What precludes brutality, tempo changes?

And lower vocals, "heavier" guitars, etc.

Don't forget Sin after Sin...that is the album that officially made them a metal band in my opinion. Sad Wings was like a tad, TAD bit away from being metal.

Today's soulseek playlist:

Some Nile song (on repeat)

It's not exactly about your point, but I hope everybody understood that I never said Judas Priest wasn't metal in the 70s.


What does preclusion of brutality have to do with it? I didn't say Altars of Madness isn't brutal.

You said that Covenant and the later stuff was more brutal. What makes Altars of Madness not as brutal, or precludes it from being brutal, was my question.

When I listen to Covenant the only thing that goes through my mind is that it isn't quite as interesting to listen to as Altars of Madness.

And I didn't say Altars of Madness isn't brutal. And it isn't as brutal due to... just ask the question: which one sounds more like brutal death?

Since when did being brutal equal being interesting? I'm not sure if you were implying that, but I don't necessarily correlate brutality with something good.

Goddamn, this reminds me of this "hard music" dude who loved Fear Factory, Machine Head, and recently had bought the first Korn album in high school. I was a big Maiden fan (it was 1994) and hes like "Maiden aren't really metal, they're Hard Rock" or some shit like that. I never got to beat his ass for saying that!

When I was trying to get into some old-school death metal after listening to stuff like Aborted and Necrophagist, I found old-school death metal boring. At the time, I was only able to get through old-school death metal albums while doing some work. A few months later, I decided to play Altars of Madness and Cause of Death, but this time, I played them with the volume much louder. I instantly understood why Obituary and Morbid Angel got so much praise. Old-school death metal in general is so much more fun to listen to.

The modern metal listeners the OP is talking about are either very stubborn or they're not listening to old-school metal properly.

The corollary are those who worship OSDM whilst generalising very negatively about modern death metal? There's plenty of 'fun' to be had with death metal that isn't old-school...you just have to look.

Well, I've once been told that some unidentifiable Math-core band is, "More brutal and intelligent than that pussy faggot stuff like Sabbath," if that counts.

But, as for the bands, I'd think that a fundamental understanding of your choice genre, including the ability to identify it, would be requisite to being able to play it at all, for a number of reasons.

Quoted for truth. It pisses me off and I've only been into metal for just over a year. I can only imagine how someone who grew up with the classic bands feels about it.

This thread reminds me of a comment made in another thread which I can't remember. It was basically the story of an MA poster who spoke to a member of a deathcore band. They got talking and the conversation went something like this;

Deathcore guy: "Our band takes a lot of influence from death metal."

MA Poster: "Oh, like Chuck Shuldiner?"

Deathcore guy: "Who?"



How can you say you take influence from death metal if you don't know who Chuck is? That's just pathetic.

This honesty dosen't suprise me. Igo to school with people that think Maiden are 'boring' for not having a breakdown. 'weebing', and bad sweep picking.

Well, of course solos work in DM, but they cannot sound like NWOBHM solos, or be wanky, overly long. To me, DM was never about being guitar gods. The short chaotic bursts inspired by Slayer are perfect for DM. My favorite example of a great DM solo would be Immolations "Into Everlasting Fire."

It's a generation thing. I finished school a long time ago and what I considered good then is different to what is popular now. Not really a revelation.

Just talking about people who refuse to accept old-school death metal. I still very much enjoy bands such as Lykathea Aflame and Spawn of Possession. It's just that today's biggest DM bands are have different musical goals than yesterday's biggest DM bands. In general, bands try to be very heavy, and there are many ways to approach that. Through fast and technical riffs in the style of Decapitated or heavy crushing riffs in the style of Obituary.

I'm probably contradicting myself.

Maybe I'm just getting old (which I am), but these new bands are terrible most of the time. Where the hell is the musicianship? Watch any stretch of Headbanger's Ball now and you get a disgusting swath of these dreadful "Death-Core" bands and all they seem to do is wail on their instruments and jam out a wall of noise and some incomprehensible growling. They're idea of mixing it up is a nonsensical sing-along clean vocal chorus that simply doesn't belong.

What happened to being able to write riffs and music? Where's the intricate guitar work and soloing? Like, Megadeth's opening to Good Mourning/Black Friday, or the kind of work seen in Slayer's South of Heaven or Dead Skin Mask? This is real heavy Heavy Metal stuff, and it's totally absent these days. They act like if they aren't just ruining guitars and growling out a monotone wall of noise, they aren't Metal. And that kind of shit is precisely NOT Metal. Even classic Death and Possessed contained musicianship.

Maybe it's just because I got into Metal with much better, more diverse music, but this new shit all sounds the same. One obnoxious wall-of-sound song sounds just like every other. One shitty Death-Core band is all you need to hear to know that every one of them sounds damn near the same way. Headbanger's Ball is a fucking disgrace to Metal now. Just because they throw in BLS every now and then doesn't mean they actually understand the music.

The music has no energy, ironically, either. Despite the obnoxious walls of sound we get, the music is boring--in large part because it has no variance.


I do agree that too many bands now just focus on image and "being extreme metal" than on actual music. I think that's one of the most obvious signs of a poseur, actually. They're afraid to experiment or try anything even slightly different. They're only idea of experimentation or difference is clean vocals "because that'll so totally blow their mind to hear clean vocals in this kind of music!!!"

