Thursday, August 20, 2009

In defense of 80s metal

So, the other day I was listening to a collection of hardcore breakdowns. Just for the hell of it. That's not my favorite genre. Far from it. But I'm always looking to broaden my horizons a little. And besides, there's a piece of me that really likes the heavy stuff.

Youtube comments are always interesting. Sometimes, I'll spend a few minutes reading them instead of actually watching the video. You learn a lot about people that way.

Anyway, on one of the breakdown videos, I found a comment that went something like this:

"It's not about how complicated it is. It's about how good it sounds. 80s metal is complicated, but it all sounds like shit."

Excuse me?

Now I KNOW the person who left the comment is a 14-year-old kid with too many opinions and too little taste in music. I know that comment shouldn't bother me.

But damnit, it does.

Kid, it's pretty obvious that you enjoy blazing beats. You like to listen to shit like this. Okay, so you've got a thing for rhythm. Fine. And you like your music to be heavy. HEAVY. That's not what bothers me.

What bothers me is that you just just dismissed an entire ERA of music. Music that was based around some very tight rhythms. Groundbreaking music.

But you know what? That stuff was all shit. None of it was any good. None of the musicians playing 80s metal and rock had any talent whatsoever. And the beats were all slow as hell. No one even knew how to play the drums back then.

Really, it's fine.

Just go back to your room and listen to some more of whatever it is you like to listen to.

Look - you can hate whatever you want to. But if you're going to speak up about it, at least have a couple of examples. Tell me WHAT you hate. Otherwise, it's probably better if you keep your mouth shut.

Let me show you how it's done:

I really hate country music. I don't like the vocal style virtually all of the artists use. I'm not a big fan of the b-string bender sound. Fiddles aren't my thing either. But you know what? That doesn't mean country musicians don't know how to play their instruments. It also doesn't mean their music is shit. Just keep it away from me. I don't even want to hear it in passing.

Was that really that difficult?

0 comments:

Post a Comment