May 4, 2014

From World War G to World War T

Ed West writes for The Telegraph:
But Kristian’s theory [political correctness as a positional good] also explains one aspect of political correctness: the speed at which the accepted and acceptable view moves, heading in an ever-more extreme direction. 
He uses the analogy of the music fan who, once the band he’s into has been discovered by everyone else, must find some other obscure outfit as a positional good. Once a wacky idea becomes accepted, the high-status politically correct brigadier must stand out with some new area of concern; this he or she does with one of those articles or blogs in which it is argued that, while progress has been made in one particular battle against prejudice or bigotry, the real war is now against racism in food labeling or the lack of transgender dolls for my children. It doesn’t matter if the issue at hand is inconsequential or, more likely, impossible to overcome; in fact the more so, the better. 
Unlike with music, however, the trend is always in one direction and there is no re-centering; it would be as if the mainstream of elite taste in music went from Led Zeppelin to Black Sabbath to Metallica to Slayer and onto Napalm Death.

I like Napalm Death's instrumentals, but the shouting vocals don't do anything for me.

Recentering in musical taste is a valuable corrective. For example, the Clash went to the Ramones' famous July 4, 1976 show in London and decided that they would play even faster than the Ramones, which they did on White Riot. But then what? Play even faster than White Riot? Instead, by 1979 they were doing Motown and by 1982 they were doing the Chopsticks-like Straight to Hell, which became popular a quarter century later as MIA's Paper Planes.
Politically that’s what much of the commentary in places like Slate sounds like to me – just some guy atonally screaming in my ear about some micro-injustice. 
Another aspect of this mindset is the desire to punish people who have insufficiently correct views on doctrine, even if the beliefs they hold were orthodoxy ten or five years ago. I’d really like to conduct a Stanford Prison-style experiment in which people were rewarded (perhaps with a dopamine hit) for punishing those with heretical views, and to see where it led.

Heck, do the experiment without any rewards: inflicting pain on the heretical would be a reward in and of itself for a lot of people.
To make it more interesting, only people with unorthodox views on only one side of the political spectrum would be punished, to see how extreme a group would become towards the other direction in a short space of time. Soon they’d be sacking people for disagreeing with an idea that didn’t exist anywhere in the world before 2001 – oh whoops, sorry, that was real life. 
My problem with the liberal-Left is not that its ideas are all bad – on a lot of things they’re right and I don’t consider myself that Right-wing [cue sarcastic laughter]. It’s just that in Britain and America the liberal-Left has had a moral monopoly for so many years that this has pushed it to some extreme positions, encouraged intolerance of other opinions, and created a large moral gulf between the rulers and the ruled. Most people would rather just listen to some Led Zeppelin.
 
On the other hand, there are meta-trends in music taste, such as music moving away from the exalted toward the narrowly functional. Dance music, for example, has evolved from this to this. That's going to take a lot of recentering.
    

68 comments:

  1. Best one ever was criticising Scousers was racist because .. Liverpool was a big slave trading port and these slaves were the finest athletes the world has ever known.

    Did not apply to Bristol for some unfathomable reason.

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  2. OT:

    Da word gap, in a picture:

    http://io9.com/rappers-ranked-by-vocabulary-size-1571623387

    Apparently a significant number of rappers have a larger vocab than Shakespeare and Herman Melville.

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  3. So ... when does World War P* begin?


    *-pedo

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  4. But not DMX, who came in last in vocabulary size. Here's my review of DMX's movie Cradle 2 the Grave, which is not about the British Labour Government of 1945-1949:

    http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/02/27/Film-of-the-Week-Cradle-2-the-Grave/UPI-55661046369463/

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    Replies
    1. You should really try your hand at screenwriting again. Write Dry Ice: make it about a Korean martial artist and an African American boxer who team up to fight housing discrimination in a Los Angeles high rise. The fight with their fists and feet and find out that the conspiracy goes to the top - literally. (bad guy real estate developer lives in the penthouse).

      Delete
  5. World War N(ecro) ...

    World War S(nuff)...

    World War ... I don't want to think about this anymore ...

