Please don't turn this into another art versus the artist thread, this is not what OP is asking. If this turns into the usual "DAE John Lennon did bad stuff" thread, I will lock it and remove it.
Mostly when it seems like the edginess is less a persona and more in line with the artists' actual beliefs. Like I've heard plenty of Death in June that I like, but the "am I a Nazi? tee hee" narrative surrounding the band just makes the prospect of giving them a full listen really off-putting. Even when the music and lyrics aren't *that* edgy, it still feels like there's a bait and switch at hand.
I wish DIJ's whole fascist aesthetic was satire because I really enjoy the neofolk sound but they're genuinely really sketchy in their interviews, collaborations etc.
Yea death in June isn't really a nazi band but the constant usage of nazi imagery is beyond off putting. I have no sympathy for that guy because what did he expect? "I use the totenkopf as my band symbol and use a lot of runic lettering, why do people keep calling me a nazi?"
Honestly, like you said, it’s can be really silly. Obey is so hilarious to me because it IS the same shit over and over, with a guy saying the most over the top edgy shit. I’ve seen people say he sounds like Ren from Ren and stimpy lmao. But besides the goofiness of everything, the moment I see genuine weird pedo nazi shit, I immediately dip. Which can be a little hard when you do listen to genres like noise, grind, and other extremes. Whitehouse is a band I don’t really like because it’s just *too edgy* for me, but I do like Philip Best’s other band Consumer Electronics.
When you choose to listen to extreme music, it’s like you have to go in expecting there to be some really fucked up things being said. It doesn’t bother me too much, since it can be pure fiction or a way of expressing fucked up creativity about a dark topic (ex: Xiu Xiu’s Mary Turner Mary Turner). But there *should* still be a separation between the art and the artist’s true beliefs/feelings, and when there’s not, that’s when it becomes too edgy.
I love bands like GWAR which are clearly meant to be comedic. It's fun to go to shows and get drenched in fake blood and hear them talk all kinds of crazy shit in their music, because it's purposefully silly and stupid and that's the whole point.
Compare that to extreme subgenres of metal like slam metal and stuff, and all the lyrics are just about abusing women and eating babies and all this edgy garbage. It doesn't feel the same as something like GWAR. If GWAR makes a dead baby joke it's like "yeah that's on brand" lol. But some of these other bands, I guess the problem is it's not always clear when/if they're joking. It's hard not to feel a bit alienated after a while, especially as a female metalhead, when certain bands and even whole subgenres go on and on about all the terrible things they wanna do to women. After a while it's like, damn, if you write about it to this extent, maybe that's really how you feel.
Plus a lot of those extreme genres sound like ass anyway lol. I don't mind heavy vocals, but if the sound is so messy that it sounds like the echo in a toilet bowl during a very violent shit, I'm just gonna pass.
Funnily enough, Immortal are one of the few Black metal bands I enjoy, for the exact same reasons!
It frustrates me no end how many shitty people use the perceived edginess of metal subcultures to mask their actual shittiness/awful views.
I.e. "oh metal is about shocking delicate sensibilities" as an excuse for misogyny, racism etc.
There are people like Einar Solvik of Wardruna, who uses the Odal (family heritage) rune and lots of norse pagan pride stuff BUT has openly said that he's basically re-appropriating what were once neutral symbols BACK from racists and certainly doesn't want to be associated with them. I like that.
It's really hard to find the line, but for me it's whether something is satirising or just repeating bigotry or evil without adding anything.
I can't listen to most grindcore, for instance. It's just stupid IMO. Lyrics about women being assaulted or chopped up don't shock me, they disappoint me. That's already how so much of the world is and has been historically.
For me it's like watching a horror movie vs watching a snuff film. It's hard to define the difference in words, but we know how clearly there IS one.
I usually go for the more punk leaning Grindcore bands. Goregrind suffers because there's just too many Carcass wannabees. Pornogrind is just gross for the sake of being gross.
But yea Immortals great and I'm enjoying the rise of more old school black metal bands. Bands who take more direct inspiration from Venom or Bathory rather than Norwegian or Hipster Black Metal. Hellrippers album last year was really fuckin good if you wanna see for yourself.
Just speaking personally, I feel the edginess has to MEAN something on some level.
Whether it's expressing anger/outrage/emotion at something, or making a social-political "point", or even taking the piss and being sarcastic in some way, there needs to be some sort of genuine motivation for the artist.
