Tropes, Clichés, metal group think

[Pedrito]

Do you find yourself dismissing an album or a band because of a review or a commonly held belief with your peers or within the wider listening community?

I'll try to frame this without too much meandering with examples:

Example: Cradle of Filth were a massive band at one stage and suddenly became a dirty word amongst many of the people who had initially vaunted them.

Iron Maiden: No Prayer for the Dying. Widely regarded as a poor follow up to Seventh Son. It was definitely a time and a place issue for this album, but removing yourself from that whole rigmarole and allowing yourself to listen without prejudice, it's actually a really strong album with great performances throughout.

Wasted Years(Maiden song) Bruce says he didn't like it and people latch onto that. As a kid I never distinguished.

Zepellin: The Crunge. Very typical for music journos to do this song down in any retrospective. It just seems like they all sing off the same hymnsheet, and yet if I'd never read a word on the album I'd never even have noticed.

Something that I've encountered again and again over the years as a music listener(and not just in metal).

It annoys my bollox when someone comes out with these types of tropes(I'm not sure if my use of the word trope is correct here: preconceived notions I suppose)..am I the only one?

[Pedrito]

I suppose what I'm saying is if you already have your mind made up how are you ever going to enjoy something or allow yourself to approach it with an open mind. I've dismissed albums for no good reason in the past and later found them to be perfectly fine listens when I moved beyond allowing myself to be told what to like and not to like.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Good topic. That said, The Crunge is the worst song from Zeppelin's entire catalogue. I didn't know that when I first heard it, but that was only because I hadn't yet heard their entire catalogue at the time 

[Pedrito]

  get out of that garden!

The song itself is something light, a departure. But, from my perspective that song fits perfectly within the flow of the album. I would actually say that it's probably THE perfect album for me in terms of flow in terms of mood, colour etc. If we had had an album of all No Quarters, I don't think its appeal would have endured.

It's something the older bands like Sabbath, Priest, Yes and others were very good at. Serious songs, heavy songs, rockers, but interspersed with lighter, sometimes even humorous moments. And I think it's why we love a lot of them old albums. It was a different recording approach I suppose too, with more emphasis on album rather than single.songs.

[Eoin McLove]

More so in the past I would have been more susceptible to that sort of influence but as I've been listening to this stuff for such a long time and have figured out what works for me and what doesn't, and the more I narrow my focus on what I like,  the less I find myself interested in outside perceptions.  It probably comes with age and experience but there are some brilliant albums that have been written off for not being current or cool,  but I find myself often more turned off by current trends these days. I tend to find the effect to be almost the inverse scenario of the proposal above in that the more I listen to hyped new bands the more I find myself disappointed with how ordinary it is. But then again,  I'm way more focused on the second wave of BM and early doom/ doom death these days,  which are two deep reservoirs to keep me occupied away from most of what is being made currently. That said,  I might find my interest turning back to more modern sounds in a few years time if something catches my ear.  Apart from reading ZT on the jacks I tend not to read reviews any more,  and I'm the better for it.

[Trev]

No Prayer was a bad follow uo

Iron Maiden: No Prayer for the Dying. Widely regarded as a poor follow up to Seventh Son. It was definitely a time and a place issue for this album, but removing yourself from that whole rigmarole and allowing yourself to listen without prejudice, it's actually a really strong album with great performances throughout.

Wasted Years(Maiden song) Bruce says he didn't like it and people latch onto that. As a kid I never distinguished.

Nah, No Prayer is a bit crap with a few good tracks sprinkled in, and I came to it without any idea of how it was perceived. I heard a few Maiden songs, liked them, and picked whatever they had in the second hand cd shop, and thought NPFTD was by far the worst one

Wasted Years though, is pure class

[Pedrito]

Fair enough and that's a taste thing. I suppose something that would get on my wick would be if someone only listened to it a few times and chimed in with the same old tired argument that I've read in countless magazines and retrospectives: there was in fighting, new guitarist etc etc...yawn! I've personally listened to it hundreds upon hundreds of times and while I definitely get some reservations about it, it certainly does not deserve to be one of the lowest albums in an 'Iron Maiden albums rated' list, by some blue haired twat who only started listening to them 4 years ago.

[John Kimble]

Do you find yourself dismissing an album or a band because of a review or a commonly held belief with your peers or within the wider listening community?

