Yeah Dolan is usually my go-to answer for the platonic ideal of death metal vocals. Super beastly, almost inhumanly so, but just human enough to still be saying real comprehensible words. I don't really think comprehensibility is a necessary component in great vocals, but a lot of my favorite death metal songs/bands happen to be reasonably understandable lyrically, simply because it's more fun/memorable to sing along. Half the fun of something like Serpents of the Light is just how fuckin' sing-songy Glen Benton can be.




I actually completely agree with this 1000%, but it's one of those things I find really interesting and persuasive in theory but I never wind up actually enjoying in practice. Kinda like St. Anger if you think about it stupidly. I do recognize that's more of a "me" problem though.

You're not alone. I feel similarly. I had a friend who was really into slam and deathcore and he was playing me some Devourment and I thought it sounded really interesting because it was focusing more on musical texture than anything else. I think at the time, I was branching out into other kinds of music, some of which was on the experimental side and what I heard from Devourment scratched my itch at the time, but when I borrowed the mp3's from him, the entertainment value didn't sustain itself for too long over time. While I still find Devourment's style fascinating conceptually, I find myself wanting to listen to something with melody and/or riffs after about 20 minutes. I think it just takes a bit of self-awareness to know what you really like and what you just respect and that type of slam is something I just respect.

I totally agree with that, lyrics are the least important thing for me in most death metal. The vocals are another rhythm instrument. But when they can articulate what they are saying, and keep it raw and brutal its great. But that is why by and large I find most extreme metal vocalists to be interchangeable. Yes, some do stand out no doubt. But unlike a lot of rock and metal I listen to, where a vocalist change can make or break the band, I find that less the case in extreme metal. For example Marduk has had a few different vocalists and I don't really find it makes any difference to me which one it is. Whereas Kamelot for example switching from Khan to that other guy pretty much killed my interest in the band. But we are talking Khan.

Devil Master is Walmart GISM wearing corpsepaint and their Order of Nine Angles/Atomwaffen connection is weird.

fully deserved

I agree with this post 100%
I saw Dave drum for Grip Inc. on their first tour, right after he left Slayer the first time, at the Fairbanks Inn in Orlando Fl; Planted my ass right on the side of the stage 5 feet from him and just watched him shred the set. I will never forget that night.
R.I.P. Gus

I like Cynic's "Traced In Air" more than "Focus".
Of course, both of those are great, fantastic albums but I find myself listening to "Traced In Air" a lot more often.

Ozzy was pretty awful during his solo career. His flawed vocals may have worked well in his Sabbath years, but he had the complete wrong voice for 80's metal.

Along with the guy that hated blast beats this is one of the worst unpopular opinions that I have read in this thread.

I don't really care much about his solo stuff, but I wouldn't even say his voice was "flawed" in Sabbath.

Seriously? I'm just thinking of how much character he adds to songs like 'Diary of a Madman'.

What does that even mean?

He was pretty far from your typical shrieky, semi-androgynous sounding caterwauler, which is the sort of voice most people imagine when they think 80s metal. Although part of the fun of metal back then is that the "rules" and conventions were still being created, so who cares.

I like 80s Ozzy, even though he did lose his ability and/or willingness to do all those Robert Plant-isms he did in Sabbath. The 80s material didn't call for it though.

I do think Ozzy's voice is most suited to doom metal - that mournful, warbling croon that you hear on the early albums. He proved on stuff like SBS and Sabotage that he could be a bit more versatile than that, but I agree that the glammy metal/hard rock stuff on a lot of his solo stuff isn't a good fit for him. I think there are exceptions, like "Bark at the Moon," which is easily my favorite Ozzy solo song, but doom metal is really his natural habitat and nothing he does outside of that environment is ever going to sound quite right to me. Calling his voice "flawed" is a bit much, though, just because he's sounds strange doesn't mean he has poor technique or anything like that.

I agree with this wholeheartedly

I think Ozzy for all his vocal limitations, killed it on albums like The Ultimate Sin. Not suited for the 80's? WTF?

