The Metal / Rock Music Discussion Thread

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RUSH said:

"Ambient Black Metal" is a thing?

That's the best way I can describe it.

[YukiHerz]

Growing up i listened to my parents' music in vinyl and cassette, though neither of them actually listens to metal, my father is more into Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, E.L.P. and other great musical projects, my mother has always been more of a melodic rock/mostly ballads kind of person, the first time i enjoyed metal was when i found a copy of Rhapsody's Symphony of Enchanted Lands.

I tend to jump between different genres, if i had to list the bands i most listen to, they would be Gloryhammer, Whispered, Barren Earth, Versailles, Pantera, Black Label Society, Iced Earth, Amaranthe, Rhapsody, The Unguided, Jupiter, Kamijo and Galneryus, all of those spreading wide into a large variety of genres and "mixing experiments", and i'm sure i'm missing a few.

Whispered's Tsukiakari from Metsutan is probably my favorite song of this year.

[Tracer]

YukiHerz said:

Pantera, Black Label Society

Attaboy. Black Label Society was the first concert I ever went to. Shot To Hell tour.

[Budoka]

I'm basically an extreme metal junkie. Be it speed, thrash, death, black or folk metal, chances are that if a band is even remotely competent and recognizable it's going to be hard for me to get tired of them.

[Koko Ricky]

I really enjoy a strong atmosphere, be it the warm 80s production of NWOBHM or the blasphemous grime of early death/black metal. Darkrthrone, Morbid Angel, Celtic Frost, AngelCorpse, Angel Witch, Diamond Head, Motörhead, etc. I also enjoy Sunn 0))), who some have written off simply because they don't rely on vocals, drums or traditional rhythms. They play at a snail's pace, more interested in establishing ambient moods than playing riffs. It's calming.

[Kontra Kommando]

http://www.ticketfly.com/event/1170827-venom-inc-necrophagia-brooklyn/

I will be at this show.

GoatLord said:

MegaDETH has more depth to their riffs, which I like. Metallica is a bit too generic for me. I mean, both bands are generic but Metallica bores me. Plus James' voice is just awful, truly awful.

Moreover, Dave Mustaine was a big reason why early Metallica was as good as it was.

Megadeth > Metallica

[Tracer]

I like Metallica and Megadeth both. Megadeth is definitely heavier, though.

But there are more songs by Metallica that I like than there are by Megadeth.

[GooberMan]

There's a whole lot of "Get off mah lawn" in this thread. So I'm just going to copy wholesale a post I made on my Facebook in early December last year.

Inside this following is mentions of albums that are not metal, alongside all the metal stuff. I regret nothing. In fact, I wish I had a better way to hear new non-metal music than I currently do.

The best new albums I listened to in 2015 (and others of varying quality)

My Year in Spotify page tells me I listened to 55,000 minutes of music this year. Sounds about right. There’s lots of talk these days about how streaming services aren’t paying the artists enough, but for my €10 a month a good 2/3 of that has to be paid out in artist royalties using the €0.004 per stream standard model (with the other 1/3 going to administrative costs at Spotify). Maybe they should bump that up to €0.008 and increase the subscription fee. But that still won’t solve a shitty record company giving shitty rates to their artists for digital streams.

Given that I’m in the increasing minority that still buys physical releases, I have to say - having immediate access to new releases on Spotify has increased the number of albums I actually buy. Back in Straya, it was pretty much bands I already knew and back catalogue purchases when I walked in to a store. These days, it’s queuing up purchases on Amazon and buying a bunch in bulk every month. I still haven’t bought every album I want to this year. There’s been a number of fantastic releases... If you’re in to metal. Again, I face the problem where I know how to get good metal recommendations, but for any other genre I’d have better luck performing a vasectomy on a rabid bear.

So. With that rambling out of the way, here’s my usual unsorted list of Good Shit(TM) and other honors of assorted quality for some of the new albums I listened to this year. There’s still plenty that I just haven’t gotten around to listening. 2015 really has been a solid year.

