VILLAGE VOICE WRITER ELOQUENTLY DISSES TORCHE, MASTODON, BARONESS AND PELICAN IN ONE FELL SWOOP
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 3:45pm by Kip Wingerschmidt
Now I’m not saying I agree with all, most, or even any of the points made in Stewert Voegtlin’s recent bitter-tastic Village Voice article (aptly entitled “Sketchy Metal”), but holy jeez a voice of dissension should be appreciated, welcome, and even necessary at times, especially when certain bands are so blindly revered by so many…..and furthermore anybody who can bring such a well-worded subtly sardonic taste to their Hateology (free album title!) a la our own Gary Suarez deserves a complimentary bong hit.
The article starts out with an analysis on Pelican’s sound (or lack thereof), positing that the Chicago band’s thang never crystallizes into anything approaching authentic emotion, but that some bands that Pelican derives influence from (Trans Am, in particular) have made plenty of music worth veneration, especially back in the day. Hmm……agreed.
I almost joined the Train of Descent (free band name!) recently myself when I was considering writing an article — which was to be called MASTODON EVOLVED EVERYTHING ABOUT THEIR SOUND ON CRACK THE SKYE….EXCEPT FOR THE LYRICS – about the many cliches held within several of the lyrics on Crack the Skye. However, after listening to the album a few more times to get a clearer context of the lyrics to the piece as a whole, I cleaned my shorts off and reconsidered libeling the best modern progressive metal band of the decade.
But Voegtlin? This guy ain’t takin no prisoners (pls disregard double negative)……my favorite gem of haterade enclosed within the article definitely has to be Voegtlin’s response to Baroness’ John Baizley’s claim that his band’s music is influenced by “fine art, cinema, and literature”:
[This is] as stiltedly silly as name-dropping higher mathematics, physics, or philosophy, when what the band really peddles is exactly the everything-and-nothing Hallmark heft so many claim to uncover in Pelican’s wordless, aimless songs. While Baizely’s predilection to hawk such High Times erudition makes him sound more puerile than he likely is, it’s difficult to imagine him honestly striving to disseminate meta-emotional discourse through music as transparently commercial as his band’s stoner-metal-meets-Ford-truck-jingle approach.
Yowza!!
More insightful dissin’ and the link to the actual article afterthejump.
Agree or disagree, dude has some interesting things to say that are refreshingly disparaging towards a quartet of bands that most folks in the metal community concur are pretty awesome (aside from Pelican — their bombastic hit-or-miss instru-bore music’s actual quality has been debated forever).
One more killer quote:
There’s little reward in puzzling out such meandering song structures—a trope utilized by Pelican and practically weaponized by Georgian Baroness neighbors Mastodon, whose songs follow a lock-step pattern of pelting the wall with red-handed swipes from prog touchstones like Yes’ Close to the Edge and King Crimson’s Red, just to see what sticks. Of course, nothing does: The listener is left ultimately with a pointless technical pissing match. The same goes doubly for Florida’s Torche, which often sounds like Looney Tunes composer Carl Stallings tearing through Helmet’s late oeuvre in double-time. Baroness can’t begin to approach the shut-in chops of those other bands, but there’s something to be said for aspiration.
Thems fightin wordzzz!!! Or…..are they?
Read the article first, and then offer your two (or more) cents in the comments section below.
DING DING DING!!!!
-KW
How can he say Baroness’s music is commercial? One listen to Ray on Pinion dismisses all of that.
I sometimes feel like I’m the only person that posts at MS who doesn’t like Baroness.
I’m with ya man. I’ve tried, numerous time to get into their tunes but i just cant do it. nothing really going on there for me.
Me three.
I finally gave them a listen last night.
I turned the song off around 1 minute in.
Maybe I’ll try again in a month.
OK COOL GUY!
yeah, they just don’t do it for me, either
…and I think most folks will appreciate your sentiment when you say “it’s just not my thing” rather than the author of this article who makes vague and disdainfully mocking criticisms.
I’ve tried but I can’t seem to get into them. I prefer Mastodon a lot more.
Yeah, I can’t get in to them either. Saw them open for Opeth last year and it did nothing for me. Torch was ungodly loud the first time I saw them but there was just something exciting about them and when I saw Mastodon last year, they came on stage, played and then got off of stage. No crazy stage show, rambling or anything; and you know what? It was spectacular!
It’s funny, I’m exactly the opposite. Tried and tried for years to get into Mastodon, they left me completely unmoved until Crack the Skye, and whilst I think it’s a great album I’m still not toting them as messiahs the way a lot of people do..
Mastodon’s Red Album on the other hand, fucking love it.
You mean Baroness’ Red Album?
