There's Too Many Bands, There's Too Much Music

"Don't start any bands. And I'm not even kidding here. Don't do it. The world is overwhelmed with bands, with records, with albums. There's really no space there for anything. There's only seven days a week. There's too many tours around. There's too many shows. People don't have, and will have less and less money. So all the tours are suffering. Do you really wanna put another song on another album that no one will pay attention to? No, you don't wanna do that. Go find yourself a proper job. Finish university, travel and enjoy life. Don't do this."

The above quote is from Nergal of Behemoth fame and to a large extent I agree with this (not necessarily the touring part) but the constant new releases and side-projects and new bands to check out is just so exhausting.  Seeing the start of the end of year list threads made me think about this and I went off to find this quote that I had seen recently.

I won't pretend to not have any releases from 2022 in my collection (indeed a couple inhabit my physical collection) but the above quote really resonates with me that there's far too much out there to ever explore, examine and embrace (or not) so how much is enough?  How much "new" do we need?  Personally, if it all stopped now, if no more releases occurred and no more bands formed and all I had was the music I have now then great.  As long as I have the music I like to this point then what am I missing?

Anyway, feel free to discuss if interested.

"Don't start any bands. And I'm not even kidding here. Don't do it. The world is overwhelmed with bands, with records, with albums. There's really no space there for anything. There's only seven days a week. There's too many tours around. There's too many shows. People don't have, and will have less and less money. So all the tours are suffering. Do you really wanna put another song on another album that no one will pay attention to? No, you don't wanna do that. Go find yourself a proper job. Finish university, travel and enjoy life. Don't do this."

The above quote is from Nergal of Behemoth fame and to a large extent I agree with this (not necessarily the touring part) but the constant new releases and side-projects and new bands to check out is just so exhausting.  Seeing the start of the end of year list threads made me think about this and I went off to find this quote that I had seen recently.

I won't pretend to not have any releases from 2022 in my collection (indeed a couple inhabit my physical collection) but the above quote really resonates with me that there's far too much out there to ever explore, examine and embrace (or not) so how much is enough?  How much "new" do we need?  Personally, if it all stopped now, if no more releases occurred and no more bands formed and all I had was the music I have now then great.  As long as I have the music I like to this point then what am I missing?

Anyway, feel free to discuss if interested.

Great thread Vinny and it is a question I often ask myself. How many times can I sit through another so-so album just because I haven't heard it before when I could be listening to an album I know I love? Well  the answer is "as many as it takes to get that same hit the first time you heard War Pigs, Overkill, Creeping Death, In the Shadow of the Horns, Raining Blood or whatever it was that floated your own particular boat, because you are a music junkie and that feeling is what you live for!!" This is not a sweeping generalisation, but it is how it is for me - and sometimes I hate myself fot it and just wish I could live with the 1500 or so albums I already own physical copies of and let that be an end of it, but as long as I have functioning ears that is unlikely to happen.

It's hard to argue against his point. The accessibility of listening to new stuff through streaming sources or any other facet you choose coupled with the sheer amount of tools to help bands self-release their stuff makes the landscape a bloated mess. Being around someone at work who listens to more of a variety of genres compared to me has really given me a better perspective of how much music is truly out there, since I've felt its hard to "keep up" even within the Metal sphere, let alone the rest of everything. When it comes to pursuing music as a career, I think he's right to use the aggressive language he's using because the harsh reality is that people literally can't shell out enough money for all the bands they may like. You find 20 or 30 albums you really enjoy throughout the year? 15 bucks for a CD, 30 bucks for a vinyl, that comes out to 300-600 bucks a year for one person spread across all these bands...it's a hard sell. I'm glad that I've found the right balance of how I listen to new releases that I'm still excited to go check out what just released or what I may have missed. 

How much "new" do we need is a tougher stance, and I can't say I agree because it feels contradictory or nihilistic to say that we don't need new music. While I completely understand not resonating with newer material, drawing a line in the sand and saying that new stuff after 2022 or any 'X' year specifically feels disingenuous. According to RYM's database, 1,102 Death Metal records alone were released in 1992 compared to 1,656 records released in 2022. Sure, the number went up, but 1,102 is still an astronomical number for one singular subgenre and is still a number that is unobtainable for the average listener, and that was 30 years ago! I don't think the logic holds up because telling everyone "Stop! We have enough Death Metal records!" in 1992 means we wouldn't have gotten genre defining releases like Symbolic, None So Vile, Obscura, Close To A World Below, and the list goes on. So why should wide-eyed kids stop making what they think is killer music in 2022 if a few select wide-eyed kids in 1992 were able to absolutely kill it? The cycle is gonna go on and that's what makes it exciting. 

