Teach me to appreciate Metal?

Cafe Society
121

I liked Death: Scream Bloody Gore even though I can’t understand a word he’s saying. I may like it better because I can’t understand a word he is saying, I’m not sure. But after Possessed and the first Bathory album I’m glad for something that’s a little different sounding, and frankly a little more competent sounding.

That said, I didn’t hate Possessed, but I don’t think I’m keeping it. It really does feel like a poor man’s Slayer, and while that may be unfair I can’t shake it.

As for Bathory, I decided to take my jump forward in time suggestion and listened to Blood Fire Death, and THAT’S WHAT I WAS HOPING FOR WITH THE FIRST ALBUM! I’m not complicated, just eq the damn thing so that you can hear all the instruments! I may listen to more Bathory. I find them intriguing beyond believe even when I’m not crazy about the actual music.

122

I never liked heavy metal until about 20 years ago. It started off with just an occasional song I liked and seemed to expand. I still know nothing about metal or know most of the artists but I do enjoy listening to it now.

123

Yeah, it’s a joke or marketing mechanism for Slayer. They were not genuinely Satanic at all.

Tom Araya has talked about being Catholic, actually. Not sure if he is too serious about it or not.

Edit: Here it is. The lyrics are just words and do not reflect his belief.

It’s just a horror movie kind of thing. They are just being intense for the fun of it.

124

Maybe that’s it. When it’s obviously performance it’s just like any other type of performance.

Also, as a palate cleaner I put on the Ministry album that was recommended. 1) it’s awesome. 2) Trent Rezner was pretty clearly a Ministry fan huh?

125

So you are about to the late 80’s early 90’s in your progression. This is where metal kind of falls out of favor (speaking as someone who was a teen from 1990 to 1996). However I would recommend Pantera’s “Cowboys From Hell”, “Vulgar Display of Power”, and “Far Beyond Driven”. Also a band I haven’t seen mentioned is Danzig. I personally love their first three albums but to get a taste I recommend “Danzig 2 Lucifuge” and “Danzig 3 How the Gods Kill”. More bluesy hard rock than metal but one of my personal favorites.

126

I have Pantera loaded for the next time I need a change of pace, I am also considering Helloween.

Thanks for bringing up Danzig. I was considering them because The Misfits were another band that was a part of my teenage years but I wasn’t totally sure how his solo stuff fit in other than that it was supposed to be Metal.

I am going to give Black Metal a real genuine try again. I want to like it, but it may end up just not being for me. I might give mayhem another try from this side of things. Short term I think I’m diving into Florida Death Metal. I liked Death enough to keep heading that way.

127

My bold.

Cool! That’s my favorite Bathory album. One thing to keep in mind with Bathory in connection with black metal, is that he was early at going towards a more folkish or viking-metal vibe.

128

That ‘not really getting it’ is pretty normal. You’re listening to a niche genre that even proponents of the genre are conflicted about. You’re not outright dismissing it, and that’s awesome! Check out some newer stuff, and listen back on it in a while; You might still not like it, but you’ll see a progression, and might also see a regression in certain aspects.

129

To trivialize either RIB or Monty Python: No one expects Reign In Blood. I will not bother trying to enumerate it’s weapons, as it is a fool’s game.

The only thing I have to add is: Can you imagine your first exposure to this record being at a party in '87, when you’re already pretty stoned? I mean, you knew a little hardcore punk that was this hard, you’d heard Anthrax and S.O.D., but nothing this precise, this devastating. Then, they would go on to get better at it. Sometimes I think Seasons in the Abyss is my favorite Slayer record, but that’s still a few years on, when I was on the verge of being in the thrall of another band (more about that in a sec).

Yeah, Slayer’s pentagram business is kind of misleading, similar to how anyone who really listens to Black Sabbath’s lyrics isn’t going to have a high opinion of worshiping Satan. They might have a more graphic method of describing the subject matter than the Smithsonian Channel, but they’ve got more clever and erudite subject matter than a lot of really heavy Heavy Metal bands. As long as you understand that they feel they don’t need to explain that humans that torture other humans are bad, that should be understood among sane adults; they’re really not a very offensive band.
So, at this point I feel I have to suggest a band that might be too experimental, maybe confrontational/extreme for some to embrace their whole catalog, but if you can handle S.O.D. and Slayer, you can probably enjoy it. The Melvins came to my notice after the release of Lysol* (there were disputes about the name). If you like the slower aspects of metal, I can’t recommend Hung Bunny/Roman Bird Dog enough. To quote it’s blurb from Boner records for probably an excessive time, “Like watching dough rise.”. The drums get going at 7:55. Metal wasn’t meant to be played on the radio like pop songs, anyway. I still haven’t really heard anything heavier than that. Maybe slower, faster, de-tuned, more aggressive, but not by much. I’m still waiting for heavier, and noodling around to find the riff that might be myself. No luck yet.

