new piece up: naming the unnameable

[John]

this is kind of the culmination of lots of thinking around this issue, stuff I've referred to elsewhere - the boil-it-down bit is kinda "wait, you like melechesh but aghora is cheesy? huh?" but there's a lot of work to do in here I think

[coldforge]

I'm proud of you, John. We have so much work to do.



But mostly I actually do think it's the vocals, yeah. I speak for myself: obviously I listen to more prog-metal than most of the people in this forum, but I actually do react incredibly strongly to certain clean vocals. I could write several thousand words on my relationship to clean vocals. It's been the story of my relationship with metal, in a strange way.

Here's what I've noticed for myself: there is a gap, for me, that is almost always very wide and very definite, between clean vocals that I love and clean vocals that embarrass the hell out of me. Here are some of the clean vocalists I love, within the prog-metal world: Lars Nedland, of Age of Silence (et al); Heri Joensen, of Tyr; Stu Block, of Into Eternity; Mikael Åkerfeldt, of Opeth. In each case, the vocals are absolutely soaring and clean; what makes them acceptable to me is not that they hedge themselves somewhere between clean and growling. But with all of them, also, there is some degree of multitracking (or harmonization), and a purity of tone, and absence of vibrato, which makes them a little bit more restrained, and a little bit classier. In your average power/prog/speed metal vocal there is the distinct quality of cheese which is brought about by the vocalist throwing themselves a little too heavily into false melodrama. It speaks, and I think this is the key, of self-unknowing.

One of the most central and stirring aesthetics that any metal, of any stripe, can communicate to me is that of wisdom and high-mindedness, of power which stems from superiority and confidence, rather than the rage or passion which might derive from resentment, or emotional weakness. What I react to, in abhorring the majority of clean vocalists, is their lack of poise, their manifest uncoolness which stems not from a defiant willingness to wave broadswords around because it is in fact manifestly awesome, but which bespeaks, more likely, parochial ignorance.

That sense is related to a quality that I find myself, for lack of a better word, calling 'humanity'—the uncomfortable immediacy of the individual singing as opposed to the persona he projects. Part of the above singers' talent is their superior skill and taste, but also part of it is the multitracking or harmonization. What those techniques do is they impose distance between me and the individual who happens to be singing, by blending his individual voice into some kind of aggregate or averaged voice (which is why I have always preferred choral pieces to solo vocals in the classical world), much in the same way that death or black vocals similarly diminish the humanity of the singer.

To delve into why exactly I find 'humanity' so deeply undesirable in almost all the music I listen to, I fear, would lengthen considerably this already considerably long post.

[John]

super-interesting & awesome response cf! the thing is though, the indie outlets 'n' ppl I'm talking about - who love non-NSBM black metal & out-there doom & repped Blood Mountain and all that - often/usually have, in their indie tastes, a pronounced preference for the "human"/"authentic"/etc - they'll be into, like, the Palace Bros or me or whoever, but when it comes to metal, there'll be this sudden need for several layers of distance

so what's that about

[John]

also cf how did you feel about the Hungarian band Without Face, now sadly broken up?

[titus a.]

To delve into why exactly I find 'humanity' so deeply undesirable in almost all the music I listen to, I fear, would lengthen considerably this already considerably long post.

I feel you tremendously on this.

[coldforge]

I think, John, without trying to condemn those indie people as tourists (explicitly, that is; because, you know, fuck everyone who doesn't bleed metal, fucking posers), it's because they approach metal as something exotic. Whether it's a new orientalism, and the Aquarius posse are just really schooled and informed in a culture which they nevertheless keep themselves totally separate from, like anthropologists; or if it's because they honestly do find that strain of metal incredibly compelling for its drama, its aesthetics, its technicality—ie, all the stuff that dyed-in-the-wool metalheads also find compelling—they don't really identify with it.

They identify with Palace Music, because that dude (it's one dude, right?) is a sensitive, articulate indie dude, like themselves. So hell yeah, get right up next to him and imagine going on a picnic with him as the LP plays and you stare at your ceiling. But your average longhaired central European prog-metaler? Not so much. That dude, lets be honest, is a little more like your fourth grade teacher, who with serious mien explained to your class as you sat on the alphabet rug that Jimi Hendrix was the best musician who has ever lived.

And it's the same for me. I think it's true of pretty much everyone that we love most that art with which we identify, or with which we seek to identify ourselves. My dominant aesthetic (not that I display, necessarily, but that which resonates most with me) is of your warrior-poet-priest, you know, all corpsepaint and armor, dispensing bloody, godlike wisdom and dispensing with the illusions and petty morals of the people of this world. Et cetera. I identify just as poorly with most of these guys, who, despite their placement in the metal camp, just as often in their values and fashion come off having more in common with my dad than with me.

