At this point, in the wider world, the term "hipster" is more or less a more polite term for "fag". The only solid defining characteristics I can glean from its seemingly random use are negative - that is, hipsters are defined by what they're not. And generally, what they're not is typically masculine - thin, fashionable, given to unapolagetic outre tastes, listens to "sensitive music", went to college, doesn't have a real job. Might as well be a fag. There are better, potentially useful definitions - you have to have some sort of term for someone who seems unusually and insincerely preoccupied with affectations and social signifiers (ie the classic buddy-holly-glasses-sans-lenses and finger moustache tattoos [remember those?]) - but hardly anyone seems to use it outside of "geek who I don't like" contexts.
I guess that depends on the extent to which your definition of "hipster" is influenced by your engagement with (people who might possibly be) hipsters or the outward expressions of hipsterism?
I mean, that brings up another interesting point about the recurring hipster conversation, that the term itself is a moving target that nobody can agree on at all. That's extremely dissatisfying and I was aware that it was gonna happen when I started writing that first post, but hey fuck it, it's something that's been occupying a lot of my brainspace lately and it's worth talking about if only to lend a little bit of depth to a regulation hate thread.
I guess my definition is basically a bit of inside baseball, as I said, largely informed by the fact that I share a lot of the stereotypical interests of hipsters but (I'd like to think) a different set of motivations. To the average mainstream-type person, definitions of hipsterism perhaps have a little less nuance, I imagine as a result not spending an awful lot of time thinking about the subject.
That said, it doesn't seem to me as though Hunt-Hendrix is insincere. Quite the contrary, he really truly believes his own hype, and the veracity / potency of his music as philosophical text. That's less hipsterism than it is good old-fashioned megalomania.
I don't think he's insincere with regards to his manifesto and his stupid lectures and interview soundbites, but what strikes me as particularly arch-hipster about HHH is the way in which he's appropriated the obvious aural tropes of second-wave black metal (tremolo riffs, lo-fi production, rasped vocals &c.) while abandoning a lot of the ideological underpinnings. I imagine Hunt-Hendrix sees this as a very clever juxtaposition or whatever but to me at least- if not to the wider community of actual metal fans- it comes off as simply missing the point of black metal completely, i.e; black metal sounds the way it does as a natural outgrowth of the worldview + visceral atmosphere black metal musicians are attempting to convey, as opposed to lyrics about death or decay or grimness or the wiping every trace of Christianity from the Earth simply sound good against a blast beat and a chainsaw-sounding guitar. Hunter Hunt-Hendrix is putting the cart in front of the horse.
This becomes especially problematic when you take into account the fact that when you boil it down, black metal IS its ideology. You can make black metal without buzzsaw guitars and shitty production and it's still black metal, but (arguably), you can't make black metal without covering some of the above-mentioned subject matter. Or at least being very grim.
It also doesn't hurt that Liturgy exists within a broader context of bands- almost all of them from Brooklyn, just by the way- playing at much the same kind of pantomime, as well as things like the Black Metal Symposium covered in that NYT article linked above -which took place in, surprise! Brooklyn!-. I have a feeling that Liturgy wouldn't come in for quite as much of a beating if they weren't seen by the wider metal community as being the most laughable and easy-to-mock example of a score of bands and artists who, in the eyes of said wider community, just don't get it. At all. Add to that the way that metalheads in general are a pretty insular lot who are very, very defensive about people they see as outsiders using the tools of metal music without a broader engagement in the associated lifestyle and worldview of the lifelong metalhead.
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Topic: LITURGY is fixing heavy metal, and there's nothing you can do to stop them (Read 66385 times)