I as well. I never got into Mastodon until I heard Crack the Skye. I love the album, but even now I still can’t sit through their earlier ones. Just sounds like noise.
I don’t like Baroness at all. Love Mastodon, really dislike Baroness.
I couldn’t get into Baroness. As for Mastodon, they are either hit or miss: Leviathan: hit, Blood Mountain: miss, Crack the Skye: hit.
Mastodon/Baroness are definitely not my cup of tea. I agree with this guy for the most part, but I think he’s writing the article for himself (Gary Suarez style? Thoreau? etc?). His comments made about Baizley’s statement are entirely hypocritical, he might as well me talking about himself and what he just said. Basically, fuck with me a dictionary, but i agree that Baroness/Mastodon entirely too popular and over-hyped for a mediocre “sound” those styles of bands are trying to achieve. I rather like “stoner metal meets ford truck jingle” lol.
I’ve been on here for a while bagging on The Blue Album. If there’s an over-rated album that’s come out in the last 5 years I’ve yet to read about it. Mutton dressed as lamb.
I like all of those bands and Love Mastodon and Baroness, but i agree with that article a little bit. I dont really like the newer Pelican stuff and i think Torche has some awesome points, but is hugely overrated. I also don’t like Blue Record nearly as much as Baroness’s Red Album and I wouldnt put it as the #1 record of the year(as Decibel has). Their selection for the top record last year(Torche’s Meanderthal) wasnt even on my top 20 list and Blue Record will barely make it on there this year. Katatonia, Converge, Isis, Mastodon, Doom Riders, and He Is Legend are all better than Baroness’ release this year in my opinion
At least someone realizes that describing oneself as intelligent doesn’t make one sound intelligent. Also – tossing out mathematical terms doesn’t make one a physicist.
My $0.02…
Every time a “reviewer” uses phrasing even vaguely similar to “back in the day,” i wonder how many times they had to stop two-finger-typing on their IBM Selectric to shout “Get off my lawn” at the neighborhood children.
*high five*
Hahahaha, best thing I’ve read all day.
I think it’s entirely too easy for some bitterly jaded Williamsburg scribe to throw around some flowery language in an attempt to discount the achievements of a group of bands that have carved out their own niche and found some acclaim along the way. They are the same people that were jizzing their pants over The Strokes a few years ago. Of course that’s what critics do by definition…make unqualified statements of opinion about the accomplishments of others, so I guess you take the good with the bad.
Agreed, i thought The Strokes, The Vines, and The Hives were the future of music…. Fuck Rolling Stone by the way
agreed
So… all I got from that thesaurus of an article was that Stewart Voegtlin is just choked because he can’t figure out how Pelican makes him feel. If you can’t put a label on everything in your life, it’s worth writing an ironically pointless article for an overrated publication, right?
I personally feel nothing for Pelican’s music, and Baroness is likable, to me, only in their similarities to the bands that they emulate, but the article was written in such a “this is how it is, and you’re retarded for thinking otherwise” way, that the only feeling I had after reading it was “that’s why I still hate music critics”. Way to miss the point of art, jackass.
Ha. It totally is a thesaurus. Every other word is just an uncommon version of something familiar.
Puerile=immature.
Erudition=scholarly…stuff.
I fucking hate people who write like this. It’s an internet article, not a fucking Chekov novel.
He’s got a point that saying your music is influenced by literature is kind of bullshit, but fuck his points on the quality of bands like Mastodon, etc.
And although I too could have articulated myself more eloquently, instead I chose to use “fuck” (and derivatives thereof) because this is the fucking internet.
Fuck this guy.
Actually, I think his point on literature influencing music is absolute bullshit. The entire point of (and power behind) a band like– to take a blatant example– Ahab is literature. I love history, literature, prose and film (particularly) as much as I love much as I love prog-rock, blues and metal. Having high culture influence you is legitimate.
Albeit I love peppering an article with thesarus words. I’m a language nerd, in a sense.
YES, thank you. I was hoping someone else would say something like this. I fucking hate people who write like that. Its just the internet, this guy is just trying to show all of us silly metalheads how ignorant we are with his obvious intellectual superiority. Jackass
Anyone can buy a thesaurus or go to thesaurus.com. Doing this doesn’t make them smart. The fact is, all critics write like this and it’s boring. Pseudo-intellectualism is somewhat of a survival tactic for these kinds of people; they need to make sure that the reader feels intellectual inferior, so as to more easily facilitate imposing the critic’s lazy, egocentric views on them. The only thing that stands out about this critic, is that he seems genuinely offended that these bands are allowed to make music.
I’m not sure when and how the ten foot pole was lodged in his anus, but it apparently made him very touchy about a specific genre of metal?
