What music do you have the most trouble appreciating and finding favorites in? Not necessarily that you think it sucks, to differentiate it from other active threads, but just that it is so outside of your palate or cultural experience that you have trouble grasping it. And maybe if people consider themselves knowledgeable in some of these areas they can make recommendations, potentially even tailored to specific poster's tastes if they have a sense of them.

For me, there are two particular areas, both of which have things in common.

One is harsh noise, and some of the more extreme industrial, including various substyles like power electronics and such. I think this ties into why I struggle with the more dissonant strains of death (and black) metal. But at least there they tend to have more recognizable song, riffing, rhythmic, and even textural structures in common with other metal, so I can put up with more atonality and lack of melody. But for a lot of the noise/industrial I've heard structure seems absent (sometimes probably intentionally), so there's just not much for me to latch onto. There is a lot of electro-industrial, aggrotech and such I like, but those tend to be more melodic and with more conventional song formats and synthesizer sounds.

Another is free and avant-garde jazz. Similar issues here, it just too often feels like random experimentation for the sake of it, and I just feel unmoored listening to it, even though the timbres are often more familiar. It's more hit and miss here, I've had more success with some of Marilyn Crispell's work, which isn't always as intense, and certain albums like John Coltrane's Sun Ship, or various work from Oregon, mix the more bizarre sections with regular songwriting, so I can tolerate the crazier stuff when I know it's coming back to more normal territory at some point again.

If I'd done this thread a decade or more ago I would have included 20th century avant-garde classical, avant-prog, and Rock In Opposition, but I've had some breakthroughs with finding more artists and albums I like there since then, so it seems possible to make progress on these. I think part of it is that two of my favorite albums are the scores to Alien 3 from Elliott Goldenthal, and to The Village from James Newton Howard. Both of those go from extremes of some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard, to some of the ugliest, and probably repeated exposure over years/decades wore me down, and I've heard elements of those in common with RIO and others that gave me a foothold.

I don't really struggle with anything at this point. Sure I still can't tolerate boybands or bad mainstream metal but challenging music quite quickly is interesting to me. One genre i find kind of interesting while it isn't for me at all is hyperpop. Many ways opposite of what I want both culturally and musically but it is so extra that it has something going for it.

Sometimes also music that should be harder to get into is actually easier to get into. I like more really abrasive jazz than more "casual" jazz for example.

I had a very difficult time with jazz that wasn't free jazz, but I was coming at it from a noise perspective. I wasn't looking for "brutality", but a lot of the tones in jazz made me cringe. And I hated hated HATED the saxophone for the longest time. Really, any woodwind instrument bothered me. But when it was played aggressively and with dissonance, I could deal with it. This and that happened, and that all changed. My math was wrong for the longest time. I was adding 2 + 2 and getting 7. Changing how I listened to it, which took an embarrassingly long amount of time, was the difference. I usually find that the case, though. For another example, I also couldn't stand the vibraphone until last year, and then I heard the Andrew Hill - Judgement album. It suddenly clicked, and now I listen to that instrument with pure joy.

I should have been able to connect the dots in my own history, as I'm a big, big Grateful Dead fan (am nuts for improvisation), adore krautrock (couldn't stand the jazz fusion bands until my aforementioned jazz journey), and have a strong connexion with your example Oregon, just to name a few. I love to listen to the players listening to each other. I'm more impressed with the skill set of listening and playing off each other than songwriting. Obviously, they're both crucial, but the skill to remove the ego and place your playing in the hands of the other players, knowing when not to play, is endlessly fascinating and provides infinite results.

I was like this with Keiji Haino too. I always liked his heavy noise and pure ambient albums, but the rest of it drove me crazy. I knew something was there for me, though. Now, I think he's one of my favorite artists of all time, and anything he does interests me. Again, I changed how I listened to him, and now I'm fully there.

I'm a big tone and timbre person. It's not usually the music itself that creates the major hurdle. It's the tones and timbre. If I can come at those things from a different place, it all changes.

Fascinating, you're kind of the exact opposite of me, or at least started from opposite trajectories. Saxophone and vibraphone were some of my early favorite instruments. I wanted to play saxophone before guitar, but my parents convinced me I'd have a better chance of playing with other people with guitar, and they were right. Learned to play saxophone later on anyway though.

The point about improvisation and listening skills is also intriguing. I've never been able to get into jam bands for the most part, but that is the reason I tend to like a lot of live jazz, it's the perfect medium for that. I get annoyed by live recordings that just try and reproduce the studio album, as it rarely matches, much less exceeds that product, so I prefer creative rearrangements and on the spot reinterpretations. It's also related to why supergroups fascinate me, where players get out of the comfort zones of their normal groups and collaborate with people they don't typically work with, where for it to work there has to be a constant feedback loop.

