The last two years I observed the metal and deathrock scene again. As you may know, I had a break with doing so for several years. In 1998 lots of people screamed “commerce!” to several bands while I couldn’t see why.
But now, 10 years later, things have changed. It’s not me, who has changed. It’s the scene. That commerce-paranoia has become true, in my opinion. Meanwhile it seems there are two classes of heavy metal bands and fans, the rich and the poor. It really remembers me on the actual situation in germany and other capitalism driven nations. The poor get more poor, the rich make more money than ever.
See webzines. I sent out my own news (I consider myself a “poor” underground band with nearly no attention from the fans) to several zines, but none are printed. Not one or two – out of 40 mags NONE printed the news that my album gets released on halloween. But I could really read on ALL webzines that CRADLE OF FILTH does something new. Well, ok. CRADLE OF FILTH is more of interest than CULTES DES GOULES is, I really accept this. But how could this happen that there are NO webzines left which write about the local scene? Or a underground scene with unsigned bands? Or a scene which excludes the major labels? Really, I don’t want to read 100 times about METALLICAs DEATH MAGNET. I guess 10 times would be good. I also would like to know about other news. My point is, that every zine writes about the same. There is no support anymore for the poor bands.
I asked some friends of mine how they had climbed the step to be a rich band. The two musicians I asked sell more than 10.000 CDs of a release. They are no rock stars, but they live from their music. Both told me independently:
“Guy, if you want to be a rich band, you have to pay lots for designing your CD. Design is everything. It counts more than the music. At least even good band photos count more”.
I really believe this. Look at the rich bands: everything is welldesigned, starting from the website to the myspace site. The CD – wow, lots of efford goes into that design. The production is perfect. All errors beeing played are hidden behind a highly compressed production. All that stuff needs a lot of money. That’s in fact the reason why I call the rich bands “rich”. It’s cause they really need lots of money for all that design and production stuff.
A poor band cannot efford this all. They just can start poor: playing tons and millions of gigs everywhere. Meanwhile – you probably know that – you even don’t get money for the fuel of your car. You have to pay for that yourself. It’s the same as paying for artwork, just less. Some bands have no gigs and no artwork. They are the poorest. They play for fun and in my opinion, they have just some cool friends who buy their outputs.
These days, poorest bands seem to sell 20 CDs from their outputs. Poor bands, who play live, may sell 100 or 200. Rich bands on the other hand sell 5000 to 10000. It’s like another world. There are now grey colors anymore, just poor or rich.
There are exceptions of course. See black metal bands. They often sell 1000 pieces without playing live. Well, I don’t like those guys very much, but they have a scene. The scenes buys lots of scene artwork, without caring about design or sound. That scene likes atmosphere, lyrics or something else. What that scene likes can be done without much money.
Well. Labels which support poor bands are poor labels too. They are dying. Poor bands have to step back – CD-Rs are necessary (like tapes before 15 years). But again, poor bands have fun, when they don’t have the pressure to sell 200 of their releases.
Rich bands are rich, but not necessary happy. They have label which tells them how the release must look like. What gigs must be played. How the CD must sound like to be sold successful. And so on. I really would ike to live from my music, but I never would accept that I play for a label. So I am glad to be poor and can do whatever I want.
Hell, local scene and underground is dying when there is no scene to support them. When there are no zines who support them. At least there are some outstanding individuals who have the spirit of metal left.
For example – read this website: vorfeed.net
No layout. But cool reviews.
Finally I am unsure what I wanted to express 
The poor and the rich has been disconnected. The drift away from each other and that never was good. There are two scenes in co-existence. Hopefully, there will be more fans for the poor scene again, otherwise it will die in its form.
