Why isn't prog as successful as metal as an indus |
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Blacksword
Prog Reviewer Joined: June 22 2004 Location: England Status: Offline Points: 16130 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 05:38 | |
I've come to this late, but wanted to throw my penny into the well...
Metal is simply more popular with the young, and unlike say the early 80's has a degree of crebility nowadays across a wider crossection of people. Metal, even among those who don't worship it, is less open to ridicule than prog. Prog is broadly regarded as elitist, twee, ridiculous and played by very old people who don't care about the listener, and are doubly clueless about younger listeners...and that's just among those who even know what prog rock is.. As far as popular music goes, metal is also a bit of an anomoly. It's timeless, appeals to multiple generations, is completely uncommercial and yet - in the case of many bands - enjoys healthy commercial success. Prog rock was of it's time, and is now reduced to an underground appreciation society among predominantly middle aged men. I'm surprised anyone else is surprised that it is ignored. Why wouldn't it be? |
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Ultimately bored by endless ecstasy!
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 06:29 | |
That is one view - I see it as asking why Prog isn't as successful today as Metal currently is. Sure there is some vestige of taint attached to it from those days but that was 30 years ago and Metal is also a tainted genre of music in the eyes of those who would tarnish Prog as being pretentious and overblown. The up-their-own-arse pseudo-intellectuals who put down Prog are equally disparaging about Metal.
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 09:26 | |
@Kati and rogerthat:
I were obviously joking with those two posts, or at least thought my joking intent was obvious. I guess that kind of humour doesn't really travel that well on the internet, perhaps also depends on what kind of community I'm talking about. I should probably have made that clearer. I'm just kind of annoyed at people here sl*g.ing off metal as a lesser artform than prog rock, when a lot of seemingly "lowbrow" black/death metal is at least as compositionally complex as much of the avantgarde/progressive music that gets praised here, and in some cases as profound or at least ambitious in lyrical themes despite its garish visual aesthetics. If you don't like the genre that's fine, nothing's for everyone after all, but a lot of the dismissal seems to be rooted in extremely specific and narrow definitions of art's purpose and role in society I see very few people I know subscribe to now because of how anachronistic they are within art history, not even within an academic context. There's probably also a generation gap or two I'm on the wrong side of and I might have forgotten that. Keep in mind I'm from a country where even the more extreme metal subgenres command a significant amount of mainstream crossover popularity, and people who can't stand them still admit it takes quite a bit of instrumental skill to play that stuff or at least that there's often some pretty heady themes motivating the music. (if I didn't, I might actually have gotten more defensive than I did... the metal community here in Scandinavia doesn't have anywhere the same degree of subcultural patriotism as that in say Eastern Europe) So quite a few of the sentiments aired in this thread just struck me as antiquated, or culturally elitist in a bad way. Edited by Toaster Mantis - March 26 2015 at 15:22 |
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 09:42 | |
I was not a little surprised to see such a comment from you. But then, I have come across pretty ludicrous defences of metal from metalheads over the years so I assumed (wrongly,as it turns out) that you were serious.
Well, you can't really expect old timers to be particularly enthusiastic about metal. Its ethos is too far removed from the flower power era (which eventually birthed prog rock). Sure, somebody like Dean may be fond of metal but I am never surprised to find dismissive opinions on metal from old timers.
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 10:09 | |
Old-timers attitude to metal surprises me a little - we wrinklies invented the genre after all; those who followed Ironing Maiden et al in the late 70s are well into their middle-ages now and those who came to appreciate Metal in the 1990s are fast approaching their 5th decade on this planet. Sure those old metalheads can be very disparaging about Nu-Metal and other such modern creations, and probably not without reason given that they are not interested in that shouty rap style of vocal delivery regardless of what genre it is produced in.
Because 90% of everything is crap it suggests that 10% of everything is not crap - yet while there is Metal I like and Metal I don't like just as there is Prog I like and Prog I don't like, it does not follow that all the Metal and Prog I like is good and all that I don't like is bad. I cannot stand Jazz, but I cannot honestly say that all Jazz is crap (just 90% of it ).