Honestly, it's a weird question for me. Any genre that doesn't 'hook' me in with relative ease will have a hard time getting consecutive tries from me. Metal or otherwise. Most of the music I listen to I got into with relative ease. There's so much to discover in genres I 'do' like, I wouldn't really want concern myself with stuff that's 'hard to get into'.

Unfortunately, I find both supergroups and collaborations to be 95% failures and don't live up to the assumed potential. I think I can name on two hands the successful industrial collaborations, and there have been thousands. Some of that is prey to my own expectations. I do appreciate one aspect of supergroups, though: songwriters who are usually very protective, defensive, and even ego-maniacs have to leave that at home when in a group of other notable songwriters and players. There's less of a hierarchy. That's another reason I like improvisation so much. While there is usually a leader of some sort, by nature, it is a very generous approach to playing music. That protectionism and defensiveness is usually not part of the makeup of the playing. It's very democratic. Leaders hire other players with the hopes they'll thrive and deliver. They don't hire guns so they can control and stifle them.

Math rock. It serves no purpose for me and sounds mostly so lifeless and calculated that I get the heebie-jeebies. When math rock bands venture closer to metal, they almost categorically do it by leaning into metalcore or djent. That shit doesn't fly with me and makes a bad situation worse. When they remain on the softer side, depending on the artist, I just find myself wanting to listen to post-punk (in so called atmospheric math rock cases) or avant-prog/RIO/zeuhl (in technical math rock cases). Usually these options have so much more life, energy, danger, excitement in them.

Acoustic shit and ambient shit. What can I say, I like some vigor and volume, I'll take something which can grab even the remotest amount of attention any day.

Folk/ethnic music. I can respect it for what it is, but it is often too crude and primitive for me to enjoy.

The most challenging band I eventually got into is Primus. I could not stand Les' voice. They certainly had fine rhythmic stuff especially on 'Sailing the Seas of Cheese', where Herb just slays. I think it's eventually his playing that sucked me in more and more.

I need some kind of composition that makes sense to me, and I hardly cannot find any in aforementioned power electronics and noise stuff. I like some industrial, but yeah, I want some structure. I haven't worked in a factory, so...

Math rock, yeah, and most math metal I've heard, too. I also find it lifeless. As a reviewer, I've received some stuff, and simply had to say "no good"... Well, I sucked at math at school anyway!

This is how I feel about most of what they call math rock myself. There are some exceptions, like early bands like Slint, or those that border more on prog rock. But stuff like The Dillinger Escape Plan, that's supposed to be very good, I simply can't get into.

As for djent, I have similar issues, and can't get into Meshuggah, no matter how many times I've tried. But I enjoy some Animals As Leaders. Some people have called Scale the Summit "djent", although I disagree with that categorization, but also really like their music, that I perceive as more prog metal/rock.

Have you heard Plini or Intervals?

The radical avant-garde scene of music. When visiting the Gaudeamus Music Week in the Netherlands one time, I was exposed to a world where 'outdated' concepts like beats and tunes get thrown out the window. It was almost a shock to encounter these very different approaches to writing and performing music. It was absolutely fascinating but sadly I can't say that, for me, the music itself was particularly enjoyable. The point of making something that defies convention and expectation deserves encouragement and support but it also taught me that what really gives me joy is a melody. I'm a simple guy like that. I wish I enjoyed that interesting stuff more but I just don't. It's not for lack of trying either. Like, I love to read about it and watch a documentary about how a new piece is composed or performed because it's entertaining and often leads to a new insight. But then I'll listen to some sweet harmonies with regular rhythmic patterns and predictable intervals after and not miss a thing.

Here's what that festival is like:

Classical, it only works when it accompanies a movie or tv show, without that it just sucks balls.

Stuff like Merzbow- I can certainly appreciate what he was trying to do from an artistic standpoint, but lets be honest- one cannot simply sit and listen to Merzbow as an enjoyable or relaxing musical (or non-musical) experience. Maybe some people can, but I can't.

I still, nonetheless, have more respect for Merzbow than I do for bad, talentless auto-tune synth pop crap. Some of which I find even more grating to listen to than Merzbow.

Not true. Like any music, and maybe like most artists, once you learn their ways, it becomes natural to pick up on the nuances and different approaches. It's no different than any other music. And someone as talented as Merzbow, you can also go through his different eras and follow him through his ideas and techniques. Like any other artist. He's an amazing musician, from his drumming to industrialism to noise and onward. His work isn't by accident, either. At any time, he can pick up his gear and go back to an old technique and produce sounds of that other era. He knows his gear inside and out, up and down. My hunch is that musicians and academics will be studying him for hundreds of years.

Well, it's not like I don't respect Masami Akita and his sonic art form, because I do- I have tons of respect for him as an artist and a creator.

