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I was actually waiting for a metal head to pop up. I think that the way that many metal heads look at metal as a genre is very narrow minded. To say that 'nu metal' is a blending of styles is true, but many 'true metal' genres blend other styles as well. Melodic Death, Melodic Black, Power Metal, and Avant Garde bands blend heavy doses of Classical music in their work. Folk Metal blends folk music. Many industrial bands blend electronica into their music.
I don't really agree with that. It's true that many genres blend different styles, but there you can always say that the genre is metal-based with influences from other genres.
Folk metal is metal, but saying that folk metal is folk music would be wrong.
Symphonic metal is metal, but it's not symphonic music. Symphonic music is classical music.
The metal in nu-metal is like the folk in folk metal. It's definitely there, but calling it metal is wrong speaking from a musicological point of view. It's not narrow minded or elitist, but just an attempt at being correct. I don't mind if people listen to nu-metal, it's their choice. But it's not metal, simple as that.
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This is the main thing that perturbs me about metal in general. Bands like KSE or Soulfy get marked as Metalcore. Metal is the only scene that is divisive like that. You don't see the Hardcore scene saying Bad Brains is not Hardcore because they have ska influences. You don't see the Blues scene say that John Mayer isn't blues because he made several pop records.
Metal is the only genre that is so divisive like this, it's sad.
Metal is the only genre that is so divisive like this, it's sad.
I partly agree. It's true that metal can be divisive, but I believe that it is useful to a certain extent. When I'm looking for good black metal bands, I want only black metal bands, not death metal bands too. There is an important stylistic difference. But metal is indeed too divisive if you look at the amount of "genres" that exists. You have symphonic black metal and black metal, why take it a step further?
I believe that the reason many metal heads are so divisive is because they want to prove the critics who call all loud guitar based music metal wrong.
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And if you want to take it further, Doom and Goth metal are not very similar at all.
Not completely true. Doom metal had an important influence on the early development of goth metal. For example Paradise Lost, who gave their name to the genre with their album 'gothic'. Many early bands have important influences from both doom and goth metal. (notable examples are Tiamat, Moonspell, The Sins of Thy Beloved, early Theatre of Tragedy) The genres have cross-influenced each other frequently. It's true that the more recent, mostly female fronted, goth metal bands often don't have much in common with doom metal. The main reason I put them together in my above post is because sorting them out would be hard, for reasons stated above.