Awe and the Grand Narrative

Heavy Metal has a romanticist conceit and a modernist tension inside it. The romance is ancient, or at least it pretends to be. It has a manufactured fantasy of an long-lost age of wisdom which post-temporally inspires and is inspired by it. In that ancient past, the Gods were all around us (and indeed, within us), nature was Beauty and Beauty was Truth. The horror, the awe of death is as beautiful as the bliss of birth. Not events to interpret, but symbols of inalienable Platonic ideals. That ancient, imagined script holds resonance for the listener of Heavy Metal. In a world without gods, the point of religion is access to Awe itself.

Heavy Metal is a modern type of music, it came to exist in the tail-end of the modern era and held, at least half-heartedly a conceit inside it that what it had to say was applicable to the modern world, even if in antagonism to it. It said 'this is the right way to live, or at least to imagine life, in this decrepit world'. And, of course, it faced the effects of deconstruction along with other forms of modern art (pop or not) in the decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

With the end of the Cold War and the victory of capitalism, western society entered into the era of endlessness, the death of history. Art, like everything else was shaped by commerce, the prime tool of capitalism.

According to where you live in the western world and your educational level, this process might have come early or later, be more transparent or opaque. For many readers it is quite possible you weren't even born before the change was complete and do not remember a world which still held Grand Narrative ideals at heart. To offer a brief description, this is to say we now live in a world where truth is relative, there is no universal goal for humanity to agree upon, there is no clear distinctive direction for progress of the world and everything that means something can only mean that in relation to something else and also in relation to whom it is supposed to mean that and other orbiting forces and pressures. 

The line drawn between modern and post-modern art is important for us that discuss Heavy Metal. It is important because it's very different from art that is self-defining as modernist and post-modernist. Just as we live in a post-modern world regardless of whether we ascribe to postmodernist philosophical points of view willingly. The post-modern state is non-negotiable. And art that retains a modernist (or even worse, romanticist) mindset in this context faces challenges that would be alien to same art in 1970 or 1980.

To understand why post-metal rings hollow in the ears of old-school metalheads, you have to look to post-metal as willingly post-modernist music. It uses the sonic tools of metal (distortion, double bass, screams, etc) to ends clearly not modernist and not romanticist. It has no truths to offer and no ancient paths to long for. It is instead highly personal, cryptic, avoidant of any solid stance or ideal. It is music which references no Grand Narrative, it has no secret inside of it, it doesn't promise a hidden glimpse towards something bigger, whole, all-encompassing, Beautiful.

This doesn't mean that it can't be beautiful, for it often is. But the beauty is in its form and not its message. It's like architecture of a space in which no humans are meant to live. Beauty in itself, but no wonder the fascination with such curiosities does not last.
And before we boo and hiss at post-metal, let's look at modern resurgences of old types of metal, like neo-thrash, new old-school epic metal and so on. That music is not post-modernist willingly. It is however, not like the old music. It's a copy of the old music, in a post-modern era. It rings hollow not because of false ideals but because the concept of 'true ideals' in a post-modern world is suspect in itself. As odd as Heavy Metal could look and sound in the '80s, it was taken at face value by listeners because that was the way to treat art at the time. Today, when a band puts on the denim and leather and patches, all these signifiers are very clearly a surface reconstruction of elements of a deconstructed past. Truth is not at stake here, instead aesthetics.

All of modern Heavy Metal, be it post-metal or the staunchest manowar-like epic metal, is concerned with aesthetics. It knows exactly what it's trying to reference and judges itself with how closely it can achieve that predefined aesthetic vision. 

For every one of your favorite '70s and '80s Heavy Metal records, there's today, and I guarantee it, a clone band's clone album that is twice as well-played and produced as that, but without any of the spirit.

And this spirit is not a metaphysical demand from me that's strictly relevant to Heavy Metal or whatever, it is the spirit of the whole of the twentieth century that has perished.  

This is the clearest way to explain why Heavy Metal is dead and we are simply toying with the corpse.

Does this mean there can no longer be any Heavy Metal with spirit, vitality and importance in 2013? I think there can be, but not for us. Perhaps for young people who somehow inexplicably emerge with a belief in a new Grand Narrative, however dumb. For us that have survived the death of the old Ideals, Heavy Metal can only function as a time-machine. 

And the young people for whom x New Wave of New Wave of British Heavy Metal is like, so awesome, give them ten years in capitalist society, that'll fix their view on truth, beauty and progress. They will realize their heroes lied.

Now, of course, the jack in the deck is capitalism itself. It's not doing too well, lately. If it could be said that the last 20-30 years in Europe were the promised capitalist dream where enlightened individuals (never groups) rise above their peers and achieve wealth and freedom while their lessers toil at the lower classes, then we are entering an age of the capitalist nightmare, where the most the enlightened individual can hope for is to have food and a place to stay, while nine out of then of their peers simply die in the streets, deemed permanently unemployable by conglomerate banks and other overarching systems.

Could there be a resurgence of the concept of history itself? Will 'progress' again mean something and if so, what would that be? 

There are many left-field activists and politically aware people who will say to what I write that for them history never died and that their Grand humanist Narrative was always an enduring truth. To those quasi-theoretical people I can only say "yes, perhaps... but when did you last go to the cinema? When did you last watch those downloaded tv-shows from America you so love? When did you last read a good book describing the valiant ascent of an enlightened individual to the top of society? How much did you enjoy these products of capitalism whose main function is to deconstruct your social identity?" I am, myself quite on the left end of the political spectrum, but I have a sense of humor about this because I am truly a product of capitalism first and foremost. I recognize my memories of the glorious past are fantasies, and my belief in Humanity at best schizophrenic. Fervent to endorse and fight for the rights of the downtrodden, of women, of homosexuals, of immigrants, and at once mad with rage against the majority of humans that obstruct this path of ideals. The Grand Narrative is in shambles inside of me, both alive and dead at the same time. I am toying with the corpse.