Couldn’t agree more.
good point, insistently needing to label everything one encounters is insanity, you end up blind, seeing the same things over and over again and truly believing that that is all there is to it. It’s just one perspective, just one opinion, one, infinitesimal linear way of looking at things, in a vast non-linear universe.
At the Pelican show at the Highline Ballroom last night, people were screaming “Village Voice sucks.”
Also, they were yelling “Fuck the Village Voice.” It was a great show, by the way.
This guy is just angrier than the people that run this site. Also, he has a better thesaurus. I’m all for adding to the discourse of music, debating what bands and artists are creating “true art”, but this guy comes across as a pretentious asshole. I don’t like most grindcore, but I’m not about to say that “their epistemology is incongruous with that of the modern Western hegemony, giving the impression that they are individuals who are stuck the Freudian psychosexual stage reserved for prepubescent adolescents”. (Not actually what I believe, I’m just making a point that it seems douche-y to write like that.)
Actually, I love your comment on Grindcore after the comma. Pornogrind, love it or hate it, is a little prepubescent.
Pelican sucks, no qualms there, but they are a far cry from the creative and original materiel mastodon and baroness have released. I’m not even a fan of new mastodon, but pelican they are not!
That article is awesome!
Very well written, regardless of my opinion on each band. It’s good to see someone intelligently rip apart something like that.
And, by the way, the new Baroness album is really bad (and I actually liked the Red Album).
I agree, these bands have enjoyed unanimous praise for far too long. I like Mastodon but jesus fucking christ not everything they (and bands like them) do is gold.
since when has the Village Voice been any kind of authority on metal? (only partially sarcastic…if they actually have for a while, feel free to correct me…)
Decibel weighs in on this same article here: http://decibelmagazine.com/Content.aspx?ncid=345944
That was an insightful and pretty even-handed (imo) response to the VV piece.
The last sentence of the Decibel commentary says it all:
“But I’ll tell you one thing—Pelican, Mastodon, Baroness, and Torche are four bands that produce a variety of metal and if Mr. Voegtlin can’t hear anything noteworthy in any of their music, I’m not entirely sure the music is the problem.”
Well said. Hear, hear.
“it also shows consumers’ unwillingness to accept the authentic, reaching for the numbing reality of the familiar, over and over again.”
This explains 90% of the history of rock’n'roll. Same old repackaged shined-up excrement going on 30 years now. Dio’s dyin’ – where are our fucking Bachs and Beethovens?
Sounds like this Voegtlin douchebag is butthurt because Decibel rejected all of his query letters.
We can’t love Devourment and Pelican? Dickhead.
Finally, one rock journalist who doesn’t suck at the teat of bad hipster metal. I live in Chicago and i’m fucking sick of hearing about Pelican. Long-winded songs with lots of effects pedals does not equal “emotion.”
Also: nothing against Baroness, but I can’t help but think what Gary Holt or Katon DePena would think of a metal band inspired by “fine art, cinema, and literature”.
I hear you man…Im in Chicago as well. I fucking HATE these hipster ball bags that hang out at reckless records and their fucking beards.
I’ve actually never heard pelican…..don’t need to. I’ve got an excellent shit detector.
If you live in Chi-town and you’re not on the beard team, please click on my signature. you might like what you hear.
dammit, too bad all metal bands can’t be influenced by beer, shitty gore flicks and wanky tolkien worship. truly pathetic how pretentious and asinine “true metalheads” are. go fuck yourselves…
@gnarlk – I agree.
That TOTALLY isn’t a pandering, cop-out response. It doesn’t have to be the typical fare to make good metal, but at least have a fucking solid POINT to a composition before you put it out.
I mean, really. I like my post-rock influenced sludge metal like the next guy, but there comes a point in time when it just sounds like another band doing what other bands have done because they like the sounds of those bands. So it comes across as aimless and unemotional.
Pelican doesn’t really come across like they have a solid idea most of the time. They play songs, but for the most part they’re hit and miss.
Also, I’m another Chi-Town MS Maniac.
Assuming that was for me…that’s not really what I was saying at all. I personally don’t give a shit about drinking or horror movies or Tolkien. If anything, I’m influenced by bad ’80s action flicks and Italian beef.
I’m not a “metal purist” and i’m not saying everything needs to be “true” or whatever. I’m just saying that there’s something to be said for originality and having a point to your music. 50 generic thrash bands with bullet belts and denim sucks just as bad as 50 generic hipster bands.
I’m with you guys. I live in Chicago too. I think you might have to be in one of the “bigger” cities to really understand that all this stuff is old news and overdone. Beards, bikes, butt tight black jeans and metal is now the status quo.
