80s decade utopia

[metalmaster]

[Moved from Victim Of Time./Mod]

Well after reading and discussing a bit about the matter in the Heavy Metal Killers comp. the idea came across my mind. We are so blind or to enthusiastic or chauvinist to understand the the 80s era was not a utopia.

Of course it would be the best era for many Heavy Metal-related things, but there was many shit around and INSIDE Metal. Ansd we are ready to parise this 80s decade and we never stop to see all that crap we now ignore but we mention as "poser" nodwadays.

I could mention among those crap things of the 80s:

1.- bands jumping into the trend (into satanic metal, into thrash, into crossover, etc)
2.- labels signing any untalented band which could sell some copies due to their image
3.-weirdos and sickos beign part of Heavy Metal. Because of these aliens, all metalheands were labeled as weirdos and sickos!!! You know, if a serial killer poped up in the 80s, he was a Heavy metal fan without doubt...

anyone can add some more items to the list.... after, the 80s was a great era, but not an utopia we worship senseless and brainless

[metalmaster]

sorry, forgot to put it in the right place

[ION BRITTON]

I don't think 80s was a utopia for heavy metal, but i do believe that the nowadays average band is much shittier than the average 80s band. The metal masterpieces of the 00's can be counted on the fingers of one hand as far as i'm concerned. I'm quite sure we won't ever witness the birth of a band of the CIRITH UNGOL or MANILLA ROAD league let alone seeing the new ACCEPT or the new MAIDEN being born.

Don't know about the others, but 95% of the new stuff i'm personally hearing is complete shit, i can't stand listening to even one song, either they call it ''true'', ''80s sounding'', ''retro'', ''old-school'' or whatever.

['pataphysicien]

no doubt the eighties cemented all the metal foundations, but there was bad music around then as now. it depends a lot on what your preferences are and which bands you come across I guess. for example there is no denying the pantheon of Doom Metal legends of the 80s, but the 2000s have been great for Doom as well. of course lots of mindboggling bullshit in between as always, but there are a lot of great newer bands around today.

I suppose it's also VERY different actually having been then and there. if the 80s are the start of someones metal biography of course their perspective will be different than that of younger generations (I'm 26). we are more like historians than first hand witnesses, trying to put the pieces together. still also those that were there are today discovering new bits and pieces of that history. thank the internet and websites like this.

from my own experience I like music from pretty much every decade since, say the 1960s, and I find great bands in all of them. just as I find things I'd rather make unheard. so in that sense I don't understand the 80s worship so many of today's metal kids seem to celebrate so enthusiastically. of course a great decade, but even the 90s produced awesome music.

[Helm]

The best thing about the 80's in relation to HM is also the worst thing.

Back then, a lot of very talented musicians flocked towards this sound because they thought they had a chance at success. Most grade A HM from the 80's was cut from this ambition. To make a living of it, to tour the world, to never have to have a real job ever again. Because it was a fresh, modernist movement there was a lot of experimentation. Nobody knew exactly, in 1981, how concrete and idiotically entrenched the genre definitions of Heavy Metal would become just 10 years from then. Anything went as long as you were passionate and real.

This is also the worst thing because there was an oversaturation in the sound and a lot of people that really shouldn't have bothered, put out records (especially in the thrash circuit circa 1987-90). Some of these records members here on this board love dearly and consider them true, but if a young person plays retro-thrash today, that's false for them. But in the 80's it was much more easy to be into HM for false reasons because then there still existed the chance for success in that form, it was high on the public consciousness. While a lot of bands were doing fresh takes on the HM sound as early as 1983, the cloning of the most successful emergent acts started as early. It's a good thing to face the truth: 99% of the HM vinyl from the 80's isn't worth a serious appreciator's time. There might be a historical curiosity there, a cute track here, a good riff there, a nice scream there, but it's not essential material for one that loves HM for the passion, the individual vision and the extreme honesty. As time grows by it's very easy to consider the obscure canadian '85 demo lp with the awesome opener track with the ripping scream and solo to be 'true', but... do we know? Have we met these people? They're lost in the sands of time but for all we know they were just dabblers in HM. As it's often said, anyone that picks up a guitar has at least one great riff in them, most even 3 good songs. So we consider them true because we don't have photos of them, we don't know that next year they went from playing RIPPING POWER METAL to power pop and we can't find out. That's the ultimate shelter of the 80's obscurist: that there is no way to verify the 'trueness' of all these small bands he deifies.

