Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Nuke on June 26, 2010, 07:25:10 pm
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I think it's easy to overestimate America's influence on other cultures when you're looking from the outside...I remember my first week in London, I was walking down the street and saw something like three KFC knockoffs on a single block. Had a definite WTF moment there, but over time I got the impression that people were well aware of America's influences (and those of consumer culture in general) and were not terribly concerned that it was going to destroy their way of life or something. Sure there's people who are like "We'll be overrun!" when anything seen as being in competition with something traditional gains any popularity, but there's always whiners like that in every country and somehow life goes on.
The only area I can think of where America exerts a truly dominant influence on the world is in music. For whatever reason (probably because it's awesome), America's original blend of African and European elements hit some sort of enormous global jackpot, to the point where really every type of music that has become huge over the past half century+ has been in some way derived from that lineage. It's not that there aren't traditionalist holdouts (various classical and folk musics, etc), but the American sound has been the wellspring for so long that it really permeates the fabric of what people think of as music. And Chuck Berry is still alive! :yes:
so why is it that the us sucks at metal?
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I think it's easy to overestimate America's influence on other cultures when you're looking from the outside...I remember my first week in London, I was walking down the street and saw something like three KFC knockoffs on a single block. Had a definite WTF moment there, but over time I got the impression that people were well aware of America's influences (and those of consumer culture in general) and were not terribly concerned that it was going to destroy their way of life or something. Sure there's people who are like "We'll be overrun!" when anything seen as being in competition with something traditional gains any popularity, but there's always whiners like that in every country and somehow life goes on.
The only area I can think of where America exerts a truly dominant influence on the world is in music. For whatever reason (probably because it's awesome), America's original blend of African and European elements hit some sort of enormous global jackpot, to the point where really every type of music that has become huge over the past half century+ has been in some way derived from that lineage. It's not that there aren't traditionalist holdouts (various classical and folk musics, etc), but the American sound has been the wellspring for so long that it really permeates the fabric of what people think of as music. And Chuck Berry is still alive! :yes:
so why is it that the us sucks at metal?
Indeed. All my favorite bands are European, mostly Scandanavian. Never really caught on to Japanese metal.
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so why is it that the us sucks at metal?
What, no love for STOVOKOR? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnAlmynTeSU&feature=related
Seriously though, I would guess it has something to do with the generous amount of sunshine we receive. It's tough to be metal when you don't have that endless-night, arctic-circle-in-winter vibe going. It's like, why aren't the Nigerians good at Olympic ice prancing?
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ive mostly been listening to metal from switzerland, namely celtic frost and triptykon, essentially the same band. to be fair america has superior power and thrash metal than most of the world, but these are subgenres i really dont pay much attention to. also should point out that most of the early metal bands like black sabbath and judas priest (both offitially formed in '69 :wtf: ) were from the uk.
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so why is it that the us sucks at metal?
What, no love for STOVOKOR? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnAlmynTeSU&feature=related
Seriously though, I would guess it has something to do with the generous amount of sunshine we receive. It's tough to be metal when you don't have that endless-night, arctic-circle-in-winter vibe going. It's like, why aren't the Nigerians good at Olympic ice prancing?
Now explain all the emo kid music in the same breath :P
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I think it's easy to overestimate America's influence on other cultures when you're looking from the outside...I remember my first week in London, I was walking down the street and saw something like three KFC knockoffs on a single block. Had a definite WTF moment there, but over time I got the impression that people were well aware of America's influences (and those of consumer culture in general) and were not terribly concerned that it was going to destroy their way of life or something. Sure there's people who are like "We'll be overrun!" when anything seen as being in competition with something traditional gains any popularity, but there's always whiners like that in every country and somehow life goes on.
The only area I can think of where America exerts a truly dominant influence on the world is in music. For whatever reason (probably because it's awesome), America's original blend of African and European elements hit some sort of enormous global jackpot, to the point where really every type of music that has become huge over the past half century+ has been in some way derived from that lineage. It's not that there aren't traditionalist holdouts (various classical and folk musics, etc), but the American sound has been the wellspring for so long that it really permeates the fabric of what people think of as music. And Chuck Berry is still alive! :yes:
so why is it that the us sucks at metal?