I like the article… It’s an unapologetic call out of a lot or rehashed, overly technical, too thought out, un-rock’n'roll nonsense going on lately with creaters of heavier music and their fans.
I will personally say I’m not a huge metal fan myself, but I’m with Biff, and I have a pretty good shit detector myself.
Oh, and Kip, I think you mixed up Descent and Dissent. Your whole “Train of Descent”, though a great song title, is nonsensical if you are meaning to say Descent.
1. dude knows tooooo many words
2.baroness is shaky atbest
3.pelican is trash
4.the most insightful piece of info from that guy was under the picture of pelican he wrote emoting
He summed up all these bands in one beautiful phrase : ” Fake Metal”.
EXACTLY. Thats what ziltoid and I have been trying to tell you fucking people.
…I DO like Mastodon’s “Crack the Skye”…because it has…wait for it…. SONGS. Which is what their other albums lacked.
death to troo metal…
And what exactly is fake about Remission? What does it lack that “true” metal albums have. And don’t say “songs”, there is very clear and cohesive song structure throughout that album. Even the album itself is deliberately and intelligently structured.
Its hipster shit, plain and simple. there is nothing metal about it. Can’t really explain it, but it is very far removed from metal.
Biff:
I missed the memo where you were appointed “Guardian And Chief Judge Of All Metal That Is True.” Since I didn’t get the memo, I don’t respect your opinion on what’s true and fake.
Thanks for sharing, though.
If you can’t explain your opinion, then it’s an ignorant opinion, plain and simple. Last time I checked, intense sludgy riffs, twisting time signatures, furiously heavy drumming, and song titles like Where Strides The Behemoth qualifies the album as metal. Hipster metal bands do shit like have a white album cover with a flower on it and then play some form of “black metal”, or attempt to make some kind of lame “artistic statement” that’s completely contrived. Mastodon play songs that kick your teeth in, about huge animals and fantastical creatures. They’re influenced by hallucinogens, cartoons, and Moby Dick for fuck’s sake. They’re fucking metal, whether you think so or not.
Biff and co. –
This is what really pisses me off about a lot of metal fans: ‘x band don’t have songs, therefore they’re shit’. This is like saying ‘William Burroughs doesn’t stick to standard narrative conventions, so he’s a shit writer’. Only a thicko would make that argument. And similarly, only a thicko would say that SunnO))), Boris, Aphex Twin, &c, are ’shit’ because they don’t replicate the same fucking verse-chorus-verse structure as everyone else. Do I like good anthemic metal? Absolutely. Do I then judge SunnO))) by the same standard as ‘We’ve Come For You All’? No, obviously, because that would be stupid – they are trying to do different things. Why are so many metal fans, who witter endlessly about the ‘herd instinct’ of those who like chart music, so terrified of anyone making avant-garde music? Metallica aim to write ’songs’ – therefore it’s fair to say that, if their songs don’t stick, they haven’t succeeded. The same is not true of, say, Swans, Neurosis, Earth or Blut Aus Nord.
somebody from pelican had to have tapped that dudes girl
Mastodon is the “best modern progressive metal band of the decade”? Is BTBAM not considered modern progressive metal? Colors is far superior to Crack the Skye and Alaska is far superior to Leviathan. Need time to make a final decision about The Great Misdirect, but I still think it’s superior to Mastodon’s work (maybe not Crack the Skye if coming from a more objective point of view).
there is no way that “the great misderict” is better than “leviathan”
no fucking way
ok, i’ll give you that one. that one is my personal preference just cause of my musical tastes, but you have a definite objective argument that leviathan is superior to the great misdirect.
Yes fucking way.
If yer gonna swip at Mastodon the Achillies heel is the vox – all studio dress. The boys can’t sing!
Yeah right shitfuck. Jealous bitch.
I saw them on their last tour, and the vocals were bang on.
I read this article on the train this morning, and while I agree with some of the points he makes, it did piss me off. I do agree with his assertions about Pelican, Baroness, and Torche, but I think he put Mastodon in there just because of their popularity status and who their crowd is. Anyone who listens to Mastodon and then calls it a “technical pissing contest” clearly knows nothing about music. People are entitled to whatever opinions they have about the music, but that statement is not an opinion. It can be objectively stated that Mastodon are clever with their song structures and rarely resort to over-the-top technicality, whether you like them or not. That statement is simply false and uneducated. If you’re going to write about music, you should have at least some sort of background in music. This guy comes across as ignorant and uneducated.
Pompous Pedantic Prick (free alliterative Village Voice nom de plume!)
Miles Davis – Kind of Blue. THE best jazz record and none of the songs do a damn thing! Same thing with Bitches Brew.
