most important heavy metal characteristic

Hey, some of Skot's videos are really awesome songs! I vastly prefer those to lazy zings.

but yes in doom metal its the riffs. in BM i like atmosphere.

flooding is flooding, jon

a good atmosphere is key to a nice, relieving BM

(sorry, lame zing myself)

TBF I'm not normally one to do flooding or zingy stuff, I just thought this was what the thread was going to be about, so I was disappointed. Sorry Aero.

I think the image is important for lots of people.

Well if we're going to talk image, there are a lot of ways to break that down. Image of the music (i.e. the presentation of it)? Image of the musicians - do they need to walk the walk offstage? Image of the fans? FWIW, I think only the first of these three is important to me in the least.

riffs

one guess

all sorts of stuff probably meant a lot to me as a teenage fanboy but i cdn't give much of a fork about anything extra-musical in my dotage

needs *gothness option for dan

pitchfork score riffs

illegibility of band name script

exception that proves mookieproof's rule:

http://www.absinthechamber.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/waking_the_cadaver_logo.jpg

Waking the Cadaver, one of the more shitty metal bands I've ever heard.

^^ cool album artwork is a good barometer of decent metal

xpost

jesus, imagine scribbling that on your pencil case.

Smithy what is your preference?

you know I kinda started this because I'm not 100% clear on which of these stands above the rest! like EZ my gut immediately says "riffs." My favorite metal bands are the ones with the unimpeachable riffs. But atmosphere (which is a function of production choices & playing styles I think, and to a lesser degree, of a band's musical "philosophy" for lack of a better term: of what they believe about their music) seems very key to me in metal...early doom is where this is articulated first I think but it's great black metal bands (and early death metal bands) who really explore what atmosphere is all about...a band like Katatonia has the most incredible riffs but the atmosphere gives them a place to live. and then lyrics paired with themes are important because even though v. v. v. few metal bands have lyrics I consider "good" in the sense of "well-said, quotable, good writing," they can paint a picture - fill out the frame to let the music take me someplace else. which is what I want from my heavy metal.

but at the end of the day it's probably gonna be riffs

Riffs + Atmosphere in a dead heat for me.

Smithy - A lot of people who play an instrument always mention to me "space" and "dynamics" Is that an important thing in metal? And can you explain what the hell they mean to someone who has no talent whatsoever who even struggled with the recorder at primary school?

aero stated my position pretty perfectly, and much better than I would have. And yes, it boils down to living or dying by the riffs.

no option for volume?

I dunno about "riffs". A lot of black, death and grindcore I'd argue doesn't exactly have memorable riffs, more like blasts of SOUND (or NOISE if you prefer). It's the way that sound is manipulated that's important. Of course the riffing is always there, but it's not like that much extreme metal is "Smoke On The Water" or "Smells Like Teen Spirit" riffy... So in most cases I'd say riffs is the least important.

But of course this all depends on your stylistic preferences - some styles of metal are much more riffy than others.

Some riffs are also hooks, some are merely foundations.

voted heavyosity

Also, I find appreciating metal merely for the riffs can seem awfully dry and vacuous - for me it's definitely the overall imagery, wanting to be ensorcelled by khaos, rather than drooling over technicality and method.

"technicality and method" sounds more like soloing to me.

Just because you say its the most important doesnt mean you dont value the other qualities listed. But heavy metal as a genre was built from the beginning upon the back of the riff.

Guitar solos are my least important.

do you listen to any new metal bands bill?

probably should've put "chops" in here too as that is a pretty important thing - to me anyway, I know for a lot of atmospheric black metal dudes it is not a concern but the metal I like is played by people who slay at their instruments

do you listen to any new metal bands bill?

― last few days to vote in the 80s rock poll by.. (Algerian Goalkeeper), Tuesday, September 18, 2012 12:10 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

what do you mean by "new"? if something was made in 1973, and i havent heard it, i consider it new. And i'm not reading the poll as "most important characteristic for metal made in 2012".

