I was listening to my playlist of stuff i wanted to come back to on shuffle last night and Fintroll came on. They are so great. The more I hear the more I like them.
Also, Google apperantly knows that I like High On Fire because I woke up with a Google alert on my phone informing me that they just dropped a new album. So, that’s exciting too.
It’s only tangentially related to the thread but I spent most of the day reading this article about Andrew W. K. and the embedded links and… It’s been a fascinating and fun read.
You all may know about all this already but if you don’t it’s a crazy fun ride.
heh - coming in way late to post:
Yeah, dude.
Yes, yes, you did.
I just dropped by to point out that:
Soulfly just dropped a new album and it has a track on it that is probably the best Sepultura song since 1996 or so. Why do I say that? Well, if you don’t know, Soulfly is…kind of the Sepultura of today. It contains two members of classic Sepultura, including the original(and best) singer.
Anyway, it’s free to listen to the GREAT track on youtube.
Listen to this one with headphones and appreciate how great Soulfly can be sometimes.
Oh, awesome! I have heard some Soulfly on the xm radio and have liked them. I didn’t realize they were Sepultura. I thought Sepultura was still around.
Edit : I did a complete discography of Sepultura up to Roots listen a few weeks ago that I have been meaning to post about but we just put an offer in on a house around that time and… Life got busy.
No, I was too confusing.
Sepultura is around, but there have been changes. It’s at “Roots” that you can more or less stop listening to Sepultura because Max Cavalera left the band.
I really kind of think that Soulfly became more like Sepultura at that point and it is really is a matter of naming rights. Soulfly has been kind of hit and miss, but a lot better than Sepultura the last 20 years.
My biggest beef with Soulfly (at least the three first albums, I lost interest after that) is that if you’ve heard one song, you’ve more or less heard all of them. Things got pretty samey.
Btw, NAF, I believe you’ve graduated! Ask Bo for your diploma.
I think The Bleeding is the most famous album from Cannibal Corpse, though. It’s kind of a classic.
I think Max got a bit lazy and repetitive and the albums went up and down in quality.
The latest, Ritual, though…is their best since their first one. Can you believe we now have 11 Soulfly albums? You can now put together a full album of instrumental tracks.
There is no graduation, only a continuing education program. 
I think that after months and months of education and preparation, NAF, you’re ready for Metalocalypse.
I was watching something today and I realized that it presented me with a good opportunity to revisit some things I wrote about CMVs. I wrote that I was able to make great sense out of them from the standpoint of artistic choice when I began to think of the singer as playing the role of a demon, like a musical actor. Metal in general makes a lot of sense IMO when viewed this way: it’s theatrical, a purposeful presentation.
Sam Johnson is a voice teacher; he makes IMO excellent reaction and analysis videos and he either enjoys or simply isn’t put off by metal. He brings a very informed and professional attitude (his concentration is evident when you watch him watch/listen to stuff) and I’ve learned a lot from his videos.
Anyway, about a month ago he did a video that I just got around to today where he reacted to Devin Townsend performing Kingdom. I’ve seen the video before, so it was great to watch Mr. Johnson as he saw/heard it for the first time: Voice Teacher Reacts to Devin Townsend - Kingdom - YouTube
But what really struck me wasn’t how he kept pointing out that Mr. Townsend was a very good vocalist using good techniques in both clean and dirty singing, it was how he also kept noting how every note was being sold and sold hard with facial expressions and even whole body stances. Devin Townsend was acting as if the notes were a strain, in order to better convey the emotions and content of the lyrics and music. It was theatre. Purposeful presentation.
Hey all
I wanted to give an update now that it’s been, not quite a year, but almost, since I decided I wanted to learn about metal. Partly because, I finally got around to listening to Death’s discography (I’m a fan!) and partly because I hate it when people just let these threads go and never update. So I saw Possessed released a new album and, it’s good, and I got to thinking about how inpenetrable I found their first album, then gave it another listen and didn’t even find it to be all that extreme. I realized my ears might have adjusted and went back and relistended to stuff and figured it was as good a time as any for an update.
So, since we last left I went away from listening to metal for a while. Several new hop albums came out, and I went on a deep dive into the bass players of Motown for a while, but even when I was not specifically listening to Metal the following bands seemed to have stuck in my regular rotation. 1)Bolt Thrower, 2) Panopticon, 3) Carcass, 4) Amon Amarth.
If you are surprised by this list, so am I! Not Bolt Thrower so much, but honestly of the above list Carcass is probably my favorite band and not by just a little. I listen to Heartwork and Symphonies of Sickness… Once a week? Each?
In fact when I listen to other Death Metal if I don’t like it the reason is usually because it’s either not enough like Carcass or not enough like Bolt Thrower and I put them on instead.
For a bit I thought my liking Carcass, in particular Heartwork, might mean I would be into other Melodeath, this is hokw Amon Amarth ended up back in my life. They are just full on fun and no longer sound so weird. They are theatrical but in a good way. It just took a minute. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to like much other Melodeath much. At The Gates I still don’t get at all.
On the other hand, I finally groked Opeth and really really have enjoyed listening to Death the last few weeks. Though it fails to be Bolt Thrower it’s pretty awesome. In particular I’m liking Human. I also really like some of the Black Metal that I found off putting at first. Mayhem, just gave them another try a few days ago and was surprised at how much more accessable they seemed. I find myself listening tok Emperor and Immortal a lot too. Dark throne still does not click. Not for lack of trying.