Point, game.
Just because you don’t understand the merit that other people find in music you don’t like doesn’t mean you get to take a proverbial shit all over it.
Jeez.
someone should probably tell this guy that using big words and making simple sentences sound extremely complex is NOT cool and it doesn’t make him sound smarter or like his opinion should matter more than others because he can find words like ‘puerile’ in his thesaurus. normally someone’s writing style wouldn’t bother me so much but this guy just comes off sounding like hes trying way too hard to prove points when he clearly doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. what a cunt (sorry Voegtlin, I couldn’t find any other smarter sounding words in my thesaurus)
not much of a fan of some of those bands, but the village voice and other sources like it are horribly outdated and staffed by sour pussed overt intellectuals with no sense of how to enjoy music or anything else in life. as the old adage goes (or a variation thereof), those who can’t become rock critics.
“but holy jeez a voice of dissension should be appreciated, welcome, and even necessary at times, especially when certain bands are so blindly revered by so many….”
This coming from a website called Metalsucks.com
Half the bands mentioned on this site receive voices of dissension
“Most rock journalism is people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, for people who can’t read.” -Frank Zappa
Erudite, yes. Eloquent, no. His wordsmithery can’t obscure his douchebaggery nor his holier than thou shit-tude.
Liberal discourse itself continuously recolonizes political identity as political interest–a conversion that recasts politicized identity’s substantive and often deconstructive cultural claims and critiques as generic claims of particularism endemic to universalist political culture.
The only thing that’s “stilted” is this dumb article, the blog equivalent of a college freshman pontificating on conflict theory and SES in a term paper for English 101. “Troo” metal, whatever that is, is the proverbial end of the rainbow: you’ll never find it objectively. Why bother looking? And all this to do from the metal “connoisseur” who believes Gates of Slumber, which is aimless Sabbath plagiarism, and Slough Feg are the definition of honest metal.
It doesn’t get more honest than Slough Feg. They wear their influences on their sleeve,true…..but they do it with reverence and not to plagerize, and they certainly have enough of their own ’sound’ to make them instantly recognizable. They have also ALWAYS done their own thing, for instance , devoting an entire concept album to an obscure 70’s RPG, “Traveller”.
never has there been an article that deal with metal that uses such aristocratic language. dont get wrong, im all for it. it just knocked my dem der boots rite owf when i did see all dem big words.
This guy is just a horrible, horrible writer. “everything-and-nothing Hallmark heft”…”disseminate meta-emotional discourse”…”predilection to hawk such High Times erudition” …Seriously, what the fuck does any of that mean? And that’s just from one paragraph. I’d rather hammer dog shit into my eyeballs than read a writer who’s this bad yet is convinced he’s fucking brilliant.
Even worse, he seems to have never listened to the bands he’s talking about. Baroness sounds like” stoner-metal-meets-Ford-truck-jingle?” Torche sounds like “Looney Tunes composer Carl Stallings?” Neurosis sounds like “post-apocalyptic bubblegum?” What the fucking fuck?
However, if this means that hipsters are jumping off the metal bandwagon, then I’m all for it. Good riddance, ya fucking douchetards.
Best comment yet. Some people (like Ziltoid) forget that writing is about communicating. This article is on par with that ‘Aesthetics of Hate’ atrocity. Same pretentious, meaningless rambling. If you can’t explain your opinion like you would in a bar, it’s probably not that good of an opinion anyway.
Thank you for providing me with my new motto.
This article is worthless. Whatever Pelican is, is subjective. If people find it boring, great, because there are plenty of people who find them exciting. I for one Love Isis and I know they aren’t held in the highest regard on MS or by several Metalheads.
Point is, the article actually offers nothing constructive, and it’s not like the Village Voice has any remote interest in Metal at all. They don’t review Metal Albums, they generally give it no attention, and when they do it’s a negative article. If anything, when it comes to music culture, it completely caters to the idiotic hipster crowd. Fuck them.
“If anything, when it comes to music culture, it completely caters to the idiotic hipster crowd. Fuck them”
And the idiotic hipster crowd LOVES these bands. Look at the bands themselves, they ARE hipsters. Youre not going to see a 30 something year old metal head in a Venom shirt at a Pelican show…because these bands hipsters, creating a hipster take on metal, selling thier music to hipsters. No old school metalheads like this garbage.
Have you ever been to a Mastodon show? There’s a small handful of hipsters, and a shitload of 30 something year old metalheads in Venom shirts.
article is a load of pretentious crap.
the aforementioned journalistic endeavor is a mere facsimile of previous post-modernistic criticisms drawing from misguided angst towards philosophically engaging progressive anthologies.
