Wednesday, January 7, 2009

I listen to doom metal

I'm freestylin this one. Sorry if it don't come out concise.

It's an odd thing, tracing your footsteps backwards into your past, on the road of music. I have traveled through so many musical tastes, listened to so many bands, and loved them, and maybe later hated them. I have continually progressed into genres that I once thought I'd never like, to my surprise, and it is this fact that has me writing now; to think curiously about my transformation of taste throughout my life. Maybe I will be able to predict my tastes of the future...

I started listening to rock music exclusively at the age of about fourteen, after growing up on hip hop that my older brother introduced me to. I started listening to Nu-Metal, and some more popular "punk" bands. These genres seemed to be enticing to me due to their newness, and sort of defiant nature. Punk has always had the youthful spirit. I think what really grabbed me about those genres though were simply the fact that they were popular among my friends. Fourteen is certainly an age of impressionability.

In my evolving self, I shifted my musical taste away from the more abrasive styles of rock (especially Nu-Metal; I burned that bridge long ago...), and towards the more melodic and emotional sounding varieties. I had always felt a particular fondness to the slow songs, the sad songs, the melodic songs, as a young one, so moving into genres like emo, screamo, and post-rock was quite natural.

Being influenced by the "post-hardcore" bands of the earlier 2000's, such as Thursday, Thrice, Coheed and Cambria, This Day Forward, Hopesfall, Snapcase, Refused, Poison the Well, Sparta, Skycamefalling, and many others, I found what I felt to be a comfortable place in music. These bands held a solid mixture of heaviness and melody, with screaming, clean parts, breakdowns, and epic endings. They had the more attractive elements of punk, metal, and emo. This era had probably the most profound effect on my musical self, and still does to some extent.

Emo; it's a bad word now, but it used to be one of my favorite styles of music. Mineral and Sunny Day Real Estate were the heavyweights to me, holding such a sincere feeling in their music. Being the total romantic that I was at the time, it was perfect. And it was this heartfelt music that opened the door to post-rock for me, thanks to Explosion in the Sky's emotional overtones. But the post-rock door was not the only one to be opened to me.

The sort of "post-hardcore" music that I was so into had a history that I was to learn of. Many of the bands in this category came from the lesser known screamo bands of the times, like The Assistant, Neil Perry, Orchid, Saetia, Circle Takes the Square, etc., having been influenced by these bands, and making music of their own as a result. Having grown a bit tired of the post-hardcore bands I'd listened to so much, I began to venture into this peculiarly intense style of music. The poor quality recordings, quick tempos with unexpected time changes, crusty and mean guitar riffs, and lacking screams from the vocalists was sort of emberassing at first. But I connected to it, in the melodic breakdowns and clean parts. It was always the melodic aspect that I looked for, and connected to...

I remember being about eighteen, and coming to understand my exclusive interest in screamo and post-rock, having been a fan of stuff like Kaospilot, and Mogwai for a while at that point. Those two genres were precisely what I was aspring to capture in my own music, until the next transition came one day. I was at a friend's house one night, and I received a call from my friend Ryan (Ryan introduced me to probably half of the bands that I have for years loved and respected). Ryan informed me of an upcoming show, where Pelican and Mono would both be playing. I responded blankly, having no knowledge of either band. Ryan was shocked, and demanded that I familiarize myself with both bands. I did. Mono was right up my ally, and Pelican was something strange and new almost entirely. It was...heavy; really heavy.

What Pelican had that initially excited me was the dramatic soundscapes, and the melodic and pretty parts in their songs. I started listening to them out of curiosity, wondering what this tramendous, downtuned guitar driven was all about. It was not long before I began to realize that these slow and heavy riffs were really moving, literally! I found myself headbanging constantly. It was at that point that I had sort of realized that I actually liked heavy music, and that while I always preferred the more melodic aspects of music, it was not true to say that I did not also look for the heavy aspects of it. It was at that point, that I realized that there was a style of metal that I actually liked; doom metal.

Ever since, I have only become more fond of doom. From Neurosis, to Cult of Luna, to Buried at Sea, to High on Fire, to the creators of doom, Black Sabbath, all has been neck breakingly good. Looking back, I never would have thought that such a dark and heavy music so influenced by metal would ever be such an exciting genre for me. At sixteen, I would have listened to a doom band for no more than thirty seconds before saying, "this sucks!" I did say that about another genre of music, when I was sixteen. Black metal.

I have recently become quite interested in black metal, as it has become a frontier I've yet to venture. Thanks to more melodic black metal bands like Hecate Enthroned, and Wolves in the Throne Room, I have come to like the sort of speed metal oprah that black metal is. What's interesting, is that I had actually predicted that I would next have an interest in black metal. Perhaps I can predict what will come next.

What I have found is that throughout these years, whatever the genre of music a band is, if it shares the melodic, artful, heavy, and/or epic aspect of music I'm already interested in, I will most certainly like it. But only so much of what I'm really looking for can be pin pointed. Some music connects to me rather mysteriously, sort of spiritually you might say. Some of the most unexpected music has touched me before. Who knows... maybe some day I'll be all about folk music.

1 comment:

  1. its funny to take a look at your musical histories..you and i shared alot of the same interests and we have both wound up in different, but overlapping spectrums of the musical world. in the last year or so i have started getting into post-rock-y stuff, as well as more experimental music. recently ive found myself so attracted to doomy metal, but at the same time im addicted to electronic experimental bands like the knife (post their first album), as well as plenty of folk and indie shit. anyways, its good to keep evolving, and it seems like youve found something consise and definite that appeals to you. im still all over the place!

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