Bolt Thrower and music nerd laziness

I've been slowly moving away from Total Indie Music Obsessiveness over the past few years, as work and movies (which, pleasently, are sometimes the same thing) and life sort of ate away at the time it took to be an all encompassing music fanatic. Movies may take more effort, in some ways -- you have to travel to the theater and devote two or three solid, uninterrupted hours to the experience -- but if you see two or three movies a week, you can keep up pretty easily.

Music on the other hand, is simply insane. Some of this is due to Pitchfork, which, at 25 reviews a week (plus track reviews and other articles), has solidified the necessity of gluttony in music consumption for any true fan. Their obliterating musical overload is the gold standard in comprehensive listening, and it's totally impossible for anyone except Forkers and scooter driving trust-funders to match.

Even my own haunt Skyscraper will publish a couple hundred record reviews an issue. At my high point, I was doing about 20 an issue for them, which is a lot, but it doesn't even really do much more than skim the surface. It's just impossible to give thoughtful listens to the totally obscene number of albums that come out each week, let alone actually purchase that many.

And along with my somewhat declining music intake (comparatively, for a former music junkie), I quit reading music criticism as regularly, opting instead just to browse the Fork each day and leaf through the pages of Skyscraper when the quarterly issues arrive. What used to be a daily hunt for news and reviews turned into an apathetic unwillingness to even make an effort when headlines popped up on my screen.

But this Village Voice article - "Is Metal the New Indie Rock?" - is really good. It does exactly what good criticism should do: Not only does it tell me what's good and what's bad, or even why that's the case, but it writes compellingly and entertainingly enough that I actually believe the author and am motivated to download the tracks (handily provided) and find out for myself.

Decibel is either the Murder Dog or the Wax Poetics of metal, maybe both. The magazine treats its subject ("extreme music") with respect but not reverence; it's fully immersed within its own world, but it isn't afraid to poke fun at itself. Most music magazines these days are written for teenagers; they don't assume their readers will have any knowledge-base about the music they cover. The writers and editors at Decibel are entirely willing to make neophyte readers feel like idiots; they presuppose that we'll already have a working understanding of the importance of Bolt Thrower and that we have some idea what the fuck "Swedish guitars" sound like. I might've never read Decibel if my roommate didn't sometimes write for it, but it might be the best music magazine around right now. It does exactly what a music magazine should: it makes you want to know more about the stuff it covers.

Although, seeing as I actually know what a Swedish guitar sounds like and have at least listened to Bolt Thrower on multiple occassions, I might be a little too "inside" to really judge.