They have a job title for people who classify things like music into distinct sets and subsets. They’re called taxonomists. The reason there’s a whole field of study attached to this task is that it’s an exceedingly difficult one. Just ask any music journalist or employee of All Music Guide who’s charged with categorizing bands into genres.
On the other end, bands will gripe to no end about being mischaracterized as “freak folk” or “alt-country.” This brand of aggravation is not an unfamiliar one to either band that appeared on the bill at the Independent last Friday, June 22, 2007.
Openers The F***ing Champs, a three-piece featuring two guitars and a drummer, have had to come to grips with their classification as a metal band, or, only slightly better, members of the subcategory indie metal.
The reasons for and against this classification are equally compelling when listening to their April 27 release on Drag City titled VI, but stand in even more stark contrast at their live show. Though I caught just four or five songs of this particular F***ing Champs show, you couldn’t miss the young kids in front of the stage thrusting devil horns in the air or beckoning notes from their musical heroes’ wailing guitars. And the sound coming from those guitars is unmistakably metal — heavy on the power chords and distortion. On the other hand, these guys do distill the best sonic elements of the genre and leave the rest. There is no posturing. The swagger is all in the guitars and drums, not in the clothing, strutting, soloing, or wailing overwrought, illiterate, grade-school lyrics.
As with the Minutemen and punk, the F***ing Champs are way too complex for the genre in which they’ve been placed. Metal brings to mind guys with hair hanging halfway down their backs who wear painted-on stonewashed jeans or (wince) spandex, not the ones who showed up on stage at The Independent in t-shirts and plain denim jeans (and not particularly tight ones at that). And beyond that, the arrangements are more complex than those of the vast majority of metal bands. Nonetheless, before leaving the stage, the guys did allow themselves one indulgence to the traditional metal ethos, raising their guitars over their heads and shaking the last squeals out them before triumphantly crossing guitar necks.