In this material, you will learn about a not very popular but extremely emotional, neurotic subgenre of guitar music — noise rock. Its representatives never enter the world charts. Noise rockers rarely participate in big festivals — they can usually be found in small clubs. However, the music they create, in terms of emotion and energy, is one of the best genres to release stress and release anger.
Where did noise in music come from?
Noise is an unpleasant word. The noise of a busy street, a factory, a market, the noise in the head after a working day — a chaotic and annoying set of various incongruous sounds. Today, noise has become a full-fledged part of music and has perfectly integrated into various musical genres. Perhaps, you’ll also be able to find its influences in the Zodiac casino games. Noise-pop, noise-rock, noisecore, simply “noise” — the listener immediately understands what they will have to deal with.
Experiments with noise as a category of music began more than 100 years ago. With the advent of the first electronic instruments, including the theremin and Martenot waves in the 1920s, the “art of noise” was given the green light. Artificial, synthetic, unfamiliar sounds firmly entered world music through the research of avant-garde composers such as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and the German bands Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, who brought the “art of noise” into mainstream music with their experiments.
The origins of noise rock
In rock music, the legendary The Velvet Underground became the first explorers and colonizers of noise. Their second album, White White Light/White Heat, released in 1968, is a classic of noise rock and a kind of spit on the standards of rock music. Monotonous, dirty, hysterical, and atonal, with the absence of classic “verse-chorus” structures and a lot of guitar feedback — this album became an alternative to all mass music of that time, and The Velvet Underground themselves were the parents of experimental rock.
One of the most influential bands of the time was Flipper, who inspired Nirvana and the Melvins with their dirty, atonal punk.
The spread of noise rock in the 1990s and 2000s
After the popularity of Nirvana and the emergence of alternative music into the mainstream, noise became an element of other genres. Very few bands played pure noise rock, mostly continuing the tradition of Big Black while moving away from shock and uncomfortable compositions. Aggression, hysterics, and atonality have been preserved, but the sound has become more deep thanks to the progress of sound recording.
The Jesus Lizard was one of the leading noise rock bands of the 1990s. Their 1991 album called Goat can be considered a noise rock classic, both structurally and emotionally.
What about today?
In the 2010s, there was a new surge of interest in noise rock. In 2010, Young Widows released their most powerful album, Easy Pain. In 2015, the Irish Girl Band appeared with the masterpiece song Paul and the equally cool music video for it.
One of the main flagships of noise rock today is the Canadian band METZ, who clearly follow the noise rock course of the early 1990s. This is one of the most expressive musical genres, which, despite its emotional monotony, nevertheless gives wonderful manic experiences. And this is one of the coolest music genres for releasing negative emotions.
