Thurston Moore on Black Metal

(Because sometimes you need more than 140 characters...)

If you know me well, you know two things: 1) my favorite musical troupe of all time is Sonic Youth; and, 2) I played drums in a death metal band for a while in high school.

In fact, to this day, my most consistent listening habits are obscure hip-hop and very heavy artists. I just can't get enough.

I was intrigued to see an interview in Decibel with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore about black metal. (If you don't know what black metal is, you won't find the rest of this post very interesting.)

In this interview, Thurston displays a very deep and broad knowledge of black metal, linking it to the avant-garde stuff he's found so inspiring for so long. He talks about how it's so raw and how it's so much not about being music but being art. It's such a great display of his devotion to all things sonic, and it's a fun read. Not to mention that there are bands in there that only the encyclopedic have ever heard of.

However, he also says the following about death metal:

Were you ever into death metal?
I really drew the line between black metal and death metal. Death metal was obviously more of a technically proficient kind of playing, which I had no interest in. I wanted to hear music by people who had no desire to impress with any kind of traditional, skilled playing. I do appreciate hearing riff masters, but they’re a dime a dozen.

This, as someone who respects Thurston probably way way more than I should, kind of caught me off-guard. I assumed that any musicians that were putting forth concerted effort to express themselves wouldn't be met by a godfather with such disinterest.

When I was playing this stuff in Albuquerque in '93-'95, we frankly had no idea that black metal existed (if it was even called that, which seems doubtful). We knew about american music mostly and the occasional European act like Bolthrower (U.K.). We certainly weren't jet-setting around the world playing shows and having any sort of insight into how metal varied around the world.

Maybe I'm reading too much into a few sentences in an interview. I can't help but be a bit disappointed. I'd like to think we can find something of value in most types of artistic expression. And to write off a whole genre of music that I hold close to my heart... well, it's just too bad.

(BTW, Sonic Youth has a new record out tomorrow: http://70.32.78.35/sonicnews/?p=13.)

If you have trouble posting comments, send them to me via email and I'll post them like I did with Ross' below.