i think the letter is too optimistic, actually. whatever their own plight, they're being used as tools to rile up militaristic hate against russia. when they no longer serve that use, or start asking questions that challenge that narrative, the media will blacklist them as radicals.

i hope they at least got paid.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26067971

deathtokoalas
it's not nirvana, that's for sure. i saw these guys open for defeater at a legion festival a few years ago, and they admittedly stood out amongst the rest of the openers...

....but it doesn't fit in well with a "grunge" sound. it fits in better with the "post-grunge" thing that included bands like silverchair, candlebox and later filter. in the late 90s, post-grunge split in half: it went off into a heavier direction that faded under emo, post-hardcore and nu metal and also went off into a poppier direction that created nickleback, creed and the like.

the big difference between grunge and post-grunge was that grunge was mostly album-oriented, whereas post-grunge was a sound that was engineered out of grunge for radio play and stadium shows. that is to say that grunge was designed for basements, small clubs and the counter-culture, whereas post-grunge was a conversion of those ideas into a mass marketable commodity. generally speaking, grunge fans do not like post-grunge because it's too commercial and post-grunge fans do not like grunge because it's too weird.

so, just to set the record straight: this sounds like '97, not '91. the vocals are very pop-punk/emo (in the co-opted sense), but it does have a post-grunge aesthetic. it belongs to the era where post-grunge was turning into emo.

Victoria V.
how about we call it rock

deathtokoalas
i think pop fits better.

Jonathan D'Orazio
this is far from pop lol

deathtokoalas
why isn't it pop? it's not disco, granted, and i'm not one to focus in on micro-genres (my intent was to get people to stop comparing it to nirvana, because that's a ridiculous comparison), but there has to be a way to separate between rock music that's designed to rock in some kind of counter-cultural sense and rock music that's designed to sing along to. that is, in the sense that it is rock music, this is not punk or alternative or metal - it's designed for mass radio play. which makes it pop. it fits well into a general line of pop music stemming from the british invasion that went around disco.

Jonathan D'Orazio
it's definitely rock…I don't know any radio station that would play this. It's not Nirvana but it absolutely has a grunge edge to it 

deathtokoalas
well, yeah, but there's lots of edgy pop, too. i mean, it's closer to u2 than nirvana, overall, and i couldn't imagine somebody denying that u2 is pop. u2 was really high-end, arty pop, sure, but it was pop. i don't think it quite gets there - that would also be a ridiculous comparison. but weezer, and all the 'emo' and 'pop punk' bands this is cribbing melodies from, were definitely pop....

pop isn't a bad word. and targeting towards a conventional media distribution isn't necessarily selling yourself short. i could complain about the way the industry homogenizes music to create demographics, but that's not the same thing as denying the value of good, catchy, driving power pop.

myself? i'm a little old for this, but pop is the kind of thing that ought to change and evolve with young people. dour critics like myself will stand at a distance and pull out the most innovative pop from each period as relics of cultural trends in order to present to future audiences, but we don't seek to stop the kids from having fun with their peers.

we could maybe compromise with a decent latter-day deftones comparison. it's a bit poppier, but i'd be willing to wager that the 'grunge' sound here stems from them more than anywhere else. and i'd consider the last several deftones records to be firmly in pop territory - and even argue that's an improvement in the deftones' sound.

i mean, i'm ultimately trying to help. i find it frustrating when i see music marketed badly. i couldn't imagine an old grunge fan really connecting to this, so why market it to the wrong audience? but i think deftones fans would probably really like this, and a subset of old emo fans (the ones more into the pop side) would probably dig it, too. and there's even a few acts coming up with a similar sound, enough that it would make sense if they banded together a bit. like, i bet a tour with daylight and city of ships would probably work out well for both bands and fans of both bands. (city of ships are doing something similar, but a bit darker).

Jonathan D'Orazio
you have n clue what you are talking about if you think Deftones are anywhere close to pop

deathtokoalas
i'm not sure what the argument against deftones being pop is. again, it's catchy music designed for radio/mtv and arena shows. that's what pop music is.

Jonathan D'Orazio
that's not deftones lol….

deathtokoalas
man, the deftones were all over mtv and modern rock radio. i'll admit i haven't turned on the radio in well over ten years, and i found the singer suffered from tough guy bullshit syndrome (the fact that he's mellowed out is a big aspect of their newer material being better than their older material), but the reality is that they were an integral component of the power pop of the period.

