That Metal Thread

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Sad to say, but a lot of it has to do with metal dying due to no real innovation. Back in the Day(tm) innovation meant that every few years you had some band or scene create something genuinely new, now "innovation" means putting something superficially novel into the mix with no real thought, like putting a didgeridoo in and aping other music genres, but since you have blast beats and a guy screeching in the background it's "black metal". Some just abandon that pretense and pretty much admit that they just want to recreate their favorite albums, but make them shittier.
Couple this with every retard being able to produce an album themselves with just a laptop, and you've got the sad state of affairs we're in where you just get flooded with absolute dreck. Granted, back in the day you also had a lot of dreck being released which is now completely forgotten, after all 90% of everything is garbage, but because everyone's bedroom being a studio nowadays along with the easy spread of information that the internet offers us, there's a much bigger flood of shit you have to shovel through to get to something which is even halfway decent.
In any case I've been listening to some epic doom metal. I've only been listening to old stuff I like for now, I'm really lagging behind when it comes to new releases, I mean I haven't even checked out last year's release by Atlantean Kodex yet.
 
Nocturnus gets a lot of praise mainly for their classic album The Key, yet it has always disappointed me how few people give them credit for their great contributions to early prog death.
 
ExciteDyke said:
Nocturnus gets a lot of praise mainly for their classic album The Key, yet it has always disappointed me how few people give them credit for their great contributions to early prog death.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=pt7tVSmkenQ
Click to expand...
Nocturnus is great. Mike Browning's probably my favorite death metal vocalist of all time. Have you heard the new Nocturnus album he put out last year?
 
Islamic Creampie said:
Bandcamp has been increasingly letting me down. Most of the stuff that gets pushed to the top of the list is generic throwback bullshit or whatever crap 20 Buck Spin is pushing these days. I'm finding myself really having to dig to come across something genuinely interesting on there these days.
Click to expand...
The bandcamp "users who like this also like this" algorithm is sort of ok and browsing users' collections can help, but their "promoted content" is only good for rage porn. I get better results browsing distro catalogs or surfing similar artists on Spotify, etc. I basically ignore anybody getting paid to write, and filter out the entire American west coast.

yoshitsune said:
Sad to say, but a lot of it has to do with metal dying due to no real innovation. Back in the Day(tm) innovation meant that every few years you had some band or scene create something genuinely new, now "innovation" means putting something superficially novel into the mix with no real thought, like putting a didgeridoo in and aping other music genres, but since you have blast beats and a guy screeching in the background it's "black metal". Some just abandon that pretense and pretty much admit that they just want to recreate their favorite albums, but make them shittier.
Click to expand...
Popular (and not-that-popular) culture has been badly self-cannibalizing for a decade or two, and I don't even know that metal has a particularly bad case of it. It's been "dead" a while and doesn't seem like it will get much deader in the near future. I will say it's telling that hipsters are copying bands that were uncool in their heyday, not the hipster metal bands that were getting hyped at the same time. Ultimately, I feel that the trouble can be traced to an overabundance of false metal.
 
I've posted about Titkolt Ellenállás elsewhere, but I might as well bring them up in the thread most appropriate.

Titkolt Ellenállás (Secret Resistance) formed in Békés around November 1993. Releasing their first cassette in 1994, the band initially played UK82-inspired Hardcore Punk with a couple of Oi!/RAC tunes thrown in for good measure, but tinkered with Crossover Thrash on the sophomore cassette. While metallic, the lads were still firmly planted in Punk territory. After signing a deal with Nordisc Records, the band had gone even further into Metal with the release of A "hatalom" emberei (The Men of "Power"), whose lyrics were a damning indictment of the communist rulers in Hungary and elsewhere in the Eastern Bloc. The music is reminiscent of The Exploited and Nuclear Assault along with Exhorder and Prong, but still not quite separated from their Punk roots:

And then came Feltámadás (Resurrection) where the band fully embraced Metal with their sound hearkening to '90s Judas Priest and Pantera:

The song "Kitartás!" sounds like "Death or Glory" by Holocaust with the main chords taken from the latter riff for riff, although to be fair, one of my favorite Metal songs of all time shamelessly lifted their chords from another band.

And, if you ever wanted to know where these guys stand politically, look no further than the first 40 seconds of this live concert:
 
So In Flames really re-recorded the entirety of Clayman, and it all sucks. What the fuck is this shit.
That artwork accurately reflects my mood when hearing this.

Anyway, I don't think Metal is quite dead yet, there are still quite a few quite awesome bands out there that put out great material. Last year alone had so many good albums...
 
It's only the 2nd of september and I'm already blasting Acid Witch, pretty fun death/doom band with a great atmosphere, especially on their debut release "Witchtanic Hellucinations"
 
Quorthon said:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZT32mu5d5Rw
I never get tired of this song. Anyone have some Pagan Metal recommendations similar to these guys?
Click to expand...

Temnozor, Kroda, some of the later stuff by the Polish band Honor, and Moonsorrow. You might like Finntroll, if you don't mind venturing really far into untrvvvve territory.