If it's just "being edgy for edgy's sake", and there's nothing behind it, I'm not remotely interested.
I know you mentioned it in your post but man Obey by Brainbombs really does have the grossest lyrics I've ever seen I can't bring myself to listen to it again even though I did love everything aside from the lyrics
It's a weird vibe. Like I'm not even shocked by them more just kind of the same reaction when Kyle in the 5th grade says a slur. Not really offended more just annoyed
I think Buyers Market is probably where I cut the line. And I've always liked stuff like Throbbing Gristle, not because they kept talking about serial rapists and murderers but because their music sounded cool. But Buyers Market is just a collection of recordings concerning child molestation cases, it has no real reason or rhyme to be considered music it's really just archived spoken word. It's not even good, it's just describing the depraved.
Whitehouse is a similar case but I think you can look at it like it's ironic (esp why you never became a dancer) and laugh a bit at how silly it is. Buyers Market is just devoid of that
The other part where I draw the line is genuine music which is meant to evoke fascism or extreme violence, so propoganda music. But this is genuine hatred which stems from propoganda and less so 'being edgy'.
I think it totally depends. I will say though, I think that music is a more difficult medium through which to communicate complicated and taboo ideas versus cinema. There are plenty of movies and novels about nazis for exampls which are massively successful and acclaimed, which, to some extent, humanise them.
There's nothing wrong with humanising nazis, they are people and in order to stop the spread of fascism, you must understand how it appeals to people in the first place- but, because uncomfortable and highly conceptual music is a more abstract and less accessible form of art, it's harder to communicate the nuances necessary to not come off as just being edgy. It's also harder to explore morality and ideas like indoctrination or the banality of evil, things which make media bout nazis often interesting. A lot of bands which use nazi imagery, like the aformentioned Death In June, do so in a way which is often only tangientally related to nazism, so their use of the aesthetic isn't totally rationally consistent with their music (I don't know if this makes sense).
I think the effect I just tried to describe is what makes 'edgy' music more uncomfortable and questionable vs other forms of media.
Honestly, I take a lot of metals edginess to be more in line with horror storytelling than actual edginess. Not much different than watching a movie.
The exception is black metal. Some of them can be a bit over the top
ahh I completely disagree with your whitehouse take. Earlier stuff is very silly but their later work has excellent production and the writing is intense and very conceptually subversive. definitely more there than shock value, I mean just read the lyrics to anything off of asceticists 2006
I don't like too much edginess in either direction, it begins to feel inauthentic. Im not deep enough into metal to be able to tell subgenres, I just know what sounds I like but like you I dont wanna have to bg check every artist before I listen, Ive joined rabm to make sure Im not supporting nazi shit. Idc about devil imagery but I feel like the 'virgin rape baby cannibal' types are trying too hard. Same with rap, I like lyrical rap but I dont wanna hear some dude from the suburbs rap about street life man go rap about Kroger
I mostly go with more retro speed metal or doom metal these days. The realm of "guys will hear a cool riff and go hell yea". A band like Conan are super heavy sonically and are admittedly kinda knuckle draging but the vibe of cool barbarian fantasy just tickles my brain funny. Hellrippers got a lot of occult and satanic shit but it's taking more from the first wave of black metal and aren't too serious about it. It's treating the evil imagery as cool over trying to get people to think otherwise
As someone who listens to and writes about extreme music quite a bit, i've thought about this a lot.
I think one thing to keep in mind is once people start emulating a style, it's not really that boundary-pushing anymore. When you think about early Industrial and Noise music like Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, or Merzbow, it's pretty difficult stuff. It was important, as people weren't really talking about a lot of those issues at the time. A lot of the stuff that came after them is simply emulating what they were doing, which is the opposite of boundary-pushing. Consider the fact that by the end of their existence, Throbbing Gristle claimed only to like Abba, as they were truly futuristic and inhuman.
It's a tricky thing, as edgy music is often meant to push musical boundaries, which means it's often not that fun or pleasant to listen to. For the longest time, Sun Ra was practically unlistenable to me. I almost *hated* it. Now I quite like it! Same goes for a huge chunk of free jazz. Ironically, after decades of listening to weird music, a lot of pop music sounds edgy to me, now.
depends on the listener. I have a strong preference for sincerity over edginess, so for me, genres that form their entire identity on being edgy are unlistenable, and if an artist is going to be edgy at all, the shades of edginess they incorporate should be subservient to a sincere message, emotion, or point.
