Black Metal, Death Metal, Heavy Metal
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Some people capitalize certain metal subgenres: Black Metal, Death Metal, Heavy Metal. These are strictly internal designations. Non-metalheads would have no reason to use them.
Capitalization implies three things. The first is reverence. Majuscules elevate words beyond mere common nouns - hence, capitalized Biblical pronouns. The second is definition, or more strongly, demarcation. "Black Metal" implies that there is a finite thing (Thing?) called "Black Metal." The word gains a corpus. The third, which flows from the second, is exclusion. "Black Metal" implies that there are things that aren't "Black Metal."
I'm trying to understand why people use such capitalization. Other genres don't do this. One doesn't see Techno or Jazz, or subgenrewise, Minimal or Bebop. Even in metal, one doesn't see Grindcore or Thrash Metal. Why are black metal, death metal, and heavy metal special? Is capitalization insufferably pompous?
Perhaps I can understand the reverence. I don't subscribe to it, though. I have problems capitalizing deities that supposedly created the universe. Western music forms that arose in the last few decades hardly constitute religions to me.
Still, "Black Metal," "Death Metal," and "Heavy Metal," as they've been used, evoke concrete things. Black metal obviously has religious/anti-religious elements. I'm not surprised that modern-day people who wear hooded robes want to capitalize things. "Death Metal" is more specific than "death metal." The caps carry atmosphere, old-school connotations. Nominon is "Death Metal," but Cryptopsy is probably only "death metal." "Heavy Metal" is likewise. Manilla Road is "Heavy Metal" - but is Blaze Bayley-era Iron Maiden?
What makes things Black Metal, Death Metal, and Heavy Metal?
Labels: black metal, clee, death metal, features, heavy metal
25 Comments:
Interesting topic. I tend to capitalize all genres in reviews, probably because I'm OCD on consistency. Plus "hardcore" just looks weird to me with out the "H".
Oh man...I'm scared to see the thread of comments this is going to kick off.
Frankly, while I'm certainly a huge offender of over sub-genre-fying, I find the whole process tiring. As a fan, I want a review to tell me why a record kicked you in the balls. Not that "XXXXX dabbles in post-necro-crust with hints of BM riffing and an overall aesthetic not too unlike what the ambient-death scene has cranked out lately."
Umm...ok.
To me, the over-reverance of genres speaks to a lazy listener.
And has anyone else been AMAZED that Metal Inquisition was the first blog to compare the thrash revival to a civil war re-enactment? GENIUS.
Haha, Inquisition made a good article out of that, although I've been saying it on numerous hot rod and motorcycle forums about the whole rockabilly thing for years, as have a few others. The stuff I did got no where though and everybody's on fire about that MI article, so honestly I think it's great and probably a multi-subcultural thing.
As far as the genre thing, it's really in how you write it. I try to go out of my way to aurally describe how something is, but sometimes genre tags do it best, and to the refined audience my site, and probably many others speak to, it's allowable. Especially when you're having to do a completely mediocre record that doesn't inspire the "grabs you" portion of your mind to crank out anything particularly visionary.
I'm a repeat offender as well but I have gone cold turkey on capitalizing metal. See my blog post at:
http://kkahnharris.typepad.com/weblog/2008/02/metal-in-capita.html
I hear you, Johnny, on the whole issue of reviewing mediocre records.
But that's actually a whole other issue...I can't tell if I really like that these days, with the nature of blogs, you typically only read positive reviews. I mean, after all...why would I take time to write up a record that sucked? And why would I keep returning to a site that was posting about albums that they didn't enjoy? It's almost as though the whole "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" saying has taken root. Not from a perspective of being nice, but just out of the informalized expression that blogs allow.
It's not a magazine that needs to please readers and give the impression of being in the know on every major release to come down the pipe. It's just some dude's corner of the web to bitch and moan about what's in his craw that day.
And maybe it's skewing the idea of "rating" records...I don't know...but it's an interesting subject for sure.
You see this whole idea play out in interesting ways on rateyourmusic.com too. After all...why would you even RETAIN a record that you only rated as one star? It's odd...
Not trying to hijack the comment board, really...
Andy, ratings and reviewing mediocre records are indeed fertile subjects that I've thought about for a while.
More to the topic, though - genre tags can be useful. "Black metal" or "reggaeton" or "psychobilly" implies certain characteristics. However, people who capitalize subgenres are going beyond mere description. They're imbuing the subgenres with an essence, and I'm trying to figure out what that essence is. Small caps genre tags don't interest me - they're necessary evils - but big caps usage still baffles me.
In my case, it's the essence of grammar and mild OCD. Nothing more, nothing less.
To me it's all about use of language and the beauty of using the written word to describe sound (and culture) - personally I'll use caps when and where I think they're needed - Heavy Metal needs them because I.T. J.U.S.T. D.O.E.S.
For an example, refer to Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (and other writings) for great (subjective) capitalization. And for proper usage, The Guardian Style Guide is always a handy guide.
This Is An Insignificant Topic.
close reading can be a waste of time.
PS ""corpus""
Andy - Metal Inquisition wasn't the first to compare retro thrash to a civil war enactment. They may have plagiarized that from a Merciless Death review I wrote half a year ago:
http://metalinjection.net/blog/2007/06/12/cd-review-merciless-death-evil-in-the-night/
Johnny, capitalizing metal genres isn't grammatically correct. If we capitalized every category of noun out there, we might as well speak German.
steve57, you've gotten the closest to what I'm getting at. Thank you for an actual constructive comment. I'll have to check out Neal Stephenson.
Not correct per se, but "looks" correct to my eyes. Steve57 nailed this better than I could I think.
I hate genre capitalization. It's the one thing that pisses me off when I review records for The Wire. I never do it in the copy I turn in, but when I get the issue, there it is: "Metal."
I was thinking about The Wire when I read this because capitalizing "metal" seems to be their current stylistic policy. I understand Steve57's point, but The Wire is completely different because it isn't written by or for metalheads (though they do sometimes write for it and read it). There always seemed to be something transgressive about the way The Wire handles metal. I don't mean to say so much that metal is transgressive in itself (that's a whole other argument) but rather that it falls outside of the normal boundaries of what the magazine covers. It's the sort of "low" art that the "high" art types can enjoy--and maybe their use of capitalization is to highlight this, to distinguish how it's both within and without the avant-garde. I'm not sure I'll stand by this if challenged on it, but it's a thought.
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Ah, I think we've discussed this a bit in comments before, Cosmo. I'll restate my position (with a few updates as they've occured from then to now) for the record.
Reverence: yes, I capitalize the initial of the name of my father or the name of my homeland though I do not capitalize the initial of any deity. This is because my father, my country, and Heavy Metal have shaped me and continue to shape me significantly and I've been over being embarrassed about the last part for a few years now. There is no metaphysical connotation for me.
'Music is just music, dude' has stopped being a valid position the moment I caught myself, while explaining why I helped a person having a seizure, (a friend asked about my moral choices so on) quoting '[...]walk hand in hand with the fear striken child, strenghten the weak and the lame/Perpetual journey into the realm of the sovereign servitor' almost instinctively. I know it sounds pompous (perhaps even insufferably so) and I don't care, that's the sort of effect this music has had on me. What it is not, is pretentious.
Categorization: a valid argument for capitalizing Heavy Metal is that it's the root genre of all the other sub-genres. I feel the need to capitalize Jazz likewise without any of the 'reverence' undertones mentioned above simply because 'jazz' means a different thing and 'Jazz' is a root genre of music. I don't capitalize thrash metal or death metal because they're derivations of the form which might have wandered quite a bit over the years but under my definitions of HM, still are very much that. There's been lots of thrash or doom metal that has had a profound effect on me, and when I talk of it in that context I talk of it as Heavy Metal regardless of its more specific kinks.
Lastly, it's a very good differentiation to this talk of 'metal'. Often when someone writes 'heavy metal' they're talking about 'classic metal' (I really don't like this term) to say, Saxon, Iron Maiden and so on. They're not talking about the wholistic term, they're talking about a subgenre themselves. This shows for me a lack of historical perspective of how HM has branched out, not to speak of a philosophical or aesthetic ignorance of the continuity of the form. It's handy then to say 'Heavy Metal' because it sounds like you mean business. You've given thought to what you're talking about means, and it's not just 'metal'. 'Metal' means loud guitars and double-bass. The 'heavy' qualifier is much more important for some, so it's a point of communication to be able to convey this succinctly.
Lastly as you say, it's useful because you can't call something that is mediocre or halfassed Heavy Metal. So you know if someone breaks out the caps, it's probably a good idea to go listen to that record.