What hacks me off in this and every other discussion we get into over why Prog isn't popular is that, (as with a lot of music genres and subcultures), it's the public who seem to be blamed for the success or lack thereof and that's plain stupid. |
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 10:27 | |
Yeah, it's something I've commented on in a couple threads I've started myself about intergenerational appeal or lack thereof in the progressive rock community. It's more when people dismiss music outside their personal comfort zone as objectively bad, or imply something like that, I think you should have some extremely good arguments for that position. (which I don't hear very often)
The funny thing is that I also see quite a bit of resentment from some underground metal types towards psychedelic and other intellectual "art music", which they identify with the cultural elite for having a more socially high-status fanbase and being more respected by academics as important to cultural history... or just see as standing for other philosophical ideals that happen to be at odds with their own. Not to mention that quite a few early metal groups jumped ship from prog/psych-rock because they regarded that movement as a dead end. It's mostly people from other countries, where the metal community is more marginalized in the culture at large than where I live, who are like that though, because the conditions motivating that type of "subcultural patriotism" (as I called it) haven't existed here since I think the 1990s. I do encounter it in veterans of the metal scene around here. I don't think most music subcultures actually live up to their own proclaimed ideals that often, though, but that's another story. My thoughts are kind of scrambled right now because I've just finished helping a friend with her laundry. Will probably post a longer reply later on. Edited by Toaster Mantis - March 26 2015 at 15:31 |
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 11:54 | |
Aye. I think some of the Goth community gets closest, which probably explains its longevity as a subculture, but I suspect even that varies a lot with some just using it as an excuse for dressing-up. I never bought into the wicca/earth-magik ideology myself but many of my friends in the community take it seriously and get very angry when people equate it black magic, devil worship and satanism.
Laundry can do that to a man. Their garments tend to mess with your notions spacial geometry. |
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 12:01 | |
In my (admittedly limited) experience the goth/industrial/noise crowd also has a way higher percentage of LGBT people involved among its membership than any other countercultural music scene, which might explain what you mentioned.
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 12:04 | |
A higher percentage of Sysops too for some reason as yet to be fathomed.
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Padraic
Special Collaborator Honorary Collaborator Joined: February 16 2006 Location: Pennsylvania Status: Offline Points: 31165 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 12:40 | |
Why isn't prog as successful as metal
Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Why isn't prog as successful as metal Sorry. Had to get that off my chest. Carry on. |
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twalsh
Forum Senior Member Joined: August 26 2014 Location: Vancouver, BC Status: Offline Points: 328 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 14:01 | |
I'm not sure what to make of these paragraphs. The first appears to mirror much of the 'Satanic panic' of the 1980s, while the second appears to be almost a rebuttal of the panic. I have a different take and the Satanic element in and of itself is not very central in my opinion. Metal appeared to have several themes that were particularly appealing to teens, some more prevalent in certain subgenres Power (adolescents tend not to have much, particularly the less popular) Rebellion (Wham! and 80s pop did not have this) Authenticity - ironic given themes of fantasy being so common. Back to the Black Sabbath days, heavy music acknowledged the existence of evil and hypocrisy (something that society likes to deny or externalize). This is especially important for people in their teens and early 20s when discrepancies between what people and the media say and how people actually act becomes more apparent. Hedonism- sex, mind-altering experiences, general high energy excitement. The more sanitized 'romance' of pop music does not fully speak to raging hormones. Complexity (in some genres) - Hair Metal tended to be more simplistic and pop-like but NWOBHM and Thrash frequently has musically and lyrically progressive elements. Teens in particular may have identified with finding their own art form that 'deserved' to be taken seriously. Not only were these themes well-matched to adolescence and young adulthood, but there tended to be a certain unity in these themes with metal music. In contrast, prog seems much more Individualistic, self-assured, concerned with musical authenticity (versus a more societal focus) and almost indifferent to what others thought of their image and ideas. To a degree this violates the herd instinct common to most people but particularly to adolescents. Too much individualism does not make a lasting movement, no matter how talented. Metal had a more calculated 'formula' (with many exceptions) that continues today.
Edited by twalsh - March 26 2015 at 14:03 |
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More heavy prog, please!
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: March 26 2015 at 15:34 | |
I also get the impression that people here vastly exaggerate how disliked by the mainstream progressive rock is, but maybe my geographical location in Continental Europe once again distorts my perspective? After all, Genesis and Van der Graaf Generator charted way higher in France and Italy than back home in the United Kingdom whereas the Rock In Opposition movement somehow actually achieved a not-insignificant amount of mainstream crossover popularity in Sweden... where a good chunk of the current prog rock revival groups come from, not coincidentally!
