But but I already covered him! 
But seriously, pigtails?
I always found this picture a bit contradictory.
Just listened to the track of his you linked to a few posts back. He’s fun. Kind of putting the emphasis back on the metal part of black metal.
Immortal going on to my playlist for today.
Already listened to Lamb of God - New American Gospel. Love their rhythm section, not crazy about their singer. I might get past it though because their music is excellent. The groove in Confessional knocked me out.
Aye. He’s also a very good songwriter. The 2nd generation of back metal that’s happening now is cool. They’ve refined the tropes of the genre and are allowing room for other influences atop the template; I like that. In another 8-12 years, we should start to hear some really exciting variations and permutations take hold.
You won’t be sorry. It’s rough and all, but you seem to be okay with that aspect of back metal.
The rhythm section on this album is also my favorite part. There are some fantastic riffs and great guitar playing, but it’s the crazy propulsive rhythms that make me spaz like bobcats on booze. And it turns out there’s a story behind that…
In the liner notes, the band explains that they recorded this very quickly, for very little money ($5000 was the budget). The guys were young, apparently still young enough for “booze is a food group, right?” to sound plausible. And they recorded the drums first, of course. When Chris Adler, the drummer, was newly drunk. Without a click track.
So that’s why the album has this peculiar lurching, raging feel to it: the drummer was soused and had no metronome. Everyone else was drunk too, so they just stumble-rushed through everything, pounding out each song with real abandon and fury, but now all infected with that slightly off-kilter sensation that started with the drums.
I truly believe the lack of a click track is the reason why this album is IMO so good, why it sets above and apart from everything else at the time. The lack of a click track was the little something that nudged them from good to greatness; the band needed that element of chaos within the order they created. It’s hard to trap lightning in a bottle twice tho, eh. The fact that they are talented songwriters and performers has kept them going and kept them atop the game, but all they’ve been able to do is add polish to their product; they’ve not yet been able to grime it up properly since this album, IMO.
I’ve been kind of bouncing off several bands the last few days trying to find something that worked for me. I quite like Immortal - Sons of Northern Darkness (maybe my favorite Norwegian Black Metal album so far? It’s up there at least), but wanted to break out of the Black Metal stuff.Decided I haven’t gone back to Sepeltura yet so I gave Arise and Chaos A.D. a listen. I am going to come back to these. I liked the flavor of them though. Sort of half thrash half death metal. Neither grabbed me hard like I hoped, but I found both to be enjoyable.
Tried Arch Enemy, based on Bo’s recommendation (I was going back through the thread looking for things I missed.)not bad. I listened to Burning Bridges, Wages of Sin and the latest one Will to Power. Like the new stuff decidedly less than the older stuff, and like their second singer (from Wages of Sin) better than the other two by a large margin (though I think I like the music on the Burning Bridges album with their first singer better.) But I liked Burning Bridges and Wages of sin a good bit. This felt like it was moving in the right direction for what I’m looking for.
Given that I was liking that pretty well and that’s kind of categorized as Melodic Death Metal I gave At the Gates another shot. I do not get why this band is so popular. I keep seeing things like “inspired a whole generation of bands” in reference to the album Slaughter of the Souls but…it’s boring. Clearly there is something about death metal that real metal heads dig that is passing me by still. I found it extremely repetitive and, sure, kind of melodic I guess, but not in a particularly interesting way. I don’t know what I’m missing. Maybe you had to be there?
So I did some more reading on Arch Enemy and saw that it was a supergroup of sorts with the guitar player from Carcass in it. I have heard a lot about Carcass and Heartwork keeps showing up on lists of essential death metal. Bo had warned me off it, but that was like a month ago at this point and, well, I like black metal now and didn’t then so what the heck.
Carcass might be my favorite Death Metal band, non Bolt Thrower category (I’m loyal.) Heartwork had everything that Slaughter of Souls didn’t. It had variety and dynamics and melody. I know it’s a kind of controversial album, but it still sounds hard as heck to me so I don’t exactly know why. I liked it so much that I went back an album and listened to Necroticism and THAT was great too! It’s never just a wall of sound. I think that’s what makes it work. Its loud and aggressive, but they make space in the music to focus attention one place or another. It’s not just waves of noise slapping you in the face. There is order in the chaos. I haven’t gone back further yet because they are apparently a little more gindcore-y and I haven’t decided to go down that road yet. But that’s my next step I think. Take a look at some genuine grindcore.