They’ve got a LOT of releases. At least 25 studio albums. They’ll go everywhere. You like fast? Try Sweet Willy Rollbar or Honey Bucket. Don’t like controversial themes? No problem!
Buzz often constructs his lyrics from what appears to be truly unfettered streams of consciousness. That way, it doesn’t interfere with the sound, and if there’s a naughty meaning in the words, your own dumb ass subconscious provided them, and you might want to be ashamed. But, the limbs they’ll go out on are very, very long. If you’ve gotten this far, try Skin Horse on for size, and know by that the end of this song, the Weird haven’t yet turned professional in the Melvins’ catalog, but they’re thinking about it. They’re Butthole Surfers’ levels of odd when they want to be. In fact, an ex-Butthole Surfer is sometimes their bass player. It’s a glorious thing.

*Among the vast number of reasons I married my wife, it was her copy of Lysol that I first heard, and now own by virtue/hazard of being married in a community property state. If we ever divorce, it’s got as good a likelihood as any to be the possession we fight over.

130

At exactly three minutes and twelve seconds into this song I was fully sold on this band.

I was aware of The Melvins, never categorized them as Metal they always occupied the same space in my brain that grunge did, or maybe the same space as Ween…either way I never actually checked them out.

I’m in.

Lysol is what you suggested, and Houdini is the one who’s album cover I know. Good enough places to start?

131

Melvins are not metal; they are heavy. There’s a lot of bands like this: not really metal, but still heavy enough and rocking enough that metalheads know of and appreciate the band/music; they’re metal adjacent.

This is by no means a complete list, but I’m talking about bands/artists like: Melvins, Butthole Surfers, Suicidal Tendencies, Minor Threat, Sex Pistols, Van Halen, Frank Zappa, AC/DC, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Rush, Unsane, Helmet, etc.

Melvins are known and respected for their long-standing commitment to heavy music, Buzz’s awesome hair and their live performances.

That video, by the way, is part of a show called House of Strombo, where a very cool guy has bands play in his living room for a crowd of about 30. I highly recommend subscribing and checking out other shows; the Power Trip show a couple of months ago was amazing! Thrash the way it was in high school and college!

132

Speaking of metal adjacent, if you’re in the mood for trying the experimental side of things, I’d recommend Crimes by The Blood Brothers. It came out in 2004 and is one of my all time favorites. Wikipedia classifies them as post hardcore, but I always considered them something more like noise metal. The songs really perfectly walk that line of being avant-garde but also having some semblance of a hook (IMHO, of course). This record (along with other more traditional post-hardcore bands) was really my gateway drug for getting into metalcore which I still love today (August Burns Red’s most recent album is a total shredder IMO).

PS. sorry if I skipped ahead of Pantera in the progression, which should not be done, of course.

133

:smiley:

I am honestly a little frozen with too many choices right now.

I spent the day so far listening to the Melvins going back and relistening to Mercyful Fate (I am fully in love with King Diamonds voice) listening to the Bathory album Hammerheart (this no longer sounds like the previous band at all, but it was fun.) and listening to Celtic Frosts Morbid Tales, which after my flirtation with early Death and Black Metals feels like surprisingly comfortable and familiar territory. Other than getting a little bored with it before I got to the end Morbid Tales feels like it slots nicely into the Thrash stuff I had been listening to and enjoying (I have had Megadeath hooks rattling around in my head for days now) but also is seemingly one of the bridge bands to groups like Mayhem.

So, Pantera seem like a good next step as it keeps me from having to figure out where to go with Death metal. Morbid Angel probably?

Not sure. But Vulgar Display of power is up for the drive home.

134

Bwahahaha, that’s when the least metal part of the song starts. Glad you like them! :smiley:

Oh yeah, they’re two of my favorite records. I have always thought of The Melvins firmly as an offshoot of metal, unlike the others in his list. Even though they have some decidedly odd songs, their center seems to be Metal. If a Heavy Metal band can’t play around, not take itself seriously and experiment, the style is bound for slow death.

Of course, I’m also who thinks of Zeppelin as Metal, and Grunge as an offshoot of Metal more than anything else. So, I may be a bit of a heretic.

(ETA: familiarity has bred contempt for me with Pantera, they’re from a suburb totally surrounded by an adjacent suburb. There was a copy of Metal Magic in my possession as recently as a decade ago. Don’t listen to that, please.)

135

I figured you would appreciate the time stamp. I do enjoy weird stuff and they are wonderfully weird.

I liked Pantera just fine. They struck me as kind of the weird offspring of Motorhead and Metallica and there is not much I can complain about there. I do wonder if they aren’t mostly responsible for bands like Linkin Park though.

I do think maybe it’s time we had a talk about death metal vocals. I haven’t intentionally moved on to serious death metal but Canibal Corpse “Hammer Smashed Face” auto played after Pantera and… Those vocals are next level weird.

136

Hehhehe, I have probably 100-250 records you’d like, then, and more recommendations that I couldn’t afford at the time and haven’t tracked down yet.

If you think of them that way, don’t listen to that link. It sounds like a really bad KISS record mixed with something else. They had two more very different records after that before they settled on the style that everyone thinks of as Pantera. I can’t blame them for learning, changing and getting better, but they can’t blame me for having a memory.

