(I wrote this text for a blogpost on inthekeyofa, but i thought i would share it here as well)
Dear fellow Rockers and Metalheads,
Our breed is vanishing, lets be honest. Every once in a while, in my favourite bar, someone comes along and the subject of music surges, often because one of my heroes passed away.
Lately it surges allot. Chester Bennington, Malcom Young, Ronnie James Dio, Chris Cornell, Chuck Berry, Geoff Nichols, Prince, Bowie, Lemmy, Scott Weiland, Phil Taylor, the list seems endless.
Whenever I hear a friend asking:
"Did you heard..?",
I surely hope he's refering to some old lady that choked in her burger somewhere. Im always wrong (Nothing against old ladies eating burgers).
I´m still getting used to the idea that some of the godfathers of the genre are gone. Some were unique, different, or just plain geniuses.
These are some are tough days for heavy metal. Black Sabbath gave their farewell concert in Birmingham a few months. Black Sabbath!, gone for good!
And what about Lemmy? I´ll tell you something, Sabbath and Mötorhead are probably the two most influenced groups in heavy metal. Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Iron Maiden, thank their existence to them, and would make an even bolder statement; the whole death/power/speed/trash metal genres wouldn't even exist if it wasn't for the four from Birminham. I´ll bet that even todays bands are still heavily influenced. When i hear some short dark riff, it´s all coming from Tommy Iomi.
Maybe i´m getting just old, and it´s getting hard for me to realise that the glorious days of heavy metal and rock and roll are long gone. It had something special to take a disc out of the package, read the booklet..hmm.
I used to think 4 times before spending 30 of my hard earned euros on a new record. I could do that once every 2 months at best. Now I hear people say that paying 9,99EUR (About 12 dollars) for a Spotify account is too much money. For just 12 bucks you have access to more then 30 million songs!, limitless!, on the go! Perhaps 12 dollars is expensive after all, when you can listen to most of it free anyways. (youtube).
The way people listen to music has changed. Not only the format (physical to digitalI), but in the actual way they listen to the songs. My generation used to listen to complete albums.
We just inserted the disc and let it play. Nowadays people tend to skip faster, from one song to another, from one artist to another. On some discs I really loved song 3 and 5. Then, after some time (weeks) i suddenly loved nº4. It was just the-song-in-between, that had time time to convince me, only because i was to lazy to get up and push the next button.
Now everything is at hand with online streaming services, just a click away. Listeners have changed. (Can we still call them listeners when they really stop listening?) Perhaps some masterpiece of a the next big Nordic metalband, is just "skipped" away. We used to really listen and analize music. Some songs are like coffee*, the first sip is bitter, not very convincing, but later you cannot live without it.
Maybe just because you can have 30 million songs at your disposal makes you less openminded about listening to something that, at first, doesn't get you from the first few seconds.
Please understand me correct, I do think there is good music out there, there are some really high quality groups making fantastic songs. It just really hard to stand out. Internet has opened an enormous international market. Where before bands only got listened to locally, or nationally if they were lucky, now they can be heard worldwide. But they also have worldwide competition.
Will I someday teach my children or grandchildren heavy-metal music, just like my father thought me to love the Blues? Will metal go the same route as the Blues? Blues was the music to listen too decades to go, it´s definitely not dead. It cannot be, as it is the origin of most of the genres. But how many blues songs do you hear on popular radios?, probably the same amount as true heavy metal music. To quote Zoltán Báthory, guitarist for Five Finger Death Punch, from an article last year on observer.com: “Every genre has a cycle. Metal and hard rock has gone through various phases, and I think we’re going to experience those phases again,” “In the ’80s,” Zoltán continues, “hard rock and heavy metal was in the spotlight and was probably the most important genre at the time. It was a voice of rebellion, the voice of a new young generation going up against the establishment. It became a passionate movement that eventually had so many followers that it became its own micro economy. All of a sudden some young, longhaired, tattooed guys could become extremely popular and sell millions of records.” I couldn't agree more. Heavy Metal and Rock (as Blues), were underground movements. Gatherings of angry people, rebellious people. Just listen to the rage in the voice of Paul Di'Anno in "Running Free". Has the world suddenly become a perfect place? Is everybody living in perfect harmony, happy flowers growing everywhere?. I don´t think so, the world is different, but there are some problems that keep existing. Racism is still here, unemployment never left, wars are raging. Where are the angry people?, or is nobody angry anymore? I did hear raging in rap-music in the early 2000`s, but where is it now? I´m not saying that rock and metal are doomed. There are some great groups like Candlemass (Those Riffs from "Solitude", are very familiar sounding for Sabbath fans), Ghost, Avenged Sevenfold etc, but are they really putting a statement out there?, are they pushing the boundaries. Are they rebellious? Hope is on the cyclic nature of things. Metal rose from the underground in the late 70's and became mainstream in the '80s. Glamrock came and then rap took over in the 90's and 2000`s. Now its all pop, indie poprock, or even reggaeton (!). The underground still exists, there are things going on there unknown to the great public. Metal will return, metal will rise once again. \m/ Keep rockin' * = I was going to use cigarettes as the metaphor for songs addiction, but that would be really educational, wouldn´t it? I guess coffee will do fine as well. p.d.: You probably think i´m near 60. Nope i´m under 40. Just a tiny little bit under 40, but under 40 I am :)
Photo: Ralph Arvesen</sub
What is the next supergroup? The next Metallica, the next Iron Maiden? These groups are still touring yes, Metallica being especially popular, and seem to still have some gas to give. But they are no youngsters. Where are the new guys?
inthekeyofa
Metal never dies
True!