Heavy metal becoming increasingly political?
A story on MSNBC today concerns 'Heavy Metal becoming increasingly political". It's an interesting story for those of you who are into this type of thing. The story makes some good points and discusses some of the misunderstandings about this musical genre that have always been present.
But writer ruined the whole thing for me with several factual mistakes. The first clue was the subtitle of the article: 'As genre nears 30, social commentary weaves its way among power chords". Two errors here: the genre is well over 30 years old in 2006 and social commentary has been a part of Heavy Metal almost from the beginning.
I realize that there is disagreement about when 'Heavy Metal' actually began, but, by anyone's estimation, the genre definitely predates 1976 (30 years ago). I would place it's origination closer to 40 years ago. The proto-metal sounds of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, and The Who are even older.
Another error is implied in the article's apparent assertion that 'social commentary' in Metal is a new phenomenon. If you've read my post this far, you are probably aware of how wrong this is. Social commentary was a part of Metal and proto-metal almost from day one.
The author also displays an ignorance of other common themes of early Metal writing, "Metal bands are also branching out into literature and mythology..." Again, these were common themes of Metal long before most the current crop of headbangers were old enough to carry their practice amps.
In all fairness, the article goes on to say that "Heavy metal has always touched on social and political issues" and makes mention of Black Sabbath's criticicism of the Vietnam War and Iron Maiden's denunciation of the poor treatment of Native Americans.
Overall, though, the tone of the article implies that Heavy Metal is younger and historically less socially aware and significant than is true.
It comes off more as saying that Metal has grown up since the vacuous 'hair metal' days of the '80's rather than more accurately stating that current metal is returning to it's true roots of musical innovation and social commentary.
My rant for the
It could have been such a good article.
posted by Art @ 11:26 AM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
I heard an interesting discussion about this on the radio recently. Two DJs were arguing over different bands---were they metal or not? Also, they brought up the same topics in this article... lots of differing opinions out there. It was an interesting show.
i saw some vh1 documentary where they profiled heavy metal and they traced it to the early 80's saying it was a turn from punk rock in the uk. probably where this reference came from, because i'd agree, sabbath and other bands were/are certainly heavy metal. as for the just now turning to social commentary.. that's bogus, it's always spoken to that. lame article
Susan, Gavin, thanks. It's so nice when people agree with my opinions -it happens so rarely (even if my opinions are always correct:)
To say that there wasn't always social commentary was a bit of a mistake. Sure, the hair metal days were devoid of any real commentary (and any good music), but I can recall listening to Anthrax in middle school when my dad walked in the room, listened to the lyrics, and said he liked how they spoke of the plight Native Americans.
The roots go pretty deep. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the first band to ever use distortion in their music was Ike Turner's first band when he was recording with Sun Records in the pre-Elvis days.
Thanks, LP. Yeah, Turner used distortion as did Link Wray and a lot of others. And common themes in Metal, both musically and lyrically, were heavily influenced by early Blues and R&B. All this was long before the Early Metal Fathers canonicized such things. There's nothing new under the sun.
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