Metal Reviews

It seemed to me that both the Alice in Chains review thread and the locked Dragonforce thread could have turned into something like this, so I decided to create a proper thread for it.

There are 3 points I would like to bring up.

1. Misconceptions by the media and the public

It seems possible to me that the most profound mistake the mainstream media has made about metal is that it has never been able (or willing) to change its view on metal as a gimmick genre that alienated teenagers can use to upset their parents and/or society. All kinds of mainstream metal, be it hair metal, nu metal, metalcore or deathcore, have had one thing in common: they have been rather good for this purpose. Hair with its rebellious lyrics and image, nu metal with its overall bleakness and metalcore and deathcore with its "lets see how brutal we can be!" aproach.

One kind that saddens me is that the media, the public and even a majority of all metalheads (at least fans of the extreme genres) seem to think that metal has to be dark, evil and hateful, something that in my opinion does nothing but limit the band's creativity. It's based on a very simple view on the roots of metal. Sure, Black Sabbath wasn't exactly bright and shiny, but they also had songs such as "The Wizard" and "After Forever" (probably the first pro-christian metal song). And let's not forget the other influential bands. Deep Purple was pretty much a sex, drugs and rock n' roll kind of band as far as image is concerned, and Led Zeppelin was very balanced lyrically, with both dark and light lyrical themes ("Whole Lotta Love", anyone?)

2. Grunge and the "dark age".

I was going to post this in the AiC thread, but I thought that could open up a whole new can of worms. I don't even consider Grunge to be a genre, but a scene based on image. I don't hear many similarities between for example AiC and Nirvana, not to mention the bands that inspired them. Listen to AiC's "Facelift", that album is more than slightly influenced by 80's metal, especially the second half.
I like quite a lot of grunge, but I think it was horribly detrimental to both rock and metal, and that is thanks to one single band, which is of course Nirvana, a band that I despise with every fiber of my being. I usually try to listen to music for what it is, but I find Nirvana so disgustingly overrated that it makes me sick, and their music is pretty much as watered down as it gets. There is no doubt that the grunge years meant a real paradigm shift for rock and metal. I have no "evidence" to support this, but my ears tell me that before the grunge explosion, popular rock and metal had rebellious lyrics, flashy solos and a complete OTT attitude, and a few years later it was stripped down, slower and more negative in the lyrical department. I blame grunge and alternative rock for the rise of nu metal and the style of modern rock that is still polluting the airwaves to this day.

3. Metalcore and deathcore

Compared to nu metal, I thought Metalcore was a huge step forward for mainstream metal. It still contains many elements that I don't like, such as the emo image and the "woe is me" lyrics (which IMO simply doesn't belong in metal, but I guess that's the reason why most of those bands have gained popularity) but it did bring back for example solos and technical musicianship, something that mainstream metal hadn't seen since the 80's. That doesn't have to be a good thing, as speedyjx pointed out in the Dragonforce thread, but imo it is usually a good thing. I think most metalcore bands have enough metal elements to be considered metal, and I think it could have turned into something good, (especially if more bands would have followed Trivium and ditched the screaming) but...

It seems like deathcore has already replaced metalcore as the latest fad, and Jesus Christ, what a horrible genre that is. I would rather listen to Limp Bizkit than Waking the Cadaver or Bring Me the Horizon. Deathcore essentially took the repetitive breakdowns of hardcore, the juvenile lyrics of gore-obsessed death metal and the mindless brutality of brutal death metal to create something that is a whole new low for mainstream metal, and music in general. The thing that really baffles me is how this genre has become popular. It pretty much proves that many people only listens to metal in order to be able to show how cool they are for listening to really brutal music.

So, ehm...feel free to agree or disagree or bring up your ideas and theories. Hopefully this can turn into an interesting discussion.

I've never seen the problem with deathcore, personally. Better "the kids" listen to that than Fall Out Boy, right?

I'm not sure about that...maybe I have missed out on the "good" deathcore, but I find Fall Out Boy quite inoffensive, while I can't listen to the aforementioned deathcore bands without wishing I were deaf.

Do you guys consider Industrial Metal an outburst from Nu-Metal?

i don't get how someone could call something like "Territorial Pissings" or pretty much all of In Utero "watered down"

musical trends all have positives and negatives. for example, grunge may have ended in crappy modern rock like Nickelback and Creed, but it also made major labels interested in underground music, resulting in bands like The Melvins, Primus, and Tool being signed. And while it's cool to see metal's popularity on the rise again and for Protest the Hero's album to get to #1 in Canada, awful shit like Dragonforce, Bullet for My Valentine, and Trivium are among the bands benefitting most from metal's trendyness.