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  6. When I was in high school early 90's), I started listening to all sorts of weird, extreme music. It was my way of rebelling and entertaining myself (and some of that shit is pretty entertaining). However, around 1994, I noticed something strange - a lot of the popular kids and football jocks at my sunny suburban high school suddenly had nose rings and Dead Kennedys t-shirts. It kind of spoiled the whole rebellion thing for me.

    It was about that time that I got into the Beatles. And 20 years later, I'd say they have brought me more joy than the entire SST, Alternative Tentacles and Touch And Go records catalogs combined.

    Lesson: Obscurity is overrated. Wish more people would accept this.

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  7. What's the alternative to shouting/screaming/growling in metal? Singing doesn't always go well the instrumentals. Occasionally a band will pull it off, but it usually ends up sounding like this (kicks in at 0:20):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUltTV3t4OM

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  8. Napalm Death, please .......... DEICIDE! DEICIDE! DEUCIDE! :)

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  9. It is remarkable to me how similar political correctness is to Orwell's doublethink and newspeak, etc.

    Folks no longer even try to hide behind their "my position has evolved," BS.

    They have always been at war with Eurasia.

    Even when they weren't.

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  10. Have you seen this one: Group polarization and the fad of ethnomasochism:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5pIka2ElqE

    Well worth watching.

    Tim Howells

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  11. It takes skill to do that genre right:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWac5UT80no

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  12. The Led Zeppelin metaphor ends with "Anal Cunt", if anyone is interested. This video is interesting to me partly because the guitarist farthest from the camera look exactly like a museum caveman:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R9sviIQcOw

    ...I believe there are actually people who liked this band specifically for their unlikability.

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  13. Apparently a significant number of rappers have a larger vocab than Shakespeare and Herman Melville.

    Artists I never heard of have more words. Aesop Rock? CunninLynguists? Of people I've heard of, Too Short, Salt-N-Pepa, 50 Cent are 1/2 words.

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  14. but the shouting vocals don't do anything for me.

    It takes skill to do that genre right:
    Cookie Monster Metal

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  15. I think Anal Cunt could have won the CEDA debate championship Derbyshire linked to last week.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFbQftMe6qY

    Click around 2:30 and then really anywhere. I'd say it's the end of the line for this nonsense, but there's always another level.

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  16. "MeowMeowBeenz is gonna make East Berlin look like Woodstock"

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  17. opinions are like guitars, sooner or later5/5/14, 2:23 AM

    It was about that time that I got into the Beatles. And 20 years later, I'd say they have brought me more joy than [blah blah blah]

    Congratulations, you've boldly stood up on behalf of the much-maligned Beatles. Don't worry, some day they'll get their properly deserved level of worship.

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  18. Napalm Death's early grincore was unlistenable (to me, at least) shit, but Harmony Corruption was great stuff. However, it only went downhill from there, unlike Cannibal Corpse, who made some of their best albums quite recently.

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  19. Napalm Death vocals are called growling, not shouting.

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  20. Ross Douthat has written that socially liberal political beliefs form a barrier to entry put up by the neo-lib elite, in practice to use as a weapon of class preservation/perpetuation; I guess the positional good here would be the energy expended on preaching World War Whatever orthodoxy without actually buying it, or not to the point it impacts one's own social climbing or crawling. This filters the meritocracy specifically to keep old-fashioned spoilsport man-of-the-people types on the outside. So, pending a better explanation, that one works for me

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  21. The Beatles is not bad, but - like all modern pop/rock/metal/hip-hop/etc. music - is even at its best just light entertainment. Even the less remarkable classical music is usually way better than anything these musical entertainers can offer. But occasionally it doesn't hurt listening to them.

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  22. Re. meta-trends. But is it the centring or the landscape that has altered?

    Like watching something you thought was great when you last saw it back in the 80's, though now being unable to concentrate on what you remembered about it, because things you took for granted and never noticed at the time are now screaming at you; the background changes are always the most important thing.

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  23. Steve, Ed writes for the Spectator now, not the Telegraph.

    http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/author/edwest/

    http://www.edwest.co.uk/

    The Spectator, like the Telegraph, is owned by the Barclay brothers, of private island and fractious relationship with their Sark tenants fame. Until they took over, Sark was I think the last feudal system in Europe. A different sort of regime now obtains.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Frederick_Barclay#Sark_and_Brecqhou_disputes

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  24. Gernan_Reader5/5/14, 4:54 AM

    Ed West doesn't write for the Telegraph (which is now completely worthless) anymore, he's now blogging at The Spectator (and is editor at some Catholic newspaper).

