CHRIS C: This year has been.... a year, hasn't it? As we approach the halfway point of 2022, I'm struck by two feelings more than anything else; this year seems stuck in the starting gate, and I can't escape my own disappointment. It seems like I've been saying the second part of that more and more as the years pass on, and perhaps we are finally getting to the age when the malaise sets in. We can discuss that later on if you would like to.
With six months of releases now behind us, have we learned anything about 2022? Is it different than 2021, or 2019, or any other year in recent memory? We have talked before about culture having stagnated, and the last twenty-two years being the longest decade of our lives, and perhaps that is the driving force behind what I am feeling. Every time I turn around, it feels like more of the same raining down on us. Part of that is due to the proliferation of bands (you'll notice at least half from one label) where the same people are giving us two or three albums every year. There's the old saying, "How can I miss you if you won't go away?" that applies here.
But it's also that I still haven't found anything you would call a new trend or a new sound to latch onto. The music I'm listening to right now is the same music I was listening to before, and that just means everything today is easier to compare directly with the music of the past. We all know that doesn't go very well.
So I'm starting this conversation off by saying I don't actually have a lot to say about the music that has been released this year, as not much of it has made the kind of impact with me I'm looking for. At my age, or in my current state of mind, I'm looking for an emotional connection to my music. That has proven incredibly hard to find.
There are things to gripe about, including some thoughts I have about rock being populated by man-children, so at least we have that to work with.
Where do you want to begin?
D.M: I am, before I forget, all in on talking about old man malaise. Game on.
First off, can I take a wild swing that the record label you're referring to is Frontiers records? Can I admit something awful, that I shouldn't say as a journalist (if I dare even call myself that?) I shudder a little whenever I find a new Frontiers promo stream in my inbox. It's not that I mind there being a label that wants to keep the past alive. Whatever, there's a market for that, clearly a lucrative one, and we all gotta eat. What is exponentially more frustrating is the fact that every press release for that label comes with a bloated write up about how genius their head of A&R is (you know who I'm talking about, his name escapes me right now and I'm too tried to look it up,) while essentially admitting that all of their bands have been put together by pulling names out of a hat and shutting them in a studio together. How seriously as I supposed to take a record that is an inorganic effort by all parties? Corporate art is certainly worth studying to some degree, but really only as a historical study in marketing and propaganda, not emotion or creativity, which I believe is what we more commonly look for as inspiration. Clearly, I may be in the minority here, as I live within driving distance of a city that takes civic pride in an oversized sign from a petroleum company.
Putting that aside, in answer to the question you first asked, about what we know about 2022, my gut reaction is that we don't seem to know much yet. That's more a curiosity than anything, as I've still managed to find, as of this writing, seven or either records that I feel strongly positive about for a variety of reasons. That said, I can't help but shake the feeling like we're still going through the ripples of albums that were written or began to be written during the heart of the pandemic. That's probably a combination of new material and material that was held until the consuming public was ready to take on new music, but in any event, the pandemic really presented us with the closest thing we'll likely ever experience to a world frozen in time, so it makes sense that the media of that time would be frozen for a while, too.
I say all that to say that 2022, in short, has no particular flavor as yet. Normally by this time, we've gotten a taste for what the musical trends and themes of the year might be, but addressing the heart of your question, I haven't detected anything consistent to this point.
Stepping out of my pay grade, there's a couple theories I have on this, in addition to what I stated above. First, much like how movie studios during the Great Recession started a still-living trend of shelling out for sequels because they were safer bets, it isn't too far fetched to believe that labels, which still hold a great deal of authority even in the digital world of self-releasing, are being extra conservative with their releases right now in an effort to minimize risk.
My other theory is that I just plain think we're seeing some world-weariness and fatigue from all sectors of the planet, artistic and non, and that's leading to a stagnation in expression and creativity. It's completely understandable. I know I've been suffering it as much as anyone, and while I don't know them, as you may have seen in my review, even the mighty GWAR seems tired and worn-out right now. Culturally, we've taken on a lot over the past two-plus years, from major health crises to important societal and equality issues, and very little of the news has been good. We've not had a chance to breathe comfortably in a long time, and the psychological impact of that will have ramifications for years. I am not an artist, but I can't imagine that it's easy to create in this environment. So, we do what we did before, if for no other reason than it feels familiar and safe and achievable.
I will say this - I don't think it's a new trend, I think it's been culminating for a while now, but it seems like any band who puts any thought into their lyrics at all, be they pure fantasy exploration, socially conscious, metaphorical or allegorical, tends to stretch the run times, of both songs and albums, out farther and farther. Songs that have any context at all are getting long in the tooth. Personally, I have always used Soundgarden as a sort of benchmark for this - they were not afraid to live around the five-minute mark if the situation called for it. Feels like bands are routinely blowing way past that now. Taking old Iron Maiden as an example, plenty of artists were capable of telling stories in three-and-a-half minutes. Is that a lost art? What causes this?
CHRIS C: Old man malaise ties into one of my musical gripes, so I'll get to that at the end of this exchange.
