The cultural legitimacy of prog, metal and punk

This is a very long post, but I've been building up some thoughts over the last year or two about whether progressive and psychedelic music really are higher artforms than "non-progressive/psychedelic" metal, not to mention the extent to which either has succeeded as cultural movements and not just genres of music esp. when compared to punk.

A couple discussions I've had a while ago on Facebook with several black metal musicians, revolved around the issue of how psychedelic/progressive rock and punk have gone down in history as important cultural movements that had a lasting impact on Western society be it for better or worse... whereas almost the entirety of metal is seen as a footnote in rock history and a cultural dead end. This extends down to people who can't stand the genres: Those who intensely dislike psychedelia or punk have to accuse them of "ruining rock music forever" if not blame the associated subcultures for perceived social problems in the present day, whereas at least in my own country I have to go back to the 1990s to find comparable indignation over metal bands that aren't either openly Fascist or pretend to be. Consider how either of the three genres are covered by magazines like Mojo or Record Collector or Sound Venue, how many academic studies have been made of them as artistic movements with a significant sociological impact et cetera, how they're described by the people who write about music for the "arts and culture" sections of upscale newspapers. (not to mention how positive/negative their assessments are)

Here's where it gets weird: Not only would an argument that any of the three genres is objectively sillier than the others be one hell of an uphill battle, there's also been a significant degree of mutual influence between all three since at least the late 1970s. (as much as the more genre-chauvinist elements of both metal and punk subcultures would deny that)

Now, I can actually understand why psychedelic and progressive rock is in general considered "higher culture" than metal... to the point that those metal groups who are most respected by the people deciding that usually have one foot planted in prog/psych or post-rock:

Its main ideological inspirations came from the Beat Generation and the hippie movement, subcultures that would both go on to replace the cultural elites they originally reacted against.

Psychedelic rock being musically defined by its attempt to expand the stylistic vocabulary of a genre originally considered superficial entertainment, its spawning progressive rock when it begun incorporating more and more influence from "art music" styles like jazz and classical.

There's also a sociological element in that many of the influential progressive and psychedelic rock groups like Genesis and Pink Floyd met at art school or university whereas Black Sabbath and Judas Priest both came from the industrial slums of Birmingham.

As far as punk goes, while it's obviously on average less outwardly complex and intellectual than heavy metal or prog rock, it's obvious why it's perceived as more serious: It's by far the most realistic and least escapist of the three genres. This becomes even clearer if you compare grindcore to regular death metal and sludge to traditional doom metal: Both genres approach specific metal subgenres but from the "outside" perspective of punk, the resulting music as a consequence being way more abrasive and intense than its original form. Whether that makes it inherently better is a completely different issue, though, and something I frankly consider mostly subjective - the entire "true art is realistic" ideology has only enjoyed its present level of popularity since the mid-19th century after all.

Thing is, how much of the described status hierarchy is actually warranted and based more in the music's content as opposed to more superficial factors if not the plain old cultural snobbery I mentioned when comparing the demographics of prog/psych and metal?

This article by the metal webzine Black Ivory Tower points out how often which black metal groups are accepted as artistically legitimate and which don't comes down to more a matter of image than with music. People who know more about music theory than I do have pointed out something similar with how categorizations like "progressive metal" are applied. For instance, I've been told that Sepultura's Beneath the Remains actually is more structurally complex than Coroner's No More Color despite not being categorized as progressive.

The conception of punk as more artistically valid than metal also bears revision in light of the amount of punk groups who either became more metallic later in their career (e. g. Black Flag, Killing Joke) or jumped ship completely (e. g. The Exploited, Napalm Death). By the same token, the idea of punk being more serious than prog/psych should be taken with a grain of salt considering The Boredoms' career trajectory or the recent phenomenon of sludge metal groups (read: punks playing doom metal) turning to progressive rock for inspiration after Mastodon became popular.

Finally, there is the issue of how often the musical cultures in question actually reach their self-proclaimed ideals when it comes to the genres' thematic content. While a common criticism of metal's inspiration from both classical mythologies and 19th century Romanticism, the genre's main claim to "cultural legitimacy", is that the vast majority of metal lyricists reduce those rich traditions to escapist fantasy on the same level of pulp genre novels... these very boards have seen quite a few threads about the lack of insightful lyrics in progressive rock, and I've met plenty of musicians from classical and jazz backgrounds who find progressive rock's approximation of either awkward and superficial. As for the extent of punk adhering to its own virtues, that's been pored over by fanzine editorials ever since the late 1970s.