Obviously it's not so easy to do this with modern bands because they're right there on your myspace and on your youtube and it's so easy to tell how many of them are false and liars and ignorants... suddenly there aren't so many great new bands to be excited about... well just wait 20 years from now retro-thrash like Gamma Bomb will start sounding 'sweet' to record collectors even if their progenitors turn up their noses to them now...

I love a lot of 80's HM but that came from the 80's is not of the greatest consequence. It isn't of no consequence either as I said a lot of talented people were attempting novel things with the form. But the 90's also gave us some amazing metal both in progressive fields, of romantic doom metal and black metal also, widely against earlier commercialization of HM. And then the mid 90's were the worst time for mainstream metal.

I think the most beneficial state for HM is when the mainstream aspect of it is almost dead, so that musicians that play this sort of music know there is no chance of mega-stardom if they sell out. The thought that there'll be 1-2,000 people in the whole world at best that will get and love their sort of music should be enough to drive these artists. Heavy Metal is esoteric, it's not meant to be arena rock. So personally I am looking forward for this new tide of HM appreciation by the mainstreamers to ebb away again. The 10's will be better than the 00's in this respect, I think.

The responsibility of the lover of HM is to not waver in their standards, to not take bullshit as good music just because there's a nice riff here or a great vocal there. Whereas we cannot tell what of the 80's obscura is really for real as easy, with modern bands we can. Honesty shows. Passion shows. Vision shows.

[sabbat666]

What you said pretty much sums up how i feel on this topic subject, so ill just say "ditto".

i've often thought about that when listening to old obscure vinyls. if the poeple playing were true metalheads, or just trying to get laid and paid.

[rictusgrin666]

The best thing about the 80's in relation to HM is also the worst thing.

Because it was a fresh, modernist movement there was a lot of experimentation. Nobody knew exactly, in 1981, how concrete and idiotically entrenched the genre definitions of Heavy Metal would become just 10 years from then. Anything went as long as you were passionate and real.

This is the key point for me... I do like a lot of bands from this era who may have jumped on the metal bandwagon, aping the sounds and fashions of the time, but I think with a kind of innocence and exuberance. It was still exciting, rebellious, shocking etc to a mainstream audience and boundaries were pushed in all directions.
Innocence CAN BE an excuse!

Heavy Metal is esoteric, it's not meant to be arena rock. So personally I am looking forward for this new tide of HM appreciation by the mainstreamers to ebb away again. The 10's will be better than the 00's in this respect, I think.
.

Yeah, but I think the paradox is that HM aspires to arena rock levels in its most bombastic form. But when the rough edges are taken away and polished to be palpable for mass consumption it loses its metal essence.

[GJ]

I still prefer good metal over true metal...

/Ignorantis Dumbasson

[Avenger]

I still prefer good metal over true metal...

/Ignorantis Dumbasson

I agree.

I don't specifically listen to one band and not another based on how "true" they may be.

If it sounds good to my ears, then fuck it, I dig it.


EDIT: And because I can foresee some smart-ass bringing up the striker thread, I don't think that striker are terrible music wise, however, I do think that they are jumping on the bandwagon.

[daniel]

Well I have no obsession with 'trueness', I did to some degree at one point but thankfully not anymore, and I don't care one bit whether I can glean information about musicians' motives or personalities etc., if the music has the right feeling everything else is irrelevant. Helm seems to have some big issue about how music should be innovative, which is of zero interest to me, I could live happily the rest of my life never hearing any of the black/death/doom/progressive/technical wankery of the late 80's/90's again. It's quite a bold statement to make, stating that 99% of 80's metal is redundant to a serious appreciator. Now, I find this bordering on insulting, if I find magic in just one track on an LP, obscure or not, THEN IT'S WORTH MY TIME, and I'm a person who actually wants to buy LP:s and cherish them, I recall you saying you don't hunt vinyl, but MP3s Helm, and then you have the nerve to call yourself a 'metal archaeologist'. Am I mistaken or did you also have some sort of limit as to what you would pay for a record...? 20e? How are you going to compile those 100 perfect records if you're not willing to spend more than that? It's easy to go on about how passionate one is, and say it's crazy spending hundreds of euros on records, but to me it's something I'm compelled to do, to me it's idiotic spending so much money on clothes or eating out, that record will be with me forever and it gives me something only that record can give me. I'm not looking forward to some perfect day in the future when I can go through some gay ritual of playing my selected perfect records, that shit happens every day, and it's completely natural I don't have to make a huge deal of it. See when someone atually has to sacrifice more that their wrist muscles to get music the world becomes a very different place. But, I am also very careful not to fall into the trap many collectors do, where rarity comes to define quality.

