If you’re a music dinosaur, like I am, and sometimes find yourself in bizarre conversations you don’t understand, such as a recent one I had about the major differences between Unblack Metal, Black Metal and Christian Metal, the world may look like a very weird place all of a sudden, as there are so many sub-genres and branched genres and intertwined genres and a lot of new and unheard of ones, your head spins. Unblack Metal for me is metal and let’s leave things right there on the floor where they dropped, as apart from some heavy metal classics and veterans, everything else is just noise. Feel free to throw nails, chains, rocks and all your steel piercings at me.
So in a courageous attempt to finding out what are the most bizarre, new, wild and mind – blowing music genres people promote these days, I started searching our reliable friend, the Internet. I have the feeling I am the last person on Earth to look for this topic, as it has been so covered and so extensively detailed, it would take me days to enrich my musical culture, which seems poor, void and so outdated, I am ashamed. But maybe there is at least another person who feels like an alien whenever they hear sounds that can be attributed to Ska, Burger – Highlife (and I thought this is Burger King’s new marketing vision) and Schranz, so for the few non – extinct musical dinosaurs left in this world, I will list 3 less known music genres you should try. Just to pretend informed and updated.
3. Shoegaze
In the name of all alternative rock icons, who are these people? This is not a music genre per – se, it is a stage behavior, where the bands members stare at their shoes while they perform, contrary to everything brilliant and world-wide famous front-men ever stood for. I am looking at Bruce Dickinson, Till Lindemann, Steve Tyler, not to mention Freddy Mercury, among many, many others who, from some bizarre reason felt compelled to engage the audience. The shoegazers sing some form of alternative rock, a sub-alternative sub-genre, and their main feature is they have a fixation with the floor, probably for using just too many pedals. For further understanding of the phenomenon, My Bloody Valentine seems to fall into this category. Otherwise, they play alternative rock of some sort.
2. Nihilist suicide pop
How did I come up with this? Some time ago I was listening to an Italian band singing in English some extremely bizarre rock music combined with folk music and with some really freaky lyrics. They are called Spiritual Front, they sing since 1999, and, if you were not running away from meteorites or T-Rex predators back in 2005, this band’s song The Gift of Life appeared on the original score of Saw II. Granted, their music is weird and interesting to listen if you can put up with the lyrics, but they describe themselves as singing “nihilist suicide pop”. Now imagine my surprise in finding there is such genre. Appertaining to only one band. So if you ever want to impress with your vast, dark, well-researched musical knowledge, say you listen to “nihilist suicide pop” and every human who understands the meaning of “pop” will crown you a king.
1. Pirate Metal and Wizard Rock
I’m sorry, this is the shampoo 2 in one kind of topic, because I can’t wrap my mind around the concepts that some bands play traditional metal about pirates, while the wizard rockers (and Ozzy Osbourne has nothing to do with them to my knowledge) sing about Harry Potter. And sometimes Gandalf. I would pay money to have a band sing about Smaug or Gollum, but that would then become the black metal of wizard rock.
Anyway. The sound is rock. Doesn’t matter what type of rock, as everything that matters is the topic of the songs. Pirates and Wizards. So Alestorm is actually a heavy metal band that calls its specific genre “True Scottish Pirate Metal” (snap!), while Harry and the Potters invented wizard rock, also known as wrock!
Now you are enlightened. Have fun with these less known music genres you should give a try and if you happen to like some (the wizard kids are cute), make sure you refer to them by their true name and sub-genre. Otherwise you will remain a dinosaur. Evolve!