:wtf:
Dream. Theater.
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I think it's easy to overestimate America's influence on other cultures when you're looking from the outside...I remember my first week in London, I was walking down the street and saw something like three KFC knockoffs on a single block. Had a definite WTF moment there, but over time I got the impression that people were well aware of America's influences (and those of consumer culture in general) and were not terribly concerned that it was going to destroy their way of life or something. Sure there's people who are like "We'll be overrun!" when anything seen as being in competition with something traditional gains any popularity, but there's always whiners like that in every country and somehow life goes on.
The only area I can think of where America exerts a truly dominant influence on the world is in music. For whatever reason (probably because it's awesome), America's original blend of African and European elements hit some sort of enormous global jackpot, to the point where really every type of music that has become huge over the past half century+ has been in some way derived from that lineage. It's not that there aren't traditionalist holdouts (various classical and folk musics, etc), but the American sound has been the wellspring for so long that it really permeates the fabric of what people think of as music. And Chuck Berry is still alive! :yes:
so why is it that the us sucks at metal?
:wtf:
Dream. Theater.
i hate prog
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so why is it that the us sucks at metal?
What, no love for STOVOKOR? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnAlmynTeSU&feature=related
Seriously though, I would guess it has something to do with the generous amount of sunshine we receive. It's tough to be metal when you don't have that endless-night, arctic-circle-in-winter vibe going. It's like, why aren't the Nigerians good at Olympic ice prancing?
Now explain all the emo kid music in the same breath :P
the music industry has been exploiting teenagers since the 50s. they did it with rock in the 50's and 60s, with disco in the 70s, with (fake) metal in the 80s, grunge and hip hop in the 90s. every time the record industry finds something they can sell, they buy out the band and all similar bands, attach a genre label to it and start mass marketing it. if they see a trend developing they fill up all the media channels with it and make it seem more popular than it is to draw in new bands that they can exploit.
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STOVOKOR
Did Star Trek borrow that word from some Earth language? Because a metal band naming itself after the Klingon afterlife is just :wtf:.
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Drone doom was pioneered and refined by Americans, so as far as I'm concerned, the U.S. has earned its metal badge.
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STOVOKOR
Did Star Trek borrow that word from some Earth language? Because a metal band naming itself after the Klingon afterlife is just :wtf:.
you didn't watch the video did you?
took me about a minute to realize they were singing in English, I think...
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Drone doom was pioneered and refined by Americans, so as far as I'm concerned, the U.S. has earned its metal badge.
theres a subgenre i nearly forgot about. good when youre high, annoying when your not.
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i hate prog
booooo
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also should point out that most of the early metal bands like black sabbath and judas priest (both offitially formed in '69 :wtf: ) were from the uk.
Yeah I'm not trying to take anything away from other countries' contributions to contemporary music, only pointing out that the bulk of music that is popular today can trace a sizable chunk of its lineage through the American South.
Seriously though, I would guess it has something to do with the generous amount of sunshine we receive. It's tough to be metal when you don't have that endless-night, arctic-circle-in-winter vibe going. It's like, why aren't the Nigerians good at Olympic ice prancing?
Now explain all the emo kid music in the same breath :P
Well, the emo thing is all about whiny adolescent angst and brooding, which occurs all over the world, though maybe a little more often in suburbia. Though the same brooding element can be a part of Metal, it is usually invigorated by a hyper-masculine current of annihilation whose strength varies with distance from the stream of chaos spewing forth from the collapsed polar gate. Ergo metal is most powerful in the north while emo can and will strike anywhere at any time. Gotta take the good with the uhg.
you didn't watch the video did you?
took me about a minute to realize they were singing in English, I think...
Yeah I think they do sing in English though at least some of their stuff is in Klingon. Did I mention the singer/growler is a one-armed giant? And they always take time out from their set to berate their human audience? They might not be #1 in metal but they are definitely the cream of Trek bands and all bands that wear prosthetic foreheads on their real heads :D For the Glory of Qo'nos!
