Why is metal obsessed with its past?

This was a great essay. Hopefully the copyright strike will resolve shortly.

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Superb historical analysis right here. Cultural zombism is a perfect way to describe the state of metal since the late 2000s. I’ve noticed the trend seems to have shifted somewhat recently from hyper-compartmentalizing artists/bands into endless, inscrutable subgenres, to hyper-generalizing music based on vaguely defined “vibe.” Weezer, Machine Gun Kelly, My Chemical Romance, Tyler, the Creator and Lifelover somehow qualify as the same thing: “alt,” “doomer” or “sadgirl” music. Genre and scene have lost relevance and tangibility in an age where music is no longer tied to physical location and form – yet, creative and cultural stasis rules the day, when one would’ve imagined that the transcendence of physical limitation would’ve opened the door to myriad new possibilities.

Everything is a rehash and rearrangement of pre-digital ideas and aesthetics, mashed together into an indistinguishable, historically deracinated blob. There are no subcultures; there are “alt teens” who are defined by wearing black nail polish and listening to “emo sadboy shit” like Burzum and XXXTentacion. Hell, this comment is likely a tiresome rehash of observations that have been made ad nauseam often over the past half-decade or so.

I recently saw a youtube short by some late-twentysomething in a black snapback, which was something like metal subgenres ranked by heaviness. It started off with Sabbath’s “Paranoid” as the least heavy, followed by “Down with the Sickness,” going up to some newgen Bandcamp slam death band. Finally, the highest tier of metal heaviness was Babymetal, with the “content creator” doing an incredulous soyface as the clip of the song played. One of the top comments applauded the guy for “pissing off metal elitists” or some shit like that. It made me think that felonizing the consumption of heavy metal would be doing it a favor, because the present state of the genre (and those most visible as its ostensible representatives) is a fate worse than death, and there is little reason to hope that this state of humiliation will be surmounted.

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