the one at 2:22 in Mount Eerie's Appetite is one i can't stop thinking about lately
Today's primary riff: Wolves in the Throne Room - Thuja Magus Imperium
So, I have a real complicated relationship to metal.
Folks who know me know that my route in was the heavier Mount Eerie stuff (like "Appetite," from an earlier post in this thread, or the heavy stuff on Clear Moon/Wind's Poem/Ocean Roarālike "Waves" for example), which reflects a period where Elverum was getting deep into black metal. From there, I've dipped into lots of atmospheric stuff, drone stuff, doom-adjacent thingsāSleep, Sun O))), Xasthur, Nadja, and Wovles in the Throne Room (linked above) being bands that I've been able to shuffle into the rotation, though some of them are right on the line for me.
So, why is it that I could listen to literally countless hours of a track like Nadja's "Numb", but I can't get through half of the stuff my metal loving friends have suggested for me over the years?
Partly, it's just bc I'm a Mount Eerie fan, tuned for the sort of distanced and effortless posture that Elverum brings to his stuff. Yes, sometimes he screams as background texture (as in the intro to "Lost Wisdom Pt. 2"), or shouts some (like in "Don't Smoke", but Phil mostly uses his regular singing voice. And while things are instrumentally heavy and riff-filled, he'll often pivot to like, a moody organ back half, chorus, or bridge (also as in Lost Wisdom Pt. 2). Lyrically he plays with some metal stuff, but never really leaves his wheel house of nature metaphors about crushing modernity, emotional distance, etc.
I think more fundamentally, I really struggle with the theatricality of a lot of metal. I respect the big swings, the performances that can almost feel camp, the wizards/devils/castles/etc. But melodically, lyrically, and (maybe most importantly) structurally, it's really hard for me to connect to. If I take a step back, I can recognize the beauty in the careful line being walked: What is more sincere than being blatantly, loudly performative?
I call this thing that I recoil from "theatricality" because I think it's the similar to the sort of large, sweeping gestures that you see from a certain style of stage performance. It's the same thing that puts me off of muscial theater specifically, and I think is tied to my inability to get into Tokusatsu, Super Robots, and a many strains of fantasy fiction is really tied up in this same reaction.
This isn't a political position or anything though. I mostly think of it as a deficit, part of being a too-cool-for-school teen that I never out grew. I am not saying that metal or broadway are cringe, I'm saying I wish I didn't cringe when I partook. I sometimes here what I can nod along to and say "wow sick riff" but never feel it hit my soul. (This is especially true for like, Dragonforce style super intense fingerwork. Bummer!)
And it's not as if I don't like actually-effortful creative works, I just tend towards... the "cinematic" versus the "theatrical." It's a false binary, I know, but I hope you get what I'm going for here. What I'm calling theatrical is Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, bathed in divine light. Whereas what feels "cinematic" to me is the gun taped behind the toilet tank, Michael anxiously struggling to grab it. The latter is just as carefully authored as the former, and yet... there is a distinction, right?
I think you can see this in a ton of my own creative work, too. In Friends at the Table, I purposefully avoid writing long descriptions of physical spaces that the party is moving through. I try to stay extemporaneous and colloquial. I obviously love a good build, but only when choreographed "drops" are cut with big moments that come out of no whereāCOUNTER/Weight fans, think about things like the Paisley scene on September; PARTIZAN fans, the Gur/Clementine confrontation. There are points where I use florid prose, but they're flourishes, not the norm, and are often about atmospherics versus theatrics.
(Realis, coming hopefully soon, is interesting because it's definitely the most Metal Thing I've Ever Made, but it's also been tough to push myself to go AS HARD as I need to to really sell it).
All of this is to say, thank you Wolves in the Throne room for being a sort of bridge to me, pushing me towards a sort of metal I have long tried to enjoy but couldn't quite become comfortable with. Maybe one day I'll be able to join my friends and their guitar wailing wizards.