Yes, the label I was talking about was Frontiers, although they are only the worst offender of this, not the sole one. I'm totally with you; when a band seems to be put together for the sole purpose of making a record, it's not exciting. I've never been in PR, but saying 'these people never met before they signed a contract to make a record' doesn't sound to me like something that would entice buyers. Then again, Michael Sweet (who has been involved in several of these projects) has gone online many times to brag about writing some of his recent albums in just a week, as if I'm supposed to be impressed by that, rather than worried he didn't put enough time and effort into it. But what do I know? Last year, I clocked at least ten albums from the label where most or all of the songs were written by their main in-house songwriter. That's ONE HUNDRED songs he wrote just last year. I have some experience in this area, as you know. Could I write a hundred songs in a year if it was my job? Sure. But would they all be good, or would they not begin to sound like the same thing over and over again? Nope. I don't think it's possible to churn out that much product without the quality suffering. But their business model seems to be selling a certain number of dedicated fans as many albums as they can produce in a year, so it's working for them. I am more generous to their artists than you are, but even for me, the percentage of their 'bands' I'm truly excited to hear from is getting smaller every year.
Branding was the smartest thing businesses ever did. They became local landmarks, and every time someone used to give directions, before Google Maps took over, they were what we looked for. I feel like that's the sort of thing Frontiers is trying to do, but it can't be done with a product like an album. They might be the first stop online for their niche of music, but it's not as if we have to drive past them to get where we're going, so it feels like they are siloed and only talking to the people who are already fans. I have that same concern with bands that have shifted to Patreon as a major part of their model as well. Making new fans is hard, for sure, but some steps being taken feel self-limiting.
We are certainly still getting 'pandemic records', which is an odd thing, since the pandemic is not over, but it's being treated as such. So those sorts of records already feel like relics of the past, even though they are as relevant as they would have been last year. When you talk about frozen time, there it is. It's as if we've pulled the future closer to the present, hoping we can make the jump and put more distance between ourselves and what we want to forget. Time doesn't work like that, sadly.
Your musing about it having been a tough time to create is interesting. I suppose it depends on which kind of artist you are. If you are one who makes energizing and happy music, yeah, I would imagine you had a tough time. If you are one who uses music as a form of therapy, then perhaps it was easier than ever. I found myself rather productive during that time, and maybe part of the malaise we're all feeling is that more of the music we're hearing is tilted in a dour direction than usual, for that very reason. Just like how you can't pull yourself up by a bootstrap, you can't exactly energize yourself entirely on your own either.
I think your lyrical observation falls into the same category as how metal has shifted in general. Just like what was heavy in the 80s isn't necessarily heavy today, the same is true for what is more 'epic'. When Iron Maiden was writing a few five and six minute songs, it was stretching what metal bands could get away with and still be popular. Like all things, the edges keep getting stretched, and eventually it's hard to see how far we have gone. You add a few seconds every year, and over the course of four decades, you wind up with any band trying to be daring, or thinking big, having to go to lengths we would have scoffed at back then. The other thing is simply that telling a story in a small number of words is hard, and most lyricists aren't very good at what they do. I know I've heard dozens of concept albums over the years. Do you know how many of them tell a story well enough that I know what it's about? Just about none. But when we live in a time when any movie that comes along immediately gets talked about for it's 'trilogy' potential, what sort of brevity can we expect?
Mentioning lyricists ties back to the malaise I wanted to address. Feeling older and worn out is normal. What really annoys me is not my own blandness, but the people involved in rock and metal who refuse to grow up and act their age. I don't know if you listened to Fozzy's album, not that I would recommend doing so, but there's a song where Chris Jericho actually sings, "U.G.L.Y., you ain't got no alibi". He's in his fifties, and is singing a line from an elementary school playground. There's also Serious Black, who had a song where they literally called the woman the song was about a drugged-addicted whore. That's on top of a song last year where a guy was bragging his new girlfriend was the same age as his son. That would also mean she would be the same age as his own daughter, if he had one. Ugly connotations, eh? The point is that no one seems to bat an eye at these overgrown man-children who think staving off old age can be achieved by acting like the dumbest of young people. We can criticize Iron Maiden for a lot of things, but they're not out there trying to prove they don't need Viagra. I know this was music made for a young and stupid crowd, but I guess I thought it would mature as the bands themselves did. But so many of them never did, and now we have the most ridiculous people trying to be exciting, while they have AARP cards in their wallets.
If anything gives me malaise, it might be that.
D.M: One hundred songs is a big deal? C'mon, that's just eight songs a month! How hard can it be?
In the meantime, the fact that there's even an in-house songwriter is kind of gross. Historically, I understand that this is not a new concept - the Brill Building, and the famously catty rivalry between Carole King and Neil Sedaka are testament enough to that, so there's precedent. Something about it seems even more unappealing though, when you've specifically contracted musicians who are known for their previous compositions into a supergroup, and then that supergroup is told to just to play pre-written material like automatons at Chuck E. Cheese (with all respect to Chuck E. Cheese.) The whole concept is rather gross and undignified.