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  25. Reg Cæsar5/5/14, 5:22 AM

    Re your first paragraph: Christopher Caldwell ended a recent FT column (about you-can-guess-which issue) with the thought that public opinion simply doesn't shift that quickly in a free society.

    Thus, public opinion is not moving as rapidly. As we're being told it is-- or we no longer live in a free society.

    I'd say both.

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  26. reiner Tor wrote:

    "The Beatles is not bad, but - like all modern pop/rock/metal/hip-hop/etc. music - is even at its best just light entertainment. Even the less remarkable classical music is usually way better than anything these musical entertainers can offer. But occasionally it doesn't hurt listening to them."

    Okay. I've heard people say stuff like this. I understand and believe that listening to classical music and higher intelligence is correlated.

    But explain to me how this works.

    What am I missing in "Ride of the Valkyries" versus "Screaming for Vengeance?" What emotion or imagery is supposed to be evoked? Is it a case that my brain functions aren't highly enough developed to respond properly to the Wagner piece? (which I like btw, just that I like lots of other things better)

    On another topic that has been brought up here, that of obscure bands.

    I have listened to a lot of music by The Who, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Animals, etc.

    I'm not a musician but the Kinks stand head and shoulders above all of them. Maybe it's just taste, or I got an idea in my head that wouldn't go away.

    Yet the above acts are household words and the Kinks are kind of obscure in this country.

    I've also seen the opinion expressed by music critics and some others that the Doors were some kind of lightweight "pop" band. I have never understood what they were talking about. To be honest I'd rather listen to the Doors than the Beatles, who tend to be universally approved.

    I think our host likes the Velvet Underground (think I saw him write a few things about them here and there). I've listened to them. Then I get a flash of memory where I hear Jim Morrison singing "The End" on one of those live versions.

    So what is in the Velvet Underground repertoire that makes the "The End" seem like a teeny bopper song? I've listened to them, just never found anything by them memorable.

    I really don't like Chicago or Steely Dan either. Guess I have a lower IQ than I though.

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  27. I think what is interesting here is that so few realize what's going on with this crazy lurching from fad to fad. Religion is a foundation element of human society. Public acts of piety are critical to building trust, particularly for those at the top of the hierarchy.

    The managerial class is forever going to be shaking their piety bracelets in public. These are displays of piety and to some degree dominance. The top chimp is the one holding the most extreme position.

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  28. It's like 'Imagine' is a great song as long as you don't pay attention to the words.

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  29. Wait wait waitwaitWAIT!

    Steve Freakin' Sailer likes Napalm Death?!?

    Send the crows to peck out my eyes, please; now I really have seen it all.

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  30. ***"I like Napalm Death's instrumentals, but the shouting vocals don't do anything for me."***

    Who needs lyrics?

    Try some Goatcraft - Necroclassical Music - or as I call it, Death Metal Piano:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHxKk71DvBs

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    Replies
    1. Goatcraft is aimless. Better to listen to Burzum's electronica and Lord Wind for the spirit of metal in the ambient/soundtrack-esque realm.

      Delete
  31. People drunk with power tend to behave like this - impose ever more outrageous demands on their subjects, partly to reassure themselves that they can, and partly to remind everyone of who has the power.

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  32. >things you took for granted and never noticed at the time are now screaming at you<

    Hair bands, in particular, seem impossible to take seriously now.

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  33. The trend in music is towards splintering and factionalization. There are a staggering and ever-increasing number of musical subgeneres out there. Look up "trance", "club", "house", "dubstep", or even "post-hardcore". They all coexist just fine.

    The trend in social thought is towards conformity and uniformity, enforced with a fanatical zeal reminiscent of the Communist Party or the medieval church. Everyone must think alike, and not just in America either - the whole world must bow down before whatever nonsense our leadership cadres have decided is this years urgent moral imperative.

