fuck you zephos this is a topic I want to be sober for, fuck your fucking timing
I will whip up a cool ass post later. I'm a buttscholar of muzak and it's my professional opinion that swing-revival and 3rd wave ska are objectively awful.
That's not what my cool ass post would be about, those sentences complete themselves alone with no necessary context, or elaboration. I would actually prefer to talk about the ways I turned my tight anus ears into gaping whorish maws when it came to receiving sound. I'll do it later.
@JERK:
But stuff like Death Metal? Black Metal?
The stuff that becomes pretty much just sludgey noise with screaming and grunting indecipherable vocals?
I…just cannot whatsoever see the actual musical appeal in that.
I see the appeal of why people would like the mood and imagery (much of which...I just find hopelessly corny). But not the pure music.
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My example of some very sludgey metal that comes to mind with indecipherable vocals that I find to be fantastic. This is also what would be considered, in general, how fans of this would consider it done right. For the record, yes, sludge/stoner/whatever metal summons people who largely have no grasp on band names and what doesn't sound stupid. Very sad.
Now to approach it from aesthetics perspective, I love that it has a very dense feel to it. The heavy landscape evokes a sort of swampy struggle, a slow pace, lumbering like a giant, etc etc (things that depict "heavy/slow imagery" with an overdramatic flair and you could go on forever). The vocals are not meant to be understood, only heard. It's nothing more than a layer to the texture. So it creates the portrait of a very vivid (or perhaps it's better to say murky?) emotional experience. It's not one that's inherently pleasing, yet, the sort of pleasure I receive is one of aural fulfillment. A very large, full meal of fulfillment.
I elaborate on like this as if I'm going to start explaining how, scientifically speaking, yada yada yada but once I lay everything out on the table it's sort of difficult to get much else out there. As obvious as it is (if you hear it you can explain what you're hearing), that's actually why it sounds good. On an emotional palette, every kind of imagery and chord can strike in you (negative to positive) resonation in a way that feels pleasing.
Particularly if you're mirroring your own mood to the work itself. Sort of akin to venting anger.
To most listeners, that sort of in your face anger is a turn off. It is very much something that people on a usual level just flat out don't want to hear. We're conditioned to hear screaming and loud volumes as cacophony, or unpleasant. For a reason. But get past the barrier and…
The end result? Pleasing, actually, just as much as sunshine pop can be.
And musically, really on a pure level, that's just it. It can sound primal as fuck, but it's effective on a technical level. You say you can understand the appeal of the imagery conceptually, not not as an actual product, I think i interpreted that right? If not then I wasted a whooooole post not like there's much to say. But it's not like I need to explain to you all of this, anyways. You're smart you know how noises work. I was more of just setting up a foundation to describe how the good stuff does capture the emotions with an aesthetic that doesn't come off as insanely cheesy. Or maybe if it still sounds cheesy it's just in the end about not being able to get past the cliches associated with the sound.
I know I've experienced that. The Wrens Meadowlands is a masterpiece of power pop and emo genre. But it took a few listens to get past that kind of voice to really hear just how good they were at doing what they were doing. The pisspoor attempts at replicating the good stuff can bear so much similarities on a surface level it's hard to separate to the untrained ear.
And it's also not to say you always have to be stiflingly mad, or bleak feeling, to be in the mood for sludginess. When I'm in a good mood sometimes I just think low end notes, heavy bass, or just deep rhythms can be damn fine.
