Metal and Its Discontents?

Mark: hey Eric
Me: hey Mark
Me: what’s up
Mark: are you into metal?
Mark: haha
Me: nah not really
Me: i like metal when it’s hybridized with other things
Mark: yeah, me too
Me: i really don’t know anything about metal, post like Slayer, early Metallica, etc.
Mark: something just popped into my head, I was thinking about the soundtrack to Gummo, and it seemed very novel at the time that a bunch of black metal and grindcore and what have you was on an indie movie soundtrack in 1998
Me: oh wow yeah, Gummo
Me: man, i’d forgotten about that film
Mark: I mean, look at this track list
Me: wow, yeah
Mark: for an indie film in 1998, that was super fresh, and I was wondering if that kicked off anything in terms of critics coming around
Me: hmmmm yeah
Me: on a young Domino, no less!
Mark: yeah
Me: i could definitely see that. i mean, film soundtracks seem to often be used as a way to smuggle subterranean music into a wider consciousness
Me: but jeez, like i’ve not heard of any of these bands
Me: except Destroy All Monsters
Me: but they’re old, i think
Me: oh shit, yeah, Niagara and what not. Ron Asheton
Me: Mark, I know you’re extremely aged
Me: were you at any point in the band Destroy All Monsters
Mark: yeah, i went to middle school with the Ashton brothers
Me: ha
Me: but your point, i think, holds generally
Me: re: soundtracks
Me: i think like any sort of comp, it allows dilettantes to dip their toes in
Mark: I’ve yet to read a convincing article about why the critical focus on metal in the last 5 years
Me: hmmmm
Me: hasn’t metal seen the same sort of niche resurgence as a lot of other forms of music?
Me: now that eclecticism is the way that people engage with music as the default
Me: like, there’s more music period, and there are beats to cover
Me: “beats” in the journalistic sense, y’know
Me: but like
Me: i think that there’s always been residual metal dudes writing about music, and there’s an audience for that
Me: like, all those metal rags in the 80s that were mixing coverage of Slayer with like, Poison
Mark: yeah, it’s true – always been a genre that people like to pick up magazines about
Me: but now, i think the coverage has gotten a lot more eclectic, as the music’s gotten a lot more eclectic
Me: and i’m saying this as someone who hasn’t ever listened to an entire Sunn O))))) song
Me: i think the field has widely expanded in general
Mark: so there are more entry points
Mark: if you like drone, there’s a way in, or ambient stuff, even
Me: yeah, like i think there’s always been dudes making weird variants on metal, but now they have the capacity to get a public
Me: a small public, but a devoted one, for sure
Me: this is a concept i generally use to discuss a lot of stuff with music post-Napster
Me: i still think it’s ridiculous for people to assume that, like, pitchfork’s gonna be on top of every doom band that comes out of Denmark, though
Me: without considering that Pitchfork’s serving an audience that’d much rather read about Andrew Bird
Me: i think a lot of things like this are explainable by looking at production, promotion and distribution
Me: and how artists can rise up through these things with a few carefully-timed releases, strategic associations
Me: and then, genres come into play
Me: like, do you know the concept of “the narcissism of minor differences”
Mark: yeah, I am familiar w/ that concept
Me: smarter people have used it, quite well, i think, to describe how genres form. they’re talking more about the actual people involved, but it’s an interesting application of the thing, regardless
Me: basically that genres coalesce when something, for whatever reason, becomes popular, essentially turning a “public” into a “market”
Me: and then other bands who are doing the same thing with minor differences get ass’d with a “scene” or a “genre”
Me: i think that’s sort of how the process works
Me: and like with metal
Me: how it’s fragmented into all these niches
Me: i think that a) that’s a function of so many options, post-Web and whatever
Me: and b) that there’s arisen a new crop of dudes whose job is to make sense of it
Me: but i think it’s important that it’s metal, though
Me: inasmuch as we don’t see huge waves of like Rhys Chatham disciples getting blog love
Me: because there’s always been a devoted base for metal and its variants
Mark: yeah, one other possible thing with metal is that, while it’s always remained popular among a blue collar base lower on the socioeconomic scale, in the last few years, too, there’s been a shift among the educated hipster elite types where certain things from this other world have become fashionable
Mark: ironic mullets, and next thing you know you are listeing to metal
Me: ah, yes
Me: we can see that with indie rock, too, right?
Me: like its roots with the British “working class,” at least initially post-punk
Me: and now, we’ve got that “Dark is the Night” compilation. Which is good, but which represents a different form of homogenization, gentrification, etc.
Me: i think the main audience for this sort of fringe music has definitely shaken out to include a large number of upper-middle class
Me: with colleges that have free Web access
Me: and creative-class jobs that let them sit at a desk all day and do nothing
Me: well, “used to,” WHAT WITH THE ECONOMY AND ALL
Mark: yeah