jco5055
Well-Known Member
I thought of a few, but a big one that might ruffle some feathers is the following:
I really feel the vast majority of bands out there, particularly either lesser known or unsigned/local bands, don't see success because the songs suck. Yes, I am obviously aware that how the music industry works, especially today, is not a meritocracy by any stretch of the imagination....but whenever there's an instance of
- "man my band is working their butts off, but in today's world we all gotta work day jobs and probably will never make this a full time thing"
- "there's some killer local bands, check them out"
- "my dad was in a band that released a major label album in the 70s, opened for HUGE bands, but just couldn't break through that ceiling"
-really any time I've gone to a local show
9 times out of 10, the songs just frankly aren't that good compared to the bands that did make it. Fuck, in college I was in a I guess melodic death metal band, but our songs sucked (only one member at the time seemed to find the time to write anything while balancing a full college workload, so we didn't have anything better to present to him/it became more of a friends hanging out thing by the end), but even then I was shocked at how much success you can see with shitty songs that could delude someone into thinking their songs are good lol.
Maybe it specifically is an underground/non mainstream metal thing, but I remember distinctly thinking at the time that the big bands a la the top draws on labels like Nuclear Blast, Sumerian etc were basically only "one step up", kind of like your direct manager/supervisor in the 9-5 world. Though I think that's more a sign of how little real world success being a draw in extreme metal is in general.
I really feel the vast majority of bands out there, particularly either lesser known or unsigned/local bands, don't see success because the songs suck. Yes, I am obviously aware that how the music industry works, especially today, is not a meritocracy by any stretch of the imagination....but whenever there's an instance of
- "man my band is working their butts off, but in today's world we all gotta work day jobs and probably will never make this a full time thing"
- "there's some killer local bands, check them out"
- "my dad was in a band that released a major label album in the 70s, opened for HUGE bands, but just couldn't break through that ceiling"
-really any time I've gone to a local show
9 times out of 10, the songs just frankly aren't that good compared to the bands that did make it. Fuck, in college I was in a I guess melodic death metal band, but our songs sucked (only one member at the time seemed to find the time to write anything while balancing a full college workload, so we didn't have anything better to present to him/it became more of a friends hanging out thing by the end), but even then I was shocked at how much success you can see with shitty songs that could delude someone into thinking their songs are good lol.
Maybe it specifically is an underground/non mainstream metal thing, but I remember distinctly thinking at the time that the big bands a la the top draws on labels like Nuclear Blast, Sumerian etc were basically only "one step up", kind of like your direct manager/supervisor in the 9-5 world. Though I think that's more a sign of how little real world success being a draw in extreme metal is in general.