I have recently come to realize that I know next to nothing about Metal. This strikes me as a pretty large hole in my understanding of modern popular music and I would like to fix it. I’m really bored with the music I have been listening to as of late so I figure now is a good time to explore the world of Heavy Metal and all its various subgenres (there are like 85 right?)
Now, I do know some stuff. The early Heavy Metal that is essentially classic rock I know. Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Motorhead, Led Zeppelin, etc. I am also passingly familiar with Metallica because I’m alive in the world. I also know a little NuMetal because I was in high school in the late 90s. Mahaloth recommended in another thread that I listened to Roots by Sepultura and it has really grown on me.
But that’s pretty much it.
Give me suggestions and possibly an order I should listen to them in (if necessary) and I will listen to whatever I am able to stream on Spotify or YouTube and report back. I’m down to try anything.
If you hear it and you don’t like it, there’s no fix for that. You’ve already named a bunch of bands to try. Add Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Scorpions when they still had Uli Roth and you’ve got the majority of the beginning. Add Hawkwind and Motorhead if you’d like. That’s the old school stuff.
Where’s Snowboarder Bo?
ETA: Sorry, you already mentioned Motorhead. It’s not really metal, but was there with really heavy rock when metal was forming.
Sure, and I’ll throw some at you right away since you have offered me a lot in my musical learning experience.
Metallica - Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, their Black Album(self-titled).
If you have to do just one of those, do Ride the Lightning.
Slayer - Reign in Blood
I’m not a huge fan of this album, but it is huge and a necessary album in Metal’s history. It’s really short, too. It is massively heavy.
Sepultura - Roots
My favorite metal album and I know you’ve heard the lead single from it already. The whole album is great, but Roots Bloody Roots and Dusted are all-time great metal songs.
Megadeth - Peace Sells…but Who’s Buying?
Another one I am not personally a fan of, but it is huge and important in history. I don’t like Dave Mustaine’s voice is the main issue for me.
Pantera - Vulgar Dispay of Power
Another mega-classic.
Are you interested in Death Metal? I did not recommend any from that genre.
The Sword, Warp Riders is on the borders between hard rock and metal, it’s pretty accessible, and a completely terrific album throughout, with a strong 70s vibe. If you’re looking for 80s stuff, I’m a big fan of Dio, too: anything off Holy Diver is a great place to start. And this recent thread has some great recommendations for more recent stuff: me, I always plug Mastodon and Baroness.
There’s lots of decent suggestions in this thread and in the other for stuff to listen to, so I’ll avoid that for the most part and instead address the thread title and try and offer suggestions on how to appreciate Metal.
First, knowing the history is a good idea. There’s a ton of great music to be heard and it’ll help with being able to understand and appreciate later incarnations of metal. NAF, it sounds like you have a good grasp on the foundations, so you’re not starting this from scratch; that’s cool.
Whoa whoa WHOA! Lemmy is one of us; no matter if he favored playing speed rock over heavy metal. Speed rock + being punk as fuck = metal, because lots of equations total out as metal; you’ll see.
No; there isn’t and that’s fine (I know you know, bobot; that was directed at everyone else :D). Metal is a big world and there’s plenty of room for everyone. People may think your taste is crazy, but whatever, ya know what I’m sayin’?
Anyway, NAF, since you have a grasp on the origins and early influences, I’d suggest starting your journey by watching Metal: A Headbangers Journey. It’s fun, has a lot of great music and will introduce you to not just the bands, but the people in some of these bands. There will be names and faces that you’ll encounter later as you listen to metal, so you’ll be a little more interested and knowledgable when you hear a song. “Oh, Mayhem, yeah they were in that movie and they interviewed the guys. I remember it was at Wakken;” etc. It’s prolly the single best overview of metal that’s been made, even tho it’s now over a decade old. Heck, that might be an advantage since the time period it has to cover is shorter than if it were made today.