But it doesn't blow my mind; it just makes me think, 'Wow, that's pathetic.'

I completely agree with you about death-core but that genre absolutely does not represent the state of modern metal.

In my opinion death-core is not metal, it is simply a mixture of some death metal elements with loads of other influences from metalcore. It is definitely true that most of these death-core bands are mostly about image and making money but the spirit of actual metal does not exist in them.

The majority of actual good metal bands can be found in the underground with only some of them breaking with the mainstream and barely any of them getting any airplay on shit like Headbangers Ball.

I would like to know this as well.

In the Covenant/Alters debate, I would say that in terms of brutality Blessed tops them both - even with the piano/accustic guitar/flute wankery. That album is an assault on the senses whereas Covenant has much more straight-forward death metal sounds and far more basic tremelo riffs. But if we only get A or B, then Alters is by far the "more brutal" sounding of the two.

I don't think either of them sounds like brutal death otherwise I wouldn't listen to them. I think Altars is somewhat more of a diverse album. I guess in that lack of variety Covenant is closer to brutal death. But it still has rhythmic drumming.

I didn't equate being brutal with being interesting. I meant just the opposite. Unintelligible vocals and blast beats are boring and unmusical... but I don't think Covenant meets those criteria.

I used to be pretty big into hardcore and bands like Botch were always touted as like the height of technicality in music. They had some interesting parts but overall it was just harsh with unlistenable vocals. You can't just play shit like that and enjoy it. It is just supposed to be grating and jarring, I guess. That's not what music is about.

What is music about, then?

The birds and the Bees and everything nice.

Music is a wide spectrum, with several moods and methods of enjoyment within its population - hardcore, with its grating and extreme nature, happens to be one of them.

MUSIC

1. an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color.
2. the tones or sounds employed, occurring in single line (melody) or multiple lines (harmony), and sounded or to be sounded by one or more voices or instruments, or both.
3. musical work or compositions for singing or playing.
4. the written or printed score of a musical composition.
5. such scores collectively.
6. any sweet, pleasing, or harmonious sounds or sound: the music of the waves.

In case anyone didn't know what music was.

Try asking Judas Preist and Deep Purple if modern metalheads are out of touch with REAL metal.

Who says what's real metal?

What makes the people of this board's view of what is real metal true? Who's to say those mallcore kids aren't true? Just because we think they're idiots doesn't mean they do. Obviously they think they're right, and we are idiots, who's to say who's right?

I would say both groups are right when they say they listen to metal.

Both groups are wrong too when they say the other doesn't.

Everyone's right about everything, nobody is ever wrong. Everyone's opinions are equal on every subject. Didn't you guys know this?

Just because someone is out of touch with "real" metal does not inherently make them inferior human beings. Sure, I despise deathcore and its variants as much as the next guy, and I absolutely hate the trendy fashion style its fans adhere to. But what exactly makes them worse than the thrash revivalist crowd? You can make fun of the scene/core kids all you want for dressing the same and looking ridiculous, but if you go to any Municipal Waste show, you'll see the same thing. Guys that cant be older than 18 walking around like it's 1986, wearing their jean vests and studded belts and such. I'm all for upholding the ideals that were manifested by the "classic" metal of the 80's and 90's, but if you just follow a template set by bands 20 years ago because it looks "cool" or it's popular in the local metal scene, you really are no better than those death-core kids. Really, is this modern crap masquerading as metal more trendy than thrash in the late 80's, or even death and black metal in the early 90's? Trendwhores will always exist, as different scenes of music experience their brief period of mainstream popularity. Deathcore will fade into obscurity in a few years just as Nu metal did, while the true metal heads will continue to uphold the genre's classics for future generations.

As a young metal head (18), I can attest to the general view that 'm0ar Br00tal = m0ar \m/3tAL' - as this seems to be the case with the majority of people who I have had the misfortune of meeting in lines for gigs. The public is ignorant and this new generation of MTV listening 'metal heads' (if the word is at all appropriate) is the reason metalcore and deathcore are so popular. No attention is payed to the deepth of the scene of any metal sub genre. Deaths roots in bands like Obituary, Death and Entombed are forgotten, and bands like Sabbath and Maiden rarely gain much attention at all. While everyone needs a way into more extreme metal and I personally loath the type of elitism of some more 'kvlt' members of the metal community, I can see this as a response to what seems to be the pollution of the metal ideal and the roots of the genre.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have seen the future and it is bleak.

The future may be bleak, but in my world it's still 1992.

"Rock is the area between the balls and anus of a dog or another man....":)

I'm glad there are others out there who think the same way that I do about music.

I don't know about asking Priest about that, because Halford has said in interviews that some of his favorite modern bands are 3 Inches of Blood, Dimmu Borgir, and Bullet for My Valentine....

Oh, awesome.

So? He can still think they're out of touch with real metal. And besides, 3 Inches of Blood is an exception to the trend. They play original, classic metal.

Well, if Entombed and Obituary aren't death metal then Blind Guardian aren't power metal, Kreator aren't thrash metal and Candlemass aren't doom metal. Some people think that the more you knock respected bands, the cooler you are.