Other bands, keep trying until your albums are as good as these

• John Carpenter - Lost Themes - Yeah, the movie director teamed up with his kid and made a very solid album of music that could have been the soundtrack to any given Carpenter flick. Good stuff.
  
• Damian Cowell’s Disco Machine - Humphrey B. Flaubert goes completely unmasked and drops an album that stands right next to TISM’s best. I backed this one when he was crowdfunding it (likewise with his previous DC3 album), but I wasn’t expecting it to come out as good as it did.
  
• Marilyn Manson - The Pale Emperor - Manson remembered what mood does to his music. By hiring a completely different songwriter. Easily the best Manson album since Holy Wood.
  
• The Gentle Storm - The Diary - Arjen Lucassen + Anneke van Giersbergen. I’d say “nuff said” but that means nothing to a good 90% of my friends list. Symphonic progressive metal at its best.
  
• Alkaloid - The Malkuth Grimoire - Technical death metal supergroup. The song “From A Hadron Machinist” might be my favourite of the year.
  
• Barren Earth - On Lonely Towers - The Amorphis heritage really comes through, but that’s not a bad thing. Quality melancholic death/doom metal.
  
• Leprous - The Congregation - This one was actually a bit of a grower for me, I had to switch right off and listen to it on a ride from Helsinki to my home for it to click. Very rewarding prog album that sounds like nothing else out there.
  
• Failure - The Heart is a Monster - Killer crowd-funded alt-rock album from a band that used to hang around with Tool back in the day (I believe Maynard encouraged them to reform and make another album). They don’t make music like this any more, mostly because it’s not the mid-to-late 90’s these days.
  
• High On Fire - Luminiferous - Ball-stomping sludge. Get it up ya! This album will increase your testosterone levels to He-Man proportions. If you don’t immediately want to drink beer and get in to fights when you press play on this one, you’re doing it wrong.
  
• Chelsea Wolfe - Abyss - Electro-metal thing that just happens to be rather fucking good.
  
• My Dying Bride - Feel The Misery - There’s a pattern of old trailblazers releasing solid albums this year. And this one is no exception. Unleash your inner teenaged goth girl and get depressed to this one.
  
• Gloryhammer - Space 1992: Rise of the Chaos Wizards - This should realistically be in the Blue Ribbon Cheese category, but quite simply I have not heard a power metal album as enjoyable, solid, and just plain fun as this in a very long time.
  
• Eagles of Death Metal - Zipper Down - Sure, now you all know them. Yeah, I would have been at that concert in Paris if I lived there. They do put on a good live show (even though I’ve never seen Josh Homme perform live with them once). And this album is much better than their previous one.
  
• Between the Buried and Me - Coma Ecliptic - Almost a break in style for them, but still sticking to prog. Worth listening to if you weren’t too pleased with their older work.
  
• Satan - Atom by Atom - Holy shitsnacks. That’s all I can say. If you like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, these guys were kicking around at the same time doing a similar thing. And this album is the kind they say “career best” about.
  
• Enshine - Singularity - Oh my. Melancholic death metal painted with the kind of cosmic grandeur the album cover suggests.
  
• Killing Joke - Pylon - Another one of those genre-defining and ridiculously influential bands from back in the day release a killer album. Prepare to put this one on loop and be just as critical of the world as their lyrics are.
  
• Avatarium - Girl with the Raven Mask - Doom metal royalty combined with the kind of female vocal style that shows just how lacking in female vocalists the scene really is. The “I can growl like a bloke” or “I wish I was an opera singer” styles really seem inadequate next to Avatarium.
  
• Panopticon - Autumn Eternal - I don’t think this is quite as successful as last year’s Roads to the North, but it’s still a very solid album worthy of looking up to. American progressive bluegrass melodeath metal.
  
• Cosmic Psychos - Cum the Raw Prawn - Australian grandfathers of the Seattle grunge scene release a new album. And it kicks quite a lot of ass. The single most Strayan album I’ve listened to in a long time. Fuckwit City should be the anthem of a generation.

