Do we sometimes fall in love with the historical value?
Posted: Fri May 02, 2008 3:24 pm
...of a record, and not its strict musical value? Can the two be strictly separated for people like us anyway? Case in point: the Nigro Mantia demo. I absolutely adore it, I play it all the time, I am falling into the oldschool pattern of learning-the-lyrics-without-a-lyrics-sheet, I've quoted "INSANITY? INFINITY!" twice this week at random occassions, the works. I love this. I'm pretty certain I wouldn't love or understand it 10 years ago if I heard it, though! Why do I love it as much I do?
Of course the songs are good, the riffs are great, the vocals distinctive and so on, but it's not enough. This isn't better than Mercyful Fate or Manilla Road (which it heavily references), I love it also because it came out in 1984 and it predates a type of music that would later be popularised further my the likes of Manilla Road and Mercyful Fate! In my understanding of HM history, this plays a big part! It's completely obscure, underground and this gives it a strange sense of allure. This is *not* the same as when you find an obscure record which is boring or outright sucks but you praise it just to appear oldschool and kickass, I genuinely enjoy the Nigro Mantia demo, yet not in the same way that I enjoy the landmark HM records that made me a metalhead to begin with! There is a third, somehow less definitive state.
I see this effect a lot on 'cult music' circles. People here often say such and such band is better than Iron Maiden or whatnot, whereas the same band they're talking about is often highly derivative of Iron Maiden directly and the band-members would die of embarassment if you told them they're better than them. It is amazing how the awareness of 'Iron Maiden' is required to understand why this smaller, obscure band is 'better than Iron Maiden'! Whereas not pointless, one misses out on why Nigro Mantia are as important as they if they listen to them without any HM History knowledge. In some ways I think this is the definition of obscure Heavy Metal: it is essentially derivative of mainstream Heavy Metal but for that same reason sometimes alluring in its variation, compelling in its historical implication.
Am I on the right track? Isn't this sorta why we keep digging in the underground, finding variations of the form that other people with a more passing interest in HM don't see anything in? It's not just the need for 'more riffs', it's the need of a more complete historical picture of HM on the whole I think, that drives this quest. It drives Corroseum (the site) in its encyclopedic structure of 'Swedish 7''s' and the like, I certainly think so. Think about how many times in your lives you've thought things like "I want to listen to, and make a database of, of all the demos by bands from my country" and such. The true lovers of obscure Heavy Metal are its lovers because of the history of this music on the whole, not for any one band in particular.
Of course the songs are good, the riffs are great, the vocals distinctive and so on, but it's not enough. This isn't better than Mercyful Fate or Manilla Road (which it heavily references), I love it also because it came out in 1984 and it predates a type of music that would later be popularised further my the likes of Manilla Road and Mercyful Fate! In my understanding of HM history, this plays a big part! It's completely obscure, underground and this gives it a strange sense of allure. This is *not* the same as when you find an obscure record which is boring or outright sucks but you praise it just to appear oldschool and kickass, I genuinely enjoy the Nigro Mantia demo, yet not in the same way that I enjoy the landmark HM records that made me a metalhead to begin with! There is a third, somehow less definitive state.
I see this effect a lot on 'cult music' circles. People here often say such and such band is better than Iron Maiden or whatnot, whereas the same band they're talking about is often highly derivative of Iron Maiden directly and the band-members would die of embarassment if you told them they're better than them. It is amazing how the awareness of 'Iron Maiden' is required to understand why this smaller, obscure band is 'better than Iron Maiden'! Whereas not pointless, one misses out on why Nigro Mantia are as important as they if they listen to them without any HM History knowledge. In some ways I think this is the definition of obscure Heavy Metal: it is essentially derivative of mainstream Heavy Metal but for that same reason sometimes alluring in its variation, compelling in its historical implication.
Am I on the right track? Isn't this sorta why we keep digging in the underground, finding variations of the form that other people with a more passing interest in HM don't see anything in? It's not just the need for 'more riffs', it's the need of a more complete historical picture of HM on the whole I think, that drives this quest. It drives Corroseum (the site) in its encyclopedic structure of 'Swedish 7''s' and the like, I certainly think so. Think about how many times in your lives you've thought things like "I want to listen to, and make a database of, of all the demos by bands from my country" and such. The true lovers of obscure Heavy Metal are its lovers because of the history of this music on the whole, not for any one band in particular.