Finist was a folky white power power metal (yes, 'white power,' as in racialist, and 'power metal,' as in Helloween) side project of somebody in Nokturnal Mortum. They're widely regarded as a joke but just letting you know they exist.

They're not folk metal, but I'd always recommend Dub Buk and Astrofaes to anyone who likes Nokturnal Mortum (especially if you like their 90s stuff too). They were all kinda sibling bands from the same scene.
 
Last edited:
ExciteDyke said:
It's only the 2nd of september and I'm already blasting Acid Witch, pretty fun death/doom band with a great atmosphere, especially on their debut release "Witchtanic Hellucinations"
https://youtube.com/watch?v=vE7iQs23y6Ihttps://youtube.com/watch?v=pTvpz2Gphzshttps://youtube.com/watch?v=hzANQ3JvT90
Click to expand...
Razorback Records brought us some fine stuff in their heyday. Unfortunately they're apparently pretty much defunct as a label.

In Acid Witch's case I honestly prefer their new, somewhat softer sound.

NotNomad said:
My favourite Painkiller cover is the one done by Chthonic https://youtu.be/QbnHQlIXtOc
Click to expand...
The only other one I can remember is Death's and I don't like that one and this seem nice, so you win. Black/death metal covers of Priest/Maiden are kinda iffy imo...

Bandcamp Friday is tomorrow, so the artists get all revenue. Get some metal while preventing the child-molesting Communist Jews who control Bandcamp from taking their vig!

 
yoshitsune said:
Sad to say, but a lot of it has to do with metal dying due to no real innovation. Back in the Day(tm) innovation meant that every few years you had some band or scene create something genuinely new, now "innovation" means putting something superficially novel into the mix with no real thought, like putting a didgeridoo in and aping other music genres, but since you have blast beats and a guy screeching in the background it's "black metal". Some just abandon that pretense and pretty much admit that they just want to recreate their favorite albums, but make them shittier.
Couple this with every retard being able to produce an album themselves with just a laptop, and you've got the sad state of affairs we're in where you just get flooded with absolute dreck. Granted, back in the day you also had a lot of dreck being released which is now completely forgotten, after all 90% of everything is garbage, but because everyone's bedroom being a studio nowadays along with the easy spread of information that the internet offers us, there's a much bigger flood of shit you have to shovel through to get to something which is even halfway decent.
In any case I've been listening to some epic doom metal. I've only been listening to old stuff I like for now, I'm really lagging behind when it comes to new releases, I mean I haven't even checked out last year's release by Atlantean Kodex yet.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_uzMYp71ZYohttps://youtube.com/watch?v=vmh2BjVdJ-4
Click to expand...

This is mostly due to the fact that guitar music in general left the mainstream in the 2000s. Every type of metal had been well explored by that point, along with the rock music genre in general, and after that it faded away.

There isn't a great deal of innovative metal these days because there isn't a great deal of innovative rock in general. Guitar music was culturally dominant for about half a century (1950s rock n roll to 2000s indie), with more niche genres like metal accompanying that, but that time has been over for a while. All the classics of metal are still there, but it no longer features on the cultural landscape, in the same way that you don't hear a lot of 1970s style funk jazz anymore despite that being hugely popular in its day.
 
Real "innovation" is a subtle thing. It's the shifting movement of the genre's fundamental harmonic and melodic vocabulary. It's the way guys like Snorre Ruch wrote riffs and put them together. Like anything, it's got a lifespan.

Like yoshitsune said, innovation isn't this sort of inorganic, outside-in "lol whoa we combine black metal with shoegaze and Russian orthodox church hymns, isn't that crazy bro" stylistic bingo that happens when a genre is past its sell-by date and it falls into the hands of cultural tourists. Metal's just dead/dying, and that's fine, things die.
 
The fact any chump can grab a cracked copy of Fruity Loops (fuck FL Studio, crap name) and a few VSTis and churn out endless streams of trap, hip hop, pop, RnB makes it very appealing. Metal on the other hand, you seen what the level of play is these days? fucking shredheads from the 80s would struggle to even tackle some of that shit. A modern guitarist is going to be surrounded with legions of sweep picking teens, they have such a high bar to set themselves aside from the rest.

I think metal is going through a great phase right now, songwriting is becoming the main thing to push towards, no more chromatic 64ths for 3 minutes anymore, you need to actually make a song people will enjoy.
 
whogoesthere said:
The fact any chump can grab a cracked copy of Fruity Loops (fuck FL Studio, crap name) and a few VSTis and churn out endless streams of trap, hip hop, pop, RnB makes it very appealing. Metal on the other hand, you seen what the level of play is these days? fucking shredheads from the 80s would struggle to even tackle some of that shit. A modern guitarist is going to be surrounded with legions of sweep picking teens, they have such a high bar to set themselves aside from the rest.

I think metal is going through a great phase right now, songwriting is becoming the main thing to push towards, no more chromatic 64ths for 3 minutes anymore, you need to actually make a song people will enjoy.
Click to expand...

I'm fond of the current atmospheric death metal trend with Blood Incantation and Ulcerate among others, but they're drawing on Gorguts. The style has been around for decades but it's growing more common now because as you said endless shredding has become tiresome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p2XpoCm62M
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom