Domingo 16 Mar 2008, 0h:07

This is a response to the Anti-Happy Metal group, since a lot of their members honestly are sincere considering power metal and even a few MDM bands as pop music. First of all, let's digress why they aren't wrong…

Pop music is a short term for popular music and emerged during early 2000th century when music thanks to radio stations could be listened to en masse no matter where you were in the world. Let's look at Wikipedia to see what it says:

Pop music is an ample and imprecise category of modern music not defined by artistic considerations but by its potential audience or prospective market. Pop is music composed with deliberate intent to appeal to the majority of its contemporaries.

Also:

In opposition to music that requires education or formation to appreciate, a defining characteristic of pop music is that anyone is able to enjoy it. Artistic concepts such as musical form and aesthetics are not a concern in the writing of pop songs, the primary objectives being audience enjoyment and commercial success.

Although pop music is produced with a desire to sell records and do well in the charts, it does not necessitate wide acclaim or commercial success: there are bad or failed pop songs.

That's pretty spot on to describe pop music. In that sense, Wicked_Adidas is not wrong, however, his arguments are greatly flawed.

First of all, he presents us with the assumption that "happy" metal is the same as pop. To some extent it is, as power and heavy metal are the more accepted metal genres to be appreciated by the mainstream audience. Secondly, he presents us with a specific form or norm which qualifies pop music, such as lyrics with silly themes like fantasy and specific song structures that seldom if ever deviate and can be found in more or less all songs. However… if we look a bit closer, we can find these things everywhere, in all genres. Does this qualify most music as pop music? No, it doesn't. Pop music is as mentioned, music which can attract a mainstream audience and a lot of genres can use a typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge/solo-chorus structure without being pop music as such.

Wicked_Adidas for example mentioned that Apocalyptica counts as pop music although they in general do not follow previously mentioned song structure, making instrumental music. Therefore silly lyrical themes do not generally apply either as lyrics are more or less non-existent. What he then must base on that Apocalyptica is seen as pop might be because of their popularity: they got their breakthrough making Metallica covers performed on three cellos and got widely popular thanks to that connection to Metallica. Metallica indeed follow the mentioned song structure most of the time and they were also played on radio during the 80s and therefore counts as pop music. They still do today as well seeing their newer sound seems to attract a more general audience.

Wicked_Adidas also seem to think that since such bands like Apocalyptica is popular, it is not metal. There he forgot that pop is an umbrella term explained in the Wikipedia quote. But what is then metal, one may ask? Metal is a particular genre that emerged during late 80s that was heavily influenced by rock music. One can see metal as the next lead of rock music which it also indicates: metal being more slick and hard than rock (in a sort of literary sense. Rock music is more round and soft compared to metal). Therefore metal use a similar way to construct songs like rock does. For that we need guitarists, drummers, a bassist and a singer. More complex and advanced riffs were created than typical power chords or blues jargong. But people didn't only experiment with the guitar but in other areas as well, such as drumming techniques. We would see drumming techniques that were far more fast and aggressive than before, such as blast beats. In addition different singing types were discovered, such as screamo and growling.

However, what still makes a difference between metal and rock is the use of the guitar: compared to most rock the guitar is used to create a thick and dense wall of sound by the use of preferrebly two guitarists. To create this sound, heavy distortion is used along with two or more guitar layers. While arguebly the guitar is an important instrument in rock music, it is not leading instrument, but rather the singing is in most cases, or both instruments are on equal weight. The focus was moved away from making dance-friendly music to create more complex song constructions with the main use of guitars. To do this, we had to borrow heavily from other genres, particularily the most complex genre at that time, namely jazz. Therefore a lot of previously jazz-only elements were borrowed into metal such as double bass drumming and a more free song structure where focus was partly lying on improvisation rather than use a set formula each time.

However, to begin with, the border between metal and rock was thin, and sometimes heavy metal and hard rock are terms used interchangeably. While we still had the typical rock like The Beatles, metal bands started to focus more on speed and technicality and finally managed to break away from their blues roots. Therefore we suddenly got an outburst of metal genres during the mid-80s where the exact origin is almost impossible to trace back to. All in all, we could find death metal, power metal, speed metal, thrash meal, NWOBHM, progressive metal, black metal and of course, heavy metal. Of those more accessible metal-subgenres heavy metal and power metal managed to get most attention from the mainstream audience, more focusing on speed and catchy riffs and simple lyrical subjects such as love. This caused the term poodle rock or glam rock to be born; which was highly connected to the way how most of these bands looked like: they had long fluffy hair (like a poodle) and were often dressed in flashy clothing which was in fashion during the 80s. Bands such as Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Mötley Crüe and Yngwie Malmsteen did all in one or another way contribute to the poodle scene while the music they performed differed greatly, to mention a few names of many, many bands and artists that were active during the 80s. One could say that for example Metallica, performing a more easily accessible thrash metal were not poodle rockers, but they were still part of the scene thanks for their more easy-to-listen-to thrash compared to their peers such as Slayer. This media attention on metal bands in particular would lay down the foundation of the current metal scene and definitely made metal, even for that time, pop music.

However, when the 80s ended so did the metal pop era. The genres lived on though and some underwent notable changes which gave an outburst of even more subgenres of the subgenres. Most of them however, like power metal and heavy metal kept some of the basic song structures. At the end of the 90s metal started to come back with bands like Nightwish at the front. Since power metal were one of the few genres that still were using the typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge/solo-chorus song structure and deviated less from the accepted song time which is roughly somewhere around 3 minutes (the origin for that is because of the limitations of the first recordings where the space was scarce). While space is more or less unlimited today as for song lengths goes, it is not when it comes to radio stations. Therefore more popular radio stations will cut off songs longer than 3 minutes so they can play as many songs from as many artists as possible during their running time.

