Metal Reviews

You know exactly what I meant. A certain 'I don't know what', if a French phrase is too much for an American to cope with. Underground metal vs identkit nonsense like metalcore, the difference between the two.

Genres have nothing to do with elitism or pretentiousness. Metalcore derives from metal, it's a hybrid, thus is not pure metal. I sound like a nazi but that's how i see it.

Thanks, my feeble American brain couldn't process any other language than American.

I think that the "je ne sais quoi" you speak of is all in your head. I don't understand how generic Deathcore band #2375 is any less "Metal" than any other Metal band, say Bloodbath or something, wether or not you like it is an entirely different question, and shouldn't come into play when determining whether or not a band is "real metal." Generic Deathcore band #2375 has heavily distorted guitars, drums, bass, and a vocalist who growls and screams. That sounds an awful lot like Metal to me.

It's as much to do with quality and quantity, the way all these identical bands appear overnight and vanish again as quickly. From an underground-ist viewpoint, it's manufactured samey nonsense that doesn't have what Metal has. No-one's going to be listening to Oceano in ten years' time, for instance, whilst Opeth are destined to be as classic as, say, Carcass in the future. You admit yourself how cloned and mass-produced Deathcore is.

Is anything nowadays not a hybrid except blues?

There are tons of samey copycat bands in Metal that no one will be listening to in 10 years (which is quite an assumption, btw). How many Melodic Death Metal bands have popped up and vanished just as quickly? Does that mean they're not Metal?

Heh, some would say so. But melodeath is still 'more metal' than metalcore. Come on, I'd have thought all this is obvious. METTTAAAALRGH! Deathcore isn't, it takes too much from Hardcore. Melodeath is influenced by Carcass, Maiden, etc.

I really have trouble finding the hardcore in deathcore, other than the name. I mean, sure, at worst it's boring generic formulaic stuff, at best it's entertaining generic formulaic stuff.

Really? It seems tailor-made for moshpit kung fu fighting action.

Cynic and Opeth have a lot of Jazz influence, are they not Metal? Even Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath have tons of Blues influence. Really, this "Real Metal" stuff sounds a lot more like incestuous white trash than nazis, because it's sounding like Metal, to be Real and True has to reproduce with itself, and itself only; taking influence from the outside immediately excludes the product from being called "Metal."

Hey, I never thought the whole 'trveness' caboodle up. Admittedly, when I originally said about getting the kids into proper Metal I meant Metal that I consider to be good and wholesome compared to this Deathcore fad. Still, you can't deny that Maiden and Sabbath are a better mix than Deathcore. Nobody says we have to take tastes into serious consideration, I'm sure there are people out there who prefer Britney Spears to Opeth. To all intents and purposes, the stance of MR is that they're wrong; slightly different yet essentially the same situation here.

I wonder if deathcore will simply be a fad as many here claim. I mean, metalcore was claimed to be a fad, but now its been around for well over a decade, and is still popular and going somewhat strong. Hell, it had been around for nearly a decade when trve metal fans began labelling it as a fad.

Metalcore has been around for ages, but it's the manufactured popularity of the new wave of seemingly manufactured bands that people are objecting to, I think. I'd love it if, say, Burst, Knut and Unsane were still around doing their thing in ten years' time.

Guys, if Deathcore was a type of metal it would be called Coredeath. Adjective first, then noun.

Listen to Dago; deathcore, it seems to me, is derived from hardcore, with metal influences added. Hence, it's not as "authentically" metal as, say, Opeth, who start from a metal perspective and add other influences to that.

There's no problem here: I agree that to use the term "real metal" as an affirmative, i.e. "if it's not real metal, it sucks", is nonsense, and is indeed silly and elitist.

But, I don't see a problem with using the term as a description. There's a significant difference between metal and hardcore, right? Why is it elitist to say that something which takes HC as a base and adds a heavy metal influence is less "real metal" than something which has its feet more firmly in the metal tradition?

I essentially agree with you, but all too often the term real metal is used as part of a derogatory sentence like the example you gave. Because of this, I think many people hear this term and immediately assume the person saying it is taking an elitist point of view, fair or not.

That is true; I guess "real" has those implications.

I hear a lot more death metal than any kind of hardcore I've been exposed to in bands like iwrestledabearonce or Job for a Cowboy or any band I've heard called deathcore. I could see saying that something like early Thrice has hardcore (or pop punk ^^) as a base and ads metal influence, but nobody really calls them a metal band.

Neither deathcore or metalcore will ever define anything. Both are just candles in the wind, that'll eventually be blown out, and never be remembered by anyone in particular. Deathcore is a devolution from metalcore, and even though they're metalized doesn't mean it's metal. Oh yeah, and I'm an elitist prick I guess.

Just a little late but for Zad talking so much about proper metal he reviewed Chimaira quite positively.

Here we go, dragging up every remote review I've written - hey, I called early Genesis a classic and helped to review Pearl Jam's back catalogue too!

But I gave Chimaira a positive score because they are a good band that makes good music (up until The Infection, anyways) and because their self-titled and the one after are METAL to the core. The heart. I didn't give IWABO a good score primarily because they're not a good band, they can't write good songs. The unMetal stuff is icing on the cake.