OccultHawk

I've been a metalhead for three decades and still the deeper I dig into the genre the more I realise it just goes on forever and ever. I'm sure it's in part because I have a predisposition to the genre but it seems more than any other genre even crappy bands can still be really good and fun to listen to. And it seems like every country in the world produces at least some quality metal. Whether it's mainstream or super deviant and obscure doesn't even matter to me.



Crappy metal forever!!!

Zer0

Who knows, because where does the bottomless pit end? If you take any musical genre you could pretty much apply that statement to it, you could keep digging into any major genre and still find great music. Whether metal is the biggest bottomless pit in the history of music or not is impossible to answer, it could be electronica or folk music for all we know.

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OccultHawk

I love folk music and have for years but crappy folk music is no fun to listen to.

Dark ambient is the best hope. Needs another two decades though. Plus, brain dead electronica bores. Metal just gets better with stupidity. Bang your head!

clutnuckle

Exactly it. Crappy metal isn't fun to listen to in general. Crappy 'anything' isn't fun to listen to in general; if you feel that way, it obviously means you have a soft spot for the genre in the first place, and therefore you'll likely be able to fathom anything bad it offers. It's not really a bigger bottomless pit than folk, drone and/or punk... They all produce quality albums to this day and a fair amount of garbage. As for your comment on countries: Good folk comes from all over the world (hence its genre name, folk meaning 'music of the common people'). Good punk is likewise everywhere because everybody can be cathartic (yes I generalized punk to catharsis, get over it).

Genres are only bottomless pits because theoretically people will continue making music that falls under their stylistic boundaries forever. If tomorrow making metal music suddenly became illegal, then it would no longer be bottomless. And seeing as it's been around about - what, 50 years at the most? Whereas genres like jazz, folk and rock have been active for so much longer and continually release just as much worthwhile material. The biggest bottomless pits lie in the genres that have been established the longest, and are still filled with ingenious thought. Jazz would probably be my number one stop (and let's just forget that Kenny G and his disciples even exist, as they are not jazz).

OccultHawk

Coltrane died over 40 years ago and there hasn't been any important evolution in the genre since. Metal on the other hand has branched off into black metal and grindcore and so on.

The anger died in the 80's.

Yeah, but the sound is not distinctive enough to really tie it together.

someonecompletelyrandom

Of course it will seem that way if you aren't looking. The only reason you find it's the case with metal is because you're really into it. I dig the sentiment man I just don't think it's limited to any one genre.

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

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OccultHawk

Just for the record, over the last fifteen years I've spent a lot more time listening to free jazz than to metal.

Ska Lagos Jew Sun Ra

Well... is the fusion of Jazz and Metal significant? I personally find that when you listen to more genres, and more obscure genres, you realize how big of a myth that 'genre' really is. I don't see how you can say nothing in Jazz is significant as almost everything that wants to distinguish or evolve from typical rock or metal(which really is just louder more distorted rock) tends to borrow from Jazz staples. I mean, prog for example, the form of music built entirely to significantly change rock/metal, owes just as much to jazz as it does metal.

Jazz is the most strongly accumulative genre around. Just if straight Jazz doesn't have any blatant mainstream figures it doesn't mean the evolutions simply in it's integrations in helping music evolve are not significant.

OccultHawk

Like the stuff Zorn has done?