I have also decided I really don’t like Metal core. Like… At all. Feels very formulaic. Just like everything I disliked about NuMetal but without the turntables to at least make it interesting. No thank you.
Bands I still theoretically like but don’t find myself listening to as much as I would have thought 1)Mastdon. Turns out while I REALLY like Leviathan, I don’t care for the rest as much. 2) Slayer. Nothing wrong with them at all. I love them every time I hear them, but they never rise to the top of my brain. 3)Between the Burried and Me. They get a little exhausting to listen to after a while. 4) Megadeath. The band I figured I would listen to most back in September but I don’t think I have at all. Thrash in general is just not calling to me right now. Not a dislike, but it’s not grabbing me. 5) Sepeltura. My favorite band I never listen too. From their debut up to roots I like literally all of it so much and will happily tell anyone who asks how good they are, but I never put them on. No clue why.
Also, I still don’t get the full on indecipherable singing. I want to like Suffocation, for example, but the vocals keep putting me off. Same with Cannibal Corpse. Especially after I saw the youtube video of the bass clarinet cover of Hamer Smash Face. Can’t get down with it though. I don’t have the problem with the high pitched vocals I can’t understand, or growly stuff like Nile does. Only the deep pig grunts. Dunno. Maybe that will change too.
So, that’s the update. Thanks again to everyone for opening these doors.
Awesome that you came back and an equally awesome post.
FWIW, I rarely listen to a single album or band anymore except for the first time I hear it. When I get a new album, I’ll play it all the way thru while I sit and listen, but after that it’s usually just on shuffle with the other 2300 albums.
OTOH, some really kick-ass albums get extended play as the default audio setting in my car (meaning I put the CD in the player and leave it there, then I just let my phone charge instead of being the music library). That’s why I’ve heard Suicidal Tendencies’ 13 approximately 87,942 times (over 8 months in the car), Doctor Octagon’s Moosebumps over 100,000 times (approximate) (14 months) , Waco Jesus’ Sex, Drugs & Death Metal about 66,666 times (7 months), etc.
For news: Amon Amarth just released Berserker; it totally fucking rocks.
I’ve bought a bunch of new music recently, but it’s almost all very obscure bands playing a very tooth-rattling, twisted kind of grindcore/death metal/slam. The more extreme stuff I listen to, the more other stuff just bores me, I find, so I keep listening to more and more extreme, heavier, denser music. Same thing happened to me with jazz once I dove into hard bop properly, come to think of it. 
OK, so I’ll lean in a bit and continue to push towards Max Cavalera. He was the singer of Sepultura, but after he left, he started Soulfly. And the truth is, Soufly is the real Sepultura these days. It continued the natural evolution I think Sepultura was on and they have (mostly) improved since 1996 or so when they began.
Thanks! I’ll give it a listen.
Sadly, I think part of the problem is that you were “in high school in the late 90s”. I graduated high school in 1991, so I was fortunate to have been basically raised on classic hard rock and metal all through my formative years - AC/DC, Anthrax, Black Sabbath, Dio, Judas Priest, Megadeath, Metallica, Mötley Crüe, Motörhead, Napalm Death, Ozzy Osbourne, Queensrÿche, Slayer, Van Halen, etc.
Yes, to a certain extent, some of this music does conjure up “sports montages” and “rad dudes” waiting for their parents to go away on vacation in some 80s film.
What I found was that when I went off to college, most classic metal had fallen out of favor and was overshadowed by “grunge” (Alice in Chains, Soundgarden) more “industrial” metal (Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Stabbing Westward) or hybrid genres with “nu” or “core” in the name. (Disturbed, Deftones). And a lot of those 90s nu-coremetal bads sucked real bad (Limp Bizkit).
I can’t really speak to the harder and more obscure “death metal” genres.
Yeah, don’t take it too hard that you can’t get into Dio’s solo stuff. I listened to it at the time, and learned a bit of it to play in metal bands a the time, but I never go back and listen to it now. So, I’ll go give it a listen, now…
(Listens to a couple of solo Dio songs to see why it never drew him back)
Wow, this is just the epitome of boring ass metal. When it’s slow, it just plods. There’s absolutely nothing enjoyable about the riffs. I’m actually offended by the lame synth sounds. The lyrics are just word salad, but they’re in an arrangement to try to imply meaning that just isn’t there. Vivian Campbell’s solos and leads try to give the songs some excitement, but there’s only so much a lead part can do with these plodding tracks. I’m three songs in and now I’m just fast forwarding to the solos. I remember these forgettable songs all too well. I’m gonna go listen to “Mob Rules” and try to forget them again.
Sorry Dio, your time with Sabbath was [DEL]wonderful[/DEL] pretty damn good, but I just can’t enjoy your solo records. NAF1138, I think you’re just using your ears here.
I can not begin to tell you how happy this post made me. People love Dio so much that I felt like a jerk for not liking his stuff
Ronnie James Dio was a badass motherfucker. When Holy Diver cam out, we all glommed onto it because a) it was Ronnie James Dio, b) it didn’t totally suck (i.e. it was definitely “metal” as we understood the term back then, c) the sword and sorcery imagery was cool, d) the lyrics seemed deep if you didn’t listen too closely, and e) the phrase “holy diver” just sounds awesome.
I agree that by today’s standards it is plodding & one-dimensional but the performances are all good, including RJD’s vocals and it does have iconic status because it was his first solo album and, again, it didn’t totally suck.
Hot damn. Just as I wrote about how Darkthrone doesn’t work for me they release a new album that is fully awesome. Sort of a blackened Doom metal thing. I dig it. Not really Black Metal but not really not.