Glen journeys into the dark world of metal

[AWESOM-O]

This thread will chronicle my attempt to explore the various subgenres of metal and find levels of extremity that heretofore had not graced my ears. I've been listening to Metallica, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, and Megadeth for years, but I've never really been able to get far past them. That's about to change.

A few days ago I listened to Arise by Sepultura. Honestly not my favorite album of all time. It's a never-ending onslaught, and the riffs don't get much room to breathe. But I liked it enough that I'll be visiting the earlier three albums in their discography.

Today I ventured forth twice more. I had been looking into doom metal, so I decided to check out Nightfall by Candlemass. The first 2-3 songs didn't do much for me, and I would have put on something else, but didn't want to fuck around with my spotify app while driving, so I let it continue. Kind of glad I did, because that album is backloaded as all hell. The riffs get a lot more interesting, and the lead guitar does some amazing stuff on some of the later tracks.

Then I listened to Screaming for Vengeance by Judas Priest. Fuck, this is what I had been waiting for. 10/10 album. I forgot they made them this good.

I tried giving Emperor a shot, but wasn't too interested in the first track on either of their first two albums. The vocals sound like a Nazgul being garrotted.

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Do the world a favor and stop now!

 

[Rufus]

Shush, I need new stuff too.

[jakefromstatefarm]

if you can't break the 'treating harsh vocals as an instrument' barrier, you might as well forget about it.

honestly, it's just a matter of familiarization

early on, I found watching artist's interviews and putting a human face to the sound really helps

[seagrams hotsauce]

not liking emperor  you are not worthy, go grab avenged sevenfolds discography as that is all you deserve

[jakefromstatefarm]

I felt the way Emperor did it was a little...grating and extreme. I'm guessing that's actually tame for the genre?

classic Black metal's production is intentionally poverty-tier. it's part of the aesthetic. watch a live performance, an interview, and a video of them LARPing in the wooded areas of Norway; it'll endear them to you p quick

[seagrams hotsauce]

Emperor is lite fare compared to the most extreme stuff. The black metal path is a dark and potentially obnoxious one. Walk too far down and someday you might find yourself refusing to listen to anything that wasn't recorded to a 2-track in a wooden cabin in the forested hills of Norway two and a half decades ago

[benjipwns]

Is Hopesfall's No Wings to Speak Of and The Satellite Years considered metal?

That and some Opeth are the closest I think I have to anything actually metal.

[Am_I_Anonymous]

I felt the way Emperor did it was a little...grating and extreme. I'm guessing that's actually tame for the genre?

It's trash. All you need to make a power metal (or whatever the fuck you call it) album is 3 power cords and a top tier crybaby bitch. Fuck... shit sucks

[toku]

[Trent Dole]

[jakefromstatefarm]

Death's guitarwork is something I'd think you'd fuck with. their earlier stuff is closer to something like Possessed/Obituary, later stuff is techy, but I still like Sound of Perseverance, it's got a Priest cover

[fistfulofmetal]

If you like Judas Priest, delve a little deeper into their back catalog. Screaming for Vengeance is good but they have a few albums that are far better.

-Sad Wings of Destiny
-Stained Class
-Sin after Sin
-Hell Bent for Leather
-Painkiller

[jakefromstatefarm]

I'd also rec Spiritual Healing, Leprosy and half of Scream Bloody Gore but that's mostly because I'm a stanley


but seriously, FL scene: Slowly We Rot, Seven Churches, Legion, Deicide :blessed

[fistfulofmetal]

RE: harsh vocals - the band that eased me in was early Ensiferum. Jari's vocals are harsh but understandable. They aren't low and demonic but higher pitched. IMO they hit the perfect balance.

The band itself is a combination of harsh vocals, folk influences, and a bit of power metal.

Anything from their first two albums, S/T and Iron



Then you have Wintersun which is Jari's band after he left Ensiferum and they're a lot better. Dropping some of the folk and leaning more on heavy layers of guitars, synth, symphonic elements, drums, etc.

[toku]

"Iron" is one of my favorite metal albums. Top 5 if you held a gun to my head and made me rank stuff.

