What I miss in this text is structure. It is rather long, without distinct sections, without a definition of the terms (Innocence, Arrogance and Elitism) -- from the perspective of the writer -- and some separate conclusion at the end.

riiiiight


anyway, great article and i've thoroughly enjoyed reading the thread

1 - Not entirely true. Many bands records their demos within their possibilities and they like it in that way, cause most of time the only grip is the production, not the songwriting itself (which is what people praise the most from non glossy produced albums).

2- I guess you're talking about bands that gained notorious attention, not about the 80, 85% of the metal bands out there.

3- Again, it's too relative. Many times the 'easiness' of the best produced material it's just that, the songwriting it's not always compromised, it's just the overall product sounds better, thus making it easier to digest/likeable/etc. Hell, stylistically talking, 2 albums might be exactly the same, but the best produced one will probably generate way different reactions than the previous one.

4- I think the problem it's not the easiness or how accesible/commercial has turned the band over time, it's just that many metalheads when hear an album, they pick that concept and stick to it when it comes to appreciate the band's effort. Sometimes it's true that the first albums are better in terms of performance and songwriting, but it's more often to see that people only enjoy the first albums (or certain albums) cause they knew the band thru them, so when a band changes a little, it's frowned upon just for the fact it's changing a preconceived concept. Some bands release their best efforts in the middle or later on their career but those albums won't get the same praise or status than the older ones for being too contemporary, too clean, cause it's not a novelty anymore, etc; all those factors are really meaningless when it comes to think the most objectively as possible about a certain album. This is especially true for more 'primal' styles like odsm death, 'standard' black and thrash.

Kveldulfr, my example is indeed mere speculation and I didn't intend to portray it as the most likely/usual scenario. The likelihood of those exact things happening is somewhat irrelevant, the important thing to consider is the development of a band from the demos or early albums to some later stage in absolute terms. The reasons as such don't matter - what matters in that specific example is a listener's misunderstanding of a band's intentions with what they've written: one might enjoy raw black metal with prominent melodic riffing considerably, but find it distasteful with the rawness and intensity reduced and additional elements (such as synth, clean vocals) added. I'm sure you can relate to the concept if not the very same terms.

With Opeth, the stylistic shift is easy to see. In simple terms, they stripped the twin guitar harmonies from their music and concentrated on playing death metal-influenced atonal prog rock/metal riffs, mainly implementing unusual chords and chord progressions as well as atonal bits of lead guitar as "fills", if you will. One can argue that this change happened before the band became overtly commercially acclaimed, and was even a development that somewhat decreased the band's chance of exploiting certain more likely niche markets. However, to think Opeth never changed for the more commercial is somewhat naive, and it would be even more naive to blame some former fans for abandoning the band for that. Experience has shown that popularity rarely comes without a cost to the band's music, and when a band is able to reach considerable success with merely doing their thing (Maiden, Sabbath), it tends to have an effect on them eventually. All bands wear out eventually, but the succesful ones do so more noticeably: an amateur band isn't necessarily inclined to keep releasing music even when the inspiration wanes, whereas with succesful ones the situation is different. Especially since piracy started playing a role in music production and resources are stretched thin, these phenomena have increasingly much effect on bands.

I'm not completely sure what orionmetalhead meant when referring to Drudkh - perhaps they generated some backlash with every post-Autumn Aurora Release even though their every album has been quite different from the last (except now that there's Microcosm and Eternal Turn... that both sound very familiar already). However, if fans abandoned Drudkh at the release of Handful of Stars, it's ridiculous to accuse them of elitism and closedmindedness. That "I only like the first album" phenomenon isn't rare for several reasons I don't find necessary to discuss here as they're chiefly obvious, but let's just say that it'd be quite unreasonable to assume that most people's opinions of that kind were based on some arbitrary standard of elitism rather than honest feelings.

Iron Maiden and Sabbath both flourished for nearly a decade, and especially the latter was able to rejuvenate its sound even after its initial boom of success and musical quality had ended. However, for example Judas Priest struggled with finding relevance through the 80s and as everyone knows, countless bands have become increasingly commercial ever since the first hint of commercial success in their career.

Sorry if it wasn't defined enough. I saw in the younger kids there the innocence we all once had as fans, just enjoying themselves regardless of how silly, ridiculous, they may look but passionate. The arrogance of those that were criticizing this innocence without remembering we were all that way at one point. And how this mentality of elitism - that somehow because someone knows more than someone or has been a metal fan longer, etc, generally can correlate to this arrogance.

Arrogance hasn't been talked about much.

Earlier, I mentioned the end-all attitude of people who think certain bands are the best, as if "the best" was an achievable end. The bands named are usually justified by something quantifiable, not their music, as that's a matter of preference- having a large, die-hard fanbase, having some sort of gimmick/image that makes the band stand out in someone's mind, or a historical place, often one that quantifies how many bands were influenced by them. Quality of music is difficult to quantify, and the thought that popularity is justified often helps sort out "lesser" bands.

In the p2p generation, a person can become an "expert" on a genre in a month - download and listen to all the essentials, the formative and influential albums, and what is currently popular. That's a great way to get into music, but it doesn't give one a full understanding of the style. Heavily guided exploration is satisfying, a way to find good music, and a way to become acquainted with the bands that the other "elites" will talk about. With such an expanse of good music, it is easy to avoid independent exploration, letting others guide you on the fast track to knowing everything it takes to be "elite". There are other relations to explore that stem from the prominent bands - other bands the members have been in, scenes and geographically related bands that were influenced by each other, labels and the styles they specialized in, and similar bands to those you like. That's a lot of music to listen to, as well as a lot of information to understand - how bands were related, how individuals are linked, and how things unfolded on the creation side of the music you listen to. Knowing how involved and deep the networks behind all of these bands are probably also inspires you to be involved in your local scene.