These tensions might or might not be resolved (or made clearer) in my lifetime. Greece (my home country) is in complete disarray right now. The crisis is pan-European. America's not doing too hot either. Will capitalism be salvaged, the banking systems reconfigured? If so, at what cost to the system and what to the populace? Or will the reign be pulled even tighter and throw parts of the western world into outright chaos and war? Will we, to the march of the war drum remember old, manufactured Gods and nature and worship self-evident symbols of truth because we need them, again like good old fascists, or will be regain our social identity and fight for worker rights and a humanist future like good old communists? And what of that sneaking, crawling suspicion inside me that both of these paths we can take at the same time because we can not fully believe in anything anymore and we will mix and match as it suits us with the post-modernist tool-set that we have been given by inheritance?

Post Surgery

Post-rock has a few definitions. Most people consider the sound definition of 'instrumental songs played by a rock band that slowly build up to a crescendo and then do it all over again'. This is a valid definition, after all, from a point and onwards that's what most post rock bands sounded like. I see your Mono and trade you my Explosions in the Sky, zero sum.

However earlier on, post-rock seemed to be an attempt to subvert and/or invert the tropes of the rock genre while using its own means. Hence, since rock and roll is generally considered a physical sort of music, we'll write songs that are terse and lacking in groove. If rock and roll depends on charismatic frontmen, we'll have none of that. If rock and roll depends on verse/chorus/verse structure, we'll just write long suites.

Then we have post-metal. It certainly also subverts similar rock cliches, but in a very curious way, not too many metal tropes. Sure, rock music has tame structures, but there's very adventurous metal music (structurally) and there's been such for a while now. Whereas the adventurous rock music (the more outre types of progressive rock) is comparatively outside its mainstream, in metal terms, Metallica and Iron Maiden with their 12 minute songs are right there in the middle. So, for a post-metal band to write a long suite doesn't subvert anything in metal terms. Or say, repetition. The original second wave black metal bands (completely and totally the opposite of 'post-metal' anything) were droning on the same riff ten years before Pelican. 

What are the metal music tropes post-metal could really subvert? There's guitar solos, and indeed most post-metal bands do not have too many of those. But still, guitar solos are not the pure domain of metal music. There's double-bass drumming and constant palm-muting, really. That's pretty much it. Harsh vocals are also very punk-related. Curiously, post-metal bands do not shy away from double-bass, muted chords or people yelling at all. There's melodic (and usually high pitched) singing, and indeed post-metal bands do not attempt anything like that most of the time. If there's a pattern in post-metal choices, it's hard to detect.

But I do submit that there is a pattern, and it's a very schizophrenic one.

1. Post-metal bands understand - and communicate - with various types of rock music much more than they do with metal music. 

This has to do a lot with how metal music was coming out of an aesthetic depression so to speak circa the end of the '90s so nobody knew exactly what metal music was (outside of black metal which was startlingly clear to identify). Post-metal bands then are in a dialogue instead with the same old common rock and roll tropes, and some of the time punk rock tropes in particular. A heavy metal guise is a tool utilized, it's not the point. Consider arty punks that perhaps like a couple of metal bands -let's say Celtic Frost and Metallica- and they're subverting rock and punk tropes by playing with a few metal sonic identifiers like double bass and palm muting. In effect this means post-metal most of the time is post-punk or post-hardcore in most of all, post-indie. This is probably infuriating to real punks that consider their post-punk to be a historically different thing, but if they could be open-minded for a minute here...

2. Post-metal bands are not subverting metal tropes as much as they're incapable of achieving them in the first place.

To play a complicated and considered guitar solo takes a certain degree of capacity that the metal musician has to hone for a few decades. Heck, to have two guitarists playing interesting harmonies without it all coming out like mud takes a certain precision too. So, no soloist? No solos. No guitar bros for life? Single guitar. No audible bass tone? No bass. A disturbing aura of an autopsy permiates. Most post-metal bands, for all their rhythmic or compositional graces, do not seem to employ any talented lead players. There is no trope to subvert when one is incapable of scrutinizing the trope first-hand. Likewise with a talented lead singer that's willing to span a range. Not too many of those around, and those that do exist would be more interested in actually playing to the trope than to subvert it (for good or worse). 

This is revealing for post-metal, especially why long-time metal music listeners feel ill at ease with it. Post-metal is the outsiders looking inside metal music for incidental reasons, it's not forward thinking metal music made by passionate metalheads trying to come up with something new by testing limits. 

A case could be made that whatever actual post-metal experimentation occurred, it happened in the early '90s with the short rise of progressive metal instead. 

Isn't it startling how little time post-metal listeners have for progressive metal and its meandering solos, overdramatic singers and complicated song structures? It's because these post-metal listeners aren't actually interested in metal music, they're interested in the warped reflection of other rock types on the metal mirror. This also explains why although most real metal listeners were captivated for a spell by the types of Pelican or Isis, ten years down the line do not listen to that music much if at all. It's not just because they're getting older and more conservative, it's because it's exhausting to confuse the outsider perspective for the inner one. It leads to alienation from one's own core ethos.