[seagrams hotsauce]

Emperor is lite fare compared to the most extreme stuff. The black metal path is a dark and potentially obnoxious one. Walk too far down and someday you might find yourself refusing to listen to anything that wasn't recorded to a 2-track in a wooden cabin in the forested hills of Norway two and a half decades ago

Don't get me wrong; i like my black metal plenty raw. I'll listen to some Von, Havohej stripped down punky type stuff or some forest fuck type stuff like Ildjarn, but overall i'll still take the acknowledged greats most of the time.

I'm the opposite way with death metal. Most of the best best stuff is really hidden away.

EDIT: on second thought nah, that only applies to the european stuff. most of the major DM players in America are pretty great.

I really never went too far down the black metal rabbit hole beyond the more well-known acts (Mayhem, Immortal, Darkthrone etc) and most of it didn't really stick. Between me not really liking it and the amount of times I'd be on Encyclopaedia Metallum and discover 'oh hey, this is a white power band,' my affair with the genre was short-lived.

[drew]

you ever try listening to Hardcore?





^skip to 30 secs in 

[drew]

and I'm not usually one for melodic metal but the first two songs (played back to back) are God tier for me, I'll put this album on and start lifting



and then there's this



i dunno, lol.

[toku]

Behemoth has some jams. I really liked Evangelion a few years ago and I remember digging zos kia cultus and demigod in high school.

[benjipwns]

I haven't really hated much posted in this thread so far. 

But then "harsh" vocals (or whatever you want to call it) only bother me when they're a kind of screeching that's way above and out of line with the music. There's a perfect example of a "post-hardcore" band that does this constantly and me and a friend used to make fun of it but I can't think of their name now.

[archnemesis]

But then "harsh" vocals (or whatever you want to call it) only bother me when they're a kind of screeching that's way above and out of line with the music. There's a perfect example of a "post-hardcore" band that does this constantly and me and a friend used to make fun of it but I can't think of their name now.

The Blood Brothers? Johnny Whitney usually uses a screeching voice.

[benjipwns]

Yeah, he gets pretty close to it, though I like The Blood Brothers and it's usually pretty in line with the music. This band was like old Fall Out Boy/AFI only with a guy screeching over top of it all like he had never heard the music he was recording over.

Old top favorite:

[archnemesis]

Good to hear that you weren't ragging on The Blood Brothers. I love all their albums.

Metal is hit or miss for me. I can't stand most of the bands mentioned in this topic. The chunk that I like is usually in the alternative, death, grindcore, noise, and progressive genres. I also like some sludge and black.

Did anyone post a link to http://mapofmetal.com/ yet?

[seagrams hotsauce]

Weird! I was just listening to Burn, Piano Island, Burn yesterday as part of my "how bad was my taste in high school" tour, and it holds up really well imho. They're maybe the only band from that scene and time that could pull of the blastbeats-to-four-on-the-floor type freneticism without it sounding contrived.

[Am_I_Anonymous]

Stan for music that is primarily dirty ass white dudes screaming into a microphone brehs....

How can you even tell the difference between any of these "bands?"

 

[seagrams hotsauce]

lol @ aia's 'KIDS THESE DAYS' schtick in multiple genre threads 

[Brehvolution]

If you don't like harsh vocal, try some metal with no vocals.


For one of the GOAT live metal performances, look no further than:


Harsh vocals aside, the musicianship is top tier IMO.
THe guitar solo in Ad A Dglgmut.

[Am_I_Anonymous]

lol @ aia's 'KIDS THESE DAYS' schtick in multiple genre threads 

Not this time, this garbage goes back to my childhood trying to watch two bands called earthball and mad crisis see who could scream better while various dirty cacs beat the shit out of themselves for no reason.

[seagrams hotsauce]

lol @ aia's 'KIDS THESE DAYS' schtick in multiple genre threads 

Not this time, this garbage goes back to my childhood trying to watch two bands called earthball and mad crisis see who could scream better while various dirty cacs beat the shit out of themselves for no reason.

earthball and mad crisis
 
I 100% take back any slander

[Eric P]

i only listen to heavy metal concept albums about darth vader

https://hothmusic.bandcamp.com/

[seagrams hotsauce]

Cannibal Corpses' existence is justified if only for Seth Putnams harassment of their lead singer. After a CC and anal cunt tour inevitably went south, seth putnam posted up outside of every CC show in boston and providence trying to fight chris barnes. After he got ducked for like 8 months, he wrote this masterpiece

[jakefromstatefarm]

I hate Behemoth so much and I really can't articulate why. Cannibal Corpse are like the Korn of death metal

[Brehvolution]

Some of the names of Nile songs make me chuckle. "Enduring the Eternal Molestation of Flame"




Distortion knob on 10.

