A rite of passage in any budding music snob's life is the deep ponderence of the "what does this even mean" element of genres.
But if genres mattered as little as snobs thought they did, we'd stop using them. And in the age of the Internet, sections in the store aren't as viable or potent as they had been in the past. But the genre argument still comes up in music fairly often, and like the common cold, has so many permutations that its sentiment is cropping up in new and exciting new comments like "They don't really sound like anyone else" or anything containing the word fusion not referring to jazz. And oddly enough, the genre war doesn't seem to crop up in movies, books, or art (paintings) nearly as often as it does in music.
My guess would be that most snobs would be far less aggressive if we just stripped out the genre and wrote in its place what all non-snobs read in the first place. Instead of punk, if we wrote "fast, talentless, and angry"I'm sure it would convey the point a little better. If the smooth jazz section instead said "over produced tripe made to drop granny panties" most people would shrug their way to a "more of less" agreement. And as I mentioned, the rest of the planet reads "jazz" and "punk" that way already. It isn't prescriptive, its directional. So why anyone gets pissy about it I'm not really sure.
But I bring all this up because my favorite subject - metal - seems to have taken the ball and run the other way down the field. I have a respect for metal that's difficult to define. Its artsy and technical, but not a pretentious pile of horse****. It can be dramatic, but its also fairly self-aware. And while I'd like to set a few of its fans on fire for being woefully out of touch with nearly everything around them, Metal doesn't give a rats ass what's popular - they know what they like and you have to give them that. They (as a concept here, don't ever think it) are who they are.
But what the hell is going on with its sub-genres?
If most snobs are screaming "It can't be placed in a box!" about their favorite music, then metal fans are looking for shackles. While all other genres are seemingly dissipating into a sea of noise, metal is moving toward an ever shrinking set of Russian dolls. Metal is how Zeno's Theory is applied practically to the natural world. But what's the purpose?
While I'm genuinely asking this question, I'd suspect its actually an attempt to achieve what the other genres are trying to pull off. By shaving things down to the core element of the genre, they're trying to differentiate between bands...but wouldn't the bands name do that just the same? And wouldn't this work worse than the diffusion of the other genres? And wouldn't both be improved if they stuck to the old monolithic genres to use as starting points?
I don't know. Long story short, I still don't get metal sometimes.