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  34. Here's a question: is there a logical end-point to political correctness? I figure if there is a logical end-point, then you can predict what way things are going to go, because people are using post-hoc reasoning to get there.

    Emotional responses are in the driver's seat, and the reasoning happens after the fact. But what are the emotional responses?

    I think Sailer's "Who? Whom?" model is pretty good; if you think of some group as in power, then you will see changes that hurt them as good, and changes that help them as bad. This model would predict that an environmentalist who sees a straight, white, cis-, male littering would be more outraged than seeing someone who fits fewer of those categories doing the same thing. (A female Hispanic littering would arouse less anger.)

    This suggests to me that the end point is this: a move from procedural-oriented law to outcome- or impact-oriented law. So, it's illegal for a white, straight male to say X, but it's legal for people who don't fit into that category to say X.

    Or simply: what's good is what's good for the party; what's bad is what's not good for the party. (You see this a lot in discussions among academics: they take on Marcuse's idea (and I think this can be found in Marx) that there cannot be free speech if one group has more power than another. Consequently, there should be different norms depending on who's speaking. Thus, it is impossible for a trans person to act uncivilly, no matter what he or she says, but it's incredibly easy for a straight, cis, white male to act uncivilly, even if he's trying as much as possible not to offend. If you don't believe that this is really a thing, read this.

    If that's the end-point, then how far can our elites get to that end-point before something stops them? Is there a limit in political reality?

    --SoCal Philosopher

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  35. Cannibal Corpse in modern cinema:

    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xjiCh88q4kA

    -SonOfStrom

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  36. 'My Humps' is a lot closer to 'The Black Bottom' than to anything by Strauss. So's the way a girl should dance to it.

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  37. Regarding WWG, Russian Twitter users have been joking that liberal Russian journalists will be getting this medal from the US State Department.

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  38. There was a brief correction in music, at least as it relates to dance music, if you recall. "Swing" music enjoyed a brief resurgence in the mid-90s (as noted by several popular films like Swingers).

    This was then ruthlessly parodied out of existence, as Big Bad Voodoo Daddy is now a punch line.

    -SonOfStrom

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  39. What am I missing in "Ride of the Valkyries" versus "Screaming for Vengeance?" What emotion or imagery is supposed to be evoked? Is it a case that my brain functions aren't highly enough developed to respond properly to the Wagner piece? (which I like btw, just that I like lots of other things better)

    I used to listen to heavy metal (or, to be more precise, besides a healthy dose of Iron Maiden and Manowae, I mostly listened to its offshoots like black, death, thrash, doom, etc.), and though I occasionally liked listening to the WalkĂĽrenritt, but I mostly liked other things more. And then suddenly (well, it happened over a one year transitional period) classical music started to "click", until I noticed ot got difficult for me to listen to anything else, even my old favorites. I know people to whom this happened, but I'm not aware of anyone to whom it happened in reverse - i.e. nobody goes from exclusive classical to exclusive pop etc. music.

    I think that's because classical music is ultimately deeper and better - you might give up one type for another, e.g. Wagner for Bach, or vice versa, but mostly not for something simpler and shallower. But it has to click for you, which might never happen to you for whatever reason.

    There's probably some correlation to IQ, but it's stochastic, and probably not very strong, so don't worry. You could still be highlx intelligent, as a lot of highly intelligent people never listen to anything but pop/rock/etc. music.

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  40. Oh, and the WalkĂĽrenritt is not nearly the best composition of Wagner. Most parts of the opera Die WalkĂĽre is better.

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  41. I my view Metallica is better than Led Zeppelin. Led Zeppelin stole alot of their songs and their concert performances were average a best. Metallica concerts are legendary. Their songs are long and structured to the point that when a long song is done, it did not seem like the song was long. The long songs of Led Zeppelin were outright slow and boring. Also Metallica committed a feat matched by none. They were able to replace signature songs with subsequent signature songs. They went from Fade to Black to Master of Puppets to One to Enter Sandman. I grew up listening to Led Zeppelin and then Metallica. Metallica wins

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  42. Steve, not all White people are the same. Punishing heretics is fairly unknown among the "backwoods" aka Scots-Irish of David Hackett Fisher's "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America." Or the Virginia Tidewater Cavaliers. In the Puritan culture, which is merely Scandinavian culture, yeah its a big deal. Almost Japanese like in stifling Edvard Munch-type "Scream" cohesion, witness Hedda Gabbler, etc.

