From its headline, I figured Ben Ratliff’s recent New York Times article “Jazz and Metal, Riffs in Arms” would be just another author happily pointing out jazz’s influence on metal music to people who don’t know any better. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but Ratliff goes further, asserting unequivocally that “Jazz is metal.”

Ratliff then goes on to explain his reasoning by pointing out that, aside from the mainstream artists in each genre, both metal and jazz are largely underground movements that contain large amounts of diversity and experimentation, not to mention superbly talented musicians. Seems pretty obvious to me, and I’m sure most metalheads with any kind of knowledge about jazz wouldn’t find anything to disagree with, but then I’m pretty sure us metal fans were not the intended audience for the article. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting read and definitely refreshing to see an article talk about jazz and metal without focusing on the music.