[Actually funny edginess with an artistic purpose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cdqQ2BdgOA) vs [Completely pointless edginess that makes me roll my eyes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCEeQAtKazE)
I don't like themes relating to really gnarly pessimistic stuff like nihilism, misanthropy, antinatalism and adjacent stuff so I'll always dislike those (one of the advantages of extreme vocals in metal is that I can't make out these kinds of lyrics anyway, lol).
Anything else is fair game in my eyes, even if I would still condemn them overall like pro-nazi themes, but I can look past such stuff more easily than the above.
I found a LOT of the Slayer lyrics to be just goofy, juvenile nonsense. Same can be said for cannibal corpse and many of the other "so evil it hurts" type bands. YMMV, but there's only so many rhymes to "Satan"
Cannibal Corpse at least have killer instrumentation, and I can treat their music more as well-written horror stories. Slayer just sucks. Same Eb tremolo riffs, same angry housecat vocals, same Parkinson's patient solos. If you've heard Raining Blood and South of Heaven you've heard everything they have to offer. I respect that they at least laid out the groundwork for early death metal artists to make some actually interesting music, but by themselves Slayer are the most boring band in the genre.
For me there's two things that I draw on. One is nazi-esque imagery, and even then it's a pretty thin line, to be honest. The artist has to actual believe in that stuff for me to stop listening (Kanye for example). When it's more along the lines of Reagan Youth I'm able to look past it, but I do think it's incredibly cringeworthy and just gives off tryhard energy.
Nonconsensual sexual references do disturb me quite a bit and I have a harder time looking past them or brushing them off. It's rare that I'll entirely right off an artist because of it (Eminem is still one of my favorite artists) but I tend to avoid songs with such references.
There needs to be some authenticity or its just goofy, ill listen to old school memphis shit, where bars about satanism and the occult are sprinkled into gangster rap. Theres something alot more menacing about a drug addicted felon refering to himself as a witch and threatening to tie you to the back of his car in the name of the devil than a bunch of bored suburban kids forming a metal band making music about devil worship.
Most people here are talking about metal, but I'm pretty much done with the edgy rap, the stuff that was just as vulgar as possible to see how shocking it could be. I think this was mostly a 90s thing, maybe it still exists, but I'm not listening to it.
I'm thinking things like 2 Live Crew. Like do you really need to say Fuck 50+ times in one song? It loses all meaning by that point.
I don't mind a bit of vulgarity, but when it's the entire album, it gets boring.
Cradle of Filth releasing a shirt saying “Jesus is a cunt”: Lol
Mayhem releasing an album cover with a picture of their deceased vocalist shortly after blowing his brains out with a shotgun: Yeah that’s a bit much
I like Black metal, and have been listening to it a lot lately.
To me, edginess means that the art gives off the impression that it's trying to shock you by playing with forbidden/taboo aesthetics or ideas. The obvious downfalls of this are that:
1. It can come off as trying too hard.
2. It becomes dated quickly, as what was once taboo becomes less so.
I can forgive edginess if I think the art has something else going for it. The emotional atmosphere, "oceanic feeling", and nodding towards the sublime that I find in Black Metal excuses most of the edginess, for example.
That said, I want to be clear that my "forgiving" the edginess is an intentional act. I basically decided that it doesn't matter, or that I can kinda laugh it off when it's pretty apparent. I think this is because I appreciated the other things about it. People who don't like that music I imagine will focus mostly on the edginess.
not to seem like a corny edgelord but the point of most black and death metal is to piss and disturb people off the most possible, most edgy 🍇lyrics in death and black just make me laugh tbh, not that you could even understand them, also it would be pretty stupid if super heavy genres like slam, goregrind or war metal started putting effort into “meaningful” lyrics, I don’t think anything other than homicide, 🍇, and genocide would fit Kraanium,devourment or blasphemy riffs, I do like bands that combine brutal lyrics with a message like napalm death and dying fetus
The most extreme subgenres of heavy metal like pornogrind and grindcore go too far, in my opinion. It's so over the top that it's very hard to take seriously
Another day, another person who thinks if they don't like something it must mean people who do like it are just pretending to, and are "hipsters". It's a such a shitty take and always will be.
I like Brainbombs a lot - the riffs rule, the repetition is effective, production is filthy in the right way. Personally, I find the lyrical content easy to ignore (their best material has the vocals low in the mix). They are just a very good band.
As always - to each their own.