    SWPL ever-leftwards movement is as much a function of a need to keep non-Whites on their side in the eternal Puritans/Vikings/Scandinavians vs. everyone else White people fight as a positional good. And most other White cultures don't have positional goods of the moral purity type, but power/dominance/military achievement.

    What's interesting is the Jewish split in culture. One part of Jewish culture (in the US and Western Europe) has become essentially Scandinavian: huge social cohesion, emphasis on moral goodness, the desire to transform the world into a merely bigger version of SWPL culture. The other part has gone totally "Borderers" Scots-Irish, emphasizing in Israel mostly, military service and accomplishment, physical courage, dominance, etc. You see this in Russia as well, also Hungary, parts of the UK (Nigel Farage) and France's Marie Le Pen.

    What's interesting about Netanyahu, Putin, Ehud Barak, Nigel Farage, and Marie Le Pen is that their personal "style" is all pretty much the same. Confrontational, "courageous," in that they don't back down from conflict, dominant, mocking of those who they feel are delusional and not even sharing the base cultural assumptions of moral goodness and who is the best choir boy of the bunch.

    Their total attitude is completely alien to say, Barack Obama, Matthew Yglesias, or David Brooks, who embody SWPL righteousness and "moral fervor."

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    1. And yet the East of England, Danelaw/Cromwell's Eastern Confederation, is UKIP's heartland.

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  43. Strauss? When it comes to dance music I much prefer the minuet.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=on1DDSLdDOo

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  44. I also don't think PC is sustainable. For PC to be sustainable, you have to peace, security, no need for military dominance and virtue. A static society where an elite top class can demonstrate its ever-greater moral virtue by positional goods.

    And that breaks down when safety and security break down. Look at Jews. Jews in Europe were among the most enthusiastic consumers of positional goods, championing ever greater positional morality and the idea that society could be transformed into say, Sweden by ever greater political correctness and social conformity. And that all got shattered in WWII.

    Result? Jews in Israel, adopted a much different culture. One based on military virtue, even a man of the relative Left in Israel, Ehud Barak, comes from a military/special forces background, he was a commando helping assassinate the "Red Prince" who masterminded the Munich Massacre. A guy like Ehud Barak is simply impossible in the US, in Britain, in many other Western nations as a major player.

    Instead you have a community organizer President, a super-Housewife German Chancellor, an Etonian Twit Prime Minister, an Inspector Clueseau as French President, etc.

    Chasing positional goods is simply not sustainable when military necessity over-rides everything. How much positional jostling is there in Ukraine? As America erodes into a Third World nation, IMHO you'll see PC thrown away as the elites are simply replaced.

    Already comedians are in various stages of revolt, the ones on the fringes angry that the Colbert suckups take all the money and leave them with crumbs.

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  45. The next battle in World War T will be the Eurovision Song Contest which starts tomorrow in Copenhagen.

    The Austrian candidate is a man who pretends to be a bearded woman by the name of Conchita Wurst.

    Austrians kept voting against this freak who has no musical talent to speak of. So this year the national broadcaster simply decided to designate the guy without popular input.

    A Russian politician by the name of Vitaly Milonov already took the bait and denounced the event as "blatant propaganda of homosexuality and spiritual decay".

    Politics always plays into the song contest as each nation gives each other nation points. Half of the points are awarded by a jury, the other half by televoting.

    It will be interesting to see how many popular votes Russia will get and by whom.

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    Replies
    1. "Conchita Wurst"

      Look up the Spanish for vagina and tell me this is his real name.

