It really made no sense because it had nothing to do with metal other than sparking thrash and whatnot so it seems like just a filler before the next episode or something.

Actually, the Glam Metal episode was a pretty interesting look at the Glam scene. There was really nothing about "sparking thrash" in it, although there was mention that the 2 scenes were at odds, somewhat (I say "somewhat" because it really doesn't seem like the glam guys took it really seriously). I'm not much of a fan of glam, but I thought the interviews were interesting, and most of guys interviewed seem to be pretty candid. I was glad to see that Dunn noted that it wasn't solely the arrival of Nirvana that killed off the glam scene.

Whether or not you think any of this has to do with metal depends on your view of metal. A lot of people, including, apparently, Sam Dunn, trace the roots of American heavy metal to bands like Aerosmith, Kiss, Alice Cooper, and Van Halen and you can make a pretty direct line from those bands to the glam bands, certainly more so than you could to American thrash bands (most of whom traditionally cite European metal bands as their inspiration). There were many people in the '80s who considered those bands metal and there are some who still do.

Just to clear up any confusion, the series never makes the case that early US metal predates early UK metal. Dunn is looking at, roughly, the same time frame (mid '60s though mid '70s in the UK, late '60s through late '70s in the US) and just dividing it geographically.

First off, the series thus far, given the commercial considerations that have been at play during its construction, is pretty damn good. Nothing is ever going to be perfect, but from a general perspective, he's hit the mark across the board. Of course, "hitting the mark" in a historical sense is going to ruffle feathers with an 1990s-centric viewpoint of the genre and its definitions.



He made it very clear that the two scenes were parallel to one another, which is true. Same as you referenced regarding the separate episodes of the US and UK scenes of the 1970s. Riki Rockett may never have written a song I liked, but the guy is completely honest about his career and what he does. I think it also looked at glam in a fully critical light and made pure note of the lack of substance in why it fell.



As far as I'm concerned, there's a correct view of metal history and an incorrect view, LOL. The correct view features those bands. From the underground metal sorta viewpoint, there's a lot of effort to distance the genre from the fact that the first rock band ever called a metal band was Grand Funk Railroad (and all that followed that over the course of the next 25 years), but none of that is historically accurate.

It also showed some funny, curious and obscure facts of the early days of the 'underground' glam scene and how everybody tried to jump on the glam bandwagon once the trend exploded in LA. Interestingly enough, Sam Dunn males emphasis in the fact that many metalheads, including himself, never considered and still don't consider Glam real Metal —funny, since VH1's definition of metal is precisely based on te pop/hair bands of the 80's, something that could also be said of That Metal Show— and finally showing how the saturation of the genre and the overflow of bands cloning each other played a definitive role n the emise of Glam Metal. a phenomenon that will also be repeated in the Thrash episode, I', afrai, since by 1991 many people, both fans and the hard rock/heavy metal press saw how the saturation of the genre was affecting the 'third generation' of thrash metal bands already and how some bands were exploring new terriotories or switching / changing their musical style.

It will be interesting to see a short segment about "whatever happened to..." certain thrash metal bands through the 90's, a period that saw the Metal torch be passed from America to Europe; while grunge was all over the place in the US during the 90's, Death, Blck and Power Metal regned supreme in Fortress Europa.

I think he's been ignoring the legends. In the NWOBHM episode, he didn't mention Motorhead or Venom at all!

Well, looking at the list of episodes coming still down the pipe, there's a thrash metal episode coming up next. Since he generally goes with the bands that are considered important to those scenes developments first, odds are pretty damned good Motorhead appears there. Venom might also make a stop in there or in the "shock rock" episode, which is where I'm guessing any reference to death/black metal enters the equation.

oh dear lord I hope not

LOL, I hope now that he calls Mercyful Fate "black metal" so a bunch of 20 year old kids have their heads explode trying to cope with that. Seriously though, if its gonna make the show (and I'm guessing it will, even if only for a fleeting moment) it probably will there. Its not like its going to do "damage" to the genre. I mean, what, we've had a few books? A couple of movies? Cover stories in Wire Magazine? A section in Pitchfork basically dedicated to black metal? Anyone watching already this probably already has an opinion.

I hope anyone watching ME at least knows what black metal is so they can tell when he says something stupid and laugh like the rest of us

The people complaining about the lack of emphasis on death/black metal are silly. For one, VH1 classic is a channel who's demographic is focused more towards people in their 40's-50's, and creating an episode dedicated to a genre very few (if any) of the target audience care about or likely are even aware exist is a terrible business move. The "Nu Metal" episode is going to be an attempt to draw in interest of the younger audience from a channel which has always been completely oblivious to the outside world.

