There are almost 5500 “genres” attributed in [Encyclopedia Metallum]. 5000+ of these have fewer than 10 bands each. Almost 4000 of them are assigned to exactly 1 band. But this chaos of descriptors is actually constructed of a fairly small set of significant terms, rearranged in more or less every possible permutation and assembly.

When describing music it’s essential to have a lexicon of descriptive terms to work with. Conveying the essence of a song, sound or style in words is not easy, so saying “X sounds like Y” is an essential mechanism. When certain styles repeat often enough we create classifications for them, usually described as genres. Most types of music have a pretty discrete set of genres supported by a range of other related terms to help qualify and further refine one’s description. So if we take an Indie band, for example Elbow, we could describe them as “British prog inflected melancholic indie rock”. This not a genre in itself – most people, on hearing the music would simply call it “Indie”, or “Alternative” or maybe just “Rock”, those words are just one person’s description. However, in the metal world, Tombs are not simply described as “blackened hardcore”, to metal fans the are Blackened Hardcore. It’s not enough to say that At the Gates are Death Metal, they are Melodic Death Metal. Melodic Death Metal may be a sub-genre of Death Metal, but they are not the same thing. Most other genres don’t suffer from this genre proliferation. We have shoegaze indie (and shoegaze metal lately!) and Happy Hardcore is a sub-genre of dance, old-school Hip-hop, Alt-Country, Prog Rock, but it usually stops at a single sub-strata rather than branching endlessly as sometimes happens in metal. So we have:

Metal ->

Death ->

Progressive Death

Brutal Death

Gore Metal

Deathcore

Melodic Death

Death/Doom

Technical Death

Blackened Death

We see this to an extent in other genres, but it it somehow seldom manages to stick in the same way (eg. Big Beat, Nu-rave, and Acid Jazz were all pretty short lived. That said NWOAHM and Pirate Metal are unlikely to stand the test of time).

In metal, it gets more baffling still when you look at the lexical topography of the metal genre spectrum. At first glance it would appear to be broadly taxonomical – that is, there is a rigid hierarchy of genres and sub-genres, and any given band fits somewhere. We start at the top with Metal (itself a subset of Rock), and below we have the mainline sub-genres, eg. Thrash, Death, Black, Hardcore…hold on, isn’t Hardcore a sub-genre of Punk? But its influence on metal (not mention the influence of Punk in general on metal) is huge. So here we hit our first problem – Metal isn’t pure, it’s an amalgam, and strictly taxonomical structures will not easily apply. If we gloss over that we hit other issues. For example, Deathcore would probably considered a subgenre of Death Metal, whereas Mathcore is most definitely a subgenre of hardcore. So although the *cores are (somewhat dubiously) afforded a common heritage, they are taxonomically fragmented. Then we have the issue of genre bleedthrough – Alcest are both Black Metal and Shoegaze. Neurosis could variously be described as Post-hardcore, Sludge, Doom, Post-rock etc. etc. And what of Sludge? A sub-genre of Doom or Punk? And try even classifying Baroness, SYL, Cobalt, Om, Earth…

(Incidentally an attempt has been made to establish a taxonomy of musical genres in an attempt to make sense of the burgeoning availability of music in the digital era. Read about it here.)

The ‘structure’ is perhaps more ontological (in the more modern sense of the word), where genres are related to each other in a more semantic sense. So Symphonic Metal, a sub-genre of Power Metal, is like Symphonic Black Metal even though they’re from a pretty distinct lineage. Some genres are grouped geographically – Swedish Death metal was very much a style of its own, NWOBHM (and the various other perversions of that acronym that we’ve been subjected to since). NWOBHM could also be taken to denote a period in time and only bands from that period (late 70′s to early 80′s) could belong to this genre – bands practising this type of music these days would probably be described as Classic Metal. Death Metal derives (to a significant extent) from Thrash, but is not a subgenre of Thrash. Thrash in turn borrows from hardcore although it largely derives from NWOBHM and proto-BM.

Some genres are stylistically ridiculously broad – Folk Metal (which encompasses some pretty disparate regional influences), Post-Hardcore (this one pretty much defies any meaningful definition and probably doesn’t exist at all). On the other hand some descriptors and sub-strata are pretty definitive, and a genre of 1 (or very few) is a very real concept. The Black Metal fraternity are particularly proficient at this, being so pathologically tribal. So there’s really only a couple of Orthodox Black Metal bands, and post-BM and Depressive-BM are pretty sparse. I think this gives us a suggestion of what all this genre chaos is about – loyalty, belonging, pride.

The bewildering array of sub-genres is as constraining as it is helpful, and many bands balk at the being pigeon-holed, but still journalists, record labels, bands and fans alike create and perpetuate these labels. Metallers are often outsiders, and tend to cluster in cliques of similar minds. The different genres attract different types of metalheads, and the genre label acts like a badge, drawing people to it and each other – something more tangible to take pride in and remain loyal to. I also think metalheads are often shameless geeks – like stamp collectors they collect and group and organise, like train spotters they note sightings.

Interestingly, genre labels are often synonymous with feelings of quality. So labelling something Nu-Metal is generally derogatory, whereas calling something ‘Progressive’ is generally considered good (despite the link with the overtly indulgent and un-cool  70′s prog scene). These days the *cores are often seen as bad, mainly by the metal snoberatti and hardcore purists. Black Metal kvltists are notoriously defensive of their beloved genre to the extent of attempting to ‘unclassify’ bands that don’t suit their view of what the genre represents, despite clear lineage (Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Bogir). There’s actually a report in The Discordance that claims to quantify this (see it here).

