Musical standstill at a certain age?

Why do many people reach a musical standstill once they have a certain age? They don't even listen to new albums by bands they like, anymore. Just listen to their old albums. I have made this observation on many occasions. Friends and acquaintances who consistently explore new bands within a certain genre of music are in my experience the exception rather than the rule.

Like it was for many, when I was younger, music was not only the skillful creation and arrangement of sounds created by tools who are made for this specific purpose carried through space by the vibrations passed from molecule to molecule through collisions in the gas mixture that we humans consider air, it was more of an image. I was (and I guess to a lesser extent I still am) heavily into Heavy Metal and its many children, cousins and nieces. I did not only enjoy the music, but liked hanging out with the people who listened to the same music as the majority had a similar outlook on life. Nowadays, I still listen to the music, I listened to back then, but I do not look for new bands or albums (or rarely). Thus I am now exactly a part of those people that I mentioned at the beginning.

I wondered why that is and after some considerations I think I can now pretty accurately say why that is.

When I first got into Heavy Metal through bands such as Manowar or Metallica all those years back (I think I was 11 or 12 and couldn't even speak English), I was instantly hooked. I then started to get all those CDs and started to read a popular Metal magazine called the MetalHammer. Because of them I was always pretty up to date and soon other bands similar to Metallica and Manowar followed. HammerFall, Savatage, Blind Guardian, Dio, Iron Maiden, Rage (not Rage Against the Machine, they would come later) the list goes on.

After awhile I heard the pattern and when I listen to new bands from that genre, I would think: "Ah, they're trying to sound like band xyz." But instead of listening to them then, I would listen to band xyz instead, since I know their songs and I have their albums. It took awhile, but I eventually got... not bored by it, but I wanted to hear more. That is when I diverged and tried all types of Metal and trust me there are many. Just check out this small clip from the Documentary "Metal - A Headbanger's Journey"

It helped that I went Metal Festivals by now and I lived in big cities (Glasgow, Manchester), where many bands stopped by on tour, so I randomly saw new bands presenting their stuff and I got exposed to even more. Power Metal, Speed Metal, Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Black Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Gothenburg scene, Medieval, Folk Metal (or was that Pagan Metal?), Hardcore, Grindcore, Deathcore, God-knows-what-core... maybe even Satan-knows-what-core.

But over the years it was always similar to the pattern I explained above. So at some point, I wouldn't find anything really new in Heavy Metal and I would, lo and behold, listen to different music genres.

I have a fairly open mind, but even that reaches its limits. I adore Irish/Scottish Folk music, Punk is pretty much restricted to almost worshipping Bad Religion and especially Greg Graffin's lyrics, I like generic Rock (R.E.M., Springsteen), Electronic music can be cool, Country is... funny, classic is soothing, few Reggae songs, but I can't stand Jazz, Soul, HipHop and most of what is coming out of the Radio and those casting shows (it just sounds interchangeable to me).

I am, however, now at a point that when I listen to music, I instantly recognise a pattern and very seldom I would encounter a music style that is new to me. The worst part now is that I do not even enjoy going to concerts as much. There was one particular incident that I recall vividly. I used to adore a band named In Flames. They toured regularly and I would see them live and checked out their new album asap. After my move to Belgium, they happened to be in Brussels, where I now live. I wasn't up to date anymore on what was going on (I missed two albums as they sounded the same to me), but thought I shall go along, just to listen to the old stuff. Well, they almost played exclusively their new songs (the ones I feel sound all the same) and I was then the old geezer who just stood there bored and then was the only one who sang along to the three songs that noone else ever heard of. It was a sobering experience (after 6 pints that is quite a feat).

As a consequence of all this, I do not listen to music as much anymore. I cannot listen to the same music all the time, so it has a lower priority now and I do other things. Usually those other things require concentration (programming and the like) and listening to music then is actually disturbing. This was unthinkable only a couple of years ago!

An off-shoot of this is, that I have now reached the point I mentioned at the beginning that I reached a musical standstill. It is sad to me, because listening to Metal and going to festivals and concerts was such an important thing to me back then. As a last effort to stem the tide, I will use my next few blog entries to post select YouTube clips of Metal songs that are amazing to listen to. If the enthusiasm lasts, I may try to categorise it somehow... maybe by genre (80s Heavy/Speed Metal, Ballads, Melodic Death Metal-Gothenburg scene).

To finish this rather bleak blog entry off on a kind of high note, I shall leave you with the involuntarily funny interview of Norwegian Black Metal Legend, Gaahl from Gorgoroth.