The shift to Patreon you mentioned is an interesting one. On some sense, it seems like a logical extension of the modern micro-transaction laden, gig-based economy, a hybrid combination of crowd-sourcing and less savory but popular purveyors like OnlyFans. It's all a little too 'put a dime in the jukebox and it'll play something' for me, but I can see how to some degree we're trying to replace the noble benefactor of previous centuries with ten thousand proletariat benefactors to achieve the same ends. There's three things happening here for me that are all concurrent, and I'm not sure what's good, what's bad and what simply is out of the bunch of them.
First is that we've evaporated much of the remaining illusory vestige that artists are creating art for art's sake, and that if it happens to be making them profit, so be it. By moving to Patreon, the art becomes transactional; we are openly acknowledging that art is a money-making venture, and moreover, than its creators are real people who need to eat. Second, we are engaging in another attempt to remove power from the traditional power structure of art and its distribution. Which as we've discussed, has its good and bad points - I'm all for artists doing whatever the hell they want and not having anyone tell them differently. You wanna name your band Vomit Fist? Go for it. Nobody should tell you no. Conversely, the labels and promoters and all those who have spent a hundred years turning art into a clever industry do have some knowledge of how to get an artist's work into the hands of the people, and (should) have the discerning eye to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of artistic merit.
The third thing, and this dovetails into a much larger argument societally, is something you touched upon - that by moving to Patreon, you've made it harder for people to find you who wouldn't have otherwise, and are speaking only to your own congregation. Empirically, this is a bad move for marketing reasons because of the, to use your term, siloing. Perhaps more importantly, it speaks to the evolving echo chamber we all find ourselves in. It could be the single most damaging thing happening to us culturally. And it's an easy trap to fall into, inexorably tied into the algorithms that have made our lives more convenient. I'm probably as guilty as anyone, and the extra time to think afforded to me by a global shutdown made me decide to close all my social media to afford some measure of protection. I'm not going to expand more than that, lest we become guilty of getting too far afield from what we're here to discuss, but the echo chamber is damned dangerous, and the further we allow ourselves to slide into it, the harder it will be to get out.
Anyway.
Allow me to expand on my original idea about it being a tough time to create, because I think in the intervening period between my saying it and your response, I've focused the concept a little more. It is my belief that we've hit a point beyond the depth of emotion, into simple, all-encompassing fatigue. Emotion, even dark emotion, requires some level of investment and effort. Even if someone is composing music as therapy, as you suggest, there comes a point where the brain is simply overloaded and out of power. What's the Dale Carnegie quote? "Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment." If that's not where we collectively are now, then I simply don't know what it would take. Speaking only for myself, my brain is toast. I am fortunate enough to have a cool job that I really love, but if you ask me on any given morning, "do you want to go to work today?" the answer is likely no. I don't think I'm alone in the concept of 'pandemic fatigue,' and that doesn't even cover all the rest of the stuff happening on this spinning marble called Earth. It wouldn't necessarily be fair for us to expect any different from our musicians. Now, that doesn't absolve 2022 of, to this point, being an average and undefined year for music, but it does give some insight as to why - the desire to put in the effort may just not be there, even in some cases inspirational material is abundant.
Regarding your grip with lyrics and artists and the meaningless showcase of artificial virility by aged men: this is going to be unnecessarily glib and contrite, but I can offer nothing else that says it better. I am quoting Henry Rollins, massively out of context, but it remains true - "there is a point where boys turn into men, which is really kind of dubious, because they just become fat boys." There's a lot of cultural stigma and expectation and other bullshit that goes into that, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. Especially for men who made their fame as young men who acted upon all the things they espoused. We talk about the evolution of artists a lot, and treading the very fine line between fans' expectation and growth and change in music, and this is a permutation of that. If your young, dumb crowd is now an old, dumb crowd, and you never had that much to say in the first place, you don't have much room to maneuver. Would anybody be interested in a David Lee Roth record where he tells the story of buying over-the-counter orthopedic inserts for his shoes, joining a fifty-plus recreational basketball league and buying a sensible car that gets good gas mileage?
Or, you could be Bruce Springsteen, and spend forty years evolving into....more Bruce Springsteen. Gross.
CHRIS C: You're right that having songwriting factories isn't a new thing at all. I guess part of the issue is that now it's more out in the open, and they promote the fact more than try to keep it under wraps. We can't avoid knowing the next album down the line is exactly the same as the one before it. But what you were saying about the bands is only partially right. Yes, it doesn't feel right to use pre-written songs for groups made up of people known for it, but the bigger problem is that a lot of these bands are made up of people who were in famous bands, but weren't writing the songs. There's a lot of confusion in the public knowledge about who exactly is responsible for the songs we listen to. Many people think anyone who was in a band had a lot to do with writing the songs, and these sorts of situations take advantage of that. I'm not going to call it fraud, but it's definitely using people's ignorance against them. Having the drummer from a generic 80s band and the replacement guitarist from another who wasn't there for any of the 'classic' songs does not a supergroup make, no matter how much they try to sell us on it.