Besides, let's be honest, has death and black metal had any measurable effect on the "evolution" of metal?



I have always thought of Mercyful Fate as a black metal band (first wave, of course)...I don't really know why but calling it "traditional metal" as many do never really did justice to the music in my opinion.

It had an effect on the bands of the 2000s, but those bands were not massive commercial successes selling arenas either. And hey, as far as nu-metal goes: The demographics for that trend towards the far end of the 18-34 male group these days. Then again, a show about Glam is largely going to appeal to people in the 45-54 range right now. I guess its a younger demo! LOL

And yeah, Mercyful Fate is totally a first wave black metal band by the legit definition. That's not even in question. There's a lot of people out there, particularly younger kids, listening to the genre, and if it isn't nonstop tremolo picking and songs about the woods, its not black metal.

Let me remind you that the series are based on Dunn's tree and, because to that, shock rock will probably include Kiss, Ozzy and Aice Cooper, and the "development" of it into marylin Manson and Rob Zombie. And yes, IF he does an episode on black metal, he will probably show Mercyful Fate and Venom. So, IF there is a second season (because that would be the only way to cover all the 26 sub-genres he managed to come up with) he would probably touch Death and Black Metal the way he did it in his MAHJ documentary.

But it also looks like the series are based on VH1's "Heavy: The Story of Metal". The four episodes covered the "old guard" bands of the 70's, the NWOBHM, Glam, Thrash and the "evolution" of it all into nu-metal and the likes. And that's why I don't think there will be a second season.

And perhaps he doesn't focus on underground scenes because, well, perhaps he is not interested in doing so, or perhaps VH1 just won't do that, or perhaps Dunn doesn't want to show it because, well, eventually some into maistream Metal will eventualy find it out themselves, and some just won't... because that is how things usally happen.

I saw an interview with him saying that he had a tough sell with the network to do a power metal episode, but that it was easier to do than trying to push a black metal/death metal episode. So I suspect that any reference to the genres will be VERY fleeting, if at all.

Are you serious? Of all the bands on the archives over HALF of them a black and death metal, despite only being around for half the time, basically every progression made in metal in the last 20 years has been either directly or indirectly related to the genres (Power metal picking up melodeath and black metal elements etc). Sure it's not creating whole NEW genres, but the amount of progression within these styles is mindboggling, from the early thrashy DM to all the strands of technical and brutal styles or the hundreds of symphonic, dissonant, and alien black metal born from the simplistic and raw beginnings there has been and still is an enourmous amount of evolution in these genres. Besides, the classification style is another reason these are not being considered new genres, the change from regular DM to tech death is certainly no less than the change from NWOBHM to Power metal, the only difference is that tech death still retains the death metal moniker, so people still consider it all "death metal", despite a total change in mood, riffing style and sound.

First, I want to make this clear: I don't want to suggest I'd be any better at running M-A or determining what is/is not metal than the people in charge. Let others do the work, they seem to be doing a successful job in terms of generating traffic and interest to the website.

With that disclaimer out of the way, pointing at M-A's list of bands as a definitive, unquestionable list of what is and isn't metal, much less determining the entire history of metal and the acts included doesn't work. There's many, many bands which would be considered unquestionably metal not on M-A due to a variety of reasons, primarily due to the lack of historical information. There's a lot there - possibly even the outright majority, I'd say - but there's going to be holes there in terms of looking at heavy metal prior to the internet era. Second to that, and perhaps more important, is that the criteria for what is/isn't metal for the website is not the universally held criteria from the perspective of popular or critical opinion. It's one that works well for the audience for this site, yes. But it isn't universal. You're kidding yourself if you believe it is.

From that perspective, ask yourself - metal in popular culture; what effect has death metal or black metal had on that? This is not a question people like to necessarily ask because it forces to think from a perspective outside the bubble of hardened metal fans.

The perception of metal as a whole has been fundamentally altered by death and black metal. So many percieve metal as "that screaming stuff" because of death metal and black metal, which they are not used to. In addition to that, genres like black-thrash, deathcore, death n' roll, and many other fusion genres, be they respectable or not, have been formed out of black and death metal - easily a number to rival genres which you in some-way see as being of greater importance.

Scaling up, It could be ventured that "metal" as a whole has had a very small effect on music as a whole... but does this mean that it'snot worthy of discussion?