It's hard to argue against his point. The accessibility of listening to new stuff through streaming sources or any other facet you choose coupled with the sheer amount of tools to help bands self-release their stuff makes the landscape a bloated mess. Being around someone at work who listens to more of a variety of genres compared to me has really given me a better perspective of how much music is truly out there, since I've felt its hard to "keep up" even within the Metal sphere, let alone the rest of everything. When it comes to pursuing music as a career, I think he's right to use the aggressive language he's using because the harsh reality is that people literally can't shell out enough money for all the bands they may like. You find 20 or 30 albums you really enjoy throughout the year? 15 bucks for a CD, 30 bucks for a vinyl, that comes out to 300-600 bucks a year for one person spread across all these bands...it's a hard sell. I'm glad that I've found the right balance of how I listen to new releases that I'm still excited to go check out what just released or what I may have missed. 

How much "new" do we need is a tougher stance, and I can't say I agree because it feels contradictory or nihilistic to say that we don't need new music. While I completely understand not resonating with newer material, drawing a line in the sand and saying that new stuff after 2022 or any 'X' year specifically feels disingenuous. According to RYM's database, 1,102 Death Metal records alone were released in 1992 compared to 1,656 records released in 2022. Sure, the number went up, but 1,102 is still an astronomical number for one singular subgenre and is still a number that is unobtainable for the average listener, and that was 30 years ago! I don't think the logic holds up because telling everyone "Stop! We have enough Death Metal records!" in 1992 means we wouldn't have gotten genre defining releases like Symbolic, None So Vile, Obscura, Close To A World Below, and the list goes on. So why should wide-eyed kids stop making what they think is killer music in 2022 if a few select wide-eyed kids in 1992 were able to absolutely kill it? The cycle is gonna go on and that's what makes it exciting. 

I guess the answer is to be selective in what you listen to. Let's face it, 75% or so (minimum) of music is average at best. The remaining 25% is still a hell of a lot of music, but reviews and ratings from people you trust are a good way of refining your listening targets. 2022 is not alone in producing shit music, it's been happening since Bill Haley first rocked around the clock and isn't likely to end any time soon, so the trick is to dodge the turds and find the golden nuggets - and that's where Metal Academy comes in!!!

I guess the answer is to be selective in what you listen to. Let's face it, 75% or so (minimum) of music is average at best. The remaining 25% is still a hell of a lot of music, but reviews and ratings from people you trust are a good way of refining your listening targets. 

Agreed on this, it all depends on if you find enjoyment out of "dumpster diving" to find what's great or want to be smarter and more time efficient about finding great tunes. Going through a slog of average albums isn't exactly fun, but I still get some sort of kick out of most things I listen to, especially since I like to keep myself honest with what I consider good versus poor.

I'm not sure I agree with this sentiment to be honest. It seems like everyone's eeing this from a purely consumerist point of view rather than from the artist's perspective. It never occurred to me that I might gain a wide audience when I played in bands & wrote & released my own music. I did it entirely because it was some of the most fun I've ever had & would happily have continued with it in isolation on a desert island for eternity if it had of stayed relatively easy to fit into my lifestyle. I found the song-writing to be the most rewarding part as it was the perfect creative outlet for me so if just one person appreciated my music it was more than enough for me. Over the last couple of months I've reached out to all of the ex-members of my old brutal death metal band Neuropath & every one of them treasures that time. The comradery is as much a part of that enjoyment as anything else & I miss it many respects, even though there were many frustrations at the same time. When the Neuropath CD is released next year it'll be a significant moment in my life, despite the fact that I hold very few hopes of it making much of an impact on the global extreme metal marketplace in 2023. That's not important. It'll mark the fulfillment of a lifelong dream nonetheless & I'll have something in my hands to show for all the work & talk about at dinner parties when I'm old.

I think there are two totally different perspectives here. One is from the creator and performer of music and one is from the listener/consumer of same. As merely a listener, I will never know what it's like to produce music of my own (although I would dearly love to be able to) but I can imagine it being a marvellous feeling, no matter what anyone else thinks of it. I used to be a bit of a one for drawing, but never showed anyone else what I produced, I only did it to please myself,  so I can kind of appreciate the satisfaction of being able to produce a piece of art, be it music, visual art or writing with no expectation of acclaim or reward. As such, I would never subscribe to the view that even if you have the ability you shouldn't start a band or bother producing music at all, in fact I would go further and say if you have the skill then you absolutely should, as I am sure it would have a positive mental health impact.

