It’s so hard to say what makes music hard.
Music that is really meaningful or intense is “heavy,” like John Lennon’s “Mother” or Radiohead’s “Myxamatosis.”
But usually heavy refers to loud, so most people think that the many offshoots of heavy metal, like grindcore, are what heavy is.
Music can be hard, it just is.
They say music is so hard to explain because it’s so easy to understand.
I like a song when I want to hear a “song” that’s really heavy: “In The Meantime” by Helmet.
There is heavier music, but after a certain point I can’t hear the song anymore.
More difficult than I can say is that the drummer uses a loud crack as a trip.
But as far as a sheer wall of noise goes, I’d say the hardest song is “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” by Frank Zappa.
It’s so heavy I can hardly believe it exists, let alone that Frankie enjoyed playing it.
But then Zappa also wrote the song “Civilisation”, which I think is the most difficult piece of music.
The only other piece of music I know of that is in this league is John Zorn’s Kristallnacht album.
Although only parts of this album are as heavy, if not heavier, than “Weasels…” Wikipedia describes it as “ranging from fairly ordinary roots music to extreme almost industrial chaos…” Although I can’t tell you what songs because i only listened to it once before but the broken glass parts were the hardest for me.
I’m guessing it was “Never Again” because that song has a warning in the liner notes:
“Caution: Never Again” contains high frequencies at and beyond the limit of human hearing that may cause nausea, headaches and ringing in the ears.
Ironically, both of these pieces of music were recorded live.
Maybe because it is impossible to play this heavy more than once?
But the hardest things I’ve ever heard were live: Sonic Youth playing for Neil Young, or maybe the middle of “Like a Hurricane,” which Neil did in Bari in 1996 on the Year of the Horse tour. .
“Sedan Delivery” from that show is on this live album, and “Like a Hurricane” is on the Jim Jarmusch film, but the middle part of the song has been replaced with the 1976 version.
Which is really cool, but not that hard.
To hear what the auditory metaphor of a hurricane sounds like, one has to listen to one of his 90 or so live albums: “Arc.” These snippets are within the half hour of noise he unleashed on tour with Sonic Youth, which you could also describe as “extreme almost industrial chaos…” Or a bit like arc welding.
Black Emperor and they get really heavy towards the end of the songs.
I may have heard Yanqui U.X.O. recorded.
Their exercises sound just like their albums.
All the heaviest music I’ve ever heard was played live or recorded live.
I think it might be because it’s really hard to play like that, and one performance is sometimes the most you can get from other musicians.
Which song do you think is the hardest?
And if you haven’t listened to Weasels Ripped My Flesh, you should, because if you know anything heavier, I’d be surprised.