“We hate emo – because the general public have no idea what the difference between emos, Goths, metalheads and punks are, and dammit, it’s important.”

This is why all those mentioned hate Emo and Indie. The funny thing is the subculture of “Hipsters” also hate Emo and Indie for the same reason. Supposedly there is a difference.

The number one reason I (as a Goth/Metalhead) resent Indie music and all those other silly little genres like “BritPop, Shoegaze, Math Rock, CB6, Twee Pop, Dance Rock, chillwave and indietronica” is because they have replaced harder, more interesting music at Gothic nightclubs. It used to be we’d get some Rammstein or Ministry mixed in with our Industrial and some Type O Negative and Moonspell mixed in with our Goth music. Now we get Emo and Indie songs thrown in.

This is why we all hate them. They’re coming over to our playgrounds… and we’re all very territorial.

[...] week, I explained to the uninitiated why I, as a metalhead, am required to hate Indie music. Now, to even the field, I will attempt to find reasons why I, as a metalhead, love Indie [...]

Ahahahaha lol

We hate hip hop and rap, because it’s a culture completely foreign to us, and we’re all white supremesists.

lol everything here with “we hate” in front of it is hilarious lol

but i gotta say i Love indie music!
mostly because the sound is so awesom, but all of the sounds are different , for example the Arctic Monkeys – From the ritz to the rubble is an awesome indie song but is also totally different from something like The Hush Sound – The market , or we intertwined.
the other reason is because indie bands are relatively unpopular. and of corse everything popular is SHIT! im one of those indie fans who loves a band … until they become popular. for exdample Owl City. Owl City used to keep me up at night, catchy up beat songs for the win. but FUCKING MUCH MUSIC and MTV had to ruin it and turn it into crap pop shit.
But i also like bands like slayer, avenged sevenfold. nothing too much, pussy stuff like Atreyu and escape the fate -_-
-mike <3
p.s.. rap can suck me :)

@Michael – I sooooo don’t “get” the Arctic Monkeys, but maybe I should give them a chance … Also, regarding “rap can suck me” – all I can say is \m/

So I got a little thing to say : )

Music essentially is for everyone. It’s such a wide variety of things and pieces of other things. No type of music is trying to “steal” from another type. If we considered different forms of music to be stealing from someone else, then shouldn’t we say that all music is stealing from jazz which originated from the beats of African drums and rituals?
I don’t know. Shouldn’t you consider things a compliment if a music is derived off the same forms of another?

I completely agree that indie is w bullshit genre, and it really is nonsense. But shoegaze, isn’t indie, it’s a subgenre of alternative. And the whole hatred of rap/hip hop is completely mundane, because if you listen to underground hip-hop you would probably love. And the fact that you dont like it because it is foreign is beyond stupid, becaucse your calling yourself a closesminded dullface. White supremacist huh?I really hope your not serious, because the entire concept of race doesn’t make any sense at all Music is for all races. If your a nazi on here then fuck off with you.

@Kyler – Wikipedia said shoegaze was related to indie, and surely Wikipedia never lies? :)

I think you missed the point of this article, which was that I was trying to, in a joking way, point out that when people say they “hate” a genre of music, what they really mean is they “don’t get it”. We like to talk things up and make blatant generalizations about musical genres – I was being silly, pointing out the generalizations people make about metal – it’s “white supremacist”, that we hate hate HATE being mistaken for goths or emos, that we think metal is the one, true and only music worthy of listening to.

It’s not, of course. Just like none of these generalizations are true. That’s why they’re generalizations – they’re applicable to exactly nobody. But it’s part of the “them or us” mentality that makes up a subculture. If you read it again, you’ll notice I never said I was a white supremasist, and in fact, at the start of the article, I explicitly said I don’t hate anything or anyone, and that’s true.

Calling something foriegn doesn’t make anybody a close-minded dumbface. I always think the music that a person loves the most is the music that speaks to them on an emotional level, whether it taps into their love of fun, their anger, their pain, their love.

I am a small, shy, white girl who grew up in a TINY town in rural New Zealand. I am blind. I have my own unique range of experiences and emotions. I find metal resonates with me on an emotional level, as does folk music, certain classical composers, some new age and Turkish music, and a little bit of alternative.

I am not, nor have I ever, had much to do with street gangs, drug culture, or even lived in the bad part of an American city. I’ve never been part of the culture that rap / hip hop grew out of (or at least, my understanding of it, which is probably quite mainstream) and, as such, the music simply doesn’t hold any kind of emotional pull to me. If it did, I’d listen to it, but it doesn’t, so I don’t.

And yes, there actually ARE a couple of rap/hip hop bands I like. I think it’s exactly two. They’re both NZ bands, and very close to my own experiences of growing up in a small town in this country. I’ve only got so much time on this earth and I’m not sure I want to spend it hunting for underground hip hop bands that will change my opinion of it. I’ve still got something like 24 053 metal bands left to hear.

I hope this goes some way to answering your questions. Also, isn’t it odd to tell me to fuck off on my own blog? :)

@Katie. You are, objectively, correct. It’s silly to say one type of music steals from another because, well, stealing implies maliciousness. The great, wide and awesome world of music simply represents an amazing interplay of ideas between creative minds. It blows me away with it’s awesomeness, sometimes.

Subjectively, of course, what you deal with is the fact that most people are emotionally connected to the music they listen to. And this changes their objective opinions of other forms of music. And when people who feel emotionally connected to the same type of music get together, you have a subculture. And subcultures are good for many, many reasons, and bad for an equal number of reasons.

I am proud to be a metalhead, and to consider myself part of this subculture. But I, like most other metalheads (especially those who read this blog, who astound me with their intelligence and open-mindedness on a regular basis) don’t allow “metal” to define us. We have a whole range of diverse tastes in music, art, literature, sport … sometimes, however, we like to poke a little fun at rap, or Indie. But for all the fun we poke at others, we poke the most fun at ourselves :)

Really enjoyed this up until you made the point about Modest Mouse. What records of theirs have you been listening to? Check out ‘Moon & Antarctica’ and ‘Lonesome Crowded West’ If you can’t find anything that ‘goes somewhere’ and/or is interesting to you in those 2 albums then you need to get your ears checked and make sure your brain is workin. I could ‘drone on’ and on about the legacy they’ve created with their output in the 90′s and how Isaac’s lyrics are absolutely some of the finest I’ve ever heard but I’d rather let the music speak for itself.

@Matt – the cool thing about writing this post was that a whole bunch of people commented and wrote to me and said “You say you hate Indie … have you ever heard THIS band?” and I’d give it a listen and now I like too many Indie bands I can’t actually claim I hate Indie anymore. An old boyfriend of mine used to love these guys but all their songs sounded the same when he played them. I know how important and influential they are, but I’ve always brushed them off as “not my thing”. I don’t think I’ve ever given an album a serious listen, though. On your suggestion, I will give the two you’ve posted a try, let you know how I go :).

I’m more than happy to be proved wrong if it means I’m introduced to some amazing music.

The simple reason is that the guitar sound is guttless. It was like seeing Tool at the BDO last year, the guitar had been turned down heaps. When they turn the guitar down its some other shit