Bands and their Beliefs

frag420

One thing that I love about Metal and Rock music is the many bands that incorporate their everyday beliefs in their music from Satanic black metal bands, political bands such as RATM etc.

I am interested to know would a bands beliefs effect whether you listen to them or not? For instance I like a bit of Earth Crisis who are a straight edge band however I am as far from straight edge as you could get, I'm a meat eating, alcohol consuming sex maniac with a love of spliff!! I like some black metal but have no satanic tendencies other than morbid curiosity. Back in the day I would have listened to Shelter who are a Harre Krishna rock band!!

So does a bands beliefs effect your tastes and listening habits? If a black metal band woke up one day and decided they were Christians(when hell freezes over I would imagine)but kept the same music style that you are accustomed to would you stop listening to them or following them? Is a bands beliefs as important as the music for you?

frAg

seachto7

It would depend. RATM. I wouldn't take note of all their lyrics, but some of their songs were kind of obvious where they were coming from.
Thing is, they made a lot of money as a commercial entity, so I wonder how they balanced their message with being a commercially successful band.
I don't begrudge them that, but it would make you think.

If it was good musically, then I'd get over the lyrics.

Christian Rock. I don't think I'd be able to hack it too much.

Good thing about metal bands is a lot of them have something to say, even if it is often said in a ham fisted way.

I would never listen to a right wing band. Ted Nugent therefore can go f*ck himself.

Jury is still out on whether Pantera were a bunch of good ole boys or not. I don't get the feeling off their lyrics that they were. Same with CoC, Down. Some bloody good riffs though!

Mr. CooL ICE

I love Gojira, but I'm far from being the most environmentally conscious person ever, but with most of the bands mentioned, it's the delivery of the music that appeals to me rather than the substance of the lyrics and overall message.

On another note, who wants to set up a political party based on the lyrics of cannibal corpse? I can be a candidate for Cork North East

jayobray

95% about the music for me, and only with very few bands will I bother listening to the lyrics. In fairness, I'd prefer to listen to Christian rock with a decent riff than Bon Jovi's 'I'd die for you, I'd cry for you' schtick.

And listening to Amon Amarth doesn't make me want to invade Britain, the lyrics and delivery just suit the music. Although maybe the lyrics of the Wolfe Tones would have the opposite effect.

Links234

Oooh, good idea for a thread!

Yeah, rock and metal can be quite a melting pot in terms of the beliefs of bands, and although personally I think for a lot of bands their beliefs are incidental to the music, they can be a factor. I can't listen to Burzum for example because of what a ****head Varg is, and I was completely put-off Austrian Death Machine after Tim Lambesis tried to hire a hitman to kill his wife. **** Ted Nugent too.

frag420

Mods, can we change the thread title to "F*ck Ted Nugent":D:D

Links234

Or at least put F*ck Ted Nugent in parentheses in the title

seachto7

Nicolas Cage wrote: »

I love Gojira, but I'm far from being the most environmentally conscious person ever, but with most of the bands mentioned, it's the delivery of the music that appeals to me rather than the substance of the lyrics and overall message.

On another note, who wants to set up a political party based on the lyrics of cannibal corpse? I can be a candidate for Cork North East

On that note, you know the way banking and insurance ads have all this nice twee music in the background as jingles, to make you think that they are saying "we care about you, the customer".

In reality the backing music on any banking, insurance or mobile phone ads should be cannibal corpse, deicide, napalm death or obituary. "We care about you, the customer. We care so much, we're going to BEND YOU OVER THE F**KING TABLE AND NOT USE ANY LUBE!!!!!!!!" :pac:

frag420

Would be partial to some Six Feet Under on some Tv adverts.............for funeral directors!!

Anesthetize

An artist's beliefs don't affect me as long as I enjoy the music they make. I'll still love Burzum despite Varg's far-right views, and I'll still think Starflyer 59 are an amazing shoegaze band despite being Christian.

bnt

The guys in Dream Theater are mostly Christians: I remember reading that that was what clinched the job for Mike Mangini over the others. I haven't heard everything they've done, but the few religious references I recall were fairly generic. (Not that Christianity is particularly original anyway, but that's a discussion for aanother forum.)

I suppose it doesn't really matter what a band's members' beliefs are, as long as the music is up to scratch. Then again, I can't imagine Rush songs would have had quite the same impact, had Neil been a Happy Clapper ..!