Token “Nordic Metal Band” Album

• Amorphis - Under the Red Cloud - If anything, Amorphis have been nothing but consistent over the last decade. Another solid release for their already solid catalogue.

Mid Life Crisis of the Year

• Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase. - It’s like he finally realised. And then said to his bandmates, “Well, chaps, I really did rather bollock up Fear of a Blank Planet, didn’t I? Fuck it, let’s go and do it right this time.” This quite honestly might be the best album he’s ever put out.

Blue Ribbon Cheese

• Visigoth - The Revenant King - These guys are about 30 years after their time. Quality mid-80’s style metal. One of the songs literally sings about playing D&D. Creature of Desire ranks as one of my favourite songs of the year though.
  
• Sigh - Graveward - Old school Japanese band still killing it. But cheesey? Well, it sounds to me like Finnish-style melodeath mixed with J-Pop. Try the track The Tombfiller.

Hail Satan!

• Ghost - Meliora - Or, as they’re otherwise know, Blue Oyster Cult with Satan. The best songs ABBA have released since, well, Ghost’s Opus Eponymous. Worth seeing live multiple times. They might even pop up in Grammy nominations this year, that’s how mainstream they’re getting.

(Note: Ghost did in fact go on to get nominated for a Grammy - and win.)

Disappointing, But Not Rubbish

• Riverside - Love, Fear, and the Time Machine - Its high points are really quite high (Under the Pillow, Time Travellers) but a lot of this album is just okay to me.
  
• Infected Mushroom - Converting Vegetarians II - Likewise. There’s some songs I really love on this (Zoan Zound fills me with joy) but a lot of it just gets me from one song to the next. Unlike CV1 which is just plain indispensable and everyone should own a copy of it.

Go Home Record, You Are Drunk

• Iron Maiden - The Book of Souls - Actually, this one is legitimately drunk. I put the album through a tempo increase filter (one that doesn’t increase the pitch, no chipmunks here) and it turned the album from 90 minutes of meh in to 60 minutes of great Maiden. Who the hell told Maiden to slow down?
  
• Faith No More - Sol Invictus - I don’t know. This album really didn’t do it for me. There’s a standout moment or two, but it’s far from the best Faith No More have put out. At least it’s still better than Album of the Year.

Stuff I still need to listen to properly/at all

Tribulation - The Children of the Night
Florence + The Machine - How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (rather good live too actually)
Wilderun - Sleep at the Edge of the Earth
Goatsnake - Black Age Blues
Myrkur - M
Year of the Goat - The Unspeakable
Tame Impala - Currents
The Chemical Brothers - Born in the Echoes
Grift - Syner
Duran Duran - Paper Gods
Disclosure - Caracal
Queensryche - Condition Human
The Black Dahlia Murder - Abysmal (which actually sounded more Gothenburg melodeath than their older metalcore style...)
Dead to a Dying World - Litany
Ares Kingdom - The Unburiable Dead
Nechochwen - Heart of Akamon
Swallow the Sun - Songs from the North
Conjure One - Holoscenic
Caligula’s Horse - Bloom (these guys are from Brisbane)
Mutoid Man - Bleeder
Horrendous - Anareta
New Order - Music Complete
VHÖl - Deeper than Sky

[joe-ilya]

No rock discussion? :(

Oh well, I do like metal that sounds like RATM's first demo album, Metallica's first two albums, Suicidal Tendencies' first album, Pantera's first three albums and many early Megadeth albums.

I'm having trouble finding more metal albums like these.

[MistAche]

GoatLord said:

I really enjoy a strong atmosphere, be it the warm 80s production of NWOBHM or the blasphemous grime of early death/black metal. Darkrthrone, Morbid Angel, Celtic Frost, AngelCorpse, Angel Witch, Diamond Head, Motörhead, etc. I also enjoy Sunn 0))), who some have written off simply because they don't rely on vocals, drums or traditional rhythms. They play at a snail's pace, more interested in establishing ambient moods than playing riffs. It's calming.