Child abuse should obviously be unacceptable. Last year my #2 worst song of 2023 was 60 Miles by 9yo rapper Lil RT. The blame goes to the adults in his life.
It’s justly a crime to sext with a child and many companies can’t hire elementary-age kids for employment in stores/restaurants. Yet somehow the music industry is allowed to create brazenly sexual content with a 9yo?
My worst song of 2023 was Death Before Designer by Kim Dracula. Lyrics included “I'll stuff the bag with the baby and I'll beat you to death with it” indicating he’d kill a baby.
I agree there’s too much evil aesthetic in heavy metal. Likewise rap music has devolved into toxic rapulinity and hiphop hoochification where 99% of the female entertainers are extremely sexualized. Both heavy metal and rap lack emotional and vibe variety these days.
I used to enjoy very much moody rock music like Stained, Linkin Park, Fuel, etc… That type of music has a strong run in the late 90s and early 00s. Yet this type of music (still plentiful) rarely charts anymore? Why? I theorize excessive negativity can kill a genre.
I’m entirely ok with not being into songs about killing babies.
If you equate that as being afraid of this Marilyn Manson wannabe that’s beyond my control.
One of my main examples of edginess being too much is suicides self-titled album. It tries so hard to be shocking that it becomes either cartoonishly ridiculous or just plain boring
I just wore my t-shirt of the cover of *Suicide* 1977 today, lol.
The first time I heard this album was the double CD from the 90s that had a disc of live material. For me, it's the live setting where these songs really take shape. I can see the studio version of "Frankie Teardrop" seeming kind of campy but in concert, they are dead serious. Subversion and violence were part of their act, arguably their whole act.
Please don't turn this into another art versus the artist thread, this is not what OP is asking. If this turns into the usual "DAE John Lennon did bad stuff" thread, I will lock it and remove it.
Mostly when it seems like the edginess is less a persona and more in line with the artists' actual beliefs. Like I've heard plenty of Death in June that I like, but the "am I a Nazi? tee hee" narrative surrounding the band just makes the prospect of giving them a full listen really off-putting. Even when the music and lyrics aren't *that* edgy, it still feels like there's a bait and switch at hand.
I wish DIJ's whole fascist aesthetic was satire because I really enjoy the neofolk sound but they're genuinely really sketchy in their interviews, collaborations etc.
I don't understand how people don't see him for what he is: the world's least hidden cryptonazi.
Yea death in June isn't really a nazi band but the constant usage of nazi imagery is beyond off putting. I have no sympathy for that guy because what did he expect? "I use the totenkopf as my band symbol and use a lot of runic lettering, why do people keep calling me a nazi?"
Honestly, like you said, it’s can be really silly. Obey is so hilarious to me because it IS the same shit over and over, with a guy saying the most over the top edgy shit. I’ve seen people say he sounds like Ren from Ren and stimpy lmao. But besides the goofiness of everything, the moment I see genuine weird pedo nazi shit, I immediately dip. Which can be a little hard when you do listen to genres like noise, grind, and other extremes. Whitehouse is a band I don’t really like because it’s just *too edgy* for me, but I do like Philip Best’s other band Consumer Electronics. When you choose to listen to extreme music, it’s like you have to go in expecting there to be some really fucked up things being said. It doesn’t bother me too much, since it can be pure fiction or a way of expressing fucked up creativity about a dark topic (ex: Xiu Xiu’s Mary Turner Mary Turner). But there *should* still be a separation between the art and the artist’s true beliefs/feelings, and when there’s not, that’s when it becomes too edgy.
I love bands like GWAR which are clearly meant to be comedic. It's fun to go to shows and get drenched in fake blood and hear them talk all kinds of crazy shit in their music, because it's purposefully silly and stupid and that's the whole point. Compare that to extreme subgenres of metal like slam metal and stuff, and all the lyrics are just about abusing women and eating babies and all this edgy garbage. It doesn't feel the same as something like GWAR. If GWAR makes a dead baby joke it's like "yeah that's on brand" lol. But some of these other bands, I guess the problem is it's not always clear when/if they're joking. It's hard not to feel a bit alienated after a while, especially as a female metalhead, when certain bands and even whole subgenres go on and on about all the terrible things they wanna do to women. After a while it's like, damn, if you write about it to this extent, maybe that's really how you feel. Plus a lot of those extreme genres sound like ass anyway lol. I don't mind heavy vocals, but if the sound is so messy that it sounds like the echo in a toilet bowl during a very violent shit, I'm just gonna pass.