Once you get involved in the complexity of exploring the metal underground around certain bands, which thanks to the series of tubes called "the internet" now requires much less digging, you know there is a lot of music. You probably found some more bands that are cult classics, hidden gems, and aren't widely known - as Eucharist to In Flames, Satan to Iron Maiden, Nocturnus to Morbid Angel. If the largest popularity networks exposed you to the more prominent bands but not the lesser known ones, you might wonder if there are bands that have been overlooked even more - bands who made great music without ties to larger scenes and famous bands. A desire to find more music can also help get you used to listening to recordings with rougher production, much less polished and often sounding more like a couple guys jamming in a basement than a complete production - I have come around from preferring polished production to loving it when bands sound like they're playing in a rehearsal room without the recording being cleaned up.

The endeavors mentioned above will take years and years - there are a lot of good bands out there if you don't limit your listening too much. There is another dimension of appreciating music missing there, and that is listening to bands that aren't great, bands that are downright mediocre, bad, unimpressive, or incomplete. Listening outside of your comfort zone, in terms of both style and quality, can aid your appreciation of music if you think about it and consider what you like and don't like. If a band sucks, why don't you like them? They don't simply suck, there are things that make you feel that way. What is done well in the music that sucks? It is rare for music to be completely unredeemable, and believe me that I've heard at least a hundred albums worse than St. Anger. Listening to music that isn't exceptional helps you understand what goes into making music, and what makes the best music special to you. There are differences in taste that separate bands, there are fundamental flaws such as botched production, and there are imperfections that are often discrepancies in performance and production that can transcend the simply describable and make or break music. Independent exploration into music can be highly beneficial to the listening experience - less external filtering occurs when you listen to bands that have few or tangential connections to the more major hubs of music promotion and distribution. Listening with less filtering for quality returns a wide range of music, which gives you a broader perspective on what you listen to.

So, what is arrogance? Believing you have found the ends of these explorations? Stopping while exploring? Telling others of the extent of your exploration? Focusing on the significance of your personal exploration rather than the joy of having this type of exploration? Having patches of bands on your vest that others could teach you a lot about? Showing your experience with music? Not showing your experience with music?

People do tend to stop once they listen to certain bands. I am guilty of it myself.


The funny thing is,
Many of the bands I love are the bands I used to hate or couldn't stand.

orionmetalhead, you are a thrash kielbasa and I am a thrash bratwurst. Bratwurst is better tasting to me than kielbasa and thus I am a better thrash fan than you are, but you are a better thrash fan than the Nathans brand thrash wieners. Nathans hot dogs are essentially preservative laced and toxic. We are all essentially meat concoctions wrapped in intestinal lining though, minus the Nathans and other large brand hot dogs which are wrapped in some sort of chemically synthesized casing. Some wieners just taste better than others but in the end, we all get absorbed and excreted as fecal material. So rank doesn't particularly matter once we are sewer sludge or septic tank sludge.

And to unexpectedly quote the great Legion of Death

"Living in the sewers eating fucking shit, I'm tired of this way of life I think I'm gonna quit"

You both need some mustard, that's what. Maybe some ketchup too, but elitists will tell you that ketchup is an abomination - fuck them.

Wait, wait, wait, WAIT! Who the hell likes bratwurst more than kielbasa?

No idea dude... I love Kielbasa. I don't mind Bratwurst though. It's a good eat.

My preference is better than yours and thus, you are the inferior wiener.

I think that OP is right, that labeling someone as an elitist would be difficult. It would almost be like trying to label someone normal, or abnormal. It's an opinion, which is all it comes down to. I think that's all that the concept of Innocence, Arrogance and Elitism is.

The internet is a resource that is more or less useful for finding music. I think most people can agree on that. In the end it does come down to if you really want to use it. To me, the notion of how information was obtained in the past as opposed to today is completely arbitrary. The reason to use it remains the same as it was for people who were 'in the know' back then; which is people who like metal are going to get into it one way or another. Metal continues to be pretty much a cult following and in a way, looking stuff up on the internet does make you 'in the know' in a way. It's got to be one of the largest unknown followings in the world.

I was born in 1994. I was too fucking young to know what a toilet was, let alone Mayhem or Judas Priest. So really the only difference is probably that I've never been to a concert, and you listen to most of your music on record; if you reading this happen to be one of the "elderly man in a wheel chair with a breathing tube wearing diapers and crapping myself." Sure, it's got to make a difference about how you think about the music, going to shows and being around for tape trading and stuff as opposed to me, who finds 99.99 percent of what I listen to on the internet. Who's to say who's experience is the better experience? I kind of want to know what it's like to be to a show or something like that. However. if you happen to think you're better than me for your experience, then that would make you an arrogant elitist.

I don't really see what innocence has to do with anything. Innocence, as in doing nothing wrong or not?

I kind of had to force myself to read that OP, admittedly. It's been about a week since I decided I wanted to take on actually hammering out a post in this thread! Hope I don't upset someone, sorry if I did. I don't think I did though. Pertaining directly to the OP, the part about acceptance of the metalhead who saves his lunch money for patches is a good message. If there was on thing I could take out of that OP positively... I don't buy patches (besides my two gorement and Death patches for my school backpack) I've saved up money for buying music, for no other reason than I like it!

Another thing, pertaining to the OP, I agree that the internet could very well overshadow real talent. It's exhausting to look through blogs and sample the seemingly endless selection of random black metal bands, just wading through forgettable stuff, keeping attention up just enough before maybe something that's deemed good enough to be saved in my favorite videos on youtube, likely to be forgotten afterwards.
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I always listen to the entire album and I listen to a lot of music on my iPod all the time.