Have you heard Axis of Advance?

[Tracer]

GooberMan, great response! I was pleased to see High On Fire included. Perhaps you are alsl familiar with Sleep or Om as well?

Also...any Mushroomhead fans here?

[Tracer]

Here are my metal favorites, sorted by genre:

Thrash

•Metallica
•Slayer
•Megadeth
•Testament
•Sodom
•Overkill
•Exodus
•Lamb of God
•Nevermore
•Sanctuary
•Sarcofago
•Witchery
•Depremacy (local band)


Doom

•Black Sabbath
•Yob
•Bongripper (instrumental band)
•Sleep
•Sheavy
•Coffinworm
•High On Fire
•Om
•Kyuss
•Windhand
•Black Cobra
•Electric Wizard
•Candlemass
•Solitude Aeturnus
•Witchcraft


Industrial-ish

•Slipknot (MFKR, Self titled and Iowa)
•Mushroomhead
•Static X
•Rammstein


Death

•Death
•Bloodbath
•Dethklok
•Amon Amarth


Other (unsure how to categorize)

•Alice In Chains (Eh...this might not be metal.)
•Acid Bath
•Pantera
•Ozzy Osbourne
•Black Label Society
•Mercyful Fate
•King Diamond
•Judas Priest
•Behemoth
•Rob Zombie
•White Zombie
•Geezer (Geezer Butler's side project...black science, great album)


This list should definitely not be considered final.

[Doomkid]

joe-ilya said:

No rock discussion? :(

Oh well, I do like metal that sounds like RATM's first demo album, Metallica's first two albums, Suicidal Tendencies' first album, Pantera's first three albums and many early Megadeth albums.

I'm having trouble finding more metal albums like these.

Slayer's punk covers on Undisputed Attitude are pretty damn good. I prefer several of them to the originals.

On the topic of punk, The Offspring's first album is my favorite of theirs. Feels raw, real and relevant - the more time that passed, the more plastic they sounded. Rise and Fall pretty much pained me to listen to back when it came out. Felt very canned and generic.

[Tracer]

Joe-Ilya, I have heard your cries, and I will soothe your anguish.

This is now the Rock/Metal discussion thread.

[GooberMan]

TraceOfSpades said:

Perhaps you are alsl familiar with Sleep or Om as well?

I am. I believe I saw Sleep at Hellfest in 2013, but I have no real recollection of it right now. Could probably browse through photos to confirm. (Tiny edit: Confirmed, found some photos.)

Highlighting that Acid Bath needs more attention. So anyone reading this that likes High on Fire, Sleep, Om, even Kyuss - stop reading and load up When The Kite String Pops.

[Koko Ricky]

MistAche said:

Have you heard Axis of Advance?

Fuck yeah, man. Absolutely devastating. They tend to handle their doomy/black metal parts poorly, because it's rarely as exciting as the more frantic motifs, but their overall sound is very interesting and aggressive. A related band is Revenge, who gets a bit too noisy and a-melodic to be honest, but is still fun once and awhile.

[Koko Ricky]

Budoka said:

I'm basically an extreme metal junkie. Be it speed, thrash, death, black or folk metal, chances are that if a band is even remotely competent and recognizable it's going to be hard for me to get tired of them.

If you want to hear some really obscure but very good extreme metal from the 90s, check out Pan-Thy-Monium. No lyrics, just vocal sounds. Interesting mixture of various extreme ideas with some avant garde elements. Their brief discography is very interesting. Here's their full debut album:

[Tracer]

GoatLord said:

If you want to hear some really obscure but very good extreme metal from the 90s, check out Pan-Thy-Monium. No lyrics, just vocal sounds. Interesting mixture of various extreme ideas with some avant garde elements. Their brief discography is very interesting. Here's their full debut album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADByOipYy0w

Please don't use the yt tags for links. I don't want this to look like the rock/metal fan thread. At least use spoiler tags if you're going to do that.

[joe-ilya]

Doomkid said:

Slayer's punk covers on Undisputed Attitude are pretty damn good. I prefer several of them to the originals.

