An Open Love Letter to SYL (and how it ended me)

My arm-flexing-party joke photo notwithstanding, there are few things I detest more than machismo. Contrived machismo is probably the biggest offender. In my opinion, physical intimidation, when detected, should be shut down immediately, with knives and poison if necessary. Before SYL, my view of 90% of all metal was that of a large tattooed drunk guy pointing a fat index finger in my chest and growling “hey fag... don't fuck with me... I'm craaaaazy.” Observing local Sacramento underground metal shows did nothing to challenge this conception. Take a look at the front men of most extreme metal or hardcore whatever bands and specifically how they hold themselves. Their band photos, lyrics etc. It's all a bunch of “ooh look out for me I'm a tough guy” horseshit. Their vocal performances deliver that same sad, pathetic attempt at intimidation with staccato growls that carry absolutely no fucking personality at all. They are, for the most part, a worthless, soulless bunch of interchangable schoolyard bullies who want the audience's lunch money to buy WHOOO BEER YEAH.
The album that introduced me to Dev was City and it was a complete u-turn from banality to brilliance. It was exactly what truly angry music should sound like. That is: ANGRY; not just some big guy celebrating his bigness and brand new skull tattoo but truly believably pissed-right-the-fuck-off.
It was the soundtrack of an eternity spent in the split second that one's mind finally snaps from frustrated to psychotic. There was no slow, plodding “ooh be afraid of us we are are heavy” Pantera-rip-off breakdowns and none of that cartoony “when i'm not fucking i'm fighting” ridiculousness. Oh no. This was the sound of the guy who had BEEN intimidated. HIS lunch money was stolen once, twice, a hundred times... however many times it takes to push a man too far. This was him rearing up and cracking Mr. Manly-Man's pig-nose right back into his empty skull. This was the soundtrack to an out-of-the-blue attempted murder. It was a “NOT TODAY, COCKSUCKER” to the world of smug assholes and it was pure inspiration to me. No pretension, just a thousand-mile-a-second blast of screaming hate from the heart of a man who has clearly had exactly enough of your stupid bullshit, Jim. REAL anger burned to disc restored my faith in music as an art form.

The album, City is my favorite recorded sound. As far as I'm concerned, it is untouchable.

*claps* very nice. City was what got me into Strapping as well.

Excellently put-- I've always preferred the words/sound of the 'oppressed' rage as opposed to the 'oppressor' sort of rage in heavy music. I know it can be angsty as fuck but I don't mind when it is. I think a certain level of ridiculous angst in music is fun.

~Josiah

You've been listening to the wrong bands.

Interesting, nice read.

You've been listening to the wrong bands.

Yeah, I think this might be partly true. Thinking of bands like Opeth and Between the Buried and Me, for instance: they're all very mild-mannered and none of them sound as if they'd like to take your lunch money. There's still plenty of bullshit out there, of course...

But, City (and most of Strapping) does kick ass specifically in the way that was just detailed, so I have to agree, also.

I agree 100% with what you've said about City. It's just so blindingly DESPERATE of an album. More so than any other of his works. Except for Alien, in some places.

You've been listening to the wrong bands.

Yeah, I think this might be partly true. Thinking of bands like Opeth and Between the Buried and Me, for instance: they're all very mild-mannered and none of them sound as if they'd like to take your lunch money. There's still plenty of bullshit out there, of course...

Even with the bands that dont take themselves too seriously (I like BTBAM, by the by), when the vocals kick in, I just dont fucking BUY it. It's not really angry to me; It's just someone showing off the growl they worked really hard to deathify. The Dev is believably pissed off and it just reaches out and throttles anyone who thinks they're making "angry" music. The fastest, most bullet-belt-wearing, death grunting, down-tuned beardo band on earth will never be as heavy as City's softest song specifically because of the emotional credibility in Dev's voice.