….. see fucker, I can write pointless bullshit using big words too. but it’s still bullshit.
Ok, gotta say this, I think to start hating on a band just becuase their popularity is increasing is complete bullshit. Uh, maybe their a good band and they deserve it? What a novel concept. It’s fine as some posters said before that Baroness is something they can’t get into, but come on… take one listen and theres no way you can deny how talented, energetic, smart, and devoted to the music these 4 guys are. Wheter or not you like it I don’t think you can deny its very artful, hence why they are, indeed, my favorite band. Shoot me, I love these guys to death, I think they’re incredible. Same thing with Mastodon, I don’t think you can deny how much thought is in their music, once again, whether you like it or not. As for Pelican, I personally really like them, Fire In Our Throats is an incredible album. Now do I think Russian Circles or Red Sparowes or even The Waters Deep Here (if you haven’t heard them check them out they haven’t hit yet but when they do they will be huge) are better? Yes, but Pelican is still pretty awesome. I think people can like the music they like and not have to bashed by people. I think black metal is awful but hey, if you wanna go listen to it be my guest. A large part of the metal community gets this stick up their ass about weird shit. Calm down, its music. Sorry, end prolonged rambling.
Sorry, one more thing to add to my diatribe (I can use big words too!), what exactly makes a band “metal enough?” No, seriously, can someone tell me? Or, better yet, what makes me “metal enough?” I like Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys, are they too pop punk to make me metal? I like me some Elton John from time to time, he’s an amazing musician, does that make me “un-metal?” Fuck, I even listen to Jesus Christ Superstar every night before I go to bed cuz it calms me, does that mean I can’t listen to metal? I like SYL, Skeletonwitch, Opeth, Neurosis, Rosetta, but does the fact that I listen to those other not so metal things remove my rights to like metal or something cuz I’m not troo? Curious as to the standards. Anyone know?
Cool story, bro!
I think the only “standard” as to what makes someone “metal” is this: How familiar are you with how wide a variety of metal bands? What else you like, the way you dress, what you do for a living, what your girlfriend listens to, and all of that shit is completely unimportant. Have you just heard Cryptopsy’s “None So Vile”, for example, or do you know all the song structures and can sing every drum fill? Can you easily distinguish between genres of metal, and know a handful of respected bands from each one? Can you discuss and listen to metal with another person for hours and hours? Then congratulations, you are “metal”.
Another point, underground cred is bullshit. I know hundreds of underground bands, and have seen them live, and for all but a few of them there’s a reason they’re underground. Simply put, they suck, and they bring nothing new to the table. Most underground death metal bands, for example, do nothing more than follow the formula laid down by Suffocation, Gorguts, Carcass etc. This is not to say that ALL underground music is trash, just that if you meet someone who rattles off obscure band names that you haven’t heard of even though you have thousands of metal albums in your collection, and tries to play like that makes him more “metal”, you should immediately punch this person in the dick.
I listen to rap. I will be the first to admit it. Not that shitty rap you hear on the radio, I dig a little deeper, but I honestly like rap and hip-hop, especially Andre Nickatina. Maybe it’s because I go to school in Harlem, I don’t know, but I’ve developed a taste for good rap. I also like this pop punk (I guess) band from Canada called Billy Talent. I like Foreigner and Dire Straits. I listen to all sorts of other things that some people would tell you are the antithesis of metal, but the difference is, I can’t talk about pop-punk or rap for hours with a bunch of people. I don’t attend those shows every single week, or own thousands of albums like I do with metal. So rock that Elton John if you want to, you can still be metal as fuck.
“I think the only “standard” as to what makes someone “metal” is this: How familiar are you with how wide a variety of metal bands? What else you like, the way you dress, what you do for a living, what your girlfriend listens to, and all of that shit is completely unimportant. Have you just heard Cryptopsy’s “None So Vile”, for example, or do you know all the song structures and can sing every drum fill? Can you easily distinguish between genres of metal, and know a handful of respected bands from each one? Can you discuss and listen to metal with another person for hours and hours? Then congratulations, you are “metal”.”
Well said.
second that.
Yay! I can write an article about music that’s filled with pointless wordy adjectives and stupid genre tags to disguise the fact that I know absolutely nothing about music! Bashing subjective things objectively without even a mention of the art itself is a clear sign of intelligence. The only thing I was left with after reading this article was wondering how many times this guy stroked his clearly undersized penis to a self-portrait while writing it. I like these bands personally and I do respect people’s opinions who don’t but this guy is a tool.
gnarlk is the only one talking sense on this entire thread.
For this VV guy to get any credit he’d have to be snidey AND funny.
The article did make me think quite a bit.
