Halcyon Magazine

Stoner Metal finally jumped the shark this year, sorry kids but that shit is getting tired. Don’t worry, you can still get high as much as you want without any consequences. I’m just saying if you’re not going to go any further then Electric Wizard did in ‘94, I’m not going to listen anymore. You’ve been lazily pummeling my ear drums for years now and its time for a weed nap. Folk metal gained a little ground in popularity this year but bagpipes still scream Flogging Molly to me and I have some serious skepticism about how traditionally Scandinavian everyone is all of a sudden. Speaking of which, Viking Metal fully blossomed into a thriving micro-genre but now we’re seeing straight up Pirate Metal breaking though the fog. Come on Alestorm, you think just because real pirates are making a come back this year means they’re going to need new pirate music to swashbuckle to?  What’s next, Mummy Metal?

Hipster Metal did some light touring on last years records but mostly those dudes just hung out at shows getting drunk and looking fabulous.  Progressive Metal stayed in the studio to work on their 2009 releases and Power Metal stayed in the gym to squeeze out a few more reps. In fact the only sub-genres of contemporary metal that were really making things happen this year were Black Metal and Death Metal.  Drawing more fans out then ever before, these once outsider genres have begun to figure out that money comes from melody and now we’re seeing extreme metal freak shows every time we open up the entertainment section of the newspaper. Hey Black Metal, once you become a staple of the LA Times Art and Leisure section, you’re probably gay.  Go home and kill somebody so I’ll be interested in you again.

But metal is as big as its ever been. Everybody is talking about it.  So who’s hording all the success? Who’s putting out the ground breaking new anthems of unwillingly abstinent teenagers and voluntary basement dwellers?  Fucking old ass rich dudes, of course!  Judas Priest, Motorhead, Guns n Roses, Metallica, and even AC/DC have all been enjoying enormous tours in support of brand new records. This was the year of new metal getting old, and old metal coming back with something new. We got a new Melvins album but nothing from Big Business. We even got a new Witchfinder General album for fuck’s sake and those dudes haven’t put out a new record in 25 years!

Does anybody here have anything new to say?

Retro-obsession might be the word. Maybe someone already thought of a better word. But this cultural quicksand goes way deeper than metal. The biggest movies of 2008 starred Batman and James Bond. That’s fucking interesting man, that’s fucking interesting. Original Bond: 1953. Original Batman: 1939! What other relics of last century are being remade in lieu of innovation? Is Ford going to roll out a Model T-1000? Why the fuck not? We’re getting a new War of the Worlds with Keanu Reeves.  We got a new 90210!  What the fuck is going on here?!  

So what’s the big thing happening in pop culture right now? Britney Spears. Who’s fucking up in the news? OJ Simpson.  Is my bathroom a time machine? Is this fucking Groundhog Day?  NBC is giving Jay Leno a “new” talk show. That’ll freshen things up. What else makes the new fall line up?  They’re going to remake Deal or No Deal, invent a new Law and Order and Cleveland from Family Guy is going to get his own spinoff. New, new, and brand spanking new. VH1 is currently running The Best of the 2000’s in 2008 because we couldn’t even wait a full decade to indulge in iPod nostalgia. Huh? THAT SHIT’S STILL AROUND MOTHERFUCKER! WE HAVE ALL THAT SAME SHIT! We at least waited until 2004 to have an I Love the 90’s. It’s 2008, you fucking retards. WAIT TWO YEARS!

But back to metal.

All I’m saying is that there has got to be an appetite for fresh metal out there. I’m not telling you to play Banjo-Thrash with fart vocals, I’m just saying a little innovation would keep the genre healthy. Seriously though, I love 1974 as much as anybody else, and its true that the metal of old is brutally wailing on the substandard metal of today. But that’s no reason to keep moon-walking through life with our backs to the future. Old metal was the best thing ever because of how drastically different it was. It was new and fresh and exciting it scared the shit out of people. But the metal revolution can only happen once and it cant be re-done after it’s already fucking won. That’s why we’re so hung up on these original titans of metal, because they did that shit first in a time when it was totally unheard of and we think that’s fucking awesome. So lets learn from their example and that means not replicating it. Let’s step it up in ‘09 and let’s fucking take this shit somewhere new. Come one dudes, it’s the metal thing to do.