I’d really like to blame Linkin Park on Korn, but Linkin Park is Linkin Park’s fault.

Hehehe, I still can’t really get into them, myself. I am pretty astounded at them, nonetheless. My best perception of them is analogous to what I think when people see a Jackson Pollock and say “My kid could do that!”. Yeah, but your kid didn’t do it, and Mr. Pollock did. I guess your kid wasn’t brave or crazy enough to put his ass on the line, huh?

Oh, and I see something has been mentioned in passing, but not really recommended. It’s long past the point where you need to actually explore some Hair Metal. Van Halen is the band that pretty much all Hair Metal bands want to be in their dark little hearts. I’m not going to recommend anything but Van Halen, because all the other Hair Metal bands I liked at the time honestly sucked in retrospect, and I don’t know of any great ones. Guns 'n Roses might have tried to redeem the genre, but their efforts failed in my estimation. Heck, after VH parted ways with David Lee Roth, they might as well have been Huey Lewis and the News themselves.

So, I know you’re overloaded with options at this point, but you should hear Everybody Wants Some (exquisite). If you have a radio and live in the US, you’ve almost assuredly heard Eruption/You Really Got Me (yep, a rock cover, but it’s pretty damn metal) and Hot For Teacher*, you may have not heard Ice Cream Man. A seriously silly band.

If you listen to other Hair Metal bands, that’s on you. I’ve done it, I don’t recommend it. All I learned there was cheap, a little trashy, and involved taffeta. Listen to early Cheap Trick records instead, they at least rock.
*For the life of me, I can find zero things wrong with this song. It is drum heaven. Lars wishes he was half the drummer of Alex, and Alex is no Dale Crover or Dave Lombardo. Also, it’s from the first new record my wife ever owned. I don’t know if it was a gift or not, but she calls me the hesher.

137

The soundtrack to Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.

I especially like Faith No More’s The Perfect Crime, Tommy the Cat by Primus, and Go to Hell by Megadeth.

138

Heh… Raining Blood is what I crank up to max volume whenever the kids’ devices are far too loud and they’ve been told twice. I’m starting to suspect they like it.

139

As a guitar player I have heard a lot of Eddie Van Halen, I have views. He’s enormously talented but has no restraint and will ALWAYS plays 4 notes where one would have worked. I find him hard to listen to the way I find people likeYngwei Malmstein hard to listen to. I have tons of respect for Van Halen but it rubs me the wrong way a bit. I might tolerate him better if he wasn’t VAN HALEN and I wasn’t a guitar player. Dunno. That said, I have really only heard the hits. I’ll give a full album a shot.

Moving forward, I feel like maybe I kinda get early death metal at least. Other than Hammer Smash Face I haven’t really listened to anything by the later bands. But I gave Morbid Angel a listen and it’s fine but it isn’t really doing it for me.

I also went back to the “stuff I liked” playlist that I made and the stuff that grabs me the most is the Big 4 Thrash stuff. I suppose this should not be too much of a surprise. It has more teeth than Judas Priest but hasn’t thrown the idea of actual songs out the window yet the way that Morbid Angel or Possessed seems to have. I still enjoy Death, they are pretty fun (Scream Bloody Gore and Leprosy are on my liked list at this point), but again, they are writing songs not JUST being loud and fast. I hate to keep coming back to Slayer comparisons, but they are the only ones I have listened to so far that seem to be able to strike the balance between all out aggression and actual song writing. Not that I have listened to a ton. I’m open to suggestions.

On the Black Metal side I do keep coming back to Bathory Blood Fire Death. I can’t say if I specifically like it or not, but I do find myself wanting to listen to it. Surprisingly the same is true of Darkthrone A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Again, saying that I like it is wrong. I finish listening to it and I need to put on David Bowie or something sort of poppy to balance myself out, but I keep coming back to it so clearly something is there. I’ll keep at it and maybe try the Satyricon album Plumpudding linked too. Going slow seems to be the ticket here.

In the mean time, I think I will head in the direction of Doom for a bit using the Post Bo put up as a guide. I’ll probably listen to St. Vitus Born too Late and the Kyuss album Bo linked to. I may have time for more, depending on things.

140

Doom is a much appreciated change of pace. I’m feeling like I’m firmly on familiar musical ground here. It makes for good background music too. Had to so some paperwork today and put together a list of Doom Metal to listen to and it was perfect accompaniment. I wasn’t doing super close listening but I felt like I enjoyed each band a little more than the previous. I listened to, in order

Saint Vitus - Born Too Late
Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus
Trouble - Psalm 9 (which has a killer cover of Tales of Brave Ulysses my favorite Cream song)
Kyuss - Blues for the Red Sun which I really dug. And it turns out that they eventually turn into Queens of the Stone age, a band I used to dig quite a bit in college… Oh and their bass player was in the Dwarves! Well heck that is awesome and surprising.

Next up are Sleep and Electric Wizard. I am also realizing that when I was in my band we were trying to make Doom metal we just didn’t know it. But we more or less wanted to sound exactly like Kyuss, we just didn’t know they existed. Also, we were not close to this good. Interesting stuff.