Positivity in Metal

This is just an excerpt from my post about Andrew W.K.’s new album this year, which I did edit just a bit so as to not have it sounding disjointed.

Music in general these days could use more of some life-affirming attitude, especially fringe genres and their communities like metal, which reaches pretty deeply into the darkest and most depressive recesses of the human psyche.

I know that often when inspired to create, myself and the other more formidable artists I look up to often draw from times of turmoil or observed negativity, not necessarily on some faux-artistic quest to find suffering to make our art better, but just out of pattern.

This isn’t a bad thing, as the art and its process is helpful and therapeutic for both the artist and the audience, but I know how easy it can be to get trapped in the mental sublevels of negativity for art’s sake thinking it’s for something good and later realizing the toll it can gradually take, which can be immense. I’ve caught myself slipping down this slope multiple times, not entirely as the result of artistic creation (other stresses definitely contribute to it), but enough to know I need to step back for a bit from making some things or even from just listening to certain things, and recuperate with something like You’re Not Alone (Andrew W.K.’s new album).I think including a yin to the yang of depressive black metal and nihilistic death metal is a balance a lot of people need and don’t give themselves, and I know I can fall into that group too.

Positive music like this is important, and even though it’s not hitting the same spots that music measured by other metrics does, it’s merits often do have crossover appeal that make it possible to enjoy alongside the super dark shit out there. It should go without saying, but not all of music should be focused on just one style, emotion, genre, etc. Part of why I like Gojira so much and why I consider Magma one of, if not the, best albums this decade is how well the band and that album particularly work positive and negative into an interwoven structure.

In short; I don’t think one should underestimate the importance of the existence of or their need for more life-affirming art to provide a counterbalance to the darker side of art.