Metal Reviews

Which member or part of a band do you presonally think it's the most important for the type of metal you listen to ?

I avoided to add the options "2 or more of the above" or "none of the above" on purpose since I thought they would not be very clear as choices. Oh and you shouldn't concentrate on certain people or combos like guitarist-singer (ex D. Mustaine), bassist-singer (ex T. Araya) or multi-instrumentalist (ex A. Lucassen). I'm talking about the elements that a band consists of.

errr, the one who writes the songs haha

but if you're talking about just playing music then i would go for the drummer, without a good one your bands just gonna sound like shit no matter how good everyone else it.

That was exactly NOT what I meant. Ofcourse the song composition is the most important one since it is the base upon where all the rest are based. But appart from that basic level (which we all agree that is one with probably the heaviest importance in most cases), I'd like to know about the ingredients that make a band. Imagine, if you will, a band playing covers (so you don't worry about composition and music/lyrics). If you switch the electric guitarist playing distorted up to 11 with a classical one, will it matter much ? What if you substitute your female singer with a male growler ? It is that importance that I'm trying to figure out. Some elements matter more to a band or to a certain sub-genre of metal that others do.
Ofcourse my examples above are maybe too far-fetched. You would not feel that great difference by switching from one growler to another or alternating between two bassists of similar tastes, playing style and equipment. But still there's always something that make some bands trully unique other than their songs.



But that was what I what I meant!

I said guitars, simply because I can put up with shoddy singing over goo riffs, but great singing over terrible riffs I can't. This is of course purely aesthetic, on a techinical standpoint it would probably be the drums.

For power metal i'd say easily the singer. For prog etc. I'd say guitars - I never pay that much attention to drumming or bass playing.

Singer. You can have the greatest song in the world, and if a bad singer is singing the song, it might as well be the worst song in the world.

vocals ruin music

For music where the singing matters, then I'd say singer, because they're what my ears analyze first and if their singing annoys me I'll probably hate it right away. For instrumental music/death metal where the singing doesn't matter, I'd go for drummer, because boring drumming is teh suck.

I voted Guitars but not always, i agree with eyesore's point on vocals but for me it can also go backwards especially for thrash, you can have the best vocalist in the world but if you aint got the riffs you aint got nothing.
In thrash metal what really gets my blood boiling are the riffs and i dont think anyone could headbang with the vocals, the riffs are the ones that put you into headbanging mode, and lets face it people Metal music is not the most sophisticaded, popular or even the most innovative music there is, every other genre has advantages over metal, the only thing that makes Metal the best music in the world is that headbanging feeling that pretty much destroys everything else.

Ive always seen the bass player as a good extra for the music, i just fucking love basslines like in Iron Maiden, Overkill, Flotsam & Jetsam (Newsted > Burton), Sadus, Manowar etc, but its not primordial.

I voted drums....they form the basis of the whole song!

I can put up with a bad singer, or even non-riffs that suck shit....as long as there are drums to listen to.

See: Krieg - Patrick Bateman EP

"A band is only as good as its drummer."

From my top 20 bands/composers/projects on last.fm:
Singer: 7/20
Guitar: 8/20
Bass (including upright): 7/20
Percussion: 10/20
Looks like drums are most important to me...

I don't think it's the singer, at least not in the music I typically listen to. In \m/extreme\m/ metal once you get to a certain level of competency at growling, there's only a certain range of variables. ie, the difference between the worst growlers and the best growlers is tiney compared to the difference between the worst guitarists and the best guitarists, or the worst drummers and the best drummers. So if you are a death/black/thrash metal band you will sink or swim on you drummer and your guitarists, not your singer.

I think there's a huge difference between the worst and the best extreme vocalists, although tiny compared to the difference between the worst and best traditional singers.

I think one reason why a lot of people dismiss extreme metal as just noise is the fact that western popular music has always been very centered on vocal melodies (from old folk songs to Britney Spears). Eliminate the vocal melody, and a lot of people won't find anything to focus their ears on.

All of them are fucking important. However, I'm gonna cast my vote for the bass. The bass is like air; you may not pay much attention to it when it is there, but you sure as hell will notice when it's not. If you have ever been in a band without a bassist, recorded a song without a bassist, you know how important they are.

The singer/vocalist! That's why they're refered to as "The Front Person"....

Frontman, you mean? Just no. While a great deal of the live presence depends on him, if the rhythm section is bollocks he'll get bottled.

I would say singer. The music is important, yes. As TGOE said, a bad vocalist can ruin a good song. The lyrics are also delivered by the vocalist, so the vocalist, for me, is the most important. Instances where the vocalist has just ruined it are :

Metallica - Kill em All : Excellent music, awful, awful vocals. And the songs are just BAD.

Entombed - Clandestine : The most shitty vocals along with just plain boooooooooooring songs.

If I never knew the lyrics to Immolation's "Your Angel Died " or "Close To A World Below", they would never be among my favourite songs. You know Ross means what he sings or should I say, growls. The intensity is, well, intense. A lot of instances where a vocalist just makes or breaks a song. My point is, it all depends upon how the vocalist delivers.

Absolutely 100% the guitarist, because without them you can't have a song. Imagine a band with just the drummer and singer rocking out, it sounds unpleasant already. Second most important for me would be the drummer though, since I AM a drummer i spend most of my time listening to the drumming on songs.

The least important part for me is the singer. The singer seems to me like the guy who bails the band when they can't form coherent songs on their own. I really respect a band who can pull of instrumental music, because that takes a really high level of musicality.

Nomeansno's first album is just drum/bass/vocals and kicks major ass . The guitarist is actually the least important for me because for a lot of my favourite bands they're the least talented member (The Mars Volta, Tool, Converge... ). Having a good guitarist is definitely superior to not having a good one, but I find a boring rhythm section much more painful to listen to than a boring guitarist.