Sunday 30 September 2018

What the Fuck is Our Genre?

One of the greatest mysteries in CWM is around the question: "What the fuck is our genre?" I mean
in a time of multiple sub genres of sub genres, simply replying with "Rock Music", may not be specific enough an answer to that question. However, I find myself struggling to come up with an answer other than that.

Everyone knows that google gives the answer to everything, so a quick peruse of google gives many exciting sub genres of Rock Music: Latin Rock, Shock Rock, Space Rock, Swamp Rock or Cock Rock. However, while many of these genres sound bizarre (particularly Cock Rock) we unfortunately don't appear to fit in any of them. Instead, some of the more well known sub genres seem to be a closer fit: Hard Rock, Alternative Rock or Punk Rock in particular.

Looking at these three more common sub genres closer can give an idea of how well our band will fit in them. Hard Rock seems to have a focus on a lot of  older bands with the likes of Queen, Led Zeppelin and AC//DC falling under the genre. I can definitely hear influence from these bands in our music as well as some of the aggression in tone required to fit in with this genre. However, this doesn't appear to be very consistent throughout all our songs.

Punk Rock has had a massive influence on each of our musical interests, which can be clearly heard on songs like Icebreaker. Yet once gain we manage to stray away from songs typical for this sub genre, particularly as the length of our songs are longer than typical punk songs and neither are they as fast. Our tendencies to follow the hard rock aggressive style prevents us from fully committing to the punk rock archetype. 

So now I'm driven towards Alternative Rock, a sub genre which a lot of bands seem to be shoved into without anyone fully understanding why. The main definition of alternative rock is that an alternative band will produce music distinct from mainstream rock; or it could also mean music heavily influenced by punk rock; or it could be underground rock artists receiving mainstream recognition. So basically, any underground rock band that currently exists and plays original music could probably fit into this sub genre. So it's not an effective sub genre as it doesn't give a band a distinct sense of identity from other Rock music.

So there we are, drifting in the middle of a few genres of rock music but not really with one we fully commit too. To be fair, I don't think that really matters- bands tend to hate being categorised as one genre or another anyway. Besides, there are more important questions to be asked- like what the fuck is Cock Rock?