There are plenty of metal songs I consider to be "impossible" to play. Metal, beyond being the sonic signature of brute savagery, defines itself by virtuosity. The model is to brandish a brute exterior and harbor a Mozartian wealth of talent. Mozart happened to have been schooled mercilessly by his father to attain the musicianship he later tossed around as something apparently just picked up at the playground. The truth of gaining great musicianship is more brutal and self-harming than non-musicians want to accept as additives in their entertainment. There are hours and hours of solitary drilling and refinement behind the heights metal musicians attain in their greatest compositions.
That's one thing.
It's another when the metal song is perhaps truly impossible to play, at least verbatim.
It's a minute and a half of production insanity, ostensibly just another hybrid electronic-human-performed composition to fit with the others on Cornelius's exceptional 2002 album Point. Many tracks are just pure electronic dance strangeness. Others do utilize heavy, distorted guitars and pounding drums to build rock-esque edifices. But this piece stands alone in how it plays with the quotients of metal.
There are no vocals and thus no lyrics, leaving the title "I Hate Hate" as the only verbal commentary. Simple enough. The concept of hate should, I think, be the only thing that elicits the impulse of hate. And the genre of metal can seem like a breeding ground of that impulse; if not via purely hate-driven lyrics, at least in the aggressive stance assumed in its performance conventions. Hate is not words. It is a posture.
This is plainly demonstrated in social contexts. Don't let some aggressive, attacking, spittle-flinging culture warrior tell you they are the aggrieved. They impute the truth about themselves.
So what to do? Will Cornelius, the shy hipster programmer, shy away from an alluring set of music and instrumentation conventions because of the association with the aggression-thus-hate of those conventions?
No. What he will do is clown the genre to demonstrate his emergence from the dark side unscathed, taking its traditional redeeming factor - its worship of ridiculous musicianship - and riding it all the way to an absurd horizon.
There actually is one lyric in the song. It's my favorite moment in this spiraling, calamitous song. The music chokes silent for one beat. Cornelius steps to the mic. His lips barely part.
"Ch."
Bang, the music is back in.
May the assurance of musicians teach us all.
When the email wasn't spell checked or the report wasn't in on time: "Ch."
This isn't idealism saying this to you.
"Ch."
You want to have a world of true productivity and humanity: "Ch."
Everyone's rehearsing their TED talks.
"Ch."