Some people is failing to see that Dunn is not really THAT concerned of metal as some of you may think.

Cause if you will do a 'metal' series where most of time you'll cover bands there are NOT metal, will you come saying that 'I don't like it, but still I'll give you hours of this stuff that's NOT metal but equally or more important than the real deal? Sounds terribly ridiculous and hypocrite to my ears.

Oh, and people saying that BM doesn't sell it's terribly wrong. With all scandals from Varg till Gaahl/Gorgoroth, all that bunch of books/documentals about it and bands so big as Dimmu Borgir and sellout as Satyricon, there's no chance in hell that the rating will be low. The obvious thing here is that Dunn knows about a shit about metal and dislikes the most extreme genres, which are the ones who keep the 'metal' alive these days.

This is a horribly misguided post. If he starts out saying that he dislikes the subgenres, he's not going to spend the entire hour saying "this genre sucks, and here's why". He's going to actually do some research about the history of it and try to come to a conclusion about the genre. I didn't see the Glam episode, but he still re-iterated his opinion at the end of the Nu-Metal one. Of course he had to say that it was important to Metal because he's on Much Music.

The only thing you got right was that Much Music made these decisions. Dunn does like Death Metal (I'm not sure about Black Metal, but he has covered it before and does accept it as a big part of Metal), but he doesn't call the shots here. He probably suggested episodes and was shot down. Both of those genres are big to us, but they really aren't that big compared to Glam and Nu-Metal, especially when compared with Much Music's demographic.

The problem with everyone criticizing Dunn is that the hate should be directed to Much Music (I thought it was VH1). The only thing I haven't been impressed with is a few of the categorizations under his Metal tree. Which also brings up the point that Metal-Archives is not the be-all end-all of Metal. I don't consider everything on Dunn's tree to be Metal, but I also don't think anything outside of the Archives is not Metal.

Knocking Martin Popoff about his opinion of what metal is when he has been writing about the genre virtually since inception makes me LOL. Can't lie, even if I don't necessarily agree with all his opinions. That is the definition of what I mean as a 90s centric viewpoint. If we can just ignore history arbitrarily as is often the case with the 70s and metal, why stop there? Might as well argue Krieg is punk.

Yeah. Except, you know, he was the bassist for a black metal band. And a death metal group. And he's covered the extreme genres in the Headbanger's Journey movie, which was made independently without studio intrusions.

Plus, rembmeber Sam Dunn is being paid (I guess a lot of money) to do the series and sure he has to stick to a schedule, script or somethong like that, because he is showing what the mainstream considers Metal and not his personal opinions on the subject. According to his "family tree", both grunge and nu-metal as seen not as sub-genres but as derivations and/or styles with common elements borrowed from/infuenced by Metal. Dunn covered extreme metal to a degree in his independent documentaries, (which I think were not directed to people into metal, but to those who want to know a bit about the metal cutlrure and such) and now he's doing a job for someone else, (mainstream media) who want to use his credibility to ride the coat-tails of what the they consider Metal's "revival" (as shown in that article posted here about metal return, blah blah blah). Perhaps the criticism should not be focused on the guy, but aimed to the mainstream media executives behind the show.

And sure, MA is not the be-all, end-all of Metal, but there is a consensus in most Metal websites/communities/social networks about what is and what is not Metal, and neither grunge nor nu-metal are considered as such.

He can write anything he wants. The problem is why to write about something he does not understand and/or likes. In his first book "Riff Kills Man" he was badmouthing thrash and death metal at every opportunity. I still cringe from his review on Sodom "Agent Orange" and I quote from my memory:"Why this crap even exists".And don't even get me started on his "De Mysteriis Dom Satanas" review. Its like me trying to review Madonna's albums. What would be the point.

Does not really makes any difference if its him or Much Music refused to to Death/Black Metal show. Its meant to be an evolution subject. And on what planet Nu Metal is more metal than DM or BM? As a result, an entire show is FAIL since it skipped an important part of metal evolution completely. But I am sure that MTV generation could not care less.

It makes every bit of difference.

The difference between being green-lit and being fired.

Thats a difference to him not to the fans who expects a show to be what it actually was meant to.

Keeping in mind that it is made by mainstream media, do you really expect they are accurate in their definition of Metal and actually want extreme metal to get any media exposure?

No, I don't. That's why the show is FAIL. But as I said, an MTV generation will be happy no matter what.

You do realize VH1's target audience is 30-50 year old conservative blue-collar males, right?

You do know how said audience would react to Gorguts and Darkthrone, right?

