Metal is...

Stupid
Total votes: 18 (53%)
Not stupid
Total votes: 13 (38%)
Blah blah Mike Patton blah.
Total votes: 3 (9%)
Total votes: 34

Metal: Stupid or not stupid?

15
Yeah, it depends which type of metal you're talking about here.

'80's Metal (Poison, Stryper, Guns 'n' Roses): Absolute, unfiltered Crap. All of it.

Speed/ Death Metal (Slayer, Cannibal Corpse, Pantera): Crap. Almost all of it.

Certain metal bands who don't fit into any one sub-genre ('80's era-Metallica, Black Sabbath, High on Fire, Mayhem): Not Crap. Very interesting, invigorating music. I also don't think that classifying the Melvins' terrific early work as "metal" is in any way erroneous.

Much too broad to classify all of this as mere "metal". Much too broad.

Metal: Stupid or not stupid?

19
The Melvins are not metal. If you classified metal as "crap except for the Melvins" out loud or in your head, your opinion on metal is hereby null and void. Please play in another sandbox.

Boiling down an entire genre of music (and one that we're already having trouble defining) to just its most generic components as practiced by its most generic artists in order call it all crap? CRAP.

But mostly I agree with skatingbasser.
You had me at Sex Traction Aunts Getting Vodka-Rogered On Glass Furniture

Metal: Stupid or not stupid?

20
Johnny,

I know you only from this board, but you seem like a guy I could get along with. We don't share the same politics (and it's clear from this subject that we don't share the same taste in music), but I've got enough respect for your self-presentation here that I'll respond to this silly question.

First, I'll point out the obvious - a genre of music is a genre. Dictionary.com sez re: genre - a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like. Objecting against form shows an aesthetic dislike. It doesn't prove anything objective, such as "all of the people who enjoy this form are lunkheads". Had you started a debate - "does Johnny13 like metal?" - we could have argued that. But your question was about whether or not it's for stupid people. Obviously it's not, at least no more than any other genre.

But I'll stop being so formal and address what I think you're getting at. Maybe you just don't like the metal form/content/technique. Maybe you just can't see how anyone would like it. (Maybe not, since you say that there are some metal bands that are okay.)

Regarding the form - I've bought more metal in the past five years than I have any other type of music. This range is very, very broad - these records are the slowest records I have and the fastest. They are the among the most and least technically proficient. They are the most complicated and most straightford song structures. If you want to use Manowar as the only metal you care to talk about, that's one thing. But this is a pretty vast genre.

Calling all of it stupid, though, suggests to me that the form is unable to convey things that more intelligent music can. I wonder what this would be. I've been totally overwhelmed by some of this music in the best way possible. Songs that suddenly make me feel almost inconsolably sad although I cannot figure out why. Songs my friends and I have cranked to 11 while we're driving down the highway, waiting for the one part where we all go totally nuts. Stuff that's made me laugh out loud, thinking "what the fuck are these guys doing"? Stuff that's changed as I listen to it, getting older and hearing stuff that I hadn't before. Stuff that made me startle because I couldn't believe how beautiful it was. And my most favorite thing of all - being at a show and hearing the music play insanely loud and having a transcendental moment, absolutely losing sense of time, space and self. Shit, if that's not why you really listen to music, than what it?

Or, to put it another way - I'd rather be at a concert full of people screaming fuck yeah and throwing horns than a concert where everyone has their arms folded together and looks like an Ira Glass statue.

= Justin

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