Last night I decided to give the new Whitechapel album a try, a band I have always joked about for being generic and having three guitarists. My opinion didn’t really change much, but it inspired me to really start listening to some of my more older music. If you were born in the early 90′s and you listened to heavier forms of music, there’s no doubt you probably listened (and liked) to Slipknot, Korn and Limp Bizkit (although, this rant is mainly about Slipknot). After all, the music was simple, it was catchy and really related to a lot of issues a kid might be dealing with. The lyrics never affected me, but maybe to others it did. In any case, I miss the days of this kind of music. Nowadays the trend for kids growing up is generic -core music that really has no substance. Yeah, that’s right. No substance. You’re probably thinking I’m fucking retarded for saying Slipknot has substance but we all know the unnecessary 9 men had a sound that wasn’t really paralleled. Anyone could pick out them in a crowd. Now, you have Deathcore Band #825, all playing the same music endlessly. Breakdowns and being brutally HXC!!111! is the new thing and it sucks. Of course anyone who was never into Slipknot and enjoyed much of the heavier 80′s/90′s metal like Death and Atheist will disagree entirely and say it all sucks and call you an untrue faggot… and it’s that elitism that caused me to push my old musical taste aside.

The reason is stupid, I agree. Entry-level metal bands really gave me a more wide variety of metal taste and I’m always going to thank them for that. Yet, until today, I just couldn’t stomach listening to them again. Not because my tastes evolved and that I hate it now as a result, but because you’re untrue and a disgrace to metal if you do as previously mentioned. At least in the eyes of some people, anyway. Entitlement and elitism has always been retarded and it will continue to be retarded, but for some reason it always got to me. I felt like I was betraying the metal community if I didn’t listen to stuff the majority accepted. It’s a dumb reason, but I didn’t want to betray the community that I loved. The community who showed me great bands. The community who helped me find the roots of the more technical music that I listen to today such as Death, Atheist and Iron Maiden. The community who really helped me push aside the stereotype that if you listen to death metal you’re weird. Of course maybe that’s just from growing up, when everyone else started to stop giving a fuck about the social norm. Even though a lot of things suck this generation of kids (shorthand typing for example), that was one thing I liked. In any case, I can’t ignore what the metal community has done for me indirectly and directly. So, any metalhead, or anyone who just likes metal in general, I thank you. I may be the only one in my group of friends who doesn’t share the same taste, but I’ve learned to just not care because of you guys. But now, within my own musical taste, I should stop caring about what the metal community thinks.

I nostalgia’d hard last night when I listened to a few songs off Slipknot‘s Iowa album. Anyone who was born in the early 90′s and liked them knew that CD was a classic. I can’t sit here and lie saying that it sucked because last night I enjoyed it thoroughly. Tracks like “New Abortion”, “Metabolic” and “The Shape” are just too catchy and memorable for me to pass off, no matter how “untrue” it makes me. Slipknot has a place in my heart because they were the entry-level to In Flames and Soilwork, who were entry-level to modern metalcore, who were subsequently entry-level to death metal.

At the end of the day, I can’t ignore it. Fuck staying true, if I even was in the first place. I wanna listen to all kinds of metal. Of course I still prefer the music I like now exponentially and I’ll always respect the bands who shaped metal today, but I think I’ll start mixing it up when I get tired of listening to noodling and radical tempo changes. It just gets tiresome to listen to the same kind of metal. I do like electronica and 90′s rap a lot so I’m not exactly narrow-minded in the grand scheme of things, but within metal I need to stop closing off music I used to like simply because I care about what people think.  I’ve tried post, sludge, doom and black, but they just don’t click for me. Of course, I’m always down to give a chance to any kind of metal so feel free to leave me any kind of recommendation. Ultimately, though, I get tired of the same music. And I’m remedying this by going back 5 or so years to the golden days of nu metal.

Maybe it’s just a nostalgia thing. Maybe it’s just part of growing up. After all, I bought a used Wii and Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 JUST for the platforming. I miss platformers, but a lot of developers seem to be hellbent on generic brown & bloom rehash shooters. I digress, though.

This could all be temporary and in a few weeks I might give a big fuck you to the music of my youth, but in any regard, I’m gonna pop in Iowa after I finish digesting how great of an album Monsters by The 25th Hour is.

In summary, if it’s good, listen to it.

-MK