They pissed me off with this last year. There was one of those projects that featured the first appearance by a guitarist from one of my favorite metal bands in many years. As it turns out, the whole thing was written by the in-house guy, so the only thing the guitarist contributed was solos. I had wanted to actually hear what he would write and play with the chance to have his own band for once, but instead we got another cookie-cutter. It was good, but I wasn't as excited as I should have been.
When it comes to Patreon, only one of your three points really bothers me. We all have known for a long time music is a business, so I'm not going to try to feign any outrage that it has become so transactional. No, I don't really like that it tends to apply a deadline where the artists need to create a certain amount of music at a certain time to justify the money, but that's minor. The third issue is the big one; the siloing isn't helpful to anyone. There's one band I follow who is doing the Patreon thing right now, and they have been releasing new songs exclusively through that platform. So in order to hear any of this music, you have to be paying them every month. In order to pay them every month, you have to have already heard enough of their old music (which wasn't Patreon exclusive - oh, irony) to be that much of a fan. You also have no ability anymore to hear what the music sounds like before you buy it, which is taking us back to the days no fan I know of wants to go back to. If they make a radical change you don't like, too bad, they already have your money. Needless to say, I haven't heard a note of that band's recent music.
I get what you're saying about fatigue. Sure, we're all feeling that way. I was looking at it slightly differently, where inspiration is a moment of energy in the midst of that ennui. Even being frazzled and fried, there are still those short bursts where something comes through the static. That won't be true for everyone, especially if creating is in fact your job. It's easier for me to say my creative side stayed engaged, because that's the way I pull myself away from storm. For those who have creation lead into the world that wears them down, it would be another story. Ironically, I'm feeling the fatigue much more as a listener. Even the music I have said is really good this year has been failing to move me on an emotional level, and as you're saying, that could be due to me simply not having the energy to feel right now.
That's one of the few Henry Rollins lines I absolutely remember, and he's right. Somewhere along the line, the idea of what manhood is supposed to be changed, and not for the better. The entire idea of the 'alpha male' that now persists is incredibly toxic, and it pushes the gullible to take things too far, or else they get called soft and weak. You're not allowed to be quiet, or respectful, or age-appropriate, without it being a sign that you aren't man enough. Apparently, we're supposed to have an overflow of testosterone bubbling through us from birth until death. I can see that middle-aged men who make a spectacle of dating barely legal women are compensating for their own fears and/or self-loathing, but they can't. We have a culture wherein it's somehow thought to be a sign of strength to be unapologetically crass, because offending people shows that you're tough enough to attack. It always comes back to the distinction I draw between saying something insightful/funny that happens to be offensive, and saying something offensive that happens to be insightful/funny. Almost all of the people whining about being 'canceled' are in the latter category, and they can't see their lack of talent is the reason they have to rely on those crutches. But now I'm getting off-topic a bit.
I guess I want to ask if you find yourself in the same boat I do, where getting older has made me look back at the music I listened to when I was younger with some degree of horror. There are certain songs and records that were cool at the time, but when I hear them now, they make me sad to realize how often the ugly messages were put into my head without me even knowing it. I know I have a tendency to go back and refer to my essay on Weezer's "Pinkerton" too often, but it was really a revelatory experience I had. I was having the same experience when Meat Loaf died, and I was listening to "When The Rubber Meets The Road", which repeatedly uses the line "yes means no means yes means no". I still can't tell which side the song comes down on, but putting any confusion between the words, and then pumping it into people's heads, now feels dirty. How often was that happening to us? I don't mean to blame that, or overstate its impact, but it certainly couldn't have helped.
Before we get to the good, what this year has rubbed you the wrong way?
D.M: I have to chuckle a little at your mention of the drummer from the generic 80s band, and the general concept of corralling musicians who aren't the famous musicians from bands and then calling the result a supergroup. You might remember - some years ago, probably back far enough that we were writing under our previous banner, there was a press release going around about Deep Purple going on a nationwide tour. But if you read the print carefully enough, there was no participation from Ian Gillan, Ritchie Blackmore or Jon Lord. So, who exactly was in the band? At the risk of insulting whoever was out there and felt they had justification in calling themselves Deep Purple, nobody that anyone gives a shit about was taking part in that tour. Coincidentally, this is why I stopped seeing Slayer, well before their three-year retirement tour. Once Hanneman and Lombardo were gone, the people I wanted to see were out, and Slayer had become a travelling a museum with replacement parts.
To tie a bow on the Patreon conversation, I do wonder what the shelf-life of this as a business model is. For one, as you mention, you have to be able to produce music on a deadline, which is more often than not a horrible idea, and also, this is all new. It's the same way I feel about cryptocurrency and legalized sports gambling - right now, it's the wild west, and seems pervasive because there is not enough data to either a) regulate it, or b) safely predict the cycles it will go through. You and I are old enough to remember when internet shopping first took off, and no one charged sales tax? Eventually, regulation and moderation caught up. That's a long way of saying this - we'll have to wait and see if the music-by-subscription model has any long term legs.