Yeah, I appreciate how important riffs are, and I can appreciate a good one when I hear it, and sometimes I do sit back and let myself get dazzled by some fancy guitar or drum work, sure - but I'd rather zone out and pretend I'm battling some fucked up hellgod from the depths of Hades while riding up a mountain on the back of a many-winged firedemon in a terrific hailstorm or some shit. That's when metal works best for me.

Don't get touchy. I was just asking if you listened to modern metal.

Didnt mean to sound like a jerk, sorry. Re-reading it, i didnt like my tone. the real answer is "some, but not much". most of the new stuff i listen to has an old-school vibe.

Smithy - A lot of people who play an instrument always mention to me "space" and "dynamics" Is that an important thing in metal? And can you explain what the hell they mean to someone who has no talent whatsoever who even struggled with the recorder at primary school?

"space" is a pretty nebulous term, but depending on how you record something you can choose to let the environment (the studio, or the hall...or! you can do this artificially using reverb & other stuff) be part of the overall sound. you don't have too, and you can choose what gets a spacious treatment and what doesn't - I think of Primordial as a band who really go for a big spacious sound but like AC/DC opt for a much more compressed picture, except on the drums, which go wide-screen. But "space" isn't really a technical term.

"Dynamics" is easier to pin down and has to do with range (soft-to-loud). A band whose songs start at the same volume level they end at & don't change it up anywhere in the middle lack dynamics. (This can be a good thing, there is no right or wrong here.) 80s hardcore is not really known for dynamics imo, and even more imo this is why a lot of punk kids sought out metal, which historically has been unafraid of cheesy dynamics (whispered soft intros into bombastic the-band's-all-here salvos, long dreamy decays, etc). Death metal was much more dynamic early on than it presently is - all the modern extreme DM dynamics are "very loud"/"even louder"/"loudest" which I can dig but as my listening matures I've come to think of dynamics as extremely important to how effective a piece of music is.

Dynamics also occur within playing - Prince is a master of dynamics imo, swooping and diving and laying back for a phrase and then cutting right back in - dynamics are what make music feel like it's going somewhere, like the music is telling a story. It's perfectly fine if one's preference is "no I just a giant rock to land on me!" and indeed modern production techniques have favored this. But for me the best metal, the lasting stuff, pays attention to dynamics somehow.

try changing "but, like, AC/DC" in graf 1 for a better sense of the sentence as I meant it

for me it's either riffs or rhythm and i can't really disentangle the two

but I'd rather zone out and pretend I'm battling some fucked up hellgod from the depths of Hades while riding up a mountain on the back of a many-winged firedemon in a terrific hailstorm or some shit.

Well, that's the thing, is that "fancy" metal drumwork tends to really conjure this for me from a very primal instinctual place.

Guitar solos are my least important.

and here it depends on the band! because if i'm listening to judas priest then guitar solos are super important, but so is the like basic rhythmic interaction between each member of the band, but then, those riffs!

this is a lot of fun to think about

Definitely riffs

Definitely riffs for me, but drums are a close, close second. The sound of Dave Lombardo whipping the shit out of his kit makes me so happy.

"space" is a pretty nebulous term, but depending on how you record something you can choose to let the environment (the studio, or the hall...or! you can do this artificially using reverb & other stuff) be part of the overall sound. you don't have too, and you can choose what gets a spacious treatment and what doesn't - I think of Primordial as a band who really go for a big spacious sound but like AC/DC opt for a much more compressed picture, except on the drums, which go wide-screen. But "space" isn't really a technical term.

To me, space refers to the actual space between notes. A sparse arrangement will have more space than a full-on all the time wall of noise type of arrangement. Which also allows more room to hear the actual physical space of the recording environment or added artificial reverb. So sometimes a song with a lot of space in can sound bigger and heavier than one where every moment is filled up with sound. For example the song Black Sabbath.

To me, space refers to the actual space between notes.

I thought it was something like that.

That definition of space is akin to aero's dynamics. I know I tend to use it to describe a specific type of dynamism (like wk's example of "Black Sabbath").