Perhaps the most compelling reason for metal genre proliferation is simply the diversity of the metal genre. When both Steel Panther and Sunn O))) coexist under the metal banner which derives influence from Hip-hop, Folk, Classical, Dance and even Country some serious descriptors are needed just so we can get a feel for what stuff might suit our particular taste. The ‘metal’ genre itself comes with much baggage and preconceptions particularly with outsiders whom I find often have a narrow view of what that tag represents. Simply calling a band ‘metal’ does little convey what the bands represent (unless perhaps you’re talking about archetypes like Judas Priest or Iron Maiden) so a more specific definition would seem appropriate – shame they often mean nothing to anyone not pretty well acquainted with the genre!

It’s a fascinating subject, and you could probably write a whole book on the variations, nuances, idiocies and inconsistencies contained within the metal subgenre spectrum. At the end of the day, call it what you want – if it sounds good then stop talking about it and concentrate of listening to it!

Griftegård’s album Solemn.Sacred.Severe was one of my favourite releases last year. Saurated in religeous imagary and existential gloom, it sets a new standard for the Doom genre. Griftegård are the real deal. Musically, they are both cinematic and claustrophobic  whilst being oppressively dark, lyrically and thematically they are learned, complex and cryptic. I’m not usually that motivated by lyrics, and it takes something pretty singular to get my attention, and lyrically Solemn.Sacred.Severe intrigued and absorbed me from the first listen. As an exploration of theology, Christian dogma and the nature of existence it stands out as philosophical tome in its own right. It’s these lyrical themes that I was most interested in when compiling these interview questions. Some of these themes were covered in an ealier interview with lyricist/guitarist Ola Blomkvist conducted by German blog Burn Your Ears (read it here. Google translate makes a pretty decent job of the translation) but it left me with more questions than answers. So I was honoured when Ola agreed to answer some more questions. I recommend reading the Burn Your Ears interview first, as this uses that as a springboard.

Your apostasy from the Jehovah’s Witness faith from upbringing seems to dominate your lyrics and apparent worldview. Do you consider Griftegård’s music a type of ‘rebellion’?

No, the music/lyrics of Griftegård are not about rebellion against my upbringing, nor against the JW’s or any other religion in general. Focusing on the lyrics of SSS only, I would say they are more of a mirroring of the dialectics deriving from the experiences I have had with religion. Losing faith and filling the subsequent void is a lifelong process and the album accounts for this process up till the release of the album.

You quote Albert Camus as an influence who was an exponent of the Absurdist branch of the existentialist movement which suggests that it’s pointless (absurd) to look for meaning in the universe, yet your lyrics suggest that you continue to do so. Do you expect to find some sort of meaning in this universe?

Just because I mention Camus and his writing as a source of inspiration doesn’t mean I stand behind all aspects of his philosophy. I think he is a very insightful, yet very cynical, man with great knowledge of the human psyche, and also he has a great, and bleak, sense of humour which I appreciate a lot. There are other authors, philosophers and personalities I look up to that have had more impact on my world of thought than Camus though. Also, just like any reading and reflecting person (I imagine) I go through phases during which a certain theme/author interests me more and lately, for example, I have been absorbed by Huxley and Orwell and their utterly revealing writings.

I do not expect to find meaning for myself in this universe, at least not in a revelatory way hitting me in a bolt-of-lightning fashion, granting me instant and everlasting illumination/salvation. Nor do I believe in an absolute meaning true to all people since an absolute meaning can only be determined if one is able to observe the all objectively, and this perspective is needless to say denied everyone but the creator of the all. So in a way I can subscribe to the absurdist stance: for us humans to search for, and expecting to find, meaning (as described above) is absurd.

On the other hand I believe we humans can, and must, create our own subjective meanings (or, perhaps overtly cynically put, we need to weave our own self deceiving illusions) and maybe the simple answer lay in here: (for me) the meaning is to create. And to be. At least this is where I am now. To be creative and to be in the created. I have big problems with applying this “insight” though, cause just like all creative souls I am restless and cannot sit back arms crossed and just take in what I have achieved, I have to go on towards new realisations or I feel trapped and anxious. Of course one could extend this reasoning and go religious over it and say that every creatures meaning (in life) is to simply “be in creation honouring the creator, reflecting his greatness and light and passing it onwards”, but let us not go there cause I could go on forever on the subject and I have too many thoughts on the meaning of life to list and discuss them all here, too many theories that no one but God can confirm or deny, and up till now he has chosen to sit back and laugh in silence at me.

Ultimately you seem to revile human behaviour. In that respect, do you consider yourself puritanical?

I loathe the vulnerability and weakness of the human condition and all our needs and lusts, yes. The notion that we are more than flesh and that there might be a possibility to achieve freedom from it triggers frustration in me. I guess I have some distance to travel yet before I am able to accept the duality of spirit and body – meanwhile I will continue making songs in which I whine about it… I guess I am puritanical also in the sense that I feel offended by what has been done to the spirit of man by the powers that rule this realm. This realm truly is hell, and on so many levels a non divine comedy. I am developing some of my thoughts on this last subject on our coming album.

There is a sense in your lyrics that religion is both the damnation and saviour of humanity? Do you agree with this interpretation and if so how do you account for this apparent paradox?

I agree, and as for accounting for this paradox I refer to my answer regarding the meaning (of life) in this universe. My lyrics are often paradoxical as I do not want to close the door to any possibility permanently. The fear of static hinders me as it is equal to mental and spiritual death (blindness and self deceit).

Your style of using religious themes and language to describe a bleak and misanthropic worldviewis in some ways similar to that of Orthodox Satanist Black Metal bands like Deathspell Omega. Do you feel any affinity with such bands or philosophies?