Sam is semi-involved in Banger TV, a heavy metal channel on YouTube. I’d recommend going there for reviews of newer albums, but they also do features where they look back at other years, like 1987 or 1993 or whatever and review albums from that time. That can be cool, like when someone is reviewing a record that I listened to in college, but they weren’t even born yet when it was released and popular. They cover a lot of genres and for every major release they review, they do 2 or 3 nano-reviews of more underground stuff. I highly recommend people subscribe to this and/or join their Patreon (still not sure how I feel about Patreon, tbh); they do good work.
So for new music, I recommend a few things (this is how I do):
YouTube. Search for a band who’s name you know, but you haven’t heard their music. See what the most popular, most recently uploaded (or made) video is and listen to that song. If you like it, go back to the search page and listen to more. If you like the genre but not that song or that band, see what’s in the sidebar or search for a new band name.
Bandcamp discover. This is pretty much my go-to place to find new bands now. I’ll listen to “New Arrivals” in any and every metal genre until I find something I like. Some days I spend hours here (and spend serious dollars, too).
Record label websites. I just ordered $140 worth of stuff from a German record company called Rotten Roll Rex. 8 or 9 bands, like 11 or 12 CDs. Only one of those bands was known before I went to the label website to order their albums. But every album page had a link to a YouTube video, often for the full album. I could listen to everything they produce for free before purchasing. Relapse, Century Media, Thrill Jockey, Southern Lord, etc. all have huge websites with videos embedded all over the place.
And speaking of that recent order, the way I knew about the first band I went there for? I saw them while watching festival videos (for Obscene Extreme Festival) on YouTube. Many festivals put up nearly the entire festival on YouTube nowadays, so it can be a great way to check out a band live.
For more examples, we’ve averaged a little over one “recommend me some metal” threads per year for the past 6 or 7 years, including the one that Penfeather linked.
Metal is by far the most populated genre of music, IMO; the only other genre that comes close maybe is EDM.
I argue that most of what we think of as punk rock is really jazz, and the truth is that metal has accepted influence from so many other genres that a lot of it is also now influenced by jazz music. A great deal of that has to do with the technical proficiency of the average metal musician today, but overall, headbangers are used to and often embrace jarring tempo, key, and stylistic changes within a song (there’s even a genre that kind of specializes in exactly that, in fact). So when you find a song you like, narrowing that down to a set of stylistic influences (a genre) can really help you find other similar artists, some of whom may be operating in genres with limited popularity (and thus a harder time finding exposure for listeners); that’s why there are so many genres and why it’s important to metalheads.
Keep posting in this thread, NAF, and I guarantee that myself and others will keep coming in and posting too. I hope what I offered here helps you (and anyone else) get a good foundation for appreciating metal and helps set you off on your own Headbanger’s Journey.
I’ll close with one link to a song; a song that y’all may not like or may not be able to like right now, but it’s one of my favorites from this year, and a fine example of the length and breadth of what I can still consider “metal”: Clown Core - Hell.
Thanks! Your thread is what gave me the idea. I am a music nerd but was into hardcore punk at the age when most people descover metal and, because I wasn’t supposed to like Metal because I was punk, it just sort of missed me.
Sure. Death, Black, other. I want to get an idea of what it’s all about even if I don’t end up digging it.
Anyplace in particular you recommend starting with Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or the Scorpions? I saw Judas Priest had a new album that got pretty good reviews. I was thinking of checking it out anyway. It that actually a good place to start?
I do like weird. Thanks for that whole post. I will report back. I am also interested in your theory that everything is actually Jazz.
Huh, that is interesting. Thanks!
Also Penfeather I missed hitting your post on the multi quote, but I have added Holy Diver to my list. As far as Mastodon and Baroness anything in particular I should check out first?
Thanks to everyone and a blanket thank you to anyone who participates in the future.
A classic death metal band and a big album from them.
Deicide - Legion
I can’t listen to Deicide without giggling. A band that claims to be actually Satanic, but the whole thing makes me laugh. Still, this was a big album from them.