Well I think there are 2 kinds of dynamics. There are musical dynamics, where different parts of a piece of music are louder or softer (Black Sabbath is a good example again), but you could have a song with a lot of space and very little dynamics. like a minimal techno track that never changes.

But then there's the dynamic range of the actual recording: the distance between the peaks of the signal and the noise floor. That's the kind of dynamics people talk about in relation to heavy limiting used in mastering and that sort of thing. But again you could take a song like "black sabbath" and crush it until the waveform is a complete rectangle and it's still going to sound like it has musical "space", and even a musical contrast between the soft and loud parts, even though there is technically no dynamic range left in the recording.

so I don't think there's an easy relationship between the two concepts

I think it's riffs?

Like, I think about old Maiden vs new Maiden -- the riffs have fallen well off with exception of maybe a couple of Brave New World tracks, and maybe Paschendale on Dance of Death...i mean, it's not bad but compare that with almost every song on the first 5 albums just overflowing with major riffage and you realize that there's definitely something to 'good' metal hinging on riffs.

Lyrics to a minor extent for me. I like singing along with my metal where possible, but it's not necessarily required.

Vocals somewhat - King Diamond, Bruce, halford, Ronnie, Messiah...I'm a sucker for the big guns, the operatic dudes

riffs & atmosphere above everything else, but vocals and melody are important to me, too. i listen to metal not as metal, this stand-alone thing with entirely self-contained aesthetics, but as music, and even as pop, so i tend to want songs, memorable tunes and hooks.

rhythm for me, which I think of as the riff, beat, and bass propelling the song forward, but not too mechanically. The sense of marching or galloping marks takes a song out of hard rock or punk territory and into metal for me.

I don't know how I'd fit in some of the more atmospheric black metal I've read about that may lack that. I'll make a point to hear some mentioned in some threads and figure it out.

The wine analogy largely fits. But surely you must be imagining something when you hear music? Or else it's just sound. It's the difference between someone hitting a hammer, or a bird singing and hearing a song...

I'm not w/Clarke, I say "don't relax" and always hear and comment on the composer/performer's intent + politics + message in every little production detail and nuance

This metal poll has taken a pontificating turn and I don't know if the gods are pleased

x-post

I mean, I understand on a taken-for-granted level that these are human beings producing these sounds which have to some extent been composed (whether laboriously ahead of time or on-the-spot or a combination thereof). But yeah, it's "just sound"!

no it's not it is people crying out of compassion and screaming out of rage

When I listen to Morbid Angel, I always just end up getting depressed that I'm not actually a ghoul storming a church and crushing the priest while beholding Satan's rise. I feel like I can never fully inhabit the music.

xxpost But if it's just sound, how do you determine why you like one sound and not another; why something might make you feel happy or sad; what kind of happy or sad is that? If it's nothing more than just sound then how are you supposed to receive any kind of emotional or imagerous (?not a word?) reaction. Why might a sequence of notes make you think of an open field in rural England, or your childhood home, or an enormous deathmachine from another planet?

When I listen to Morbid Angel, I always just end up getting depressed that I'm not actually a ghoul storming a church and crushing the priest while beholding Satan's rise. I feel like I can never fully inhabit the music.

― Clarke B., Thursday, 18 October 2012 14:23 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Spot fucking ON! Absolutely. Of course if I felt like this all the time then I'd probably have gone out of my mind by now; but I believe that this desire exists and is subconsciously pervasive in the listener. We have to suspend ourselves between reality and this abstract and unattainable desire if we want to connect to the music.

hence why people sometimes people do listen to music and say "it's just noise" - they are unable to connect to it in any way; it evokes absolutely no response in them. They may as well be listening to a washing machine cycle.