What are your thoughts on this? Is it even a desirable thing for music genres to also aspire towards doubling as "cultural movements" in the first place? The entire "putting ideology ahead of music" thing is not just by far my least favourite aspect of punk, it's also the main reason I find 95% of the more national-romantic type of black metal an absolute chore to listen to.

It might also be relevant that one of the black metal guys had no idea that prog/psych-rock was a considered "higher" form of cultural expression than metal to begin with.

Edited by Toaster Mantis - January 08 2014 at 12:46

Ah... no. As strange as this may at first appear, it is nothing to do with the music. The music was at best a by-product of the cultural change and predominantly the change in youth culture that was happening at the time. The music was a result of the change not a driver for it, therefore the cultural movements that we now associate with the music, to the point where it is impossible to separate them, were a product of the environment they developed in and developed in parallel with the music (and for the benefit of Pedro: the art, the literature, the cinema, the theatre, etc. if, and only if, it is applicable). As I have argued on several occasions, Prog Rock has never been a cultural movement, a subculture or an all embracing artistic movement, there was no fashion or literary subgenre attached to it, no cinema, no theatre. And the same is true for metal (in the main) - loose biker-imagery of leather, studs and denim is the best you'll get - jeans and a band t-shirt doth not a uniform make.

Dean wrote: ...  Prog Rock has never been a cultural movement, a subculture or an all embracing artistic movement, there was no fashion or literary subgenre attached to it, no cinema, no theatre. And the same is true for metal (in the main) - loose biker-imagery of leather, studs and denim is the best you'll get - jeans and a band t-shirt doth not a uniform make.

There's a red thread running through all of this I can't believe I haven't noticed until now:

It appears that the people most concerned with which types of rock music are most "culturally legitimate" are usually reviewers and scholars rather than musicians and songwriters.

Somehow, I don't think this is a coincidence.

An interesting angle that I didn't include at first because I couldn't find it, but would have liked to: I remembered an old thread wherein several posters claimed the opposite, that the general public considered metal more obviously complex and intelligent than prog... and I've found it.

purplesnake wrote: Metal is generally easier to explain as more complicated music, because of the faster playing, and so people can explain themselves more. And they feel belonged in a group that is relatively large. With Progressive Rock, its harder to communicate the intelligence. The outside listener must really understand music.

rogerthat wrote: Yeah, sort of.  The fast part is particularly important.  It is easier to relate to prog metal as technical music because of the fast, intense playing whereas in prog rock, it is necessary to come to grips with the music to appreciate its nuances.

CCVP wrote: First, progressive rock still have a negative stigma in the eyes of many in the music business and media, what does not necessarely happens with progressive metal.

Of course, another angle I could elaborate on is how much "intellectual substance" each genre has thematically... but articulating exactly how you measure that in a way that's not extremely subjective would probably require more work than I could be bothered with. I'll probably edit this post more when I've figured out how to do that.

I don't believe either that technical complexity alone qualifies music as intelligent or intellectual, indeed that mentality is one of my least favourite things about the progressive rock scene as it stands right now.

What matters in my book is what the recordings do with that technical proficiency, that would be underlying concept behind the music the performance serves to express or communicate. This goes into the question of whether the three mentioned genres have some kind of unifying ethos or ideology, let alone said ideologies are well-thought out.

One of the black metal musicians that discussions with whom inspired me to create this thread, it's Demontage's percussionist "Abominable Reverend" if you're curious, brought up that the artistic/literary lineage (Wm. Burroughs, Aldous Huxley, Ken Kesey etc.) that psychedelic rock has brought up as forebears isn't that different from certain metal subgenres' evokation of the more morbid side of 19th century Romanticism and the French Symbolists in particular. (Charles Baudelaire, Comte de Lautréamont etc.): Most of said intellectual precursors came from a different generation and often didn't have much of an active interest in rock music to begin with (Burroughs being mostly into jazz), not to mention that their output was way more advanced both in the depth of the literary themes explored and the narrative structure of their prose composition when compared to the vast majority of rock songwriters to take inspiration from them. The same thing goes for progressive rock's inspiration from classical music, the thread I started in the Prog Music Lounge about the subject brought up the revelation that neither Genesis' Selling England by the Pound nor Yes' Close to the Edge fulfil the formal criteria for a proper classical sonata.

