I've been thinking a lot lately about the subject of "labeling" music, ie. attributing genres and sub-genres to a particular band or piece of music for categorization purposes. This is something that nearly every musician feels obliged to hate, though I would argue that, in order to discuss their work intelligently, some form of short hand is necessary... one can't reasonably be expected to launch into an impromptu, 400 word review every time they want to describe an artist's music, and even if they were to do so, saying a band plays "angular riffs" with "clean, melodic leads" and "a propulsive backbeat" in lieu of, say, using the substitute term deathcore, does little to place said band in context with contemporary trends in music.
Let's face it: the real reason an artist gets belligerent whenever the subject of what genre they play comes up is because they like to believe that they're inventing a brand new sound, a wheel that may look like other wheels but is nonetheless one that they invented sans influence, ostensibly out of whole cloth. Well, fuck that, if it looks like a wheel, drives like a wheel, and the tread is usually worn thin by the third or fourth time you take it out, it's a goddamn wheel. We're not going to invent brand new nomenclature to describe the same shit every time some asshole gets their skinny jeans in a bunch.
