Plus, unlike in DIY emo, I’ve met very few metalheads who say “uwu,” which is a huge bonus. Hell, in metal, people might actually be less concerned with how you carry yourself or how traditionally cool you are. The stereotype of the neckbeard metal nerd is really only slightly less unfair than the stereotype of the meathead jock hardcore kid, or the manipulative sex pest emo dweeb, and so on and so forth. Then came the final nail in the coffin- despite my perception of metal as being filled with thin-skinned pedantic dorks who have monstrous egos and poor reading comprehension skills, hardcore and punk and emo are all also filled with the exact same type of dipshit and everyone knows it (and I’m definitely including myself there). Is referring to yourself as “Quorthon” or “Abbath” any more embarrassing than the legions of fully-grown men who have elected to have bands and zines instead of last names? Are lyrics about dragons and horror movies any more cringeworthy than the 77th consecutive song about getting stabbed in the back (because your friend broke edge or held the hand of a girl you had a crush on or some bullshit)? Is there any logical argument you can make that saying you listen to “blackened death metal” is somehow even more painful than saying you listen to “twinkly emo” or “mathcore” or “hyperpop”? I think the big push for me came when I realized that there is no way that listening to metal could, in any way, be more embarrassing or less cool than any of those other genres. In the past, the best way to combat that sort of loss-of-interest-due-to-depression- and, to be honest, something that should be done regularly just to keep me sharp and sane- was to deep dive into a whole other genre, and metal seemed to be the way to go, not least because I had a lot to make up for with regards to my attitude towards it in the past, but also because it was so completely arbitrary for me to shut myself off from so much music I probably would have enjoyed out of a false sense of arrogance. At the same time, I’ve also just felt so trapped and boxed-in by what I’m “allowed” to discuss musically (which, of course, is self-imposed) that listening to music wasn’t giving me any joy and I didn’t ever feel like doing it. When I had my big semi-nervous-breakdown last month, it opened me up a lot to seeing things from perspectives that I didn’t really ever think to entertain before.
Classic metal albums full#
I tried to tell myself that I preferred hardcore because it was more authentic and the shorter songs were more conducive to my short attention span, but the truth is hardcore is full of its own type of performative bullshit, it just reads as more “authentic” due to its aesthetic- there’s nothing about that is really inherently more passionate, artful, or “real” than metal, just like how a song’s length doesn’t actually matter as long as it’s fuckin’ interesting. That’s a really shitty and arrogant point of view to take, as it turns out! In my Underoath retrospective from way back when, I even remember saying “hardcore is fundamentally a less limited/restricting genre than metal” or something like that, which is patently false. And whatever metal I did like, I tried to handwave it away as being due to its inherent influence from hardcore or whatever rather than appreciating it on its own merits. But to tell you the truth, I think I was just being a dick because metal wasn’t “cool” in the same way as punk/hardcore/emo/etc. Part of this has to do with the vague, longstanding “rivalry” between punk and metal on, I guess, ideological grounds that I apparently took a little too seriously when I was a kid. In fact, I’ve been kind of condescending towards metal for a long time, only investigating what I felt like I needed familiarity with in order to understand its impact on punk and hardcore. All of these are things that I never really took the time to do with metal. I have a very long history with emo/hardcore/adjacent music- I know many of the subgenres and histories inside and out, and I can delineate between the tiniest sonic variations within regional interpretations of each form.
Classic metal albums free#
(This section isn’t too important- just a whole lot of belly-aching and throat-clearing and self-indulgence- so feel free to skip ahead to the record reviews if you don’t feel like reading through this gunk!)