Music is sound. It’s a combination of many things, not just words. Placing all of the focus on the lyrics is detrimental to the rest of the music, and often wildly misleading when trying to describe the musicians’ overall sound.

For example, I’ve seen scores of music bloggers referring to bands as “Viking metal”…just because they’re metal bands who sing about Vikings and Norse mythology. That’s not enough; a band would still need to use classical Scandinavian musical stylings and extreme riffs in there, otherwise any metal song about the legendary northern warriors would instantly be considered Viking metal based on the lyrics alone. If that’s the case, then Led Zeppelin’s famous “Immigrant Song” is Viking metal. Ridiculous!

Next we have Swashbuckle, who are often referred to as “pirate metal.” Technically, this is incorrect: Swashbuckle may perform in pirate costumes and write lyrics about nautical nonsense, but they’re a thrash/death metal band. (Full disclosure: I’ve written about Swashbuckle for Musician Photo Journal, and even I’ve fallen prey to using the term “pirate metal.”)

Drifting away from metal, we have “nerd rock.” This is rock or punk music wherein the lyrics deal with topics such as comic books or video games. Again, it’s a piss-poor genre; just because your band sings about something that might be geek-related, that doesn’t change the riffs on your guitars, now does it? Case and point: look at “I am the Law,” a thrash metal classic by Anthrax. Using modern standards, this song would be classified as “nerd rock” because the subject is Judge Dredd, a comic book character. Clearly, this is wrong; no one would ever consider an Anthrax song to be nerd rock! So why are other songs with nerdy lyrics given that rubber stamp?

We all know the real reason for these misleading genres: money. If you advertise your group as a rock band, even though you happen to sing about Star Trek, you won’t get far. Promote yourself as a nerd rock band, however, and science fiction convention planners will be knocking down your door. Furthermore, nerdy lyrics and the like are often used as a cover to hide many bands’ lack of musical skill. Fanboys are much more likely to give a crappy rock band a free pass if they’re singing about Batman than if they were performing Top 40 songs.

I still think a band should stick to its guns and forgo these fake genres. Your music should always come first before selling out, but that’s not a popular opinion these days.

Even if you’re not familiar with the patented name, you’re guaranteed to have come across a few Digipaks in your travels. These are CD cases made mostly (or sometimes completely) out of paper products, that unfold to reveal the disc, liner notes, et cetera. (They also have DVD cases that are built much the same way.)

My problem with Digipaks is their lack of durability. I take excellent care of my media, as I want it to last as long as possible. Unless you never remove them from your shelf, Digipaks are bound to get scuffed and worn, especially on the edges of their spines. Good old-fashioned jewel cases hold up much better than that. Plus, jewel cases are easily replaceable; Digipak albums have to be purchased again.

I understand that some artists use Digipaks to do clever creative things with the packaging, and that’s okay, I guess. I’m a big fan of collecting physical copies of my media, as I do like the artwork and such. What bugs me is when record labels just use it as a cost-cutting measure…but don’t drop the price of the CD itself. Unless you’re doing something with the packaging that cannot be replicated with a jewel case, then don’t bother.

Some might prefer Digipaks, claiming that their cardboard construction is better for the environment. Of course, most people aren’t throwing out CD cases like one would a plastic bag. Furthermore, additional printings of many CDs end up in jewel cases, anyway!

Clearly, this argument against Digipaks is one of personal preference. But guess what, it’s my damned blog, and my preference is solid plastic!

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!

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!

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’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.

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.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate any of my hobbies; I’m just not pleased that I have far too many of them. In my neverending quest to become a somewhat decent human being, I do understand that sometimes the most innocuous hobbies can cause problems with one’s life. The main issue is that a majority of my hobbies revolve around acquiring some kind of physical object, such as an action figure, building set, video game, book, et cetera. As such, this immediately creates two problems: price and space. You need money to buy said item, and a place in which to display or store it. Both of these are serious issues, and even worse, they sometimes compound one another! I’m not affluent (or even upper middle class) by any stretch of the imagination, so indulging in my hobbies tends to have financial ramifications down the line that I’m not always prepared for. So what’s a man to do?

Here’s a rundown of my various hobbies, and the problems I’m running into while keeping up with them. Aside from giving you an insight into my madness, it’ll help me keep track of this stuff later on. I should point out that this stuff was all acquired over the course of a decade or two; I certainly don’t have the cash to acquire massive quantities of stuff in a short period of time!

• LEGO®. This one gives no quarter; the entire premise of being a LEGO® fan is based on the building sets themselves. You need to own at least a few in order to get involved! The upshot is that once you’ve got a good amount of bricks, you can create just about anything you want. You can display an official model for a while, then if you get tired of it, rebuild it into something else. It’s not like a collectible game, where you’re absolutely required to spend money on a regular basis just to stay competitive! (That’s the exact reason why I gave up on playing Magic: The Gathering long ago, and Axis & Allies Miniatures more recently.) With my LEGO® addiction, space has become my biggest challenge. I’ve completely run out of room to display my sets (mainly Star Wars ships), so I’ve been forced to disassemble many of them.