[jakefromstatefarm]

I fuck with Melechesh sooo hard breh. Sphinx :headbang

I special fellow over any Eastern influenced metal. Cult of Fire :headbang

Real talk, I've found black metal is way more agreeable to the folksier influence in general

[BobFromPikeCreek]

I'm all about the doom/stoner metal

[jakefromstatefarm]

tbf, Dopethrone is less an album than a rite of passage

[archnemesis]

I'll just post some YouTube videos of bands I like that haven't been mentioned in this thread.

[drew]

Stan for music that is primarily dirty ass white dudes screaming into a microphone brehs....

How can you even tell the difference between any of these "bands?"

 

edit: came in here to post Dopethrone, +1 on that shit fo sho

[Brehvolution]

Listened on my commute today: Between The Buried And Me - Colors

I think I love this band. Production is high quality, the riffs really stand out, good combination of harsh and regular vocals, strong sense of melody in a lot of song sections, good percussion unit.

[fistfulofmetal]

BTBATM is a good band but I don't like them that much now. They're fallen down into their own buttholes and their music has lost a lot of spirit recently.

[jakefromstatefarm]

stuff I've been listening to

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

you really sold me on MA fam

[jakefromstatefarm]

-sandoval

his double bass is

from wikipedia:

Sandoval had never used two bass drums before joining Morbid Angel. He had to practice frequently in order to get his feet up to speed, and recorded the Altars of Madness album within only a couple of months of joining Morbid Angel. According to Morbid Angel guitarist Trey Azagthoth, the band would occasionally walk in on Sandoval passed out on the floor in a pool of sweat. After being woken up, he would immediately say, "Time to get back to work!"

never been well-versed in the NY scene, def checking out Immolation, digging those tracks you posted

edit: yooo that last track off DoP sounds like its ripping a hole into hell

[Brehvolution]

The thing about drummers like that is you are born with it or you aren't. You can't teach whole body timing and no one can fake it.

[Brehvolution]

You don't have to care about the music to respect technical mastery.

I don't care for all of Vai, Satch, or even Stevie Ray Vaughn's work to understand that it's greatness at what they do.

[jakefromstatefarm]

At the Gates - The Red in the Sky Is Ours

from what I remember, this one is way techier and has way more schizophrenic composition than their later material

this band, btw Aesome-O, is super seminal along w/ the rest of the Gothenburg scene (In Flames, Dark Tranquility) for adding a lot NWOBHM elements into dm. their influence permeates the American scene today, for better or worse

[jakefromstatefarm]

Slaughter of the Soul is probably the album out of Gothenburg that had the biggest impact on the new wave of American heavy metal. One of the early Hatebreed LP's is probably the equivalent out of the hardcore scene. As a nascent metalhead, I never found Metalcore agreeable like I did nu-metal; I think the latter is a lot more able to identify with your standard hard rock fare.

Plus meatalcore was fucking everywhere throughout high school. I think everyone had that moment when you got into your friend's car and they were like, "If it's ok with you, I'm gonna play some heavier stuff."

"For real? By all means."

and then he flips on Atreyu/BFMV/Trivium

[Brehvolution]

It's easy to tune out the vocals. No one listens to metal for the vocals anyways.

[jakefromstatefarm]

RiB's production is fucking incredible, Rubin's best work. 40 years from now that shit'll still sound immaculate. One thing I feel is missing from Seasons in contrast is the punch in the double bass; instead of providing a backbone to Slayer's music, Lombardo sounds distant on that album, and I feel like they really suffer for it.

Seasons has some great highs: Dead Skin Mask, War Ensemble, Hallowed Point, Skeletons of Society are all terrifying as intended. Intro to Expendable Youth is some ssj2 shit. It's def more telegraphed/predictable than their classics though, which is the salient knock on it.