To us, and to some of these bands, music and lyrics create a whole that is much more than the sum of its different parts, unlike so much of the contemporary trivia/entertainment that passes for music. This is the strongest link between us. We definitely feel an affinity towards acts like Funeral Mist, Ofermod, Watain, The Devil’s Blood and Necros Christos as we do with all bands that transmit “the right” atmosphere and feeling and walk the talk.

Do you intend to carry a message to people with your music, or is it purely for your own ends?

Griftegård can be perceived as an embodiment of spiritual/philosophical evolution set to music and lyrics, one that contains insight and doubt, triumph and defeat, in short Griftegård mirror a struggle (for knowledge). It is definitely for our own ends as a collective that we do what we do. But if we by sharing (what we feel is true) can make people start to think about things that really matter in the end we have served a purpose. We have no illusions of changing the world or its people in general though, we are too realistic and too old for such naive aspirations.

When writing , which comes first, music or lyrics?

In Griftegård music and lyrics are equally important and are developed simultaneously, and often separately. The reason for this might be that I often write the lyrics like poems, because I want the text to be able to stand on its own, without the music. This is also what we as a collective try to achieve with the music, to grant is such density that it could stand on its own and deliver the right atmosphere even without lyrics. When both kinds of expression have reached the highest degree of fulfilment we are able to give them they are put together and the necessary adaptations are made. Usually this is a rather painless process – often when we try a certain text against a particular piece of music it is as if the lyrics just have been waiting to marry with the music through Thomas (Eriksson, singer), who has a great ear and an even greater intuition for what a certain song demands in terms of vocal channelling.

To what extent is your choice of musical genre (Doom Metal) reflected by your lyrical themes? Could you see your ideas and lyrics mapping to other genres?

Doom Metal, as I see it, is the perfect medium for the kind of themes we deal with. The solemnity, the gravity, the pace, all furthers an atmosphere that creates a perfect room for ponderings of an eternal nature. There was never any question in our minds whether Griftegård would be a Doom band or not when we formed the band. Also I personally find it hard to compose anything else as this is what my heart is full of. As for the ideas of Griftegård mapping over to other genres: I could picture myself doing something aching to Apocalyptic Folk in the Sol Invictus vein at some point, using ideas that would fit Griftegård as well.

Both your music and lyrics are introspective and downbeat. Do you consider yourself a negative or pessimistic person?

I would not say I am negative and pessimistic by nature, but realistic. If you ask those near to me you might receive a different answer though. The less you learn about how the world is made up and the more you know of what really is going on the more resigned you become. There is no hope for this world as it stands now, it is clear for all to see, and only a massive turnover of the powers that be can save “us”.

Which other bands out there today that you consider your lyrical or musical contemporary?

To be honest (blasé & boring) I have lost contact a bit with the Doom scene the last couple of years so I don’t really know if there has surfaced any new acts that play it similar to Griftegård. I have still not heard of anyone but us writing lyrics from an apostate Jehovah’s Witness perspective though, but if there are any I strongly urge them to get in touch. Certainly there are acts out there that move in the same area as we do though, be it thematically/philosophically, atmospherically or purely musically. Even though Warning has quit them and we have a lot in common when it comes to feeling and pace, I sense this and apparently many others do as well (which is an honour for us) judging by reviews. While Heaven Wept must be mentioned in this context as well, for obvious reasons (even though Vast Ocean’s is the fastest WHW platter this far), and so must Forsaken. The current act that I feel is closest to Griftegård thematically and, to a certain point, musically though is Count Raven, whom we are making a split 7” release with, due out sometime in August through Ván. Dan’s lyrics are perhaps more direct than mine but we think very much along the same lines and there is a religious longing to his expression that I can relate to. I have a feeling that he, just like me, identify with The Bible’s Job to a certain extent, however much hubris this might be from my side.

In addition we feel a kinship with non metal acts like 16 HP, Michael Gira, Diamanda Galás and, perhaps surprising to some, Scott Walker, whose three latest albums are all dark, heavy and introspective masterpieces if there ever was any.

Are you currently working on new material?

Yes we are working on three new songs, which are in different stages of fulfilment, titles being A Beam InThe Eye Of The Lord, A Deathbed For All Holy and The Last Song Of The End (A Final Time). There are plenty of other ideas that are waiting to be realised as well but these are the ones we concentrate on at the time of writing (2010-07-16).

Any plans to play in the UK in the near future?

We are playing the Dublin Doom Day on the 18th of September 2010, which we look forward to a lot. We would jump at any chance of playing Britain but up till now nothing has been possible to arrange.

…has this changed me permanently? What exactly is my taste in music? How will I know if the stuff that thought I liked was not just a product of my addiction? Only time will tell I guess…

I wrote those words the better part of a year ago referring to my taste crippling addiction to my last.fm playcounts and the various insalubrious statistics which one can derive from it. It turned out I wasn’t the only one. One commenter wrote:

You have opened my eyes, this has to stop. Today I’m removing my the AEP counter from my page. This can’t go on. Scrobbling should be about the fun!

Indeed. More recently I received an email from a fellow sufferer looking for guidance:

I recently read your article on your LastFM addiction (I’m very behind I know) and I HAVE THE EXACT SAME THING. How has your withdrawal gone? I’ve wanted to delete it several times, but I feel like losing all my Scrobbles would be wasted ‘work’ or something. Plus I’m just now getting into Porcupine Tree, and I’ve got this ridiculous idea that not being able to see how many Scrobbles I have of them will prevent me from gauging my ‘progress’ in getting into them. I would try and stop visiting the site and scrobbling, but I know I CAN’T DO THAT NOW because I’m hopelessly addicted. I also have the problem you had where I’m not even sure if I really like artists or if I’ve convinced myself I have to increase my versatility. Anyway, any tips? How did your attempt to break the addiction go?