The phenomenon of Dev's superiority is manifest in the language with which these other bands describe their music. Every last one of them calls it "brutal." Their fans call it "brutal. The word "brutal" has an inescapable connotation of stupidity. Baboons are brutal. "Anger," on the other hand, has a righteous connotation and that, I argue, is why SYL (and City specifically), leaves "brutal" bands in the fucking dust.

You've been listening to the wrong bands.

Yeah, I think this might be partly true. Thinking of bands like Opeth and Between the Buried and Me, for instance: they're all very mild-mannered and none of them sound as if they'd like to take your lunch money. There's still plenty of bullshit out there, of course...

Even with the bands that dont take themselves too seriously (I like BTBAM, by the by), when the vocals kick in, I just dont fucking BUY it. It's not really angry to me; It's just someone showing off the growl they worked really hard to deathify. The Dev is believably pissed off and it just reaches out and throttles anyone who thinks they're making "angry" music. The fastest, most bullet-belt-wearing, death grunting, down-tuned beardo band on earth will never be as heavy as City's softest song specifically because of the emotional credibility in Dev's voice.

The phenomenon of Dev's superiority is manifest in the language with which these other bands describe their music. Every last one of them calls it "brutal." Their fans call it "brutal. The word "brutal" has an inescapable connotation of stupidity. Baboons are brutal. "Anger," on the other hand, has a righteous connotation and that, I argue, is why SYL (and City specifically), leaves "brutal" bands in the fucking dust.

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that. SYL is embodied by the emotions expressed, whereas with other bands, the emotional spectrum is left flat and there's a disconnect between emotional expression and musical implementation. For instance, I like BtBaM, but I've never felt any real emotional pull from their music--I understand the directions they're taking and all that, but on the whole, it's expressively static. I was impressed with the jump from Alaska to Colors, but there's still something missing, and I think that's the credibility you're talking about. But anyway, I've fallen tangent.

Categorically, I'd say SYL is in a league of its own. I don't consider BtBaM or Opeth to be "angry," just heavy. But I have a feeling that the musical goals of both of those acts aren't related to being angry, per se, but only to being big and weighty. The point I'm really driving at in a roundabout way is that while SYL is angrier and more emotional than other forms of heavy music, I wouldn't say that it totally rubs out the "brutal" bands simply because they're not meeting the same criteria that does SYL. Personally, I think SYL is better than these other acts (for a number of reasons), but they're in a totally separate musical sphere, moving nearly parallel.

An Open Love Letter to SYL (and how it ended me)

My arm-flexing-party joke photo notwithstanding, there are few things I detest more than machismo. Contrived machismo is probably the biggest offender. In my opinion, physical intimidation, when detected, should be shut down immediately, with knives and poison if necessary. Before SYL, my view of 90% of all metal was that of a large tattooed drunk guy pointing a fat index finger in my chest and growling “hey fag... don't fuck with me... I'm craaaaazy.” Observing local Sacramento underground metal shows did nothing to challenge this conception. Take a look at the front men of most extreme metal or hardcore whatever bands and specifically how they hold themselves. Their band photos, lyrics etc. It's all a bunch of “ooh look out for me I'm a tough guy” horseshit. Their vocal performances deliver that same sad, pathetic attempt at intimidation with staccato growls that carry absolutely no fucking personality at all. They are, for the most part, a worthless, soulless bunch of interchangable schoolyard bullies who want the audience's lunch money to buy WHOOO BEER YEAH.
The album that introduced me to Dev was City and it was a complete u-turn from banality to brilliance. It was exactly what truly angry music should sound like. That is: ANGRY; not just some big guy celebrating his bigness and brand new skull tattoo but truly believably pissed-right-the-fuck-off.
It was the soundtrack of an eternity spent in the split second that one's mind finally snaps from frustrated to psychotic. There was no slow, plodding “ooh be afraid of us we are are heavy” Pantera-rip-off breakdowns and none of that cartoony “when i'm not fucking i'm fighting” ridiculousness. Oh no. This was the sound of the guy who had BEEN intimidated. HIS lunch money was stolen once, twice, a hundred times... however many times it takes to push a man too far. This was him rearing up and cracking Mr. Manly-Man's pig-nose right back into his empty skull. This was the soundtrack to an out-of-the-blue attempted murder. It was a “NOT TODAY, COCKSUCKER” to the world of smug assholes and it was pure inspiration to me. No pretension, just a thousand-mile-a-second blast of screaming hate from the heart of a man who has clearly had exactly enough of your stupid bullshit, Jim. REAL anger burned to disc restored my faith in music as an art form.