You do know how badly studios like VH1 hate having their chief demographic scatter like roaches away from their programming, right?

I'd say Dunn's put his balls and his career on the line enough by including At the Gates and Arch Enemy in that one episode.

Dude, I am 41. Guess what, I would react to Gorguts and Darkthrone just fine. My issue is that an entire show targets audience who discovered "metal" when Black Album came out or Nirvana came along.

Considering the series started out with hard rock groups of the 60s, it's not a show aimed at the MTV audience (otherwise, they would have nixed the 60s material altogether).

It's aimed at the middle-aged and older men who grew up with the stuff.

Not really. The show's goal was to educate. But instead they skipped an entire part of evolution no matter how ugly that is. Its like to write an evolution of civilizations and leave the Middle Ages out

It's more like writing a show and leaving out parts that are harder to market.

Well they have an audience that they have to placate. Most of them wouldn't sit down for half an hour and watch a short documentary on a form of music they have no tolerance for.

That's exactly the case. But who wins? I don't have a problem with Glam/Grunge/Nu being included. But I do have a huge problem with extreme sub-genres excluded. Thats an integrity issue.

If you're 41, then most of your peers are people who discovered metal vis-a-vis stuff like the Black Album or Motley Crue. 98% of the posters here are younger than you, and probably a goodly number of them by a factor of a decade or more. The actual majority of people this show happen to very much like Motley Crue/Metallica/GNR/etc and probably would react rather unfavorably to an episode devoted to the likes of Darkthrone and the ilk. But more importantly than that, the advertisers underwriting the show probably don't give a hot damn about associating their products with Cannibal Corpse, Mayhem, Death, Morbid Angel, et al.

.[/quote]

And some of my peers has discovered metal years earlier (myself included) with Show No Mercy, Ride The Lightning and The Number Of The Beast. Thats not a point of my argument. The show was meant to be an evolution of metal but by skipping an integral part of it completely, really questions an integrity of that whole thing. I understand that DM and BM would not appeal to many but it had to be included as a part of metal progress no matter how ugly it is. And if some folks don't want to watch episod on DM/BM, they don't have to. I didn't mind watchin Glam/Gruge/Nu episodes at all even thou I don't really care much for them. The show meant to be educational after all but it is not by breaking an evolution chain right in a midle of it.

I don't think there's anything to argue here. Its a network/advertiser approved version of heavy metal history done within the goalposts provided. If the lack of a proper death/black metal episode or series thereof renders everything stated by the series irrelevant to you, that's your opinion. For what it is, its easily the best such show on the genre ever produced on english language television. Its not even close, either.

Exactly!

Ad well, about the accuracy of the show's title, perhaps we should read it as "Mainstream Metal Through the years", or "Metal-according-to-mainstream-standards through the years".

You have to be realistic here. You need to take a look at who is airing this show and who is financing it. I can't take Dunn to task for not having a Death or Black metal show because I'm about 99% certain that it's not in his hands. VH-1 Classic (and let's specify that it's the Classic station and not VH-1 proper, which is about 95% reality TV these days) is all about the '70s through the early '90s with a heavy emphasis on the '80s, and its all about mainstream rock. Their "Metal Mania" shows about 90% '80s videos, with a few nuggets from Sabbath, Zeppelin, or Purple thrown in. "That Metal Show" is about about '70s and '80s hard rock and metal, with a heavy emphasis on the mainstream. Those guys talked about that on the show this year and stated that it's VH-1 Classics call (although Eddie Trunk was quick to point out that he doesn't like death metal while the other two guys claimed to be fans) not theirs. The network has no interest in running shows on Death, Black, Doom, or any other non-mainstream genre. Power and Prog metal fans should rejoice that those genres are getting episodes. I think that, for the most part, Dunn is doing a fine job. He wants to examine how metal started and how it's evolved and what it spawned and, because it's on VH-1 Classic, the focus is going to be on the mainstream. I actually wouldn't be surprised if he mentions death and black in the "Shock" episode, though.

To be honet I could only see VH1 allowing Dunn to air an episode of Death/Black if it centred around the suicides, church burnings and killings around it. Since majority of Black/Death metal documentaries on popular channels similar to VH1, seem to paint both forms of metal as a genre which automatically converts you into a satanic and rebelious serial killer.

Are you sure that Sam in Dementia is Sam Dunn? If so, the artist pages should be merged...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Dunn#M ... activities

Yep. Picture even looks like him.

That picture is too blurry and Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Not saying it's not true, but I'll wait for better evidence before merging.

