Metal Reviews

I just read in the news section that the album of Ari Koivunen, the finnish idols winner, has now been 8 straight weeks on the top of the finnish charts. I don't find this album to be much more than a rather average pop powermetal album. I am however not that suprised that it reached number one since many powermetal acts reach number one here in Finland. Stratovarius, Sonata Arctica and Nightwish have withheld the number one spot for several weeks with their latest albums in Finland. Hammerfall's three latest albums have reached #1 in Sweden. However, the finnish powermetal trio has never even reached the Top10 in Sweden, neither has Hammerfall done that in Finland.

I would not be much wrong saying that Helloween, Blind Guardian and Gamma Ray are the hottest names in powermetal for the moment, however, these artists have just in a few occasions managed to break into the Finnish charts (GR Insanity and Genius #7, Hw Chamleon #7). Finnish people don't seem to differ in taste from their european counterparts. Finnish evening paper Iltalehti even gave 5 stars to Gamma Ray's powerplant and stated that this would probably be the best melodic metal album of the whole year, however, it only peaked at #28.

Do people tend to prefer to support artists from their homecountry prefered to foreign artits or is this just due to people not knowing of these powermetal acts? I find it a little bit hard to believe that somebody that is for instance really into Stratovarius would not have digged deeper into that genre. Timo Tolkki has for instance mentioned that Helloween was their biggest influence and this is very clear when listening to the first Stratovarius albums.

I think it seems to be more or less like some kind of patrioism when it comes to metal..

I tend not to care whether a band is British or not.

Occasionally if I hear something really cool and then find out they are from the UK there will be a slight extra w00t factor, but it probably wouldn't raise my opinion of them.

Although, there are plenty of bands that do actually make me proud to come from this country, they should be obvious to people here. Especially coming from the glorious Midlands, home of Black Sabbath, Napalm Death, Judas Priest, and Iron Monkey.

Personally I don't care whether a band is Canadian. In Canada there's a law that requires radio stations/muchmusic to play something like 30% Canadian music to support Canadian culture... and even if Finland doesn't have that law they probably play bands from Finland more than they play bands from other countries.

not at all....there are hardly ever any metal on the charts here in norway...only list-pop and other shit..i think dimmu borgir was in for a week or two but...norwegian metal better known in other countries than here

If there was a decent Turkish metal band, even just one, other than the billions of shit awful bands we have here, I guess I'd be proud.

If I was in that band I'd be prouder.

Hmmmm

I think I'm on to something here

There is an extra w00t factor, as Charles said, particularly because in my case it makes it easier to email them and blag a free copy of the album, but generally there are no borders, dude.

I'm a big patriot. I buy and support a lot of the local bands, and also attend the newbie bands gigs. I'm proud of the many bands Malaysia has produced, just sad some of them are condemned and arrested for being negative influence. The only way to show support is to buy their merchandise and listen to them.

I'm not sceptical towards foreign bands, just that I spend too much money on local merchandises and I'm broke to buy any foreign ones. But I do set aside some cash for my favourite bands.

Australian metal does have its own little 'scene', but even then none of it cracks the charts or gets radio airplay (besides late at night, most notably on triple j, the country wide station all the cool kids listen to.)

I will say however that the few extremely good quality bands to come out of this country do make me proud. Most notably Pestilential Shadows, Alarum, Pathogen, Elysian Blaze, Alchemist and Pod People.

I try to support local bands by going to their shows even though most of them suck =|

I support worthy Finnish bands. The rest can rot.

On tuesday night I used to listen to Full Metal Racket, its where i first heard Decapitated. Too bad the host was so goddamn boring

I actually only know of two Aussie metal bands, those being Black Majesty and Cog. And I don't even really like either of those.....

Talking of Aussie metal and no mention of Sadistik Exekution, Deströyer 666 or Bestial Warlust? Shame on you.

Spear of Longinus are also killer.

I'd be pretty proud if any decent metal came out of Wales as the bands that have success are pretty lame (Bullet For My Valentine anyone? ). The best we have are Arawn, who are a decent one-manblack metal band who may or may not be NS.

Looks like I'll be the first American to post in this thread. I hate our music scene... metal or not, our scene sucks. My state, Nebraska, has the worst metal scene in the world. We are so far back in the past with our scene, we have new nu-metal and rap metal bands still coming out. It's pathetic. However, we do have Cellador, but most people here can't stand them.

Crap, forgot about Destroyer 666 *slaps self*

I agree generaly about the scene in the states sucking. At best we have regions that become famous and then the metal heads patrioticly buy everything from every band that had a member that at one point lived there. You have south Florida/ Tampa Bay and theres the whole LA hair metal thing.

I will however support my black metal in the region much in the same way hellraiser described. I am quite proud of the black metal coming out of New England and would be surprised if some bands didn't emerge from here on a large scale. (relatively speaking for BM)

American metal gets about an hour a week on MTV 2 during Headbanger's Ball and even then it is laced with crappy bands (ie: Korn) and emo-core shit.

As for around Cincinnati, my hometown, most local bands are emo-core except for Estuary.

i'm not..but then again, i don't really consider myself as a metalhead since it is only one of the genres i frequently listen to

Agreed with Zad and Chuck - if a Scottish band happen to be good then I'll maybe be that bit extra happy, but there's no way I'll like one just because they're local boys.

I'm refering exclusively to the unsigned scene here as Scotland has no established metal bands. We have some good bands and an endless queue of shite ones.

Metal is probably the music with the least borders though. You wouldn't hear a Polish pop singer who sold millions or some crappy soft rock band who sells as much, but when it comes to metal everyone knows Behemoth.