Your post was really good and convincing until I read this. So if Sirenia changes their image, they'll be metal?
Depends if they do a full on makeover and play convincing metal. Considering it's Sirenia, doubt they can pull over a cloak. I mean, Sirenia suddenly riding motorcycles and drinking beer and shit, you think they can do that? I don't think so? I just think it'd be the same shitty old car with a new paint job. Image is projected by integrity. And protected by integrity. If Sirenia suddenly started doing that, you could make a case for them being metal; but even then you could ask whether they're doing that because they want to pander to a different crowd (and therefore sell to other people), or because they actually genuinely want to play that music. And I, I don't think they do or they can. They want to make heavy pop music. Same thing Tarja did in Nightwish, which is why she is gone now. Nightwish had to preserve their honesty. Whether Anette is to everyone's tastes is something else, and I don't think Anette sounds all that metal (and Nightwish are semi-metal musically anyway). But the other band members are clearly rooted in metal, in some very good metal as well; Tuomas claims the 3rd and the Mortal and Tiamat and such as influences, so, you know... And from what I gather, Anette is a VERY genuine personality. Image is being GENUINE about what you like. I think I should have worded it differently. I like metal bands that are genuine. Maybe this explains it better?
Look being metal is a sort of feeling as well. It's playing the music, but it's also the culture, the lifestyle, you know, there's a whole different level to it. Sirenia fit in that little sub niche where the "gothic" subgenre (but they sound nothing like Gothic music, whence another debate...) I mean, this is nothing or other. This just drifts somewhere between trying to write catchy rock melodies and trying to be dark so you can sell to a part of the population that totally kicks on things that are "dark" and "gothic" and "spooky". It just hits a vacuum between trying to be heavy, trying to be melodic, and trying to be ambient and atmospheric. I guess you could say in all these bands there is a "metal influence", and then you'd probably be right. But you can't you know consider Sirenia metal unless they actually live the whole thing out.
I know in some cases the borderlines get really fucking tedious. Rammstein for example, they have this problem too: clearly there is a huge Metallica and Pantera influence there, but are they metal? I don't know, there's a KMFDM and such influence as well. Are they industrial? They don't stick to a lot of particular conventions of that genre either. So what are they? In Rammstein's case, I'm tempted to say they're metal because I think in their sound and in their image and in the way they project themselves to their audience, they are pretty metal and they are very authentic. But you can of course argue the other side of the equation.
Well stuff like Sirenia has the same problem. I'm a bit bored of the hype over all these kinds of bands, so I'm tempted to take shots at every single one of them every once in a while just because I can because it's getting annoying to see every sixteen year old kid wearing a fucking Within Temptation or Tristania or whatever fucking band shirt when you know, they probably don't know who Carcass are, or Bathory, or Celtic Frost, or Watchtower. I really have to draw lines because even though I am not that old or anything (I wish I'd been there in the 80s to hear Anthrax or Slayer) but you know, the scene is so much more than these hyped "metal" bands when real metal as it originated sounds nothing like those modern female fronted metal bands at all. I know metal has split and branched and for some bands in the genre, I mean, say, Draconian, I can think that in their case you could say there is a case they are actually metal (the Opeth and My Dying Bride influences are huge).
In this case, the genre Sirenia would be closest to (doom metal, really, although just playing heavy metal slower does not make you doom metal; Sirenia don't sound like Candlemass), I mean, doom metal bands are still different from what Sirenia does. I don't like the term gothic metal a lot, though I understand why people use it; it's a mix of gothic music and metal, but since when do Sirenia sound like a cross between Bauhaus and any metal band (which metal band anyway? Iron Maiden? Metallica? Candlemass? Solitude Aeternus?). No. They don't. They sound like a cross between pop music and metal music, and I can see the appeal in that: catchy melodies and it's still heavy in a way; but don't confuse the two.
Seriously, Retsu, I respect the fact you like female vocalists in metal and I know where you're going with this, and actually, I don't hold a grudge against chick vocalists at all like some metalhead elitists do, but I do agree with them that I have to draw some genre lines, and that of course that the genre lines are by no means a 100% guarantee for what I enjoy musically.
