When did Doom Metal/Black Metal and the like become "hip" and why?

xpost

yeah Amber Asylum

oh and obvious point but I would say that Aquarius Records in San Francisco is a great case of people who were always into tons of weird and cool music and obviously a "hipster" epicenter and they have always supported black metal and doom, so if you're looking for who put this stuff into hipster bloodstreams, AQ is one contender on the West Coast at any rate. Cinematically, Harmony Korine's "GUMMO" soundtrack did the same for NYC and stylists/fashionistas, I reckon.

What put me off BM for the longest time was the neo nazi connotations. I know I'm not the only one.

Considering Aquarius stocks Chunklet magazine - "hipster" epicenter is quite apt.

aQ might cater to hipsters but the guys behind it are def long term metal fans, who also like other stuff, like most of us here on ilx posting to this thread really.

I think the neo-nazi connotations are an attraction for the "art world" types--fantasies of an all-white, all-male universe.

Yes, Zorn/Boredoms-gateway-metal dudes are like an older generation of hipster than Southern Lord/Vice photo book/Matthew Barney nu-indie hipsters

i'm younger (29 next month), but i definitely am coming to metal via an interest in jazz/noize

xxp - duh, one is not one's audience.

A lot of hipsters are actually drawn to it BECAUSE of the neo-nazi connotations. Look how we deify they openly racist eugenics fan Varg Vikernes ON THIS VERY BOARD as a hero.

i definitely am coming to metal via an interest in jazz/noize

same here + "brutal prog"

xpost:

we do?

He's the one in the picture with the photoshopped cat, right?

liking burzum the band and burzum the dude are obv two very different things, if that's what you're getting at...

the dude in the picture w/the cat is v cute in that picture.

He's the one in the picture with the photoshopped cat, right?

hahaha. you will have to be more specific. this if the internet after all. ;-)

also: hipsters have been acting like heshers for a decade now (PBR, wolf t-shirts, partying hard), it seems natural that some would grow up and get into REAL METAL

"are you being an ironic hersher, man?"

"I can't even tell anymore."

I'm pretty sure it started before that. Grohl was probably doing it to ride along on it's wave. That record truly flopped though, so it didn't do him or anyone involved much good.

(a) agreed, I don't think Probot was that big a deal for more than like a week
(b) I'm really intolerant of stuff like this tbh, I don't even see where this 'wave' exists - the idea that Grohl had anything to gain in the 'credibility' stakes, circa 2004, by doing songs with King Diamond, Kurt from DRI and Max from Soulfly is just bizarro world to me. I am a hundred miles from feeling like I need to jump to Dave Grohl's defence but I get really het up by this narcissistic thing where people are all 'well this guy has sold eight-figure sums of albums but he's still glomming onto my music, how about that!'

what are the current supposed crossover 'hipster' metal albums out of curiosity

http://tanakamusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/vargcat.jpg

Yes!

yeah how do i get started on this poser business

also in general can we cut all the side-stepping around the word "hipster" like it's some ugly "other." I'm so goddamn tired of everyone on ILX being like "I'm fat/old school/unfashionable/nerdy so I'm not a hipster." Jesus christ, we all post on a message board where people deconstruct the meaning of the word "balearic" and transcribe gucci mane lyrics and call Dirty Projectors "boring normal indie" and brag about the blues 78s they found at estate sales. Enough with the posturing already, ffs

Deathspell Omega is pretty awesome.

yeah no fronting I'm a hipster I just want to kno to what to listen to I can get my card renewed

so*

also in general can we cut all the side-stepping around the word "hipster" like it's some ugly "other." I'm so goddamn tired of everyone on ILX being like "I'm fat/old school/unfashionable/nerdy so I'm not a hipster." Jesus christ, we all post on a message board where people deconstruct the meaning of the word "balearic" and transcribe gucci mane lyrics and call Dirty Projectors "boring normal indie" and brag about the blues 78s they found at estate sales. Enough with the posturing already, ffs

quit posing, basically?

man, deathspell omega IS pretty awesome.

xp - Whiney - yeah, it's kinda like saying, "I'm not bourgeois, I'm only middle class."

i'm like 20 min behind the convo because i'm using crappy bolt bus wifi

but general "hipster-approved" metal in 00s was obv, Mastodon, Boris, SunnO))), Earth, Torche, Nachtmystium, etc

There was a short wave did decade that actually went by "hipster metal" because dudes looked like indie rockers and had no chops: Danava, Saviours, The Sword,

Obv, the best hipster approved metal record is Mastodon's Leviathan

i own 2 blank dogs records on vinyl, i am a hipster.

1. Denial — ppl in williamsburg
2. Anger — ppl in chicago
3. Bargaining — maybe if i cop to liking blink 182 ppl will stop calling me hipster
4. Depression — what is even the point of buying this metal record, i'll always be thought of as a despicable hipster 4ever
5. Acceptance — whiney g whinegarten

I get really het up by this narcissistic thing where people are all 'well this guy has sold eight-figure sums of albums but he's still glomming onto my music, how about that!'

hey that's not what i was doing. I think you know me well enough to know that.

but general "hipster-approved" metal in 00s was obv, Mastodon, Boris, SunnO))), Earth, Torche, Nachtmystium, etc
...
Obv, the best hipster approved metal record is Mastodon's Leviathan

mea culpa

add me to that acceptance category - i think i was the first to cop to it in this thread, actually.

