American and European Metal

[!--QuoteBegin-MaidenCanada+Aug 3 2004, 07:19 AM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(MaidenCanada @ Aug 3 2004, 07:19 AM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--] Americans can run for the hills.....for all I care!!!!  I am not to fond of the american blokes. I know they are my neighbors, but there is too much
ignorance in that country [/quote]
Your right, alot of Americans are ignorant, but dont forget that their are also alot of Americans that are very intelligent and informed. Stereotyping sucks. And dont say that all our music is shit just because we havent yet produced a band that is as great as Maiden.
 
MaidenCanada, your basic stupidity and arrogance are becoming really annoying. Can you think before you post crap? (Can you think at all? [!--emo&:blink:--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/blink.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'blink.gif\' /][!--endemo--] )
 
maiden canada,trully, i may be n00b to,but goddamnit. You inherit a house when someone close dies. And yuo're fuckin happy cause in inhereted it?
You're seriously disturbed.
 
Yea dude, you talk about how there is so much ignorance, and how America is a lesser country for being so ignorant. But really, you seem pretty damn ignorant yourself. Look in the mirror before criticising others.
 
[!--QuoteBegin-MaidenCanada+Aug 7 2004, 09:33 AM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(MaidenCanada @ Aug 7 2004, 09:33 AM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--] What the fuck!!!! Blanket Statements????? I am not the only one in the world that only thinks this way. Only the people that are not American will agree with me!!!! [/quote]
I'm going to take a leaf out of SMX's book here.

You are a fucking retard. You give the Maple Leaf a bad name. I'm Canadian, 150%, and you make me ashamed to be from my country. So either smarten up, stop your dumbass anti-American rhetorical nonsense, come up with something intelligent to post, or get THE FUCK OFF THIS BB. I don't like you, I don't want to read anymore of your BULLSHIT COCKSUCKING MONKEYFUCKING RETARD ORIENTED babbling.

Go move to Texas, fucktard.

You'd fit right in.
 
[!--QuoteBegin--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--] maiden canada,trully, i may be n00b to,but goddamnit. You inherit a house when someone close dies. And yuo're fuckin happy cause in inhereted it?
You're seriously disturbed.[/quote]

Nah, Black Ace, you're not a n00b. You're a newbie, not a n00b. Newbies are intelligent, while n00bs are like MaidenCanada.
 
Seems like my post went unobserved, eclipsed by the stupidity of one man [!--emo&<_<--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/dry.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'dry.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
 
[!--QuoteBegin-Black Ace+Aug 7 2004, 06:36 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Black Ace @ Aug 7 2004, 06:36 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--] Seems like my post went unobserved, eclipsed by the stupidity of one man [!--emo&<_<--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/dry.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'dry.gif\' /][!--endemo--] [/quote]
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
 
Black Ace;

I think it's a bit rich to insinuate that there's no folklore in North America. Beyond the Native folklore, there is the multitudes of stories and traditions brought to North America from everywhere in the world. We have a fair bit of history and tradition here!
 
[!--QuoteBegin-LooseCannon+Aug 7 2004, 09:57 AM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(LooseCannon @ Aug 7 2004, 09:57 AM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--] I'm going to take a leaf out of SMX's book here.

You are a fucking retard.  You give the Maple Leaf a bad name.  I'm Canadian, 150%, and you make me ashamed to be from my country.  So either smarten up, stop your dumbass anti-American rhetorical nonsense, come up with something intelligent to post, or get THE FUCK OFF THIS BB.  I don't like you, I don't want to read anymore of your BULLSHIT COCKSUCKING MONKEYFUCKING RETARD ORIENTED babbling.

Go move to Texas, fucktard.

You'd fit right in. [/quote]
Agree with Loose Cannon but..... hey man, the Texas thing is..... just because the bush is from there doesn't cast everyone at his same intelligence level.

All this ethnocentric crap..... MaidenCanada how have you survived from not getting completely booted from the site? I didn't know rednecks also dwelled in Canada!!!
 
With that comment I was just playing to the stereotype of all Texans as, well, Bush-like...world-hating arrogant SOBs. I didn't mean to imply that all Texans are like that!
 
Not far from the truth LC .... hahaha

but no not all are the same you get rednecks everywhere my friend
 
[!--QuoteBegin-$yk0_H+Mar 26 2004, 03:21 PM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE($yk0_H @ Mar 26 2004, 03:21 PM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--]I don't know why, but I'm getting a strong urge to promote [a href=\'http://www.dreamevil.se/\' target=\'_blank\']Dream Evil[/a]  [!--emo&:D--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/biggrin.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'biggrin.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
[snapback]58520[/snapback]​
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Thay was pretty cool. Chasing the Dragon reminded me of some of Yngwie Malmsteen's old stuff.