Not really, stuff like Ministry predates it by several years.

Bands like Ministry and Fear Factory, however, were big influences on contemporary nu-metal.

Well, yeh. I took his post to mean that Industrial metal sprouted from nu-metal, which it didn't.

I completely agree with you, here. Although I think the overall sound of metal is a big part of the reason why it hasn't yet been able to shake this image. Even "happy" metal bands still usually have that heavy and propulsive sound about them, which leads many uninformed people to still brand them with the "angry/dark/hateful" label.



What REALLY made grunge popular IMO is that the popular grunge bands, at least apparently, cared strictly about their music. They weren't concerned with money or glamour. They just played whatever was on their minds, and that was that.

I'd like to point out, too, that even though the big four grunge bands didn't sound at all alike, they were often combined as influences on later alternative rock and nu-metal bands. For example, with a band like Queens Of The Stone Age, you hear a combination of Alice In Chains and Nirvana (except not nearly as dark or depressing as those two bands). While with Godsmack, you hear a combination of Pearl Jam and AIC.



I've never even listened to deathcore before (nor do I care to), so I can't comment on it. But I will agree with you about metalcore. It's definitely a step above nu-metal, and there are actually some pretty talented bands in the genre such as Lamb Of God. But I agree with you about the whole goth/emo image often associated with such bands.

Gotcha.

A lot of points to hit on ummm:

- So metal doesn't have to be dark at all. Almost no Judas Priest songs are really evil, at the worst they describe a lower class life.

-Industrial metal is completely separate from nu-metal

-After listening to Birthday Party a lot, it seems like Nirvana is just a less extreme, ie: boring, version of them.

-It's fine that grunge made rock/metal subject matter darker; the main problem is how that negativity has become angst-y and immature, ie: unlike the negativity found in AinC

-I wouldn't claim that metalcore brought back solos, it just brought "true" metal back in to the mainstream view, sort of like how BJ for a Cowboy is bringing Behemoth into the mainstream's eyes. Fans of BJ don't "understand" Behemoth but they like it anyways because it is the "most brutal" when Origin, Nile and countless others are even more "brutal" but whatever and this is all because: So true...

I so much agree with you on this. Whenever I read about or listen to anything from deathcore I feel baffled about how this shitty excuse for noise can be liked and be popular for any other than "image-enhancing" (aka poseur) reasons.

As a musician I personally am able to enjoy many metalcore bands and try to extract any musical value they have, mainly in the form of cool rythm guitar riffs, and once I get over the screaming vocals it's quite enjoyable. Mendeed, All That Remains, Lamb Of God, Unearth, Bullet For My Valentine and Threat Signal are some of my favourites. You just have to swim through all the generic crap and find the good bands. Goddammit, Unearth are kickass on stage and the albums are awesome too. Listen to "This Lying World".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlF2IcgSib0

Regarding Trivium:

If The Crusade had been released by some underground band out of LA or some shit, there is NO WAY that they would get as much shit as Trivium does. So what if the new vocals sound just like Hetfield's? Bands like Warbringer are even more copies of Slayer than Trivium are of Metallica and nobody seems to have a problem with them. The fact is that the only reason they are being called "awful shit" is because of their popularity, which is a shame because they're actually trying to bring good metal back to the mainstream and appeal to us "hardcore" fans, yet we're still shitting all over them.

If they had never been so popular from Ascendancy (which I think is decent, by the way) and The Crusade had been their first release, they would be called a pretty good neo-thrash band with vocals influenced by Metallica and a lot of potential...which is what they are, in my opinion. But regardless, while I don't like mainstream metal AKA metalcore/deathcore in general, I still find it enjoyable and I give those bands credit for being a shitload better than nu metal...especially deathcore bands. I don't understand how death metal fans can find them so bad when they're really, really similar...at least to my ears.

As far as Trivium go, the knife cuts both ways: if they weren't famous, then the fans wouldn't have said The Crusade was a good abum. Trivium, BFMV etc are the Blink 182 of metalcore - they're the 'cool' band that people like because their friends do. If they bothered to do a little digging they'd find much more goodness. That's not to say that everyone that likes Trivium is a n00b p053r, like Kendo always says listen to what the hell you want! Just don't try and kid yourself that they're making better music, because they're not.