As to your larger question, I don't know that I have had the same experience with musical reflection from my youth as you have. I get what you're saying, some of it is pretty gross, especially with the amount of music about heroin that I took in during the grunge era, though I was too young to really even understand what heroin was. I had a unique experience relative to most in that my older brother brought home a lot of music from his high school years, but I was seven years younger and really didn't get the messaging on the same level that I'm sure he did. I don't know that I really understood what a song like Soundgarden's "4th of July" was about until years later.
Never mind all the Zeppelin. As a youth, I loved "Trampled Underfoot," but didn't really pick up on what was being said until later. My dad also drilled into me early that musicians could be great and make great music, but that I should not look to emulate their lifestyle. He was speaking, I think specifically, of Aerosmith and Alice Cooper, but the lesson applied in many different facets. Either way, both of my parents instilled in me a love for a band literally called The Doobie Brothers (whom I still love,) so music wasn't thought of as being taboo (though my mom wasn't too keen on Ozzy.)
When I look back at that stuff now, for as cringe-inducing as some of it can be (and boy, can it,) I think I've rationalized it as being part of the larger escapism and suspension of reality of many of the forms of entertainment that I enjoy. Sure, you can talk about cerebral subjects like science fiction or fantasy, or whatever, but in terms of the lower-brow music I imbibed, I'm thinking of the amount of professional wrestling and Russ Meyer movies that I've spent time with.
I enjoy all those things. But I don't start a nine-year feud when somebody hits me on the head with a coconut, and I don't expect women to look or act like Varla from "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" Have I listened to a lot of Dead Prez? Sure. Have I been a stoplight and sang along with Ice Cube's "We Had to Tear This Muthafucka Up?" Absolutely. But much as with those other media, for me, it's all a suspension of reality, a fantasy world that doesn't generate resonate with the one I'm in.
Let's see, what's rubbed me the wrong way this year? Not much in particular - the only thing that really comes to mind is that the sheer volume of releases has become trying. As we mentioned, it feels like we're still under the avalanche of pandemic records, so at any given time, I feel like I'm a month behind in my listening. As of this writing, I've barely finished all the albums I wanted to listen to from May, and we're starting to get releases for July. I understand that everyone is trying to empty their closest and that there's revenue to be had, but I can't help the feeling that some of these records aren't being given their proper moment before they're pushed out for something else. On my front, that's really about it.
How about you?
CHRIS C: I can't say I remember that incident with Deep Purple, but it wouldn't surprise me. How many bands have we seen in the years since where anyone who thinks they have even a fraction of the rights to a name goes out and tries to make whatever buck they can off it? One of the worst things that ever happened was Foreigner replacing every single member without the crowds noticing. Now every band thinks they can follow suit and dupe the fans simply by putting a band's name in big letters, and hoping no one knows enough about what's going on to know any better.
I'm not bullish on Patreon as a long-term strategy either, but for a different reason. There is surely the barrier to entry we've already mentioned, and there are fans who will be disappointed and leave, but there is a further issue with the artists themselves; they might burn out. I've already seen some bands that have gone this route who have taken hiatuses, or had to completely rework the entire premise, because they weren't interested in making music at that moment. It's been less common there, but I've seen the same thing happening with people who talk about music (particularly on YouTube), where once they have turned their hobby into an actual job, they lose the passion for doing it and they either quit, slow down, or completely change their content. The same thing is going to happen to some of these bands. The ones on Patreon are usually not doing music as their actual job, and once it starts to feel like one, the business transaction aspect becomes too hard to ignore. At least crowdfunding albums can be done when they have something they are ready and passionate to release. Patreon pulls back too much of the facade of being an artist, I fear.
See, I completely agree with you.... now. I can put on that old music an enjoy it for what it is, but only because I'm old enough now to realize what it's saying and put that aside. I can hear those songs and intentionally ignore the toxicity in them. But in order to do that, I first had to have those realizations, and it's the time before that happens I find dangerous. I come across a lot of people who are serious music fans who don't care in the slightest what the lyrics of a song are. Those kinds of people aren't going to be looking for meaning, or questioning what they are hearing. Those kinds of people are going to absorb some of the messaging, and I fear if you hear those things often enough without any context, it could be an excuse to embrace some of the thoughts we're supposed to be ashamed of. Without getting too political here, it's in the same boat with how people have been given license to be more openly hateful of women and minorities in recent years. Hearing your favorite records going down that road can give the impression its ok to follow suit. Sorry, Ted Nugent, but every article where your name is ever mentioned should start and end with a note telling the audience you wrote a song about raping a child. Context is critical.
I'm going to consider myself lucky for having a severe case of apathy right now. While the releases never stop coming, I have not at all been able to muster the energy to listen to a ton of them. As I'm writing this, I've listened to just about 75 albums and EPs this year, which is just about on par with the last few years, and that is weighted towards the winter, when I got off to a fast start. I don't know, I just don't seem to care about much of anything right now. It's made my job of finding things to write about a bit harder, but I don't mind not listening to another twenty records that will turn into a mush of forgettable noise.
I guess what's rubbed me the wrong way isn't so much the music, but the reaction. There are a handful of 'legends' who put out records that could generously be called mediocre, and yet the collective opinion is a big 'two thumbs up'. Matt Barlow is pretty much the only piece of Iced Earth's history that isn't an embarrassment, but he put out a record this year that sounds so terrible I can't believe a label actually agreed to release it. The reaction to it was positive. Tony Martin put out a record that reminded us all his era of Black Sabbath is largely forgotten because he can't write more than two good songs per album. The reaction to it was positive. The Flower Kings put out another double album with ninety minutes of tuneless meandering. The reaction to it was positive. That wretched Serious Black album I mentioned earlier. The only reaction I saw to the lyrics, other than my own, was positive. Maybe that all comes back to my old complaint that too many people like too much of what they hear. And that seems to apply to the musicians as well as the audience.
So let's talk about some good things instead. What this year has been a boon for you?
D.M: I know exactly what you mean when you talk about what happens when music becomes too much like a job. It's one of the primary reasons why I never really tried to turn editorial music coverage into an occupation. As a hobby, it's fine - I can pick it up and put it down as my regularly-scheduled life dictates (much to the chagrin of all the promoters and press folks we work with, I'm sure,) but I love music too much to ever want it to feel like work. And I am familiar with all the variations of the axiomatic sayings about "do what you love," but it would seem inevitable that obligation would start to supersede passion, and that's damaging to the experience in the extreme.
I don't want to rehash all the things you and I have talked about over the years, but I also know what you mean about critical reception to established artists. The example I always use is Behemoth. And I'm not taking away from their accomplishments, or even blaming them for the phenomenon. But I double dog dare you to find a negative review of anything Behemoth has ever done. Which simply can't be reality. No artist can be perfect over that long a period of time. Don't even get me started on the Cult of Mike Patton. You know how in sports they talk to death about "playing for the name on the front of the jersey, not the name on the back?" Music journalism actually needs to STOP playing for the name on the front.
I want to back up for a second, because since my initial response, I've revised my answer. There is something that rubbed me the wrong way. And you and I have discussed it in brief, vague terms over the last year and change, but I'm going to call it to the carpet.
We currently live in some of the most contentious, controversial and critical time in our collective history. There are real problems that need to be addressed and solved. Where are the upper-tier musicians who are willing to take a stand on these issues? Where is the new Green Day? Who are the new Dixie Chicks? Who will be the new Public Enemy? (Okay, that last might be Killer Mike, but where the hell has he been? He hasn't released a solo record in ten years.)
What's happening here? This is only my personal opinion, but in the intervening time since Green Day released "American Idiot," we've seen the advent of social media and everyone, largely for worse, has become hyper-aware of utter nonsense like "maintaining their brand." You know what happens when you try to maintain your brand? You become risk-averse. You cower away from saying anything of principle or importance, and hide behind consistency of image like a fucking pane of bulletproof glass. Artists have become so damned afraid of offending people and alienating their potential revenue generation as to transform into saccharine shells of artistic stagnation. It's like we're being held in thrall to profit and collectively living in fear of the followers of a delusional old white man who currently carries no official authority. But when you say it out loud, it sounds crazy, right?
In private conversation, I think I enjoyed Ghost's new album a little more than you did, but we agree it's not the band's best effort. That said, I give Ghost all the credit in the world for taking some issues face-on and actually having something cogent to say. Was Tobias an unlikely crusader? Was some of it clumsy and a little ham-fisted? Yes on both counts. But he's out there standing by it and marching under that banner, and good for him, especially at a time when all of their compatriots in heavy music, formerly a proud genre of protest, want to either avoid the conversation entirely, or talk about it through the lens of weak, subtle metaphor or historical allegory.
Anyway, my blood pressure is back to normal now. What were we talking about?
CHRIS C: I'll tie two of your points together. I haven't taken any steps to look into monetizing what we do either, but I wouldn't be opposed to it. I know it would take some of the joy out of it, but that joy isn't as common as I would like it to be, so I'm not naive about what I would be walking into. The issue is what you were saying about critical consensus; I don't know who would pay us to write about music, given that we aren't reflexively positive like a lot of outlets are. Granted, I haven't been reading as much coverage as I once did, but the amount of negative reviews I come across seems to be directly related to a band's reputation. Any group that is beloved rarely finds themselves being savaged by critics. It's only when a band's momentum has naturally started to wane that the reviews follow suit.
I am not like that. I know I have a bit of a reputation for hating everything, but I think my skepticism is actually a benefit. People know when I praise something, it's because I actually believe it. I've said so many times over the years that I don't trust people who like everything they hear, and I mean it. Praise means nothing if everyone gets it, so the fact that I am both ready and willing to levy harsh criticism when necessary is a sign of rare honesty. It's also why I don't go out of my way to point out everything I write, since even though some of the people we work with appreciate honesty, they might not appreciate how much of it comes their way.