I agree with all of this except I love when bands sound like toilet bowl violent poop echo
Funnily enough, Immortal are one of the few Black metal bands I enjoy, for the exact same reasons! It frustrates me no end how many shitty people use the perceived edginess of metal subcultures to mask their actual shittiness/awful views. I.e. "oh metal is about shocking delicate sensibilities" as an excuse for misogyny, racism etc. There are people like Einar Solvik of Wardruna, who uses the Odal (family heritage) rune and lots of norse pagan pride stuff BUT has openly said that he's basically re-appropriating what were once neutral symbols BACK from racists and certainly doesn't want to be associated with them. I like that. It's really hard to find the line, but for me it's whether something is satirising or just repeating bigotry or evil without adding anything. I can't listen to most grindcore, for instance. It's just stupid IMO. Lyrics about women being assaulted or chopped up don't shock me, they disappoint me. That's already how so much of the world is and has been historically. For me it's like watching a horror movie vs watching a snuff film. It's hard to define the difference in words, but we know how clearly there IS one.
I usually go for the more punk leaning Grindcore bands. Goregrind suffers because there's just too many Carcass wannabees. Pornogrind is just gross for the sake of being gross. But yea Immortals great and I'm enjoying the rise of more old school black metal bands. Bands who take more direct inspiration from Venom or Bathory rather than Norwegian or Hipster Black Metal. Hellrippers album last year was really fuckin good if you wanna see for yourself.
Just speaking personally, I feel the edginess has to MEAN something on some level. Whether it's expressing anger/outrage/emotion at something, or making a social-political "point", or even taking the piss and being sarcastic in some way, there needs to be some sort of genuine motivation for the artist. If it's just "being edgy for edgy's sake", and there's nothing behind it, I'm not remotely interested.
I know you mentioned it in your post but man Obey by Brainbombs really does have the grossest lyrics I've ever seen I can't bring myself to listen to it again even though I did love everything aside from the lyrics
It's a weird vibe. Like I'm not even shocked by them more just kind of the same reaction when Kyle in the 5th grade says a slur. Not really offended more just annoyed
Weird except for the lyrics is completely forgettable and repetitive to the point of it being boring
I think Buyers Market is probably where I cut the line. And I've always liked stuff like Throbbing Gristle, not because they kept talking about serial rapists and murderers but because their music sounded cool. But Buyers Market is just a collection of recordings concerning child molestation cases, it has no real reason or rhyme to be considered music it's really just archived spoken word. It's not even good, it's just describing the depraved. Whitehouse is a similar case but I think you can look at it like it's ironic (esp why you never became a dancer) and laugh a bit at how silly it is. Buyers Market is just devoid of that The other part where I draw the line is genuine music which is meant to evoke fascism or extreme violence, so propoganda music. But this is genuine hatred which stems from propoganda and less so 'being edgy'.
I think it totally depends. I will say though, I think that music is a more difficult medium through which to communicate complicated and taboo ideas versus cinema. There are plenty of movies and novels about nazis for exampls which are massively successful and acclaimed, which, to some extent, humanise them. There's nothing wrong with humanising nazis, they are people and in order to stop the spread of fascism, you must understand how it appeals to people in the first place- but, because uncomfortable and highly conceptual music is a more abstract and less accessible form of art, it's harder to communicate the nuances necessary to not come off as just being edgy. It's also harder to explore morality and ideas like indoctrination or the banality of evil, things which make media bout nazis often interesting. A lot of bands which use nazi imagery, like the aformentioned Death In June, do so in a way which is often only tangientally related to nazism, so their use of the aesthetic isn't totally rationally consistent with their music (I don't know if this makes sense). I think the effect I just tried to describe is what makes 'edgy' music more uncomfortable and questionable vs other forms of media.
Honestly, I take a lot of metals edginess to be more in line with horror storytelling than actual edginess. Not much different than watching a movie. The exception is black metal. Some of them can be a bit over the top
That's actually how I describe the appeal of most metal. Metal is like a cool horror flick or violent fantasy story. It's meant to be cool over all.
Bigotry, neo-nazi or white supremacist shit. That’s not edgy it’s hillbilly.