But, the point of this thread being, I find it "Challenging To Get Into." That was my point. I have a lot of respect for musicians and artists whose work I don't really connect with, and Merzbow is dark, avant-garde, edgy and experimental to the extreme. Thus, I like it far more than auto-tuned synth pop, which I find equally challenging to get into but have little respect for. Artists like Merzbow are everything these pop/top 40 artists are not.

Of stuff that I have an actual interest in, and have tried to get into, jazz in general has been really tough for me. It's obviously a huge genre, but with so much history behind it it's been a mega chore to actually identify what I do and don't like. Even looking at the subgenres of albums I really like often hasn't resulted in me finding any other albums I like in the same style.

Start a thread for suggestions. I'm always looking for new gems, as I'm mostly new to jazz myself. And even in highly specific suggestion threads from all over the internet, I still find myself thinking, "Oh no, that's not what I was looking for. We're obviously keying into different things."

This is very well put, and I agree with the general sentiment, and Merzbow is one of these artists that I have a hard time getting into, but that I still respect from an artistic standpoint. In practice I'm not more of a fan of his work then the work of any given bubble gum pop artist out there, but I do have respect for his work. I do wish I would enjoy his work more though. But, as you said, it's challenging work.

I'll echo what a lot of people have said and posit the more loose and/or avant garde forms of jazz. I respect the insane skill it takes to write and perform but it just never ever works for me. I got a comment on my (very negative) imperial Triumphant review that mocked me for finding it unlistenable while praising the fuck out of White Ward's shallow shlocky saxophone parts before smugly asserting that I must not listen to a lot of jazz. And ya know what, anonymous commenter? You're right! I can totally understand why somebody can hear how wacked out and challenging Imperial Triumphant is and understand it as extremely complex and well written, but I wish fans of that could also understand why somebody else can hear the same thing and interpret it as stream of conscious gibberish. Just like how I can totally understand somebody can hear the smooth sax lines in White Ward and think that it's really shallow and gimmicky, while I think it fills a space that metal has left empty for decades so it's great to hear somebody explore the idea.

I will admit that any actual disdain towards those types of jazz stems more from my annoyance of its fans (absolutely nobody is more insufferable about liking something that you don't than jazz fans (the only group worse than metalheads with this)) because the style itself is more "not for me" than it is "bad", but it's definitely the style I've had the most resistance towards getting into when I've given it an honest try.

I suppose harsh noise stuff also qualifies but I'm convinced that nobody actually listens to it for pleasure. I can see how somebody can respect or appreciate it for its intentional buttfucking of musical tradition and wanton boundary pushing, but nobody gears up for a road trip and tosses on Merzbow. If that stuff gives you joy to listen to, please donate your brain when you die so it can be studied.

With this, whatever you tried to express before it was turned to mush and/or negated.

I'm not sure "pleasure" is the right word, but I suspect the reasons people listen to harsh noise are more to be challenged, to experience novelty, seeking endorphin release, etc. Kind of like eating spicy food or even BDSM. Sort of a masochism that generates its own reward, or makes other adjacent gratifications more intense. But there are levels to it, where maybe death metal is like a habanero, but harsh noise is more like a ghost pepper, which is too much for many (including me).

It's the right word, just a wrong implication.

Never really tried a lot of the harsh noise shit. I have tried some industrial like Throbbing Gristle, and weird shit like Velvet Underground's second album. I feel like saying "oh who can enjoy this" is just headed down a bit of a slippery slope to being like "only conventional melodies and songs are good." There's a fascination and intrigue to this stuff, along with weird metal acts like Nuclear Death for instance, where it's like being intrigued by a really out there movie or something. It's just interesting sometimes.

I suppose I did register as an organ donor.

Harsh noise is, among other things, a lot about sound design. it's similar to ambient music in that regard. This reminds me of an ocean during a raging storm, white-water spraying everywhere, for example:

I think I implied that HNW is uniformly bad and everybody who likes it is pretending, which isn't actually what I meant lol. I meant you don't listen to it the same way you listen to basically anything else. With pop you can focus on hooks, with metal you can focus on riffs, even with super intense grind or powerviolence you can latch on to the sheer intensity. HNW doesn't lend itself to any of that. Hell even ambient, a genre you're kinda meant to listen to passively and let it wash over you, is at least oftentimes calming. I didn't mean HNW sucks, I just meant that it isn't the type of music you throw on when you want to have a good time, and I can't imagine hearing a wall of static noise and saying "Oh shit this is one of my favorites" and cranking it up in the car ya know?

I'd love to be proven wrong though! HNW hasn't historically been for me, but I don't think it's implicitly bad or anything, just not something you'd throw on at a party or something, lol.