So that’s where I am right now. 2 death metal bands I genuinely really really like. I may even go so far as to call myself a fan of Bolt Thrower at least, probably Carcass too. I should probably listen to some more Death too. I feel like I would like them even more at this point, I was already liking them a little. I was thinking of listening to some more Thrash also. We will see where the weekend takes me.
In case anyone has suggestions or wants to point me in a direction or add something here is what I have on my “to listen to” playlist at the moment. It’s long sort of broken into genre as I can figure it:
Power/Symphonic Metal:
Manowar - Battle Hyms & Kings of Metal
Gamma Ray - Land of the Free
Dragon Force - Inhuman Rampage
Iced Earth - Something Wicked This Way Comes
Angra - Holy Land
Children of Bodum - Hate Breeder
Thrash:
Voivod - Nothing Face
Kreator - Pleasure to kill
Sepeltura - Beneath the remains
Testement - Practice what you Preach
Municipal Waste - The Art of Partying
Baroness - Red Album
Unsure how they got on my list:
Paradise Lost - Lost Paradise
Dead Cross - Dead Cross EP
Sarcafigo - Inri
Cynic - Focus
Obscura - Cosmogenesis
Orphaned Land - Mabool
Primordal - The Gathering Wilderness
Sodom - Persecution Machine
Metalcore
Hatebreed - Satisfaction is the Death of Desire
Grindcore
Napalm Death - Fear Emptiness Despair & From Enslavement to Obligteration
Terrorizer - World Downfall
Pig Destroyer - Terrifyer
Death Metal -
Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
Hate Eternal - I Monarch
Autopsy - Mental Funeral
Cannibal Corpse - The Bleeding &Torture
Gorguts - From Wisdom to Hate
Decapitated - Winds of Creation
Obituary - Slowly We Rot
Black Metal
Khold - Hundre Ar Gammal
Cradel of Filth - Dusk and her Embrace
Gorgoroth - Pentagram
Behemoth - The Satanist
Summoning - Stronghold
Tiamat - Astral Sleep (is this actually Black Metal?)
Immortal - Pure Holocaust
Dimmu Borger - Stormblast & Enthone Darkness Triumphant
Prog
Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood
Opeth - Deliverance
Atheist - Elements
Dream Theater - Images and Words
Meshugga - Destroy Erase Improve
Devin Townsend - Ocean Machine
Nocturnus - The Key
Isis - Oceanic
Folk Metal
Skyclad - A Burnt offering for the Bone Idol
Melechesh - Djinn
New Wave of American Metal
Machine Head - The More Things Change
Lamb of God - Ashes of the Wake
Industrial
Godflesh - Streetcleaner
Straping young lad - City
Ramstein - Sehnscht
Fear Factory - Fear is the Mind Killer
KMFDM - Nihil
White Zombie - Astrocreep
I took out stuff that I already listened to but it’s very possible I missed a suggestion. So don’t be afraid to re recommend something that you aren’t certain I saw. The thread has a lot of suggestions in it at this point.
Also, if anyone feels that a category should be fleshed out or if I am missing an important sub genre let me know. Lastly, if anyone knows about those bands that are on my “I don’t know how these ended up on my list” feel free to share. Sometimes I just dump bands on the list while reading something and then forget why.
Not quite sure where The Sword sit on the metal/hard rock continuum - I’ve heard them referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as Heritage Metal - but Warp Riders and Age of Winters are just good l oud fun albums. Ditto Orange Goblin, who are equally steeped in the 70s.
I am shocked.:eek:
I really thought I was the only one that saw that “same but different” thing, that exists there. For me it is truly ineffable, and everyone I’ve ever brought it up to said they didn’t see it.:rolleyes:
Now I know it’s not just me.
I’m not much of a fan. IMO they never quite get the songwriting down pat to produce a truly awesome, memorable tune. They do clearly have a style/formula tho that others love: they’ve had quite a long career now.
No idea; not a fan myself. Too much fucking melody.
Well, he played with Carcass for a bit, aye.
Indeed, their first album is nearly devoid of melody. Symphonies is somehwat more polished and features fairly standard and coherent song structures as well as ripping solos (fav of mine from back in the day). To be honest tho, I liked their post-17y-year-hiatus album, 2013’s Surgical Steel best of them all. It’s very polished and INSANELY fast. Finally the pace doesn’t have to slow down for the melodic bits, which come so fast they sound like brief riffs at times instead of melodic passages. It’s only real detriment is that it has an intro song, something I’m solidly against lately.
Good picks overall. Highly recommend Kreator’s 2nd wave tho, starting with Violent Revolution. As I’ve said, IMO Mille (and the band) got better with age.