Such fun - a lot of my usage of capitals comes from the fact that typography is my job/life and almost (almost!) as important as Metal. Words are fun, music journalism is fun, there's nothing like buying a record purely on your reaction to a review... and it Rocks! kinda gives you some hope for the human race etc... (same for the covers of)
btw, the Neil Stephenson thing, pick up Snow Crash first, it blew my tiny mind. And I'll still go on record and say that Cryptonomicon is the greatest book written in the last ten years...
Keep up the Good Work.
If capitalization is an important issue to you, why do you ALL CAPS the mp3 tags?
Graeme - very interesting point about The Wire. But I'm not sure if they're treating metal as "low" art. They're dealing with the more avant-garde strains, and not, say, Children of Bodom. But maybe you're right, maybe they're capitalizing Metal to set it apart in some way. Are they capitalizing things like "drum 'n' bass" and "dubstep"? I don't have an issue in front of me - maybe I'll drop them a line.
Helm - very good reasons for capitalization, even if I don't adopt them myself. I feel capitalizing "root genres" is a slippery slope - if we capitalize Jazz, then we have to capitalize Blues and then Folk Music. As far as "classic metal" goes, I use the term b/c if I say "heavy metal" and don't capitalize it, it risks confusion with the genre as a whole. (And "classic" to me has positive connotations, as opposed to, say, "retro.") Also, I have no need to "mean business," but if people get excited enough about something to capitalize Heavy Metal, I'll indulge them.
steve57 - Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. Got it. I've looked them up and am very intrigued. Will check 'em out.
Post-Felix - I put MP3 tags in all caps b/c I am a lazy bastard. I don't intend people to actually keep MP3's from here and listen to them, since they're at such low bitrates - but I gather that some people do that.
I never download the mp3s, that little 'play' button next to them is the future, I tell you!
Capitalizing root genres is a slippery slope if someone feels they need to be all-inclusive and exhaustive, but that's a strange thing to attempt about language anyway. We're not robots, it's okay to capitalize one genre and then forget to do it for another. That type of attempt at consistency leads to neurosis, heh!
To the point, 'metal' is just too vague, man. What does it mean? Remember when you said that a black metal accoustic guitar project a while back was certainly 'metal'? I don't know where to start with that really, and this is my attempt at codifying a simple solution so I don't have to do a lot of soulsearching about black metal bedroom folk sideprojects and their place in HM. They can have 'metal'!
Sorry for the late response here, but I flipped through a back issue of The Wire and it appears as if metal is the only genre they capitalize.
As far as the "low" versus "high" thing, I oversimplified the matter. Basically, I think that metal has as much to do with a "metal culture" as it is about how metal sounds. The Wire seems to want to take metal as sound and do away with metalheads. The Wire may ignore Children of Bodom, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a continuity between them and, say, Gorguts.
No worries, graeme, thanks for the info. Of course, The Wire isn't about metal culture - that's for metal publications - but I think it's great that they're at least willing to engage with metal as sound. Sure, they're not getting the complete picture, but seeing some of it is better than none.
Absolutely.
What is this?
I mean to say I am having a real hard time excepting the question I'll ask below.
I see Rock Blues guitar player,GW Williams name is everywhere.
Really? It's everywhere,whats up with that?
His name is in press releases,on blogs,forums,on radio and in the news.
He's selling on Amazon.com and itunes and on Sony records I think.
My question is where did this guitar freak come from?
What makes him one of the greatest top 10 guitar players ever,since he's only been selling music for 8 months about?
What about Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan?
Instead all I hear about is GW Williams.
I must admit he has several songs that could top the charts, like - Beyond The Clouds and Electric Son Rise and I guess his gospel song, On Easter Morning ,gots the hots in the church world also.
But I rather hear about the old guitar stars.
It's just I think to be a guitar superstar you need to be around a few years first.
Understand I am not trying to knock the guy, but Gezzzzzz, he's all over the Internet and everywhere I look these days?
Thanks Sally Frenchbrae
If you don't know what I am talking about check the link below for your self and do some research !!
P.S. Here's GW Williams rock, blues Guitar site. - GW Williams Rock,Blues Guitar
Great post.I love to read regarding metal works.Thanks dear!
Hi,
Great post.The Wire isn't about metal culture - that's for metal publications - but I think it's great that they're at least willing to engage with metal as sound.
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