• Star Trek. The beloved science fiction franchise spans over forty years of history, twenty-nine seasons of television, and eleven films, not to mention all of the countless merchandising and other goodies. The television shows and films are most important to me; I own all of the films (save the newest one, which isn’t available on disc yet, and Star Trek V, which is crap), but only five of the twenty-nine seasons. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, and that’s not going to be cheap. Granted, Voyager and the first two seasons of Enterprise can wait until the very end, but I’ve still got a majority of the original series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine to pick up.
• Star Wars. The core of this franchise is the films, and there’s not many of those; that made collecting them quite easy. I also enjoy reading some of the novels, and collecting the artbooks and other reference tomes. However, when it comes to Star Wars action figures…therein lies the rub. Even casual fans of the franchise know how addicting that can be, and I’m no different. I used to display them in my office at work (gotta be the stereotypical IT department, and all), but since we moved to a new location, I now have a cubicle rather than an office. Thus, I no longer have a door that I can lock. I don’t think anyone would pilfer or otherwise screw with my collection, but why not err on the side of caution? Since I’ve got nowhere else to put them, though, they now sit in a box in my apartment complex storage space.
• Model railroads. While this is one of my most enjoyed hobbies, it’s sadly one of the most neglected, simply to due to the high cost. I’m “over the hump,” as it were; the most expensive pieces of my layout were the tracks, locomotives, and control system. However, I’ve still got landscaping materials to buy, plus model cars and tiny little people. Those aren’t cheap! If I don’t finish my layout this summer, I’ve got a feeling it will be indefinitely shelved.
• Video games. Ouch. This one’s definitely the 800-pound gorilla in the room, since I play a lot of games. They’ve never been cheap, and with more and more titles coming out all the time, with more platforms competing for market share, costs can add up insanely fast. Part of this can be alleviated by renting games, but that creates two more problems. One, renting from chains like Blockbuster is a complete ripoff; the rental price is too high, and you’ve only got about five days to play! Two, even if you use a much better system like GameFly, now you run into the subscription problem. Here, you’re paying a flat fee per month to rent a certain number of titles (GameFly wisely offers a tiered system), but what if there’s a few months where nothing’s coming out, or there isn’t anything you’re interested in playing? Now you’re literally spending money on nothing. As far as older titles are concerned, emulation’s a quick solution, but legal issues aside, that doesn’t compare to playing original games on original hardware. It just doesn’t! (I keep a 13″ CRT TV in my room specifically for retrogaming, fer crissake.) I’ve focused much of my attention on my NES collection, but those still take up space. Right now, I’m using the ol’ cardboard-boxes-in-the-closet method, save for a small stack of cartridges I’m actively playing. Those get a place of honor on my desk. Classy.
• Heavy metal. You’d think that simply enjoying listening to music wouldn’t cost too much, since you don’t have to pay to use your ears. And as far as acquiring music goes, that’s inexpensive, too, especially in this day and age of iTunes and BitTorrent. Too bad I’m one of those old-fashioned fuckers who enjoys owning actual physical copies of his media! The backlog of discs I still want to buy would probably equal the down payment on a small house. Eesh. My subscriptions to Decibel magazine and the Requiem Metal Podcast have exacerbated this addiction by getting me into many new bands.
• Books. Normally, this isn’t a problem, as we have libraries for all of our reading needs. However, some of the licensed series I enjoy (particularly Star Trek novels) have little to no library presence. Translation: if you want to read it, you’d better buy it, and I’ve bitched about the ridiculous cost of paperbacks before. Even though the recent Star Trek film has breathed new life into the franchise, the books are still a relatively niche commodity. The Star Trek section at my local bookstores just keeps shrinking over time, and when new novels come out, you really need to nab them within a week or so of release, else you run the risk of missing them. Then, of course, there’s the fact that eventually, my bookshelves at home start to get very crowded.
• Manga. Since the stories I enjoy only come out every few months, this one’s at the bottom of the problem pile. Prices are on the rise, though, and I read much of my manga well in advance via scanlations. I buy the official collected English editions later on. If the prices get more annoying, I may dump the printed versions, and just stick to reading them online. And before you bitch at me about the “illegality” of scanlations, they’re not technically illegal, and publishers often use them as a way to gauge interest in localizing new series! Eat me.

As you can see, the solution to many of these issues falls under the usual purview of “stop buying shit.” Which, as it turns out, is something I’m actively working on, especially in the video game realm. I know that sooner or later I’m going to have to no choice but to severely scale back or ditch a few hobbies, but them’s the breaks. It’s happened before (like when I ditched that filthy comic book collectin’ habit), and I’d like to think I’m a better person for it. Life is more than just random collections.

For example, I’m not a fan of Star Trek-themed bands. In fact, I can’t stand them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some anal retentive Star Trek fan who thinks that Trek should always be serious. No way; I enjoy nitpicking and making jokes as much as the next fan. Themed bands, however, take the silliness to a level I’m just not comfortable with. I don’t want to hear some whiny punk rock kid wailing about Kirk and Spock! It just sounds retarded.

It’s the same problem I have with nerdcore, though I don’t think the themed rock ‘n’ roll outfits are as pretentious as their hip-hop counterparts. It’s just retarded; maybe I’m “too old” for this kind of stuff, but I still think it’s stupid.

However, after this summer’s show, this longstanding tradition may be coming to a close. It’s not the band’s fault. It’s the fault of the ticketing agency; in this, those fuckers at Live Nation. We all know ticket prices just keep skyrocketing, but it’s gotten beyond aggravating this time. The tickets for the upcoming Dream Theater show start at $38 for nosebleed seats, and $48 for regular seats. We opted for the regular ones, of course, since you get much better sound quality sitting there. I expected the usual annoying service charges on top of that. What I didn’t expect was just how high those charges have gotten: $12.50 per ticket! Altogether, a measly pair of concert tickets came to $121. That’s fucking insane. I don’t care how nice the venue is; that’s way too much money.

Dream Theater has always been one of my favorite bands, but this may be the final time I see them. I’m sorry, no band’s worth that much cash out of pocket. Fortunately, Dream Theater always puts on an excellent show, so I have no doubts that the upcoming concert will be a grand sendoff.