MetalGPT: Is A.I. helping or hurting metal?
With artificial intelligence growing in popularity, it was only a matter of time before it would begin to affect the music industry. Where it’s so easy to have A.I. generate your music, album artwork and band logo. Many websites make it as easy as typing a prompt and hitting click, which doing that a couple of times on a site, can create enough for an EP or a full album. Saving you from studio and production costs, as well as your free time. It almost has become easy to start and make your own metal band in a day. With enough creativity of the technology, you would be able to create a bountiful amount of material in a day, week or month. And there lies the controversy behind A.I. and its use in heavy metal. Is using A.I. “a crutch” as a musician? Does it make you look bad for using or benefiting from A.I.? Are artists and musicians losing their jobs to it? Sadly, all of these things are a factor and will only get worse as this technology develops and improves with time.
The original A.I. generated cover
In 2024, A.I. became a huge talking point with many examples of its affect in the metal scene. Death metal act Pestilence fell in the crosshairs of the metal community for using A.I. artwork for the band’s 2024 retrospective album Levels of Perception. Following the release of the album’s cover, the band received backlash slamming the band for using A.I. for the album’s artwork. With fans claiming the cover to look “lifeless” and a “big slap in the face to any real, living artists in the world”. Many fans would cite the band’s early album covers, Consvming Impvlse and Resurrection Macabre, that the band can have great artwork, but don’t understand why they used A.I. for this album. Following the backlash from the fans, the band would redo the artwork and release their album with the new artwork. But Pestilence would not be the first band to face the consequences of using A.I. for their album cover.
Florida death metal legends Deicide would unveil their A.I. generated cover art for the band’s 2024 album Banished By Sin. Just like Pestilence, Deicide would face fan backlash by fans and stirred online controversy and comments. Surprisingly, Deicide would stand by their cover art and would release the album with the artwork as is. In an interview with The Brutally Delicious Podcast, Deicide front man Glen Benton would defend his decision to use the artwork:
"I like to do something different and provocative. And I know the whole A.I. thing, everybody's [up in arms about it]… But it was meant to stir. People don't understand. It's a modernization of… It's a sign of the time that we're in. People just can't — their first [reaction] is, like, 'Oh, he's trying to put all of us artists out of work. And I'll be stuck drawing penises in men's bathrooms for the rest of my life.' So everybody's up in arms and thinking that this is the end of the fucking world. And it's really ridiculous, man. It's just a form of art and expression. So I think people should just really stop being ridiculous and accept it for what it is, man. It's a sign of the times."
Another death metal band to follow the trend of A.I. artwork was technical death metal act Hour of Penance with the band’s album Devotion. The band doubled down on its decision to use A.I. artwork, going in an almost cryptic and haunting realization of the direction that A.I. is going. Vocalist/guitarist Paolo Pieri said in an interview with Metal1 his mindset towards his nihilistic viewpoint of using computer generated artwork:
"Just as we have accepted that the earth is not the center of the universe, we must accept that we are not needed as humans. We have to accept that maybe one day an Al will do a better job of writing music or poetry or creating art without feeling emotions."
He would go on to explain how they designed the cover using popular A.I artwork generator website MidJourney:
"We used Midjourney with an unlimited subscription plan to learn how to use it properly," said Pieri. "We spent a lot of time experimenting to see what it could do, what was possible and what wasn't, what suited our tastes. Then we experimented to find the perfect prompt for the main concept of the album. It was important to us that the prompt fit the lyrics and their themes, and after refining the prompt with a few parameters, we got a result that looked exactly as we imagined. We then used the variation function to generate similar images until we were happy with the final result. There wasn't much work needed after that: color correction, tones, some cropping, but that was it. It definitely took us more time than emailing someone to do the work and get paid by the label."
And there lies the problem with A.I. affecting artists who draw band logos, album covers, tour artwork and merchandise. Not only does it minimalize work from hard-working artists who rely on their art for a living, but it also shows how A.I. uses images from artists themselves for “inspiration” as many artists against A.I. have claimed. With many creators citing for legal regulation and limitations on what A.I. takes its sources from, and crediting artists either with royalties or some sort of compensation or credit.
My result for my A.I. prompt
To test how good and easy it is to use, I tested it myself. I used the site deepai.org and for the prompt I typed “Create a black metal album cover showing anti-Christian artwork and occult images. Only use the colors black and white.” And as you can see, it creates a pretty good cover/art piece, and if you add your band logo, you can slap it on the cover and call it good. Showing the easiness and simplicity of how A.I. can be used. Maybe if you are struggling band and can’t afford to hire a cover artist, it may be your “artist on a budget” so to speak. Personally, I am not a fan of using it as the default for any artwork or project. I would rather support artists and maybe use it as a reference/rough draft that I would bring to an artist who would be doing my album cover. Showing them this and saying, “I like this idea or look, but I want to see what you can do with it or how could you make it better”. Like bringing your idea for a tattoo to a tattoo artist and they make it better with their own take on your design. Adding shading, colors, different interpretations and influences, etc.
