Which ones, might I ask?

Some of the best songs ever are really simple. Most of the best melody lines are really simple.
Complexity can be cool and interesting, but simplicity is underrated in metal for reasons I have never understood.

Insecure metalheads need an objective metric to distinguish their music from pop and hip-hop and other "bad" music, and complexity plays that role perfectly. It's easy to identify, and it gives them a sense of superiority and intellect over FM radio listening peasants.

Great examples of that are Tool and Meshuggah fans.

It's just a really dumb album, is my only problem. It sounds great but I have to be in a mood for something dumb.

Thundersteel is a really similar work musically but the extra doses of hard rock and soulful stuff, and the more epic lyrics, just give it a whole other feel.

I'll take a simple and non-complex, but catchy and great riff over complex shit that's complex just for the hell of it.

Metal-archives is the only place in the world where you'll find people citing whatever Iron Savior's did as better than Painkiller.

My favorite comments that I read online are about how metal is some sort of intellectual piece of art.

Pretty much every early extreme metal band with their primitive lyrics would like to disagree with that.

Condition Red is pretty great though - just on point all the way... but sure, hard to beat Priest at their own game.

Extreme metal is (mostly aside from the technical stuff) anti-intellectual, it finds meaning in the unknown instead of what we think we know. Still can be a piece of art though.

Some metal is more intellectual, more thought provoking, more challenging, etc. But I don't use "intellectual" or "more complex" as a synonym of "better". Simple, straight-to-the-point art (including metal) is all good if done right. Think Master of Reality, like we said. But if you want to make some jazzy prog death fusion stuff like Atheist and Cynic, or tech thrash like Vektor and Voivod, that's all fine by me.

Master of Reality was a bunch of crazy guys one-upping everything else that had existed in music for heaviness standards. The fact that Luvers compared it to later Sabbath songs when they evolved further is just so weird.

I know, right? That's like bitching that Scream Bloody Gore is too simple compared to Human...

It's incredible that a woman who is closer to 60 than 50 is wasting her time arguing on an internet music forum, mostly with people less than half her age.

Never underestimate the powerful allure of online arguing and bitching

I never wrote otherwise, my words are not a dichotomy. Being critical of an otherwise celebrated piece of art is not the same as claiming it is a dumpster fire, and it most certainly is not a critique towards those with a dissenting opinion.Unless I am mistaken I never wrote that complexity makes it "better," I wrote that complexity makes it superior and that is not just semantics. I take into account actual compositions because I am a musician as much as I am a fan. I know some people could care less if a song has 3 riffs or 12 or if it changes key at some point or how many times a refrain is repeated and those that feel that way I would never disrespect. No one can be 'wrong' with their subjective opinion.No question. "Don't bore us, get to the chorus!" right? I'll take a simple and non-complex but great riff over complexity for its own sake...If you read my review I acknowledge this fact more than once. I certainly respect what MOR gave to metal, its impact is unmistakable. That is, however, just one positive. Besides the C# tuning of the stringed instruments, what did the 'metal' songs on MOR do that Sabbath had not done before?Not weird at all, the next three are just my favorite of the era, but I could point to Paranoid, which came before, as everything MOR was not. Every song on Paranoid is significantly more varied than MOR. More than that, the debut had a youthful charm and energy while Paranoid maintained that and was a songwriting peak. Only 2 of the 5 metal songs on MOR have any speed to them. Does Sweet Leaf, LOTW and Into the Void - with the exception of a disconnected speedy interlude - not move at a much slower clip?

could you elaborate on the distinction you're making here? i'm not seeing it.

the last bit of your post also seems to imply that slow songs are inherently worse than fast songs, which is ridiculous, but perhaps not what you meant?

