There is a question that comes back every time a discussion about metal opens up: is the music less exciting than it was, or is it just nostalgia talking? It isn’t rhetorical. We hear it among friends, in comments, at festivals, we hear it in ourselves too. And the truth is that the experience isn’t the same as that of previous decades — but the music is still worth seeking out. The death of monoculture, the way we discover records, the decades we single out and the relationship between artificial intelligence and live music are the four points that keep the conversation alive.
The death of monoculture
We remember the late 2000s, when there was still a centre: television, radio, magazines and the charts. An album by a big band was a cultural event that everyone talked about, and the charts captured fairly accurately what the audience was listening to. That centre has been lost. The audience fragmented into dozens of communities, the charts don’t play the role they used to, and a release can go by unnoticed even when it’s excellent. Music didn’t get worse. But it stopped being a shared experience: when an album isn’t heard at the same time by an entire generation, something is lost that streaming doesn’t replace.
How we discover music now
The truth is that discovering music has lost its charm. You once had to read Kerrang, Metal Hammer or Terrorizer, watch music television like Scuzz or MTV, go to the record shop and risk your money on a CD you might not even like. That risk made discovery more powerful. Spotify and YouTube make everything easy and instant, but also more indifferent, because nothing costs anything. So the listener becomes more selective and skips past things far more easily. We’re not saying convenience is bad. We’re saying it makes commitment harder.
The decades and the classic albums
If the criterion is classic albums, the 1990s and 2000s come out on top — we consider them the best. The 80s had less variety: thrash and traditional metal, with the other genres still in their infancy. We remember the 2010s as the emptiest, with the rise of metalcore, djent and modern prog, few great albums and a shift towards singles instead of statement albums. This is, of course, our own assessment and not some objective measure. Every decade has people who lived it, and they would defend it with the same passion.
AI, live music and the return
As for the causes, we see more time online, more temptations, social media and the skewed role models they project, instead of the old model where a band was built within a local scene, in a bubble. But the conclusion isn’t fatalistic. We see the enthusiasm coming back, and we believe artificial intelligence may ultimately benefit music, because it creates a craving for authenticity and for live music. Live shows are in greater demand than ever, prices are rising and bands are touring more. Our conclusion: metal isn’t as exciting anymore compared with the previous three decades, but it’s worth seeking out new music and supporting new releases.
See also
See also: Is Heavy Metal dead? – Kostas’s opinion and The 12 biggest reactions in the history of metal.