After my post the other day, I got a comment from the legend Kogi. At first I was just going to answer it in the coment section, but my response kept getting longer and longer, so I thought it made sense just to post it all here. Maybe it will be interesting to a few others.
Thanks man, that means a lot. Hmmm, lore.... Well, i dunno if this counts as lore, but here we go. About 12 years ago, I was getting so burned out on the music I was hearing. I had always been in punk bands, and been into punk music, and garage punk and stuff like that, but I also really loved Slayer. Everybody I hung out with hated Slayer and I was the butt of many jokes. More and more, I started to hate listening to generic punk stuff, but I didn't know what I really liked or what I was really wanting. I didn't really know that this kind of hardcore even existed, to be honest. I tasked a good friend to help me find what I like, because I knew he liked heavier shit too. It took a long time, he would get close with some things, but there was usually something that I didn't like. I was craving some sort of mid-tempo Death n' Roll, I just didn't know it. The first thing he showed me that kind of blew me away was Entombed, specifically the Uprising LP. And I was like FUCK YES MORE OF THIS. Eventually I found Burning Love, it was almost perfect. Then CURSED. This was what I was looking for, this was what I was missing all those years. Blackened, Crusty, downtuned, Angry hardcore punk/metal that was neither punk nor metal. I can't tell you how many time I've listened to their first record. (The coolest thing about all of this might just be that I ended up becoming friends with their singer, Chris, who is the nicest fucking guy on the planet). After that I was ravenous and I started hunting down hardcore blogs and trying to find like-minded people. I found a few, but I had a creative itch, I always liked designing websites, and I wanted to just post the stuff I was really getting into, and nothing else. So, with blogs like The Elementary Revolt as a guide, I just started posting. At first it was stuff I liked and already knew about, but eventually I started realizing that there was a TON of this kind of music being put out every day on Bandcamp, so I started posting things I found from there. The rest is kind of a blur to be honest. At one point, Chris's blog Manic Compression got randomly nuked one day, and he graciously started posting on this blog. He was a machine and he really kept this place afloat for a few years while I was starting to get burned out. Eventually life happened and the posts died down. But throughout it all, the chat remained very active and Jerm managed to squeeze out a few posts here and there (I kid, Jerm). Now, hopefully I am back in the swing of things and I'm really enjoying the posts that I am making. I hope that you guys are too. And that's basically how this all came to be.
I do have one question for you guys. This is one we have all been asked by family or co-workers. The "What kind of music do you listen to" question. It's brutal. But what do you guys say? What even is this music really. I usually end up telling people "Death Metal", but the more I think about it, the more I realize it's not true at all. I don't consider most of the things on this blog to be "metal". And I am reluctant to just call it hardcore, because in most cases, that means Hardcore Punk, and that's really not my thing either. Crust is close but it just reminds me of crust punks I used to hang out with that had Discharge patches on their dirty clothes. To my ears, Blackened Hardcore sounds the closest. Even my wife who is very knowledgeable about cool music in general cannot answer my question, she says it can't be categorized. So maybe that's it. It just is what it is. Just wondering what your guys' thoughts are. Sorry for rambling
5 comments:
I tell everyone I listen to loud abrasive noise. I feel like that covers a lot of bases.
I often deflect the question by saying "loud obnoxious music" and the response lets me know if I should say more.
Great post, enjoyed getting a little backstory on probably my favorite place on the internet (i honestly have very little use for it other than keeping up with music and films). Really happy to see this resurgence lately, and definite shoutout to Chris M who I randomly became friends with in a FB group years ago and in turn ended up here, he's made me a fan of so many bands over the years. To expand on the previous comments, it's kind of absurd how much I've come to loathe that question over the years as a person who is genuinely obsessed with and lives for music. My most recent go to response has become, " Music you've never heard of and probably wouldn't like. "
I usually just tell people "devil music". Conversation usually ends pretty quick after that so...yay me? also I know of mastiff but haven't listened much. I'll have to change that.
Thx for the background. I've always been curious. As for what I say to folks, I just say I listen to a bit of everything, which is closer to true than not as I've gotten older. We can talk about The Hollies or Dödsrit, it's all good to me.
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