      Delete
  46. Jim Carrey about Napalm Death

    not a bad article. his analogy is exactly, 100% correct. metal was maxed out by the mid 90s for heaviness and there was no place to take it to make it any heavier after death metal. although i would say, thrash metal and power metal were heavier, because death metal, black metal, and blast beat starts to become noise when it gets too fast, and you lose power instead of picking it up. i don't consider metalcore to be any good, so anything after 2000 is not an improvement on the heaviness front. the analogy between metal and politics is apt. standing there shouting as loudly as you can about a very narrow topic is less powerful than backing off some.

    it's interesting listening to judas priest as they got heavier and heavier over 15 years, in reaction to new bands forcing them to compete. by the time painkiller came out in 1990 they had become as heavy as the thrash bands and had even fired their drummer because he couldn't keep up, and hired a new guy who was 13 years younger. rob halford was a huge pantera fan, and probably a metal fan in general, which kept him apprised of how all the competitors were doing. but in their pursuit of keeping up with the times, they were forced to drop old long time associates, similar to modern liberals turned cultural marxists where some old school democrats have dropped out of the culture war and retired instead of continuing on.

    pursuit of heaviness over musicality is sometimes the downfall of some of these bands, certainly the case with pantera, who tried to go as heavy as possible by 1994, and ended up just being less musical. once you cross the noise threshold, your other stuff ends up being more heavy because it has more impact.

    kinda disagree with reiner tor for that reason, napalm death was heavier once they started to move away from noise and simple blast beats and began to groove in the mid 90s. i don't think it was a coincidence that the best black metal band, mercyful fate, played thrash, or that the best death metal band, death, also pretty much played thrash. chuck schuldiner moved away from death metal and towards thrash and power metal as he got older and better, kinda funny the guy who invented death metal voice left death metal behind. which also happens to punk bands. the better they get, the more they sound like hard rock bands.

    anal cunt is just noise. nickelback is heavier. at some point this stuff just becomes annoying noise, and the blast of a 155mm artillery cannon is the heavier sound. wonder why they never simply started recording rheinmetall 120mm tank cannons firing. that's way heavier than anything they ever 'wrote'. they're just using their instruments to make noise. it's not music.

    i remember in the 90s there were bands exploring how to mix and master outside of the sony red book specifications, so the loudness level of the CD was far above where it was supposed to be. i'm not sure if this lead to what we're in now, which is called the loudness war, but it's possible. the loudness war is not metal specific, but rather a general music industry problem.

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  47. "Recentering in musical taste is a valuable corrective."

    Especially in classical music, whose composers wrote increasingly abrasive, atonal, unmelodic, arrhythmic garbage from the 1940s into the early 1970s, driving people from concert halls, until composers got tired of the unrelieved anguish and ugliness and began to emulate 19th-century music -- you know, the kind that people actually like to listen to.

    No such luck for World War G, where even if 99% of the population would rather sodomites go back in the closet and keep their behaviors private, including many sodomites who would prefer it that way, there will be endless pressure for acceptance and celebration of increasingly disturbing and deviant behaviors because rights.

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  48. "So ... when does World War P begin?"

    Children at younger and younger ages are being taught that homosexuality is good, that it's a wonderful and exquisite lifestyle, and that if you have homosexual thoughts, no matter how fleeting, then you should be proud of those thoughts and act on them.

    Then a boy, probably just over the cusp of puberty at age 13, will mewl that he's in love with a 19-year-old man. And the boy will ask: how dare the State stand between full physical expression of their beautiful and completely legitimate love? Homosexuality is a beautiful, legitimate behavior, and they're in love! The argument will be that many other hetero teenagers have sex with each other and also with people over age 18, so why do we incriminate love with arbitrary "age of consent" laws? It's hateful and discriminatory, especially because love between a homosexual 13-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man is not fully accepted by those bigoted Christians and other evil conservatives. This will happen, in some fashion.

    And amazingly enough, this victory in sexual deviancy will precede World War B, bestiality, because people overall have warmer feeling and regard toward animals than they do toward people they're not related to.

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  49. "Hair bands, in particular, seem impossible to take seriously now."

    I think you intended to say impossible to not take seriously. I give you Steel Panther performing glory hole:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diYS8jyOcFc

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  50. So ... when does World War P* begin?

    I think you'll see serious efforts by the end of next year. Polygamy might come first, but that'll be a quick slam-dunk since "gay marriage" already eliminated any argument against it.

    That is, unless we get a serious economic crash or some other disaster that forces people to focus on things that actually matter for a while.

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  51. A few skirmishes in world war P were fought during the 70s and the Ps lost badly back then. They're still licking their wounds but it's really only a matter of time until they fight back.