I did break my last.fm addiction, for the most part. Here’s how.

After writing the article I struggled on for a few more weeks and nothing had really changed. Even if I wasn’t checking my last.fm stats (which I still felt compelled to do, at least once a week), always present was the knowledge that it was there, and everything I listened to was still out there for analysis and interrogation. Some more drastic action was needed. I toyed with the idea of deleting my account entirely, but it still seemed like an important document to me, so in the end I simply opted to cease scrobbling. Job done. I scrobbled nothing for at least 6 months.

Knowing that no-one but me would know what I was listening to I was slowly allowed to listen to music free of that volition. It felt really liberating, and what followed was a voyage of rediscovery. The feeling that I could listen to anything that I wanted was an intoxicating one – holding on to this feeling is what allowed me to finally kill my addiction. Eventually, what I discovered was that my music taste wasn’t as perverted as I had expected, just a little more directed – I was always listening to what I wanted to listen to, for the most part, but now it doesn’t feel like a guilty pleasure.

However, in the end, I really still valued the service of having a log of all my music listens – I’m both a music and stats geek (as you may have noticed) so the lure is inevitable. After some agonising, soul searching and mental preparation, I fired up a fresh last.fm account and started scrobbling again a couple of months ago, but this time with a resolve to use it as it was intended, to log mine and my family’s music listening in all its dread reality, warts and all. There’s no point in hiding from yourself, it will always catch up with you in the end.

Ironically, when you install the iTunes Scrobbler it scrobbles your entire history, which for me went back years, so my new account is pretty similar to my old one. However, I only check it occasionally. I checked my AEP once, but It’s not on my profile and it’s not something I pride myself on (there’s nothing that commendable about taste diversity after all, is there?).

Recently my son, 3 years old, learned to adore Neil Young’s Live Rust (don’t ask how he stumbled upon that album, I hardly ever listen to it!). He listens to it all the time, and each time it gets scrobbled (I intercepted a few but the vast majority are). It irks me a little, but I can live with it. I think that is a sign of recovery, for the most part.

In the end, my ‘addiction’ was probably a manifestation of some latent OCD tendencies, and these things should be tackled head on, which is what I eventually did. There was always a hint or irony in my original article, there are many worse an addiction to have after all, but I’m absolutely serious when I say that it had a real affect on my life, and I felt genuine elation to be rid of it. You’ll also see that I’ve learned to control last.fm and use the beguiling data in there for more constructive purposes.

Music isn’t and should NEVER feel like work, it is one of the ultimate escapes and releases. Music should be celebrated in volume and at volume, not measured out in rations.

So, am I reformed, rehabilitated? As much as I need to be and probably as much as I’ll ever be. Music, after all, doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and outside influences will always play a part in your music tastes and last.fm is but one of these. I can live with that.

Here’s my last.fm account if any of you want to join me on are bored/perverse enough to spy on my listening habits.

Related Articles

The last.fm straw – A Tale of Addiction

Fail.

Bands are getting more and more enterprising and are increasingly seeing the value of giving their early releases away free of charge. Anyone who’s spent any time reading this blog will know that I approve. Every week I get sent, or stumble across, free releases from independent bands, and I try and make time to listen to, and in some cases review, as many of these as possible. However, often what I’m sent is a link to a page that contains a bunch of links to individual MP3’s. In theory this is fine, MP3’s are what I want as that’s the way that I generally consume music.

The problem is, when presented to me as a list of individual MP3′s, they’re a pain in the arse. I now have to download each track individually, hunt around my hard drive for them to import them into iTunes, then on to my iPod, in the process of which I often loose some. I’ve got limited time to devote to this, my hobby, and I’d rather spend my time listening to the music rather than trying to get the damn things onto my iPod! Once they’re there I often find, sin of ALL sins, the ID3 tags aren’t set properly so I can’t even find the bloody tracks! Grrr! It’s at this point I often give up. Life’s too short.

If you’re going to give your music away free, and reap the potential rewards of free distribution, you need to make it as easy as possible for folks to get a hold of and consume the stuff. Most listeners have a LOT less patience than me, and will simply move on when presented with a page of MP3 links. These are your potential fans, and loosing them at this early stage is just plain idiocy. Here’s a few tips:

1. (Please tattoo this one on the inside of your eyelids so that you don’t forget) POPULATE THE ID3 DATA!!! I can’t emphasize this more. Put the correct data in the correct fields, correctly spelt. Populate the album field (even if it’s just to say ‘EP’), genre, year the lot. Make sure it’s consistently spelled and formatted across all files. If you don’t know how to do this then find out, or give up. Here’s a tutorial to get you started.
2. Put all your tracks in a single compressed file with a file name that is human readable and includes band name and album title. No funny file types, zip is fine. If you have it, include high quality album cover and image of the band, and even some sort of introductory preamble which includes URL’s for your Myspace, website etc.
3. Upload this file to as many places as you can – Mediafire, Rapidshare, Bittorrent, your own website. If the facility is available, include links to your Myspace so people can listen to it before they download.

Now, I actually don’t particularly advise this route if you’re in the business of promoting your album. There are plenty of tools out there to help you distribute and promote your music digitally. Bandcamp, for example, provides a media player so people can hear the music before downloading, as well as a ‘pay what you like’ function – OK, so most folks will pay nothing, but at least you have a chance of making some cash. Soundcloud has some excellent social/promotional functions (you’ll notice that I have a Soundcloud dropbox so that artists can send me tracks). Don’t limit yourself, the internet is a goldmine of (often free) promotional tools. Make it easy for people to hear your music and give it the chance to be loved!

Lemmy - a skew loose?