Im guessing the distinction between the two is that "superior" can be measured with objective tools : harmonic richness, structural elaboration, time signatures, mode changes, etc.
And "better" refers only to the listener's subjective appreciation of it. A Beethoven symphony is superior to a Motörhead album.
Like in cooking : a 5 stars restaurant is superior to a mc donald's. You have every right to find the restaurant pompous, and prefer a good ol' hamburger. But nobody would argue that one could find mc donald's "superior", that it's just subjectivity at stake. In most cases, it's a lack of exposure to subtle food (often due to a strata struggle, but not each time, sometimes it's just a lack of interest) that prevents people to enjoy superior cooking.

But i do agree this argument "superior =/= better" often rubs people the wrong way because it's easy to slip from "there's some art objectively superior to other art" to "my tastes are superior to yours because i like superior art". There is a slippery slope to pettiness and patronizing. It's sometimes very hard to dissociate the validity of your own tastes with the inner qualities of the art you like. But there's a way out : you can like both.

oh right, that's a very helpful analogy - i think the word superior isn't very well suited for that though, since it so strongly implies a qualitative comparison (being pretty synonymous with better), as opposed to a term like more sophisticated or something, which would be more clearly quantitative

My gripe with this is that older albums can't really be criticized by todays standards. Tech was different and people were different. Also, there's this thing i realized lately is people shitting on older Metallica albums, for example, because they're not that good or because today's thrash is better.
In a popular metal subreddit Master of Puppets was voted like 30th place out of 50 albums. This is just non sense. I think everything has its place and even if you personally don't like a classic album doesn't mean it wasn't extremely influential at the time it was released.

I find the superior idea iffy when talking about something like music. I suppose one could appreciate the technical brillians of a piece of music even if it evokes no emotional reaction. In metal Dream Theater is more complex and technical than Motorhead, so one may say its superior. For me DT makes me feel nothing, where Motorhead makes my blood pump.

But how are we to ascribe either superiority or inferiority to the outcomes of those measurements? What time signature(s) is superior to another, and how do we make that determination?

Bottom line...it's all subjective. Period.

Or, in layman's terms, this can be better understood with the following:
superior = what a person likes
inferior = what a person dislikes, or likes less

That's more where I lean. I'm a network engineer and things in my line of work are objectively suprerior at performing a task or they aren't. There are no real subjective opinions in the mix. Music should be creating an emotional response. Sure you can appreciate the technical prowess of a piece of music, but does that make it superior?

No, not at all. I get the similar feeling than joppek when he says the term "superior" should be replaced by "more sophisticated".
Then you can't say sophistication is subjective.
There are some factual elements that make some music more sophisticated than another. A succession of 25/16 + 5/8 + 6/4 + 11/8 in a song, is more sophisticated than just 4/4 during 5 minutes, just like a fancy meal in a Gault&Millau restaurant is more sophisticated than a whopper. Maybe you'll enjoy the burger more, but saying it's subjective to place the starry meal above it in terms of sophistication, would be a lazy form of relativism - and bad faith.
Sophistication comes with technical mastery, variations, harmonic richness, flawless execution, etc. And one could be moved by a sophisticated piece, just like with a simple one.


Yes but it's heading to binarity here : we end up saying "complex music is boring and simple music is effective and move people". And to the core, the atrocious cliché "feeling > technicity". Like the more complex a music is, the more boring and pretentious.
Feelings must be uncorrelated to complexity. I hate Meshuggah, i love Mekong Delta, i hate Nirvana, i love ACDC ; but Meshuggah is by far more sophisticated than ACDC, and this is not subjective. At all.

I was planning to have a whole rebuttal to this discussion, but yeah, the "better =/= superior" thing just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I guess I can see it if you're approaching it purely as a musician and looking solely at technical ability, but that's such a limited way of talking about it really.

Not all complex music is boring. Rush moves me more than Motorhead and I don't think Ace of Spades is going to out technical Hemispheres. Some complex music is boring, some is very exciting. Some simple music is boring, some is very exciting. I'll give you sophisticated sure.

Not only technical ability (to play a difficult piece), but the richness of the harmonic design as well, the mode changes, the way the composer managed to make different parts coexist fluidly, the way you expect a chord resolution only to be caught off guard, there are litterally a dozen of different things you can appreciate in a music, without even liking it.
But just like the food analogy, it's hard to see all that when you're used to the fat/sugar/salt holy trinity. It demands time and deep diving into the music machinery, and sometimes it takes efforts and theoretical knowledge to be able to appreciate a complex piece of music. But hey, everyone has the right to find this snobbish and listen to Iron Fist and Overkill all day long, that is fine as well. There is no "right choice", no "superior tastes", just opportunities, time, and the will to sharpen your understanding.
Sometimes it doesn't work, i failed many times to appreciate lots of complex music, but since i tried i know there is a lot more to it than just technical ability. And it didn't move me away from simple and catchy tunes that i would look scornfully at.

Yeah - the harmonic design, mode changes, etc, are probably very interesting but it's also just a much more specific niche of conversation. Not downplaying it though.

I do tend to listen with detail now even if I don't know all the technical terms or music theory etc. I just like interesting stuff. Been playing some jazz lately and I always appreciate the recent Pharaoh albums, Hammers of Misfortune, Anacrusis, etc, all really thought out.

It's funny that this is centered originally around Master of Reality, which, while not a mind-bending tech odyssey by any means, is a rich, well put together piece of music and functions great on many levels itself. Hardly caveman shit.

I agree. It seems either impossible or very, very hard to imagine a scenario in which someone utters the words "superior to" without implying "better than."

I figure it's just an odd choice of words on Luvers's part. But the idea seems to be, as you said, that people apparently tend to value pieces of music that involve quantifiably more of a certain something (for example, years of training/practice/study in order to play the instruments; compositional complexity; etc.), but there are still exceptions in which the sheer quality of the music ("good-better-best") is not determined by any of these variables: "Better" music may in some cases happen to have lower measures of these variables.

Something like that, maybe.

SOTS is pretty much the last album I think of when I hear the phrase "immune to criticism."

Some of your takes are even worse, though.

Yeah, I was going to mention this, but decided against it just to avoid feeding the fire (that I kind of started, sorry). But since you brought it up... I don't think that MoR is "immune to criticism" or anything, but attacking it on it's supposed to be simplistic/primitive, is just mind-boggling to me.

You want some stuff that's simplistic, predictable, uninspired, unadventurous? Try any Unearth album. But MoR?

If they were saying Venom, Motorhead, ACDC, etc I may disagree but I'd see where the dichotomy comes from. Sabbath on that album had simple riffs but the songs covered a lot of moods and the album is well rounded.

Only time I hear SOTS mentioned is to say how shit it is.

Anthony Pwl gave a damn near spot on answer to this, better than I can apparently. He used food as his analogy, I used housing before so will again. A sprawling 25K square foot mansion is unquestionably a 'superior' house than a 'shotgun shack', however.... as for a house being a home, the inferior shotgun shack can still function just as practically as its counterpart.Precisely this, although I think Motorhead is a lot more complex than your post could be interpreted as.Well... if the conversation was about painting, you likely would not ask a plumber as to the in-and-outs of color saturation. It would seem most logical to ask musicians about it. Some songs/albums are just simply more complex than others. In the case of MOR having been singled out, both Paranoid prior to it and the subsequent three releases are, objectively, more complex and grand in their arrangements. I fail to see how admitting this changes anything about the enjoyment factor. A person can like/dislike whatever but there is also no reason to deny quantified realities.I would not argue how the album makes you feel, but is it not true that compared to the album just prior and after that, in terms of energy/tempo and complexity, it pales in comparison?
Sorry my post(s) bothered you so much, not sure how they did but... sorry. I would appreciate knowing what is so mind-boggling about someone pointing out an aspect you and others have admitted is a reality as a criticism.

Yeah... no. A house has a definite purpose, the fulfillment of basic living needs. The house which best fulfills those needs, up to a point*, will be the superior house. Music is expression and what the listener (or musician) gets out of it depends entirely on their preferences, so the labels of superior and inferior make no sense.

*I say up to a point because architecture can be art and needs can turn into preferences at a high enough level. I don't think we're talking about that though.

Yeah I'd buy the food analogy more than the housing. I've lived in a 350 sq/ft tiny shack and while it was my home, it was in no way as good as a 4000 sq/ft place. It didn't have the functionality due to size limitations. Food, well I've had expensive meals that were meh, but in general a gourmet burger at a decent sit down resturant is going to beat out a McBurger. Now some are so used to that tripe they prefer it.

But the visceral, emotional reation you get from good art isn't just a factor of time changes, complexity, etc. I just don't think the term "superior" is a useful in that complex. I dunno. Interesting conversation.

Well... it depends on their preferences, yes, but "entirely"? Im not sure about that.
Or : it depends entirely on their preferences, once we admit that preferences can evolve, can be affected by education, instrument practice, exposure to "formal music" (at a young age, or later), by wanting to explore other types of music, etc. Personal tastes are not (or should not be, i must say) something rigid, carved in stone - and more importantly, i think sometimes we have to show some humility when we face something we don't like, because it could be something we don't get.
Music is a form of art so popular that everyone seems to feel entitled to critizice it in an abrupt way, and in the end a disagreement between two people is suspended to a matter of tastes.

I think i have to illustrate this with a personal experience with food (again).
Last year it was the first time of my life i went to a starry restaurant (i don't know if "starry" means something in english for a restaurant, but its equivalent in french means a restaurant with a very high degree of recognition in the cooking field, officially awarded by professionals). And i was disappointed. I think i would have preferred a nice steak with fries that night, instead of this. At some point my fish came with a basil ice-cream and fancy vegetables with some weird spices on it. It seemed to be very difficult to cook, ok, but I can't say i liked it.
But instead of bitching about "so-called quality food doing nothing but showing off", i had to admit that my palate was just not educated enough to appreciate that - although i go regularly to nice restaurants. And this one was above them all according to cooking elites. Im not going to refute that with my average joe knowledge of cooking, and tell them it's just a matter of tastes at the bottom line.

That's the same with music and art in general. When facing a complex piece, lots of people won't see any appeal to it other than "okay it seems to be difficult to do that, and?" but there's a lot more to it to get. Like i said to Empyreal, there are plenty of corners to dissect, lots to compare to what is expected, and in order to do it, you have to educate your ear and learn (at least) bits of music theory.
He said :

And yes he's right, that's such a limited way of talking about it, because a senior musician certainly won't look solely at technical ability. Im no senior musician, not at all, but i know many of them and in my experience, technical ability is the last thing they talk about when facing a complex piece - when they talk about it. They can go on and on and on about a shitload of architecture details, inversions, etc, but the playing perfection is taken for granted.
If you don't hear anything but technical ability, you could be right, maybe there is only technical prowess in an otherwise telegraphed song - but maybe you can't hear anything else because you don't have the tools to.

So yeah, it depends on their preferences, but... not only.



Yet i think Luvers is precisely talking about that.
I think the point he's trying to make, is you can't call upon "to each his own tastes" when comparing this to this.
At some point the gap speaks for itself - the second housing is "superior", without withdrawing your very right to dislike it.

However i wouldn't say the gap between Master Of Reality and Paranoid is the same though lol

a mcdonald's burger is probably more energy dense, it's easier to eat without utensils, and has a way longer shelf-life than the basil ice cream with fancy vegetables, so obviously it's superior if you're a doomsday prepper, or are just packing for a few day's hike.

if the second house's inside floors are as slippery as that yard looks, it'll be no good for pet owners; and it's so excessively big that playing hide and seek wouldn't work at all, 'cause you'd just never find the other person. hence the first house is obviously superior.

point is, a qualitative statement requires definition of desired qualities. you can say one piece of music, food, or architecture is "more complicated", "more difficult to produce", etc. but "superior" heavily implies "being better", which just isn't a well defined concept in the context of music

As I see it, you can compare music to anything you want, but it misses the target either way because you deviate from the subject at hand. Comparing is not staying on topic.