I think you’ll like that Municipal Waste quite a bit. The Baroness album is my favorite of theirs, too; the album artwork ushered in a whole new style (and career for guitarist John Baizley).
This is still very hardcore-sounding. It’s good. It’s brutal and raw and direct. But IMO the band took a couple of albums to really hit their stride. By the time of 2003’s The Rise of Brutality they were a powerhouse, a real-life mosh pit generating machine of ferocious intensity. If you like what you hear I’d encourage you to keep going through their discography.
You should also check out Throwdown (a couple of links previous), Every Time I Die (2009’s New Junk Aesthetic was the best album I heard that year) and Nora - I Should Have Sent Flowers.
There’s a lot of sub-genres and branches that metalcore took, but those are some core metalcore bands. 
Good picks to start. I’ll start thinking about how to explain grindcore eh.
Good recs, Penfeather.
The Sword’s first album, Age of Winters is awesome, a heavy but fun romp thru snow in pursuit of vastly overmatched enemies. Gods is a tinge less fun but still very good. Warp Riders is a perfect album if you just remove Night City, which is as wretched a tune as ever graced a mid-'70s hard rock album.
Orange Goblin are a favorite of mine and don’t get near the accolades they often deserve. They play a boozy kind of stoned biker doom:
Orange Goblin - The Ale House Braves
Orange Goblin - Beginner’s Guide To Suicide
Orange Goblin - Acid Trial
Nope: not just you. I hear similarities in their twin guitars, their song structures, their vocals (altho not generally their lyrics), etc. It’s as tho both bands started from the same place but then subtly changed away from that point of singularity just a bit before straightening their trajectories out again.
For Cannibal Corpse “The Bleeding” is great but I would recommend “Kill” instead. (I personally prefer "Butchered at Birth and “Tomb of the Mutilated” but that’s because I was a teenager from western NY in the 90’s so hometown band syndrome)
One band I quite enjoy thar never gets the attention is DevilDriver. I thought Coal Camber was one of the better nu-metal bands (same singer). Plus how can you not love a band who turns country songs into Black/Death Metal.
In the same vein is HELLYEAH. Pantera crossed with Mudvayne…what’s not to love. I suppose it’s a little bit too much “redneck” metal for some tastes, but after some shots of whiskey if you crank “Drink, Drank, Drunk” something is probably getting broken my the house from getting rowdy (and I’m 40 so it takes something to get break stuff rowdy)
Ok, if we’re back to doom style again, I have to recommend Red Fang
If people are suggesting Doom while I wait for the Grindcore breakdown I am up for it. I like me some Doom metal. I had actually started an entirely separate listening list for Doom because my doom section got so long.
I’ll bump Orange Goblin and The Sword to the top of my list along with Down (which was on my Doom list next.)
If you recommend a Red Fang song, you have to link to Prehistoric Dog, because the video is the apex of Western Civilisation. It was all downhill for society after they shot that, we’d peaked.
Also I’m going to throw in Swedish desert/stoner metal Truckfighters: if you like drawling fuzzed out spacey riffitude, this is for you.
These guys rule. I watched both linked videos and like 3 others.
How about Okilly Dokilly? 
Grindcore.
Hmmmm. This has been harder to organize in my head than I had hoped but not harder than I had feared, thank Og. I’ll try and summarize the genre’s components and evolution in this post and then post links to songs in a separate post.
Grindcore is the ultimate punk-rock-style “fuck you” to the concept of Western pop music. But it didn’t start out trying to be.
Grindcore, musically, started from basically two things: trying to go faster than everyone else and trying to sound more distorted than everyone else. That’s the origin in a nutshell. Nothing fancy, no game-changing philosophy behind the music, no great moral convictions… just a bunch of punk rock kids trying to play faster and louder and angrier than anyone had every played before; it’s very much related to both powerviolence and thrash core in origin.
The fact that the result of that WAS game-changing, was a definite example of deconstruction of an art form AND that the people involved in creating it were smart enough to realize and understand that is a big reason why it continued and evolved. Today, you’ll find a lot of crossover with different metal genres musically, particularly slam. And there’s some commonality in elements of sludge, notably the vocals and the emphasis on ‘noise’.
Typical stuff in grindcore: highly distorted (usually through technique alone) vocals, distorted down-tuned guitars & bass, jackhammer drums loaded with blast beats, sometimes almost entirely blast beats. Pace of songs can often exceed 200bpm, although it’s also not uncommon for songs to be only a few seconds long. The vast majority of grindcore vocals are impossible to understand, with that being a kind of badge of honor among vocalists nowadays, I think.