Someone else can recommend Entombed and a few other historic Death Metal bands. I really think the genre rarely does anything great. Some would list Sepultura as Death Metal, but I don’t think so.
This is the best of CC 1.0, their last album with Chris Barnes. It’s not their best, tho, IMO, largely because George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher is a better vocalist for the band. The band also has gotten better with age, IMO, so there’s that. Myself, I actually prefer their newer material most of the time, like Kill and Torture. Last year’s Red Before Black was also outstanding, IMO. I’d stay away from CC at the start tho; their extreme takes on vocals, song structure, lyrics, etc. can put people off if they don’t have the background to understand what they’re hearing; this is true for a lot of death metal and other extreme metal variants. I highly recommend educating oneself up to things in metal rather than trying to jump right in.
An excellent album, and prolly the most accessible of their early output. Still, I’d avoid this for awhile.
I don’t even bother with Deicide. They suck. Shitty songwriting, no sense of rhythm or dynamics and shitty music. I don’t care that you can play those three notes really fast over and over; play an actual fucking riff ffs.
Death metal is awesome and often does great things, IMO, but death metal isn’t where you want to start. DM is like the awesome filling in the middle of the donut that eventually spreads out and covers everything in a sticky, black goo from which there is no returning, but you don’t wanna go there until you figure out how to digest things first.
Besides, it’s easy enough to do this the same way we did when it actually happened: listen to NWOBHM, get familiar with the underground acts coming up in the UK at the time that were moving things to a new place (Motörhead, King Diamond, Venom (especially Venom)), move into thrash because that was the American response/continuation to what was happening in the UK, and from there move into death metal, early grindcore, industrial metal, etc.
That’s one reason I suggested that movie; it pretty much goes thru things in chronological order, even laying out charts to show the evolution (that map was created because of the chart in M:AHJ, in part).
Here’s another link, this time to something a bit more accessible than the previous one. Metalcore is a combo of metal and hardcore punk. Pretty much no or very short solos, shouted vocals, lots of gang choruses. It’s very heavy on moshable parts musically and lyrics tend to be positive and self-reliant, although still, like the music, very aggressive. This band was one of the pioneers and is still one of the best examples of the genre; here’s Hatebreed - Destroy Everything.
With Mastodon I’m fond of their Once More Round the Sun album, and with Baroness I love Yellow & Green. And you asked about Judas Priest and Iron Maiden: with Priest I’d start with the classic British Steel or Screaming For Vengeance, and with Iron Maiden probably Killers. And if your tastes started with punk and hardcore, you can’t go far wrong with Motorhead, who never quite fit the classic metal mould of long solos and overwrought musicianship, but were more into just making a really loud fast nasty fucking noise, and had a lot of crossover appeal with punk: Bomber, Overkill and Ace of Spades are all from the classic lineup.
Isn’t there a youtube channel with two hip hop guys checking out metal? Pretty neat actually.
I’ve liked metal from before I was released into the wild, so I don’t really know how to teach someone to appreciate it. It’s been with me from the uterus. But my main takeaway from that channel was that they started appreciating things in metal they appreciate in other genres. Being hip hop musicians, they immediately grabbed on to the beats and rythm. Maybe that would help.
If you’re a hardcore guy, early death or black metal might actually appeal to you. Fun fact, most early Norwegian black metal musicians were hardcore punkers. Anyway, Deathcrush by Mayhem is an obligatory listen. Intro by Conrad Schnitzler! Grindcore is also an offshoot of hardcore and crust, so you should check it out at some point.
Btw Mahaloth, I’d argue Sepultura’s output before Roots and maybe Chaos A.D. can be considered death metal. Arise and Beneath The Remains is definitely not nu metal!
I am listening to some of the stuff you linked below this right now, and…yeah I get it. It has a very hardcore sensibility in a lot of ways. But I listened to Mayhem earlier and, I’m less sure about that. I’ll come back to it. I mostly wanted to post this to say, I looked them up while I was listening are those stories real or is that made up lore? The band sounds like it was actually insane, not just playing at insane.