Angron

It kinda depends. For instance, I won't listen to National Socialist Black Metal, and that's a point I've refused to budge on despite a friend complaining that I'm missing some great music.

bushball

Nope not one bit, might affect me choosing to buy their music or merch but not listening to it. As long as the music is good I don't care who plays it or what their beliefs are. I think it gets done up too much what religion a band is to be perfectly honest

seachto7

Well, for those who say "I don't care what their beliefs are", would you listen to music by a band if their members were openly racist or homophobic?

GLaDOS

bnt wrote: »

The guys in Dream Theater are mostly Christians: I remember reading that that was what clinched the job for Mike Mangini over the others. I haven't heard everything they've done, but the few religious references I recall were fairly generic. (Not that Christianity is particularly original anyway, but that's a discussion for aanother forum.)

Heh, I didn't realise that. The first DT song I think of when you mention religion is "In the Name of God", which is more anti-religion than anything!

Links234

ScienceNerd wrote: »

Heh, I didn't realise that. The first DT song I think of when you mention religion is "In the Name of God", which is more anti-religion than anything!

I think one way to look at it is that the members fo Dream Theater themselves might be Christian, but they're not a Christian band.

Nailz

Love the idea of this thread frag. Earth Crisis are an interesting one to be fair, with the whole "straight edge" thing I am always reminded of Minor Threat, an obvious thought as they had a tounge-in-cheek song called "Straight Edge". The thing was that a lot of punks at the time hated them for that very thing, in spite of their obvious subsequent influences.

I like the idea of straight edge musicians in a musical environment were you are expected to be the opposite, but at the same time with it and many other beliefs, I don't like the idea of being preached to. Singing about it is fine, but anything further than that is out of bounds for me, not that I ever found lyrical content overly important to begin with. I was told a lot about Morrissey's antics on his previous European tour, and no matter how much I love The Smiths, it only added to how much of a dickhead he comes across as.

In terms of just having such believes and not relating their music to it I couldn't care less, I see music as a separate entity, a body of work, not the person itself. I've no problem listening to Burzum or Mayhem. Never liked Lostprophets or Charles Manson's music I'll be honest, although I'll be hypocritical and say that I can understand why people would get sickened by the formers' output. Ted Nugent has some good tracks. :P

What I love in relation to this though are those bands that are totally not interested in going on about what they believe in, and in fact don't bother with sharing such things on an individual level either. That's why I find FNM, Primus, and Aphex Twin such captivating artists on numerous levels.

Anesthetize

Nailz wrote: »

Love the idea of this thread frag. Earth Crisis are an interesting one to be fair, with the whole "straight edge" thing I am always reminded of Minor Threat, an obvious thought as they had a tounge-in-cheek song called "Straight Edge". The thing was that a lot of punks at the time hated them for that very thing, in spite of their obvious subsequent influences.

I like the idea of straight edge musicians in a musical environment were you are expected to be the opposite, but at the same time with it and many other beliefs, I don't like the idea of being preached to. Singing about it is fine, but anything further than that is out of bounds for me, not that I ever found lyrical content overly important to begin with.

I love Minor Threat but the whole straight-edge thing doesn't bother me. I'm more amused that the founder of what would become a large and quite often obnoxious movement, Ian MacKaye, broke edge.

bushball

seachto7 wrote: »

Well, for those who say "I don't care what their beliefs are", would you listen to music by a band if their members were openly racist or homophobic?

Probably if I enjoyed their music enough, I would not buy any music or merch though

briany

Bands are perfectly entitled to have their beliefs, but it's not cool if they go beyond beliefs and into openly promoting or enacting violence upon innocent parties. Music at it's most basic, in whatever form, should add something to the world, not take it away. Thankfully, the dangerous 'hardcore' is always quite small, because there's not much overlap between knuckleheads who'll work at their music and also participate in or promote the destruction of property or violence upon others.

black_frosch

To be emotionally attached to someone and emotionally attached to someone's music are two totally different things in my opinion. Piece of music is like a piece of furniture you don't care who was the guy who produced your favourite armchair you don't care about his race, political views and how he died you just love your armchair and you're falling into it when back home.

Anesthetize

Surely this thread can't be without mentioning Liturgy. If anyone isn't familiar with their frontman's manifesto 'Transcendental Black Metal' you can read it here (starts at page 53):
http://www.radicalmatters.com/metasound/pdf/Hideous.Gnosis.Black.Metal.Theory.Symposium.I.pdf

For the tl;dr version - the band want to replace the death and atrophy of black metal with life and hypertrophy instead.

As for the music itself? I'm not particularly endeared to their sound.