Iron Maiden Devil Worshippers......, page 8

Originally posted by warbird03
Here's a question to consider: Does music influence life, or does life influence music?

In my opinion, the latter has much more truth to it. Bands like Iron Maiden are made up of people like you and I. They started out because of a love for music, not because they're involved with the Illuminati or anything like that.

Real music (NOT the newer popular artists like Lady GaGa or Kanye or any of them) is written and created by people looking at the world around them.

Besides, musicians can't be into the whole conspiracy theory thing?

They both influence eachother these days. Originally it seems the latter was more true, such as blues being borne out of work songs from slavery days, but in this day and age, they're completely symbiotic.

Consider rap as it was in its early days, essentially street poetry reflecting the harsh conditions around them at the times (like the LA Riots resulting in an influx of rap music based around those events). From rap grew hip hop and 'gangsta rap', glamourizing certain aspects of the lifestyle to ridiculous levels, and around these subcultures grew, full of people wanting to obtain that lifestyle. Cue many debut rap albums about tough life on the streets, hard times, wanting to make money to get out of it etc, and then a second and third album about how they made their money and are living the life. Music affects life affects music.

To bring it back to metal, Black Sabbath started off writing material that they felt needed speaking about, because no-one else at the time really was broaching those topics (War Pigs being about the Vietnam War for example), and took quite some critical flak for it, but they carried on regardless, and attracted popularity due to their avant garde heavy style and lumbering pace, as well as controversial subject matter that people could identify with, that they were really feeling but couldn't find another outlet for. Cue a culture with a tough skin that's willing to look outwards and relfect on the world around it, while treading new sonic ground (literally, as technology improved, amplifiers got louder, more distorted, new FX and such were introduced, new musical techniques and styles invented or developed upon (thanks Yngwie <3)...).

These bands and styles got popular and the record labels picked up on it, trying to churn out more bands like them to make a quick buck which is why today we're inundated with crap music from all walks of life, but most of them were borne out of real musicians that were reflecting on the world around them (including music). So yeah, complete symbiosis really, can't affect one without seeing ramifications to the other