I love Neurosis, I kind of like Baroness, but they don’t really strike me as extremely fantastic. Mastodon would be amazing in my book if it wasn’t for the existence of Intronaut and Pelican needs a vocalist and solid ideas.
For the most part, these are good bands, though I would be inclined to agree with the sentiments for bands like these. Some get the purpose behind what they’re doing and come off sounding amazing and can convey their ideas without much of a problem. Others tend to fall behind and sound like one, long, droning festival of wankery with pedals and equipment accessories. The dude is taking a stab at the latter, obviously. Which is why I kind of agree with his points on pelican. I can’t hate on Pelican and you probably wont hear me saying they suck pure ass, but goddamn I wish they would buckle down and get a goddamn vocalist. (I’m available.)
I also don’t have a problem with him sounding like a thesaurus. Hell, i don’t mind someone speaking eloquent towards me. I certainly don’t see it as being talked down to. I like the fact that he doesn’t feel the need to dumb shit down just so I can read it. If I don’t understand, I’ll look it up.
Its funny how everyone says “I don’t need to sound intelligent because we’re on the internet” when it’s insane to even think of sounding dumb for the sake of it when THE INFORMATION IS RIGHT FUCKING THERE.
I learn new things every time I get online and all I have to do is use google or dictionary.com to gain some understanding. It’s simple as shit to use. So why the fuck not?
Isn’t the main thing that pisses people off just plain old pretentiousness. It’s the people who want to be seen to be liking something because in theory this makes them look good. NB – they are not all “hipsters” either. A lot of them are (black) dyed-in-the-wool metalheads, or at least go to great pains to seem that way – but they’re talking just as much bullshit as the so called beardos they rip on.
And then there’s the emperor’s new clothes metal (not as in Emperor emperor of course). People think they should think that it’s awesome. Jarvis Cocker (the UK hipster’s hipster) booked SunnO))) for the 2007 London South Bank Meltdown festival he curated. It was the only “metal” band on the bill. I’m pretty sure it was people going:– “oooo it’s a METAL band – but they’re like, experimental. It’s performance art. It’s tongue in cheek. It’s clever. I see what they did there.” Bullshit. It’s just endless droning (except the album with Boris which was alright). Yeah – the effect can be interesting and mesmerising, but it doesn’t make it fucking genius.
Baroness’ Blue is a decent record. Ok maybe only the first half and even though some of the songs don’t feel finished. But Crack The Skye is just amazing full stop. Its beautifully conceived and executed and shows a band taking a massive step forward dynamically when arguably they didn’t need to.
All I’m saying is that – yeah , pretentious shoegaze upitsownassness is irritating – but I don’t agree with the targets in the article.
it cant be very easy to actually enjoy music when you pick it all apart every time you listen to it.
i love mastodon.
you speak the truth
Cheers, guys.
cheers, douche.
I’ve read and re-read the article several times and my opinion has gone back and forth on it. There are a lot of valid points. The one that I take the most contention with is the sentiment that metal cannot be influenced by “high art.” In Baizley’s case, the guy attended RISD, one of the most respected art schools in the country and lives in Savannah, which is home to SCAD, another highly respected art school, so it shouldn’t be surprising that some of these elements find their way into Baroness’ music. Does it have an air of pretentiousness? Maybe, but it’s just plain wrong to infer that it’s arty for the sake of being so..
Article pissed me off, on the one hand because I really like all the bands he mentions. BUT, fine if he doesn’t, there’s a lot of music out there, we don’t all have to agree. What mainly pissed me off is in an incredibly shrinking Village Voice (it used to be MUCH bigger) to devote and entire article to bashing 4-5 bands? Why? Why not use the space to promote or hype a band someone likes, that could use the exposure. Metal, indie rock, rap, whatever? But with limited print space, to just waste one of the few music columns that they have trashing a handful of bands is just a shame. There is so much good music out there, so write about that, and just keep your hatred of Pelican et al. to yourself!
exactly, what the hell was the catalyst to write an entirely, 100% negative article??? If thats the village voice, get me the hell out of the village and to the pelican show, where you’re all brothers and sisters. Not divisional, heartless, big-head’s.
Stewey rocks. I highly recommend his blog, ‘The Left Hand Path’, though he doesn’t update as much as I’d like. I rarely agree with him, but I love his style….kinda everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, me-and-my-invincible-intelligence vs. the World stuff. Keep fishing.
This is still pretty harsh. I don’t really see how comparing Baroness to Yes or King Crimson makes any sense. If anything, it makes me feel as if this guy knows a lot less about prog than he seems to claim.
