Monday, March 24, 2014

Symptom of the Universe



"War Pigs" was playing on a loop during jiu jitsu training on Friday. Specifically, the version from the sequel to 300 (or as I like to call it, "Pride Parade: the Movie"). Turns out, contrary to what I previously thought, Sabbath does not in fact give me super powers. Though getting slaughtered by my buddies didn't make me forget any of the words, so there's that.


The next night I saw some kids cover Nirvana songs that were older than they were. I guess it's no stranger than when my friends and I jammed on "War Pigs" and "Children of the Grave" when we were their age, except I can remember when In Utero was referred to as 'the new Nirvana album' and Kurt Cobain was a recovering drug addict instead of a dead one.

I was born in 1979; by that time Sabbath's best years were behind them and the travesty of the Ian Gillan years were still ahead. None of that meant that they were anything less than ubiquitous during my own metal awakening a decade and change later. I knew a dozen Sabbath songs by heart without owning a single album, thanks to FM radio and reverential covers by the likes of Sepultura and Faith No More. Clearly for millenials, Nirvana occupies the same classic space. It seems like every generation is rife with nostalgia for the musical era it just missed. I'm not sure why this surprised me; I guess i wasn't expecting the music of my angry youth to become classic rock so soon.


Unfortunately, all this instant nostalgia also means that we're probably less than a decade away from a nu metal revival.