Perhaps surprisingly, occasional Emperor bandleader and Norwegian black metal icon Ihsahn has had the Weeknd's Dawn FM in heavy rotation — and he thinks it's edgier music than what many emerging extreme metal bands are making these days.
In a new interview with Metal Hammer, the musician criticized the modern metal scene for its lack of darkness and danger. To fill that void, he's been looking to mainstream pop idols — or at least the gritty, Deftones-inspired sonic palette of the Weeknd — to find the edginess he's after.
"It's so heavy," Ihsahn said of Dawn FM [via Louder]. "Maybe it's just me being old and grumpy, but there's so much new metal coming out where there's no danger."
"I listen to a lot of commercial R&B like the Weeknd," he admitted, as if we don't all (well, except maybe Neve Campbell) understand the Toronto artist's singular appeal. "That's darker and more edgy and more experimental than most new extreme metal bands, to be honest."
Ihshan is not sitting idly by and criticizing, though — he's working to be the change he wants to see. The musician produced the forthcoming debut album from Ibaraki, the new Japanese-themed black metal project helmed by Trivium's Matt Heafy, who recently said that rhythm guitar has also "been lost a little bit" in modern metal.
The LP features another collaboration that may seem surprising on the surface, but maybe isn't really that shocking: My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way.
"It's really cool of him to want to join that," Ihsahn said of the emo legend's involvement. "I wasn't aware that he's into that style of music so I think it's really cool. I think it's something he and Matt had been talking about. I think he did a really great job. He comes from a different world — screaming is not his natural way of singing."
The takeaway from all of this might be that we need to open our minds to a broader conception of what constitutes metal... or just that the Weeknd goes undeniably hard, as does "Welcome to the Black Parade."
"As a musician, I think people overlook this; when you get to have a life in music, all of us get to a point where we love great music and we're not fans of average music," Ihsahn concluded. "What genre it is is beside the point."
Further intertwining genres and mediums, the Weeknd recently made a cameo on The Simpsons, playing a young streetwear entrepreneur.
In a new interview with Metal Hammer, the musician criticized the modern metal scene for its lack of darkness and danger. To fill that void, he's been looking to mainstream pop idols — or at least the gritty, Deftones-inspired sonic palette of the Weeknd — to find the edginess he's after.
"It's so heavy," Ihsahn said of Dawn FM [via Louder]. "Maybe it's just me being old and grumpy, but there's so much new metal coming out where there's no danger."
"I listen to a lot of commercial R&B like the Weeknd," he admitted, as if we don't all (well, except maybe Neve Campbell) understand the Toronto artist's singular appeal. "That's darker and more edgy and more experimental than most new extreme metal bands, to be honest."
Ihshan is not sitting idly by and criticizing, though — he's working to be the change he wants to see. The musician produced the forthcoming debut album from Ibaraki, the new Japanese-themed black metal project helmed by Trivium's Matt Heafy, who recently said that rhythm guitar has also "been lost a little bit" in modern metal.
The LP features another collaboration that may seem surprising on the surface, but maybe isn't really that shocking: My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way.
"It's really cool of him to want to join that," Ihsahn said of the emo legend's involvement. "I wasn't aware that he's into that style of music so I think it's really cool. I think it's something he and Matt had been talking about. I think he did a really great job. He comes from a different world — screaming is not his natural way of singing."
The takeaway from all of this might be that we need to open our minds to a broader conception of what constitutes metal... or just that the Weeknd goes undeniably hard, as does "Welcome to the Black Parade."
"As a musician, I think people overlook this; when you get to have a life in music, all of us get to a point where we love great music and we're not fans of average music," Ihsahn concluded. "What genre it is is beside the point."
Further intertwining genres and mediums, the Weeknd recently made a cameo on The Simpsons, playing a young streetwear entrepreneur.