You mention Behemoth, which is a perfect example of this. Their fans are still enraptured by the band, and it's hard to find a critic who will say anything against them (I would, if I bothered to listen to them). Then there's the other side, which we can use In Flames as an example of. They lost their initial fan-base, and critics have been savaging them for damn near twenty years now. The problem with that is they still sell tons of concert tickets, and they still sell enough albums the bigger labels keep signing them to new contracts, so you're telling me none of that sizeable number of people who still enjoy the band happens to be a critic? What are the odds of that?
I don't go out of my way to be a contrarian, nor do I take any particular pride in it, but I don't shy from it either. I like what I like, and I don't give a damn about impressing random people I don't know.
I too have wondered why we never got a proper anti-Trump album that broke through and defined the era. I can't quite explain why we didn't. Maybe you're right and it was a fear of backlash, but I'm not sure I believe that. Rock music used to live in the backlash, and that amount of polarization would drive so much interest it would probably be worth the bad press on the other side, at least from a business perspective. I wonder if it might simply be that, given the state of civic education, a lot of the rockers aren't qualified to make nuanced political discourse. Then again, when the target of political cartooning is already a cartoon, perhaps there isn't any room left for lampooning. Regardless, someone missed out on the opportunity to carve out a space in cultural history, and Ghost's songs are not going to fill that space. I respect them, sure, but it's too little and too late.
What we were talking about is what we have liked so far this year. I'll say this; I've found myself looking backwards a bit. I seem to be liking music that would have been more 'of the moment' when we were younger. Not that it will wind up being a favorite, but Avril Lavigne is a good indicator of that. She made a pop-punk record firmly of the early 00s, and dammit if I don't find it fun. Cold Years has a punk-adjacent record that gives me a "Warning" era Green Day vibe. There's another obscure record that reminds me a lot of classic era Jimmy Eat World, so my focus has largely been on that era of music, and the echoes of it I'm hearing right now. Also, it was great to hear Lzzy Hale's voice again, which was even better since it's been several years between records (with only a handful of guest appearances), so I had time to miss her. That was all good stuff.
D.M: The phenomenon you mention with In Flames is magnified with a couple of more known, and consequently more hated names: Nickelback and Creed. Chuck Klosterman wrote a piece some ten years ago about attending a concert of each on the same night, and the central theme of the piece was that for all the easy internet hate and vitriol, SOMEONE must like these bands, because they're still being booked at NBA arenas and large ballrooms. Now, I grant, if you look around at the unfiltered, uneducated and conspiratorial nonsense that saturates every corner of social media on any variety of subjects, it's not hard to draw the conclusion that a lot of people are not thinking critically about what they believe or enjoy. Point. But even with that, music is the most subjective medium of them all, so more to the point, it's impossible to believe that all reception is either positive or negative.
What have I liked so far this year? It's interesting that you talked about the old vibes, because I've been sensing a lot of that, too. Which is more an observation than a thing I really enjoyed, as it feels like the vibes I'm picking up on are based on the rock/metal/pop punk of our college years. This fits nicely into the puzzle of my alleged twenty-year cycle, but also portends a potentially fallow period for the music I particularly enjoy.
In a general sense, I feel pretty good that it's halfway through the year, and that if I had to make a year-end album list right now, I have nine records that I would feel decent about putting on my shield as indicative of what is shaping up to be a fairly good year. While prodigious creativity hasn't been the order of the day exactly, there's even been a few truly unique gems like 8 Kalacas. So even with the banality of another slew of pandemic records, and the overwhelming fatigue we talked about, there's still enough going on that's captured my interest. And I think what makes it best of all for me is that of the nine, seven of them are from artists that are either new, or that I wasn't previously familiar with, so that's a great sign as we head into the summer release season with some heavy-hitters on deck like Arch Enemy, Soilwork, maybe Combichrist and maybe, maybe, Kendrick Lamar.
So that dovetails nicely into the next part of our conversation - what are you looking forward to in the second half?
CHRIS C: That is all true, but there's enough of a distinction it's interesting to note the difference. Nickelback and Creed both had massive crossover appeal, and they were relegated to the cultural trash heap when their ability to chart hit singles dried up. In those cases, I can see where the casual fans who still remember those songs would still go to a show to see them get played one more time. In Flames is firmly in the metal world, where we tend to think of the fans as being more hardcore. There wasn't as much of a casual audience for them to lose, and it's not as though they are getting radio airplay to bring in a new batch of them. With them, it's almost all hardcore fans in both eras, and I find it fascinating that they seem to have put together two very successful careers with what seems like minimal overlap between the early fans and the late fans. I suppose it's sort of similar to what Metallica was doing in the "Load" era, except their music was omnipresent, and I think a lot of people got brainwashed into thinking it was all amazing. Retrospective listening has definitely made that era sound duller than ever.
It probably isn't just music, but also life, that follows the cycle. Yes, we are due for a lot of those old sounds to come back into style, but we're also at the age when we're having high school reunions. I think we are in the right place in life where we are prone to looking backward anyway, so something that reminds us of the familiar will have even stickier velcro for us to grab on to. I would like to think that's a solid reason for it happening, because the other main culprit would be black clouds lingering over my head more of the time. I would much prefer it to be unconscious nostalgia.
