What would you call something like Shok Paris' "Steel and Starlight"? Seems pretty accurate to call it USPM or heavy/power metal. Great example of what gets called blue collar USPM.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J9ucxOKUs4

Thought you were talking about Count Orlok before I found the start of this discussion.

For those that care, I have finished 4 weeks of the 12 week police radio course that I'm doing. It's really hard and I have done nothing much more than take triple zero calls (911 calls for Americans) all last week. A third of the class have already dropped out or failed their telephony exam - started with 9, down to 6. Next week we begin the dispatch phase of the course.

It's really hard, not going to lie. I'm pretty much at my mental limit, but I have also taken many many police emergency calls. It's actually lamer than it sounds, although getting abused on the phone is always a hoot and a half. Dispatch is a whole other thing, though.

Also, living in Sydney is a bit strange. I have never lived in a city before and I don't really care for it. The one advantage is that any service I could ever want is within walking distance to me. But I'll be glad to be back on the south coast after it's done.

The video is blocked in my country.

Just read that Soulseller Records is going to re-release Gorgoroth's "Pentagram"!

A. B. wanted to inform me



I beg to differ. The email did not even had a subject. What has become of all those hate-mail writers? Such posers and wannabes. Nothing proper any more.

Infinite ammo cheat.



This entire scene is so incredibly incompetent that it transcends being "so bad its good" and is actually uncomfortable to watch.

Those Fx are pure goldies.

Looks like Behemoth has started playing a new song live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNkEvT9b6T0

Sounds pretty fast and a bit more black metal, but the quality isn't great so it's hard to get a real impression. Definitely stoked for the follow-up to The Satanist though.

Wishing you lots and lots of energy to make it through. One thing that helps me keep up my motivation during highly demanding tasks/periods is to remind myself how far I've already made it, which is proof of what I'm capable of.

^
Indeed! Also that job is a tough one in terms of stress and responsability, it's really not for everyone. If you can pull it trough you should really be proud!

Guys just a question, I had a debate with a few friends of mine at today's lunch, how could you define a commercial band in general? Both of them implied it was a band that was made up for being successful, hitting the charts and passing on the radio... Like something planned to success, favorizing the popularity over the music itself, whereas I thought it was bands like Kiss or Cannibal Corpse that create A LOT of goodies and shirts etc... to be the most attractive possible. But they told me this genre of bands wasn't commercial but lucrative. What do you think about it?

I would define a commercial band as KISS or Cannibal Corpse.

That sentence is better if Ritual Suicide isn't a band name.

If you haven't eaten elk before, you should eat some. Tender and juicy Looking forward to trying some bison, and I can hardly believe it might be better than elk.

It depends on what you mean by "commercial." Cannibal Corpse are commercial within the metal scene, for sure, in that in metal they are a pretty big name and sell a lot of records and merch in comparison to other metal bands. Kiss, however, are commercial within the wider sense of the word, in that they make a TON of money when they tour, and hearing their songs in the media is a pretty common occurrence. I'd say a commercial band is a band which exerts a degree of influence and is a "big name" or draw within their scene or in society in general.

I also disagree that bands are commercial because they are "made" to be successful. Most bands become commercially successful because they are lucky enough to have a single, or an album or whatever, that gains traction and enables them to sell a lot of records, tickets, merch etc. I feel like your friends are talking about bands like Bon Jovi, Guns n' Roses or Motley Crue who have (had?) a radio-friendly sound and so sold fuck-tons of records off the back of that whereas you are referring more to being "commercial" within the metal scene.

Although I do agree Cannibal Corpse (and a lot of top tier extreme metal bands) are more lucrative than commercial in the wider sense of the word.

Okay I see. Oh and by the way I do not denigrate the talent and the huge influence of both of the bands I quoted had!

Actually they don't like metal. They were talking about other rock-related genres. One said for instance that in a way, the Beatles were commercial in the sense at the very beginning they were a pretty insignificant garage band and then someone noticed them and made them "suitable" for radio, shows etc making them the first boys-band. I don't know if it's true but that's what he said. They were also talking about pop shit that we could hear while listening to music radio... I call them supermarket songs, since the only moment you're listening to them is while making the grosses.

As for me what I mean by commercial is "a band that sells a lot of stuff, CDs like merch or concert tickets". So maybe yes it has to be seen within a specific range, like extreme metal bands for CC.

Within the context of music, "commercial" is an ill-defined adjective whose alleged precision is as tightly-defined as Borat's marital wizard sleeve. Most J-pop and K-pop bands are unheard of outside of southeast Asia. You would never have heard Nightwish on a US radio station in the US prior to 2006 (if even then) despite the stadium-sized concerts they sold out elsewhere. There was a time when Cannibal Corpse sold more albums in the US than Armin van Buuren while the precise opposite situation prevailed concurrently in most European countries. Has-been bands in one nation suddenly find themselves best-sellers in lesser-populated countries when they resume touring there. People here and elsewhere talk (with sarcasm or seriousness) of the specter of trueness vs if you are a false, but it's a vague pseudo-ideal which stands less for purity than it does for bragging rights about whose favorite band is the least catchy.



