It’s not that serious!

Alright, let me clarify, it’s serious enough for me to dedicate time to resolve and alleviate it, and time is precious to me; it’s not serious enough to need a special therapy session or be impaired by it. It’s my music crisis a rather annoying recurring phenomenon that on the positive side, pushes me to expand my musical horizons.

So my intention is to use this situation to bootstrap my section about music commentary in this blog since it’s really where everything began.

Let me begin by saying, like many other stories in my life, this is a story of discovery and expansion after a long period of repression. In this particular case, that repression was self-inflicted due to a need to conform to a specific group of people. I am a metalhead, and I still consider myself that, in this day and age where metal seems to be dead for everyone but a small cult following. Back in my teenage days, being a metalhead was, of course, more than a musical taste; back then metal used to be the music of the outcasts, the angry and the oppressed youth that wanted to see things burn, so it fit me perfectly because that was me, a fucking cliché of a kid with a broken family, a history of abuse, a deep hatred for religion rooted in the same family conflict, and the works. You name it, fucked up kid I was.

So although I still listen to a lot of metal music and some of my best memories from my teenage years are related to this music, friends, events, and the beauty of rebellion (that I haven’t lost), there was a downside to it: metal was in my time, a rather closed circle, it implied hating or despising most mainstream music and attitudes (even the “NuMetal” which was really the sound of my teenage years). So a respectable metalhead was a bit of a purist, knew a lot of band names, band member names, band records, and dates of release, preferred the obscure, more underground bands over the most successful ones, and took pleasure in introducing especially brutal stuff to others and so on. Lots of fun, but also lots of pressure and work!

That’s the self-inflicted repression I was talking about, no time for other musical exploration except if it was somehow within the acceptable parameters as an adult I started to realize this was OK for a stage in life, but I realized the world was much wider and there’s lots of amazing music to be enjoyed outside the ranks of metal. So I listened to the same stuff for so long that it became stale and I stopped enjoying it, that was my first musical crisis.

Now you may find that term funny, well that’s fine, look at the title of this article section, it’s not that serious but it’s very annoying because I’m one of those people who simply won’t function in life without music. I’m listening to music when I wake up and take a shower, I listen to music all day at work, and I sometimes stop working and go straight to sing karaoke (of course I have karaoke gear at home), I listen to music when I study, drive, work out and so on… So being such a musical creature it really fucks your day up when you’re blocked and don’t want to listen to anything because of how tired you are or what you know, but also you know it will be hard to get into something new that can really excite you. That’s the second issue, not just any new music will do.

But I had to do something about it…

Introducing… more metal

Yeah, for real. I know it’s disappointing but bear with me for a second here. xD

So yeah I solved my first crisis with more metal, that’s true and doesn’t seem to be quite a change; but this was a different brand of metal that took me to other places and music styles, it’s called “atmospheric black metal” and other variants like “atmospheric folk black metal” and the names can go on forever but they’re like, similar.

This is beautiful music, which is also sad and gloomy typically, so this is not a recommendation if you’re depressed and not used to listening to the heavy stuff. But even as I’m writing this article I’m listening to a band named Agalloch which was one of my first discoveries from that time.

Now having said that, if you would ever browse my Spotify library, you wouldn’t believe the blend; from Cuban salsa, choral renaissance music, and alternative, to dream pop, indie, country and so on. So yeah, I ended up exploring a lot more than metal, this was like baby steps for me though. I sound like in a support group for metal addicts, LOL.

So that’s it for today, that’s the introduction, the upcoming articles about music are really the detail of my adventures listening to new music and my thoughts on it.

Thanks for reading!

J.V