Avant-garde metal

Avant-garde metal
Stylistic origins	Avant-garde music Extreme metal
Cultural origins	Mid 1980s in Central Europe
Typical instruments	Electric guitar – Bass guitar – Drums – Keyboard – Synthesizer – Sampling – Various string and wind instruments
Derivative forms	Post-metal Drone metal Mathcore
(complete list)
Other topics
Experimental rock - Extreme metal

Avant-garde metal, experimental metal, or art metal is a subgenre of heavy metal music characterised by the use of innovative, avant-garde elements, large-scale experimentation, and the use of non-standard sounds, instruments, and song structures. The earliest avant-garde metal bands include Celtic Frost and Master's Hammer. Many Avant-Garde metal bands can be found on North American label, The End Records.

Characteristics

The term avant-garde metal refers to bands and musicians who "incorporate new and innovative elements in metal, who break conventions, tear down walls, violate borders." The genre has also been described as "the art of creating deep and strange atmospheres by experimenting with new instruments and sounds, strange vocals, unconventional song structures, rhythms and harmonies, unusual lyrics or uncommon artwork" or alternatively, "progressive, psychedelic, surrealistic, phantasmagoric, expressionistic, dissonant or extravagant interpretations of extreme metal."

Michael Haas of Angizia notes that avant-garde is "a conscious distance from traditional listening and composing habits" while Svein Egil Hatlevik of Fleurety identifies avant-garde metal as "an aesthetic ideology" to "make music that's more than just average metal." He also notes that heavy metal music is a "field where it still makes sense to be avantgarde" because it is "one of the most conservative fields of artistic practice in the world." Not everyone agrees with the use of the term to establish a subgenre of metal, however. Jeff Arwadi of Kekal warns that "when another sub-genre has become established, it would create nothing but limits, and I don't think it's wise if we try to establish sub-genre [sic] that limits creativity and expression." Chlordane of The Amenta takes issue with the tendency in heavy metal music for "anyone who does something slightly weird" to be considered avant-garde. He contends that the term should not be used unless a band is "pushing music forward," further suggesting that the mere use of classical music in heavy metal is not avant-garde as it "has been done," "is not new" and "offers nothing."

In his essay "What is Avant-garde Metal?" (2009), philosopher Oliver Side contextualizes avant-garde metal on a larger (than musical) scale to demonstrate how this kind of music is strongly related to both social and biopsychological psychedelism in general. Furthermore, he doesn't believe we can neither describe avant-garde metal by an analysis of its instrumentation, technique and musical theory (which are potentially unlimited in this context anyway), nor try to rationalize its content to make it fit into the restrictive concept of a so-called "subgenre of heavy metal", because avant-garde metal is in a constant flux of metamorphoses and therefore is by nature beyond any categorization.

List of some avant-garde metal artists

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

• Abigor
• Agalloch
• Age of Silence
• The Amenta
• Angizia
• Arcturus
• Buckethead
• Celtic Frost
• Deathspell Omega
• Disharmonic Orchestra
• Dog Fashion Disco
• Enslaved
• Ephel Duath
• Fantômas
• Fleurety
• Iwrestledabearonce

In the Woods...

• Kayo Dot

• Kekal
• Korovakill
• Lux Occulta
• Manes
• Master's Hammer
• Meshuggah
• Mr. Bungle
• Mirrorthrone
• Naked City
• Orthrelm
• Pinkly Smooth
• Portal
• Psyopus
• Ram-Zet
• Sigh
• Solefald
• Strapping Young Lad
• The Dillinger Escape Plan
• Ulver
• Unexpect
• Vintersorg
• Voivod
• Yakuza (band)http://www.freebase.com/view/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000047457ee</ref>

Differences with progressive metal

Although progressive metal and avant-garde metal both favor experimentation and non-standard ideas, there are rather large differences between the two genres. The experimentation of progressive metal lies mostly in playing complex rhythms and song structures with traditional instruments. For avant-garde metal, most of the experimentation is in the use of unusual sounds and instruments. Progressive metal also puts a greater emphasis on technicality and theoretical complexity (e.g. odd time signatures, complex song forms, jazz fusion influences), while avant-garde metal is more unorthodox and tends to question many of the musical conventions. Some avant-garde bands can be minimalistic in their music which is completely opposed to progressive metal's emphasis on complexity.

Common elements

Some of the more common techniques include:

• Extended techniques: Any of a number of methods of performing with voice or a musical instrument that are unique, innovative, and sometimes regarded as improper.

• "Prepared" instruments—ordinary instruments modified in their tuning or sound-producing characteristics. For example, guitar strings can have a weight attached at a certain point, changing their harmonic characteristics. A different form is not hanging objects on the strings, but divide the string in two with a third bridge and play the inverse side, causing resonating bell-like harmonic tones at the pick-up side.
• Unconventional playing techniques—for example, the tuning pegs on a guitar can be rotated while a note sounds (called a "tuner glissando").
• Extended vocal techniques — any vocalized sounds that are not normally utilized in classical or popular music, such as moaning, howling or making a clicking noise.

• Incorporation of instruments, tunings, rhythms or scales from non-Western musical traditions.
• Use of sound sources other than conventional musical instruments such as trash cans, telephone ringers, and doors slamming.
• Playing with deliberate disregard for the ordinary musical controls (pitch, duration, volume).
• Creating experimental musical instruments for enhancing the timbre of compositions and exploring new techniques or possibilities.

References

• Christe, Ian, "Avant-Garde Metal", Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal, Harper Paperbacks, ISBN 0749083514
• Niederwieser, Chrystof (December 2007), "About Avant-Garde Metal" (PDF), Avantgarde Metal Magazine, 1 (1), retrieved 2008-03-27
• Side, Oliver (July 2009), "What is Avant-Garde Metal?" (PDF), Avantgarde Metal Webzine, retrieved 2009-07-02

External links

• Avantgarde-Metal.com