Ever had to deal with the two-second skip between tracks on a CD? You don’t see (or rather, hear) this much anymore, but it was more prevalent in the past due to the way CD burners handled the disc writing process. For studio albums, this isn’t a big deal; when a song ends, a few seconds of silence is normal, and you likely won’t even notice it. But when it comes to live albums…it’s intolerable, and hugely distracting.

Wondering what brought this post on? A week and a half ago, I covered an Epica show for Musician Photo Journal. (You can read my review of the show here, and my interview with Epica founder/guitarist Mark Jansen here.) After the show, I hit the merchandise table to buy a few Epica CDs I was missing. One of them was their second full-length album, Consign to Oblivion. The other was The Classical Conspiracy, a double live album featuring the band playing classical tunes as well as their own, backed by a forty-member orchestra and thirty-member choir. It’s the latter album that sparked this post.

Don’t get me wrong, the music on the album is nothing short of stunning; Epica’s renditions of classical pieces is amazing, and the full orchestra providing accompaniment to their own compositions is a natural fit. The first disc is just perfect; each track flows into the next without pause.

The second disc, however, has those dreaded gaps. So, in the midst of the crowd cheering between songs, there’s a cut to two seconds of silence, then back to the crowd. It completely destroys the illusion that you’re attending a live performance, which is the entire point of a live album!

Do I blame the band for this? Of course not. Nor do I blame the record label. The fault almost certainly lies with the hardware used to mass produce the CDs at the factory; perhaps a setting was toggled incorrectly, or an older machine was used to write them. Whatever the cause, it’s still irritating. I’ve used iTunes to ignore those last two seconds, but it’s not seamless; the gaps in the CD are like a kick in the ear every time.

Quality control, people, quality control!

In case you didn’t know, extreme metal is a passion of mine. In particular, I really enjoy black metal, a form of music that came out of the frozen countries of Scandinavia, especially Norway. The epic imagery that the music conjures is second to none.

If explaining my love of death metal to people is difficult, then doing so for black metal makes it look like a walk in the park by comparison. Death metal may be loud, growly, and fast, but the folks involved with that scene didn’t go off the damned reservation the way many black metal band members and fans did. The gangsta rap world has a notorious reputation for acts of violence, but I think black metal surpasses that. Not only were people involved in the scene killing each other as well as innocent people, there was also violent suicide and widespread destruction of property, notably the burning down of Christian churches. This was done in defiance of Christianity’s supplanting of the pagan religions common throughout Scandinavia’s history. Then there’s the idiotic racism and other prejudice displayed by some black metal musicians. Put simply…some of these guys are fucking nuts. (For further reading on the subject, I highly recommend the book Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground.)

With all of that notoriety practically eclipsing the music, it’s hard to prove to people that one can enjoy the music without all of the assorted baggage. I’ve always been a proponent of separating a creator’s personal life and actions from their media, but with black metal, it’s hard for people unfamiliar with the scene to make that distinction, because everything is seemingly intertwined. I’ve gotten some horrified looks when I tell people about this stuff, let me tell you, and those looks almost always mean that I’m somehow fucked up for enjoying the music. Even if I point out how incredibly ridiculous some black metal bands look, due to heavy use of corpsepaint, spikes, and leather, it doesn’t seem to help.

So, I’m often left with just shrugging my shoulders in disgust. People are often going to remain ignorant, no matter what opinions are brought up to the contrary. My only regret is that I didn’t get into black metal back in high school. Maybe people would’ve left me alone!

What is it with people and their complete inability to disconnect from their cellphones for even a brief span of time?

I was at the Dream Theater show last week with one of my friends, and the sheer number of bright white screens detracting from our enjoyment of the concert was ludicrous. You don’t need to send a text message or check your fucking Twitter feed every five minutes, you sad, pathetic losers. Put the thing down, and enjoy the band you actually paid to come see!

This kid next to us watched the entirety of the concert through his cellphone’s screen, for crying out loud. It was annoying, and if he’d been in the row in front of us, extremely distracting. In that case, I would’ve angrily ordered him to put the damned thing away.

(There was also the two drunken douchebags behind us who wouldn’t shut the fuck up, but that’s a completely different issue than the cellphone problem.)

If you’re going to attend a show, you don’t need to be on the damned phone. Seriously, put the fucking phone away before I slap it out of your hand.

I finally came up with a term that perfectly describes punk rock and its derivatives: they’re musically sterile. Before you little spikey-haired bastards start going red in the face and throwing your Black Flag records at me, let me explain my reasoning first.

I’ll begin by explaining how punk rock is one of the most conservative forms of music out there, rivaled only by blues. By “conservative,” I don’t mean politically; I’m referring to the genre’s musical structure. Since punk’s inception over three decades ago, the song structure, chord changes, and even the lyrical styles are largely unchanged. Even punk’s primary offshoot, hardcore, hasn’t changed much in terms of musical structure. While that’s certainly to the genre’s credit, as they’ve stuck to their roots while every other genre has drastically changed over the years, it’s also kept punk treading water in a musical sense.

