ME(T)A(L) CULPA (This section isn’t too important— just a whole lot of belly-aching and throat-clearing and self-indulgence— so feel free to skip ahead to the record reviews if you don’t feel like reading through this gunk!) I have a very long history with emo/hardcore/adjacent music— I know many of the subgenres and histories inside and out, and I can delineate between the tiniest sonic variations within regional interpretations of each form. All of these are things that I never really took the time to do with metal. In fact, I’ve been kind of condescending towards metal for a long time, only investigating what I felt like I needed familiarity with in order to understand its impact on punk and hardcore. Part of this has to do with the vague, longstanding “rivalry” between punk and metal on, I guess, ideological grounds that I apparently took a little too seriously when I was a kid. But to tell you the truth, I think I was just being a dick because metal wasn’t “cool” in the same way as punk/hardcore/emo/etc. And whatever metal I did like, I tried to handwave it away as being due to its inherent influence from hardcore or whatever rather than appreciating it on its own merits.
Check out "Operation Mindcrime" by Queensryche if you haven't done so already. Scary how relevant the lyrics are to the present day, and the musicianship is off the charts.
Check out "Operation Mindcrime" by Queensryche if you haven't done so already. Scary how relevant the lyrics are to the present day, and the musicianship is off the charts.