BOULDER, Colo. — An explosive dispute over genre semantics broke out at the Thanksgiving dinner of the three-generation metalhead Reeder family regarding the disputed progressive metal subgenre known as “djent,” several sources with tinnitus reported.
“For once, Thanksgiving was going great,” middle son Zakk Reeder said. “Then, ‘Bleed’ came up on shuffle, and Dad had to use the ‘D-word’ in front of Uncle Len. And of course, he flips his shit and goes into this whole rant about how djent isn’t a genre; it’s just a stupid made-up word used by people who like Meshuggah too much. Honestly, it could’ve gotten really ugly if Mom hadn’t thought to change the music to the Blood Incantation space ambient album.”
Patriarch Earl Reeder aggressively defended his use of the term, blaming his brother’s outburst on deep-seated insecurity from an unsuccessful foray into learning “the djent way.”
“Len is just pissy because he can’t palm mute for more than two bars at a time, and he knows it, to say nothing of his absolutely pathetic grasp on polyrhythms.” Reeder said. “For fuck’s sake, I didn’t get this mad at dinner back in 1995 when he said that ‘death ‘n’ roll’ was going to rule the new millennium. I’m just glad Mom and Dad aren’t here to see this. They’re in Denver seeing Tesseract. And by all reports, it’s ‘sick as hell.’”
Metal sociologist Dr. Catherine Fields says that these disputes are not entirely uncommon among this demographic, regardless of age.
“While it’s true that families of this sort tend to have more harmonious Thanksgivings then, say, the ones who send their kids to private school, it only takes one perceived unjust genre classification to turn everything upside down,” Dr. Fields said. “And pretty soon, everyone is riled up and citing arguments from message board threads that are over 20 years old at this point. Now, djent is by far the most represented in the scenarios, but I’ve also heard plenty of similar cases regarding the use of pornogrind, neocrust, and countless, countless others.”
At press time, sources confirmed the Reeders’ altercation was disrupted by one at the adjoining apartment over whether or not Depeche Mode “counts as goth.”