The definition of a sports fan

No one has an obligation to be a sports fan. It's that simple. No secret handshakes, no over-the-top requirements to show your commitment to a cause. You show up to a game, put on a jersey, or merely check the paper the next day for the final score and you're in the club. The diehards might not accept you into their little self-indulgent treehouse, but who needs them? Who says their word is final? There's no rhyme or reason to it, no logic, and no requirements. I'm a Cubs fan, Bears fan, Bulls fan, and Blackhawks fan. I can remember Carlos Marmol knocking out Brewers hitters like it was yesterday: slider, fastball, fastball, fastball, slider, strike out. I can imitate Derrick Lee's swing to perfection: right-handed, open stance, bat between a 90 and 180 degree angle, and a major leg sweep to get the timing right. Derrick Lee hasn't worn a Cubs uniform in years. Craig Krenzel to Bernard Berrian for 49 yards and a TD? In my mind it happened yesterday, not eight years ago. $100 for a Toews jersey? Absolutely worth it. Without question.

That's the power of fandom. Plain and simple.

There isn't a test you pass to become a diehard for your cause, and there's no badge that you can betray. No one has questioned my credentials as a Cubs fan, nor have I questioned theirs.  You claim to be a Cubs fan? Then you're a Cubs fan until you say otherwise. The satisfaction the each of us receives from victories may not be the same, nor the stinging pain of defeat, but we've invested in both of those things. When I first discovered baseball, I was a White Sox fan. Why? No reason. None whatsoever, aside from them being from Chicago. Then I went to a Cubs game and changed my mind. I was 12, and haven't changed my mind since. No one makes rational decisions when they're 12. You're in middle school, just started to hit puberty, and have barely begun to grasp the idea that competition is the perfect outlet for everything, even if you don't know why you're so damn competitive. Even losing to relatives at a board game sucks.

But fans, diehard, casual, in middle school, what have you, are just that: fans. With jobs and lives outside of the ticker on the bottom of the screen during SportsCenter. On top of the never-ending daily grind of working 40 or more hours a week, dealing with the barrage of school work, coming home to personal problems, or putting up with shit I can't even begin to fathom, people still tune into sports. I've spent so much time watching games that I've likely wasted years fully grasping zone defenses or what to throw in a 2-2 count when the only pitches in your repertoire are breaking balls and fastballs. I could have spent that time studying AP U.S. History or Microeconomics. And yet I planted myself in front of the television, day after day, game after game, for reasons I can't articulate.

For some reason geography is the basis of almost all sports fandom, and no one questions that. I am a Cubs fan who originally rooted for the White Sox because they were from Chicago. I changed allegiances to the Cubs because they too were from Chicago. Just physically (in terms of ballparks) closer. (Also maybe because their uniforms had actual colors. But I honestly don't remember why I fell in love with baseball, or with the White Sox, or with the Cubs. I grew attached to the Red Sox because I had family in Boston. Likewise, I have family who don't like in the Midwest yet call the Cubs their #2 because of us in the Midwest who do call the Cubs our team.

I've suffered through painful defeats, depressing eras that have lasted years, championships, and everything in between, but I've never abandoned any team that becomes a part of my life's blood. I've been so angry at these teams that I've thrown things, broken things, and thrown gear away. Screams, tears, jubilation, sobs, exhilaration, you name it and I've done it in the name of fandom. Hell, a god damn video game commercial that simulated Cubs fans celebrating a World Series victory made me tear up. Nothing makes me tear up. That's not hyperbole. I just don't break into tears. And yet slipping into a dream where I'm in Wrigleyville, surrounded by lifelong Cubs fans, as that team wins it all has me fucking bawling my eyes out. IT WAS A GOD DAMN VIDEO GAME COMMERCIAL.