You're certainly giving a solid argument that an episode about black/death metal will be unlikely due to the channel but on the other hand, I don't see how their significance is lessened in a general sense.

It isn't about what I want: What I'd want is a 13 episode documentary about how awesome Entombed is. But that's not happening, right? The perception of extreme metal as screaming maniacs isn't any different because of death or black metal than the perception of the genre was thrash was king or when Motorhead was the fastest thing going. That Nocturus' The Key was a hugely influential death metal album is little relevant to a program that's trying to cover the width of the genre when what is oft considered "not metal" here at M-A is viewed as such because of its critical and/or popular standing.

Overall I'd love such an episode assuming it was done as well as those preceeding it, but it probably won't happen. Sucks, but that's life, and I'll move on. Instead, the feeling I get is that Dunn was more successful pushing genres I sense he prefers in power and prog to get their own episodes. If you want a comparison point, just look at how Ken Burns' Jazz documentary on PBS basically snubbed any and all modern jazz movements. That was more greivous given that Burns got carte blanche to do whatever he pleased and instead turned out to be a Wynton Marsalis mouthpiece.



No one is saying it isn't. If that were the case, an advertiser reliant cable network wouldn't be green lighting a documentary series on heavy metal, right? You have to think outside the bubble here though.

Fair point, these days it is far easier for bands to both get something released, and to get that release recorded and noticed. That is reflected by a large increase in the number of total releases being accepted. There was a chart made by a user a year a couple of years back which showed this increase (It may even be in that data analysis thing that is linked on the main page), which has tapered off in recent years (From 2006 or something around there) due to the site starting to get very thorough in noticing the vast majority of stuff getting released. So I'll admit that scraps my over 50% in overall history argument, although I would still say there are more bands today than then, but I'm jsut speculating. Of course the fact that most stuff coming out these days is extreme metal still shows that it is important to the development of the genre as a whole. And even if you included the biggest mainstream genres, both Metalcore and Deathcore factor in death metal influences in some form, and take no influence from hair metal, shock rock, or even the Nu Metal that it replaced.



Admittedly it isn't a tome that can be expected to be perfect, music catagorization is subjective to some degree, and obviously there will be grey areas, while most of my issues are with individual bands, I do have a couple of spots where I think the site is wrong (too hard on deathcore, too soft on prog metal, side project rule). But with that said, that doesn't instantly mean the popular opinion of people who are not in the know of the genre (besides, why would people who aren't into metal be the target audience of a fucking metal show) is correct eiether, not to mention several topics covered with full episodes are not considered metal even by the most naive of views (grunge, shock rock). Besides several of the areas where the site would be lacking by mainsteam standards aren't even covered by the show either, such as metalcore.



So in other words the question was "What has Death or Black metal done for the evolution of metal, but not counting what it has actually done". Besides, what did grunge do for the evolution, what did nu metal do, both styles died in the ass and led to nothing, they were dead ends.

I would actually agree that there's probably more bands now than ever. The ability for the music to penetrate markets where releases were difficult to come by or illegal to own has increased exponentially in the last 25 years. I'm sure there were dudes selling bootleg cassettes of Metallica records in China back in the 1980s, but imagine how much easier it is to acquire that kind of music now somewhere like there today.

Also, in terms of the sheer numbers in favor of death/black metal: If you started a band in the vein of, I dunno, Xero or Trespass today, would you get in M-A? Or a glam band? Or a nu-metal band? Or a metalcore band? No, right? This isn't a knock on the criteria or a demand that it changes. I'm just trying to give you a different perspective as to how some will look at this.



My statement that death/black metal was relevant in developing the artists in the early 2000s was directly related to this exact thing. I'd even go on to say that death metal was important in the development of nu-metal as well, though I don't know I'd consider it key by any stretch of the imagination.



This comes back to what I said about universal sentiment here on M-A not necessarily being authoritative.



To a lot of people, myself included, black and death metal are just as much evolutionary dead ends themselves for heavy metal. You and I can argue the merits of innovation respective to those two genres till the cows come home and we're probably not going to come to a consensus.

I think overall our entire disagrement is driven by the fact you're talking about it in context of a show on VH1, where as I took your "Besides, let's be honest, has death and black metal had any measurable effect on the "evolution" of metal?" question as being on the genre as a whole, not just the ultra mainstream. As far as metal that gets played on the radio, it has had absolutely zero effect. Hell has any "metal" been mainstream radio worthysince like, late 90's KoRn? Even for metalcore shit it's not showing up in the top 40 countdown, and is relegated to late night "metal" shows. So I suppose the Hair metal and glam TV world sense, metal has been dead since the late 90's, so there will be no second season. Thus rendering this show an entire waste of time, as usual.

