Whitechapel's new album Mark Of The Blade is due out on June 24 on Metal Blade, and as well all know by now, it's going to feature some clean vocals. He reveals to Metal Wani that the album will actually feature two songs with clean vocals, though the real interesting bit of the interview comes when he discusses a song on the album called "Elitist Ones."
According to Bozeman, the song is about people needlessly criticizing metal bands and essentially hopping on bandwagons
“The main reason for that song is because we are a metal band. And metal is one of the most criticized and very like, it’s one of the most… I don’t know. People are just so judgmental, it’s one of the most judgmental genres that you can be in. Because if you’re not this type of metal then you’re not true metal, there are just so many subgenres of metal that it’s almost like a fashion contest at this point. A fashion show, you know?
Like who’s got the most brutal, heavy, vocals. Or who’s got the heaviest sounding songs. It’s just a very… You know people call us deathcore and you know it’s whatever, it is what it is. But now if a band even has like screaming vocals and like a breakdown or something they’re considered deathcore. That was never considered deathcore.
But at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what it’s called. That’s what people fight over to post and people in the metal community fight over what matters the least. It’s just really frustrating to see that. I don’t care if a band that I don’t care too much for, if they wrote a song that I enjoy, then I’m going to enjoy the song. I don’t care who wrote it.
People are so quick to say like ‘Oh this song’s awesome, who is it?’ you know, and they say, ‘Whitechapel‘ and they’re like “oh those guys suck, I’m not gonna listen.’ That just doesn’t make sense to me. You should like music just for the way it sounds, not because who is associated with it. If you like the song, just listen to it. That’s what that song mainly was about.”
It sucks, but he's dead on. Bandwagoning will always happen in metal – some people just decide they should hate an artist and they'll never, ever give them another chance. It'll be interesting to see how many comments there are about how dumb Whitechapel is on social media about this from people who didn't even read the article, too.
[via The PRP]