This is both true and not true. As you said, don't you listen to each type of music, or sound, differently? I do. Nevertheless, it is all panging emotions, vibes, or however you want to term it. I go to nearly every type of music for a different reason and listen to it in a particular way, but in the end, it all falls under the same reason I go to music and sound, some particular satisfaction. I'm sure that's obvious, but I'll say it anyway. I don't listen to noise all that differently than I do to jazz improvisation or jam bands (I never cared for that term, but I get it). It's honestly why I've never understood why there isn't more cross interest between listeners, like Deadheads not having interest in krautrock or most electronica. For me, there are parallels all over the place. Anyway, I think I can too easily get sidetracked from the original post. Apologies.

This trying to generalize in this strange way the reasons people listen to harsh noise made me feel a vicarious embarrassment, plus feel sorry for people on MA who listen to this kind of noise for other reason(s). In one thread, one of the main reasons people listen to it was defined as self-harm, and in this thread it was compared to masochism… Is there really a reason/need to make such "diagnoses"/comparisons?

I forgot about that thread. There's nothing quite like a conversation between people who hate something (read: usually don't understand it). They're quickly talking about themselves and not the subject at hand.

Yes, I think this is the main problem in this situation.

(LithoJazzoSphere, just to be clear: I, like you, can't listen to and can't get into harsh noise either, it's just way too harsh, intense and chaotic for me, but I understand that there are people who can just listen and perceive it and find harsh noise interesting).


I think that the mention of levels (like "different people are able to perceive music/noise at different intensities") is quite appropriate in this thread though , but in a different way/situation - that are more related to perception than to feeling.


I think, in certain cases, it doesn't even have to be literally noise to be perceived like noise for certain people.
Like, some people who don't listen to extreme metal at all consider intense death and black metal as "just (chaotic) noise" and can't get into it.

For me personally, things like these feel/perceived more like noise/general sound than something that actually being made up of notes -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2EGKt8yONI
I can enjoy tracks/albums that have long minimal repetitive parts (although I prefer it with some pauses and tempo changes in/between), but 'unnaturally/abnormally' fast and repetitive stuff like this is that I can't enjoy and can't understand a point of it - it's just minimalism only for the sake of repetition and intensity to me.

There is even a Youtube comment from a listener of free jazz who thinks that this repetition is much worse than free jazz and is unlistenable at all:

I just find that when you don't understand why a person does or likes something, you often either don't know enough about the activity or interest, or not enough about the person. I'm sure there's a whole panoply of reasons that people can be into it, but that's just a small amount I've gleaned from occasionally reading discussions about it over the years and from friends who are into it. If you think you have a better theory, have at it. At least a small quantity of masochism is inherent in a large amount of the music that is popular here, compared to the average person's interests. "(in general use) the enjoyment of what appears to be painful or tiresome." I like spicy food, and it confounds some people, so that's my other easiest avenue into understanding the phenomenon.

LithoJazzoSphere,
thank you for your answer and for the more detailed clarifications, this is exactly what I was hoping to hear:


When it comes to a more extreme form of music/noise, the generalization (and especially in such a more physiological/psychological way) of reasons people listen to it is what I personally find inappropriate and incorrect.

You have an awesome topic here - it's interesting to read how metal fans perceive different non-metal music and about the preferences in non-metal music (it's good to know that I'm not the only one who is not really into "pure" math rock!), and it would be sad if the topic turned into something like this ''infamous'' thread - viewtopic.php?f=1&t=122672
where, for some reason, the OP was trying to generalize the reasons people listen to extreme metal with all those theories/"analysis".


Yes, a very good thing about this forum is that it's a good place for people who prefer extreme (metal) music - there are much more chances that no one will judge you and will not ask you strange questions if you like more extreme/intense/weird (in musical sense) music, and you just feel comfortable with your musical tastes here, - it would be great if it stayed that way.

captain beefheart never clicked for me, even though I love Gorguts

Ah, I see more where you're coming from now! I think you'd still be surprised though. Particularly back when I was more into noise and experimental stuff in general, it would occupy similar listening roles as more conventional stuff. For instance, I love listening to it in the car, especially if the car has decent speakers.

What do they have in common except being weird avant-garde, dissonant, experimental music?

Same for me. I always see Captain Beefheart mentioned with a lot of early prog and psychedelic bands that I quite like, but they're entirely their own thing.

noise, ambient and such are psychedelic music to me. I like the feeling of what it does to my mind. It is almost like dreaming with your eyes open.

Hyperpop just rubs me the wrong way generally, it's like Twitter in music form and I hate the culture surrounding it. Some of it is OK though but only because it's more nihilistic than going for any particular kind of posturing as subversive:



this local artist for instance is a hit here with alternative kids here and I can tolerate it at worst. He seems like a fun guy.

As for theorizing on why people like HNW, I think the spicy food/masochism comparison makes sense. It might be a generalization but I don't see what's so inappropriate about it. People have said similar things about my taste for extreme metal and techno and when I hear it I generally respond with a "yeah, maybe, so what". Their opinions, their business.