A bizarre triangulation of that divide—a shameless glitz-and-tits approach to faux-anthemic blockbuster melodrama masquerading as elite-approved Art for Art's Sake—plagues "metal" these days, as decidedly "un-metal" folks play "headbanger" by night in a host of dunderheaded critical darlings with banal commercialist tastes: Baroness, Mastodon, Torche, and especially Pelican.

Trans Am, a schlocky, neo-futuristic transliteration of Jan Hammer, Giorgio Moroder, Mike Post (he of the Magnum, P.I. theme), and Kraftwerk, are another formative influence. But those guys, tongues firmly in cheeks, were having too much fun leaping genre and sub-genre fences, reworking typical rock territory—covered by ZZ Top, Skynyrd, Bad Company, etc.—with atypical (and very non-rock) instrumentation: sequencers, electronic drums, Moogs.

Same with Georgia's Baroness, whose frontman, John Baizely, claims his band's music to be influenced by "fine art, cinema, and literature," which is as stiltedly silly as name-dropping higher mathematics, physics, or philosophy, when what the band really peddles is exactly the everything-and-nothing Hallmark heft so many claim to uncover in Pelican's wordless, aimless songs. While Baizely's predilection to hawk such High Times erudition makes him sound more puerile than he likely is, it's difficult to imagine him honestly striving to disseminate meta-emotional discourse through music as transparently commercial as his band's stoner-metal-meets-Ford-truck-jingle approach.

Jeez, what a terrible writer. Like ANUS, but less fascist and more irritating.