OSI has put out 3 terrific albums in the last few years. Jim Mattheos from Fates Warning and Kevin Moore, ex-Dream Theater, are the primary members and songwriters. Mike Portnoy also drums on the first two, although I prefer the latest, ‘Blood’, with Gavin Harrison from Porcupine Tree behind the kit.
Moore handles the vocals, not screaming at all, think more like Roger Waters, but maybe a bit more world-weary…
Occasional guest vocalist on each album, too. A bit electronic-tinged (Moore’s production tends that way), but overall awesome.
Enter the Grave is an excellent record without a doubt, but the track 100WD is simply epic. They do have a definate Metallica sound going on, but it’s not a total ripoff, more like early Meshuggah had the same thing going on but found their own voice. It’s hard to do thrash without kind of aping Metallica anyway. I expect Evile to only improve with time and both are solid modern thrash albums. Certainly better than Municipal Waste.
Sodom is amazing. They and Slayer are two of the only 80’s thrash bands to never go limp dick about their metal. Kreator would be better if Mille’s voice wasn’t so close to Jeff Walker’s Carcass or Steve Sousa’s Exodus sound of “angry demon puppet”, but musically they’re solid. Sodom is the reigning king of Teutonic thrash.
Amen.
Venom and Tears is the only album of Throwdown’s that I own or have ever heard as a hardcore punk friend burned it for me thinking it would be right up my alley. It’s really good and super heavy, but the alley this really goes down is actually about two streets down from mine (I’m at the corner of Dark Funeral and Isis/Pelican/Russian Circles generally) Still not bad for a rather metal take on hardcore, but it’s too hardcore punk lyrically for my tastes.
ETA - Dream Theatre is not thrashy or all that heavy. It’s middle aged dudes with instrument fetishes playing keyboard driven wankery. Of course YMMV, but recommending DT to someone mentioning Metallica and Megadeth is like recommending Boones Farm in a conversation about bourbon.
Aye, I wasn’t meaning that they were ripping anyone off, just that on EtG you can clearly hear a solid '80s-Slayer sound and influence, from the song structure to lyrics to the atonal solos.
On IN, that influence is replaced by a 90s-Metallica one. These guys are way to talented to need to rip anyone off.
I also hope and expect that they will improve, and I’m sure that with the addition of Joel Graham, we’ll hear another change in their sound with their 3rd disc.
I love Municipal Waste, btw, but let’s face it: they’re a party band. Their music is fast, fun, and all the guys are top-notch players and good songwriters. I mean, they aren’t the 2nd coming of S.O.D. or anything, but I never skip one of their songs when it comes up.
And really, I prefer Gama Bomb to either band.
See, I grew up on punk, so my to me lots of metalcore is awesome. I’ve really been liking the new deathcore stuff, tho, especially bands like Architects and Trigger The Bloodshed.
To be fair, lots of DT songs have parts that have a nice chunky feel to them. And the guys also have a fairly strong Zappa influence. But yeah, this is way more prog rock than metal, even if some songs or parts of songs are heavy.
Check out Constant Motion, for example. Excellent heavy prog intro, nice riffs, good chunk on the first verse, even the vox sound good, almost exactly like mid-80s Metallica.
Sure the chorus is lame, but it’s quick.
Then after a couple of verses, they morph into this excellent Zappa-esque guitar part at around the 4:00 mark, before bringing it all back around to the chunk for the finish.
The guys in DT are all awesome players, but to me they are too much like the bad parts of Rush, old Genesis, Marillion, Styx, etc. to get me to listen to much of their stuff: too much prog, not enough rock.
OTOH, I’ve had 2 GFs that loved them after I played a couple tunes, and that was way better than listening to native american flute music on our backpacking and kayaking road trips.
I too grew up on punk and I love it completely, but when I want hardcore I’m turning to something like Bullet Treatment or The Bronx, or H20, not cookie cutter mosh breakdown “Yelling about my friends and family” stuff. I love crossover-thrash too, but metalcore/deathcore/thrashcore stuff tries to hard to straddle both genres too much and waters down the better parts of both.
I read your blog by the way and fully plan on checking out Gama Bomb when I’m home. Sounds pretty good on paper.
Well let’s be fair here, I’d rather listen to an endless loop of DT than most of the Top 40 stuff my fiancee listens to, but you nailed it when you said that they have too much of the wrong parts of prog rock. Plus they look like complete tools, not that looks have any bearing on anything, I just watched a concert video of theirs this past Saturday and, well, they look silly. Like dudes who probably collect swords and think that Van Halen rules. Anyway…
Word on the street is that Mike Portnoy is going to be drumming for Avenged Sevenfold (kind of metal on the first two albums) on the new record and on the subsequent tour and that’s cool, the dude can drum his ass off, but for the record: I personally think it takes more than “heavy” to make metal. Porcupine Tree is a great example of heavy without being metal. Motorhead is heavy as fuck, but again, not metal. These are rock bands. Hell, Creed had some heavy sounding stuff and if that’s metal I’ll eat my Master of Puppets back patch. It’s not to say that metal can’t have it’s softer moments, or even it’s prog moments. Ozzy is metal, but listen to No Rest For the Wicked, most of those songs are really light and poppy. Opeth plays all sorts of stuff and still remains metal. Dream Theatre may have their heavier moments, but they’re not and never will be metal.
Yeah, I hear ya. I hear that complaint a lot actually, from both sides of the aisle. Metalcore has always been that way: it attracts and repels people because it’s a hybrid according to people’s tastes. [shrug] Different strokes for different folks.
