subgenres are retarded

[Tom the Fish]

Red Robot is the most metal!

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/archive.php?s=77

Tom

[nailz]

nice

[Kai Stromler]

no, dude, Clango.

<has been waiting like forever to link that>

--K

[DDramone]

so wat exactly are the basic "morals" of metal music? whats a defining characteristic of metal? i hear alot of "no, thats SO not metal". and i hear it on my side to, with posers and stuff, but im so remote from that (lol).

[Kai Stromler]

Metal defines itself by having no set morals, and virtually no defining characteristics. Metal bands a) call themselves metal, in whatever form, and b) are recognized as metal by enough people that the rest of us are sure that their fans aren't all retarded. Posers call themselves metal and do not have the weight of community opinion on their side. Sellouts are obviously metal, but don't like to be called such because it has a negative effect on their album/merch sales. When journalists or media outlets call bands like Limp Bizkit and descended metal, that's just called "being ignorant/uninformed".

Beyond that, most metal bands can trace the ancestry of their influences back to Black Sabbath in some way, shape, or form. This is true even for bands that sound nothing like Sabbath. Similarly, most metal bands organize themselves around power-chord guitar riffs in twelve-bar blues-descended structures, but there are enough who do anything but for that statement to be just this side of meaningless.

Metalheads differ from a lot (though not all, and maybe not even most) other fans-of-non-mainstream-genres by using their music preference, in most cases, as their dominating identification. It's very seldom that you'll hear anyone say "I like metal" rather than "I'm a metalhead/thrasher/banger/whatever", for example. This identifying principle becomes a unifying factor that substantially overrides, in most cases, race, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, age, and even many fine-grained tastes in music. Any Cannibal Corpse fan obviously has more in common with any other Cannibal Corpse fan than any non-metal listener with whom they share any common identifiers, but any Cannibal Corpse fan is also highly likely to have more in common with any Sonata Arctica fan than any similar non-metal listener.


Note that after almost 35 years of continuous development and evolution, metal has diversified to the point where the umbrella "heavy metal" term has more or less completely lost coherent meaning (see nailz' original subgenre list, of which a scary number are real). Asking "what is metal" now is not a whole lot different from asking "what is rock'n'roll" in 1985, but people still do it. As a result, many or all of the observations made in the above paragraphs may not be true or applicable in any or all instances.


In short:
Metal makes you put up the horns.
\m/

--K

[Flint the Dwarf]

Metal + Christian = Matter + Antimatter

But Metal will typically do one of three things: make war on god/group thinking/programmed behavior; question gods existence; or as many famous songs do, lament the loss of a friend.

And if you think metal is limited to those 3 concepts, put away your angst and check out some REAL bands.

x 2

[nailz]

no, dude, Clango.

<has been waiting like forever to link that>

--K

you shitlick, I just posted that on the BG forum.

[Kai Stromler]

no, dude, Clango.

<has been waiting like forever to link that>

--K

you shitlick, I just posted that on the BG forum.

dammit, I don't read the BG forum. It's tough enough to read here, type 2000+ word posts saying ~nothing, and still do work every now & then.

--K

[nailz]

if it makes you feel better, i liked your description of "what is metal."

[DDramone]

Metalheads differ from a lot (though not all, and maybe not even most) other fans-of-non-mainstream-genres by using their music preference, in most cases, as their dominating identification

i dont no any subculture that DOESNT do that. punks exactly the same.