On the value of simplicity

In Aristotle’s Politics, the Greek philosopher and scientist states:

“He who thus considers things in their first growth and origin, whether a state or anything else, will obtain the clearest view of them.”

To paraphrase, Aristotle is saying that an efficient way to go about understanding a subject is by peeling away the layers of meticulous detail, therefore reducing the subject to its bare essentials. The benefit of this is that through this method, one can initially remove the challenging complexities of the matter and start with a pure, concrete foundation to build upon as your knowledge grows.

In Politics, Aristotle is of course referring to government and, well, politics as the subject matter. By stripping such a complex matter down to its bare essentials, the general concept is graspable. We handle education the same way. Kindergarten children aren’t just given a Shakespeare play report assignment as their first lesson; instead they start with something along the lines of Dr. Seuss and build from there. If you work at a factory, you won’t likely begin as a supervisor encumbered with a plethora of responsibilities. You’ll begin as a machine operator, or perhaps something as basic as cleaning the floors.

When this method is applied to music, however, there’s an important change: The most basic music can still be interpreted as profound by even the most experienced listener. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who considers entry-level reading material for young children to be compelling works of art. And if you ask an experienced supervisor of a factory how deep and insightful it was mopping up those floors when he began, you’d likely be scoffed at and dismissed. Yet when it comes to music, it’s a different beast entirely.

Minimalist composer Phillip Glass, arguably best known for his 1982 recording Glassworks, was definitely a flag bearer of the “less is more” outlook. Glassworks is comprised of six bleak songs that range from sensitively patient to aggressively eerie. There are two principles however that are constant throughout: repetition and simplicity. This album is simple in a different way than pop music is simple, however. Pop music is simple in the sense that it’s ultra-streamlined and obsessed with unadventurous narcissistic compulsions. Very rarely does it even attempt to peer beyond such a narrow vantage point. Simplicity is the end result of pop music, while Glassworks, alternatively, uses simplicity as a tool to achieve a certain atmosphere or ambiance.

The American black metal masters, Profanatica, operate under a very similar principle. They rip all of the intricacies right out of extreme metal’s chest, to the point where only the most important aspects remain. No wild guitar solos, complicated riffs, or off-the-wall time signature drumming. Only three key values perpetuate Profanatica’s music: structure, spirit, and unstained ferocity.

The importance of this is that when you sift through all of metal’s fat and gaze into its soul, you are staring at its purest form. When building upon that bare foundation, the importance of that spirit has a tendency to be lost in the blubber of new bands and sub-genres. The spirit is replaced with either simplicity for simplicity’s sake (war metal, groove metal, nu-metal), complexity for complexity’s sake (soulless tech-death, djent), or novelty joke music that laughs at itself and has nothing to say (Babymetal, Dethklok).

Many modern bands get it, many others don’t. The latter should consider revisiting the bare essentials of metal and hopefully become reinvigorated by the concreteness of Profanatica (or even something as early as Black Sabbath), so that metal can be built upon and advanced with everything important in mind.