As I understand it, Wicked_Adidas does not seem to consider bands from the 80s as pop compared to power metal bands that emerged during late 90s while still very few of these bands actually ever became truly popular outside their own fanbase. Such examples can be Edguy that didn't reach any serious mainstream fame until their Hellfire Club release which was more rock-oriented. It can also be quite noticeable that bands such as Nightwish also had to release a more "electronized" song with their Wish I Had An Angel release to hit the radio stations. Therefore we can still draw the conclusion that metal in general still neither very accepted within mainstream media nor the mainstream audience. The only band I can mention like that atop of my head that underwent minor changes until their mainstream breakthrough was Hammerfall with their Hearts On Fire release.

If we then compare to modern rock bands with groove elements such as Korn, it is clear they never had to change their music at all to become popular en masse. If we for instance compare to a band like In Flames where the change is so notable it is hardly remiscient of the old sound anymore, we get a sort of picture of what today is accepted as popular metal. True metal fans can whine that I don't mention "sell out" bands like Behemoth that managed to emerge as a quite generic black metal band to reach more fame through a change in sound which would later label then as death metal, the sort of extreme opposite genre.

We need to understand one thing: the key element to become a popular metal act today is the groove element originally laid out like bands such as Pantera and Sepultura. The groove elements are quite far from metal if used wrong. Groove riffs are often slow and simple and instead of being built on power chords single string picking. We basically speak simplfied and slow downed thrash metal.

During the 90s we could notice a specific genre fusion movement which maybe a bit wrongly was labeled as nu metal although it has got very little to do with metal at all except the fact of a few power chord elements and distorted guitars. Nu metal borrowed heavily from funk, groove, industrial and even the hip hop scene.

Wikipedia describes nu metal like this:

Nu metal, otherwise known as new metal or nü metal, is a musical genre that emerged in the mid 1990s which fuses influences from grunge and alternative metal with funk music, hip hop and various heavy metal genres, such as thrash metal and groove metal.

Nu metal music emphasizes mood, rhythm, and texture over melody and complex instrumentation. Often, nu metal songs use rhythmic, syncopated riffs played on distorted electric guitars with strings detuned to lower pitches to create a darker and thicker sound than other mainstream music.

If we notice the lined I bold out, I'd say they just removed the very thing which makes it metal, namely song complexity. Metal emerged as a faster and more complex variant of rock, to remove those complex elements would take it back to a rock level. Therefore it is fair to say nu metal is rather a form of modern rock rather than modern or alternative metal.

So where does power metal for example stand in comparison to modern rock music? Wikipedia says:

Power metal is a style of heavy metal music combining characteristics of traditional metal with thrash metal or speed metal, often within symphonic context. The term refers to two different but related styles: the first pioneered and largely practiced in North America with a harder sound similar to speed metal, and a later more widespread and popular style based in Europe (Especially Germany, Italy and Scandinavia) with a lighter, more melodic sound and making frequent use of keyboards.

We can frankly see that the likeliness of inspiration and origin is very small, the only ones being an influence from thrash metal where power metal is far more metal oriented than modern rock music as we can clearly hear thrash oriented riffs if we listen closely to any power metal band in comparison to modern rock bands styling towards groove and funk.

However, both genres are pop because they are more or less widely accepted genres into the mainstream music albeit modern rock has an upper grip here, since there are more famous and well-known modern rock bands than power metal ones.

If we also compare a band such as Linkin Park to a band like Kamelot, the differences are so many we can clearly say we speak about two completely different genres not even related to each other. A few similiarites would be:
- Use of keyboards to create melodies
- Clean vocals
- Similar instruments in the line up (guitar, drums, bass)

If we look on the differences:
- Slow and simple riffs vs fast picking and complex riffs
- Keyboard used to lay simple and emotional elements compared to melodic and symphonic elements
- One band is having a rapper, the other doesn't
- The clean singer is singing in a lower range in modern rock, sometimes fusing it with screamo/growl compared to a higher melodic range
- DJ methods are used to create additional sound effects vs none
- Lyrical themes where modern rock is more oriented towards emotions and teenage angst compared to more fantasy/story based themes
- Drumming more akin to groove compared to typical speed metal drumming

And I could go on and on.

Conclusion: popular music is popular music regardless of genre and song structure. Metal must contain groove elements to become popular music with examples statuated with In Flames and newer Metallica.

Easy-to-listen-to music should not get mixed up with pop: there is mainstream metal and there is pop whereas pop has a larger range of listerners and is generally accepted by media. Mainstream metal is such metal that has a large fanbase within the metal-scene but is still more or less unknown compared to conventional music found within the pop scene. Such mainstream acts would be those often labeled as sell out because of their generally high popularity within the metal world, like Behemoth, Nile, At the Gates and Opeth.

As such, some avid followers of the true formula consider any band that is becoming fairly well known even within the metal scene as sell out. It is however very sell out if the band becomes famous within general mainstream media and thus will be labeled as pop.

Since only a few bands even at this date are well known outside the metal scene like Dragonforce, previously mentioned Nightwish, HammerFall, In Flames, Metallica and Edguy, it is pretty fair to say that power metal as a genre in general is as such not considered as a generally accepted pop genre. While we have another genre on the rise in metalcore; metalcore as a genre is on the borderline of being classified as metal although it is definitely more eligible compared to modern rock bands as Linkin Park and Korn. I am however quite unsure how popular metalcore is outside the general metal world and metalcore deserves another journal entry some other time.