Industrial Metal often gets tainted with Nu Metal because of the Nu-related likes of Dope and Static-X that mixed Industrial and Nu-Metal elements. Speaking of Static-X, actually, I tried out their latest and was surprised, expect a review soon whoever asked for it in Alex & I's thread.

Nirvana, having listened again, really just are a very bad, garagey version of The Melvins. Cobain's championship of them was the only good to come from his smackhead life, and as much as I like Foo Fighters, Nirvana just sound terrible in comparison.

Deathcore for me is Metalcore m.k. II. Yes, there are some good bands - Ted Maul, for instance - but the overwheming majority of them sound exactly the same, and if anything turns me off a genre it's bands that.all.sound.exactly.the.fucking.same. Expect reviews of stuff that I've sampled and found to be better - or worse - than others, but Deathcore overall is nowhere near as good as 'proper' old-school or brutal/technical Death Metal, which if you listen to a variety of it, is not at all all the same.
I'm as open-minded as they come, but I refuse to be criticised for not liking a fad. If it gets a few people into Origin or Nile or whatever, great, but that doesn't excuse the fact that it's inferior. The trend will end, ultimately, and then it'll be Black Gothcore or something picking up the reinsm and expect me to moan then. Such is the state of overground Metal.

oh come on...
Nirvana's "Bleach" isn't watered down, its a rough fun album.
Sabbath influences all over the place, good guitar solos. On "Negative Creep' Kurt makes his voice so rough that he sounds just like Lemmy, which i find really cool.
"Incesticide" is another good album. Its more hardcore punk than metal. Its still harder than "Nevermind". With "In Utero" Kurt was trying to get back to a heavier, less mainstream sound. The record company made "Nevermind" way too slick. Nirvana's music is soppose to be Kurt's vision of what Punk is soppose to sound like.

I actually am starting to warm up to deathcore, i first dismissed it as being something ive heard for the billionth time. the same old core or the same old boring death metal. My friend was showing me a waking the cadaver video, telling me that they were the most brutal band on the planet. I shot him down by telling him, that every other death metal band has already done this. Later on i was watching a Job For a Cowboy video on a podcast, i got hooked,. Job for a Cowboy and Impending Doom are the two deatcore band i listen too.

Metal isn't always evil. Power metal is everything that isn't dark and gloomy. Symphonic metal isn't always dark either. or some thrash metal bands like Anthrax weren't always evil. I could create a really long lists of bands that aren't always evil.

This might be the first deutscher I've seen on this forum!

I'm static-xcited about a Static X review.


@Trivium discussion: So not listening to Trivium for more than just a few songs, I simply don't like them. I've always seen them as Dragonforce meets Machinehead and that isn't the greatest comparison. Trivium lacks enthusiasm. Metalcore has always seemed like the waterdowned version of bands I like. Throwdown sounds exactly like Pantera and I like them so why would I dislike Trivium for sounding like Metallica?

And Bleach is decent but nothing special.

Here's my issue:

I love pop music, preferbaly from its most honest period, the 80's.

I hate metal as pop music. (Bon Jovi)

I have no problem with hitmakers making hits. I have a huge probelm with pop makers using heavy metal as a vehicle for making hits. (I like bands like Rush who evolve and make pop music because it is what they feel is the best music they can make at any one time)

I still have no problem with metal artists making pop music. (For example, Europe)

I have no problem with metal becoming the vehicle for pop singles (Early Black Sabbath or Deep Purple)

for example i love:

Rush
Europe
Hall & Oates
Big Country
Disturbed
Pearl jam
...ect.


I hate:

Journey
Limp Bizkit
Foreigner
Creed
Later-day Motley Crue

I think you get my point. Its about honesty. I like a hitmaker making hits and a metal band making metal. I hate a record label using metal as a device to market pop to metal fans. I hate a record label using pop to market metal to he masses as well.

except the melvins never wrote a song as good as any of the songs on Nevermind

don't really understand the hate for deathcore, yeah Bring Me The Horizon are awful but JFAC were pretty good before they turned into a mediocre death metal band and Glass Casket's two albums are amazing.

it would be really cool if all of Trivium's songs were as good as Pull Harder on the etc etc. or maybe i just like it because of that fake-lyrics video