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  52. Anonymous Anonymous said...
    The next battle in World War T will be the Eurovision Song Contest which starts tomorrow in Copenhagen.

    The Austrian candidate is a man who pretends to be a bearded woman by the name of Conchita Wurst.
    -----
    I still cant get used to how fast attitudes are changing when it comes to that kind of stuff.
    Everybody knew until recently that Drag Queens were men who loved to dress and act like women on stage. There was never any doubt that a drag queen was a he. Now when you read comments about that austran freak you see people using she and the people using "he"are being chastized for doing so. I can't believe how the under 25 are completely onboard with that stuff. They must have it taught to them in school.

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  53. Yet the above acts are household words and the Kinks are kind of obscure in this country.

    I don't know about that. Who/Beatles/Stones were certainly better at the business of being rock stars; whereas Ray Davies went deeper into the tea & crumpets thing. The growth of the Kinks U.S. fan base just dropped off early, especially after Townshend started ripping off their sound wholesale. The niche where the Kinks carried the most weight recently was in the post-grunge college/indie scene of the late 90s. It would figure that if they inspired the first American garage rock movement, they'd also be popular with whatever revivals came along.

    I've also seen the opinion expressed by music critics and some others that the Doors were some kind of lightweight "pop" band. I have never understood what they were talking about. To be honest I'd rather listen to the Doors than the Beatles, who tend to be universally approved.

    Overseas Jim Morrison is treated as some kind of cross between Paganini, Keats, and Gandhi. Here we remember him as a drunk retard.

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  54. "explainer said...

    Overseas Jim Morrison is treated as some kind of cross between Paganini, Keats, and Gandhi. Here we remember him as a drunk retard."

    Except for Oliver Stone - he still holds the torch aloft for the Lizard King.

    Frontmen are overrated. Krieger and Manzarek were probably the brains behind the band.

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  55. I'm a day late and a dollar short to the party, but resistance is futile when it comes ot iSteve music threads.
    "Napalm Death's early grincore was unlistenable (to me, at least) shit, but Harmony Corruption was great stuff. However, it only went downhill from there, unlike Cannibal Corpse, who made some of their best albums quite recently."
    Agree to disagree. "Utilitarian" is quite possibly my favorite Napalm Death record and it came out in 2012. It's very nuanced (for Napalm Death), but the chorus will still rip your face off; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el5ewJxBASo

    "I think Anal Cunt could have won the CEDA debate championship Derbyshire linked to last week."
    In what seems like another life, my band opened for those guys. They were kind of assholes. Hilarious and intelligent, but assholes none the less. They'd probably fit right in here.

    "There was a brief correction in music, at least as it relates to dance music, if you recall. "Swing" music enjoyed a brief resurgence in the mid-90s (as noted by several popular films like Swingers)."
    Now you're speaking my language. If anyone's interested in seeing how deep that particular rabbit hole goes, have a look at this.... http://retrointhe90s.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/004-big-bad-voodoo-daddy-americana-deluxe/

    "Lesson: Obscurity is overrated. Wish more people would accept this."
    The way people's musical tastes change as they age is fascinating. How did it work out for you guys, especially those of you who liked the louder/faster/heavier stuff in your youth?

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  56. Gunnar von Cowtown:

    "Utilitarian" is quite possibly my favorite Napalm Death record and it came out in 2012.

    According to my player, I haven't listened to Napalm Death since 2010, except for the song Circle of Hypocrisy (to which I listened to last October) from the album Harmony Corruption. So I haven't heard Utilitarian. I might check it out, but I listen to this type of music so rarely, that my old (and not so old) favorites will do that for me, I don't think I need to explore much newer stuff. But who knows, I stored this information that Utilitarian might be a good record by the good old Napalm Death.

    The way people's musical tastes change as they age is fascinating. How did it work out for you guys, especially those of you who liked the louder/faster/heavier stuff in your youth?

    At present I listen to mostly classical. As I'm writing, Schubert's 13th string quartet is playing in my earphones. It's magnificent, although the 14th quartet that preceded it was even better.

    But sometimes I still listen to things like Burzum or Behemoth or 80s Iron Maiden or mid-90s Pantera or something like that.

