Being an avid and honestly sometimes obsessed fan of heavy metal music, there is one thing that really peaks my interest when I look back at the last decade of music.  The complete lack of CLASSIC albums.

If you look back at the history of metal and/or hard rock dating back to the late 60's early 70's all the way up through the 90's, there were new bands coming along that were putting out albums that people will label "classic", meaning that they are genre defining, monumental slabs of molten glory that will forever stand the test of time and be revered by fans for years and years to come.  Such albums that when they came out blew everybody's mind and changed the game altogether.  In the 70's you had Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, The Scorpions, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple.  Then in the 80's Iron Maiden emerged (although they had started in the 70's), followed by Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and the countless other bands in the thrash movement, then in the 1990's there were trend setting bands like Pantera, Machine Head, White Zombie etc etc etc and the list goes on.  Regardless of what you may or may not think of the music the bands I have listed put out you cannot deny the impact and influence that they had on their respective generations of listeners.  When bands like this put out albums they set the bar, everybody was put on notice that this is what you have to live up to in order to run with the big dogs.

Take a look at what has emerged from the year 2000 onwards.....in my opinion nothing new that measures up.  I'm not saying that there hasn't been any "good" albums put out since, there have been many.  I still am a huge fan of metal to this day and I still pick up albums that I think are really good, but when I look back on my collection from the past decade I don't see any genre bending mind splitting albums that 10 years from now will be looked back on the same way we look back on those old Maiden or Priest albums.

So why is that?  Why all of a sudden as a new millennium hits is there a lack of seminal releases and new genre bending bands?  Is it just my perspective?  Am I just getting old?  They say that the first music you fall in love with is always gonna be the best music you ever hear, which I think that may account for some of my disenfranchisement with a lot of today's metal, but not all of it.  I'm definitely too old to understand bands like All That Remains and shit like that, which is geared more towards a teenage audience.   But go and take a look at any all ages metal show and see what band T shirts all the kids are wearing....Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Slayer, etc.....all the old bands!  This generation of metalheads is paying more reverence to the bands of old than the bands of their own generation.  When I was a teenager growing up in the mid to late 90's, we had a love for the classics, but THE bands for us were Pantera, Machine Head, Zombie, and some of the bands like Testament who were still churnin out relevant music, and of course Metallica were on top of the world even though they were putting out really bad albums.  It seems like today, kids gravitate towards the old bands from the 70's/80's and the new bands that sound exactly like that (aka ripping them off).

So if it's not just me being an old curmudgeon, then what is it?  I don't think there is one easy answer, nor do I claim to have every piece to the puzzle in place but I do think I know the root cause, and I know this is going to open a huge pandora's box and a can of worms but this is what I think is the main cause.....

Downloading.

Ah great, I know here we go again.  This old debate.  Before you roll your eyes or get angry, I'm not going to get up on my soapbox and preach about the moral rights and wrongs of downloading, because I don't care about them and that argument has been beaten to death and back to life and to death again.  However I think it's the most relevant cause of this strange paradox I am talking about in this blog post.

To start, just look at the time line.  Napster and free downloading started to get really big around 2000ish, the same time frame we start to see a decline in really big classic albums.  Not a coincidence if you ask me.  No matter what your opinion of free downloading is, whether you do it or not, you cannot deny the simple fact that if a band doesn't sell albums it doesn't make as much money.  You can't debate that, it's a simple fact.  Now I know that bands make their money elsewhere and record labels rip them off blah blah blah, but as a metal band coming up trying to tour and get signed, you starve.  And when you can't sell albums, at the live show or at the record store, you starve more.  That's the number one cause of bands breaking up....people get sick of being broke and you can't blame them for that!  I know we are supposed to do this just for the love of it, and many of us do....but not making any money and in fact LOSING money some times on the road is really difficult.  Fact is bands HAVE to tour to get themselves noticed (the whole notion of the internet making peoples music accessible all over so you don;t have to tour to sell albums is completely idiotic!), so couple increased gas prices which really add up when you are in a tour van hauling a trailer full of gear, with really low album sales and you got a situation that makes it difficult for bands to last and get good and reach their full potential.  A prime example is my bands first album has had a couple thousand traced downloads from the source computer, and about 10 of them were from itunes where we charge $8.99 for the album.  Had those couple thousand people bought our disc we could have easily gone on an extensive tour to support it.