From the  point of view of a consumer of music though, with the plethora of music available, particulary now when anyone can self-release their musical endeavours, it can sometimes feel like wading through a quagmire of uninspiring and tediously repetitive mediocrity to get to the nuggets that provide real listening satisfaction and inspire us and enhance our lives. So, these two aspects of musical production and consumption have two very different requirements, I would suggest, but whereas the producer of art doesn't necessarily need an audience, the audience most definitely needs a producer of art!

So, in conclusion, I would say: if you want to and have the ability to, then do it. Just don't expect me to listen to it if it's shit!!

You could say the same thing for just about any other piece of art or entertainment: books, movies, TV shows or anything else. You may even go beyond art and claim that there are too many cars and other pieces of technology (you might have a point there due to environmental and resource issues, but that's another discussion), too many athletes, too many sport teams and so on and so forth.

My point is: if no new bands were to be formed, creative development of metal would come to a halt for good. And again, this principle can be applied to any field of human interests, which is what makes Nergal's remark so idiotic.

And besides, who does he think he is to dictate who should and shouldn't be a musician? Sure, it is a statistical likelihood that your music will be overlooked and forgotten, but that won't happen necessarily. There is a chance that your creative output will be a new milestone, and if you think that you can and should do it, there is no reason to refrain yourself from doing it.

My point is: if no new bands were to be formed, creative development of metal would come to a halt for good. And again, this principle can be applied to any field of human interests, which is what makes Nergal's remark so idiotic.

I don't think we have met before.  Welcome to the MA site, hope you stick around and chew the fat some more.

Some interesting points in your post, however I think there is a fair argument to say that "new band" does not always equal "creative development" though.  Every new band that gets together does not push the boundaries of music, in fact you only have to look at the "retro" scenes in say thrash or death metal to prove that.  I would even go as far as to consider that an excess of new bands actually leads to a reduction of creative development.  Scenes grow and die out usually seeing some kind of revival within 10 or 15 years.  That's not creative development though, that's regurgitation.

I don't think he is "dictating" anything and let's just caveat that I am no huge fan of Nergal or Behemoth so feel no obligation to defend him - and the irony of this statement coming from a well established and commercially successful artist from within the world of music is not lost on me either - but there is a lot of sense to what he is saying.  Even without the pandemic or the global financial crisis the career of a musician is limited.  Nothing wrong with doing what you love of course but it does not mean that this will put bread on the table.

Of course there's too much of everything.  Humanity is greedy by nature and the need to satiate that hunger inevitably leads to excess of everything, it is not idiotic to call that out though, in fact it is the very theme that runs throughout many metal act's lyrical content.  I have listened to metal for over 30 years and so I have been around the block a few times and I am tired of trying to keep up.  I accept that this is my problem and clearly differs from others views but there is nothing wrong with looking at what you have got in whatever form your music collection takes and just sticking with that.

Great discussion, and a HUGE welcome to DinaricWarrior. You are most welcome here!

I must admit that I have nostalgia for the time when I could genuinely keep up with the majority up metal releases. Back in the early to mid 90s, I could genuinely check out every black and death metal album that appeared on any label of significance, not to mention a whole heap of albums from other genres. Nowadays I scratch that OCD itch by trying to add every relevant release to Metal Academy, but I have zero chance of listening to them all.

This was actually the first year that I made an attempt to review every release with over 100 ratings on RYM in my favoured genres. I made it to about August before realising I a) was already way behind and b) was starting to find it to be a bit of a chore. I've since started doing the Review Drafts to make sure I check out something I've never heard, while also attempting to finally figure out what my top 20 / 50 metal albums of all time are. It's been awesome listening to all my favourite releases rather than slogging through a heap of albums in the hope of finding something that floats my boat.

All that said, I think it's only my own personal completist nature that makes the huge number of releases coming out feel like a problem. When I take a step back and just listen to what grabs my attention at any given time, and ignore the mass of releases passing me by, I find myself in a healthier headspace. It's a certainty that future albums will end up favourites. It might be harder to discover them, but that's much better than them not existing at all.

Where I will agree with Nergal is that music is far too easily accessible in 2022. Which is to say, any college student can create a piece of music at home and publish it on YouTube, Soundcloud, Spotify, Bandcamp or whatever your streaming preference is. My personal anecdote to this conversation is that I bought my first recording/mixing set in 2022. After all was said and done, I had spent around $600 CAD (which correlates to just around $450 USD). This is a far cry from the mixing boards that cost $1000 by themselves.