I believe last year was the same, where you had more records you felt strongly about than I do. Looking at my list of favorites so far, I'm not entirely disappointed, but I'm also not ready to go to the mat for all that many of them. Like last year, I can hear significant flaws in several, and I'm still waiting for that one record that comes in and delivers the uppercut to stun me.
What will that be? To answer your question, I'm not sure what I'm looking forward to for the rest of the year. There is a full-length album coming from The Spider Accomplice I will of course be excited to hear, but otherwise, I haven't heard many announcements yet that have caught my interest. There is a new Nordic Union album on the way, and an EP from Yours Truly (obviously less exciting than a whole album), but that's about it. I'm looking at a lot of blank space on my spreadsheet right now.
You mentioned a few you're looking forward to, so that leaves us at the end of our usual questioning. What have been the surprises this year, both good and bad?
D.M: Metallica, as ever, remains a subject unto themselves, right? You know how in high school science classes, they teach you about the phases of matter, and that the molecules condense and the dimensions get smaller as you move from gas to liquid to solid? And then they throw in the one exception - that water expands as it freezes? Metallica is water in this analogy. Nothing about Metallica, in any historical context, applies to any other band of their ilk, and nothing about any other band of their ilk applies to Metallica. They've broken every rule of heavy music physics and chemistry.
I think the thing that's surprised me most this year, and mayhaps it shouldn't because, as you mentioned, I had such affinity for last year's records, if the amount of time I'm still spending with artists from 2021. We've spoken about it to the point where it has become practically axiomatic - that as people age, they become more attached to the sounds of their youth, our of nostalgia, a lessening of time available for exploration, and a hundred other external factors. And yet, I can't shake the feeling that some of the great records I've listened to in my adult life came out last year. Cave of Swimmers, Dead Poet Society, Bokassa, CueStack, Beartooth, all still in my regular listening rotation. And then...the Hawkins. Their EP, "Aftermath," is the record I've listened to the most this year, without question. They are rapidly rising up my list of greatest bands alive.
Sadly, that brings to the bad surprise - that the other side of that coin is that I haven't spent much time listening to new records. While above I talked about how bullish I was for being at the end of June and having multiple albums that I'd argue in favor of, I don't know that I've listened to any of them more than two or three times. And I think, to use your phrase of uppercut, while these albums are very good on the whole, they have perhaps lacked an uppercut. I don't think I've really seen one signature single that moved me this year and drew me back in, with the possible exception of Feuerschwanz's "Memento Mori," which is a song that isn't even in my native tongue. I say all that to say that I'm surprised I haven't encountered a knockout single this year yet. Normally by now I've gone too far the other way - mediocre albums that hang around because they've composed one sublime single.
But, there's still a lot to look forward to, as I mentioned above. I'm enjoying the new Dampf record, and don't look now, but I think Alestorm might be maturing into a real, grown band. There's an Arch Enemy record to look forward to, plus Soilwork (who haven't been peak Soilwork in a while, but their name still carries a lot of weight and merits the time of day,) maybe a Kiberspassk album, and in just a couple days' time (probably in the rearview as of publishing date,) releases from both Pathos & Logos and Rxptrs, which piqued my interest.
Hope springs eternal. Speaking of...Let's. Go. Mets.
CHRIS C: Metallica really is a unique case. Megadeth basically followed them every step of the way, but it never worked out quite the same way, or with the same good will. That's an interesting thing to think about; what makes Metallica bulletproof in a way no other metal band has ever been? I fully admit I am not steeped enough in metal anymore to even begin to answer that question. But with Megadeth about to release an album soon, the difference is rather stark and hard to ignore. Oh, remember how I used to defend "Risk"? Yeah, I don't do that anymore, with the exception of "Breadline", which I will still say is a great song. In fact, I don't know that I ever think about Megadeth at all anymore. My life is not missing anything. Ha!
I haven't had the uppercut, but a few albums have landed enough body blows that they've gone the distance. I'm noticing more of those kind of slow-burn albums in recent years. I've also had a couple more instances of changing my mind than usual. That's interesting. There are a couple of singles that have outpaced their albums for me. Ghost has a couple songs that fit that bill, but were never actually released as singles. Slash has one too. "The River Is Rising" is bloody awesome, and the rest of the album just can't compete.
My surprise of the year is how I seem to be the only person who hears certain things the way I do. When I do engage in discussions with a few people about the music we're listening to, it's amazing not that I like what they don't and don't like what they do, but we hear the things in completely different ways. I heard a certain singer struggling to keep up with his old self, they think he sounds amazing. I heard a record with production so loud it gave me a migraine, they thought it sounded amazing. And so on and so forth. I know I've always tended to see things from a bit of a weird angle, but it's getting a bit ridiculous.
And with that being said, I think we've reached the end of the line for this talk. Perhaps we will reconvene to make fun of Megadeth when their album comes out. If I can be assed to listen to it, that is. Ha!
Until then, I think we've accomplished enough.
