I think that's why I keep coming back to this forum. There's something satisfying about typing something that creates a civil but colorful debate where you learn about other peoples' tastes as well as gaining a deeper understanding to why you feel the way you do.

It was Rival Sons and Voodoo Six when I saw them on their own tours and killswitch engage when my brother saw them, and that's in the UK. I don't know why they can't bring bands Iron Maiden fans actually want to see when the ticket prices are so high, it's not likely anyone's gonna upstage them.

I couldn't go because I was sick but Judas Priest bought along Saxon and Uriah Heep recently on their tour, which works. Not saying Maiden can't give newer bands a chance but at least bring someone along who are even in the same ballpark when it comes to genre. Plenty of trad metal bands out there, power metal or some of the less heavy thrash bands would be fine too.

I think I've largely been lucky on openers with Maiden. Queensryche, Halford, Dream Theater, Alice Cooper, Megadeth, Ghost are the ones off the top of my head. No Harris' kids or shit like that.

Agreed.

Womb of Lilithu wasn't great, but the last three albums on Century Media are all way too polished. Sounds like Amon Amarth.

Morbid Angel are boring when they do breakdowns. Which is in basically every song.

I thought that Dawn of the Damned was their best since Darkside. The latest one is solid; but it does safe, sure.

The last great album they put out was Death to All. It's not like I have lost interest in melodic black/death metal. I still seek those bands out regularly, but Necrophobic sound like they are just going through the motions at this point. There's an audience that seems to enjoy what they are doing and that's fine. It's just not for me. I feel the same way about a band like Unleashed. I see people praise their newer material all the time and they get good reviews but I just don't get it.

- I prefer 'Clandestine' to 'Left hand path'.
- I prefer Vomitory to Dismember.

Maybe a wrong thread to put this in, but don't want to open a new one for it. An article on Stereogum about the lack of metal in "metal" stars/headliners of today.

https://www.stereogum.com/2258777/metal ... ing-board/

Mark of the Necrogram and Dawn of Damned are sinister and obscure albums simply requires an active listening….

Two masterpieces

We are grown men and should be able to discuss civilly.

Unless you chastise me for liking fruity power metal. Then all bets are off.

I'm still always suspicious that any of that stuff matters. It doesn't really matter that much if metal has big viable arena bands. I'm listening to Root's Black Seal now for instance and it's complete bliss - heavy, thundering, outside the mainstream excellence. There's so much amazing shit out there and always has been. Metal's underground didn't flourish as some sort of life-support latched onto Metallica; they were just inspired by those bands... now that we have all the ease of the internet for music discovery, it's extremely easy, moreso than ever, for kids to find the good shit and model their own work after what they want. The big label pop does not matter.

This is the truth. Besides, even if metal, in fact, dropped dead this instant and no new albums were ever released, all of us would have multiple lifetimes' worth of previously released unheard albums to dig through. Not to mention the tons of old ones to relisten. We fixate too much on novelty and recency when we should just listen to Blood Fire Death again. Or Root's Black Seal, which rules.

Hey, I like fruity power metal too. I say hell to those who can't find the beauty in a band like Stratovarius.

I just skimmed through the article, and while I wouldn't disagree that it wouldn't hurt if the genre had one band that was the face of the modern state of it, I also don't think it's needed for the genre to thrive. The writer mentions bands like Lamb of God or Korn as genre stalwarts throughout the 00's and 90's respectively, but he doesn't seem to acknowledge that both of those bands are very controversial in the metal community. The drawback with having a band be the face of the modern era of the genre is that fans of that genre start to resent that act because they (often rightfully) feel like it's being shoved down their throats or can misrepresent the appeal of the genre. One thing I think nobody can accuse metalheads of is not knowing what they want. If a good band comes by our radar, we can elevate and support them and we won't need a record exec or a journalist to decide who's the face of the modern era for us.

This is a good article and I agree with much of what is written there. We have talked about this in other threads about the state of metal's popularity a couple of times in the last few months. The resume would be that most of the guys here don't really care about the mainstream exposure of the genre, arguing that more or less metal has always been an underground genre and it doesn't matter if there any popular bands in the present or in the foreseeable future.

Other interesting thing that was discussed here was that the record industry companies, after the digitalization of music and the advent of the internet and music platforms changed radically over the last 20 years and is imposible to have this big-name bands again, because the supply of music has surpassed the demand. We have lots of bands now, but no big name is pushed by record companies, there is a homogenization of the rock and metal bands popularity. All can put their music free on the internet, but no one will help those bands to get more famous, only the digital algorithm of the platforms decide which music becomes popular or not and metal is pretty far from that kind of mainstream exposure, especially in the younger generations.

