Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Concerning BDM: Less fashion, more passion

I want to start with a little anecdote. I was on a festival some years ago and wore some skate shoes, basketball shorts, a flex fit cap and an Endstille shirt (a German Black Metal band). I have always worn pretty ‘normal’ clothing, some kind of skateboarding style if anything. As I walked across the camping site, some ultra-true Metal fan (the long haired fat dude in a leather jacket kind of fan) shouted “Hey, you fucking Hip Hop fag!” It’s not that this hurt my feelings or anything, but I think this shows very well the typical attitude of most Metal fans.
Now, when I first entered the Death Metal scene and especially the Brutal Death Metal scene I thought that it was a very mature and relaxed scene. The discrepancy between the mostly very extreme imagery and lyrical content and the attitude of the people on the other hand is remarkable. Compared to other Metal scenes, such as the Heavy, Pagan or Black Metal scene etc., BDM people are mostly pretty ‘normal’ and don’t take everything that seriously (except the music itself of course). There aren’t a lot of posers, wannabes or people alike in the scene. People don’t really care too much about what you wear or other superficial things. Or do they?
Although people in this scene are in fact mostly pretty easygoing dudes, there are regularly things people say, that extremely annoy me. One time some people bitch about Pathology being on Victory Records (a hardcore label) and the label magically turns music into ‘core’ (whatever that is). Or when Acranius members wear contemporary clothing they become gay. The other day it’s Devourment not releasing another MTD and offering baseball caps as merchandise (and by that becoming ‘deathcorish’, needless to say). Or bands becoming extremely overrated, because they have a girl on the mic, or people hate other styles of music (Deathcore, Justin Bieber etc.) and put a huge effort into being extremely childish and irrational. This is a bad and petty attitude.
I always thought that the BDM scene was full of grown up and mature people, but that is at least not true for all. Still people are way too superficial, care a lot about the ‘trveness’ of the image and the fashion around the music and act as if they were the most elite BDM fans. But mostly they are just immature and silly. Of course there are a lot of traditions in the culture of Death Metal and most are important for the authenticity of the music and everything around it, but things like clothing are not amongst them.
What people should care about most is the quality of the music and the love for a great genre. Less fashion, more passion.

7 comments:

  1. I feel like most of that is a way to haze out the faggots, so it can stay the way it is, the way everyone loves it, without being invaded by kids that are IN IT for the fashion. Like a protective defense measure. Any time a music scene gets invaded by those "types," it always eventually gets watered down and modified negatively by their influence. Noone in the BDM scene wants that shit.

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  2. I claim that people who are concerned with "kids" and how they look like are the faggots. Music isn't a thing that can be invaded. If people like to do BDM they will. If they want to make watered down BDM as you call it, you don't have to listen. But I am confident that there will always be people that create good music. And if nobody does it, then at least I will.

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  3. KIDS (teens, confused young adults) are typically the ones that take a style of music, exploit it (or make a generic version because they dont actually understand it), and outnumber the actual loyal fans of the genre. Therefore essentially flooding it with shit and TAKING OVER. How the fuck do you think deathcore came into being in the first place??

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  4. Well I don't see how a music style is something one can take over. How does that work? Will those kids force bands to make bad music? Deathcore is just a new genre, what exactly did it take away from BDM/DM?

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  5. You can make all the good music you want, but if the posers producing shit outnumbers the bands and musicians producing quality music, then the ratio becomes unbalanced. It aint fuckin rocket science haha

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  6. Well then BDM would become even more underground than now. I don't see the problem really.

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