Ok, here it comes, my official announcement:
I am a Metal Hipster ©. No more any of that boring old rap/indie/electronic-crap, just pure metal music for me, thanks. I am on that bandwagon now.
I (mostly) only listen to these bands now:
- Earth
- SUNN O)))
- Khanate
- Boris
- The Sword
- High On Fire
- Sleep
- Om
- Wolfmother
- Mastodon
And I started playing guitar again, as reported earlier, as well as developing an unhealthy appetite for scoring old guitar effect pedals from the ‘bay.
Why? I don’t know really. But right after having been listening and really getting into all that stuff, partially thanks to my man Mark, I read a newspaper article about Metal Hipsterism and I realized immediately that it was talking about me.
As it turns out, Metal Hipster, which is of course a very negative term to any real head banging metal-dude, is a nerdy white male music fan who has recently started listening to some of these particular metal/stoner/doom/drone/whatever bands. And who used to be really into something else before that. And apparently it is mandatory to dig all and any bands that's on
Southern Lord label. But I used to be really into metal as a teenager, you know? And the fact is that those bands really rock AND/OR play interesting and fresh music, mostly without that stupid Spinal Tap-style irony/self-parody, or on the other any of that technical wanking usually associated with metal bands. At least I think so.
And hey, if you put together early Motorhead, early Black Sabbath, some Black Flag & Stooges, some Celtic Frost, early Sonic Youth, Bleach-era Nirvana, Metallica’s first album etc. and mix ‘em well and turn it up really loud, can you really get anything else than just good old rock’n’roll music? And please note the
‘early’ in front of all those bands.
Another point is that most of these new metal hipster's favorite bands are simply too left-field and strange for the mainstream of metal music and they will never be accepted into that genre. After all most of the metal audiences are some of the most conservative popular music audiences, along with Country & Western fans. Yeah, come and kick my ass for saying that, you spiky-haired dude in your Slipknot long-sleeve t-shirt.
But maybe I am wrong. Or maybe next month I am really into something else again.
