I think I mentioned that I’ve been keeping my car satellite radio tuned to liquid metal. They play a decent amount of Korn and System of a Down who I still strongly dislike from my teenage years, but they also play a lot of Slipknot and… They aren’t so bad. Maybe it’s just that Slipknot didn’t get tons of radio play like the other two did when I was younger, but I decidedly don’t hate what I have heard.
Slipknot’s good, yeah, at least the couple albums of them I have. **Korn **I never really could get into, but I really like System of a Down (even though the first time I heard them, live as part of a big US metal show I hated them with a passion). Kittie’s a guilty pleasure - I know they’re shit, but their first album is tied to some good memories for me and… well… I don’t know, it’s endearing shit ? Sincere shit, possibly. Then there’s **Godsmack **which I genuinely like, although I’m not sure they’re really nü strictly speaking ? More like heavy grunge I figure.
And I just realized that Godsmack’s eponymous album is 20 years old now and I need to have a sit.
I have a significant bias against System of a Down that is probably unfair, but is likely unshakeable. I have heard a lot of that one album that was huge (because it was flipping inescapable at the time) and its all mostly associated with bad things for me. Not their fault, but no thank you.
Slipknot I did not know much about, but I knew of them. They were insanely popular at the end of high school and early college for me, but mostly popular with kids who were a few years younger than me and therefore obnoxious. They didn’t get any radio play though so all I knew about them was that moody teenagers liked them and this performance on Conan O’Brian which I remember watching vividly mostly because they seem to have two members of the band whose only job is to be short and headbang. So I mentally chalked them up BS shock rockers like Insane Clown Posse or maybe Kid Rock or, if I was feeling generous, Marilyn Manson. Just wrote them off.
I am genuinely surprised to find that there is more to them than headbanging fat guy backup dancers and silly Halloween costumes.
So I decided to start off with Blind Guardian for my Symphonic/Power Metal week this week. 1) I had heard of them in my other reading about Metal, and 2) a lord of the Rings concept album seemed like a good time and if I didn’t like the music I might dig the story.
It wasn’t what I expected! Well, it was, but it also wasn’t. After so much Black and Death Metal this seemed very… Rock. It was pretty fun though. It reminded me a bit of Helloween’s Keeper of the Seven Keys.
I’m down. Nice change of pace to be sure. I’ll keep listening though your recommendations in this post and the next couple Kobal. Thanks!
Going back through the thread I realized I missed this suggestion so I listened to Sunbather this morning. I like this. Why do the metal purists hate them? Sounds perfectly metal to me. It has some rock influence I guess but feels like what I have come to expect from Black Metal… Maybe a touch more accessible?
Someone else want to weigh in on what I’m missing?
If you haven’t found out yet, Panopticon released a new album this year called The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness I and II, which is a double album with one disc his usual atmospheric black metal and the second disc is mostly acoustic “American Folk” (the kind you’d find in the Appalachian region). I had only checked out Kentucky before, which I didn’t quite “get” at the time, but this one clicked with me.
As you had expressed concern about Austin Lunn’s political leanings, you can rest assured that he is simply an anarchist and totally not a Nazi.
This makes me happy. I have been reading stuff that he has written about music over the past few days (he seems to contribute to No Clean Singing which, Bo is right, is a pretty cool website) and he seems like a good guy and genuine music lover. I was going to be really upset if he turned out to be a Nazi. Also, why the heck is Nazi black metal a thing? That makes no sense. Nazi’s are all about the establishment and black metal seems to be fundamentally anti establishment.
Whatever. Now that black metal has clicked I’m really enjoying it. Plumpudding I took your suggestion and went back to Mayhem’s Deathcrush EP yesterday and it was like hearing it for the first time. It’s funny how having the proper mental context can change things. I could hear past the drums for the first time and actually appreciate that there were songs there. Also, Emperor is a great band, I know people probably know this already, but I think they are my favorite of the original Norwegian guys. At least* In the Nightside Eclipse* is my favorite album of those albums.
Edit: I also listened to the whole of Mayhem’s Grand Declaration of War, which sounds so tame compared to this other stuff. I liked the music a lot, but the anti-Christian stuff felt a bit over the top. I get it, but I don’t have strong feelings about Christianity one way or the other so it didn’t really click and unlike Slayer (again they seem to be my baseline) it felt very serious and…meh. I don’t hate it but I probably won’t come back to it because it’s just slightly too distracting.
