April 2020 Feature Release - The Gateway Edition
It's now April which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. Ben & I will certainly be contributing & we look forward to hearing your thoughts too.
This month's feature release for The Gateway is the 1990 debut album from Californian funk metal outfit Primus entitled "Frizzle Fry" which is often regarded as the pinnacle of the subgenre. Do you think it's a metal release? We look forward to hearing your thoughts on it & please make sure to have your say in the Hall Of Judgement too.
When I wrote the review for this album, I wanted to talk about the music itself and whether or not it actually stood up as a piece of art. I'm not going to recap that review very much here because of the less formal nature of the forums, and because I know what Daniel really wants to hear.
In my opinion, I think that there is not enough in the way of heavy metal tendencies to call this a "metal" album; much more of a subgenre while the funk and math rock elements are given prominence. But that brings me to a larger question: how much "metal" is too much/not enough? While I certainly am not the biggest fan of their more recent output, Opeth have been making much heavier music since Sorceress, but because it doesn't have harsh vocals or heavy as hell guitar riffage, it gets blasted by many as "not being metal enough".
What does this mean for artists like Poppy? Sure her first album, Poppy.Computer was electronic dance pop, but her most recent output, I Disagree, has metalcore breakdowns and industrial tendencies, and breaks up the monotony with dream pop passages. Does that mean that album isn't metal? I put a review up on this website so at least someone thought it was.
I think that our perception of metal should not be based on how heavy it is, but by how it makes us feel. This album toes a fine line between what is "hard rock" and what is "heavy metal" and we should critique this album as a hybrid of the two styles, rather than not being heavy enough. I encourage anyone else who participates in this months clan challenge to approach this record the same way.
6/10
Hhhhmmmm…. interesting. The decision on labelling a record as metal or not is much more black & white for me & doesn't have much to do with how heavy a release is or how it makes me feel because there's plenty of metal out there that doesn't give me the same feeling of dark empowerment that a band like diSEMBOWELMENT does for example (see Babymetal, Helloween, etc.). On the other hand, I can sometimes get that feeling from a country track or a piece of classical music from a horror movie soundtrack but this doesn't make it metal. It's just a darker version of that particular subgenre. For me, it's all about the tools that are being employed & whether they come from the metal toolkit or that of another genre.
In the case of "Frizzle Fry", I simply don't hear much use of those metal tools at all. There's a much greater component that draws on funk rock, alternative rock & 70's jazz fusion which by my methodology leads me to label it as non-metal. To qualify as a metal release I wanna hear the greatest component coming from that metal toolkit. Does the largest percentage of the album's duration reside within the realms of metal? If not, then it's not the primary genre in my opinion. Therefore, if Rainbow's "Rising" album includes six tracks & four are blusey hard rock, one a sort of hard rock/metal hybrid & the other a legitimate metal song, it's clearly a hard rock record in my opinion.
Oh for sure Daniel. I completely agree that their is a specific sound palette that needs to be attained by an artist or group in order for it to fall in specific genre categories. And I agree with your statement that Frizzle Fry does not really contain enough of an edge to separate itself from "hard rock" or "heavy metal".
But I think part of my point was misrepresented in my original post. Probably because I didn't really explain myself all that well! And it's an issue that Alternative Metal has had to deal with for decades. Hell, Metallica and Opeth have had to deal with it over their history. When a band drastically changes their sound to something more "accessible", a large portion of their audiences abandons them because their sound is "not heavy enough" anymore. And alternative metal gets a bad reputation among most metal fans as not being heavy enough and is, usually, received unfavorably. Even if, in the case of Frizzle Fry and Primus in general, they were never meant to be viewed as a heavy metal band.
I can tell that you're pretty smart Daniel and I'm confident that you aren't one of those people I referred to in the last paragraph. There is a lot of great music out there and not all of it is heavy metal. Obviously, I don't think that Frizzle Fry is a "great" record, but it isn't for stylistic reasons. And I think that the discussion on whether something falls under the banner of heavy metal is a separate matter from the quality of the music itself. That's all.
Primus' debut record is about everything you would expect out of Primus, from the technical but downright funky Les Claypool bass lines to the overall weird atmosphere this album gives off. From an objective musical standpoint this album is incredible, with the guitar, bass, and drums playing very complex and well written passages that have incredible coordination with each other. I've obviously listened to Primus before, but I've never sat through an entire album of theirs, and while their gimmicky weirdness does start to wane after a few songs, I was surprised at how much I ended up liking this album. There are a few duds, but no one does heavy, funky, and nasty slap bass lines quite like Mr. Claypool in this kind of genre. Obviously slap bass gets used in Jazz to similar and even more outrageous effect, but it's refreshing to hear bass used so well in Alternative music like this. I feel like this record could grow on me even more, so I'm going to throw a 4/5 on it.
As for the discussion that's going on above me, it's a very interesting one for this album. I'm in agreement with Daniel's toolbox analogy; a Metal release should be judged on how many Metal elements it consistently uses. But that can come down to musical theory as well as overall composition. The more I write and figure out my review style, the more I wish I studied a little bit more music theory, because that sort of knowledge helps in being more objective about music, for better or worse. Metal tends to have much more dissonance than Rock/Hard Rock, and that all depends on the types of chords and scales used, which give Metal its signature dark/evil/grating sound. Obviously other genres that aren't metal use minor scales, but couple that note choice with a lot of gain from your gear, crank that volume up, and suddenly you have something that sounds like metal. Frizzle Fry does have those dissonant chords plus driving and loud riffs, especially on the signature track "John The Fisherman", but I agree that it's hard to definitively say that it's distinctly Metal. While you can call it "Funk Metal", it can easily be called "Progressive Hard Rock With Slap Bass". Funk Metal itself doesn't have much ground to stand on in my opinion, especially since upon further research the main bands for it are apparently Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane's Addiction, Rage Against the Machine, Faith No More, and of course Primus. I'm guessing people felt the need to distinguish bands that used slap bass or bass heavy elements from other Alternative Metal/Rock bands? Because I wouldn't really call any of those particular bands as mainly "Funk Metal".
In any case I'm also with Saxy in that I never want to be one of those people who judge an album based on how much gain the band puts on their guitar. It's silly to judge albums on genre placement alone, even though it can be a fun discussion for these kinds of albums that sit on the edge of many, many genre classifications. If I was able to cast my vote in the Hall, though, I'd have to say this belongs in non-metal.