Bassists Attempt to Defend Their Position in the Metal World, Completely Fail

Bassists take a lot of shit, and the reason they take a lot of shit is: they’re easy targets. As Gear Gods so eloquently puts it, there are a lot of bass players who are really “just demoted guitarists, girlfriends of the band, a friend who just wants to be involved, or community school dropouts.” I suspect these all-around winners are attracted to the instrument because it looks relatively simple and easy to master, and this has become something of a self-perpetuating situation: idiots wanna play bass because they think it’s rudimentary, and so a lot of bass playing ends up being really rudimentary, and so people keep making fun of bassists. Not helping: while you can’t just take the drums or the guitars out of the mix without fans noticing, you can, it seems, do so with your bassist.

Our pal Glenn Fricker from Spectre Sound Studios is known as a particularly harsh ball-buster of bassists, but it’s important to note that that’s all he really doing: busting balls. I don’t think Fricker really believes that ALL bassists are “useless cunts.” But the number of shitty ones seems to far outweigh the number of good ones, and, furthermore, they devalue the good ones, because, like I said, the idea that they don’t matter has become self-perpetuating.

Of course, there is no fucking room for any gray area whatsoever on the internet, nor is having a sense of humor about yourself allowed, so there are plenty of people who want Glenn’s head on a spike as a result of some of his previous comments. In his latest video for the aforementioned Gear Gods, Glenn seeks to clear up the misconceptions about his feelings regarding four-stringers (note the slogan on his t-shirt!)… although he does so in typically Glenn fashion. Enjoy: