I’ve seen it a thousand times,and probably you too: a new underground band comes out and if its mildly good it gets promoted to the four winds, sometimes even “deserving” cult or legendary status at only a few months of releasing the first demo. As having success with a band is easier than it has ever been, a local scene can fill itself with hordes upon hordes of new acts expecting its fifteen minutes under the sun, most of them crap because of their motivation.

Some see the amount of bands coming out nowadays as a good thing, but for the more observing, the current state of affairs is tragic: more bands don’t necessarily mean more bands of superior quality.

For those believing that metal is dead because there aren’t any good bands coming out in recent years, it must be said that is not entirely true – there are new bands releasing pretty good music considering their amateurishness, which means they are often far ahead from the herd. Not great nor classic stuff, but music with potential to become excellent, given some time, work and effort. Usually, you can catch them on MySpace and other music channels.

The problem with relentless promotion of the type already explained is that if mediocre stuff can be easily promoted nowadays, the music with potential can too, and that can be perjudicial in the long term for those bands, as an early bout of success in the scene can terminate its potential for further growth. I’ve also seen it. It’s like the scenesters, in non-violent way, clip a band’s wings before it learns to fly by giving the band what they want before they deserve it – recognition.

~ Too much indiscriminate band support is negative and can eventually kill the underground

I’m very inclined to agree. In local bands, why is it that even the mediocre get so much praise and support?

There’s just so much focus on selling a band and its image that it takes precedence over the music quality itself, and anyone can be a star – even in underground music. Then the scene becomes more important than the music.

Because of this, everyone wants to join their friends in being local rockstars. The deafening noise of the thousands of 2-day record hack-bands drowns out all of the good ones, and we never get to listen to those.

This could be a blessing in disguise though: there’s probably an amazing grindcore or death metal band out there that we haven’t heard of yet and doesn’t get any recognition, we just have to keep on searching for it.