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Richbich
Forum Newbie Joined: March 27 2015 Location: Alaska Status: Offline Points: 2 |
Posted: March 27 2015 at 01:29 | |
I like metal alot too, but prog is harder for more people to get into into. Metal kind of appeals to more of the people who want to have fun where prog is more for people who like to think about things alot, then they kind of meet in the middle. I dont mean that metalheads are idiots at all though many of them are intelligent.
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: March 27 2015 at 03:56 | |
I'd say that really, really depends on what you mean by "prog" and "metal". A lot of traditional heavy metal isn't particularly inaccessible to many mainstream rock fans if you can get over a less blues-based more "neoclassical" melodic sensibility and lyrics that work more through fantastic metaphor than real life emotions, same situation as those progressive rock groups that get played on classic rock radio though. I wouldn't really call Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden or Metallica less or more accessible than Genesis, Pink Floyd, Rush etc.
The more extreme subgenres I'd call more inaccessible in theory. Not just the harsh vocals, extremely abstract riffing styles and musical grammar very different from "normal" rock music but also that the compositional structures can get even more complex and hard to follow. Then again the same thing applies to the most complex Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa records... as well as avant-prog like Art Zoyd, Henry Cow and Univers Zero. Maybe the latter are more accessible on account of not featuring growled and screamed vocals, but then again what's "accessible" is in large part determined by cultural norms and personal comfort zones. Things that in turn vary with time and place. I mean, the earlier death metal groups like Entombed and Morbid Angel weren't that far removed from the mainstream-accepted speed/thrash of their day. Hell, Slayer and early Sepultura basically have one foot in each. Edited by Toaster Mantis - March 28 2015 at 06:12 |
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: March 27 2015 at 06:19 | |
Now, as for the cultural difference between prog and metal? Here in Denmark, according to Jens Jam Rasmussen's 2010 book on the history of the Danish metal scene at least, there was a certain cultural distance and even mutual rivalry between the avantgarde/progressive rock movement back in the 1970s and the psychedelic hard rock scene which later turned into heavy metal.
The former scene as represented by groups like Blue Sun, Burning Red Ivanhoe, Secret Oyster were made up of classical/jazz-trained musicians who had usually attended art school, conservatory or university where they'd get into contact with much of the cultural and artistic avantgarde's cultural frame of reference. As a result, they had often made up elaborate philosophical background concepts and were very focused on expressing those in their music with a strong focus on instrumental interplay in a group setting. On the contrast, the "concrete rock" scene as they called it here in Denmark before the heavy metal/hard rock label stuck, were made up of self-taught basement/garage jammers who just wrote about what they thought were fun... with their cultural frame of reference just as often being drawn from exploitation film, pulp genre fiction and other "low culture" art forms. Bands like Far Out, The Old Man and the Sea and Sensory System can be mentioned as examples. Likewise, their music was often focused more on guitar heroics than on instrumental interplay. Those heavy metal musicians who did come from the former prog/psych background did in part jump ship because by the mid-1970s the progressive rock scene came to appear to them a cultural dead end or had exhausted its possibilites. Notice that two of Mercyful Fate's members, Michael Denner and Kim Ruzz, came from a prog hard rock group called Iron Space which I'm not sure ever recorded anything. Apparently they were inspired most by Atomic Rooster and Jethro Tull's harder songs, but a couple of their own songs were later reworked very heavily into MF songs. (can't remember exactly which ones) King Diamond's first band Black Rose, whose demo recordings have actually seen a re-release, were somewhat in the same vein just more to the Deep Purple/Uriah Heep direction. They had by then come to find the prog/psych movement's aspirations to high culture a creative straitjacket and its motivational ethos of New Age-y utopian idealism rather naïve... instead gravitating more to a Nietzschean heroic existentialism. (which most Satanism consists of at its philosophical core, just with added) However, especially Mercyful Fate did keep the things they kept: Elaborate instrumental interplay, ambitious songwriting often built around the adaptation of classically inspired narrative structure to rock instrumentation, fantastic subject matter with nonetheless a genuine philosophical substance as underlying concept... notice that they were the first serious occult metal group of note. I think that later aspect is where some of the conflict comes from, the earliest heavy metal subculture around here came from people who weren't satisfied with mainstream society but did not really like the existing