can still afford to keep the wheels in motion. Until then, do whatever you can to truly SUPPORT your favorite music, go outside more often, don’t just skim the headlines, and eat your fucking vegetables.
