Brutal/loud/nasty music that rules.

Manunkind wrote: BaldJean wrote: helofloki wrote: BaldJean wrote: the whole genré bores me to death. I can only ridicule it Failure. nonsense. if it bores me to death, it bores me to death. period. there is neither any failure nor would there be any success if I liked it and were enthusiastic about it. it is simply my taste of music. you are not the mentor of my musical taste. my personal opinion about ultra brutal music is that it is pretentious. if you like that kind of stuff, fine; I call that neither a failure nor a success. it is your personal taste. period again. In what way is it pretentious? It'd be pretentious if these musicians actually believed the stuff they growled about etc. The very few who do are/will soon be either dead or in prison. The rest are in it to have fun playing the stuff - just like my cousin who is practising to become a death metal drummer.

"pretentious" stems from the verb "to pretend". if they don't believe it, they surely are pretending, hence they are pretentious

The very few who do are/will soon be either dead or in prison.

Manunkind wrote: It'd be pretentious if these musicians actually believed the stuff they growled about etc. The very few who do are/will soon be either dead or in prison.

Quite a number of them are. Black Metal band members have been burning churches,

That was 1992, I think...

 one member of Dissection got sentenced for murder,

That was 1999...

 a member of a scandinavian Gothic Metal band hung himself last month (forgot the name) ...

I've heard of at least five cases of suicide among extreme metal musicians... how does this stack up against the number of suicides among rock musicians in general? And rock/metal are hardly the only genres with people who have serious issues - jazz and classical have never been an exception. Suicides, drugs, alcohol, fights, even murder cases... you can find these anywhere. If, for example, you judged your classical music collection by the moral standards of the famous composers, your collection would be quite small, I think...

And come on, say 100 - 200 disturbed people out of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of extreme metal musicians? What kind of a statistic is that?

The irony is that the bands which openly admit that they only "pretend" to be evil get bashed by the fans for not being "authentic" ... like for example Dimmu Borgir or Cradle of Filth.

Interestingly enough such bashing (and almost all the suicides/murders/rapes etc.) is confined to black metal almost exclusively. No wonder - it's one of the two or three metal genres where image tends to be more important than musical integrity. This image appeals to some kids and it's on the basis of this image that these kids give bands these ridiculous tr00/untr00 labels. Those who spend more time listening to other extreme metal genres - death metal, doom metal, grindcore etc. rarely act like this, since there's no real image here and hardly any ideology (barring perhaps some anti-christian ranting), just the willingness to create and listen to music that is as heavy and/or brutal as possible.

I'm certain that a fair percentage of black metal musicians are also pretty laid back about the 'ideological' side of their music, only that they have a more 'demanding' audience to cater to, so they have to adapt... Despite being open about the true nature of their 'ideologies' CoF and DB still get the largest share of the cake; the rest, the people who want tr00 black metal still constitute a significant market, so someone's got to get to them... this is where bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone etc. come in. No tr00 belief in the Dark Lord here either, it's all quite cynical really.      

Is the "I'm from Planet Gong/Kobaia" acting honest? I guess not; and if it were it would be even worse for the members of Gong and Magma, wouldn't it?

And it's not like metal bands make any money on the stuff they play and that they have five star touring conditions. Yet more often than not they're said to put up a great show, even though they probably know that later that evening they're going to have to argue with the club manager about their pay. A band that wasn't devoted to their music (I stress 'music', not lyrics) wouldn't put up with this.

by the way, I love some brutal music; "Sea Shanties" by High Tide is in my opinion the most brutal album ever. a lot more brutal than the "brutal" bands of today

Spoken like a tr00 metalhead - my band's more brutal than yours.

Manunkind wrote: BaldJean wrote: I don't think the music is honest. the brutality is a put-on act that is being sold as "honesty". you can't tell me this "bad guy" acting is honest. and if it were honest, it would be even worse. Is the "I'm from Planet Gong/Kobaia" acting honest? I guess not; and if it were it would be even worse for the members of Gong and Magma, wouldn't it? And it's not like metal bands make any money on the stuff they play and that they have five star touring conditions. Yet more often than not they're said to put up a great show, even though they probably know that later that evening they're going to have to argue with the club manager about their pay. A band that wasn't devoted to their music (I stress 'music', not lyrics) wouldn't put up with this. by the way, I love some brutal music; "Sea Shanties" by High Tide is in my opinion the most brutal album ever. a lot more brutal than the "brutal" bands of today Spoken like a tr00 metalhead - my band's more brutal than yours.

Then you either somehow stumbled upon the few who do (early Mayhem, Graveland, maybe Dark Funeral) or simply got fooled.

Christian Vander definitely is a madman; in the early days of Magma you were only allowed to enter the house they lived in if you wore black and spoke a little Kobaiahn at least. but that's a kind of lunacy that appeals to my sense of humor.

Not wishing to be disrespectful towards Christian Vander - if his belief in Kobaia actually had made him more friendly and forthcoming to guests and people in general, I'd embrace his 'lunacy'. Since it caused the opposite, well... there's no fun in being mad, I'm sure.

as to my comment about High Tide: I only mentioned them to explain I am not opposed to the idea of heavy music per se

And Peter Brotzmann would just tear through High Tide and nearly all other brutal bands - but so what?

Baldjean, it's obvious you've got a skewed view of "brutal" music. I don't really know if you really care how authentic it is, but I'm gonna try and express it anyway.

First of all, Grindcore is basically the ultimately intense manifestation of the punk mentality and is coming from the punk tradition. In this way it is very political and anti-establishment. So if you look strictly at say Brutal Truth's lyrics you find anti-establishment lyrics about things that they were really into at the time and still are even after the band has broken up. As well they took their music very seriously (which isn't necessarily a punk tradition thing I know) but I really want you to understand that these guys are not "pretenders" they're the real deal. And if you think that Brutal Music isn't tongue and cheek you've never heard of Anal c**t.

And finally, I could try all day and give you all sorts of examples why some (of course not all) brutal music has a truly authentic and honest flavor to it. But if you are going to refuse their honesty and authenticity no matter what, let me know I'm wasting my time arguing with you. But seriously you should understand that "brutal" is not really simply something that you can class all this different stuff in. It's a really extensive idea encompassing both honest and somewhat contrived artists. If you don't want to put in the effort to really understand the underpinnings of these styles, I'm totally cool with that. But at the same time that leaves your judgments on the subject fairly worthless.

the problem I have with "brutal" is quite a different one. either a band is really brutal all the time, then I find that monotonous and uninteresting and simply boring. or they are not brutal all the time; in that case I would not use the adjective "brutal" in the first place. simple as that