Much of grindcore is categorized by the lyrical content or themes, despite the fact that about 0% of the words can be understood (or even recognized as words, a lot of the time). Thus you’ll see things labeled as goregrind (lyrical themes of gore, natch), pornogrind (porn), etc. Sub-genres can also be based on outside aural influences brought into the grindcore genre, such as electrogrind (electronic music elements), noisegrind (noise rock influences) and blackened grind (black metal).
So Napalm Death happened. Bolt Thrower happened. Carcass happened. Then, in America, Repulsion and Exhumed and Terrorizer and Anal Cunt happened. With grindcore solidly it’s own genre, Cephalic Carnage showed us all what it really meant was possible. The thing was, only a tiny number of people were paying attention (still true for the genre today, nearly 30 years later).
Mind you, it was a much derided, misunderstood genre at the time. It was so fucking brutal that it actually turned away a lot of punk rock kids, but so fucking short and in your face, like having a 5 minute football coach diatribe blasted at your face in just seconds, that it freaked out most headbangers too.
And then there was the humor. Anal Cunt in particular reveled in being as over-the-top as they could and Seth Putnam knew that their songs were largely incoherent bursts of noise so he took to giving their songs hilarious and outrageous names. To a lot of people, this suggested that grindcore was a “joke” genre, perpetuated by the untalented or the deranged for even more deranged and gullible audiences.
But it didn’t die. There was just enough product and just enough real thought being put into just enough grindcore that a 2nd generation popped up in the mid and late 1990s, largely focused lyrically on politics and social issues. That gave them ready audience for marketing, and since some of these guys could actually play and write and some of the lyrics were actually coherent screeds, they too began to exert influence, spreading blast beats all over the place.
The evolution of grindcore is a murky thing, with lots of crossover and borrowing from other types of metal, punk rock, electronic music and Europop. Today, grindcore is a wide, weird and wonderful world, ranging from truly disgusting and disturbing music to truly disgusting and humorous music to disturbingly catchy and humorously disgusting music.
Vocals range from demon frog to demon pig to demon to really angry person shouting to dear-God-what-the-fuck-is-that-a-person-making-those-noises? And as I said, it’s kind of a badge of honor that the vocalists are making those noises themselves, not using distortion pedals or harmonizers or whatever.
Drums are insanely important to grindcore, particularly the snare. If you like snare drumming, you’ll find stuff to admire in grindcore. In fact, just the sound of the snare, the actual aural quality of it, is important to bands, with most favoring a very dry, snare-less sound that cuts right thru the music but with most drummers trying very hard to distinguish themselves with different tones. The snare is also often featured prominently in the mix, so if you don’t like that sound, you’re gonna find a lot of grindcore annoying as hell.
Bass is also usually fairly prominent in the mix and is almost always heavily distorted.
The rhythm section in grindcore is usually tight as fuck, playing at insane speeds but providing a nearly-but-not mechanical template for the chaotic guitars and vocals. This allows the chaos to subside or coalesce for tension-and-release.
One of the things I like about grindcore is that it’s like the punk rock frontier of heavy music at the moment. As a commercial venture, there’s fuck-all to be made from the music, for the most part, so we’ve got a genre that’s been largely untouched by anyone that didn’t actually already like it for several decades now. There’s a strange sense of humor present in most of the songs; even goregrind is about evenly split between vomit-inducing disgust and laughter-inducing black humor. Pornogrind runs the gamut from violently misogynistic lyrics to “bom chikka wow wow” tongue-in-cheek cheekiness. There’s a lot of freedom within the genre and a lot of willingness in fans to allow that freedom, and I find that very exciting.
Oh, one of the conventions of grindcore is that abbreviations for censorious purposes are done with a lower case “x” instead of a period. Thus you’ll see Anal Cunt referred to as AxCx, etc.
I don’t know that I’ve done a very good job here; the genre is, to me, complex as hell, encompassing a wide variety of artistic goals and techniques, many of them so alien and strange to the generally accepted popular culture encapsulated by the term “music” that it can require quite a bit of intellectualizing to explain all of what is being heard and why.
But I think I’d boil my advice to appreciate grindcore down to several key points:
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Have a sense of humor. Being ridiculous is fine in grindcore, even encouraged.
-
Don’t be overly concerned with technical precision. While there are elements of grindcore that are demanding, for the most part it favors enthusiasm over exactitude.
-
Enjoy sounds much more than you enjoy words; words are simply mouth-noises to convey information of some kind, right?