The album, City is my favorite recorded sound. As far as I'm concerned, it is untouchable.

God damnit, mr Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.

That's sort of compatible with first paragraph of my boring lastfm journal entry. Which was planned to be inflammatory, but during writing I realized I actually agree with most of it. I think you still have right with that 90% of metal frontmen being people that feel urge to speak their bad growly voice even when music isn't playing (SYL won't change entire genre after all). And while they try (too) hard to be someone who they are not, Devin just vented steam. In his case term "vocal style" is kinda misleading, this isn't styling, that sounds like real-life voice of snapped mind.

Gotta give credit to really menacing frontmen, though. Some of them don't pretend, I'm pretty sure Jens Kidman of Meshuggah, Randall Blythe of Lamb of God or Al Jourgensen of Ministry (RIP) really start their day with devouring of whole kindergarten. Not sure if I want to meet such people in person, but respect the talent and authentic personality. But they're rare and even some of voices I like I still find unconvicing.

God damnit, mr Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.

It's "Hedley."

I liked metal up to a heavy factor not exceeding Pantera before, and regarded it as potentially good music, just not my thing. Despite the fact that I usually try to ignore lyrics and treat vocals like another instrument, I always preferred it as an instrument with clean emotional tones, and found screaming somewhat boring and unmusical. I had a friend that disagreed, and would frequently link me to the very best heavier metal had to offer. Then I ran into Ziltoid, and being that maybe half the album has clean vocals, I jumped right into it, at first feeling like I was "tollerating" things like the vocals in Ziltoidia Ataxx and whatnot, then getting used to them. And then Color Your World struck, with Ziltoids frantic all out screaming vocals, and it struck me that they have the potential for more emotion (if less range of such) than singing possibly could. That this eluded me before is odd. It makes nothing but perfect sense that more emotion could be conveyed with screams. Ah well. The next thing to reinforce this idea was a single song, Almost Again. However, I still found the harshest of harsh vocals asthetically unpleasing, but after a few weeks with Ziltoid, and eventually finding all of the vocals in Ziltoidia Attaxx nothing but good, I decided to get right into it and see what happened. I still couldn't enjoy listening to an entire SYL album start to finish, but songs like Wrong Side became daily listens, and I think this story is already far too drawn out, so I won't detail the rest of my tollerance building.

I'm bumping this, just because the initial post is THAT great.

Every last one of them calls it "brutal." Their fans call it "brutal. The word "brutal" has an inescapable connotation of stupidity. Baboons are brutal.

Very true. I was pondering a while back what it was that irked me about a lot of current metal and the metal scene in general. I was also pondering the point at which Heavy Metal ceased and METAL rose to dominance (dominance see, very brutal).
And the word 'brutal' kept coming to mind. Almost every interview you read about Band X's new album will endlessly go on about how Brutal it is. "We just finished recording and fuck it's so brutal! Every track is brutal! Every fucking chord is brutal!"
And any development or deviation from a formula is regarded with utmost suspicion unless it can be guaranteed to still be brutal:
"Yeah we got a power ballad in there, but its still Brutal, man. It's a Brutal ballad!", "This time we spent more time on arrangements and shit, got a bit more complex but without compromising that brutality! It's brutal as fuck!" "Peopel think that just because we use panflutes it's not brutal, but that's bullshit. these are the most brutal panflutes you'll ever hear."

To me Brutal suggests coarse, unthinking, cruel, base. Certainly there is a time and place for that, but really it isn't something I want to be putting in my ears all the time.

Now I'm going to listen to some Dio.

Billy, I too remember the good old days (that I wasn't alive for).

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