Where I draw the line with the initial quote is consumerism. Behemoth have been around for a long time and within the blackened death metal world, Behemoth are one of the best in my opinion. So much so that Behemoth have received glowing reviews for their albums from mainstream metal publications like Loudwire for a number of years. Meanwhile, bands like Enfold Darkness get zero recognition because they play for a relatively small record label, unlike The Satanist, which is published by Nuclear Blast.

I have made it no secret that I like browsing the highest rated lists on websites like RYM and Bandcamp and giving a new artist a chance to impress me. In 2022 alone, Thornhill, Holy Fawn, Dvvell, and Dreadnought released fabulous albums that, if I had listened to Loudwire, would likely never have known existed, except for maybe Thornhill's Heroine. These albums are miles above the new releases from Megadeth, Architects, Machine Head and Lorna Shore, but these are the records that will be at the top of many an album of the year lists because of marketing and promotion instead of actual quality.

Honestly, when I read this Nergal quote initially, I read it as peak boomer energy. "Why is no one listening to Behemoth in 2022? We even released a new album!" It's because Behemoth are part of an old guard. I still occasionally listen to Demigod and The Satanist, but I have no interest in hearing the same Behemoth routine replayed over and over again. Especially when other bands are moving the blackened death metal sound forward instead of leaving it firmly in the mid 2000s. I cannot speak much more about the blackened death metal scene, as I know very little about it, but this is exactly my issue with modern thrash as well; no one wants to push boundaries and move this genre into the 21st century, it all sounds formulaic and boring. It's why a band like Megadeth, who already have the name recognition, get nominated for a Grammy, while Critical Defiance get peanuts. 

If only 10% of the music you listen to is of an elite caliber, then increasing the quantity is still going to leave you at 10%, but that 90% is going to seem much larger. So yes, having so much music to hear does have its drawbacks, but I still think the good outweighs the bad. In Nergal's case, Behemoth had their fifteen minutes of fame, and now they do not know what to do now that The Satanist is close to a decade old. And as we approach the end of 2022 and prepare for 2023, I'll still be here to find the best, worst and most mediocre that metal has to offer. What you do with that music is not up to me to decide.

New bands do not guarantee creative development, but no new bands guarantee no creative development. Creative breakthroughs and milestone are and will always be rare because brilliant minds that are able to think out of the box and effectively express their ideas are also rare, but there would be neither avant-garde milestones, classics in the old school style nor generic, run-of-the-mill, "hear it once and never bother again" albums of no new bands were to be formed. It's simple as that.

The reason Nergal's remark irritated me so much is because it seems to me that it comes from his perceived place of superiority; as if he thinks that just because he's in a very popular band, he gets to claim whether someone should form a band or not; like a pretentious talent TV show judge or something like that. Besides, not every band seeks worldwide fame. Some bands are perfectly fine with playing in their own native towns and are likely formed because the bigger bands can't or won't come to their town. And that's another reason I object to Nergal's remark: because it comes off as an attempt to monopolize his position as a metal celebrity, so to speak. And last but not least, his remark is inherently demotivating, though this ties in to the previous point.

Also, it would seem that the environmental/resource issue applies to music as well. This morning, I watched a interview with Marcus Siepen regarding the release of The God Machine, and he said there that the album was finished last year, but it took so long for it to be finally released because the resources for manufacturing vinyls and CDs are getting scarce. Here's the link to the interview for anyone interested.

Much like Ben, I also have that slight OCD regarding checking out every album I can and all that. But that fact is that it is impossible to check out every single album out there, even from particular niches we are interested in, and that's okay. You don't have to listen to everything, and stressing out over missing out on an album you haven't listened to or over wasting time with album you have listened to but didn't like, will do you no good. It's good to keep an active interest and look out for new stuff, but one must not allow themselves to descend into hedonism.

Regarding the accessibility of the music, it's a double edged sword. Everyone has an opportunity to have their music heard, but that also means that the pool of available music is flooded with mediocrity which makes navigating and plucking out worthwhile releases more difficult and tedious, as Saxy already mentioned. I don't have much to say what he hasn't said already. However, I recommend him and anyone else who is bothered by the staleness of modern thrash Divine Comedy: Inferno by Bestial Invasion. 80's-styled tech thrash brilliantly blended with power and progressive metal, with some slight touches from other genres as well.

Great conversation and some really good points made.