I used to, certainly. I used to read Metal Hammer religiously as a teenager (say 1994 to 1999), at a time when they had a massive hard on for commercial/nu-metal. I wish I kept some of their old reviews, cause they were, in retrospect, so completely wide of the mark. I remember one particular issue where they gave the second Korn album a glowing review and using it as an opportunity to lambast older metal bands which they considered to be outdated. Looking back, I probably avoided black metal based solely on Metal Hammers attitude to that particular genre. It's hilarious to think now that this was a magazine pushing the likes of Coal Chamber, while completely dismissing Emperor.

[mugz]

a trope is a meme viewed externally; so the meme is a mental construct that lives or dies in the mind of one person or has a life cycle within a social group.

the meme 'mugz is a dick' is a successful meme in the metal warfare social environment, but the trope is 'there's always a few awkward, annoying cunts in every scene.'

in relation to the thread topic, it's interesting to note that as the social environment of recorded music dies, as vinyls start to fade out again, as the young people start to move away from music, a lot of the persistent 'this is this, that is that' memes in the metal subculture are fading away too.

the cradle of filth one is a great example- so easy to loathe but artistically they never did anything wrong in their own terms, they just attracted annoying fans from 97-02, but their actual art of being cradle of filth and releasing a certain kind of music was still pretty spot on.

[Pedrito]

Nicely put and definitely what I'm getting at.

[mugz]

Do you find yourself dismissing an album or a band because of a review or a commonly held belief with your peers or within the wider listening community?

I used to, certainly. I used to read Metal Hammer religiously as a teenager (say 1994 to 1999), at a time when they had a massive hard on for commercial/nu-metal. I wish I kept some of their old reviews, cause they were, in retrospect, so completely wide of the mark. I remember one particular issue where they gave the second Korn album a glowing review and using it as an opportunity to lambast older metal bands which they considered to be outdated. Looking back, I probably avoided black metal based solely on Metal Hammers attitude to that particular genre. It's hilarious to think now that this was a magazine pushing the likes of Coal Chamber, while completely dismissing Emperor.

a lot of the 'rock journalists' at that point were quite quaint, and now Emperor sounds quaint, so it goes a bit weird

[Pedrito]

Do you find yourself dismissing an album or a band because of a review or a commonly held belief with your peers or within the wider listening community?

I used to, certainly. I used to read Metal Hammer religiously as a teenager (say 1994 to 1999), at a time when they had a massive hard on for commercial/nu-metal. I wish I kept some of their old reviews, cause they were, in retrospect, so completely wide of the mark. I remember one particular issue where they gave the second Korn album a glowing review and using it as an opportunity to lambast older metal bands which they considered to be outdated. Looking back, I probably avoided black metal based solely on Metal Hammers attitude to that particular genre. It's hilarious to think now that this was a magazine pushing the likes of Coal Chamber, while completely dismissing Emperor.

And I would wonder if the reverse is true also. Yes, the magazine was ridiculously anti the likes of Emperor..you'd swear a lot of the Norwegian stuff didn't even exist. And yet I'd say interesting bands like the Wildhearts would be widely disregarded by plenty, for having been lauded by the very same magazine. I hated them for the interviews but really came to enjoy their music many years later.

[Pedrito]

Do you find yourself dismissing an album or a band because of a review or a commonly held belief with your peers or within the wider listening community?

I used to, certainly. I used to read Metal Hammer religiously as a teenager (say 1994 to 1999), at a time when they had a massive hard on for commercial/nu-metal. I wish I kept some of their old reviews, cause they were, in retrospect, so completely wide of the mark. I remember one particular issue where they gave the second Korn album a glowing review and using it as an opportunity to lambast older metal bands which they considered to be outdated. Looking back, I probably avoided black metal based solely on Metal Hammers attitude to that particular genre. It's hilarious to think now that this was a magazine pushing the likes of Coal Chamber, while completely dismissing Emperor.

a lot of the 'rock journalists' at that point were quite quaint, and now Emperor sounds quaint, so it goes a bit weird

Too easy to fall into that trap. There's stuff recorded in the 50's and 60's all.the way through to now that has so much energy and raw passion that it goes beyond any time and place.

[mugz]

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[mugz]

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