Where are they from?
 
*sigh* and here I thought someone had read all four pages to contribute something new to propel this thing after laying dorment for so long.... [!--emo&:p--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/tongue.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'tongue.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
 
www.crystalempire.org they are from Italy, very good. They have a album ready now, buy it!! [!--emo&:D--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/biggrin.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'biggrin.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
Powermetal thing!!! [!--emo&:rock:--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/headbang.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'headbang.gif\' /][!--endemo--]
 
Ok I finally got around to interviewing some European folks, one is a girl from Belgium, one from Italy and one from Germany. The girl from Belgium speaks French because she lives in the French section of Belgium, Spanish because her mother is from Colombia, English because the school imposes it as a second language AND a little bit of Dutch because they also have to choose a third language but there isn't much pressure to excel in it. After spending six months here in Tucson, Arizona she said she was convinced she was leaving a dumber person because school here was WAY too easy compared to Belgium. In Tucson's defense Arizona is the 48th state in Education, so yes in fact she did not get the best. She said that in middle school she had to prepare a 45 minute presentation and had 3 months to get it ready to present in front of the school administration and student body... NOT A SINGLE AMERICAN MIDDLE SCHOOL DOES THIS difference number one in school systems between america and Europe.

The Italian Girl Speaks Italian (duh), English and is currently taking Spanish (of her own free will) and told me that in ELEMENTARY school and basically all throughout until highschool they have the OPTION to take a history of religion class IN PUBLIC SCHOOL. Something I feel is horribly lacking in the U.S. A classmate of mine who is originally from California told me they offered the same thing at his high school so it is probably a state thing. She also told me that American movies in southern Europe get dubbed (no subtitles like in Latin America) no matter what movie, while in Nothern Europe (Norway, Denmark etc) Movies don't get dubbed or subtitled so Children That grow up watching American cinema speak English very well.

A note on being bilingual/trilingual in Europe: Through my interviews I've noticed that Europeans push themselves rather hard and unless they have something down 100% they don't admit to being proficient at it... in this case speaking a foreign language. The belgium girl refused to say she was trilingual because she had a french accent when speaking english... even though she was more articulate and expressed herself better than most native speakers.

The German girl who I met in high school had to repeat her senior year when she returned to Germany because she was missing credits that simply are not offered here in the States, plus in Germany they attend high school for five instead of four years, their college "gen eds" are taken care of during that last year so they can jump in straight into their major if they are able to get admited into a University (Because University is free in Germany... or dirt cheap... they are very picking over who they admit... the same goes for Belgium)

In Belgium schools do not offer music programs BUT students attend a music academy after school... i forgot to ask this to the german and italian girls hehe [!--emo&:D--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/biggrin.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'biggrin.gif\' /][!--endemo--]. Anywho...the Belgium Girl told me a lot if not most students attend a music academy.

In conclusion: THE EDUCATION THEY RECIEVE DIRECTLY AFFECTS THEIR MUSICIANSHIP. They are pushed harder in Europe while in the States then want to make things easier for the child so they don't suffer, stress out and go on a shooting rampage, Testing standards are being lowered and teachers are now adviced to use green instead of red ink or marker when grading because red is traumatic to a child (No joke). The awarness of other languages and cultures influences their variety in their music (ex. Mago de Oz from Spain, though they are a metal band they have songs which are pure rock n' roll, blues, country and midieval). Instead of the "English Only here and all over the world" mentality of the U.S.

Sorry for the long post but It has been too long since I followed up on my crazy claims. Please let me know, specially the Europeans reading this, if the information given to me by these European ladies is wrong, partially true, or right on the bullseye. Thanks.
 
I will now speak about the Romanian Education system in brief. I'm a 9th grader for almost 3 months, I just got admited at the best high-school in the city. We started Enlgish classes when we were on the 3rd grade (we either take english or french, it's not really our choice, it's just a matter of odds) and french on the 5th grade. I myself like to consider myself a great english speaker and except for my rather often typos which get me flamed, I think I spell as good as anyone on this board.

Thiis isn't always the case, but I must say that our school system has it's pros and cons. The pros would be that there's a whole lot of information and we have pretty good teachers.Also we have to take music and Arts classes, and I now know pretty much about rythm, some complex measures in music and all that. It encourages musicians if they want to study for it, but for 98% of the students it's just another pain in the butt.