And so we boo them sometimes. We put them on these immeasurable pedestals that project this superhuman image of athleticism that's so out of our league it becomes a form of escapism so strong we don't even recognize it as escapism. It's beyond escapism, above the silliness of getting lost in a book, TV show, or band. It's so engrained in society that diehards are completely accepted, unlike Trekkies and Tolkien lovers. Pouring your heart and soul out into a team is expected. And winning a championship is considered so far beyond anything, it eclipses every other single emotion combined. More than love, more than hate, more than anything. Absolutely anything. When our team loses, that escapism is broken and ruined, an ugly punch to the gut that throws so many negative emotions in our faces we can't think straight, because we give them so much weight relative to everything else in our lives. And so we boo them sometimes.

It's a double-edged sword, fans and athletes. Fans owe players nothing. Players owe fans nothing. I choose to be a fan of a particular team because of geography and the stupid idea that the emotional roller coaster is worth the ride. Players play because they get paid to. Ideally they play to win a championship, because that's how sports is framed: play like a champion and win it all. But simply playing the game is their job. Don't confuse the job with this false idolatry. Winning it all is what the archetypal sports myth is all about, but we don't live in a world of myths and ideals. We live in a world with men and women, both on and off the field.

What is a genre?

In 1984, Bathory came out with its self-titled debut album. In 1992, Darkthrone came out with its second album, A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Venom's album Black Metal came out in 1982 while Burzum's self-titled debut came out 10 years afterward. All are, most metalhead would argue, staples of the black metal genre. 

But how true is this? What does it take for something to qualify as a genre, and how are these genres determined, labeled, and legitimized? These are big, broad, pretentious questions.

I will try to answer them anyway.

Here's the thing about black metal: the concept of it as a whole genre didn't come about until the 1990s. The first wave of black metal, which occurred in the 1980s, includes bands such as Venom, Bathory, and Celtic Frost. But Venom and Celtic Frost were essentially thrash bands with low production quality singing about Satan. Black metal? No. Not quite, if we're going to compare them stylistically. It wasn't until the influx of bands from the 1990s (the second wave of black metal) that black metal reached ears outside of those dedicated to the music and the scene. It wasn't until bands such as Darkthrone, Emperor, Immortal, and Mayhem started putting out albums during and after 1992 that enough black metal was out there being made to justify inventing a genre for it (besides the awful label of 'extreme metal').

Music genres can be very annoying things. They have an obvious positive benefit: they tell us generally what the music is going to sound like, sort of like a quick preview in case we're not sure what music some artist we've never heard of makes. Maybe an album cover pops out at you, and it happens to be in the 'metal' section. Helpful. But then you pop in the CD or switch to your computer's music library and discover that what you got is far from what you thought you were getting. Or maybe you have that friend who raves about the latest blackened post-metal shoegaze band or some new atmospheric sludge/doom album.

(Spoiler alert: I'm that friend)

I care too much about proper genre labeling, at least within metal. This is because A) I'm bizarrely neurotic about that, and B) there are enough diverse styles of metal to justify added descriptors to clarify what kind of metal the music is. I have 29 different metal (sometimes self-assigned) subgenres in my library: black, blackened shoegaze, death, doom, drone, folk, groove, heavy, industrial, melodic death, metalcore, nu, pirate, post, power, progressive black, progressive death, death, progressive post black, sludge, speed, stoner, symphonic black, symphonic death, symphonic, technical death, technical melodic death, thrash, and viking.

Progressive post black metal. I am literally Hitler for making that a thing.

Back to Bathory. After their debut album, Bathory continued to put out albums in the 1980s that continued to influence (along with artists like King Crimson) the soon-to-be second wave Norwegian scene. And they were really the only ones well known for making that sound and style of music, effectively making black metal in the 1980s even though the concept and definition of black metal didn't exist quite yet. Under the banner of real-time genrefying, Bathory would be an 'extreme metal' band. Under a more retroactive banner, Bathory is black metal. But is it black metal in sound only, or also in spirit? I can't tell because honestly second wave black metal (which ended up defying the genre) was just a giant circlejerk: Bathory copied Venom, Norwegian bands copied Bathory and then copied bands that copied Bathory to give us the iconic black metal sound.