A.I. has also invaded music videos this year with the release of power metal band Unleash The Archers’ music video for “Green & Glass”. The video’s directors, Danny Gayfer and Adam Junio at RuneGate Studio, used AI models that used the licensed artwork of Bo Bradshaw. Though in the beginning of the video, there Is a text crediting that they used Bradshaw’s artwork for the video, Bradshaw didn’t have any artistic say in the making of the video or how his artwork was used. Showcasing another issue artists have with their artwork being used without their say. Without the consent of the artist it inspires, artwork could be construed or misused in controversial ways or against the original artist’s beliefs or views. Like an artist who is a vegetarian, have A.I. use their artwork for a meat company.
Now we get to the meat of the matter, A.I. generated music. Now, A.I. has technically been around for years, but in different variations compared to the stuff we are seeing nowadays. AutoTune you could say would be one of the first examples of technology modifying how artists sounded when they sang. Made famous by Cher on her song “Believe”, introducing the feature to popular music and becoming a way to help singers be on-pitch and in-key. Music software has also improved or used A.I. to help artists create music with a roll of a random dice. Ample Sound has guitar plugins for music production that can generate A.I. riffs by setting chords, tuning, notes and bars. Helping an artist auto-generate a riff that they could use to tweak and make their own or just use as is. Toontrack also did the same for drummers with their EZDrummer and Superior Drummer software.
A.I. generated music has now hit a huge milestone in metal music with the debut of the melodic death metal band Frostbite Orckings. With the band releasing their debut album The Orchish Eclipse at the end of last year, the album featured computer generated images of the band with completely A.I. generated music. The band’s music was trained by A.I. listening to countless recordings of musicians playing melodic death metal and the A.I. would generate the music based on what it learned. The band would then modify it with production notes and then finalize it and release it. With many critics citing it as very similar sound to well-known melodic death metal act Amon Amarth. Some of the critics of A.I. pointed out that, could A.I. be trained to listen to a specific band long enough to capture/recreate that sound. Creating a dangerous warning that record labels could do in order to chase profits. To take what Is popular, have A.I. learn about it and then recreate it. Regardless of how original or creative it can be, all that matters to the label is how much money is rolling in. This theory of listening to music and it being recreated through A.I. was made popular on YouTube by the account DADABOTS. It would test this concept out by having its program listen to acts like Cannibal Corpse and recreate the music to a pretty decent quality. Dennis Martensson would also create a similar effect but with djent, recreating similar sounding music in the vein of Meshuggah or Animals as Leaders.
One site, Suno.ai, is currently blowing the music fans mind with how easy, fast, and good quality the A.I generation of song prompts is. The website was even featured in an article with Rolling Stone, dubbing them the “ChatGPT of Music”. The site works very simple in that you can create music in two different ways. The first method is you just type a simple prompt in (“write a black metal song about Satan” for example). In as fast as twenty seconds, it will generate a thirty second to two minute song (depending on your plan) and gives you the ability to download the audio and video of the song with the lyrics in the video following along, similar to a karaoke machine. The second option, Custom Mode, lets you insert your own lyrics to the song. If you can’t do lyrics, you can type in a prompt and click on Generate Lyrics, which will generate lyrics from ChatGPT. Then, you would list the genre and any other criteria and then generate. The site’s popularity has skyrocketed and been used for full on enjoyment of musical creation, teaching kids with catchy songs, creating study music or just general background music. Though, with this popularity, the site has drawn detractors from music fans and artists, who are against the site using their musical styles to create original music. From a creative standpoint, does it also dilute free and original thinking, when you can just type whatever you want something to sound like, and you get a two-minute song in seconds?
The last sticking point with A.I. generated music is the use of a singer’s vocals. There are many sites that offer A.I. generated vocal adaptations of iconic singers like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, James Hetfield, and Frank Sinatra. These vocal takes can be used to be included on whatever song the creator is using, without the permission of the original artist, or the estate of the artist if they have passed away. Which seems like it could lead to potential future legal battles, in the similar “sound-alike” debate. For example, if I asked Rob Halford from Judas Priest to guest on my song, and he says no, but I use A.I. to create vocals that sound like his, does Halford have a case to sue me? Or if A.I. makes it just different enough, like a sound-alike, does that make it ok? It becomes a hot bed of legal debate about how A.I. needs to be regulated.
We must accept that A.I. is here to stay, and we cannot change that. The only thing we can do is somehow control it and make it clear on the legality and the clarity of it. If you are using A.I., it should be notated somewhere in the song’s liner notes or on your site. If you use a famous vocalist A.I. adaptation, you should be forced to label it as “A.I. (insert artist)”, so we know that it is that or not be allowed to use it for release or award submission like a Grammy, without consent from the artist or estate if they have passed on. Lastly, regarding the artwork and credits, regulation needs to be set for visual artists to get credit for the work A.I. is pulling. No one should go hungry or lose work because of the ease of computer-generated work.
Finally, we must also encourage people to use A.I. wisely, and not to stifle creativity and individuality. When we pick up an instrument, write a lyric or sing, we are showing actual emotion. We show our own natural flaws in vocal voice cracks in performances, natural playing, and skill on instruments, and we inspire people to be just as creative as we are. If we rely too much on A.I., we ruin the waters with the same, generic quality of music that stifles creativity and uniqueness. Originality falls by the wayside to mediocrity and nothing new comes from it. Plus, the challenge of reinventing sounds and genres A.I. can’t think of is the musical spirit. A.I. has led to a musical divide in the metal and music community. Only time will tell before this is a musical renaissance, a musical recession, or the start of a musical revolution.