So we’ve learned that some bands have pretty obsessive fans. It’s nice that they’re listening to a lot of Opeth’s music, but are they just getting gooey over one album or even a single track? Let me demonstrate what I mean at its most extreme – the one hit wonder. This is not a phenomenon that’s particularly prevalent in the metal genre, so we’ll look to the genre most susceptible: pop. When I think of one hit wonders, one track always seems to spring to mind: Deep Blue Something – Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s a nauseating ditty that seems to blight the airwaves still, even 17 years after its release. Let’s see what Deep Blue Something’s last.fm listener profile looks like shall we?

Breakfast at Tiffany's and some other tracks

Oh dear, a staggering 83% of Deep Blue Something’s overall listens were from that one track that you doubtlessly find occasionally looping round in your brain, eating away at your soul. In statistical speak this effect is broadly referred to as Skew or Skewness. According to Wikipedia “In probability theory and statistics, skewness is a measure of the asymmetry of the probability distribution of a real-valued random variable.” Ummm, yes. Put more simply, and in the current context, if folks are listening to 1 or 2 songs from a bands catalogue lots, and hardly anything else, then that band’s playcount would be considered to be skewed. In last.fm circles, the calculation for this is often referred to as AEP (I won’t bore you with what it means, other than it’s a fairly arbitrary statistical calculation) which gives an indication of skew across a band’s top 50 tracks. The AEP is a value of between 0 and 5 that indicate skewness, where 5 is not skewed at all (all tracks listened to exactly that same amount of times) and 0 (or less) is very skewed. Thanks to that wretched track, Deep Blue Something’s AEP is -13 (yes minus 13), compared to, to pick another more successful pop act, Michael Jackson, whose AEP is a respectable 2.7.

So, how does my list of metal acts fare in the AEP stakes? Let’s have a look:

So here we see a different picture again. These are very high AEP’s, which indicates that the bands’ top 50 most listened to tracks are listened to a comparable amount of times. What this suggests about a band is that they’re not just a 1 trick pony – their fans love a wide variety of their tracks rather than listening to just a couple before moving on. Predictably, In Flames make a reappearance, Opeth remain strong, and we all knew that Devin Townsend fans were an obsessive bunch (this incidentally, doesn’t include all the numerous variations on Townsend’s solo band names, or SYL, who are #32 in this list). This is a respectable list – Neurosis, Tool, Cathedral, all at the top of their game and widely respected, and there’s a real mix of genres here. Perhaps this is a demonstration of a quality all round band, no filler. Albums bands, career artists.

This may all be true, but things get a lot more interesting, and confusing, if we consider the other end of my (far from exhaustive) list:

Yeah, a bunch of flash in the pan, one hit wonders – non-players. Oh wait…those would actually be some of the most revered and respected bands in the rock/metal arena! What went wrong? I’ll give you 5 reasons: Smells Like Teen Spirit, Crazy Train, Paranoid, Black Hole Sun and last, but by no means least, Ace of Spades. If you don’t know exactly what those 5 labels refer to, then you must have been living in a cave for the past 40 years. Now, for many of these bands, these tracks are the worst, but not the only, offender (Come as You Are is a close second for Nirvana for example), but each bands have significant skew thanks to these BIG hits in their back catalogue, something that few of our least skewed acts have. So we’re still missing a dimension here…

Let’s take Mötorhead, who are skewed into minus numbers by their ‘classic’ (quoted as Lemmy doesn’t reckon it’s their best track) Ace of Spades. Now, as we saw earlier, Breakfast at Tiffiny’s accounts for 83% of DBS’s overall listens, so what of Ace of Spades? Well, it clocks in at a modest 10% of Mötorhead overall listens. So where are all the other listens going? Well, remember that AEP is calculated across a band’s top 50 tracks, so the majority of listens of Mötorhead’s tracks must be happening outside of their top 50. Given Mötorhead’s rich and voluminous back catalogue this is hardly surprising.

So, there’s another calculation that will tell us which bands benefit from this sort of listener attention, it’s called the Long Tail and we’ll discuss this in the next article.

Related articles:

A long tail of a critical discrepancy

Numbers of the Beast #1: Love you long time

Pavement, O2 Brixton, Wednesday 12th May 2010
Their entire career lo-fi indie legends Pavement had displayed a flagrant disregard of convention, either musically or genre imposed, focussing more on the deconstruction of musical art rather than its fulfilment. Their live show is a glorious, ramshackle celebration of chaos, irony and bare faced lunacy. That’s not to say that Pavement don’t take their art seriously, it’s just that they don’t think art needs always to be so serious. Their entire back catalogue is spanned almost at random in a show that covered classics and obscurities in equal measure. The highlights were rabble rousing Unfair, Steve Malkmus throwing a hissy fit and throwing down his malfunctioning guitar on the floor half way through Summer Babe, and 5000 people shouting ‘NO BIG HAIR!’ at the culmination of Cut Your Hair.

Pavement are more punk than many a punk or hardcore band around today. I think some of this loose, lo-fi aesthetic and ethos is missing from the punk and metal genres. Once upon a time it was “pick up a guitar, learn 3 chords, write a song”. These days in metal it’s more like “pick up a guitar, a shed load of effects and Pro-Tools, learn Dream Theatre’s Octavarium, note perfect, from beginning to end, spend 2 years writing a prog metal epic”. But the pursuit of art isn’t confined to endless noodling, expanding, refining. Pick up Napalm Death’s Scum, and Pavement’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and learn a little about experimentation.

Cathedral, ULU London, Thursday 29th April 2010
Doom should be played loud. The bass emitted by a doom show should loosen your teeth in their sockets. Whether it was the lack of sound check (the bands collectively arrived late) or some stupid sound regulation is unclear, but one way or another this show was nowhere near loud enough. Because of this, Japanese serial killer obsessed doom merchants Church of Misery, a band I’m not particularly familiar with, failed to have an impact on me, so I spent their set outside catching up a long lost friend that I’d bumped into on the night.