Blizzard of Ozz, Diary of a Madman and Bark at the Moon are all heavy metal classics, Ozzy's voice in his total prime and accompanied by guitar gods like Randy Rhoads and Jake E. Lee.

You get it sir.

Now that's an unpopular opinion!

But really, Ozzy's voice worked for that heavy, trudging sound that 70's Sabbath was all about. I always thought he sounded completely out of his element once he decided to play flashy guitar-driven heavy metal. Randy Roads and Jake E. Lee are/were indeed great guitarists...but the way I see it, they are/were the highlights of Ozzy's band. Ozzy certainly wasn't.

I’d add “Sin” and “No Rest” to the list of classics.

I'd stop the list at Diary. Too patchy after that to be called classics.

Until No More Tears Ozzy solo project was very good with great albums…

The Ultimate Sin is a must

Personally, The Ultimate Sin is my favorite Ozzy solo album partly because I think Ozzy's voice compliments the music so well. On Blizzard... and Diary..., I wouldn't go so far as to say that Ozzy sucks on those albums, but sometimes I do think that a vocalist who's more comfortable with that kind of hard rock music would have been a better fit. With The Ultimate Sin, I think switching Ozzy out with anyone else would be a detriment to the whole album. His voice adds a Gothic flavor and it makes The Ultimate Sin almost sound like a Sisters of Mercy album but with a flashier guitar player. I'd say the same about Bark at the Moon, but apart from the title track and "Waiting For Darkness" that album sounds unfinished and/or too all-over-the-place for me to get into as much as The Ultimate Sin.

Ultimate Sin rules, pure reverb-drenched cocaine fueled mid 80s ephemera, and the level of melodic invention in Jake's playing elevates it way above a lot of the other "X goes glam" type albums it gets lumped in with. I'll have random weeks where the opening riff of "Never" is stuck in my head for days.

Ozzy (or the Ozzy/Sharon estate, whatever) seems to dislike the album and it hasn't been remastered since the 90s, but that's a blessing in disguise really. That just means it's impossible to hear it a compressed, brickwalled form.

Every Ozzy solo up to No More Tears is essential USPM (yeah I said it, suck it). Sure some are better than others, but they all rule.


Down To Earth isn't bad either.

Haha, what? What about Ozzy's solo material makes it sound like something that would fit in with bands like Omen, Vicious Rumors, Queensryche, Fates Warning, etc? I'm partially curious as I haven't heard every song from all of those albums recently, but I'm quite skeptical of a claim like that. If he does have power metal songs, though, I'm definitely interested. The usual hits I've heard over and over have basically nothing in common with USPM.

You've gotta admit that sharing your unpopular opinions make people say shit they normally wouldn't.

Spot on. That riff and the bridge are perfect.
"Killer Of Giants" is a masterpiece, too.

Quite a few of the non-hits fit this trope. Waiting For Darkness, Believer, Slow Down, Killer Of Giants, Bloodbath In Paradise, Devil's Daughter. Hell, Bark At The Moon itself wouldn't be out of place of Fire Down Under.

Man, I can imagine Guy Speranza singing that song as if it really happened. You might be onto something there.

That said, I don't know if I'd lump Ozzy's first six albums in with US power metal. There are similarities (if I squint, the bass line to "Believer" sort of sounds like the one for "March On" by Omen), but similarities aren't enough to qualify being labeled something. It's like saying AC/DC is German metal because they sound like Accept.

Fire Down Under sounds more like a heavy metal / hard rock record to me. It's not like you could compare any Ozzy stuff to that of Thundersteel-era Riot... or could you?

Every attempt I've seen to describe what USPM sounds like has been along the lines of "it's like european power metal, except without the european powermetal-isms" or "it's like european power metal, but less fluffy, more raw and gritty." The thing is, those descriptions are basically just describing regular heavy metal.

The term USPM has some utility when bands like Crimson Glory (where just the label "heavy metal" doesn't quite suffice) exist, but there's an inherent vagueness in the term that caused it to devolve into something overly broad. So now we see it getting applied to Metal Church, Manowar, Ozzy (??), etc.

Metal Church certainly makes some sense to me. I can't really think of any heavy metal records that sound like, say, Blessing in Disguise in terms of riff work.

OK, going through these:

"Waiting for Darkness" sounds like a more metal Bon Jovi song. 0% USPM.
"Believer" is actually a good candidate here, while it's more heavy metal than anything I do think some of the arrangements sound a bit USPM-ish in a primitive way. Definitely a bit surprised by this one. Might be time to dig back into Ozzy's catalog for the first time in a while?
"Slow Down" is a bit more complex than the typical Ozzy track and the chorus has a bit of a Europower flavor to it, but ultimately it sounds more NWOBHM-ish to me than anything. Maybe 10-20% USPM.
The intro to "Killer of Giants" absolutely sounds like something that could be on a Queensryche and overall the song has a fairly progressive USPM-ish flair to it, but I'm not sure there's actually enough metal riffs on this track to really call it USPM. Feels more like a prog rock version of a USPM song. Still interesting, though.
"Bloodbath in Paradise" has a basic hard rock/heavy metal riff that sounds similar to something like "Crazy Train." 0% USPM. The solo is badass though.
"Devil's Daughter" is slightly more sophisticated and does indeed sound like something that could appear on early Riot albums, though I think those are tangential to USPM at most. Halfway to something like Omen though, pretty cool.

Ultimately I'd say one song could actually pass for USPM maybe ("Believer") and two come maybe halfway "Killer of Giants" and "Devil's Daughter" for a total of 2-ish USPM tracks here if you squint, which to be fair is two more than I thought. Kind of interesting. All three of those tracks I mentioned are bangers, so I definitely intend to go back through some of Ozzy's stuff here. It's been ages since I've heard the non-hits as I just haven't gotten around to it (and the only hit I really like is "Bark at the Moon.") I still don't think I'll agree that Ozzy is USPM in any significant way, but enjoyable heavy metal is always a plus!

It's not really a distinct genre - it's useful as a descriptor of the kind of more aggressive, pumped up stuff you'd get in the 80s, or the more proggy and atmospheric side of bands like Fates Warning or CG, which was different from the earlier NWOBHM and stuff like Sabbath, but ultimately it's just the genre evolving as all of them did, heavy metal becoming more mature and shedding older influences.

Yeah, I find the USPM descriptor very useful for me because the increased complexity (on average) and sort of bombastic, triumphant tone makes for something that I'm much more likely to enjoy than just a basic heavy metal album, so labeling something USPM versus just regular heavy metal makes me want to check it out because it's more likely to check the right boxes for me. Ultimately, the "blue collar" side could be called plain heavy metal if you're not super invested in the genre and the "white collar" side could be called progressive metal. But I think there's a distinct kind of flavor or atmosphere to a lot of the bands that make it significant for someone who's interested in that sound, as if you lump it all together and just pick a random "heavy metal" or "progressive metal" album out of a hat you might not get that. But ultimately it's subjective and it doesn't really refer to specific technical aspects of the sound.

Whatever you are smokin, put it down. There has NEVER been a Bon Jovi song this neo classical.





We've sort of come to the conundrum here. What the hell is the difference between plain ol' heavy metal and USPM? They really are the same thing. I also think NWOBHM is an overused sub-genre classification. If anything we should take a cue from black metal and be calling that time period the Second Wave of British Heavy Metal.

If you think heavy metal and USPM are the same, why use the term USPM at all? I understand that USPM can be a subjective term, as I explained above, but the terms are absolutely NOT interchangeable. Either you believe in USPM, in which case you don't consider it equivalent to heavy metal, or you don't, in which case the term is irrelevant to you.

I always liked Diary the best out of his solo stuff, though I have some nostalgia for Ozzmosis.



Blast beats are still overused lmao.

Exactly.......