The problem with this I think is that the only ones that will enjoy this genre and the underground form of metal will be people already introduced in this world making it a smaller scene that it was in 80s, 90s or the early 2000s.

I mean it's a well written piece with good points for the argument it's trying to make, but I just reject the whole premise. They don't mention any bands I'd say are among my favorites except for Iron Maiden. Not to say I'm so important. Just to say there's a much bigger world out there than what that article is talking about.

I remember talking to people back when Slayer had announced their farewell tour in the late 2010s. I asked what bands they felt would end up taking Slayer's place as a headliner in those type of events, only to get the answers of Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold, and Five Finger Death Punch.

Whether or not you consider them metal, Slipknot have been around since the 1990s, while Avenged Sevenfold formed in 1999, releasing their debut album in the early 2000s. So they'd have been around too long. I was hoping to have an up and coming thrash metal band be mentioned.

Even in rock music festivals, the headlining names seem to be the exact same ones each year now. Three Days Grace and their ilk.

In rock music, I'd say the Nirvana of the 2010s was...Nirvana. So far in the 2020s, the Nirvana of the decade is still Nirvana, not a new band who have a similar sound to them.

I agree with way more points in this than I thought I'd do, but I feel it takes a lot of time to say what most, nay, every metalhead has always known: the mainstream is going to chew up the elements of metal it requires and spit out some palatable corporate crap that is easy to consume for the majority of people. Which isn't a new thing, really. It happened in the 80's with glam in the late 90's/early 00's with nu metal, then metalcore. There, I said it in a single paragraph.

Rock music as a popular music movement is dead. But we will thrive in the underground, like we always have done.

I really despise nowadays popular music though, my girl made me watch some of the Coachella festival last weekend and I was nice to her trying to enjoy that stuff, but man that music fucking blows. If that's what's popular nowadays then I don't want anything to do with it and metal is pretty far from that plastic influencer top dollar crowd. I also think that the metal new bands really don't have that much to offer to a young girl in her early twenties, not so sure how we are going to connect with that crowd with bands like Witch Vomit or Necrot (both that I love and listen to daily).

It's not like women in their twenties were all that into metal in the 80s either. Obviously hair metal bands like Motley Crue and Poison had their female fanbase but metal by this site's definition has by and large always been historically male dominated.

Also I feel like people put on their nostalgia glasses when they talk about metal music in bygone times, when the reality was that it was never the most popular genre of music. More popular than it is now, sure, but there were probably more people into Cyndi Lauper in the 80s then the fanbases of most NWOBHM/speed/thrash metal bands combined. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Metallica were (and still are) exceptions to the rule and even then their fans were outnumbered by Michael Jackson fans. The main difference between then and now is that there are no longer any cultural gatekeepers limiting the kinds of music people are exposed to and that there is no real shared, communal pop culture anymore thanks to the Internet. The landscape has completely fragmented and there are a million different niches, of which metal is one. The good thing about that is that it's easier to gain access than ever before, so finding your way into the metal scene is still possible even though you don't have a MTV Headbanger's Ball playing music videos of the popular bands anymore. I think this idea of the big gateway band is less important now than it was for previous generations, and perhaps less viable when there isn't really anyone acting as a tastemaker and saying what's cool and what isn't (unless you count Tiktok as one).

Yeah, but at least most of the glam bands were unapologetic about wanting to make it big. Meanwhile the appeal of nu metal/metalcore was the credo of being opposed to the mainstream (although more in style than substance).

Also, I imagine there's a parallel discussion going on in punk circles about Green Day, Blink-182 and MGK having the spotlight, so this isn't just an issue in metal.

It's always been a double-edged sword with the way the industry works for bands getting popular. Before, you could possibly get a lot of money from music, but you had to keep changing your sound to meet the trends. Now, everything is fucked by algorithms and Spotify cuts you off from receiving any payment at all if you get under whatever amount of streams, but you don't have to follow the leader in terms of whatever sound is popular right now. Either way a lot of bands always got left by the wayside. There wasn't ever a time when a lot of bands we all like would've somehow been really huge doing exactly what they were doing. Very unfortunate, but that's why it has to be done for the love of the art.

I hadn't read the article, but reading the discussion here made me immediately think of Spooky Imagine Dragons err...Sleep Token I mean....and when I finally click on it, what do I see..

Arch Enemy fans are probably wowed.

