i mean most bands play one style their whole career(slayer overkill,black sabbath) some bands experiment with different genres of metal(kreator did so with industrial metal Sodom with crossover thrash)I dont get why you dont see a thrash metal band play a doom album

Uhm, plenty of bands experiment...?

Considering all three of those you bands you listed have experimented with their sounds to varying degrees, I'm not sure what you're talking about. As for why, things like comfort zones, financial needs and sometimes general apathy come into play.

Usually bands have a pre-conceived notion of what they want to play, especially the bands that get popular, like all of the ones you've mentioned. Sadly, record companies usually don't allow and are even afraid of bands experimenting. And I'm not so sure what you mean about a thrash band playing a "doom album", but I wouldn't call that experimenting. Experimental music pushes a certain genre as a whole, doom + thrash is paradoxical and simply an overlap of two already established genres.

By the way, there's plenty of thrash bands that have written slower headbangers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3TIHEHObjI

I think your problem is you need to find more stuff to listen to. There are plenty of bands that experiment.

Black Sabbath have played hard rock, pop rock, prog rock, blues rock, heavy metal, doom metal, AOR... borderline power metal (Tyr in particular). Slayer have played thrash, hardcore/crossover (well, the covers anyway), heavy metal-y thrash (Show No Mercy), nu metal, borderline death/thrash (Hell Awaits). Overkill have done groove, thrash, some doom-y thrash (on The Years of Decay) and heavy metal (stuff like 'In Union We Stand'). These bands have experimented, man, c'mon.

1. Not everyone is trying to be the next eclectic genius. Some people just want to play the music they're good at writing. I'm good at writing thrashy and head-bangable riffs, but I would never be able write a death metal song to save my life. Sure, I enjoy listening to a lot of death metal, and even rock, doom, experimental music etc, but I find my thrashier music to be more appreciable... that's all.

2. Most bands actually do experiment, it's just that most of the time it ends up failing and we don't really consider them to be good efforts. I was just thinking a moment ago how queer it was that Morgoth should write an alt rock album. A lot of bands have experimented with groove, rock, or some other form of alternative music at some point but don't get that much attention. Even within genres it happens a lot. Dismember is famous for having a very consistent formula and sound, but consider how each of their first four albums got progressively more and more melodic each time.

Also, just because a band might stick to one genre doesn't mean that they can't experiment within the genre!

I love this site, but sometimes people take the genre tags too much at face value. If you go by Slayer and Black Sabbath's, you might think that they never experimented.



This is an example of people going simply by M-A genre tags. There's virtually no alternative rock on Morgoth's last album. There's much more industrial metal/rock and post-punk like Killing Joke than anything made by the Pixies, Dinosaur Jr. or (middle to later day) Sonic Youth.

I'll take a look at that album/tag.

Thrash band playing a doom album? I'll give you a super-unique example, Sacrilege (UK) started out as a crust/crossover thrash band and ended up releasing a straight up doom metal album called Turn Back Trilobite!!! Look it up on the archives.

Notice how solo projects tend to show more experimentation than bands with 4 or 5 members. When you change your sound you need everyone in the band on board, and as others have said there are pressures from record labels to sound a particular way.

Ha, I'm sorry, on my first listen I wouldn't have said it was anything other than alt rock. But I am rather illiterate in that area.

Not to mention Overkill did at least one full-on doom metal song ("Skullkrusher").

Also one thing about experimentation is that most experiments fail. That's just the way it goes. If you're entering unknown musical territory, no matter how good a musician you are, you are not likely to take a shot in the dark and hit good music. And when a band does strike gold, they're often not inclined to push their luck. A lot of pioneering bands experimented greatly at their formation before finding a sound and settling into it. Do you think Tony Iommi just picked up a guitar in 1968 and decided "I'm going to write doom metal today"? No, he did not, he and the rest of the band spent two years working on and refining their signature sound, changing even their name multiple times until they released their debut. After all that work coming up with a sound that launched a genre, can you really blame them for sticking with it?

Good point. This often brings out great creativity as well. Working within defined boundaries forces people to get clever to make something captivating in an unexpected way.

Morbid Angel are another example. AoM was pretty thrash metal-inspired and later turned more into a sludge doom-y sound (which still sounded different from album to album) Their latest album seems like an experiment taken too far, though.

In general, TOO MANY bands experiment nowadays because they're not creative enough to continually write good songs without rehashing their old shit together. This results in crap like the latest Morbid Angel or The Unspoken King or Lulu.

Most of the older bands that are still relevant and popular(relatively) today did nothing of the sort. See Bolt Thrower, Asphyx, Incantation, Inquisiton or Vader.

I'd say it's more of a huge FAIL. The experimental songs sounded like really bad remixes and the actual metal songs were just repetitive, fillers. The lyrics were even worse. I remember downloading it when it leaked, then deleting it not even an hour after.
The worst experment album to me though, is Danzig Blackacidevil. Danzig 4 is my favorite Danzig album and to have the next one is this....ugh.

Once you have an audience, you kind of have an obligation to what they like. The exception is if you can pull of something that isn't a sell out, and do it as good or better than your past style.

You're correct. This is uncannily close to industrial rock-Killing Joke. Not alternative rock at all. I have changed the genre.

Just sayin', you could file a wrong genre report next time you notice something like this.