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  57. "Lesson: Obscurity is overrated. Wish more people would accept this."
    The way people's musical tastes change as they age is fascinating. How did it work out for you guys, especially those of you who liked the louder/faster/heavier stuff in your youth?
    =====
    My taste in music broadened rather than changed. There are a few genres that I used to be into and that I completely gave up on (some forms of harsh techno) because they really had no lasting power at all.

    I still like extreme metal even after 30. I am however much pickier than I used to be and it take a lot to impress me. I've been into it for so long that I don't get impressed by new shiny bands easily.

    I'm still not too old for the loud and fast stuff but it has to be more than just loud and fast. The loud and fast has to be done well.

    Before I got into metal I was into hiphop, but it's really because I didn't know about anything else. I gave up on hiphop in my mid teens and never looked back.

    Over the years I've learned to appreciate various pop music artists. People can try introducing me to a lot of stuff and I'm willing give it a chance.

    Although most of what I like is obscure, being popular is not anymore something that turns me off an artist.

    I've gotten into some composers but I can't say that I have much knowledge of classical and/or jazz.

    I'm not too worried though, because I still have a lifetime to learn about them. I will never get tired of music and I will be open to trying out new music until the end. If my music taste was going to fossilize it'd have started to do so already.

    PS: my taste in music is very surprising for most people. I really don't look or sound the part.

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  58. Brett said...

    Goatcraft is aimless. Better to listen to Burzum's electronica and Lord Wind for the spirit of metal in the ambient/soundtrack-esque realm
    ==
    Sorry but Burzum's electronic albums are garbage, imho. It's surprising how bad they are given how good his guitar based albums are (for the most part).

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  59. Some of the lyrics to Mozart's work (lyrics not written by him admittedly but by a collaborator) are far more sexually explicit than 'humps'. Shakespeare uses 'constable' for vagina more than once by the way.

    Anyway, if all music amounts to is "auditory cheesecake" as Pinker says, Gotta Feeling is not that different to classical music.

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  60. "Lesson: Obscurity is overrated. Wish more people would accept this."
    The way people's musical tastes change as they age is fascinating. How did it work out for you guys, especially those of you who liked the louder/faster/heavier stuff in your youth?
    ===
    My taste has broadened rather than changed.
    I'm still into the fast and loud stuff but I do require it to be "good", so I don't get enthusiatic about any old band that plays fast and/or heavy.
    I can't say that I know a lot about classical music or jazz, though I appreciate some composers here and there. I have a lifetime to get into those genres and if my music taste hasn't fossilized by now it probably never will.

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  61. It is probably safe now to say that I am a huge fan of Mike Patton.

    I find myself listeing to Mr. Bungle and Fantomas in particular more than anyone in my family is happy with.

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  62. "My taste in music broadened rather than changed."
    Yeah, the same thing happened to me, and I can't see the trend slowing down any time soon. I'm over 40 and somehow acquired a taste for Black Metal, Latin Jazz, Exotica, Classical, Country and instrumental Surf. Changing seasons seem to affect my listening habits as much as anything. I haven't cut much from my wheelhouse, either, other than hip hop made after 1990.

    I read somewhere that men's hearing changes as they age. Not just in the "speak up so Grampa can hear you" manner, but also in the ability to hear the higher and lower ends of the sound spectrum. I wonder how much that affects musical taste? For example, while I always thought Led Zeppelin's music was awesome, Robert Plant's high-pitched girly shrieking was almost painful when I was young. Now, I think his voice sounds magnificent, but I wonder if it's just because I lost a few Hz's off of my capacity to hear the high frequencies, thus making it more palatable?

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  63. acquired a taste for Black Metal, Latin Jazz, Exotica, Classical, Country and instrumental Surf.

    This sounds very much like Mike Patton's Mr. Bungle California album. The whole album is up at youtube.

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  64. Titus Didius Tacitus5/7/14, 9:34 AM

    If that's the end-point, then how far can our elites get to that end-point before something stops them? Is there a limit in political reality?

    --SoCal Philosopher

    -

    I think that is the end point. I don't think there's an internal stopping point. Whites will learn to push back, or exit to the ash heap of history.

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