deadasdreams05.bsky.social
On a mission to influence the taste of metalsky by sharing great albums | Spreading the gospel of witching metal | Yapping way too much in the process| She/her. 🏳️‍⚧️
Lay down your soul to the gods rock and roll
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Glad I could help!
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2 is where you find a lot of modern stuff like BTBAM and Haken and whatnot. And anything where the “metal” elements are just basic chugs and nothing else
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I think 3 is the interesting case of it being “progressive” metal but not “prog metal” if that makes sense. And as for 1, I think that’s where you find the stuff like Voivod, Watchtower, Queensryche, Fates Warning, and so on. Actual metal but also fused with prog rock.
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Honestly I don’t know if “prog metal” as commonly used is even a real subgenre at all because of how broad it is
It can refer to:
1. Metal mixed with prog rock
2. Basically heavier prog rock
3. Metal with a few progressive elements
I’d say 3 is metal, 2 isn’t, and 1 is sometimes
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It’s a frustrating thing to hear at times but genuinely the best answer to half these questions of what is and isn’t metal is “you know when you hear it”. The frustrating part is that only works when you have the knowledge and experience with the genre to actually know it lol
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This is why no technical argument is ever gonna sway me on these things tbh. It can’t suddenly make these things Feel Like or Sound Like metal to me. Same reason you can’t actually convince me of something’s quality or lack thereof by pointing to objective elements it’s just not how I think
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Holy shit I love this album so much
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It was the thread about that Sleep Token review lol. I stand by all the points I made about the review itself but the conversations in the replies went in directions I hadn’t expected or wanted tbh
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I do try to be good about it tbh. Every now and then I do kinda slip a bit tho I think. Today I was definitely worse than normal, especially in that one thread it’s why I’m being uncharacteristically reflective about it
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I don’t care if someone else listens to Motionless in White or whatever they can enjoy what they like. If they start trying to push bands like that into actual metal spaces then I’ll get annoyed tho tbh
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But tbh none of that is actually based in some big philosophy of metal or whatnot. It’s just based on listening to a ton of stuff and the way everything sounds and feels to me. Some things sound and feel like metal, some don’t. Some things sound better than others. It’s purely intuitive and personal
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Like I do have a pretty narrow view of what counts as metal and I think older classics are usually better than modern stuff and rawer production is often better than cleaner, that’s all true. And I do have pretty strongly held opinions on all these things and on what I think is and isn’t good
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Honestly yeah they fit the music just fine
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Hell yeah
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Oh definitely. Metal, jazz, classical, and certain strains of electronic music are the most elitist by a long shot
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I don’t think accessibility is inherently good, but I don’t think it’s necessarily bad either. I just think it comes with costs, and those involve the genre being flooded with more and worse releases that often drown out the good stuff
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I mean yeah it’s definitely a personal thing. I don’t think the accessibility of making or listening to metal is an inherently good thing and I don’t actually care how mainstream the genre gets. Is that a me problem? Sure. I’m still gonna point out things I don’t like in the scene and say so tho
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I’m not really upset at the person I’m upset at what something like that says about the state of metal these days. I’d honestly rather talk with a big pop fan than a big nu metal fan. Surface level metal is fine but false metal isn’t
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Black metal absolutely crosses over with heavy metal. That’s how you get stuff like Negative Plane. Atmoblack is just a straight subgenre of BM, and a lot of it is still riff-focused, plus it still crosses over with other real metal genres like doom. Blackgaze tho sure it’s barely BM anyway
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I hate that I can say I like metal and someone will say, “oh yeah me too, Slipknot is great”. I hate that people who don’t actually like metal think they should have a say in its direction. I hate that people write off classic artists because the modern shit has tainted their view of metal
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For me it’s just that certain things fundamentally do not feel like they are metal and it’s annoying to see them popularly touted as part of the genre by people who clearly have no experience or understanding thereof
