9/01/2009

The Audacity of Rock: Part 25

I'll show you how I hard rock with my double bass pedal and screaming vocals.

Thrash metal reached its heyday in the early 90s, and yet its legacy still lives on, despite its waning mainstream popularity. But I'm always surprised at how ubiquitous hard and fast rock still is. This is not my style of music, being one who desires melodies and nuance, but if you're going to be angst-ridden and misanthropic, you might as well do it thoroughly and loudly instead of wallowing in self pity and poorly played instruments.

"Angel of Death" by Slayer (1986)

By this point, heavy metal like this is beyond cliche. I have a hard time imagining how edgy is must have been at the time, playing as fast and loud as possible because now it just seems ridiculous. Unfortunately, like repetitive soul music, more fun to move around to than to listen to. Seriously. This music is torture unless you're moshing yourself into oblivion.




"Blood on My Hands" by The Used (2009)

Screamo seems to be the contemporary incarnation of heavy metal. It's the kind of music a pair of roommates I had one year would listen to when they were particularly angsty/menstrual that day. It's got a sprinkling of emo, in that it's less about the Reaper than heavy metal of yore, but I can stomach it better since at least these people are angry which is way more fun than being whiny. Here's the Used's fairly radio friendly newest.




Questions to ponder:
1. What was/is your angry music?
2. What was the angry music of back in the day? Or did people not have time for it? Like Bach-era music? That's just too clinical to really get down to, amiright?

No comments:

Post a Comment