I also don't get it. The Unleashed debut was a barbaric classic of viking themed death metal though.

You didn't like Bloodhymns or Third Antichrist?

Did you like Pieces EP or The God That Never Was?

I can see a world where Clandestine is more enjoyable than Left Hand Path, the sophomore is a leap in quality and depth of songwriting, the compositions are more ambitious, labyrinthine and intricate, full of detail and nuance. Basically they take everything that Left Hand Path was good at and make it more sophisticated, personally I prefer the gut-wrenching harshness of the debut (with compositions also very nuanced but in a more subtle way) but at the end of the day both are landmark albums in the history of death metal.

This a 100 times. I always found Left Hand Path very tedious and kinda by-the-numbers Swedish death. Clandestine feels a lot tighter and cohesive.

You know the reason on why it sounds like "by-the-numbers Swedish death" is because every swedish death metal band were inspired by them right?

Yep. Back in the 80's the glam bands had plenty of chick fans, especially the Poisons and Motley Crues. But go to a house party and put on some Testament in 1987 and expect to get harsh looks and most of the ladies telling you to turn that noise off. Even stuff like Iron Maiden was mostly a dude band. Most of the bands praised here would be extreme niche bands in the 80's as well. Hooky hard rocking metal with plenty of power ballads was big but it was also a trend.

Its part of why Metallica got a lot of backlash from the hardcore when Metallica dropped, suddenly all those people who called Puppets noise were mega Metallica fans humming Nothing Else Matters. My special band was everyones band now.

This. It's kind of silly to call some of the most influentials and pioneering bands "generic" or "by-the-numbers" when it's other bands who copied them...

Like, I can see how someone getting into swedish death metal in 2024, could stumble upon Left Hand Path and think it sound like a lot of other stuff, and therefore not be interested by it, but it's not a valid criticism of the actual album.

One of Witch Vomit’s guitar players is a woman. So to that end, the idea in theory (emphasis added) to connect to a female audience should be something along the lines of “I do it, you can too” or “I represent you” or something.

I realize some of that is phrased in a bit of a pedantic or reductive manner or whatever, I’m struggling to think of a better way to phrase it. I swear I’m trying to make a positive, inclusive point-not sure if it’s landing or not.

There's plenty of women that like heavy as fuck music of all kinds; very silly to not think so in 2024.

I disagree man, this is not true. Most girls don't like death metal I think is very delusional to think that. Kalaratri and
Ace_Rimmer are right, at least for me, we have been a male dominated genre since the very beginning and in the extreme metal scene that disproportion of genders only increased.

Iam not saying that is good or bad, it's just a fact about our scene.

Pleased to say there were quite a few women at the Carcass gig I went to last week.

Yeah if you go to shows you see this. It's probably never going to be 50/50 or whatever, but it's not like it's 100% dudes either.

Most men/boys don't like death metal either. This whole discussion about how if you played death metal in a party, girls in their twenties would complain relies heavily on very flawed premises, because you're kind of implying that they, and only they would complain, while the fact is that most guys their age (or any age, really) would also complain. Like you've kind of been suggesting that just because metal has been male dominated since the beginning, it means that a lot of men like metal (and extreme metal) but it's just not the case.



Saying that metal (especially extreme metal) is male dominated is different from what you've been arguing over the last few posts you've made. Like when you said that "the metal new bands really don't have that much to offer to a young girl in her early twenties". Like yeah, you're not wrong, but metal also isn't a genre that most guys in their early twenties listen to. The end of your sentence I just quoted was "not so sure how we are going to connect with that crowd with bands like Witch Vomit or Necrot". We don't connect with most guys in their early twenties with Witch Vomit and Necrot either. This is extremely niche music. So the fact that there are more guys who are into these bands is kind of irrelevant. The amount of people I know IRL who are into these bands (or even just know they even exist), I can count on the fingers of one hand. So yeah, most women AND men I know, have zero fucking clue who these bands are.

Considering this, and the fact that women have been getting into metal more and more over the years (including extreme metal), and that today we are as diverse as we've ever been when it comes to the gender of metalheads, I'm kind of failling to see the point you're trying to make.



Same. I saw Carcass last year, and there were a bunch of women there. Same for the Cannibal Corpse/Mayhem/Gorguts/Blood Incantation show I attended last September.

How do you even measure 'most' of a whole gender though? And if you really want to talk proportions, yeah, "most" people in general aren't into the really heavy shit...

All the best new trad bands have women fronting them or in them too, which is an interesting development.