So genres have souls now. Apparently.

A simple solution would to just label Bathory as 'proto black metal,' along the lines how the Stooges and MC5 would be considered 'proto-punk' because they were punk rock before punk rock existed. But the Stooges and the Sex Pistols were still of the same notion: fuck society, I'm a rebel. Bathory and Burzum aren't of the same notion. Bathory is 'Hail Satan' but not in a serious way. Burzum is 'Hail Satan' in a literal, church-burning way. Bathory came from Sweden. Second wave black metal came from early '90s Norway, a very different scene from early '80s Sweden. Norwegian black metal was very reactionary, very counterculture, and sometimes anti-Christian. Bathory was a man alone, without a scene. The spirit of what black metal is comes from the bands and music that came out of that second wave. I think spirit matters in this case. Bathory is of black metal sound, but not of spirit.

Problem solved! We're halfway home!

There's a new trend emerging in metal as bands continue to push the boundaries of traditions: the forging and evolution of fusion subgenres. If you look back on that list of subgenres sitting in my music library, you'll see stuff like melodic death and blackened shoegaze along with all the progressive subgenres (though progressive is another pet peeve of mine: it's a lazy way of describing how multiple subgenres are fused). There are some bands who only combine two styles of metal (any melodic death metal band) and then there are those that throw in so many it makes labeling using a traditional scheme impossible.

Agalloch and Cormorant are the banes of my existence. (You can blame Cormorant for progressive post black metal).

Hit play on any Agalloch song and you'll stumble across these different styles: atmospheric black, acoustic, black, folk, doom, and post metal. Listen to Cormorant and you'll be jumping from black to shoegaze to melodic death to folk to NWOBHM-inspired metal. But let's ignore Cormorant from now on because I like Agalloch more. First off, I should mention that Agalloch has a subgenre, sort of. The band refers to their music as 'dark metal.' I'm not sure how I feel about this because A) Is a band allowed to define its own subgenre? B) If not, who gets to put the label on a subgenre? Meshuggah is prog band that incorporates polyrhythms in the form of chugging, and calls their sound 'djent' as an onamonapia. The term has begun to catch on somewhat, but there's also a lot of backlash. This didive wasn't present when 'black metal' was taken from the Venom album and coined as the descriptor for the Norwegian sound.

Unlike Meshuggah, black metal had an entire scene devoted to the style, a scene very active that closely tied everyone together. Norwegian black metal artists were like-minded in their approach to the music: perform as if the color black were a type of music. Listeners have reacted negatively towards 'djent,' showing that sometimes classifying power can reside with them. There also isn't very much present with Agalloch and 'dark metal' (unless you want to get into the whole Cascadian black metal thing, which is very dumb and widely regarded as a bad decision). There are a few bands that are getting around to copying Agalloch, but not at the amount or growth of second wave black metal. And while no one's rejecting 'dark metal,' no one is really claiming it and legitimizing it.

I've just given up and labeled Agalloch as 'post metal.' It took me months to do. I'm really neurotic about this.

Back to Cormorant now, and my new favorite band of the moment An Autumn For Crippled Children. The problems that persist with these bands is that they are wave front, they are making the experimental stuff that'll never get near the mainstream and will either inspire the future conventions of metal, or be ignored completely for being too out there for its own good. AAFCC combines third wave black metal (a U.S.-driven subgenre that's growing and branching off in a very exciting fashion) with shoegaze, ambient, and post metal. I gush about the album Only the Ocean Knows, and it's a truly unique blend of styles that's both Explosions in the Sky and Alcest (an influential shoegaze black metal band).