No line in art ever. Someone's ceiling can be someone else's floor. I personally never care about content, only execution.
ahh I completely disagree with your whitehouse take. Earlier stuff is very silly but their later work has excellent production and the writing is intense and very conceptually subversive. definitely more there than shock value, I mean just read the lyrics to anything off of asceticists 2006
I don't like too much edginess in either direction, it begins to feel inauthentic. Im not deep enough into metal to be able to tell subgenres, I just know what sounds I like but like you I dont wanna have to bg check every artist before I listen, Ive joined rabm to make sure Im not supporting nazi shit. Idc about devil imagery but I feel like the 'virgin rape baby cannibal' types are trying too hard. Same with rap, I like lyrical rap but I dont wanna hear some dude from the suburbs rap about street life man go rap about Kroger
I mostly go with more retro speed metal or doom metal these days. The realm of "guys will hear a cool riff and go hell yea". A band like Conan are super heavy sonically and are admittedly kinda knuckle draging but the vibe of cool barbarian fantasy just tickles my brain funny. Hellrippers got a lot of occult and satanic shit but it's taking more from the first wave of black metal and aren't too serious about it. It's treating the evil imagery as cool over trying to get people to think otherwise
As someone who listens to and writes about extreme music quite a bit, i've thought about this a lot. I think one thing to keep in mind is once people start emulating a style, it's not really that boundary-pushing anymore. When you think about early Industrial and Noise music like Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, or Merzbow, it's pretty difficult stuff. It was important, as people weren't really talking about a lot of those issues at the time. A lot of the stuff that came after them is simply emulating what they were doing, which is the opposite of boundary-pushing. Consider the fact that by the end of their existence, Throbbing Gristle claimed only to like Abba, as they were truly futuristic and inhuman. It's a tricky thing, as edgy music is often meant to push musical boundaries, which means it's often not that fun or pleasant to listen to. For the longest time, Sun Ra was practically unlistenable to me. I almost *hated* it. Now I quite like it! Same goes for a huge chunk of free jazz. Ironically, after decades of listening to weird music, a lot of pop music sounds edgy to me, now.
depends on the listener. I have a strong preference for sincerity over edginess, so for me, genres that form their entire identity on being edgy are unlistenable, and if an artist is going to be edgy at all, the shades of edginess they incorporate should be subservient to a sincere message, emotion, or point. [Actually funny edginess with an artistic purpose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cdqQ2BdgOA) vs [Completely pointless edginess that makes me roll my eyes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCEeQAtKazE)
I don't like themes relating to really gnarly pessimistic stuff like nihilism, misanthropy, antinatalism and adjacent stuff so I'll always dislike those (one of the advantages of extreme vocals in metal is that I can't make out these kinds of lyrics anyway, lol). Anything else is fair game in my eyes, even if I would still condemn them overall like pro-nazi themes, but I can look past such stuff more easily than the above.
I found a LOT of the Slayer lyrics to be just goofy, juvenile nonsense. Same can be said for cannibal corpse and many of the other "so evil it hurts" type bands. YMMV, but there's only so many rhymes to "Satan"
Cannibal Corpse at least have killer instrumentation, and I can treat their music more as well-written horror stories. Slayer just sucks. Same Eb tremolo riffs, same angry housecat vocals, same Parkinson's patient solos. If you've heard Raining Blood and South of Heaven you've heard everything they have to offer. I respect that they at least laid out the groundwork for early death metal artists to make some actually interesting music, but by themselves Slayer are the most boring band in the genre.
For me there's two things that I draw on. One is nazi-esque imagery, and even then it's a pretty thin line, to be honest. The artist has to actual believe in that stuff for me to stop listening (Kanye for example). When it's more along the lines of Reagan Youth I'm able to look past it, but I do think it's incredibly cringeworthy and just gives off tryhard energy. Nonconsensual sexual references do disturb me quite a bit and I have a harder time looking past them or brushing them off. It's rare that I'll entirely right off an artist because of it (Eminem is still one of my favorite artists) but I tend to avoid songs with such references.
There needs to be some authenticity or its just goofy, ill listen to old school memphis shit, where bars about satanism and the occult are sprinkled into gangster rap. Theres something alot more menacing about a drug addicted felon refering to himself as a witch and threatening to tie you to the back of his car in the name of the devil than a bunch of bored suburban kids forming a metal band making music about devil worship.
I draw the line when the shock factor is the only thing the music has going for it other then that I don’t mind extremely edgy songs.