Cathedral too suffered with the auditory depravation, but still managed to put on a spirited show. Playing various tracks from their lauded new album The Guessing Game mixed in with classics such as Hopkins (Witchfinder General) and Ride, in all other facets the show was everything a Cathedral show should be. Singer (and bone fide doom legend) Lee Dorian’s manic flailing makes for an entertaining spectacle, and the crowd departed with a collective smile on their faces. Good enough for me.

RIP Ronnie James Dio
There’s nothing that I can say about Dio that hasn’t been said a million times by now. There are few icons in the metal genre that can match his stature and influence. Dio’s gargantuan voice formed a vital part of the soundtrack of my formative years. It is Dio and not Ozzy that provides that voice for my favourite Black Sabbath song:

His legacy is a fitting enough tribute in itself, and should speak (howl, wail, scream) for itself. Rest in Peace Ronnie, you will be missed.

The Inevitable Nose is 1 year old
On the 31st of May 2010 it was a year since my first post on this blog (I urge you not to waste your time checking out my early posts, they are poorly written, inaccurate nonsense for the most part), which in the intervening year, has formed a vital part of my existence. Started as a mechanism to recommend music to my mates, it soon turned into a musical odyssey that would have a massive impact on my life. I’ve discovered musical forms that I never knew existed, learned that I know nowhere near as much about music as I thought I did, met people who have become good friends who I otherwise would not have met, rediscovered old friends, helped found a forum and fanzine and improved my writing skills massively. It’s sometimes hard to remain interesting, relevant and maintain quality, but writing this blog never feels like a chore, and thus far has propelled me to fascinating and inspiring places. To those who have tuned in over the past year, thanks for listening, it’s been an absolute pleasure.

My PC hates Myspace

You can not have fail to notice that Myspace is in terminal decline. Barely an update in a year, it has become largely redundant as a social platform as the ubiquitous Facebook outstrips them on every level. And everyone hates it! It’s cluttered with ugly, heavy designs and the music player is flakier than an dandruff ridden scalp. But as a promotional platform for musicians it’s still #1 right? Well not so according to a recent article on paidContent.org which suggests that Myspace is losing the music promotion battle to Google owned online video giant YouTube.

A high-level examination of the top-ten most-played songs makes the shift abundantly clear. During the same period, the ten most-played music videos on YouTube racked 57.3 million views, while the top ten on MySpace Music generated 7.5 million.

OK, so YouTube is a better medium for the big players to reach their audience (if you were looking to hear the latest Metallica track, would you really start with Myspace?), but what about unsigned/independent/underground bands and musicians, is Myspace still a safe bet for them?

The competition in the market is rife, with various new websites that are beating Myspace at their own game and in a more forward thinking, agile and, most importantly, band/consumer friendly way. Soundcloud, Bandcamp and Nimbit all have their own take on social music promotion and streaming. Variously offering full digital download ecommerce, more advanced and portable/embedded streaming, extensive social functions and fresh, flexible layouts. However, for the moment at least, Myspace has something that the rest of the pack (YouTube excepting) don’t have – ubiquity.

Being the pre-eminent destination to ‘check out’ new bands is not something to be sniffed at. Heard of this great band Coffinworm and want to find out what they sound like? Do you go looking for their website? No, you simply type in to Google ‘Coffinworm myspace’ and go check them out there. Every band has one – Myspace is like the Yellow Pages of bands. Even if you weren’t specifically looking for Coffinworm’s Myspace, or any other band, their Myspace is usually the first Google listing you see. The Myspace domain carries a lot of weight, and even though the profile pages are pretty dodgy from an SEO perspective, they tend to rank quickly and highly, usually above the band’s own website. It will take literally years for the competitors to build up that level of Google love.

So bands, as much as you may despise Myspace, and are charmed by Bandcamp’s swanky (and in reality far superior) features, it’s not time to bail on Myspace just yet. However, you can’t spread your promotional effort across Myspace and all the other new players, and neither should you. From a search perspective, centring all your web activity around a single base is absolutely essential lest you should spread your SEO love too thinly. My advice is to attempt a smooth and steady transition to another service, while still keeping your Myspace pretty fresh. Gradually move your SEO focus over to the new profile and centre your promotional activity there only when that starts to rank in the search engine results at a similar level to your Myspace. You’re probably going to have to do this at some point, so why not start now.

Bands just starting out should look at what other bands in their genre are doing. If there is a particularly strong presence on Myspace, then it may be safer to stick with that, but if there’s a real buzz elsewhere then centre your activity there but fire up a Myspace and shove a few tracks on there, as folks will still go looking there and the web presence is generally helpful.

And as for YouTube? Unless you have a promo video, then you’re looking at having to post your tracks with an album cover or some band pics, which is fine, but really you’re shoehorning. Currently, although convenient, it’s not really tailored for the job. YouTube is a really helpful promotional platform, but bands should centre their activity around a site with more focus on doing just that as you’ll soon find YouTube very limiting.

Myspace no longer suits either the bands or the fans, who are voting with their feet, but its death will be slow and painful. It may be that one or more of these rival websites has a trick up its sleeve, or perhaps some well employed venture capital, that will propel it into the general consciousness, until then hedge your bets folks.

The Ocean – Heliocentric

On releasing Precambrian, The Ocean had a whiff of the future about them. Delivering punishing post-metal reminiscent of Cult of Luna but stretching into more old school prog territories, referencing the likes of Pink Floyd. With Heliocentric they take a fairly radical turn, apparently into more post-hardcore territory. The fact that, with new vocalist Loic Rossetti, Heliocentric demonstrates a preference for clean vocals, although significant, isn’t really a concern here. It’s the fact that they’ve had to employ some fairly hackneyed melodic techniques to accommodate them. Now sounding like a less mature Oceansize, the band may view this as a personal progression, but it the grand scheme of things, this ends up sounding like the faux-boundary pushing of the likes of Between the Buried and Me. There are some rousing moments here, and hints at former glories, but nothing that really grabs the listener screaming “we have just rewired you brain!”, which is what I was hoping for. This is the sound of a band finding its feet with a new sound, and I commend them for it, but The Ocean have been around for quite a while now, and they should be sounding like a band well and truly in their stride. Heliocentric is part of a pendant of complementary albums, the second to be released late 2010 – we can only hope that they saved all their real creativity for the second half.

Cathedral – The Guessing Game

Unlike The Ocean, Cathedral are a band branching out into new, progish areas and sounding like they’ve been doing it all their lives. Cathedral’s sound may not be new any more, but they’ve always managed to make music that sounds totally out there, and The Guessing Game is the most ‘out there’ record they’ve released in a very long time. This is not an album for those new to Cathedral unless you happen to be a veteran with lengthy, noodling old school prog. But this isn’t simply prog revisionism, nor is it merely Cathedral ‘doing prog’, this is a pretty bold artistic statement and one that will see them revered as metal revolutionaries for another decade to come. Dorian and team feel as fresh as ever, and in terms of maturity and damned right assuredness, they’re so far ahead of the pack they almost everyone else may as well just give up.

The Dillinger Escape Plan – Option Paralysis

Perhaps the title of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s 4th full length album is indicative of their state of mind when they recorded this album. Throughout their career Dillinger have broadened their palate to include whatever damn well suited them and be damned with the rest of you. Managing to shock and confound on every single release, the seemingly endless diversity of the musical form was once again before them like giant smorgasbord for them to indulge their sonic crapulence. Option Paralysis describes the state where you have so many options available to you that you are mentally unable to act on any of them. In The Plan’s case, they appear to have been paralysed, for the first time in their career, into standing still, which is sad, because although Option Paralysis is a good album by any band’s standards, it lacks the elements of surprise and obstinacy that has really defined Dillinger’s career to date. I’ll forgive them for this hiatus from creativity, but the next release better damn well be a marshmallow vindaloo of an album.

Barren Earth – The Curse of the Red River

With Opeth sounding like Opeth while managing to sound utterly different with every release, Barren Earth sound like Opeth trying to not sound like Opeth. A mix of doomy death and through-the-ages prog, Barren Earth’s sound is Technicolor and cavernous. Referencing 70’s prog in a more literal sense than Opeth, complete with synth solos and folkish bits, there’s a distinct air of Dream Theatre. Unfortunately, for almost every instance of proggy goodness, the unsubtly arranged and delivered death vocals spoil the party – Curse… sometimes has a whiff of Nu-Metal about it. It’s like the DM vocals are there purely to qualify this album a progressive death record, but this is akin to remixing a King Crimson’s In the Court of the Crimson King with hip-hop interludes. There are moments of pure Death here, but they mostly sound like Opeth, with a bit of Morbid Angel thrown in. It grates to the extent that I simply don’t enjoy listening to this, an album that otherwise I’d really love. I don’t rate albums but if I did, it Curse of the Red River would get 2/10 as a (prog)-death album, and 8/10 as pure prog.

Ludicra – The Tenant

Whether the kvlt like it or not, Black Metal is evolving. That doesn’t mean hardcore crossovers and progressive dabbling, but developing its monolithic core around creative minds and thus spewing a more paisley misanthropic ooze. So here we have San Francisco’s Ludicra and an oestrogen inflected black masterpiece called The Tenant. Ludicra mix tempos and melodies not usually associated with BM, but somehow obviously belonging to BM as if they merely discovered them in some corpse infested basement. The Tenant is at times mournful, others unsettlingly aggressive, managing to inject melody and riff hungry groove, evoking anything from Burzum to Megadeth to labelmates Worm Ourourboros. The female element is apparent, straying from the lowbrow bludgeoning of much of the genre, softening edges where they need softening, but tearing ragged maws to redress the balance – this is not ‘softer’ just more balanced. Regardless of genre, The Tenant is an accomplished record as you’ll find this year, and one that simply radiates class and creativity. Black Metal it is, through and through, but of a new sort, not progressive, just a progression.

You gotta do it all yourself these days

It’s all about the music, isn’t it? No-one needs to make money to make music, but it certainly helps. Modern music begs to be created by and channeled through increasingly advanced technology, to be heard on multifarious shores. Music is global, dispersed and, increasingly, non-commoditised. Some money is necessary to facilitate this, but there’s less and less of the filthy stuff around. In 2009 global music related revenues slumped 7%, continuing a decline that began in the early naughties when the digital revolution took hold.

But it’s not as simple a picture of piracy induced decline as the record industry would like us to believe. What’s most important to understand is that digital theft is only partly to blame for these financial woes. Due to the ease on distribution of the new digital formats, and the ability to buy single tracks off of albums without buying the whole thing, sales have migrated away from lucrative CD sales (which supports a massive production and distribution infrastructure) to considerably less lucrative digital forms starving both the recording and distribution industries of cash. The way people consume music has changed forever, but the music industry was slow to catch on.

There has also taken place a devaluing of the music. Because of the ease of distribution of digital media, and no tangible way of stemming the free exchange of digital music files, a key economic law has been violated: the law of scarcity. Put simply, a ‘commodity’ that is desirable but abundant or freely available has a low (or non-existent) intrinsic value. Musicians and the industry alike would probably balk at this, but it’s an immutable law of economics that everyone’s going to have to get used to.