Just because I, like many, find the 80's to have produced the most perfect metal, doesn't mean I worship every aspect of the 80's, I would think that is a given - it doesn't matter what other crap was going on then because I am obviously focusing on my preferences. Yes other things than simply the end product mean a lot to me when it comes to metal, but if there is an old band I love for their music well more often than not all other aspects of the band become irrelevant on the whole, certainly when drinking beer and playing the records, all you want to do is let the magic wash over you and forget anything negative, so what if a band went from power metal to pop, that doesn't take away from the validity of their 'first' efforts.

[Piotr Sargnagel]

Dear Mozart,

I think you should stick to just composing quartets. Your operas and symphonies just don't sound true to me.

Joseph Haydn.

[Helm]

Helm seems to have some big issue about how music should be innovative,

Not so much 'new' stuff as 'individual' stuff. Every person is different to the next one, and it's not because every person is 'new', it's because although we're all made from the same meats and biochemicals, we all grow up through different configurations of events so at the end we are distinguishable from each other. This is what I want from my HM as well: for it to be highly individual, passionate and honest. I don't need someone's band that they wanted to mimick Iron Maiden with, there's Iron Maiden right there to listen to.

The only reason I said there was great progressive metal, doom metal and black metal in the 90's was because if you listen to Fates Warning, My Dying Bride, In The Woods (to pick a few of the prominent bands from these types of music) you'll see that they are very individual bands who do not attempt to be liked by their audience because they are similar to something their audience already likes.

It's quite a bold statement to make, stating that 99% of 80's metal is redundant to a serious appreciator. Now, I find this bordering on insulting,

I can see that and I'm sorry if I offend. I should restate then to be more exact that it is redundant for myself as a serious appreciator. No point to speak in the place of other people.

I recall you saying you don't hunt vinyl, but MP3s Helm, and then you have the nerve to call yourself a 'metal archaeologist'. Am I mistaken or did you also have some sort of limit as to what you would pay for a record...? 20e? How are you going to compile those 100 perfect records if you're not willing to spend more than that? It's easy to go on about how passionate one is, and say it's crazy spending hundreds of euros on records, but to me it's something I'm compelled to do, to me it's idiotic spending so much money on clothes or eating out, that record will be with me forever and it gives me something only that record can give me. I'm not looking forward to some perfect day in the future when I can go through some gay ritual of playing my selected perfect records, that shit happens every day, and it's completely natural I don't have to make a huge deal of it. See when someone atually has to sacrifice more that their wrist muscles to get music the world becomes a very different place. But, I am also very careful not to fall into the trap many collectors do, where rarity comes to define quality.

There's a discussion to be had there but I think perhaps you are saying some of these things mostly because you felt insulted so I won't hold on to them. If you still feel like you want to back up every word in that quote then I can reply.

so what if a band went from power metal to pop, that doesn't take away from the validity of their 'first' efforts.

Hm, generally I wouldn't disagree but there's something to be said about continuity... people don't expect it from entertainers, generally. I think there's merit in doing so.

[MassOfKthulu]

I can see tilemaxos' point in this case.Being more of a metal historian,I can also quote examples.
the singer and guitarist from Heathens rage,the militia singer,titan force,watchtower members are/were playing hip hop right after they realised there's no million dollar contracts.
He's right about most of the things he talks about
however the 99% percentage is also way too exaggerated.Maybe for Polish metal or nwobhm there's more mediocre stuff than there's good stuff,but i ld say especially between 83 and 86 (before metal gave way to glam/thrash) the percentage of great stuff VS shit is in favour of greatness.

['pataphysicien]

Dear Mozart,

I think you should stick to just composing quartets. Your operas and symphonies just don't sound true to me.

Joseph Haydn.

that was beautiful

[Khnud]

Dear Mozart,

I think you should stick to just composing quartets. Your operas and symphonies just don't sound true to me.

Joseph Haydn.

And stop ripping off Bach.