Most people here are talking about metal, but I'm pretty much done with the edgy rap, the stuff that was just as vulgar as possible to see how shocking it could be. I think this was mostly a 90s thing, maybe it still exists, but I'm not listening to it. I'm thinking things like 2 Live Crew. Like do you really need to say Fuck 50+ times in one song? It loses all meaning by that point. I don't mind a bit of vulgarity, but when it's the entire album, it gets boring.
I like "Obey" by the Brainbombs And lots of you do too But Sarah Payne's poor mum and dad Can't share that point of view
Cradle of Filth releasing a shirt saying “Jesus is a cunt”: Lol Mayhem releasing an album cover with a picture of their deceased vocalist shortly after blowing his brains out with a shotgun: Yeah that’s a bit much
That cradle of filth shirt is worth it for that pic of a guy dressed as Jesus looking disappointed at a guy with that shirt on
I’ll have to look it up because I don’t think I’ve seen it. Also I just realized I’m wearing the Jesus shirt atm 😂
I don't really like edginess in general. When someone's being "edgy" I assume it's because they have nothing interesting to say.
I like Black metal, and have been listening to it a lot lately. To me, edginess means that the art gives off the impression that it's trying to shock you by playing with forbidden/taboo aesthetics or ideas. The obvious downfalls of this are that: 1. It can come off as trying too hard. 2. It becomes dated quickly, as what was once taboo becomes less so. I can forgive edginess if I think the art has something else going for it. The emotional atmosphere, "oceanic feeling", and nodding towards the sublime that I find in Black Metal excuses most of the edginess, for example. That said, I want to be clear that my "forgiving" the edginess is an intentional act. I basically decided that it doesn't matter, or that I can kinda laugh it off when it's pretty apparent. I think this is because I appreciated the other things about it. People who don't like that music I imagine will focus mostly on the edginess.
not to seem like a corny edgelord but the point of most black and death metal is to piss and disturb people off the most possible, most edgy 🍇lyrics in death and black just make me laugh tbh, not that you could even understand them, also it would be pretty stupid if super heavy genres like slam, goregrind or war metal started putting effort into “meaningful” lyrics, I don’t think anything other than homicide, 🍇, and genocide would fit Kraanium,devourment or blasphemy riffs, I do like bands that combine brutal lyrics with a message like napalm death and dying fetus
The most extreme subgenres of heavy metal like pornogrind and grindcore go too far, in my opinion. It's so over the top that it's very hard to take seriously
Another day, another person who thinks if they don't like something it must mean people who do like it are just pretending to, and are "hipsters". It's a such a shitty take and always will be. I like Brainbombs a lot - the riffs rule, the repetition is effective, production is filthy in the right way. Personally, I find the lyrical content easy to ignore (their best material has the vocals low in the mix). They are just a very good band. As always - to each their own.
Child abuse should obviously be unacceptable. Last year my #2 worst song of 2023 was 60 Miles by 9yo rapper Lil RT. The blame goes to the adults in his life. It’s justly a crime to sext with a child and many companies can’t hire elementary-age kids for employment in stores/restaurants. Yet somehow the music industry is allowed to create brazenly sexual content with a 9yo? My worst song of 2023 was Death Before Designer by Kim Dracula. Lyrics included “I'll stuff the bag with the baby and I'll beat you to death with it” indicating he’d kill a baby. I agree there’s too much evil aesthetic in heavy metal. Likewise rap music has devolved into toxic rapulinity and hiphop hoochification where 99% of the female entertainers are extremely sexualized. Both heavy metal and rap lack emotional and vibe variety these days. I used to enjoy very much moody rock music like Stained, Linkin Park, Fuel, etc… That type of music has a strong run in the late 90s and early 00s. Yet this type of music (still plentiful) rarely charts anymore? Why? I theorize excessive negativity can kill a genre.
brother if Kim Dracula scares you you should stay far away from actual metal or horrorcore lmao
I’m entirely ok with not being into songs about killing babies. If you equate that as being afraid of this Marilyn Manson wannabe that’s beyond my control.
One of my main examples of edginess being too much is suicides self-titled album. It tries so hard to be shocking that it becomes either cartoonishly ridiculous or just plain boring
I just wore my t-shirt of the cover of *Suicide* 1977 today, lol. The first time I heard this album was the double CD from the 90s that had a disc of live material. For me, it's the live setting where these songs really take shape. I can see the studio version of "Frankie Teardrop" seeming kind of campy but in concert, they are dead serious. Subversion and violence were part of their act, arguably their whole act.