Periodically, metal journalists battle it out over ideas relevant to metal.
The latest battle is "hipster metal," and the main antagonist is the A.V. Club's Leonard Pierce, who argues:
If there’s one thing in the world more head-slammingly dull than reading a bunch of online Realness Police argue about what constitutes real hip-hop, it’s reading similar web manifestos by metal’s “trü-kvlt” militia. Did they happen to spot a Mastodon album at Best Buy? Must be “hipster metal.”
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Apparently having forgotten that one of the key elements of metal’s appeal is its egalitarian populism, these sneering exclusionists—who are far more snobbish than the so-called “hipsters” they claim to denigrate—get off on casting anyone out of the real-metal club who doesn’t fit their definition of realness. The amount of things the anti-hipster-metal crowd has forgotten in pursuit of a self-satisfaction high is alarming: That metal has always aspired to mass appeal (is anyone going to tell Bruce Dickinson that he does “hipster metal” because he can afford his own jet?); that metal has blended with the indie/punk scene for more than 25 years (Greg Ginn, anybody?); that metal—even in its most extreme forms—has always served as a safe haven for nerds, geeks, and losers, not as another avenue to keep people like that on the outside.
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In fact, that’s one of the hallmarks of the “hipster metal” complaint: It’s never about the music. Who gives a s**t if Mastodon is familiar with the concept of irony?
How quickly could you spot what he left out? He very, very carefully leaves out a definition of hipster metal. He does this so he can imply it's a certain vague thing, and then bash that.
But the truth is that being a hipster isn't how you dress, where you live, or even what brand of beer you drink. It's how you approach the music. It's how you approach life. It's an attitude and philosophy, hipsterdom, and some journalists better than I have covered it in detail.
Yes, the music -- the same thing Pierce claims is forgotten, above.
If you think about metal as a group of people who share a belief, you can see why metal is so "uniform" in appearance to outsiders. Kind of like how at a political rally for one specific idea, other ideas probably aren't going to be popular. These people aren't closed-minded, but they've made a decision about what they like.
These people called metalheads were ostracized, called geeks, belittled and spat upon for insisting metal is important. And what is that idea? Metal is the idea of worshipping power and intensity, not the "safe" and twee personalized Jesus that rock music is. Rock music is there to show you irony, to make you feel like crying and laughing at the same time, in short to distract.
Metal is the opposite direction. It's heavy. It's heavy because its sound and apocalyptic imagery show us how small we are as individuals, reduce our ego-drama and point out that we're all just cogs in a big machine. Wars, disease, mayhem and murder feature heavily in metal lyrics, because they're heavy.
Rock, especially indie rock, doesn't like heavy. It likes clever on the surface and comfortingly the same underneath, like how a manufacturer might take the same old bread, add garlic-mango flavoring and call it Polynesian Mating Ritual Bread and sell it for $1 more a loaf.
For the record, I don't think there's such a thing as "hipster metal," like a genre. I think there's good metal and then bad music. In the bad music are some indie bands who decided to ironically be metal bands, that it might be fun, and started dressing up their indie rock like metal. I like some of these, like Cult of Luna. But most of them aren't so much bad as in the wrong place. They're not "heavy" and bore me with their irony.
Because the people behind them are not thinking of the music as in metal as a genre, but of how they can be ironic and twee and unique, metalheads tend to write them off as "hipster metal." I understand. I hope Leonard Pierce puts that in his pipe and smokes it.
Comments
Hipsters like to turn everything into a matter of relative opinion. These are the same people who ruined Punk, but it seems that wasn't enough.
People ask me why I don't give a damn about crap like Opeth or Lamb of God . The argument is the same every time. "The music just evolved, dood. Stop being so closed minded. Metal is for everyone!"
This is the same thing people said when I lost my taste for most Punk in high school.
Perhaps I'm a tad cantankerous, but this music did, and still does mean something to me.
'Pure Holocaust', 'The Sun of Tiphareth', 'From Enslavement to Obliteration', 'Cause of Death', 'Wrath of the Tyrant', 'Apocalyptic Raids' are just a few of the better outputs from over the years that had an unbelievably profound effect on my psyche. Real Metal has an intangible elegance that can't be aped.
Your bread analogy brings to mind Tool. Average psychedelic band, sprinkle with some vague occult/medical imagery and add a dash of anti-authority sentiment. Viola!
So, you claim that in order to be metal, bands must write lyrics concerning these so called 'heavy' subjects? I completely disagree. First, since when is metal defined by lyrics? Metal, in all of its forms, is defined by the music itself, its characteristics, and not the subjects it dwelves in. Second, a good amount of rock bands nowadays deal with the same subjects, and do so quite poorly- take Slipknot, for example.
Bean: Slipknot is usually catalogued as metal.
To address the rest, wars-disease-mayhem-murder are just examples of heavy subject matter of which Brett attributes to the metal "philosophy" and NOT to the music. Re-read the article.
Mauser: Your comment is actually the antithesis of the point. Opeth, for example, is completely not what this is about (they are not indie masquerading as metal, they are self-professed crossovers and progressive musicians who's sound has not changed much far before 'hip' was a subject of contention)
Overall I completely agree - there is simply good metal and bad music. Dubbing anything 'hipster metal' just because well dressed pseudo intellectuals from Brooklyn like it is just making 'hipster' the new 'indie' term. Slap a label on anything - it doesn't change what it actually is.
I agree it's just another label. There's so many it's hard to differentiate.
I never cared what genre or sub genre or whatever, but so many people label everything it's hard to avoid. If I like it-great! If not-toss it aside.
I have to say though, it is interesting to read through the descriptions of all the genres (am I spelling that right?)
Hipsters, and hipster metal, are so highly feminine it's ridiculous. I don't think we've ever been so close to losing all traits of masculinity. Did any of this stuff come out in the 80's? Early 90's? Something happened, probably after 2002 where our culture because so obsessed with being content and emotionally comforted that we got bored and created bastardized forms of entertainment like metalcore and hipster metal, posting useless opinions on internet message boards about things that have no meaning to begin with, and dressing like homosexuals. We need to be annihilated fast.
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