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Here, let’s go for a definition of whether a genre is actually metal or not. The easier it can cross over with heavy metal, the more actually metal it is
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I mean there’s a reason djent mostly exists within and crosses over with things outside the core metal sphere like metalcore, industrial metal, and modern prog metal. There’s a reason there are far more djentcore albums than there are blackened djent albums. It just doesn’t fit with real metal
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Genuinely I think djent is largely its own thing at this point it doesn’t fit under any other category imo
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Periphery and Vildhjarta sound nothing like metal to me I’m ngl
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I don’t think the riffing is that metal-like tbh. Sure early Meshuggah still had some metal in it due to their roots but the later bands absolutely filtered that out and the genre overall doesn’t fall under metal imo
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I genuinely don’t think tech thrash -> djent is a very direct line nor that taking some influence from real metal inherently makes it so itself. I would say that djent sorta strips out the actual metal from the genres that it takes from, and just makes its own thing in the process
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This is a solid point, but they gotta stop accepting the idea that Sleep Token is in any way metal. It’s not overcommercialized or watered-down metal, it’s just not metal at all. This review wins the battle but loses the war
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Agalloch started as pure folky atmoblack and mixed in post metal over time. And their atmoblack sound comes from regular BM, which evolved from thrash, which evolved from heavy metal. The sound did change over time but it’s a clear throughline. Djent doesn’t feel the same way at all imo
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About 17. I can’t remember exactly what triggered it tho. I’d always known about things like Black Sabbath and Metallica and those just kinda led me deeper as I looked for more things that sounded like that. Getting into classic rock around that time really helped too
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Not at all tbh. I still like plenty of non metal things, I just don’t feel the need to fit them into a place they don’t belong. And I’m not against bands doing new things or pushing boundaries. I like a lot of bands that do that. I just don’t think djent bears much resemblance to the genre I love
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There are no metal bona fides in Sleep Token. Also, “There’s hardly any guitar work on Even in Arcadia, so the bulk of the record consists of Vessel singing over programmed drums and synths” is the single most damning sentence in this whole review, why is it basically a throwaway line?
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The thing is, I don’t really care what the general public counts as metal. There is no losing this battle until you accept it as lost, and I have not done that yet. I probably don’t count most of those turn-of-the-millennium advances either tho tbf
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The fact that 2/3 of the comparisons here are also not metal says enough about Sleep Token right there.
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No no no don’t go accepting djent into the metal canon. It largely doesn’t fit there and it’s not a coincidence that it mostly crosses over with other false metal genres like metalcore. There are no metal sections in Even in Arcadia, and not much to be found in the other bands mentioned either
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You can say Sleep Token’s music doesn’t live up to their presentation, you can say they haven’t earned that sort of presentation or that they aren’t being authentic about it. These would all be interesting points. But rejecting the aspects themselves as dumb just misses the point
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Honestly, complaining about theatricality in metal is weird. Plenty of bands call their shows rituals, (especially in black metal) put on costumes or makeup and use stage names. Sure it’s cheesy but that’s just how metal is. The lore aspects of Sleep Token are dumb, but the theatricality is fine
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Riffs: Yes, the first actual one here.
Exhilaration: Again unhelpfully vague, a vibe at most
Exaltation: Again way too vague and undefined, pure vibes
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Screams: Ehhh, depends how you define that. Metal gets really broad vocally speaking
Breakdowns: Started in hardcore, only a thing in some actual metal genres, by no means fundamental to metal
Violence: Unhelpfully vague, definitely not inherent to metal and leaves out a LOT of stuff
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Let’s start with this. The writing of the review is fine in itself but the content here is the issue. You can’t talk about “metal’s fundamental pleasures” and then have like 2.5 actual features of metal listed alongside some that only fit sometimes at best and some that make no sense at all
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A disclaimer: this thread is entirely from a more “true metal” perspective that many would consider gatekeeping. I consider this the generally correct perspective but if you don’t, you will likely disagree with this thread