Ideas are king. As a metal-fan, you know pretty darn well that "everyone" nowadays can achieve a heavy, crushing and "brutal" sound by having the right equipment. However, if the riffs aren't there, if the song-structures are bad etc., it doesn't matter:shit's wack. I think the core ideas are king and then the effects are there to maximize the potential.

A lot of metal in the 80's had terrible production-values with tinny, trebly guitars, young musicians not really knowing what type of distortion pedals you were "supposed" to have (especially old brazillian black/death/thrash is hilarious in that regard; I suspect the less fortunate bands used 60's fuzz-boxes and I love it) and cardboard drums and shit and yet, I dug it and still do; too many bands today rely on studio-created big sounds which has watered down the heaviness.

And if you look at Black Sabbath, Iommi didn't start to tune down and heavily distort his guitar until "Master of reality" and yet, the first two albums sound perfectly heavy. That's because heaviness doesn't really lie in effects or distortion but rather in the attack; when Iommi played a chord, Ward and Butler was right there with him giving the chord/note the "weight" it deserved by accenting and playing with *force* behind him, it's nothing sophisticated or technological about it but rather something that at the core is based on musical sympathy, interplay and above all a willingness to put fancy self-realization to rest and instead having the balls to be *primal* (not a big feat today but in the prog-rock/roots-rock/singer-songwriter era, it sure was, especially since "all" critics dismissed Sabbath as musical neanderthals).

That distortion and downtuning made the sound even doper, well, that's a given but if the riffs and the band playing them wasn't so dope, they wouldn't have amounted to shit-just look at all the lame doom and sludge bands that are a dime a dozen. Sure, lots of cool bands in those scenes as well but the hit/miss ratio is pretty low (as it is in every style of music; just saying that if texture was king, every band playing slow, heavy and crushing would be dope but they aren't).


All that said (and back to the post), I also don't like when people criticize artists that has made th effects a natural part of their vocabulary to such an extent that there's no point in separating them; I HATE when people say that about Hendrix for example; effects can be viewed as a "voice", just like a human voice which is of course based on timbre as well. Sure, effects are mass-marketed which means that "everyone" can get the "voice" but then again, a lot of vocalists have had their voice ripped off as well.

Basically, criticizing someone for the effects can be kind of like when the Damaja dismissed the importance of a voice in favour of the *sheer* sheet-music aspect which I think is ridiculous. Saying that, say, Marvin Gaye relied too much on his voice and various manners and "vocal-tics" strike me as retarded and I feel the same way when someone disses Hendrix or criticize metal bcause "those riffs wouldn't sound heavy on an acoustic" (no shit!) or whatever.

In other words, I have very conflicted opinions on this matter and I guess it depends on if I like the artist that gets criticized or not. Like, you can diss U2 or Radiohead for relying too much on texture (and in the case of U2 at least, I REALLY don't think the Edge is playing anything; it has nothing to do with skills or virtuosity, jsut that what he plays strike me as a big, wet nothing-the most unskilled musicians can still play cool shit). Say the same about Hendrix or whoever and I will get defensive, LOL!