Metal Reviews

I listened to pop in high school. Didn't get into metal and stuff until later.

Cliff's notes, please?

That's why my tastes split. I was was listening to adult contemporary radio until about 1996, age 11, it became increasingly difficult to hear a great song on those stations at that point. The 80's stuff was going out of style, they weren't playing it anymore and in general everyone around me was developing a musical style of their own. I mean way back then really no one talked about music or cared until their balls dropped, if I can be so crass. I wasn't really into the alternative scene much and hair metal wasn't cutting it as a form of pop music because I was listening to the pop elements and didn't care about the metal elements yet. I just found that those rare stations at the time that would play almost anything rock from the 70's onward were featuring more good songs per hour than the AC station was. The songs were pretty fresh at that point too. A few years later I would listen to the house of Hair every weekend, listen to Kiss albums and all that. I can't say I was ever into Nu-Metal. I liked a few bands that were being played alongside of that stuff, but never liked Korn or any of that. By the time I was listening to Thrash and all that, I was finding it difficult to distinguish bands like Slipknot from it. I mean it was thrash, but the thrash fans weren't having it, but fuck them anyway if you have to get "approved" to join their genre. All the "nu-metal" I liked was just the old stuff with a newer kind of sound. Dope were just doing what the crue did back in the 80's in my opinion. My tastes were reaching further back in time and branching out into the obscure in high school. Sooner or later, I go Rush's retrospective discs and actually found the perfect music. By the time I was graduating, I was listening to Dream Theater and Yes. I was on my way, and around a year later I would find a local store that would enlighten me to the underground european labels where I would discover more obscure power metal bands that were combining the overwhelming melody I loved from my youth and Rush with the power of the stuff I listened to up until then.

@cotb,

Saying quality over quantity is fine but should we really be upset that there are more people just having bands due to being fans of the music? Not every band seeks to be newest most creative thing out there and most just want to play what they like, i.e., what they grew up on why is that wrong?

As for the originality of the 70s and 80s, I think you're just not opening your eyes enough. Everything is going to have influences because we can't work outside of our subjectivity but there are definitely bands that transcend their influences and compose original stuff.

Not saying it's wrong. It was in response to the argument of "album after album of pointless imitations and "retro" bands."

Well, the music from the 70's and 80's had their influences, as well.
But, there is no other band that sounds like Mercyful Fate, Venom, Slayer, Sabbath, Deep Purple, Saxon, Celtic Frost, Kreator, Death, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Destruction, and to delve into the early nineties a bit, Emperor, Darkthrone and Burzum, etc.... I could go on, but that's sufficient. When those bands played, they had their own unique sound, and you knew right away who was playing (if you've heard it before, of course).
Take today's metal landscape; you have a thousand Marduk clones, hell entire regions even have their own "sound", i.e you can tell which bands are from Finland, Sweden, etc.
Same goes for black metal, the thousands of bands are pretty much divided into two categoies: Burzum influenced and Darkthrone influenced, with a few exceptions.
A thousand Suffocation clones, all with the same basic formula.
Power metal, I can't really comment on much, because I don't listen it, but I've heard the same thing being said: oversaturated, with very little originality.
Same with any -core bands... I get nothing but a headache when i listen to that stuff, and it makes me hate the world, so I am not interested in digging deeper into it.
You'd think that with such a saturation of bands, something new would arrive, but by and large, that's not the case. At least not yet.
So, I think my eyes are sufficiently open, thanks. I've heard enough metal both new and old to base my arguments on facts. What, you think I'm some kind of noob?

Dillinger Escape Plan is new. Baroness is new. Withered is new. Mastodon is new. Pig Destroyer is new. High on Fire, Strapping Young Lad, Converge, Cobalt, Nachtmystium are all newer bands who wear their influences on their sleeves but by no means are they simply rehashing it. These were just off the top of my Last.fm page. I'm sure they're are tons of other bands too that are high quality and original while still working within the framework laid out by Sabbath, Death or Darkthrone. If you want an entire movement of stuff I could think of some of those; USBM, mathcore, sludgy beard metal for lack of better terms.