This has created another interesting attitude in music these days which i find totally disgusting.  Bands make more money off merchandise than they do off their music, so they are told to sell themselves as a "product".  Make a cool t shirt, pins and various other crap that looks all pretty and use your music as the commercial vehicle to sell this stuff to the masses.  This has always been there to a certain extent, but the level it has reached these days is complete nonsense.  Basically every band has become KISS.  Where's the incentive to spend time trying to write an immortal masterpiece that bends time and space if that's not puttin money in the bank?  The focus is now on who can make the coolest t shirt that is gonna sell, which is style over substance.  Personally i think that's crap and that kind of forced commercialism is no good for music at all.

The other thing which people falsely applaud is that all the big record labels are crumbling.  Don't get me wrong, I think the industry has created this problem for itself by overcharging the public for music for the last 25 years or so, but if the labels are gone, who is gonna invest in these bands?  Who is gonna put in the time and support these bands while they develop and get their music out there?  Who's gonna finance the recording of their next album?  DIY???? You know how much DIY pays you?  Not enough to feed and house 5 dudes and their families and give them a comfortable living I'll tell you that much from first hand experience!

So what I'm getting at here is a sharp decline in album sales makes it harder for bands to survive, get really good, and make that album that is gonna put their stamp on world of music.  Most bands if you look back put out many albums, EP's, demos and etc before they get that big break and put out that classic disc.  Take away another portion of their very limited income and it makes it all the more difficult.

I'm not preaching to you whether or not to download music for free.  I completely understand people's attitude from a consumer's standpoint as I too have overpaid for music for years.  I also understand that money gets tight and sometimes it just is what it is.  But I will say that if you never buy music, then you aren't supporting metal.  I still buy music to this day, both in physical and digital forms from bands that I love.  I strongly encourage you to do the same, and especially if you go to a show and see that independent touring band on their way up.  That 10 bucks you drop at the table on their album means a ton to them and it really helps them out.

Another contributing factor to the current state of things in my opinion is recording technology.  A lot of albums that come out these days sound exactly the same. It's all very formulaic and uninspired.  Nobody seems to want to put any of their own signature sound or style in their recordings these days.  Like when you hear any old Pantera album you know that's Dimes guitar instantly.  When you hear any old Iron Maiden track it takes half a millisecond for it to register that it's f**kin Maiden comin out of the speakers.  These days you could easily take 3 albums by 3 different bands and not be able to distinguish the guitar tone or the drum sound from any of them, because it's all digital, sampled and most of the humanity is squeezed out of it.  There's not point to this, it just makes you feel like you've heard this a hundred times already.

This technology has also enabled every Dick and Jane to put out an album from the comfort of their own home, which has it's advantages and disadvantages.  Advantages are demos are easier, recording music to show your band mates is easier, plus more.  But the main disadvantage is that a lot of troglodytes can put out a lot of really really bad music and just flood the market with it, so on the indy level you gotta weed through a galaxy of garbage to get to the really good stuff.  


So this is just my 2 cents on where we are at in metal and music these days and why.  Like I already stated I still love metal unconditionally and that will never change, it's as much of a part of my life as anything is, and has been one of the only constants since my teen years.  But I do feel that there are major issues being faced by our beloved genre in this day and age, which hopefully won't be issues forever that bands and fans alike have to face.  I'll be very interested to see where things go in this next decade, but one thing's for sure, I will be seeing you all down at the front of the stage!