That said, the digital market is thriving in almost every territory, and the music based revenues in Australia, Brazil, South Korea, Sweden and the UK grew last year because of this. But it still remains harder than ever to make money out of music, and as a result record labels (key for providing funding for bands to produce and market their wares) are less able to take on new acts. This is leading to an anti-diversification of the music that’s being marketed to the masses and a preference for pushing legacy acts. This trend is likely partly responsible for the fact that digital sales, volumes of streamed tracks and even those of pirated tracks are all trending towards the popular end of the market. The ease and low cost of production and distribution of music mean that there are more acts than ever competing for listener attention. These three facts, among many others, mean that it’s tougher than ever for a marginal/unsigned/independent artist to get heard, let alone make money.

As a result bands are having to become marketing/promotion machines on top of all the other diversifying tasks they are having to take on in the absence of labels. Some see this as bad thing, others see it as bands being forced into taking control of their own destiny – this may come with much more work, and countless pitfalls and gotchas, but for those successful the immediate rewards are much higher. Unfortunately, only bands with a lot of nouse, real dedication and a lot of luck are likely to make this a reality, which leads us back to the labels – the market needs for them to start taking risks again, and quickly.

Instead, the big players have been trying to litigate and legislate their way out of their deepening hole. The former has yielded little success and cost a lot of money, the latter has had some success with legislation passed in both France and UK. The UK’s Digital Economy Act is controversial to say the least (it gives media companies the power to request that repeat offenders have their internet cut off) and was rushed through in a potentially unconstitutional fashion. This legislation is unlikely to work, not least because it won’t grow any teeth for at least 2 years, by which point Plan B will (God willing) have taken hold.

What’s Plan B? Well it’s already happening around you and the record industry is only mildly less worried about it than they were when this pesky digital revolution thingy started happening in the first place: streaming.

Industry backed Spotify currently dominates the European streaming market and is already becoming ubiquitous. The last software update saw them integrating with Facebook and including listener’s own MP3 library in playlists – a move which should give iTunes pause for concern. However, Spotify isn’t making anyone much money at the moment, least of all the artists, and there’s a palpable sense of “when will they shut it down” in the air. Until that is rival little cousin We7, whose revenue and royalty payout model yields better results, posted profits last quarter apparently proving that an advertising based streaming service can be profitable. The market is really hotting up, and with Apple recently squashing streaming service Lala, rumours are rife that they are preparing an iTunes based streaming service in an attempt to muscle in on the party.

These streaming services will need to become truly mobile before they are a viable alternative to MP3’s (Spotify already are for paid subscribers) and even with We7 turning a profit, it’s unlikely that they’ll be really embraced by the industry unless they can turn over a bit more cash, most likely via mandating paid subscription. One way or another, streaming would seem to represent the future of digital media, and once firmly established should render filesharing redundant.

This being the case, the situation we’re currently in, where making money out of selling music directly is nigh on impossible, will remain so for the foreseeable future and probably forever. That’s not to say that one can’t make money out of music. Live music is a big growth area at the moment, with many record labels looking to monetise their acts this way. However, this is driving ticket and bar prices up which could have the effect of squashing this market too.

An interesting side effect of digital streaming is that it’s actually widening the music listening audience. 60% of people never buy music, however, services like Spotify are engaging these people into actively consuming music and converting them into potential revenue targets – they may not want to buy music, but they may well pay to see it, or simply swallow some advertising for the privilege. Understanding, expanding and exploiting this ‘new’ audience will be key to the evolution of the music industry.

So where does all this leave the music industry? Well there’s a bunch of people that don’t make music who probably will have to find careers in different industries, but the people who do make the music are likely to carry on doing so, regardless of the economic welfare of the music industry. The economic battle will be fought by suits who will utter the word ‘licensing’ a lot while worrying about the logistics of an increasingly complex royalty system. The music is thriving, even if it’s not as good at generating dosh as it was before, and thanks largely to the advent of digital distribution, there’s a larger audience than ever before. The music exists without the industry, and that’s what matters.

Previously I uncovered In Flames fans’ obsessive behaviour by observing the interaction between their playcount and listeners. This is interesting, but only tells us part of the story. Just because a band’s fans listen to lots of their tracks, doesn’t mean that they spend that much time listening to them. Napalm Death fans listening to their debut album Scum will consume 28 tracks in 33 minutes, whereas Earth fans would only squeeze 1 track off of Earth 2 in that time. So we need to look at another dimension: track length. To do this I calculate the average track length from the band’s 50 most listened to tracks then multiply that by the overall playcount. This is what we get:

(Just in case you were wondering, that amounts to Metallica fans having collectively spent 1.5 centuries listening to their beloved band)

This doesn’t really change the picture that much. Metallica are still way out front, and the big boys still dominate. So let’s look at a slightly different stat – Average Time per Listener. We get this by multiplying the Plays per Listener with the Average Song Length. A pretty fuzzy calculation I know, but indicative none the less. Here’s what we get:

So here we see that Opeth fans spend quite a lot more time lost in the meanderings of Mr. Akerfeldt than any other band. In Flames, perhaps unsurprisingly, make a reappearance, and bringing up the rear, the real underdog, the dark lords of Orthodox Black Metal – Deathspell Omega.

Interestingly this does even the score somewhat with the critics list, as we now have Neurosis and Tool in the top 15, however, Black Sabbath suffer even greater humilation in this list as they drop down to number 49, just behind Lostprophets…ouch!

So, what does this tell us about the listening habits of the metal head? Well, I think it demonstrates that we’re and obsessive bunch, and we like what we like, and lots of it. Also, stats like this go some way to filtering out the noise of the casual listener and indicate where the real heart of the metal community lies.