Literally every time I mention Feel Sorry for the Fanatic I mention Killing Joke in the same breath. Never noticed the genre tag here though. I"m not wild about the album but as I said in another thread I think it's got its moments and, well, I really like the song "Last Laugh".

Anyway, obviously heavy experimentalism doesn't really work for the majority of bands, especially those who want to develop a regular fanbase. I'll wager most musicians do try and experiment in the rehearsal space though, maybe especially when certain narcotics are involved.

funny you ask, I was just watching this... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viY6r1I5Kwk and the comment from "Last Chance to Reason" was basically this (and on the most part I agree).

And it's a great but unfortunately forgotten album!

There is a UK christian doom/thrash bands whos name ive forgotten, they were pretty good.

Edit: here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNh-488sVS8

I think GloomyDoom hasn't heard of Black Sabbath before.

When bands experiment, people bitch.
When bands don't experiment, people still bitch.

This. Especially with rather traditional and well-known bands this is a problem. Just look at Cannibal Corpse: They are very talented musicians, but I'm sure if they would play something very different (say, Atheist-like jazz-metal), many fans would turn their back and hate them for it. But currently they are also criticized for playing the same stuff over and over.
But also rather unknown bands face this problem (except that the shitstorm isn't as big): Dark Millenniums second album Diana Read Peace was back then mostly ignored or hated by the fans and the scene in general. Some music magazines praised it, but else nobody seemed to notice it and so the band disbanded. Today it's an underground classic and the few people who enjoy it do so very much and consider it one of the greatest and ahead-of-it's-time prog metal albums.

Another example is Holocaust (heavy metal band). There are few reviews for their latest album, Primal, but they are very different in content... Those who know the older stuff from them hate Primal and everything about it, while those who never listened to their old albums (including me) love Primal for being very different from any genre clichés but also very emotional and atmospheric - at times similar to Devin Townsend (I absolutely agree with the single review on here).

So I'd say there are bands who experiment a lot and you should appeciate them and support them, but changing genre and exploring new musical styles is always risky for a band and especially well-known bands have trouble with it.

I couldn't care less to be honest. Good music is good music.
I don't care if Slayer releases a old-school Doom album or another Thrash one or some Jazz-Fusion thing. If it's good I'll listen to it.

I think it's important to have an artistic direction rather than just "doing everything".

Even Nurse With Wound, the first artist people think of when they think of experimental music, has a singular goal and voice.

You can be as traditional or as experimental as you want, if you don't have any good ideas, or have any way of effectively conveying an emotion or idea through your music, it means nothing.

It's better for an artist to have a strong and powerful composition that provokes something in the listener, than consciously mix and match pre-existing genres together and seeing what sticks.

Combination of it slipping my mind and noticing that someone had already filed a "wrong genre" report before. Oh well.

Huge experimentation rarely succeeds in metal and I'm not a huge supporter of bands that stray too far away from the core fundamentals that shape up heavy metal. GOod music doesn't need experimentation and that is especially true for metal. However, a band should of course continously evolve and not stagnate.

Bands should follow whatever inspires them creatively to make music, not silly statements like these.

Killing Joke always comes to mind when I hear Godflesh and Ministry. It's amazing how widely influential that band is.

Killing Joke has some great records, but some of them are just plain bad. But the last 4 have been really good. Great band none the less and are always evolving.

Killing Joke were influential to a ton of genres: they pretty much invented "industrial rock/metal", and had a huge influence on post-punk, goth, and crust punk.

They also had an influence on NWOBHM, thrash, 90's NYHC, and have spawned lots of clones (not into clones though).

But to get back to the actual topic, many bands don't experiment, because:
1. They have an audience for what they've done before, or
2. they're just not good at other styles, maybe not on a personal scale but as a band

Cause it's safer?

Experimentation in modern metal is usually either superficial and carnivalesque, or a pander to the indie crowd. Like, throw in a flute, some post-rock influences and some weird time signatures and suddenly your album is trailblazing "art"?

Stagnation is a problem too, but this dichotomy isn't as important as you think. Quality is what matters.

i just think "form follows function"

If you've got an awesome song that might sound better done in another style, go for it!! If you've got an awesome idea for an experimental album or side project, try it out!!
If the song sounds better and more powerful in a traditional metal style, keep it metal!!

Don't just experiment for experimentation's sake, or stay the same for tradition's sake.

The song itself "decides" what style it's best played in.

It's interesting you would mention NWW. I was talking with a friend the other night about NWW, C93 and Muslimguaze - projects with absolutely vast discographies. The problem is that if you really, really like one period or sequence of albums, with a project like that you're eventually have to flat out say "I dont like anything past X". Because by definition it's changed so much. It seems like you can pretty much pick ONE of those sorts of bands and follow them. For example, I have every DI6 release. But in terms of physical copies, I have a handful of NWW and C93 albums that I like, but it got so exhaustive trying to keep up that I kinda stopped following them. Similarly, I own every SCORN release, and that project changed heaps over the years. But it almost means that I'm not going to be too enthused about Meat Beat Manifesto. It's too similar and I'm too invested in a collection of their closest cousin.

Maybe that's an autistic symptom of Metalheads, the need to have every release by an artist to feel "credible". But it sure as hell falls apart when you start looking at the enormous discographies of experimental solo artists.