Symbolic wrote:Im talking about the sound, and funding principles of the music. The mainstream crowd has very different reasons for making said music than the Underground. This is where money comes in and sacrificng your integrity to appeal to a broader audience. This is what Im getting at.
And who exactly, draws this line about mainstream and underground?
How can you tell that every band you reckon as underground, is in fact, underground? How do you know that they are not just appealing to the underground crowd because of X reason (popularity with the "cult" people?) that doesn't match with someone's criteria of who is underground and who is not?
Or what if a mainstream band makes an 'underground sound'? Even if you supposedly like said sound, you will not accept it because it was made by a 'mainstream band'?
How do you know what is mainstream, by your definition? As far as we know, Lady Gaga may have the same reasons to do what she does (regardless of wheter it sucks or not) as that one underground band.
Jack Torrance wrote:Folk metal isn't underground, at least not in the way Symbolic sees and lives it.
Nor in the way I do.
Underground for me also means the actual music, not just whether or not a band is known or not.
Unknown bands can still make mainstream music.
I didn't mention folk being underground, even though 3 of the 4 bands used as an example were folk. I'm guessing that's why you said that. Just clearing that up.
And what is "actual music"? If some guy tells you that he loves the way traffic sounds, and he thinks it's music, you can't really tell him that he's wrong. Music is art. Art is subjective. He might go ahead and make his traffic music CD the way he exactly wants to, and if he's actually putting an effort and doing it out of his love for it, you're no one to tell him that what he did isn't music.
Symbolic wrote:Also if I comr across as a dick on this subject at times I apologize lol. Its not on purpose I swear. Just metal is more than music to me, its my lifestyle and has been since my early years. Theres alot of "scene kids" in the community these days that must be removed lol.
This is precisely why I asked you. I've been listening to metal for years, and it's been literally a deciding factor in the course of my life. I went to many different places because of it, met plenty of people because of it, met my ex because of it, made me play piano (as weird as it sounds, but loving metal lead me to loving music, which got me into the instrument) etc.
I've met (and actually was one myself) people that love metal to death. But they are very much zealots, they close their mind out of a fanatical love for it. They go on and actually say what is music and what is not, when they are nobody to decide such things. I was once like that, plenty of years ago and I still am sometimes, but try to keep myself in check, even with the shittiest music I've heard (in these cases I just don't talk
). I don't even consider myself a metalhead, but that's very much the music I like the most together with instrumental (baroque in particular).
I walked away from the whole metal world/life/thing, because while I think it's an incredibly creative music genre, flooding with ideas, flooding with talent, and evolving day by day, it's way too much about appearances and ego in many cases (not all, of course). So I just download whatever, listen to the metal I like but I'm not really in contact with its 'world'.
Anyway, that's why I just say it as known or unknown, when talking about mainstream and underground. I'm no one to say what is, what isn't and the rules for it. At the end of the day, art will always be subjective, for the same reason that beauty is subjective.
Also, scene kids are very much annoying. That much I can give you. They listen to 1 black metal song and suddenly are the spawns of Satan walking on Earth.
Hopefully, I didn't come up as too douchy. I have a special talent to be a douche.
while Im not a fan, I do have a great deal of respect for them. Bruce is just such a dick lol.