[Brehvolution]

The best slayer album is Hell Awaits though

Also I love poverty tier buzzsaw basement black metal production but yeah, it's an acquired taste.

You can't tell me this isn't fire tho

Burzum - Dunkelheit:

That hot rodded tone.

[jakefromstatefarm]

Black metal Casios

edit: reading this, dying

[jakefromstatefarm]

in terms of American pop cultural osmosis, nothing comes close to thrash

in terms of pushing the limits of the genre and redefining what the genre is, black and death are the definitive umbrella subgenres

[jakefromstatefarm]

I mean, what yardstick are you using to measure that?

are we ranking artist's material track to track, album to album, genre to genre? because that's entirely reductive and, more importantly, obscures the real merit that subjectivity has within music. Esch likes particular genres, artists, whatever because he's compositionally-inclined as a music listener. I value aesthetic, flow, and listenability, so I tend to favor other genres. From what I've gleaned, you really like musicianship. All three of us are going to have drastically different, and yet sometimes similar, views on what good music is.

[jakefromstatefarm]

once upon a time our Indo-Aryan ancestors made love underneath the sycamore tree


in other news, I just checked out:



and HOLY FUCK I completely overlooked/wrote these guys off. Honestly, aside from the Melvins guitar tone, I don't see the sludge categorization, and I DEF don't see it for doom either; a ton of their material takes pages straight out of hardcore's playbook, sometimes descending into borderline black metal territory. Schizophrenic clean/screamed vocals, eschewing of conventional solos with otherwise standard song structure, heavy emphasis on vocal melody as opposed to instrumentation: on more than one occasion I got the impression it shared a lot in common with nu-metal. After a cursory search of the band's discography though, their two (lone) albums coincide directly with Korn's first two LPs. :mindfuck: It's not convincing that these guys could've had an impact on the mainstream hard rock/metal scene because their reach was so brief, so niche, and so limited but I can't help but shake the similarities.

S-tier trailer park music, will be fucking w/ for the foreseeable future.

[jakefromstatefarm]

This is not complex or deep music but it does satisfy.

and this is the beauty of it. The way they combine such disparate elements across the spectrum into a coherent, palatable package is seriously blowing me away. Lombardo's double-bass on Dr. Seuss is Dead and God Machine, black metal thrashing on 13 Fingers and New Corpse, Jerry Cantrell acoustic on Scream of the Butterfly and New Death Sensations, blastbeats on Jezebel, riffs dripping with Melvins influence and psychedelic lyrics reminiscent of Zeppelin/Sabbath. All with the bastard lovechild of Eric Burdon on vocals :mindfuck:.

finna have to check out Goatwhore after this, they any good?

[tiesto]

Let's be honest though, you have been listening to this stuff for less than a week, it hasnt sunk into you yet. The noise factor is still there (can't help this). And you're still a bit attached to the notion of this stuff as 'rock' music, with choruses and songs you love individually. Extreme metal often doesn't rely on a lot of song writing conventions you hold as givens inside rock music. The riffs and motifs shift and blend into each other. There's more playing with dissonance, contrapuntal melodies etc. This is kinda why some of the more erudite metalspergs make comparisons to electronic, classical, jazz and folk music.

This actually does a good job explaining something... a lot of metal fans I know also enjoy various forms of electronic music. Hell, before I got into house and trance I dabbled in thrash metal. That kid who I met in middle school when I noticed his Metallica shirt and started talking to him about MOP? When we reunited on FB I saw him post links to Nick Warren mixes. I accompanied my friend in college to see In Flames and Iced Earth in Cleveland... and who's playing across the hall but Sasha and Digweed (I did not know about this at the time)... after the metal show was done we all snuck in at my behest and they all loved it. Always seemed like a rather strange crossover, this metal and dance crossover.

[jakefromstatefarm]

you see a ton of crossover with artists too, especially the artsy fartsy composer types like Varg and Silenius from Summoning

[fistfulofmetal]

I'm listening to Immortal's At the Heart of Winter

never listened to this band before. it's p good.

[Brehvolution]

Is it this guy?


Edit: nope nvm

[Brehvolution]

Personally, I don't listen to any BM unless I know each band member volunteered for at least 100 hours in a soup kitchen.