The cons would be that there's SO much information that the brain can't always process it and you just end up learning everything mechanically (like you would learn a poem) without understanding what you just learned). What I've noticed is that even students which aren't considered the sharpest knife in the drawer consider school in the US or Cannada easy if they move there. Today for example, I had 3 hours of physics (right now we're studying optics) one hour of french, one hour of english, one of Informatics (I know how to make rather complex programs in C++ and just started it for 3 months) and one PE. Adds up to 7 hours. Tuesdays and Wendsedays I have 8 hours.

Another bad thing about our school system is that we have to take ALL classes. We have no choice at what to take, except at the end of the 8th grade, you choose your "profie" which dictates if you'll go and study more bio-chemistry or math-informatics (the profile I chose) or whatever... I'm not even going to start now that our teachers were on strike the last 3 weeks demanding more funds for schools...

I think this was all a bit off-topic, but hell, Onhel started this drift.... [!--emo&:D--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/biggrin.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'biggrin.gif\' /][!--endemo--]

As he stated, schools in the US are afraid and they should be... after all those killings I saw on TV, Columbine and all the others, I sincerely don't want to be an exchange student to the US... to risky. Plus, I would consider it a lost year, becuase I'm sure I wouldn't learn anything new. I think that our educational system is superior to that of the US, and that helpes musicians in the most unusuall ways: better math: better understanding of complex rythms; better informatics-better usage of music software, which improves sound qualiy; better history- easier for the musicians to write history inspired lyrics; You get the idea, you guys are smart...
I guess all I wanted to do is sustain Onhel's post, by adding testimonials for romanian education... [!--emo&:D--][img src=\'style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/biggrin.gif\' border=\'0\' style=\'vertical-align:middle\' alt=\'biggrin.gif\' /][!--endemo--]

PS, considering this topic is pinned, I do not consider that reviving it is a bad thing;
 
Hmmm, I can see some interesting points being put forward in this thread.

First of all, when looking at the history of music, we can notice several things:

1. Throughout European history, despite all the wars and nations rising and falling, each country has kept a fairly stable and standard ethnic group at its core. There have been variations (e.g. the Viking invasions of Dublin and the later Norse conquest of Ireland adding a strain of Scandinavian and French blood to the gene pool), but these have not drastically affected the culture of the places involved. So, although Europe is a much smaller landmass than the U.S. or Asia, due to the lack of unification and centralisation of its various states, it has retained much of its identity in regards to individual countries. From this, we get all the variations in metal, as each country takes the basic metal strain brought from the U.S. and presented by bands such as Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, adding their own areas influences and history (this is shown even more in folk/symphonic metal bands, which like to add even more cultural influences in songs, to the point of some folk metal bands singing in their native language-Mago de Oz, Nightwish (some songs) etc.)

2. Now, as for the Americas, the result is different. In Canada, which was originally annexed by both the British and French, there is a strong sense of identity, and yet the music is also heavily influenced by the American market, where most Canadian bands will be getting their influences and aiming to market their music.
Central and South America were colonised by Europeans-the Hispanics. Throughout, they have not been influenced by America and retained much of their identity, as Mexicans, Brazilians, or whatever. South American metal is largely 'European' in origin, but then we have some bands such as Sepultura playing a 'socio-political commentary' style of song, more evidenced in....
...the USA! Although American was effectively colonised by Europeans, it was to escape the harshness of the Old World and find a new life-whether from religious or political persecution or hunger and war, the founding fathers of American didn't want to rely on Europe, especially after the 1776 Revolution. From then on, America was focussed on maintaining themselves as an independant nation (Canada did not gain full independance so readily, nor did the Central/South American colonies); and with the mass extermination of the Native Americans, this left her with little inherent culture-probably due to the fact that the first settlers were Protestants (there go any chances of pagan folklore remaining in the history [img src=\"style_emoticons/[#EMO_DIR#]/tongue.gif\" style=\"vertical-align:middle\" emoid=\":p\" border=\"0\" alt=\"tongue.gif\" /] ) and businessmen-who were more concerned with making money than preserving an 'old' sense of culture (not that they were wrong-even in Europe much heritage was being ignored in favour of aggressive expansion and industrialisation).