I think it must also be held in mind that music innovation isn't a hermetically sealed concept. It comes from an evolution and building upon of previously released material. It must be borne in mind that the most amazingly innovative or interesting metal would never exist without Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Death et al, as it is incremental adaptations of the basics that have given us whatever mind-blowing modern metal release is floating our boat today. My deep-dive into early death metal and it's mutation from extreme thrash taught me quite a bit about how a particular new genre could evolve from older styles. No Black Sabbath self-titled album, no Messa, Close, so to say that artists should just stop producing new works is obviously ridiculous.

Just because Nergal, me or whoever could be quite content with already existing music, doesn't mean future (or existing) metal fans should. Could we not have stopped music at the first Iron Maiden album, because it had come on such a long way from Rock Around the Clock and so why would we want anything more? The argument is clearly nonsense if one completely removes the commercial aspect. It seems to me that anyone getting into music nowadays, particularly metal, to make a living or become a star will almost certainly be disappointed, but does that mean they shouldn't. Just because a footballer is unlikely to play in the EPL, should he just give up and not turn up to play for his pub team every Sunday morning, or should he still don his boots because he loves the game and should the twenty people who turn up to watch stay at home because Lionel Messi isn't playing? Of course not, so why should musicians act differently. All they need to do is manage their expectations.

I too am a bit OCD as far as new releases go, or rather more specifically, Fallen-related releases, but I am willing to endure all the run-of-the-mill or worse releases I listen to if I keep turning up albums like this years Dvvell, Messa, Epitaphe or Shape of Despair - albums that will be added to my cache of all-time favourites. If an album is good enough I will buy it and spin it occasionally, if not I will let it go and probably not return to it again. It is in highlighting the exceptional and warning of the inexecrable that the reviews and posts on sites like this are invaluable, so if your new music listening time is limited, it might pay to do a little research first.

Just one question, Saxy - what does peak boomer energy mean? Is this some sort of meme from the inter-generational war that seems to be constantly waged on the RYM boards?

I think that Vinny's original Nergal quote is getting a bit extrapolated here, even though I can see where the sentiment is coming from. I obviously don't know the guy, but I think his "advice" is akin to, like Sonny said, professional athletes or even content creators on YouTube or streaming sites. I can't cite it but there was a poll in elementary/middle (?) schools a few years back and one of the most common dream careers for younger kids was being a Youtuber or some sort of content creator, to which I say Nergal's blunt advice is mostly correct. Content creation, in many of its forms, isn't lucrative as it's almost impossible to get noticed and requires an immense amount of luck, work, and sacrifice compared to the admittedly broken and sometimes soul-crushing normal pipeline of getting an education, finding a job, and working from there. For the large percentage of kids wanting to do Youtube as a full-time job, I'd say absolutely not because it's not a stable life decision, and I think that's the crux of his argument. 

However yeah, the line about "Do you really wanna put another song on another album that no one will pay attention to? No, you don't wanna do that." was very unnecessary and comes across as diminishing other people's talents. Obviously people shouldn't stop making music, there are too many hardworking creative minds out there to believe that. Maybe he's jaded because he's already gotten all of the fame and tours, but being a small artist and getting a few hundred listens on Spotify for the first time after working hard on an album has to be an amazing feeling. It's hard to keep that positive energy going for a long time when there's almost no reward, but Daniel's absolutely right when he talks about the perspective from the artist rather than the consumer. As long as you don't crash and burn your life trying to make it big in the music world, I can't find a negative to pursuing that passion. I'm sure that if only 1 person buys Daniel's Neuropath CD he'd be ecstatic that someone is listening to what he created. 

Lorna Shore's Pain Remains is the 2022 Album of the Year - Loudwire

It took less than a day! Who called it?

Sonny, "boomer energy" is one of those terms that has been grossly misrepresented in recent years. The boomer meme is meant to be an individual who is stuck in old traditions and thinks that the "new normal" is bad. In Nergal's situation, I view them as being salty that fewer people are looking to Loudwire and MetalSucks for their metal news, since those are the outlets more likely to promote Behemoth records, and are instead looking to independent record labels and forums, like Metal Academy ;) for heavy metal news and information.

I would very much be the one who called it, it's just so epic for me! Also in that article, there's a motivational Facebook post from Will Ramos in 2014 (long before he joined Lorna Shore) that basically combats Nergal's suggestion. While there are consequences such as relentless amounts of touring and recording and how much money to make, it's a good dream. I might not be able to accomplish such a feat today, but I might in the future if I can practice doing what I can when I can. You just gotta not put yourself down and instead believe in yourself. There's never too many bands or too much music, there just needs to be a balance in everything. No standstills and no overloads.