Sadly, I’m not enjoying my stab at symphonic European power metal quite as much. The Blind Guardian album was still great, but the other stuff was a little too much for me. It’s a fine line I guess. Still, not giving up. Mostly I got stuck on Rhapsody so, I will keep moving forward. I still have the following albums to check out in the symphonic/power metal vein.
Children of Bodum - Hatebreeder
Sonota Arctica - Reckoning Night (spotify didn’t have the recommended album, this is what allmusic suggested)
Therion - The Secret of Runes
Grave Digger - Rheingold
None of the recommended Nightwish was on Spotify, so I may have to go to Youtube to try it out. I’m still hesitant.
I also have albums from Hammerfall, Gamma Ray, Iced Earth, Stradivarius, Sabaton, and Angra on my playlist based on stuff I was watching on the Banger TV youtube channel.
Then it’s on to the folk metal and the Finnish stuff suggested.
Also, I would like to take a minute to appreciate how awesome it is to live in the future where I can actually listen to dozens upon dozens of albums in a few weeks time and not have to spend several thousand dollars to do it.
Oh, last thing. The Deafheaven album took me down a rabbit hole that lead me to Myrkur - Mareidt which is also, kind of controversial? People don’t seem to like the lady behind this band. But I kinda dig it.
I didn’t like that Deafheaven album when it came out and I’ve heard nothing from them since that changes my mind.
My experience with Myrkur has been similar.
Frankly, I wish the metal press would stop pushing them on us. Let them go claim that they’re some other genre that they’re not and exploit that for a while, I say.
ETA: if you’re liking Emperor, be sure and give Ihsahn’s solo stuff a listen. I thought After was one of the two or three best albums of 2010 and IMO it remains the high point in his catalog.
That makes sense. I felt the same way about bands like Green Day and Blink 182. Still do sort of. Say what you like about them but they aren’t punk, and saying they are doesn’t make it so.
My suggestion is to now not go by genere so much because some bands just don’t fit in one category. Case in point is Sepeltura. Hell of the top of my head they could go under Death, Thrash, Nu, Groove, and that’s just when I listened to them and I stopped at “Roots” who knows what they are now. Same thing with Fear Factory. Early albums are Thrash and progress into Techno with albums like Remanufacture. Ultimately generes are just a sloppy way of categorizing things that should be organically descovered…Unless it’s Black Metal! I f×cking hate black metal! Oh look I record my band impotently flailing away at our instruments on a sh×tty two track before I committed some crimes in one of the most prosperous and non-violent societies in the world because we’re so dark and broody.
This made me laugh a lot.
Ultimately I think you are right about abandoning genre at this point. I have mostly worked my way through the 90s and am probably ready to hit the 21st century in a serious way.
I’ll post what I have left on my listening list and you guys can maybe offer some guidance.
Two genre relates questions before I go back to chronology.
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what exactly is Metalcore and why do people seem to hate it?
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what is the new wave of American Metal and is it or is it not also metal core?
I disagree: don’t abandon genre; the distinctions are important IMO.
I see that you’ve figured out that there’s nothing headbangers love more than to share their favorite music with anyone who will stop and listen. 
IMO metalcore was born from two albums (with some help from Slayer): Stormtroopers Of Death’s Speak English Or Die and Cro-Mags’s Age Of Quarrel. Both showed the power of fusing hardcore punk with heavy metal, specifically New York hardcore punk and heavy metal. Typically somewhat slower paced than thrash (and not nearly as technically demanding, of course), breakdowns feature heavily (as they provide excellent mashing cadence, natch). The lyrical content is often self-affirming and urban in nature, although there are a substantial number of bands that focus on political and/or social causes exclusively. Here’s some metalcore (some of which I’ve linked in this thread before):
Madball - Face to Face - the hardcore is strong with Madball, eh
Hatebreed - Destroy Everything - pure metalcore
Hatebreed - Live For This
Throwdown - Holy Roller - another pure metalcore band
Throwdown - Burn
Ringworm - Snake Church - either the most hardcore metal band or the most metal hardcore band around today
Ringworm - Hammer of the Witch
Metalcore itself is fun, powerful music, stripped of much that ornaments other metal genres but allowing some skillful playing to seep into punk rock.
The reason that the term is often met with derision boils down to the fact that the simple nature of the music meant it was simple to exploit: the tropes were easily translated to other formats and genres. Once the lame dipshits who came up 2nd generation and embraced the great music of bands like Husker Dü and Minor Threat only softer and with whining over it to create emocore and screamo as distinct genres, it was already too late to save metalcore. Then “art rock” bands started co-opting the sounds, then EDM acts… it quickly got squicky, eh.