This third wave of black metal is really a fascinating thing, especially given what it means for the core concept of 'black metal.' You have American bands taking this music and splitting it off in several directions: atmospheric, shoegaze, depressive/suicidal, and post black. Not to mention stuff like blackened thrash. But the point is that a lot of these American bands don't hold the same convictions and inspirations that music from Norway had. American black metal isn't really reactionary,  counterculture, or anti-Christian. Many bands don't implement poor sound quality when recording. Introspection and sadness are key qualities of the spirit of the music. Perhaps 'dark metal' is a better term, because third wave black metal seems to me more like 'blue metal,' blue as in the dark blue sky of dusk. Not black as midnight, just enough to tell the day is dying.

But that'll never catch on because A) I just made it up, and B) it sounds ridiculous. Pretty soon we'll have 'red metal' and 'green metal.' And you can all thank me.

I guess besides stroking my ego, this post is about some of the cracks in the current scheme.  I don't think that we need to limit classifications if the most accurate way of labeling it involved four different descriptors (Agalloch) rather than a band that obviously only needs one. If that means 'progressive post black metal' and 'blackened shoegaze post metal' have to exist, so be it. And if we have to call Bathory 'extreme metal' because subgenres aren't retroactive or are about sound rather than soul, then so be it. But I only sort of know what I'm talking about.

Best metal of 2012

First, a disclaimer. I've only been a metalhead for about a year now, and I'm still developing my musical tasting and discovering new music. There's also no way I've been able to sit down and listen to every single metal album that has come out this year. All this means that what I have to say probably has very little merit to it. So feel free to completely throw my opinions out the window. Without further ado, here's some of the best metal of 2012:

An Autumn For Crippled Children - Only the Ocean Knows This is quickly becoming one of my favorite albums of recent memory, if only for the insanely beautiful bass sound (the rest of the music is equally as beautiful, I assure you). Bass guitar in metal is often overlooked and dulled down in the mix to the point where you can barely hear it. But on this album, it's as if the bass guitar is functioning as the lead guitar, which is unheard of in most metal (especially black metal). That aside, AAFCC (ridiculous name, I know) has managed to outdo Alcest with this shoegaze-style masterpiece. Phenomenal, breath-taking album.

Be'lakor - Of Breath and Bone Hands down, this is the best melodic death metal album I've ever heard. These Aussies have taken the '90s Gothenburg style of In Flames and At the Gates and perfected it into an hour of thunderous aggression. Every single track, every single note is flawless, unrelenting, and at the same time, a bit melancholy. There's a level of emotional depth (at least, to me) in the melodies that I'm not used to finding in music (metal or otherwise), and it's very moving. Given that this, their third album, is Be'lakor's best one yet, I can't wait to see if they can outdo themselves.

Pallbearer - Sorrow and Extinction I've recently discovered the wonderful world of doom metal: slow, heavy, boulders of music that slowly but powerfully bowl you over as you listen. Throw in some somber, sorrowful lyrics and you have the ingredients for a doom band. In their debut, Pallbearer executed all of those components successfully. Listening, you can't help but sink into the music, which slowly rolls over you, wave after wave and song after song. Damn those were some good metaphors.

Royal Thunder - CVI This band is one of my favorites, and they only have one full-length album to their name. Groovy, heavy, hypnotizing, and with a bit of Southern blues, this doom band from Georgia put out a great album, molding psychedelic influences with bluesy metal riffs that call back a bit of a retro feel. Mlny Parsonz, lead vocals, has a deep, haunting, and powerful voice that glide right along with the music. Imagine The Doors, but heavier and moodier, ready to guide you on your trip.

Woods of Ypres - Woods V: Grey Skies & Electric Light Hey look, more doom! But this time a bit of a different kind of doom: much more melodic and depressing. Pretty much every song is about how depressing life is, how meaningless living is, and how the narrator is ready and willing to die. Some sample song titles: "Death Is Not An Exit" "Kiss My Ashes (Goodbye)" and "Finality." Pretty unhappy stuff. (Fun fact: the lead vocalist died in a car accident shortly before the album was releases, which makes all the references to dying extra resounding). But that's only if the lyrics matter to you. On the other side of things, the rest of the music is faster and more melodic than other doom bands, which paints a very vivid soundscape. A good album to listen to when you're out while it's snowing.