I don't think you're a noob by any means, guy. I just think you honestly haven't heard a lot of new original bands. You may not enjoy them but they're out there.

V, I could care less about most of the these newer, popular American bands, but you are missing out on some East European black metal that is definitely not Burzum or Darkthrone clones.

Besides the more well-known Negura Bunget types, there are lesser know bands like Kroda, Walknut (ok, they are a bit of burzum clone, but they are excellent) or Temnozer that are interesting.

A lot of those bands are offshoots of sludge as you mentioned, and they are operating in their respective genres. However, I don't think that they constitute any gigantic sweep of originality or anything. Not that I hate them or anything they are just a few examples, though I have to agree with Cry of the Banshee on his post. Unless you want to count of all of these pretentious Mucopus, Psyopus, Daughters, overtechnical shit on musical form bands.

I like a lot of the bands you mentioned, though I have a hard time admitting there was a better musical era then what he mentioned myself.

I think a lot of the bands I mentioned compete with the classics or will in time. Cynic 'Traced in Air' is a good example.

E. European BM is some of the best.
I think I am being misunderstood; I like a ton of new stuff. I just like the older stuff better.
Maybe its nostalgia.

I've heard a lot of them, and of course there are a shit load I haven't. DEP, Mastodon, SYL, not too big on, though they are alright.
Nachtmystium, etc... they are decent. Never heard Cobalt,
Some good USBM out there, but I don't really care for any type of core bands, at least from what I've heard.

Even if you look at something fairly small like sludgy metal there's tons of bands like Zebulon Pike, Buried Inside, Taint, Pelican, Neurosis, KEN Mode, and probably even more that are all imo doing very different things from one another.

Also there's lots of bands who have created their own styles and created subgenres in the last decade like The Dillinger Escape Plan, Necrophagist, Isis/Neurosis, Pelican, Converge, Meshuggah, Weakling, blah blah blah

That is an extremely old phenomenon. People that spend an overwhelming amount of time listening to a genre think no two bands sound alike at all and those other genres everything sounds the same.

I don't think Serenity and Sonata Arctica sound much alike and neither one of them sounds anything like Stratovarius. All black metal sounds about the same to me because I really don't listen to much of it.

So when a non-fan says everything sounds the same, they are just playing off their perception which is based on the leveling of those genres and sharpening of genres to which they do spend a lot of time with.

It's like the slipknot comment. I don't spend an overwhelming amount of time listening to thrash, especially the speed thrash aspects of it, so the stuff I do listen to doesn't all sound extremely remotely different. So when something that is virtually the same sound-wise comes along and it sounds like thrash, you know, if it quacks like a duck...I'm not saying it's a thrash record. It's a metal record, but if I had to pin that custard on the wall by forcing a limited amount of genres, that's where it would stick because it's similarity to things people often use the genre for. I'd think it was silly too if 80% of my listening was extreme metal and balls-out 200bpm thrash. But I don't. My tastes lean more mid-tempo, more riff oriented and more up-to-date.

Yeah I don't think there's any instances of two bands I'm extremely familiar with that I think sound the same. Musicians all have different writing styles and make different choices over the course of a song as to how it unfolds, so once I learn their style well I tend to notice big differences between them and musicians they're surfacely similar to.

Ah, yes, Weakling did create the 'USBM band that people who don't really know much about the genre inexplicably pimp to enhance their credibility' subgenre.

dude needs toget laid or get a hobby.

Fuck

Cute.

Like 'thrashing till death'?

And noodles, would you expect anything less, we used to have fun!

hart

Actually, looking back at what I wrote, I realize I was too harsh. I meant to poke you, not insult you. I should have left the stuff about 'credibility' out.

I'll never understand why you guys love that Weakling album (or most USBM) so much, and obviously it irritates me; but, you guys like it because you like it, credibility has nothing to do with it.