I remember studying philosophy of language in college and getting myself all heated up: "WHERE is meaning stored in the mind, if in the mind at all? HOW is this *sound* I utter CONNECTED to an object out there in the world? What is the MECHANISM by which these utterances or squiggles on a page can quite literally MEAN objects or thoughts or desires?" Eventually you get to the point where you wonder, "How can I even talk at all? What if it's impossible to actually understand someone else, like what they REALLY mean?" But then you have to, like, get your oil changed or go to the doctor or talk to a girl you like and all of a sudden you're just talking. And being understood. And understanding. It's both kind of miraculous and also the most natural and ordinary thing in the world. PUT THE BOOK DOWN!

hence why people sometimes people do listen to music and say "it's just noise" - they are unable to connect to it in any way; it evokes absolutely no response in them. They may as well be listening to a washing machine cycle.

― make like a steak and beef (dog latin), Thursday, October 18, 2012 9:30 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a pretty sizable gulf between not engaging with something as intentionally produced music at all and wanting to transmogrify into a shiny bouncing sphere.

doom metal riffs make me want to dance

xxpost amen to that clarke. in fact part of what i'm saying is that the listener has to subconsciously undergo a kind of aesthetic contract to make the most of the situation he or she finds themselves in when hearing a piece. you have to step in and step back - find that biting point between fulfilment of that total immersion wish, and not understanding or responding to the music at all.

Getting as close to that immersion is the goal though - it's why we have club visuals, vibrating dancefloors, ever increasingly loud soundsystems, choreography, music videos, music-enhancing drugs etc... they all work towards making that music more tangible.

It makes me wonder why they don't just invent some sort of simulator, like one of those sensory deprivation tanks that creates a near-holistic experience of sound, colour and possibly movement that would take you as close as possible to that musical nirvana. Cool idea, but then what? It would only be the equivalent of spoonfeeding you someone else's interpretation of a sound. That's why music works so well because music is so highly personalised that only YOU can interpret the music through your own distortions and touchstones and emotions.

But aren't you spoonfeeding yourself an interpretation when you imagine so explicitly what the music is evoking in you? Isn't that a distancing act, a very focused self-consciousness that prevents you from immersion? It's really not that hard to immerse yourself in music, I don't think; the stuff is quite literally inside you, vibrating little bones in your ears.

I'm not sure what you mean by "spoonfeeding yourself". This isn't about an explicit thought process where one thinks almost out-loud "Is this music? How does it make me feel? What images is it making me think of? What is the meaning behind this collection of notes and bars?". Thank fuck I'm perfectly at home with dancing around in a club and having fun. I'm not going to have an existentialist breakdown in the middle of the dancefloor, crying because I know I'll never get to experience Todd Terje's 'Inspector Norse' form the vantage point of a gigantic robot goose.

But still, we use this kind of abstract language when we describe music. Other than in the most academic of contexts, we rarely talk about music in terms of "I like that switch from Dm7 to Am". We're more likely to say "these keyboards sound chirpy" or "this song makes me happy" or "this is music for dickhead teenagers" or "That noise sounds like someone hitting a rusty pipe" or "this makes me think of a clown on a bouncy castle" or "it's like a huge beam of light breaking through pink clouds". As soon as we start discussing music in these terms we're implicitly acknowledging that that First Circle of listening appreciation exists and, by extension, is desired by the subconscious.

(very sorry for thread derail, for those not interested in this line of thought btw).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

this is one of the craziest threads in ILM history imo

When I listen to Morbid Angel, I always just end up getting depressed that I'm not actually a ghoul storming a church and crushing the priest while beholding Satan's rise. I feel like I can never fully inhabit the music.

― Clarke B.

i figure as long as i feel like beavis and/or butthead in that one episode, i'm good

this is one of the craziest threads in ILM history imo

― burrito smalls (some dude),

why so?

Riffs will walk this poll btw

options make no sense, discussion is confused because of bad options

i figure as long as i feel like beavis and/or butthead in that one episode, i'm good

― j., Friday, 26 October 2012 03:33 (4 hours ago) Permalink

heh heheh heh heh heheh, you said it j.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Those are some crushing riffs.

hunh

wonder if a different distribution of 'lyrics/themes' and 'atmosphere' would have affected it