AlmostLeroy
Stop calling this pop.  Its just rock music.  Not grunge, nor metal, just rock.

deathtokoalas
yes, master?

it really doesn't rock. sorry. it's catchy, though.

Jonathan D'Orazio
it is rock lol……there's no argument there

AlmostLeroy
In the same argument don't think Aerosmith rocks, but it still rock music.  

deathtokoalas
nah. aerosmith is pop, too.

Jonathan D'Orazio
troll 

use, your, commas, correctly, please, .

deathtokoalas
grammar is a type of authoritarian mind control that needs to be strenuously abolished. i will wantonly disregard all grammatical convention, and flip the finger to the grammar nazis that seek to enforce their narrow vision.

it sounds silly but it's very much true: abolishing grammar is the first step to thinking in a truly free fashion.

with commas, i use them to indicate a rest, and as i see fit, without any interest in convention. now, it happens to be that there is nothing Officially Incorrect with putting a comma before "too" in much of any circumstance. if there was such a convention, however, i would completely disregard it.

Jonathan D'Orazio
okay I didn't ask for an essay on commas..

lilac-w-i-n-e
by your own definition, nirvana were one of the biggest pop bands ever. they're hardly a good example of the "counter cultural sense" considering they started out doing what a lot of other bands were doing and made it popular. they pretty much defined the sound every other band tried to do after them in the 90s and what many still are. nevermind was deliberately made to sound clean and catchy to appease the masses and sell and it succeeded. not even just by the label, kurt was trying to write the "ultimate pop song" with teen spirit and a lot of that album. i'm not claiming to be an expert or anything and you can tell me how wrong i am, i'm just saying if you wanna classify music by the attitude behind it rather than the actual sound/lyrics/instrumentation that's fine but nirvana was designed for mass radio play, far more than daylight and other similar bands are now, and therefore a "pop" band.

deathtokoalas
that's an intriguing perception of nirvana. i think it's a little scary to me, though.

i don't think that the kind of band nirvana was even exists anymore, in the mainstream or otherwise. maybe the closest thing is something like ariel pink, but there are some obvious sonic differences.

the process behind nevermind, as i understand it, was sort of convoluted. it stands out in their discography, due to the extremely glossy production. but it's sort of widely known that the band wasn't happy about it.

like, you have to understand that when 'smells like teen spirit' was written the focus was on finding a way to eat that week, not on writing a generation-defining, radio hit. the genre that nirvana existed within had no hope of arena success at the time. that might be hard for a younger person to get their head around, but this is the reason the comparison is so absurd.

i mean, imagine deerhoof's spazzy phase randomly just going multiplatinum. or, go check out the most recent melt banana record. if you listen carefully and with an open mind, you'll realize that this is actually really catchy music. but it's also incredibly bizarre music. having that explode wouldn't be an expected turn of events by anybody, but if the stars aligned the right way it could work itself out. and it could conceivably change what pop culture is.

however, you'd have a hard time calling that pop music relative to what is dominant in popular culture today, even if it were to sell lots and lots of records. but if the influence works itself out, it could be what pop music sounds like in the future. people of the next generation would then look back at deerhoof and melt banana, hear how marketable it is relative to what they understand as marketable and call them pop bands that were marketing their sound for the radio. but you know that's not at all true.

so, i understand why a young person would perceive of it that way, but getting your head into 1991 produces a very different reality. i hope i've expressed that by analogy.

in the sense that they changed pop culture, though? well, they were very popular, obviously. but, again, they were also very different, particularly relative to what pop, at the time, was. they liked to plug their favourite bands so people would buy their records. they'd say silly things like that they were ripping off the pixies because they liked the pixies and they wanted people to support them, not because they actually did. the truth is that nobody ever did or ever quite would sound much like nirvana.

i made a point up there to talk about calling something pop not being an insult. there's lots of creative pop being created every month. while the label only fits well on nirvana in an anachronistic sense, in that sense they do certainly fit the definition of creative, definitive pop.

however, one of the defining aspects of pop culture is the way that it reproduces itself in the form of a commodity. that's an accusation that rings very hollow when thrown at nirvana, who were and remain absolutely unique. yet, it defines the video i'm commenting on very well.

this wasn't the initial topic i posted about. the topic was that daylight sound like corporate emo, not independent grunge. but i hope i've provided a useful perspective to some younger people.