Ghost and Sleep Token are like the pop music of the metal world. Wide appeal, but cheesy and only nominally on what many would consider to be the metal side of things (heck Ghost are essentially an ABBA tribute band with a bit of down tuning).
They have a couple of decent songs but I'm not sure they deserve the adoration they currently enjoy.
But they may act like "gateway drugs"... I'd thought that metal was deep into its "jazz slash opera phase".
Don't get me wrong, part of metal has always been about the theatrically overblown pomposity. Look at the glam scene of the 80s for example, or power metal's love of the fantastical.
But these two in particular are heralded by some outlets as being the greatest thing to happen to metal ever and that's just not true. Yes they attract huge audiences and might be somewhat a gateway drug but they remind me more of the emo/scene thing about 20 years ago where a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon cos it tapped into something.
A Haunting Poem
I Scream
You Scream
We all Scream
For I Scream.
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Ghost and Sleep Token are like the pop music of the metal world. Wide appeal, but cheesy and only nominally on what many would consider to be the metal side of things (heck Ghost are essentially an ABBA tribute band with a bit of down tuning).
They have a couple of decent songs but I'm not sure they deserve the adoration they currently enjoy.
Sleep Token's drummer has released a virtual instrument sampled from his drum kit and his playing (including editable midi grooves)---could be condemned as "horrible monstrous sell-out" or whatever perhaps, but it's pretty impressive in the context of a mix:
Bit less so in the isolated drum tracks, where it's more obvious that they're isolated hits. (Perhaps AI enhancement could fix that... and generate endless new grooves in any combination of drummers' styles---like maybe 20% this, 50% that, etc.)
There are a bunch of others too... including one based on the drummer from Gojira (sampled him hitting his drums at various velocities):
Pop music has ALWAYS been a commodity. The production and distribution of Pop Music has ALWAYS been exploitive, destructive, and imbricated within the industrial thanatology that is capitalism. Using AI to make Pop Music makes complete sense.
3. Whether it is robots on an assembly line stamping out gadgets, or someone stuck on the fifth floor of the Brill Building cranking out the hits, it's the SAME. Labour under capital. As humans we valourise the human in the Brill Building because, as humans, we valourise human labour over natural or mechanical production. Capitalism doesn't have such sentiments. It exploits them. Now, in terms of Pop Music, a form of music that ONLY exists because of the reification inherent to commodity production and distribution, capitalism will cheerfully generate Pop Music by whatever means provide the largest profit margin. It's not rocket surgery.
[...] I think Timbaland's just trying [he's launching some sort of AI pop music thing] to grift some profit out of a dying industry - Pop Music - an industry being smothered in its hospital bed by the inherent contradictions of capital. At the same time, the hype around "AI" and the "San Francisco Consensus" is based in a grift around what is essentially a mechanical hyperBayesianism enabled by contemporary computing commodities. Under Capital.
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Azath Vitr (D, on 19 May 2025 - 01:41 PM, said:
