RGG February 2015 - p.7
@weak13
@nickjtownsend
Went off topic slightly there Anyway I was
listening to Metallica the other day because “I
am a thrash” and then it became instantly clear
that thirty years since their formation that they
aren’t known as a thrash band anymore; in fact
they are often referred to as a band You saying
“I am a Emo because I listen to Thirty Seconds
To Mars” makes me wonder why you even
bother having a unique name of your own; you
might as well change your forename to emo
and your maiden name to emo and call yourself
emo emo and then thirty years later when
TSTM decide to release a country sounding
album you can change your name again and say
“I am a cunt” Maybe I just get wound up
because I think we are all unique individuals
Arguably most readers of this magazine often
discover that the articles about bands (laugh
out loud) in the entertainment sections of
newspapers or magazines are a guess who
contest that they didn’t ask to play; the type of
music you actually enjoy listening to in real life
is not covered or mentioned within the pages;
they don’t represent your musical interests and
instead you suck it up and read about a load of
reality TV show contestants from a Saturday
night Karaoke slaughterhouse As far as they are
concerned; the tripe they shove down your
throats is the only real music there is and we
just accept its false superiority like the sheep
that many have become
All this squabbling about band genres is a real
waste of time because the music press for the
mainstreammedia doesn’t seem to be reporting
about any of them In tabloids you often see
sensationalised news stories about suicide or
depression concerning the culture of Emo or
Goth but you never read about the music of
either in the same publication’s entertainment
section They haven’t missed an opportunity –
it’s a saying known as “divide and conquer”;
because they don’t want to promote anything
musically stimulating and are just fuelling the
“dumbing down” of society years ago you’d
see spin doctored news articles and fear
mongering about rockers and ravers that were
always focused on drug addiction or overdoses
but never would the same publications attempt
to report on the music; instead they
concentrated on featuring regurgitated pop acts
with the lastability of a suicidal hamster on a
Catherine Wheel The media can shape fears and
desires; people who are not engaged in critical
thinking are easy to control
Bands get defined by a genre when they first
start off out because they only have a few songs
to be identified by but in most cases nearly all
of them (except for Take That and Slayer)
mature with age push new boundaries and
expand their sound; resulting quite often with a
completely different sounding act years later and
that means the original genre description for
them becomes obsolete If a band does
something different to what they did on their
last album then they’re experimenting and that’s
commendable Don’t panic or get aggressive if
your favourite band wanders into other genres
to make new music Look at the US band Korn;
they experiment but they still sound like Korn
despite using different sounds Mind you
though can you imagine if Korn decided one day
to ban their singer Jonathan Davis from using
the words “Fall” “Down” “Bring” “Hate” and
“Me”? There isn’t a Korn album that doesn’t
contain those words I haven’t checked
either; I’m that confident
A band will always be just that; strict genre
identity can actually limit the musicians playing
in them from expanding It’s not always a
popular move with fans but why would you
want a band to record the exact same sounding
album again with different words? Bring Me The
Horizon’s recent single “Drown” was described as
“a bit of a joke” because they completely altered
their sound and it’s their own fans that are giving
them a hard time At least Korn make different
sounding albums with the same words That’s all
for this month