Catching up on the episodes I DVRed while on vacation and watched the thrash one. As someone stated earlier, pretty much only touches on the American scene. If you were going to go about doing episodes on black/death metal that would probably be more problematic, but we're a bit past discussing that now, aren't we? Besides, the US scene was clearly and indisputably the most influential and popular of said thrash scenes, so I can't honestly say that they were in the wrong to focus primarily on Metallica. What did surprise me was the portrayal of Slayer as the clear cut #2 and the critical darling of the scenario. Dunn leaves literally zero doubt whatsoever that he thinks the Black Album is a sellout and a betrayal of the fans in doing so either.

Someone else mentioned that they thought the fast forward to Gothenburg/"metalcore" was poorly staged, but I disagree with that. I clearly, clearly remember being around in the late 1990s listening to the Gothenberg acts when the entire style was red hot and at that time people were very cognizant of the relationship that sort of music had to thrash. I'm almost so sure of this that if someone wants to pull out their old BWBS issues that the reviewer for Soilwork's Natural Born Chaos straight up calls them "thrash", and I'm remembering this on nothing but pure memory from something printed a decade ago. It was also the first time during any of the episodes that I felt like I really got a new perspective on something: the clips with the interview with Bjorn Gelotte just fucking fit a puzzle piece on my head over why it was that you had that rush of bands doing that style particularly after In Flames started dropping records and everyone wanted to be Jesper Stromblad. As for metalcore, it certainly isn't fair to claim that was a US interpretation of the Gothenburg sound, though I fell to some degree that Dunn was leaning in that direction in the way the piece was cut. But again, I have very cognitive memories of comparisons with thrash. Again, pull out Century Media's ID5 and look at how they typecast Shadows Fall.

I was just looking at his chart and the one category says "goth metal (aka doom metal on the dvd)". Then under that are listed some doom metal bands. What's up with doom metal being called goth metal?

And just finished the Grunge episode. Kim Thayil may have said it best when he said that blaming anything for the death of grunge may have been impossible because "it never really existed anyways". I've always felt that some of the bands grouped under that label either released records or were de facto metal acts, and the content of the show wasn't going to change that. It really just reinforced that opinion of mine if anything. Some of the interviews were downright uncomfortable - Hiro Yamamoto looked like he wanted to do anything other than discuss heavy metal.

The show reminded me a lot of the mentality that was given to heavy metal back in the 1990s and early part of the 2000s from a critical perspective. These days filled with hipster doom and black metal make it easy for younger people to think that metal was always accepted by the music intelligentsia as being a sonic frontier. From my own formative perspective, being a metal fan posting about the genre on general music forums back in the late 90s when I started hitting up forums and chat rooms, or working in a record store back a decade ago, there was zero respect given by a lot of "serious" music critics or listeners to heavy metal or anything grouped with it. I remember playing Anathema's Alternative 4 and Paradise Lost working at Record Breaker in Glastonbury, CT my first year of college and having the manager (who was ardently of the Sub-Pop generation) tell me that there was no way those bands had anything to do with metal.

We can all complain now either as we've gotten older and abandoned some of those acts (I generally did when it came to that sort of doom, TBH) or we've seen persons we see as interlopers making heavy metal music in the form of Liturgy or Early Man or whoever the target of general abuse is tomorrow. The climate in which one can discuss metal openly now or write about it in publications and websites and be taken seriously is so, so much better, and in turn, I think that's made the writing about heavy metal on pretty much every level (professional and amateur) much better too.

Oh, so Grunge episode. Sorry about that tangent. Dunn could have made the comparison of bands like Alice In Chains to Motorhead and Black Sabbath - those latter two are pretty much universally considered "metal" by anyone with an opinion worth shit, but they'll swear up and down they aren't it. AIC wasn't even so quick to push back on the moniker. No parallel drawn whatsoever. Sam seemed to understand that the "grunge sound" was nonexistent and largely an invention of marketing, but I'm not sure he really put that forth well. And then the last 15-20 minutes were spent completely diverging from discussion of grunge as metal to discussion of bands that are vast stretch to call connected to the genre. I mean, why are we discussing Candlebox in a metal show? It seemed like a masturbatory long segment intended to do nothing more than allow Sam Dunn to show a lot of clips of people respected and revered in the musical community shitting on Creed and Nickelback. Not that I really care if you're gonna do that were you doing a documentary of the after effects of alternative rock breaking in the US, but in a metal documentary? What the fuck does Days of The New have to do with heavy metal?