That's part of it, but not all.

[coldforge]

I don't know Without Face. I'm sure if I ever saw them, I avoided them, because they looked cheesy as hell and had soprano vocals, which I have never liked. Shall I investigate them anyway?

[John]

I don't know Without Face. I'm sure if I ever saw them, I avoided them, because they looked cheesy as hell and had soprano vocals, which I have never liked. Shall I investigate them anyway?

no man they are as cheesy as you suspect - I love them, but I have a pretty high tolerance for cheese, for example I unironically and wholeheartedly love Iron Maiden and not just DiAnno era like all the self-styled hardasses

[John]

the thing is, though - and part of what I'm trying to say - is that demanding some level of human remove (death/black vox, outre production etc) seems to me part of the same impulse as indie-toes-in-the-water: you want your metal not to be part of the tradition of which it is explicitly, undeniably a part, and if you doubt me on that count, have a listen to nobody-here-can-question-the-man's-credentials Erik Rutan's old band Alas (who used to be my line-in-the-sand but I wish I'd kept the promo 'cause I might like it now)

[coldforge]

Wait, which tradition is it a part of, and who doesn't want it to be—me or the indie kids?

[Andrew_TSKS]

you know, john, my first reaction to your post was "hey, i did like evanescence, at least at first", which is i think fitting in light of your most recent post. i think i'm starting to understand where you're going with all of these thought processes, which is somewhere in the area of "i will fully pay the price of renouncing my coolness cred forever if it means i get to listen to this awesome piece of music without fear or shame." i mean, right? let me know if i'm on the right track here.

i also have something to say about the issue of humanity in music--i think coldforge has a really good point about what it is that indie kids want from metal, and i also think that i don't fit into that whole thing. i mean, of course not; i was a metalhead before i was into pretty much anything else, where music is concerned. but i don't identify any more than that with his own perception of what he likes in metal, and his way of identifying with metal. i think it is precisely the emotions that he attributes to a position of weakness that i identify with in metal, and i think i do want humanity in my metal vocals. but of course, the humanity i get out of tom araya's vocals is a lot different from the humanity someone else gets from will oldham's. i relate a lot more to furious screams of anger and hatred than to a kind of soulful blues mourning. getting back to metal, i think this is why i tend to have trouble with death metal vocals--the same inhumanity that draws coldforge repels me. i want to hear a guy screaming rather than growling. i can remember reading reviews of hardcore albums in inside front fanzine in the late 90s, and brian d. would get upset about hardcore bands having monotone screams as vocals. the band i remember him saying this about was coalesce, and while i've always loved them, i've heard a whole bunch of other more metallic hardcore and/or metalcore bands over the years where this exact monotone scream was their vocal approach, and it's usually turned me off. it gets the same effect, in my mind, as death metal vocals--another instrument, and a harsh one, which cannot replace the emotional catharsis i get from listening to a dude scream his fucking head off. i think that's something i'm looking for in all music, really, regardless of whether it is channeled through harsh screams or quiet, pretty vocals. i love the emotion i hear in alex chilton or nick drake's vocals, too. but i am more drawn to hardcore, metal, and emo than to anything else, and all of that stuff is at least somewhat based around screamed vocals.

granted, that's not the same brand of cheese as is generated by guys like bruce dickinson, but i do think it involves a similar form of sacrifice when you fully admit that you like this kind of stuff. you compared it to lilith fair in your article, which is a good analogy, but you could also compare cheesy prog-metal to an unashamed love for a band like fall out boy, which you will probably remember got me a world of shit back when i first made it public in the early days of the board (these days everyone's just used to it, which is good in a way).

one more point: i grew up loving iron maiden, and never became ashamed of that sort of thing, but in my late 90s hardcore-true-believer days, i felt like almost everyone around me who also claimed to love iron maiden were being ironic, whereas i was serious and actually put their records on on a day-to-day basis. maybe the fact that i'm unafraid to embrace my love of one particular brand of cheese makes it easier for me to also love other brands of cheese, you know? like, i was always into the emo stuff, and i was always into maiden, and saying which came first is totally chicken-and-egg when i think back on my teenage years, but either way, being willing to admit to loving one and not being afraid of getting kicked out of the cool kid club probably made it easier for me to admit love of the other (and of every other cheesy thing i like, of which there's quite a bit).

for indie kids, though, there's still a lot of reluctance in place as far as their willingness to embrace ANYTHING uncool goes. i could argue that kids who are able to admit to liking some of the more pop-based indie stuff should be able to see what's great about some of my favorite popular emo bands, but they won't cross that line because to do so would involve crossing from an area that is sanctioned as cool into one that's decidedly not. a different version of this same reluctance may very well be the reason you can't convince indie kids who like mastodon and tortoise to check out something like aghora.

