Honestly, I just think it's silly that metal fans have to defend the genre's musical worth so often from stereotypes of juvenile music for juvenile people or "lulz angry m00zic you grow out of". Especially when so much metal is in fact compositionally hyper-complex and requires a massive degree of proficiency to play. Proficiency doesn't equal good, but it at least it shows the people who play it aren't just dribbling blockheaded neanderthals. I don't care if people don't
like it; I do care when people dismiss it as having no musical merit on the basis of hearing one Death song, the image of Cannibal Corpse, and meeting one smelly hairy guy in a Slayer t-shirt.
In support of Tom Waits, I will post this, then drop the debate. This is one of his most beautiful songs. He's still gravelly, but not growling.
I gave it a go, and that's just not a style of music I'm interested in. The music's fine and all, but I just find him a bit plodding and dull, kind of like listening to the sleazy chain smoker at the pub drone on. I avoid sleazy chain smokers at pubs.
What I was really getting at is simply that it surprises me how Tom Waits fans, of all people, can be so vehemently anti-metal. I don't expect them to
like it (since the reverse obviously doesn't work, as in my case), but to at least understand why people might enjoy deep growled vocals. It's a rather similar aesthetic. I expect Celine Dion fans to rage against death growls, but not Tom Waits fans. Yet I see it all the time - not singling out anybody here, except perhaps Cobbler, whose mind seems resolutely closed when it comes to metal having any validity (which is very funny coming from a keen fan of an even more maligned genre, rap).
I've yet to find a metal album with mindblowing lyricism on the level of some of the other great songwriters we've discussed over the past couple of pages, but have certainly discovered lots of wonderful musical passages. Vocalists hurt metal bands far more often than they help them. Russian Circles never has nor ever will need a vocalist.
There are Agalloch and Anathema lyrics that, for me, wipe the floor with anything Bob Dylan or whoever has written. But that's because they resonate with me and mean something. Lyrics are painfully subjective like that.
Though I don't listen to metal for the lyrics ... or to much music for the lyrics, really. Bad lyrics alone can break a band, but good lyrics alone don't make one. If I want some good writing, I'll go and read one of my favourite authors.
And I must not forget to vote in the Hottest 100 before Monday night...
I voted so long ago that I've largely forgotten what I voted for.
Villages by Alpine is in contention though, don't forget that.