Ok got it.

Still don’t buy that metal is the only innovative rock sub genre, but I’m open to hearing the argument.

If I could re-write that original post again, I would. I'm sure there are some innovative rock bands outside of Metal right now, but I've been so put off by what I've heard that I've pretty much given up looking for it. So I turn it back to you, 'educate me! I'm down'.

i like it when the hive mind coalesces around a problem

Metal is open to a lot of nuance and stretches itself into a lot of new territories beyond just amalgamating things. It is true for a fact that many of its sub-genres get bogged down and eat their own Tails by refusing to work outside a strict set of parameters. But those very subgenres come to exist because somebody in one place or another decided to push things in a different direction.
Hellhammer and Celtic Frost were definitely an early example of Avant garde metal in the early 80s, for instance. I know a lot of people who appreciate their approach and the fact that it didn't emphasize technicality so much as atmosphere. You can actually sort of hear them learn how to play over the course of their recordings. Tom's current band Triptykon still carry on in a forward-thinking Direction, made better still by the fact that he has become a fine musician and composer over the decades.
Bathory are another great early example of raw black metal emerging in the 80s, and he also managed to create the Epic Viking Style and get super polished and grandiose a couple of years after that. Double gigantic influence there. For good or ill, that work is super important.
Ulver certainly pushed a lot of boundaries, and through that process wound up not even really being a metal band at all anymore, but they have managed to make a lot of strong statements in a lot of different areas. It would have been hard to foresee that at the beginning.

The whole reason I got into black metal when it came into its own in the early and mid 90s because it appealed to the part of me that likes noise and groups like Sonic Youth. It had that Sonic quality to it and didn't sound like any metal I'd heard before then. I didn't grow up with metal at the center of my listening but I have listened to it quite a bit since the 90s. There are a lot of dead ends, but there are a lot of really good rabbit holes when you find which ones to go down

Seriously though, if you don't like metal generally I would suggest Aluk Todolo's "Occult Rock" or the work of Oranssi Pazuzu for more current examples. Those groups are classified as metal but what they really are to me is extremely evil Space Rock. And they're both excellent.

Edit: symbols guy take note; if the vocals are a big issue for you, Aluk Todolo are instrumental.

The tail-eating you mention, though obviously problematic, does have a kind of virtue if you look at it a certain way. Most of the subgenres, especially at the underground level, seem to have quite clear musical objectives. Sticking with Black metal, it tends towards trying to finds ways of expressing either a bleak depressive atmosphere, or some kind of extreme misanthropic hatred or a more cosmic occultism. As bands come along and appear to go as far down that path as it seems possible to go, others have to find new ways of pushing it even further, if only to justify their very existence. Rock doesn't generally have that kind of clearly-defined focus so is more likely to keep producing music simply for its own sake. Even its innovations really are just innovation for the sake of innovation. Whereas with certain areas of BM, it always feels like it's striving for something specific but ultimately unreachable: hence its obsession with being 'true'.. You can even extend that to production. The obsession amongst some bands with lo-fi recording always means they want to go further and further down that direction, so you start with Hellhammer then end up with stuff like the whole Les Légions Noires thing and then you have bands that follow them, trying to go even further down that route. Like I say, it has it's problems (it's essentially a purity spiral) but it's key to why certain areas of BM seem to, almost by definition, have to keep going further and further down a particular path.

EDIT: In a way Symbols point about hive minds coalescing around a problem is a great way of describing what's going on within those areas of BM, where the 'problem' is always that which gets in the way of whatever it's striving for. It also probably helps explains why certain figures within it are so easily drawn towards really dodgy political beliefs.

Isis - Wavering Radiant

 

Gojira - From Mars to Sirius

 

I have listened to pretty much every single goddamn Metallica album (even that unacceptable live one with strings!) via high school mooks, then college mooks, then one of the few friends I kept from college (who can also be a mook).

It has not been good.

Don't you "Eh" me, you little iPhonesuckin' millenial. Unless you don't want the super-deluxe 107-track fuck-you edition of the White Album in 24/96, that is... :)

maybe it's cuz you listend to *everything* including the shit which i bet can induce massive allergies

but in their day they wrested metal from the drooly jaws of glam, and in doing that they keep things interesting for the next generation to take the mantle

so, you don't like this song? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncdIQJ297KM

No, I don't. Jesus Christ Monkeyballs that was some bloated boring bullcrap. Thank you for the 4:47 I'll never get back.

ok let’s push back the clock...

what about this

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X4bgXH3sJ2Q

OH MY GODDAMN GOD MOTHERFUCKIN' SHITTY MAIDEN HOW LOW ARE YOU GONNA GO?! Dude, let's move on, seriously...

hahahahahahhaaa!

but that was so much fun!

You'll take my life but I'll take yours too
You'll fire your musket but I'll run you through

etc.

my favorite music video of the 80s probably bhahahaha

i just posted 2 of the greatest metal albums of all time fwiw.

ok mr tambourine man



actually that photo lies. the kultrun is way more fun than the fucking tambourine of mr tambourine man.

I’m semi-familiar with Gojira, and a I know a bit of Isis, but not these specific albums. I will listen!

* Xennial, ya bitsch. I remember Reagan. That’s the official unofficial cutoff.

Dunno about the kultrun (never seen one, much less played one; I only know what they told me about it in school, I must admit), but clearly you don't even have a ghost of a clue about which instrument, and which musician, that song refers to.

For real: shut the fuck up, let's move on.

So what are we working with here?

Baby boomers ~1945-1965
Generation X ~1965-mid 80s?
Generation Y/Millennials ~mid 80s-1997
Generation Z ~1997-today

Baby boomers are pretty well defined, and based around Severian's insistence he's not a Millennial I've put mid-80s as the cut-off there.

The Pew Research Centre goes with boomers 1946-1964, X 1965-1980, millennials 1981-1996, and Z 1997-today. I agree with their reasoning behind Z - if you can remember 9/11, you're too old to be Gen Z.