If the chords and structure are still the same, that means you’re not evolving, expanding the art form, or breaking any barriers. You don’t even have to be a progressive rock band to evolve musically; genres from jazz to heavy metal have all done it. Punk has not. Sure, there’s been a few changes since the 1970s, especially in terms of production quality. However, the basic structure is still the same old thing. It’s technically been an endless rehash ever since the beginning!

Even worse is the trap many punk bands (and fans) fall into when they try to break out of their boundaries. They’re either decried by the “old school” fans for not being “true” punk (which is utter nonsense), or they’re claiming to be another genre, when they’re still punk rock through and through. Let me examine both of these phenomena in a bit more detail.

“Old school” punk fans love to rail against groups like Blink 182 or Green Day, often making the preposterous claim that those bands aren’t real punk. This is certainly due to their incredible success in the pop sphere, and their detractors are simply wrong; those bands still qualify as punk rock. The musical structure is still the same. Opinions, styles, and attitude have absolutely nothing to do with placing music into genres. I don’t give a shit about the whole DIY scene, bands’ activism, or any of that nonsense; punk rock is music, a collection of sounds put to a rhythm, and that’s all we’re talking about here. Screw the scenester crap that’s been attached to much of it; if you use opinions, activism, image, and other bullshit as criteria for classifying music, you could logically throw any genre classification out the window, as you’re literally letting style override substance. We’re sticking with the facts, people.

Then we move on the various offshoots that claim to be something other than punk rock, but even a cursory examination of their musical structure proves otherwise. There’s no need to claim you’re a separate genre, when you clearly fit into another one. The latest example of this is metalcore, a genre I deconstructed last year. I made it quite clear in that post that metalcore is really just the latest front for popularizing punk rock, not a proper subgenre of heavy metal. It’s a perfect way for record companies to get impressionable punks into what they deem “metal,” and another lightning rod for longtime punk rockers to attack. Controversy equals interest, which translates to sales more often than not. (Metalcore is likely just a creation of marketing, much like deathcore, its Hot Topic-fueled sibling.) Just because you tune down your guitars and start screaming doesn’t mean you’re not a punk band anymore.

Fans (especially young ones) have loved punk rock for decades due to its simplicity, and record labels will continue to love it for the same reason: it takes little to no effort, talent, or skill to crank out a punk song, and the general public will snap it right up. But as someone with some knowledge of music theory, I need my music to evolve, not stay stuck far in the past with basic chord patterns a six-year-old could play. Punk rock fails the test on every level, and that’s why it’s musically sterile.

As many of you may know, I’m a huge fan of heavy metal. I always have been, even since I saw cheesy hair bands on MTV in the 1980s, and moved on to much more talented and technical bands in the following years. While most of my peers moved on to the alternative trend, then the rap-rock trend, and who knows what else, I stayed true to my metal roots.

Over the past decade or so, I’ve become much more interested in progressive metal, as well as extreme metal (such as black metal, death metal, and grindcore). The latter has made things exceptionally difficult when it comes to discussing music with other people, simply because I don’t know anyone else who’s into it. There’s a few exceptions when it comes to specific bands (for example, my brother also likes Dimmu Borgir, and I got my girlfriend into some of Devin Townsend’s music), but they’re few and far between. By and large, the extreme metal I enjoy is unknown to others at best, and despised by them at worst.

It makes me feel uncomfortable when people ask me about my music. I do love talking about it, but I see folks’ eyes glaze over very quickly once I mention my favorite genres or bands. So, it’s really not worth talking about, now is it? Lately, I’m trying really hard to catch myself before I babble too much. I also try to change the subject, or answer any questions as briefly as possible.

I realize that a possible solution to this problem is to join some online message boards and other communities dedicated to extreme metal. However, that idea gives me pause. The Internet has contributed much to human culture and communication, but when it comes to bringing large groups of rabid fans together, I think it does more harm than good. (Like with video games.) I’ve lurked on a few metal boards, and the griping and flaming that goes on there makes me roll my eyes in disgust. A lot of the members there are kids who listen to extreme music as a form of rebellion; we’ve all been there at one point or another, but we outgrow it. The discussions rapidly devolve into flame wars, complete with horrendously bad spelling and grammar, and you know that ticks me off. These communities don’t look like places I’d want to spend a lot of time; plus, if I want to talk about music, it’s vastly preferable to do so with people who are actually in the room listening to it with you! (Oh well. I’m a member of far too many message boards and such as it is.)

A majority of my music listening is done in the car and at my desk at work. Both of those situations are ones in which I’m alone 99% of the time, anyway, so the solitary factor is one I’ve been able to get used to. Still, it blows not being able to share my love of intense music.