And yeah, The Bronx fucking rules. With their last album they came dangerously close to Minutemen and Refused and The Clash in their ability to excel at whatever they try. If their next album continues the trend, their gonna be in my Top 10 All-Time Greatest Bands list.
Awesome, thanks! Thanks from Gama Bomb too! (hehe I wish I could say that legit)
I love PT and would kill for Lemmy if he asked, but I agree with your take on this.
Now please tell me you play drums and live in Vegas.
I liked the Megadeth song, the Testament stuff and the Blood Island Raiders. I’ve listened to quite a bit of what everyone’s been posting, and while I like a lot of it, it just doesn’t seem to grab me like the stuff I already know. I suspect confirmation bias, or nostalgia or both conspiring to make me feel that way.
I wonder if my tastes have completely changed as well. I gravitated towards grunge in the 1990’s, accepting that a lot of metal guitar work was indeed fretboard masturbation (while still maintaining a strong love for older Metallica, Megadeth and Pantera in addition to classic Iron Maiden, Sabbath, Judas Priest, etc…as well as being a Steve Vai and Satriani geek) and that the emphasis on the song was greater than on the solo…generally speaking…
…and after that I started liking some of the throwback bands like The Darkness, along with trashy pseudo-metal like Sevendust, weird metal/techno acts like KMFDM, Gravity Kills, etc…
…and now here I am, with no real current frame of reference.
Thanks for helping me try to find the 21st century version of the metal Grail!
I didn’t care for Solar Benediction, but Blind For All To See had the fuzzy guitars I like quite a bit. Not a big fan of their singer, though. I know, I know, tough crowd!
One is Al Cisneros, who was in Sleep back in the day, and currently also is in a band called Om that occupies a weird nether-region of metal, along with bands like Sunn 0))), Boris, Ocean, etc. that’s usually referred to as drone metal.
The other is, of course, Scott “Wino” Weinrich. He’s been around the metal underground forever in bands like Saint Vitus, The Obsessed and Spirit Caravan. He’s really been a driving force behind the music that’s evolved into stoner, doom, and desert metal.
Guitar and Chicago, sorry. Also if you’ve never heard Mariachi El Bronx hunt it down this very second and do yourself that favor. Matt Caughtran is the best vocalist, well, ever.
ETA - Kyuss is awesome for the, ah, foggier moments of one’s life.
Yeah, Portnoy is filling in for AS. He is apparently a huge fan of a bunch of bands and likes extremely heavy stuff.
I gotta disagree on the not metal part. The metalest (is that a word?) thing I have ever heard in concert was Panic Attack by DT on the Octavarium tour. I’ve seen a lot of bands* and Panic Attack live was just nuts. I though my heart was going to explode in my chest. DT is total metal when they choose to be. They can also go way prog. Just depends on their mood. My guess is there next album is going to be lighter and more prog than the last one.
FoieGrasIsEvil, if you like older stuff try Savatage. Their guitarist, who died a while ago, kicked ass. Also, if you can, pick up Into The Mirror Black (link)and Refuge Denied (link) by Sanctuary. Older school stuff but still kicks ass.
Slee
*Metallica on their first (metal up you ass), second, third and forth tours. Slayer a bunch of times. Ozzy a bunch of times. Sanctuary (the loudest concert I’ve been to next to the last DT show), Testament a couple times, Exodus, VoiVod, Venom, Pantera, Sabbath (Born Again tour with Ian Gillian, great show). Too many to list…
I mentioned Meshuggah upthread and while their newer stuff is probably a bit too extreme for suggestion their first album Contridictions Collapse is pretty thrashy as it’s their first and they still have a lot of Metallica in them. Choirs of Devistation isn’t really typical of them, but after a slower acoustic start they kick off into a perfect bit of thrash for really not long enough, but it’s still a very thrashy song and Meshuggah kicks ass.
Mastodon is also a bit heavy on the vocals at times and if you don’t like drums that are basically nothing but non stop fills they can get to be a bit weary, but since I’m thinking about perfect thrash, the end of Seabeast off of Levithan is nearly perfect. Also they lightend up considerably and aren’t trying to hide the prog anymore in the last two albums, Blood Mountian and Crack the Skye so those might be worth looking into as well. The song Divinationsoff of Crack the Skye is pretty good, minus the retardedly campy video.
I’d recommend Leviathan or Blood Mountain over Crack The Skye.
They have shorter, more riff & hook based songs, although there’s plenty of complexity to them. The stuff on CtS was okay, but ultimately I always find that I can’t remember any of the songs, even tho the album doesn’t suck while I’m listening to it. It’s that I don’t wanna waste my brain cells on remembering that the part from 2:10 to 3:43 and the part from 7:40-8:16 really rock in Tune X, I guess. Just gimme a 4 minute song that rocks that part out enough for me to want hit “replay” please.
ETA: I like the vox better before this album, when it was more Troy and less Brent.
Metal is essentially dead; in my opinion its barely even a shadow of its former self. Forget modern bands and check out early Voivod, specifically Killing Technology through Nothingface.
A couple samples from the album Dimension Hatröss:
Agreed. The earlier the album the better I like it when it comes to Mastodon’s oeuvre. Brent Hinds sounds like he graduated magna cum-laude from the Zakk Wylde School of Constipated Vocals. He’s better when he’s doing back up stuff for Troy or at least doing his own version of screaming instead of the new stuff.
Mastodon up to and including Leviathan is an awesome band. After that, they lost a ton of focus and intensity, which I blame on the near constant diet of acid that they’re on.