And, influences are influences. They might not have any direct effect on the music at all. Are we really going to doubt Baizely’s influences? If he’s not affected by them, that’s a different matter entirely. I don’t think Baizely’s trying to come off as something he’s not, he’s merely answering a question.
Agreed almost 100% on this. Crack the Skye doesn’t deserve all the praise it gets, neither does Blue Record. Pelican are garbage. I have zero opinion on Torche, since I’ve not listened to enough to have one.
Also, this guy writes like an elitist douchebag. I understand using varied vocabulary, and straying from everyday vernacular, but it’s a bit much.
What’s the current popularity of “douche” as the ultimate put-down? Jesus Harold Fucking Christ. I don’t ever recall being called a “douche” or a “douchebag” or having my writing derided as “douchey” with this sorta frequency. It’s fucking uncanny. Is that the term of endearment around the Decibel office?
No.
Voegtlin… you’re the ultimate douche.
“Al Pacino! Attica! Attica! Attica!”
It’s because people think your writing helps vaginas stay clean, but in fact it’s bad for them.
Right Voegtlin. You see for some people the ultimate insult does not involve an unintentionally
comedic display of obscure synonyms. Sometimes it’s good enough to call a pretentious douche
what he is instead of feeding into his insatiable hunger for insubstantial displays of intellect.
For instance when I read you’re article I was not thinking “wow this guy must be so smart for
knowing these words or his clever ideas.” I was more wondering if you were in fact so
wise then how could you not notice the irony in blasting people for creating unmerited
ascociations with intellect when you appeared exactly the same in your article with every
unecessarily flowery sentence. If you were not so busy stretching you’re face down to you’re
butthole to inhale a fragrant whiff of you’re own farts after masterfully bookmarking thesaurus.com
to incorporate every sentence with academic hyroglyphics you might have actually noticed that.
Fortify you’re arguments with logical consistency next time instead of a bland stacatto machine gun
assault of verbosity. In the internet age it is not impressive.
And yeah you clearly are a douche. Sorry if this lacks an ironic post-modern deconstructive tongue
in cheek acerbic wit fit to make any overly-caffenated self-important twit cream his shorts but you
have to admit, it does accurately describe you. To me that’s good enough :)
Thanks for taking the time to write this, friend.
Ugh, the VV is the most overwhelmingly pretentious rag out there, the read of choice for NYC hipster-doofuses who spend half their weekend standing in line trying to gain entry into whatever crappy club the VV has touted as this week’s “next big thing”. Reading anything they might have to say regarding the genre is like reading Hustler for recipes.
to be honest I don’t like metallica all that much. that shit is kinda boring. had to get that off my chest.
whew. thought i was the only one!
None of my friends who listen to metal like Metallica. In fact, we all talk shit about Metallica on a regular basis. We were all born in the late 80s, so I think liking Metallica probably has something to do with growing up with them, being young in the early/mid 80s when they were fucked up on drugs and alcohol and Cliff Burton was still alive.
Okay, one thing I don’t understand…
I’ve seen the Village Voice be called a hipster magazine a couple times in this thread, and I’ve also seen the bands mentioned in the article called hipster.
Infighting or mislabeling?
*sigh* another failed musician sexually abusing his thesaurus…
This may be the most intelligent and even handed internet reply discussion I’ve ever read. Good on ya ‘metlers.’
“The same goes doubly for Florida’s Torche, which often sounds like Looney Tunes composer Carl Stallings tearing through Helmet’s late oeuvre in double-time.” – GOLD
if you sip tea and listen to metal too much you end up like that, think my buddy calls it Red Carpet Crew
Meh. I think the real irony is he complains about insubstantial attempts of bands to sound inteligent while using words like “puerile” or “erudition” in the same breath. I don’t even need a thesaurus to write like that it’s just that most of the time I chose not to. Honestly I can picture this guy bending down in between each paragraph to inhale a lovely gust of his own farts. ( or “flatulence” as I’m sure he would have put it).
Mastodon is a great band. I have not heard Pelican and can’t say.
Yeah it’s all hipster metal but you like what you like. As for Torche, their older stuff is far more metal and has, I think, one of the heaviest songs of all time:
TARPIT CARNIVORE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rr5qIDObgo
IT is what YOU make it.
I enjoy running around aimlessly and cliche fist pumping to Mastodon and Pelican with reckless abandon, especially in my home, where there are no asshole’s trying to decide whether they like me and my music or not. But then again, maybe I’m fucking delusional and actually staring at my feet, nodding to and fro…
I hope people notice the futility and calculative, candy-coated cleverness of this egojaculated article…see? It’s not that “eloquent”, we can all do it.
It’s just an opinion, and it is what you make it.
Obvious troll is obvious.