Elk is good, albeit not as tasty as bison in my opinion. However, neither are as flavorful as reindeer. Rudolph is better dead and smoked than alive and poorly-drawn in some holiday coloring book.

Every single freaking time I see that artist get mentioned, I start getting defensive and then realize it's NOT referring to Werwolf's side project.

a commercial band is a band that waters down their sound/genre what they are playing in hope for becoming bigger. For example early Saxon was quite commercially successful but those albums are obviously not watered down however after power & glory they obviously did water down their sound and became commercial for a couple album. Now obviously innocence was still a decent album some of the others were not.

So highly successful bands that are huge that... don't water down their sound aren't commercial?

A fairly decent price for this Mortician album: https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/5074328

So Saxon became less commercial when they became more commercial?

Sweet! I'll be seeing them this weekend on the Slayer retirement tour. I will have to sit through Lamb of God and Anthrax though....

Anyone else catching a show on the tour? I'm pretty sure Slayer knows their audience but if they don't do a good run of the classics I'll try to climb up on stage and cut off Kerry Kings' stupid pointy beard.

I kinda agree with Tomcat. "Commercial" is an odd old thing that like a bunch of other things in music can have a few million different meanings.

..And Justice For All got to #6 in America, but in now way would I label that commercial.
Cherry Pie by Warrant got to #7 but I would certainly argue that it's a way more commercial album.

The idea being that "commercial" is something that is done with the aim of generating more commerce or something.

of course it's vague as hell.. so what? That's the great thing about music. It's a subjective weirdo thing, where you're rarely *provably* wrong, instead you're just super dumb

Just posted this little video clip for the upcoming Cosmic Atrophy album. Check out this ridiculous solo

https://www.facebook.com/CosmicAtrophy/ ... 846093141/

v

Just popping in to say that Scrolls of the Megilloth by Mortification is fucking bad arse.

Don't be like me and discount Mortification because they're a Christian band and released this as an album cover and title.

And don't be like me and discount Mortificaion because they're a Christian band and released a song called 'God Rulz' where the lyrics can be transcibed as;

God Rulz x8

Turns out that when they weren't doing cringey stuff like that, they were writing solid metal. Hell, even 'God Rulz' is a good track if you get passed the dumb lyrics.

Should speed metal even be a genre? What separates it from thrash?

Thrash is more chaotic and tends to "shapeshift" more often.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqO1hjFCCLc
vs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc0UxuyC3Ew

In that way, I feel that speed metal is the most restricted of the metal genres. It can't go many places without becoming something else.

It really is, but we love it, so we want more of it.

Wise words.



Check out the megathread on the "Metal Discussion" forum, there is (or was) a discussion about the exact same question. To me it's not a real genre in the sense I always have to put another genre behind it like speed/thrash or speed/power. It describes a way of playing rather than a particular sound. It does not give any clues about the sound of the music, a "speed metal song" could be at the same time a Helloween, a Razor or an Agent Steel one.

What separates it from thrash are the other influences. For instance Helloween's Wall of Jericho is pure speed though it doesn't sound like thrash at all, because of all the melodies in Kai Hansen's voice or in the riffing in general. Same thing for Riot's Thundersteel.

It's a good album. The punchy bass and thin guitar give it a really distinct sound, different than the meaty or ultra-crunchy guitar-driven sounds that really took hold at the time. The music is driven by the bassist/vocalist and drummer when it gets faster, but the guitarist has a knack for those ominous slower parts that give it a feeling of... biblical doom, I guess.

That being said, after I found the CD many years ago, I looked at their website, and Steve Rowe comes across as an egotistical, insufferable prick. Mr. Extreme Jesus Death Metal has his own bigger-than-Jesus syndrome, while simultaneously holding his god as being even bigger than him. Amusing, how he hasn't been humbled by his music being laughably bad for the last 20 years.

Tbh I just consider "speed metal" to be synonymous with "heavy/thrash metal."

Stuff that most people consider to be speed metal seems to occupy a nebulous space in between thrash, power and heavy metal. It's like really fast heavy metal but not quite as epic and grand to be power metal, and yet also not as aggressive or venomous to be thrash.

I always thought of speed metal as stuff that's too fast to be called regular heavy metal, not melodic enough to be power, and not aggressive enough to be thrash. Basically, it's just really sped up trad metal.

I think Bathory's "black metal phase" is more speed metal than thrash. It's definitely a black metal release but contains parts that are akin to speed metal.

The first album, maybe. From The Return onwards i really don't hear that influence prominently anymore

Never said it was a bad thing.



Steve didn't come across as that bad, from what I've seen of him, but you've probably read stuff I haven't. Shame that Mortification went to shit, I was looking forward to digging through more of their catalogue, so I guess I'll just start with the old stuff and keep going till the quality drops off.