[John]

Wait, which tradition is it a part of, and who doesn't want it to be—me or the indie kids?

I would say both of y'all as it seems to me! It's quasi-operatic Nightwish-y clean female vox (not as good as Nightwish though) and doomy/My Dying Bride-ish riffs (though played by Rutan, so obviously they're a cut above) - indie converts tend to want their metal to not be mawkish sci-fi D&D-ism since they prefer that stuff with a wink & a nod, hc extreme metal dudes don't wanna seem soft & related to the hesher tradition even though ALL the dudes from the true Norweigan come-up were heshers who loved Maiden etc.

x-post Andrew's right in his first graf, although that's sort of always been my thing - the print editions of LPTJ were at least partly about praising music I loved even if people thought it was lame (Amorphis, Grim Reaper, Zaza, etc)

I also love a fair amount of Lilith Fair stuff although it's at exactly that point that I become less comfortable talking publicly about it 'cause it's really hard to defend on any grounds other than "hey, sometimes I enjoy it"

[coldforge]

I wouldn't necessarily agree that we don't want it to be part of that tradition, John. I don't know any true metalheads who repudiate our heavy metal past—even those who don't like Maiden usually just say, "Before my time, man". But everyone identifies in terms of tradition, history, folk, blood, etc., with Sabbath, Maiden, Priest, Dio. Nobody, even those of us who range from not really digging Dio's music to simply not really ever leaping to put it on the stereo, would deny that he's a really important part of our past, and still definitely relevant to our values and culture. I mean, you have the most grim and frostbitten longhaired Aryans from Norway traveling down to Wacken in DROVES and screaming like girls when Dio comes up, and they are not in the minority.

 I love Maiden most of the time, so I think the hesher tradition is very strong. I identify with it, though I don't self-identify as a hesher. I think the distinction between that heavy metal tradition and one of its current offshoots which much of the more extreme metal community doesn't identify with, like gothic metal, is one of degree. In particular, yes, I think that soprano female vocals come from a different place, from outside the main trunk of the metal progression. So I don't feel bad about generally ignoring their place in metal. But in general, metal's incredibly detailed stylistic facetization means we can be awfully choosy about our music. I don't like soprano vocals, I am distrustful of violins, I could rank my preferred vocal styles with astounding gradation. Maybe it is a matter of not wanting to seem soft, dunno, but when you get to a metalhead preferring one kind of metal to another, a lot of it is by degree, rather than trying to redraw our family tree.

[Ah_Pook]

forgetting to care at all about what other people think about the stuff you like is a pretty big step in the right direction

i really have never gotten into operatic female vocals in metal though, i dunno. something about the sound just doesnt do it for me. its weird because i really love fruity power metal vocals and Into Eternity and whatnot.

edit: if anyone wants to throw out some reccs of good female fronted metal bands i would be into checking them out.

[coldforge]

düdd have you heard of arch enemy they have a chick singer, she is so hot, blucas to thread

[Ah_Pook]

dude i said good chick singer bands

[Ah_Pook]

off the top of the head ive heard Thorrs Hammer, Ludicra, some interchangeably awful goth metal bands... um oh shit some terrrrrible prog thing with some ex cynic guys in it... i know theres more but yknow.

i do like the female vocals on the first Hammers Of Misfortune album now that i think about it.

[John]

Pook you did not just dis Arch Enemy

ban Ah Pook

[John]

forgetting to care at all about what other people think about the stuff you like is a pretty big step in the right direction

this is kind of an oversimplification - as I said upthread, I've always covered almost exclusively stuff that people think is silly, irrelevant, etc. What I'm trying to point out is that even the most liberated of listeners will occasionally find that some of his "criteria" are in fact scene- or culture-based constraints, not aesthetic yardsticks of any particular value.

[Ah_Pook]

i have a long history of dissing arch enemy

mainly i do it because i think they suck profoundly large quantities of balls

[Ah_Pook]

um oh shit some terrrrrible prog thing with some ex cynic guys in it

oh man, i went to check out Aghora and they are totally who i was talking about here

ha

[John]

dude Michael Arnott

I mean the dude has the kinda pedigree where you gotta give him massive massive credit

like, if he's writing riffs and you don't feel him, you might wanna give dude the benefit of the doubt

[John]

ps if you are copping to liking Into Eternity then you are braver than I

[coldforge]

uh, FUCK YOU MR EDITOR MAN

Into Eternity fucking slay!

Well, their most recent album is kind of middling,

and their first album was not yet immature,

but holy shit, the middle one is truly fantastic. One of my over-and-over records.

[John]

every Into Eternity record I've ever heard bored me so bad

ban coldforge