The genre as a whole is argurably much larger than purely what M-A offers as being "heavy metal". Like I said - I don't consider the general consensus here any more authorative than Martin Popoff's opinion. There's very different viewpoints there.



There was probably some lame metalcore stuff that made the top 40 Active Rock charts in the last 10 years (and certainly more recently), but I'm not gonna rush looking to Billboard archives on Lexis/Nexis to prove it. Real metal had a huge commercial boom at the start of the 2000s. It wasn't nearly as strong as the sales for nu-metal though, which is probably why we're not seeing an episode about Killswitch Engage.

(and before someone comments: No, Killswitch isn't any good. Yes, I know they are "core" by the definition here. But commercially, bands and tours in the time frame around 2002-2005 were better off than they had been since the early 1990s. Maybe even bigger. Look at how many times bands with the profile of Vader came over to the US during that period playing large venues. Look at how Maryland Deathfest and New England blew up while Milwaukee and New Jersey collapsed in the years prior. )

Well at least the archives has a well defined measurement of what is metal, and has a fairly precise definition to metal. Unrelated argument though of course. But yes, it all is arguable, I stick pretty close to MA's, but there are differences as I have said.



Oh indeed, the underground has had quite a boom thanks to the internet, metalcore along with it, which is how the mainstream metal scene these days is large, despite not getting airplay in non-specialised places. This has lead to bigger tours and whatnot, however it has not been big enough to shoot them into the absolute pop levels of success, like the older hair and glam and nu metal stuff had.

Edit: This is another reason why a show like this blowing off the death/black/doom genres is so infuriating, there IS an audience for it out there, and as some of the huge festivals prove, if you target something towards them, they will pay attention.

What? I can't speak for power metal, but death and black were alive and well over here.

For his section on "shock rock", he's probably going to talk about Alice Cooper for a while, then run his mouth about the "revolutionary" Marilyn Manson. Ugh

Well, the question is... is there really an audience out there? Underground metal fans are VERY criical towards VH1, That Metal Show and the series we have been discussing in this thread and many even refuse to watch it... ...and I don't think VH1 is very interested in gaining ThAT kind of audience for themselves.

Perhaps I did not make myself clear... what I meant was that Power, Black & Death Metal were all over the place in Europe, almost mainstream, while in the US these three subgenres (especially BM) stayed in the underground...

Well look at this thread, 7 pages of people complaining that they're not going to cover any of those genres. There is so little stuff done on metal that we tend to give absolutely anything relating to it a cursory glance, if something covered these genres well (And for all Dunn's shortfalls, he is at least somewhat knowledgable on these genres, and provided he was careful it could still work)

I would disagree and say that many of the people who consider metal music "that screaming stuff" have never heard black/death metal in their lives (aware or not). The people who think it is all screaming are those who aren't very familiar with metal and the bands that they do hear scream are the more popular metalcore and hardcore bands. They don't know the difference between hardcore and metal and often think hardcore is metal because of the screaming.

I don't any of us are too far away from agreeing on the same principles here. I think we just have slightly different takes on what they particularly mean. Tezcat and lord_ghengis basically agree that the genre is more viable commercially than it was some time ago, but even at that increased level of attention, I'm not sure its so visible that VH1 would demand or even acquiese to a death/black metal episode, which is what Tezcat argues. I'd also say I think the genre's popularity has fallen off some in the last few years, but that may just be me projecting based on my own almost complete lack of participation in record buying or show attendance in the last 7-8 years.

I also don't seriously think people think of hardcore when they think metal and consider it screaming music. People have said that for decades. Long before I was even interested in the music.

Gotcha. I should have realized that since the discussion here has largely been dealing with metal's presence in mainstream media.

I see he's doing the next episode on thrash. If Venom isn't in that, I have no respect for him

Do you actually have any respect for this clown?

Dunn has Anvil and Pantera on his list of thrash metal bands.

^ On a related note... he was the same guy who put Scorpions on the list of Power Metal?

He must be since GNR is on list of Glam 'metal'

Yeah he did have Scorpions there. Actually only the last few bands on that list were actually power metal, the rest were Dio, Scorpions, Judas Priest and so forth.

Am I the only one who feels like strangling the idiocy out of this buffoon?

I think this is a grand idea and would gladly help in any way to make this event happen.....