On the topic of punk, The Offspring's first album is my favorite of theirs. Feels raw, real and relevant - the more time that passed, the more plastic they sounded. Rise and Fall pretty much pained me to listen to back when it came out. Felt very canned and generic.

You clearly haven't heard of The Offspring's second album : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmhcADE8jvQ

In the first album there are a couple songs I don't like (Beheaded, Kill The President) but in the second album everything is gold.

[GooberMan]

Aw shit son, how did I miss that Dawnbringer dropped a digital EP a couple of months ago?

[Bashe]

Another metal thread that had to be amended into "metal/rock" so essentially you can talk about any music then.

Oh well.

[Tracer]

Bashe said:

Another metal thread that had to be amended into "metal/rock" so essentially you can talk about any music then.

Oh well.

Metal is just a form of rock, really.

Besides, there are some great rock groups that have a place in every metalhead's heart, or at least should. Ted Nugent, Deep Purple, ZZ Top, fucking Pink Floyd...besides, if you include rock, that just opens the door to finding more good music. So what's the problem?

[Bashe]

Just giving you a hard time. I like rock too, I just think it's funny that the other metal thread changed to "metal/rock", which feels like it was done so that people could post bands nowhere near the metal spectrum without reprimand.

[TheMightyHeracross]

"Any music"

Except pop, country, hip-hop, R&B, any electronic genre, classical, reggae, etc.

[MistAche]

GoatLord said:

Fuck yeah, man. Absolutely devastating. They tend to handle their doomy/black metal parts poorly, because it's rarely as exciting as the more frantic motifs, but their overall sound is very interesting and aggressive. A related band is Revenge, who gets a bit too noisy and a-melodic to be honest, but is still fun once and awhile.

I'm not a fan of Revenge, atleast their latest stuff; their first releases are monstrous. I played a show with them (I'm in Heresiarch/Vesicant), in Adelaide last year and they unleashed hell... I prefer Conqueror though.

I never understood why people relate Revenge etc to AoA though... they're completely different. AoA is far more complex, there's a lot more under the surface and in the lyrics. Interesting you dislike their doom sections... I'd say it's some of the best parts in their songs. Their cover of Thergothon's 'Elemental' is killer. Another thing to note, AoA never did anything wrong... from River of Corticone when they were called Sacramentary Abolishment, right through to the Purify EP. Every release is unique and a total masterpiece. Perfect example of a band ending when they should've.

[MistAche]

TraceOfSpades said:

Metal is just a form of rock, really.

No it isn't.

[Tracer]

MistAche said:

No it isn't.

I agree to disagree.

Another group that I actually like a lot is Burning Witch, and they catch a lot of flack from other metalheads I know.

[RUSH]

I'm not much into rock anymore, but Led Zeppelin is amazing. Their first six albums are all classic, with Led Zeppelin IV being a seminal masterpiece of music. Well deserving of all the praise it receives. Their music is well recorded with great riffs and atmosphere.

<--- I love Rush as well. Neil Peart is one of the absolute best drummers of all time.

Check this out. His drum solo begins at 3:20 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa0C5Uxpd3c

Oh and the song YYZ rules.

[GooberMan]

MistAche said:

No it isn't.

Wikipedia said:

Heavy metal (or simply metal) is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the United Kingdom and the United States.

It has a pretty clear lineage back to rock music. Which itself has a pretty clear lineage back to blues, effectively meaning that rock is a form of blues.

[Koko Ricky]

Lol at the audacity of anyone claiming metal isn't a form of rock music. Metal is a concentrated form of the most aggressive elements of rock and roll (distortion, extensive solos, low tuning, a lack of a central key, palm muting) combined with idiosyncratic elements that occasionally draw from outside sources. This is where classical melodic phrasing, blast beats, the reliance on power chords, percussive use of harmonics, dual guitar harmonies, hardcore motifs and ambient passages arise from. So it is fundamentally a style of rock and roll, but also has a number of other influences.