Today Is The Day: What’s So Experimental About Metal, Anyway?

Steve Austin strikes me as a singularly-minded sort of fellow, for better and for worse. Just read this Metalsucks.net interview; Mr. Austin might seem crazy, but no one could argue he is not dedicated to his work; Today is the Day is the story of that dedication. The band has seen a number of folk shuffle in and out of the lineup over the past 16 years, but for my dollar they’re one of the most consistently interesting “heavy” acts ever.

The question of what makes this body of work “experimental metal” – as was raised in the comments section of this post – rather than one of the other twenty-five available genres is a fair one. As a dilettante, I can offer a possible solution to this everlovin’ question of genre without too much baggage:

Today is the Day is weird. (“Atypical”, in other words.)

Dreadfully Obvious Classics #2 – Selected Ambient Works Volume 2

A few years back I wrote an email to a friend who had asked for an Aphex Twin recommendation. For whatever reason I closed my email to her with the following line:

“Burroughs was the Venetian Snares of magickal sodomy. SAW2 wears a rubber glove.”

Now, that doesn’t make a damn bit of sense whatsoever. The first half – maybe? I can see the argument if you’re fresh out of some of the mid-70s work, all done up with wire hangers and metaphors and executions. The second half is totally pointless and I’m really sorry, A., because that wasn’t even remotely helpful.

Dreadfully Obvious Classics #1 – I See A Darkness

I see that look upon your face. The one that says “Why not review a perfect snowflake? Why not review your first love?”

Because, Mr./Mrs./Ms. Smarty Pants, snowflakes melt and my first love was a painfully earnest exercise in learning how not to be a complete shit all of the time, and mostly failing at that.

Hence I See A Darkness.

People like to rip on the haystackers* both because they’re the big name in Indietown and because they generally write like smuggy ding-dongs who need a wedgie so badly that the universe cries out for vengeance against their butt cracks, but they’re not wrong about this being one of the best albums of the 1990s. It absolutely is.

Low key, low-fi, and no low end. Quiet, desperate times at 3 a.m.; maudlin with good reason.

* (Ha ha, get it?)