Bands then started getting the “-core” labels slapped on them willy-nilly: as long as you were metal-ish, you must be some kind of “core”, right? So a lot of the pushback to the term also comes from the fact that marketing jerks saw it as a quick and easy way to categorize everything as “metal” and improperly and over-used it.
The NWOAHM is not metalcore and metalcore bands are not a part of it, IMO (with the possible exception of Killswitch Engage).
IMO the NWOAHM began in September 2000 with the release of Lamb Of God’s New American Gospel. This was a new melding of riff power, propulsive drumming and screamed vocals coupled with excellent songwriting. Soon after, Mastodon would emerge from Atlanta with the next musical step (even more accessible songwriting and monumental proficiency with their instruments) and with Machine Head running well out in front, a horde of American metal bands would soon pour forth, emulating and evolving the formula: raw vocals, loud, angry guitar riffs and stuttering helicopter rhythms, technical precision on display at all times without having to be deliberately flashy about it… it was bound to win over fans of heavy music, eh.
But the NWOAHM ended in about 2005, IMO, just due to the new things brought to the table being eaten and digested by then and simply a part of metal: we all liked most it well enough that that stuff is just expected now.
Which brings me back to my last, brief post. In the end I try and cut acts like Myrkur and Deafheaven a lot of slack, despite my own personal dislike for their product. There’s plenty of different tastes to satisfy, after all. And I should be flattered by the fact that they’ve co-opted metal into so many other genres, because it shows what the world hasn’t really noticed yet: heavy metal won. Rock is dead but metal lives on; it can’t be killed. Not only that, it infects and infests everything, glomming on and taking over, subverting and subduing and remaking all in it’s path like a musical Blob or Thing.
Metalcore an N.W.O.A.H.M. are where I kind of checked out of the “Metal” scene. Don’t get me wrong I thought at one point Lamb of God could have overtaken Metallica as the KINGS of metal but their last few albums were very underwhelming to me. I was really taken aback with the whole clean chorus plauge that infected metal at the time. As I reassess I can help but admit I love me some Killswitch Engage though again CLEAN CHORUS WTF!
Of those :
Gamma Ray is very solid, as is **Helloween **(same guys, different band)
**Angra **is really good ! It’s been ages since I’ve listened to them, too. Think I’m going to dust out Angels Cry today.
Statovariusis… I mean they’re good, but they’ve released over a dozen albums and it’s all the same one, or so it seems
.
SabatonI know are old school, but I never got into them
Iced Earth rocks solidly. Nothing revolutionary, just good power metal. If you like both it and Blind Guardian, check out Demons & Wizards ; a side project of both bands.
**Hammerfall **is a bit of a guilty pleasure. They’re super derivative, haven’t put one original note or thought to paper, the music is passable, the lyrics have zero point (as a friend and I used to joke, it’s your basic “steel eagles of metal swords on fire” stuff - like Manowar only less inspired) and they’re ridiculous on stage. Also they’ve committed this video, which is most certainly a thing. Don’t play the cliché drinking game with it, you’ll die. And yet, somehow, still enjoyable sometimes. It’s a mystery to me.
With some bands it’s annoying, for instance with A Day To Remember it seems like they use clean when they should be using unclean and vice versa. But some bands can pull it of like Like Moths to Flames.
Well that was something else. I’m glad I watched it. It’s not my thing, but that was pretty fun.
In The Nightside Eclipse is a great album. I saw Emperor once at a no-alcohol youth festival… I didn’t notice I’d stepped in dog poop so I had the whole front to myself… :smack:
Immortal (hint: zipper) is another band you’ll probably like. Maybe you’ll like Gorgoroth, but they’re in the “so satanic it hurts the brain” territory.
There’s two more albums from Satyricon you might like, Shadowthrone and Nemesis Divina. I also like a lot of their later output, but after those two albums they change course towards a more accessible sound.
I think you should probably have a look at the most beloved and the most hated band of norwegian black metal: Dimmu Borgir… Begin with the original release of Stormblåst, then listen to the new release. I think you’ll notice a pretty stark difference. Enthrone Darkness Triumphant sets a new course from the earlier albums and Spiritual Black Dimensions continues that, until Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, where they change from a symphonic black metal band into a symphonic black metal parody.
Other bands in the same sphere: Old Mans Child and The Kovenant (These guys are weird, they’ve done symphonic industrial black metal, black metal with accordion and opera vocals, symphonic techno-black metal, you name it. They also take the cake for silliest band pictures.).