Some people, myself included, find diatonic music in 4/4 predictable and boring. This is the sort of music that appeals to people who know a lot about music and music theory, precisely because it skirts the edges of the “rules” and subverts expectations while having a sort of internal consistency.

I’ll compare it to stand-up comedy. I’m a huge fan of Norm Macdonald, but I know plenty of people who don’t think he’s funny because of his deadpan delivery and rambling shaggy dog setups. But that’s precisely what makes him so funny and why other comedians consider him a genius. He subverts the “rules” of comedy to create something refreshing in a landscape of stuff that all feels the same. It’s easy to understand the appeal when you’re well versed in the “rules”, but it just seems chaotic when you aren’t.

AdP is like that. The weird time signatures, microtonality, and deviation from the chorus-verse structure make them very interesting to people who understand rhythm, scales, and structure. If you don’t have a solid understanding of those things, you aren’t going to understand what they’re doing or why they’re doing it, any more than you’ll understand why Norm Macdonald tells a rambling 10 minute story that culminates in a corny pun unless you understand the principles of comedy.