Its easily my least favorite episode of the series and the most poorly thought out and executed. Lots of directions to go there, lots of ways to get your point across (and its one I've argued for a lot of years), and he missed pretty much all of them. By the time its over, you get the feeling like Sam Dunn thought the entire episode was a mistake and just decided to beat a dead horse about bands he didn't like to fill time with only the most base of defenses mustered to make it look like it wasn't a hit piece.

This is just a crazy theory, but I thinkk it is because of all the ocnfusion back in the early-mid 90's with Paradise Lost's "Gothic" album. Even though Paradise Lost had used soprano (or at least female) singer in their debut album, with "Gothic" they took their experimentation to a new level, and it was almost a common place to call "gothic metal" to the introduction of keyboards, violin and soprano voices in death/doom bands, such as Anathema and Misanthrope, way before Theatre of Tragedy made the "beauty and the beast" style so popular.

There should be a drinking game for this show, each time Sam Dunn says, "(Genre I am talking about)'s connection to (sub-genre) is becoming clear to me, but what I still don't understand is, how did (genre) become (blah blah blah)?", take a swig of whatever drink you have nearby, should get loaded pretty quickly.

You have to be drunk to sit through the painstakingly obvious bullshit he 'still doesn't understand' in any case, so it's a win-win situation (albeit with a lot of lose for actually watching the show).

Well, I just saw the Shock Rock episode today. They were talking about Alice Cooper, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Arthur Brown, KISS, King Diamond, Slipknot and Rammstein. I was kind of pissed that they didn't talk about GWAR, even though they had a couple of interviews with him during the episode, and especially they count more as metal than most of the bands documented in there. Also, just a little tidbit I only pointed out today. A bit pointless, but I'll say it. During some of these episodes, they were interviewing this guy (forget who his name is) and on his wall, he had the artwork for Suffocation's Effigy of the Forgotten. And on the shelf just above that was a picture of Lil' Beeper from Tiny Toon Adventures. You know, because Tiny Toons are fucking metal.

The only thing I liked about the grunge episode was it taught me some things about grunge that I didn't know because I very much dislike it but now I have some knowledge about it's history. I feel like I'm in abusive relation ship every time I watch Metal Evolution though, even though he decided grunge is one of the furthest things from metal.

Tiny Toons are so fucking metal, I don't know what you're smoking

All of the Steven Spielberg cartoons are fucking metal as fuck.

I know, I like the Steven Spielberg cartoons as well (including Tiny Toons) but the picture just seemed out-of-place with that Suffocation artwork. Like, I know Tiny Toons mentioned Stairway to Heaven in one episode (The one with the Raffi parody, I believe), but it just seemed quite odd, like you wouldn't expect this guy to have Tiny Toons and Suffocation pictures in the same room. Anyways, next episode on power metal should be quite an episode, even though the promo for Metal Evolution that aired during the shock rock episode didn't really show any specific footage. They better show Rainbow like they did back in the movie.

I'm actually glad they're not going to do any episodes on extreme metal, specifically black metal. Dunn doesn't know much about the genre at all, and he obviously dislikes it/doesn't think very highly of it judging by how he breezed through it in AHBJ and spouted out a bunch of inaccuracies (seriously, how this guy supposedly got a degree in anthropology I will never know). More importantly, the only reason anyone in this thread cares about him not doing any episodes on extreme metal is that they mostly just want to see how badly he'd fuck it up. It'd be good for a laugh, sure, but even if he got his facts straight this time around, it'd just be paraphrasing information everyone already knows.

Although I do think it'd be very interesting if someone developed a series for one of the premium networks similar to That Metal Show and the format I imagine ME to be in. Except, y'know, with hosts who actually know what they're talking about covering bands and movements that are actually relevant. Like the evolving American black metal scene, for one. Nobody ever does documentaries that feature bands like WitTR, Panopticon, Absu, Benighted in Sodom, Leviathan, or Nachtmystium.

I just find it funny that some of the people here are whining and crying about the show not focusing on the underground, Underground metal is meant to stay in the Underground, some extreme metal genres are not for mass consumption, underground music doesn't need to be exposed on mainstream television, do you think bands like Conqueror, Blasphemy, Archgoat and the likes would be happy if they will be mentioned on mainstream TV?

The underground doesn't need mainstream media to survive, it has passionate fans all over the world that made it what it is today.

Leave the mainstream to the sheeps.

Thank you to the above poster. Heavy metal doesn't need a bunch of pimply faced defenders to stay alive and relevant. It does so on its own merits. Personally I could care less about seeing a documentary on a band like Sodom or Absu - Do I really need to see "The Teutonic Anvil Story" to know what their lives and club touring is like?