countercultural milieu either... often as a result of not coming from quite the same sociological demographics. Same thing with the glam rock movement that arose at the same, later turning into punk by way of The New York Dolls, The Sweet or for that matter David Bowie befriending Iggy Pop. The heavier end of that scene, like Slade and The Sweet, were after all both proto-punk and proto-metal. The overall point is that by the time of the late 1970s when the New Wave of British Heavy Metal rolled around, the hard rock/heavy metal movement had built up its own culture with its own norms and ideals with its own aesthetic reflecting those. Same thing with punk, which had also built up its own subcultural infrastructure of independent record labels, underground concert venues etc. which the metal scene would soon follow suit with despite not taking the entire "do-it-yourself" work ethic to the same. This is nonetheless something that the punk subculture had created with the specific with not being as reliant on buying into the mainstream music industry's corporate structure as the progressive/psychedelic movement was, which ended up killing it once the big labels lost interest and pulled the plug. The Rock In Opposition movement, to its credit, also embraced that independent music ethos as they were an active move away from the mainstreaming of progressive music back to its avant-garde oppositional roots. Punk and metal were also moving in different directions away from both mainstream society and previous countercultures, and generally don't reflect quite the same ideals either though there's some overlap. (here in Denmark, and probably also Sweden, the death metal milieu is at the grassroots level made up of the exact same individuals as the more extreme punk subgenres - crust, grind, hardcore etc) Does all of that make sense? The "too long didn't read" version is that since psychedelic/progressive rock as a cultural movement preceded both heavy metal and punk, much of those two subcultures' formation tried to get right what the psych/prog movement got wrong and correct the reasons that one didn't really work out in the end. They're also based upon different systems of ideals, even if they sometimes overlap, both on the level of how the aesthetics of the style is put together and the deeper philosophical/ideological aspect the stylistic conventions have evolved to express, that also appeal to somewhat different demographics. I think it took several hours for me to type this. I'm getting flashbacks to writing my master's thesis last year... Edited by Toaster Mantis - March 27 2015 at 06:34 |
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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TODDLER
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: August 28 2009 Location: Vineland, N.J. Status: Offline Points: 3126 |
Posted: March 27 2015 at 06:40 | |
The Satanic Panic era was a means for journalists to profit...which is why skeptics find the era farce and disbelieve news reports covering any or all tragic incidents. That is moronic on the skeptics behalf because cult killing will occur regardless if a journalist sensationalizes it or not. It's not the Satan cult's problem if a journalists wants to make them look stupid and pretentious. They are going to worship Satan anyway , they will sacrifice people anyway, and if a majority of people in society believe what the newspaper prints, or what the news on television decides to report ...after they have already screwed up the true story , telling lies, then that is their problem. The "Satanic Panic" was very commercial and appeared to be a hoax because journalists made it appear that way to intelligent people , while scaring the hell out of people in society who took the sensationalism seriously. In the real world, the murders and disappearance of children existed. In the news media, it was made to look stupid.
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: March 27 2015 at 07:00 | |
Regarding the question of crimes related to Satanism and the occult, I found an interesting article about the subject a while ago but unfortunately I can't locate it right now. Anyone interested in it?
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: March 27 2015 at 07:25 | |
Noooo - 99.999% (or some other randomly made up statistic) of Metal has nothing to do with Satanism.
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Blacksword
Prog Reviewer Joined: June 22 2004 Location: England Status: Offline Points: 16130 |
Posted: March 27 2015 at 07:45 | |
No. Not with regard to music. You can find occult symbols anywhere if you look for them, and the few references to Satan worship in metal are nothing but guff. Just using darkness as entertainment. Now, if you want to talk about the relationship between Satanism/occultism and the establishment, then I'm interested, but that's a different thread for a different forum I would say.. |
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Ultimately bored by endless ecstasy!
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ExittheLemming
Forum Senior Member Joined: October 19 2007 Location: Penal Colony Status: Offline Points: 11415 |
Posted: March 27 2015 at 08:03 | |
Satanism - everyone else's religion apart from your own...
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