WARNING:
IF YOU ARE ANYWHERE OTHER THAN COMPLETELY ALONE, ALL OF THIS MUSIC & VIDEO SHOULD PROLLY BE CONSIDERED BLATANTLY DISGUSTING AND OFFENSIVE!
SOMETIMES WORDS AND SENTIMENTS ARE CLEARLY ENUNCIATED THAT SHOULD PROLLY NOT BE BLASTED THROUGH A WORKPLACE OR, SAY, A CHILDREN’S PLAYGROUND!
SOMETIMES VIOLENT AND/OR PORNOGRAPHIC IMAGERY MAY BE DISPLAYED!
I DON’T WANT TO HAVE TO SPOILER THE ENTIRE POST OR BE BLAMED FOR THE POSSIBLY-DISAPPROVING LOOKS ON THE FACES OF PEOPLE NEAR YOU, EH!
Early grindcore. Bands that still perform this style are now sometimes referred to as classic grindcore or old school grindcore.
Bolt Thrower - In Battle There Is No Law - the whole 30 minute demo album
Napalm Death - Scum - This is the whole 33 minute album. You can prolly hear the S.O.D. influence clear as day there, I know I can.
With both of these albums, IMO the limitations of the studio equipment and the people behind the boards are both extremely detrimental to the presentation of this music; thank Og that live shows abounded and perceptive ears were everywhere.
Anal Cunt - Everyone Should Be Killed - 58 tracks with an average length of about a minute; it’s a long and largely unvaried ride. The fact that there are variations seems to somehow add to both the seriousness and the humor of the music, tho, IMO.
Assück - Anticapital - IMO the first political grind band; this album was a big deal.
Magrudergrind - Magrudergrind - modern political grind, this is their 2009 album (all 23 minutes/17 songs of it)
The band that IMO showed us all what that template made possible:
Cephalic Carnage - Exploiting Dysfunction
Then there’s death grind:
Pig Destroyer - Gravedancer - I should note that this band has grown and changed quite a bit since this song was recorded. For instance, they just added a bass player.
Benighted - Carnivore Sublime - playlist of the whole album by this French outfit is about 38 minutes. On this album you can hear some of the demon pig squeal vocals that are now a prominent part of grindcore (not presented as a historical example or anything, just noting that they’re there; this is their 2014 album after all).
You can immediately hear that the songs are much more complex than classic grind, as you’d expect from melding death metal with grindcore.
Goregrind:
Gutslit - Amputheatre - one of my 10 best listens from 2017, this band from India significantly upped the ante from their raw-but-fun debut.
Death grind/pornogrind:
Grind Of The Dead - Pussy Jamz
Pornogrind:
Teen Pussy Fuckers - Just Some Pornstars - serious pig vocals here
Teen Pussy Fuckers - Pigtails
Vaginal Penetration Of An Amelus With A Musty Carrot - Eyeball Peeler - you can prolly see why this band’s name is often abbreviated. Amazing pig and frog vocals tho.
Vaginal Penetration Of An Amelus With A Musty Carrot - Embryo’s Orgasm - very not safe for work video;
Note that lyrically pornogrind isn’t like watching porn set to grindcore. It’s often misogynistc as hell, sometimes disturbingly so even when presented as “joke-y”.
Groovy grindcore kind of combines a lot of those influences but emphasizes having some kind of actual headbang-able parts. Lyrical content runs the gamut from smut to gore to scat and more.
Piggy - Porcogore (14 tracks, 27 minutes) - a fav from last year
Grindzilla - Toshinquandon (15 songs, 32 minutes) - a fav from this year
Gutalax - Shit Happens - yes, every song is about feces; what else would you expect from a band named after a laxative? These guys put on brilliant live shows and are a favorite at OEF.
And here’s some more recent stuff just cause I like it:
Sewage Grinder - Solid Waste - 39 songs of crusty grindcore in 20 minutes
Brutal Sphincter - Analhu Akbar - deceptively named band; this brilliant 16 song, 31 minute album is 100% political in focus
Sarugutuwa - Namakubi - 12 songs, 35 minutes with some freaking amazing front-and-center snare drum work.
NAILS - Abandon All Life - okay, kind of a powerviolence/noise/grindcore outfit, I admit but they are IMO one of the most vicious, brutal bands around today, reducing everything to an incredibly loud, violent series of outbursts that happen at insane speeds. I love all 10 songs and 17 minutes of this album. It was a classic to me as soon as I heard it.
Wow, on preview that’s an off-putting shitload of music I just linked to. Sorry about that. ;)
Take your time, eh.
:smack: I botched the second Gutalax live show link.