Honorable mentions:

Ash Borer - Cold of Ages Atmospheric black metal of the Cascadian variety. Excellent full-length debut.

Oak Pantheon - From A Whisper Definitely inspired by Agalloch, this band incorporates acoustic, black, and post-metal into a great first album.

Skagos - Anarchic More atmospheric black metal, but this a bit more aligned with AAFCC. Band named after the island from A Song of Ice and Fire, which is rumored to have unicorns and cannibals. (Sadly, neither song is devoted to unicorns or cannibals).

The Sword - Apocryphon Yet more great stoner metal from the fearsome band. Some say they've lost their sound, but I disagree.

Sylosis - Monolith I'm not big onto modern thrash, but this album knocked my socks off.

So I listened to nothing but black metal for a week

Spent seven days giving "nothing but black metal november" a try, but there's simply too much out there to listen to that isn't black metal. (I also confused Opeth for Mastadon, a good sign I sufficiently soaked myself in corpse paint). HOWEVER, I would consider the past seven days a success for two reasons: I've expanded my music library to include some phenomenal new bands and I've really begun to appreciate black metal.

Reason the latter: Black metal may be the least accessible form of metal, if not one of the least accessible. It's taken me months and months to begin to appreciate it enough just to listen to an entire album. now i fucking love emperor, burzum, and deafheaven. I could listen to them for hours. Before, black metal was noise: fast, insanely distorted, without changes in dynamics, devoid of tri-tone riffs, blast beats, and with weird screechy vocals that had to be an octave higher than anything I normally listen to. But I swear by the time the seven days were up, there was a beauty to the intricacies of the arrangements. There are patterns to the guitar parts, the distortion delicately integrated, subtle changes in dynamics, the blast beats fit perfectly, and the vocals held a powerful meaning and symbolism I never knew of.

I rewatched the documentary "Until The Light Takes Us" in late october, and it rekindled my desire to get more into black metal. Before then (having not really given the film much thought the first time seen), it was a bizarre and irritating genre. It had some weird european history and was devoid of all other stylistic elements of metal. I've tried for months to get into it, going with a periodic brute force method. compared different eras. nothing. But then I gave "Hvis lyset tar oss" a listen after rewatching, and it all began to click. This wasn't just a couple guys mad at the world making music that was supposed to literally sound black. It was a very small, unique extreme counterculture movement, one that has roots in developing music of earlier eras (which I always find fun) and roots in social unrest.

These guys (the members of bands like Burzum, Immortal, Mayhem, Darkthrone) were deeply inspired by Bathory, Venom, and Mercyful Fate. they developed that into their own thing, deeply bathed in the social unrest that drove the scene. That unrest, at times, fueled a fundamentalist approach: church burnings, murders. Black wasn't just a genre, it was its own lifestyle. Most genres can't say that. The way black metal struck back at musical norms was also fueled by this unrest: the more lofi the recording, the bigger "fuck you" to the clean, expertly recorded and cut records that didn't question why clarity should be the norm. I feel this comes out in the music, especially in Burzum, Mayhem, and Darkthrone.

The dankness of "Filosofem" and "Under a Funeral Moon" suddenly make all the sense in the world. (I'm a big melodeath/folk metal fan, and we like crisp, clean mixes (see: Wintersun's "Time I")). The grueling wall of guitar noise and blast beats sounded instead like a violent cacophony, wanting to reach out and punch anything that hated it. The vocals had a melancholy quality to them, even within the underlying pent-up aggression. And that's just my revelation concerning '90s Norwegian black metal.

There are two waves of black metal in terms of rock history: the first wave (early 1980s Bathory and Venom), and the second wave (early 1990s Norwegian bands). There's a third wave developing right now in the U.S. Bands popping up incorporating post-rock/metal and shoegaze elements are growing. These guys are being inspired by the music of the '90s and reinterpreting it for themselves in the form of current U.S. black metal, and it's a kinda great result. These bands have locked in on the emotiveness of black metal, someone I never noticed before. There's a much different type of melancholy in this emerging wave, something very post-rocky a la every Sigur Ros song ever. What it is, I don't exactly know yet. and that's rather exciting. (But the answer is definitely not Liturgy's frontman's 'transcendental manifesto').