This all leads to the following-European music has had much more culture to draw on in its music. As has been stated, the Blues brought with the African slaves to America developed into blues, jazz, rock and subsequently metal. So America spawned metal, or at least the seeds of it, which were taken up in Britain by the aforementioned bands (Sabbath, Priest etc.). As to lyrical content, much of the blues music was concerned with melancholic themes and the soul-rock n' roll was talking primarily about rebellion and other popular themes at the time. So, when metal comes along, bands now have another medium to represent their views on. They can go further with this 'controversial' genre than ever before, and need not talk about such optimistic themes in their songs. In fact most metal music is inherently pessimistic (I'll deal with power metal in a minute). Now, European bands (thinking around the 80's with the advent of NWOBHM here) have a vast cultural heritage-and led by Steve Harris, Maiden draw deep on British and European themes. This clearly inspires the other fast, upbeat bands that followed them, such as the German/Scandinavian power metal bands. Power metal took the melodic compositions evern further, by adding happy themes of warriors and metal to their songs. This gives us bands like Helloween (cross-over Speed/Power), Blind Guardian and Rhaspody. Incidentally, Speed metal can be attributed directly to a fusion of Maiden's style with the then-popular thrash metal scene, only stripping away the harsh, aggressive features inherent to that genre.
Now, as to thrash metal, we can pinpoint the major country for this genre to be the US. After the Vietnam War, the American public were becoming increasingly skeptical and critical of their government and democracy as a whole. Scandals such as Watergate exposed the fact that politicans can be corrupt, and the American metal scene took up on this pessimism, giving us the 'political commentary' song, exemplified by bands such as Megadeth and Metallica.

So, I think that because of Europe's rich and varied culture the metal found here is destined to use the vast cultural and musical styles of each individual culture in both composition anf lyrics
In America, however, we can see that things must start at a lower level. If American metal seeks to enter the realms of fantasy, they frequently do it through European culture ('Creeping Death' by Metallica) or the increasing popularity of the Science-Fiction genre ('Hangar 18' by Megadeth). Additionally, the rebellious attitude of the 80's Generation, following in the footsteps of the hippies, focusses more on speaking out against the attitudes of their parents. In Europe, this was not the main factor, but it was still a relevant one.
But there are cross-overs. Bands like Rush and Dream Theater, by being progressive in nature, frequently enter the realms of fantasy and also consciousness in their songs. Some European bands (like Motorhead) would frequently stay in the 'rock n roll' lyrical theme.

Now, as to education and what that contributes, we must look at the two systems of schooling in the USA and Europe. In the US, for whatever reason, children are protected as they go through life, and nowhere is this more apparent in the education system. Perhaps it is the US' consumer society that does this? Anyway, I would say (and this is an opinion) that the European school system is better than the US'. Also, look at America's metal instrumentalists such as James Hetfield, Dave Mustaine or John Petrucci. Many of them are self-taught (particularly in the thrash metal scene), and while this is not necessarily a bad thing (read: 'Arry), the compositional and classical training that European musicians can recieve gives them a better oppurtunity to write more structured and varied songs (not necessarily better, but more 'classical' in style). All this means that European metal can be generally classed as:
More classical in style, with lyrics pertaining to fantasy/the mind/history, and with clear strains of cultural heritage in their songs
American metal, on the other hand, is:
A lot more experimental, often heavier and more aggressive in both lyrics and music.

Of course, this is a generalisation and there are exceptions. But I certainly listen to more European metal bands than American metal bands. But perhaps this is due to:
1. The scale of the US: although geographically large, it is culturally and musically quite a small nation in terms of variety
2. The difference in cultures in Europe leads to a vast array of genres being widely practised there.

To sum up, we like metal (well, this is the reason for me) primarily because of its escapism. We frequently would rather hear new and strange styles about fantastical things than a song that brings us down to reality.
 
[!--quoteo--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--quotec--]Science-Fiction genre ('Hangar 18' by Megadeth). [/quote]
Hangar 18 is a real place. It is tied to the Area 51 alien conspiracy. Hangar 18 and Area 51 are real, it's whether or not you believe in the alien conspiracy. Considering that, it might or might not be science-fiction. People like me (and possibly Dave Mustaine) might think it's real, although I have no proof (not anything you all would believe anyway.)
 
That is a very good post Silky, really tying all the points that have been previously discussed. I have to agree with you excpet for one thing. The labeling of American metal as "low" and European as "high" or "classical". While I tend to agree, I don't do it because it is subjective.

@COTG: Since it depends on the individual, for simplicity's sake it will fall under science fiction. I don't want this ending up in the madness forum.
 
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