I hear the term “hipster metal” all the time, and I think it’s total horseshit. Today’s “true” metal bands fetishize sub-genres that peaked anywhere from 10 to 35 years ago. Any exciting metal right now incorporates “false” influences, whether you know it or not. If blindly following tradition is the truth, I want to be false, I want to be a hipster. Yes, I live in a trendy section of a major metropolitan city, wear plaid shirts, and I’m listening to Baroness as I type this, so I may already be there, but hear me out:
OK, we all agree this guy still sucks.
Young heshers that formed bands during the MySpace era (2004-2010) and claim to be “true” thrash/heavy/death/black metal are to true metal what the Strokes are to garage rock: Convincing tributes at best, irrelevant knockoffs at worst. It’s not for a lack of trying — I’m sure their hearts are in the right places — but those styles came from a certain time and places, all of which I’m told had a charming lack of refinement and perhaps a communist government. Those times have passed, the places are all connected by the internet, and any band with $1,500 usually opts to re-amp and Beat Detective away that lack of refinement.
The pioneering spirit is still alive in the hearts and expanding beer guts of lifers who are often almost twice my age. It’s awesome that they’re still at it. I had such a fucking blast watching them kill it last year at Maryland Deathfest that I just re-upped for this year’s MDF, too. But to put it in perspective, I was in my momma’s belly when Master of Puppets, Reign in Blood, and Peace Sells all came out. I was a whopping six years old when Wolverine Blues signaled death metal’s commercial peak, and seven when Count Grishnackh hit the showers at Tromso.
All of the “true” metal sub-genres are decades old now. It’s not so bad that their sub-cultures have rigid expectations for behavior, imagery, and most of all, music — that happens within months of a “scene” forming, and it’s a natural phenomenon. But it is telling that the imagery, rituals, and yes, music, have all been co-opted by large mainstream entities and even corporations for commercial gain. At this point, it’s so accepted that even die-hard DIY bands will play those corporate festivals and release a record with a corporate logo stamped on the cover.
Metal has flirted with the mainstream on and off for a long time, but now that one of the world’s largest car companies thinks that pissing money away on expensive metal festivals will actually add to their bottom line, and a (hilarious) cartoon band based on the most lunk-headed metal stereotypes has actually become one of the most popular metal bands in true life, and dads are bringing their sons and daughters to Big Four concerts, and straight-up death metal bands are cracking the Billboard 200, it is time to accept that true metal is no longer a fringe sub-culture.
This is all a very long-winded way of saying that true metal is a relic, and “false metal played by pretentious hipster faggots” might actually the truth in 2011. And I do love the old shit, so fuck you.
Metal has actually always had some very commercial and ‘mainstreamish’ traits. I remember that it felt quite weird to me when I began to listen to thrash metal back in the 80′s. I come from a punk background (Sex Pistols and Clash) and during this period many of the ones that had evolved into hardcore where then merging with the metalheads during the time when HC bands where incorporating metal influences (cross-over like D.R.I) and metal bands with clear hardcore influences where being born (thrash metal). I remember that reading Metal Hammer was an almost shocking experience with musicians talking about commercial success, giving kudos to mainstream musicians or commenting contracts with record companies. In our scene such things where unthinkable and interviews where mostly about hos drunk the band went during the last gig or what a bit crap this or that other mainstream band was. We had then to adapt to this fact, but this just added a new dimension to it, and of course, we where also growing more adult and ceasing to think about our bands as comic book heroes.
The point I was trying to make is that many of us metalheads are quite aware that our favorite genre is far from being an underground movement. Claiming that something is ‘hipster’ because it sells is thus a bit stupid at least.
On the other side there are a lot of “commercial” stuff that had gown flushed down the WC; just think on hair-metal (aka “glam-metal”), “emo-core” or the use of “funky-ish” (aka ‘grunge’) vocals and riffs.
I also don’t agree that all the newer bands that adhere to one or the other genre are nothing more than “revival” bands; there may be some few bands that imitate the originals exactly, but most of the new bands in the BM or DM scenes actually make new readings of the old influences… that plus the fact that the “old ones” are far from having been buried under a glacier and fossilized. Just check out bands like Watain, which are there from the beginning of BM and are nowadays one of the flagships of the so-called Orthodox BM. BTW, bands from ex-communist countries like for example Behemoth wo stared with BM in the 90s have actually created their very own brew of Darkened Death Metal… far from revival thus.
And there are bands that quite clearly try to achieve a broader commercial success by adhering to a style that is successful. This is neither good nor bad and it completely depends on the band.
For me, the term “hipster metal” may better describe things like Metallica who seem to make a matter of sport from crapping out albums with any random band. But I don’t call them that because I ceased to consider them metal a lot of time ago.
Just a final word regarding success on the charts: That a band sells means that there are a lot of people buying their stuff. And we metalheads, even the “pure breads” are quite a lot. If you add the people who may like metal but are not 100% metalheads it shouldn’t be strange to anybody to find metal bands in the charts. And metal is fat less ‘exotic’ for the common listener than for instance drum and bass or dubstep.
BTW, kudos for the blog and greetings from another guy who likes to bitch about metal (doomster, actually).