Reason the former (yup, I finally got there): I don't scroll through my music library and instantly skip over the various black metal bands. It legitimately used to feel as if I blocked them out completely, like they weren't there at all. Scrolling through my library now makes it look a whole lot more full. I have so much more to listen to now, and I can never have enough music to listen ton. I can unwind by putting on some black metal and letting it block out all the noise. I'm going to enjoy it while it still feels new.

Why I Listen to Metal

The drums start up, rolling a fierce, fast marching pattern that lingers until the first riff hits. Soon the second guitar kicks in along with the bass. The drum pattern picks up, matching the intensity of the riff. Then come vocals: harsh, guttural, powerful. Another riff slams into you, and then another. A solo comes flying through, screaming and burning. And then another solo, riff, verse, riff, outro, In the meantime, all hell is breaking loose around you. You’re leading an army into battle and soaring through mountain ranges and running through brick walls. There’s an overwhelming sense of strength and vigor running through you, a feeling akin to being indestructible. Like the guy who walks slowly away from a fiery explosion bursting behind him and doesn’t blink.

In reality, I’m just sitting on my bed. I’m wearing a bathrobe, haven’t done my homework, and I’m really hungry. I have some Eluveitie playing, but somehow the combination of sitting on an Ikea bed frame and listening to “Your Gaulish War” isn’t quite one that screams “metalhead,” whatever that term means. Other times I might be sitting on the bus, wearing khakis, a white, collared shirt, and a Star Trek jacket. I just sit there, watching the same boring scenery pass by as I take the same route I always do. Even when Thor, Hlodyn’s son, protector of mankind, rides off to meet his fate while Ragnarok awaits him, I’m merely Matt, John’s son, protector of very little, and I’m riding off to class while the j-school and student union await me.

But during that ride, I sink into the music pounding in my ears. I’m only sort of on the bus. Another part of me is far away, in some other world that I’m not exactly sure of. It’s definitely a place I like to visit, and sometimes I stay there for hours. It’s great: the music’s there, I’m there, the book I’m reading is there, and nothing else is. It’s like my own private beach, except it’s right next to an active volcano, the natives are Uruk-hai, and the sea’s filled with sharks with freakin’ laser beams. Most importantly, the music’s all around, pouring out of everything, omnipresent and pulsing with life. And all of that is flowing through me, while I sit on the bus and while I sit on my bed wearing a bathrobe.

There are other types of music that generate strong feelings and emotions within me. There’s the raw honesty of folk and heartland rock, the rebelliousness of protopunk, and everything that is Led Zeppelin. There’s music that will bring tears to my eyes, plop me to the top of the world, or pick me up regardless of circumstance. But I never get to the beach that way. I don’t know if it’s possible to get there any other way, or if the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 mean anything. But that beach is a damn nice place to be, and it’s where I’m having my most intense musical experiences. There’s something comforting about slipping out of the moment for a bit and taking a breather elsewhere, where it’s you and only you and you’re a god thundering music down upon the waves.

I’m eager for Wintersun’s “Time I,” which is supposed to come out in two weeks. I’m excited to listen to it as I sit in the Union and read whichever Wheel of Time book I’m on. I can’t wait to play The Sword’s new album while I do laundry, and the next time I go grocery shopping I’ll be sure to rev up some classic In Flames while I glance through the produce section. I’ll save Amon Amarth for the gym, Moonsorrow for when I’m walking home at night, and Deafheaven when it’s particularly autumny outside. And I know a lot of black metal focuses on the cold, frigid nature of Scandinavian winters, so I’ll pull out some Agalloch and Darkthrone when it starts snowing.