Nate Carson should weigh in here, too.

nate was a hipster before any of us who heard all these bands before anyone else and booked their pre debut shows in attics/art gallerys in Portland ;)

1. Denial — ppl in williamsburg
2. Anger — ppl in chicago
3. Bargaining — maybe if i cop to liking blink 182 ppl will stop calling me hipster
4. Depression — what is even the point of buying this metal record, i'll always be thought of as a despicable hipster 4ever
5. Acceptance — whiney g whinegarten

amazing!

he also gets up half an hour before going to bed
xp

xp - i wasn't calling nate a hipster, to be clear, just acknowledging that he'd have insight on the issue.

there's also the gourmand vibe of black metal - "this band from tasmania that's actually only one guy who lives out in the middle of nowhere, records all his stuff onto an old tascam, no-one's ever met him -- his early tapes are the most incredible thing ever!!" - that agrees nicely with the indie need for exclusivity, access to secrets, a feeling of being informed. whereas death metal, I mean, let's be honest indie types, a lot of those death metal dudes are the guys who used to beat the shit out of us in high school, and it's weird to see dudes like that making music, which for indie/gettin-our-asses-kicked kinda dudes is coded as a realm to which we have/had access but our tormentors do/did not.

this seems totally otm, except that in high school i was a nerdy metal kid into thrash & death, mostly pretty chopsy stuff. any metal-leaning bully-types listened to pantera & slayer, which i liked too.

xp to Kerr: yeah it's not you rilly but that guy has been into the bands whose members he was working with on 'Probot' for pretty much longer than both of us put together, for that reason I choose to believe his intentions were sincere y'know

Grohl probably was a "hesher" in high school.

now hold on there pardner, I get pleasure form the art of Varg Vikernes, but I don't co-sign with his racism.

Obvious point, could invoke Wagner or D.W. Griffiths here too, but:

I love Patricia Highsmith's novels, but I don't agree with the opinions she spouted in her alcoholic anti-semitic letters to her friends.
I think Rick James' "Give it Me Baby" is funky and sexy but don't support burning prostitutes with crack pipes.
I admire the prose of Sir Thomas Browne and Jean Bodin but don't support the verdicts they returned at seventeenth century witch trials.

Because I teach the artwork of the 16th & 17th centuries, a deeply doctrinaire time of radical religious extremism and the espionage/security states and torture practices that went with that, I am perfectly accustomed to loving the artwork of people with completely toxic and icky and oppressive views, so to me it's just not hard to admire the sound of Burzum records while realizing full well that his ideology is preposterous. As a homo, I'm quite aware of the homophobic views of the first generation of Norwegian black metal bands (cf. the murder of a cruising middle aged gay dude described in "Lords of Chaos") and I'm not giving black metal some kind of "get out of ethics free pass" or just looking the other way.

Going out on a limb, I'd say that the fantasies of hatred in the music are a part of its appeal because they constitute an extremism without limits which is auto-immunizing for the consumer who is an anti-racist/philo-semitic/PC/lefty "hipster" precisely because those views *aren't* acceptable: it's no different from watching slasher films or documentaries about sharks, you are in awe of the lack of restraint that other beings permit themselves and their capacity to reach amoral / immoral stances that you don't for a moment regard as possible or desirable for yourself. I think the consensus of secular modernity is so pervasive that black metal becomes by that very fact ironically wildly compelling because it constitutes a declaration of virulently atavistic beliefs which have been so effectively banished and exorcised from liberal multicultural discourse that they show up as quaint and hopelessly exotic to people who are safely in art world chattering classes environments like NYC and SF. But in fact of course racism/Anti-Semitism isn't actually exotic or out-of-place in America at all, (why do you think Sarah Palin chose the thorougly black metal name of "Trig" for her child anyway?).

not that it ~really~ matters, but i just realized that at my school (in my year), we had "skaters" instead of heshers. none of them really skateboarded much, or well, but they did all wear carhartt jackets and listen to pantera and party a lot. the real metalheads were in my honors classes (and band) and generally not-threatening, but the skaters were like the public face of metaldom to me, and i wasn't interested. (actual skateboarding i thought ruled, and i was always disappointed that none of them seemed to have any interest in it)

I realise this might be shining more of a light on myself than is wise but the reason I feel really prickly about 'hipster' being used as a pejorative about every last fucking thing is that none of the stuff I listen to that supposedly comes under this umbrella has ever increased my social standing or to the best of my knowledge led anyone to look more favourably on me or... anything like that

But in fact of course racism/Anti-Semitism isn't actually exotic or out-of-place in America at all, (why do you think Sarah Palin chose the thorougly black metal name of "Trig" for her child anyway?).

Because she had aspirations that he would actually understand and pass trigonometry?

oof what is with this thread. pfunkboy be trollin'! it's almost 2010 people!

hahaha. close thread.

now hold on there pardner, I get pleasure form the art of Varg Vikernes, but I don't co-sign with his racism.

If you ever give dude or his label any money, you're essentially co-signing racism imo

didn't we already cover the fact that part of what enabled metal to be popular among "hipsters" is the ability to download it for free off the internet?

re: burzum

especially since--unlike wagner--dude considers racist dogma as an essential part of his art.