Originally Posted by Seltzer

You disown practically anything attached to the title 'metal' or 'prog' - it seems like you hold a grudge against most music that involves any kind of technical skill. I think it's more the fact that you're only open to one idealised type of music. Sorry if this sounds stupid because it is hard to explain so I'll give an example. I like thrash metal - I find it to be a fairly consistent genre and while I listen to it because I like the musicianship and energy etc. I doubt I'll ever consider a thrash metal band to be one of my favourite bands ever. This is because I am open to the ideals of thrash, but most thrash bands just aren't superior enough for me to consider them my favourite band - they don't have my preferred ideals.

What I'm saying is, I guess you set your ideals more by lyrics, vocals and a certain type of instrumentation which you find to carry emotion. If the instrumentation is technical, you are less likely to judge it as emotive. While my preferred ideals tend to lie in atmosphere and progression, my ideals are open so I can enjoy many types of music. Here are a few examples of musical ideals based on genres:

Prog rock = Progression, songwriting instrumentation, technical instrumentation, atmosphere
Punk rock / thrash metal = Immediate catchiness (opposite to progression), riff dependent, energy
Jazz = Songwriting instrumentation, Theory instrumentation, technical instrumentation
Post rock = Atmosphere, progression
Folk = Lyrics, acoustic instrumentation

Rather than saying someone is biased towards a genre, sometimes it's better to say their musical ideals fit certain genres. Of course, these are only ideals and there are thrash metal bands with progression, jazz which focusses more on immediate catchiness and folk which uses electric instruments.



If you want I'll see if I can find any examples later on. I'm a bit busy with studying right now.