Then again, have all but the most exceptional prog/metal/punk songwriters ever even aspired to that level in the first place? If not, I don't think it's reasonable to hold them to that standard at all. More than anything else it reminds me of modern science-fiction/fantasy literature evoking classical mythologies as predecessors: Yes, there is an obvious lineage, but when was the last time you read a SF novel as advanced in theme or style as Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and Odyssee or the Ramayana? Does it even have to be in order to succeed on its own merits? (for the record I have very little active interest in either genre these days, being more into crime/horror fiction)

ExittheLemming wrote: Toaster Mantis wrote: I don't believe either that technical complexity alone qualifies music as intelligent or intellectual, indeed that mentality is one of my least favourite things about the progressive rock scene as it stands right now. Kudos for clarifying that, as the merits of Dylan, Velvets, Television, Patti Smith, Pete Townshend, Nick Cave et al would be rendered spurious for our purposes otherwise. I hope none of us continue to feign surprise at the resistance shown from any rawk sphere to a genre interloper that tacks on the provocative 'progressive' prefix

ExittheLemming wrote: As far as political leanings are concerned I discern significant right wing sentiments in much Metal but considerably less so in Punk (the Nazi Punks have largely followed the advice on the badges and erm..f.u.c.k.e.d off accordingly (trad anarcho socialist punks must be considered a quaint anachronism now surely? Social Democrat Punk just doesn't have the same frisson does it?) Re Black Metal and its purported links with Satanism/Paganism/National Socialism (sic). It really dosent require a sociologist to tell you that these are a right wing stratification driven enterprises.

The weird thing is that despite borrowing a good chunk of its symbolism from the NSDAP by way of biker culture's appropriation of same, and Anton LaVey's Church of Satan notorious for promoting "might is right" ethics, until the early 1990s the metal genre didn't have much of a honest right-of-centre political presence at all except the occasional outlier like Alice Cooper or Ted Nugent. It gets even weirder when you consider that the person most responsible for the metal scene's turn to the far right in the 1990s, the late Type O Negative frontman Peter Steele, happened to be a transplant from the NY punk scene! For the record, I get the impression that Social Darwinist/Fascist Revivalist loyalties aren't anywhere as widespread in metal circles as they were in the early/mid-2000s... probably as a result of the genre's recent re-mainstreaming since then. (and Pete's death in 2010)

By the way there's also still plenty of hardline leftwing sentiment in the more extreme subgenres of punk... even if those are (often by design) very inaccessible to mainstream audiences and hence don't get noticed much. Likewise, I've noticed that at least in Denmark and Sweden the death metal subculture is at least as hard left as black metal is hard right in many countries, probably because its fanbase overlaps quite a bit with certain punk subgenres. (crust and grind in particular)

I can't comment on the literary influences at play in Black Metal but it's interesting that you cite the French Symbolists as being pivotal. (Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Poe, Verlaine etc) These were the same influences that shaped the work of Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, Lou Reed, Richard Hell and much of the NYC proto punk milieu circa the mid 70's.

Well, there's two obvious reasons for that: The earliest black metal groups (Venom, Bathory, Celtic Frost etc) were all very strongly informed by punk, something the genre gradually dropped throughout the 1990s but has returned to in recent years; there's also the extent to which the French Symbolists dabbled in Satanism - in particular Baudelaire, Huysmans and Lautreamont. I actually think a recent English translation of Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil was done by a practicing Satanist!

For the record I've seen Baudelaire and for that matter Edgar Allan Poe brought up as forerunners to psychedelic culture too. (in Jim Derogatis' book about psych-rock Turn on Your Mind)

I heartily loathe SF so will steer well clear of this point (Apologies)

It's the same basic phenomenon of a pulpy "low culture" artform evoking "high culture" as inspiration, though, and the same question of how often that's a case of signing checks you can't cash. (I personally take it on a case-by-case basis)

rogerthat wrote: I am not at all sure what cultural legitimacy of music is supposed to be.  However, to answer in your question in simpler terms, why punk gets an easy pass from a cross section of rock listeners as opposed to prog or metal is because it has the strongest connections to out and out rock music.  There is no need to get to some other place or push your tastes in a certain direction (in favour of the complex or the extreme) to appreciate at least the likes of Sex Pistol or Ramones.  The complexity may turn people off prog but its more accessible side via Floyd, Jethro Tull may still find (has found) following.

Couldn't you say the same thing about the more "traditional" metal subgenres like for instance NWoBHM sans its rawer-than-roadkill Venom/Atomkraft/Warfare corner, newer power/speed, the styles of doom that still are close to bluesy hard rock etc.?

Another thing: I'm also certain that around here the more accessible metal and to some extent prog (depending on the social milieu) are actually more popular than the comparably accessible end of old punk at least as far as the general public goes. When it comes to what's acclaimed by the kind of people who write books about the history of rock music, though, and professional critics in general the script flips completely.

(that's also one of the main points of that Spiked Online article)