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I was mostly playing :p
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oDXRo78rtY
^My weakness for metal, this style :< Corny++
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Though I'm not really versed in metal as a whole, that's the sort of thing I tend to like too, or at least anything with clean singing and a strong melody. It's music to kick ass to. :p
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metal vocal styles are all over the place you get clean vocals mostly in your power and prog bands and sometimes goth and doom bands, guttural primarily used in black and death metal (lemmy kinda is the one who started it), thrash metal tends to be a lot of loud yelling (not screaming, screaming != metal). of course you have the high pitched so called "traditional" sound that was famous in the 80s. if you trace metal as far back to black sabbath you will find typical 60s rock style vocals. some bands even use classical or operatic styles. therion is a band that likes to mix classical arrangements with traditional metal to create an unidentifiable subgenre. arcturus did the same with more of an avantgarde twist. you of course have nightwish (though there are better fem vox bands out there, like theatre of tragedy). there are even chicks doing guttural (astarte, arch enemy).
point is metal is so broad that you may actually have to listen to a dozen different subgenres to find a style you like. i started listening to thrash before finding black and death, but these days i mostly listen to the old skool black metal (the stuff that came out before the generic norwegian sound was established), doom metal, motorhead (it gets its own genre), and whatever celtric frost/triptykon calls what its doing (t.g. warrior seems to be mixing up the things i like best about metal and sticking it in one band).
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so why is it that the us sucks at metal?
:wtf:
Dream. Theater.
i hate prog
:wtf:
How can you not like:
- A Change of Seasons
- A Nightmare to Remember
- The Count of Tuscany
- These Walls
- Panic Attack
- Etc.
Sheesh! :ick:
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Nuke only likes music to kill kittens to.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-TUufvK0gU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-TUufvK0gU)
^ My vote ^
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Drone doom was pioneered and refined by Americans, so as far as I'm concerned, the U.S. has earned its metal badge.
theres a subgenre i nearly forgot about. good when youre high, annoying when your not.
It's really the only kind of metal I got into seriously. Doom metal and avant-garde minimalism are a match made in heaven, especially with a heavy dosage of that vaguely Morricone-esque apocalyptic western aesthetic (e.g., Earth's more recent work).
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I was mostly playing :p
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oDXRo78rtY
^My weakness for metal, this style :< Corny++
I'm with you. Metal is best when it's like a theme song from an awesome pre-anime, pre-flash cartoon with really hokey animation ;)
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Meh.
I listen to Rush.
and Nightwish....
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Nuke only likes music to kill kittens to.
but i wuv kittens
puppies now
Drone doom was pioneered and refined by Americans, so as far as I'm concerned, the U.S. has earned its metal badge.
theres a subgenre i nearly forgot about. good when youre high, annoying when your not.
It's really the only kind of metal I got into seriously. Doom metal and avant-garde minimalism are a match made in heaven, especially with a heavy dosage of that vaguely Morricone-esque apocalyptic western aesthetic (e.g., Earth's more recent work).
I kinda used to like eyehategod. it had a slow ear raping sound that gave you headaches with prolong unmedicated listening. doom metal in general is good, with its solid blues inspired sound. black sabbath's original sound was a rock-blues crossover. and since then the sound of metal got progressively faster. but its good to see bands go back to the roots of metal.
i think im gona split this topic because its turned into a discussion of metal, which frankly deserves its own thread.
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and Nightwish....
Yup, you know an amazing voice like tarja turenen when you hear her (dark passion play was great, but their new singer is **** (bad), i guess this is the trade off the band gets to deal with after tarja left and the rest of the band was finally able to "break out of their shell" for the first time (good)). I've found i like powermetal. I also listen to sonata arctica.
After that there's nothing more to listen to on american radio since it's all ****. I mean really, papa roach and linkin park became emo boy bands?
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they let the record companies dig their talons in too deep. the smart bands all created their own record label and bought their own equipment and then licensed their work to distributors. if black metal proved anything, its the self production model. satyricon, celtic frost and others (memory failure due to whiskey) both started their own labels to produce their own stuff.
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wow, nice suggestions all. I've been looking for a couple of new metal bands myself.
What Japanese metal bands are there btw? I know X Japan is heavy metal. There's also Blood Stain Child which is kind of Techno + Metal. And there's Head Phones President which basically sounds like Nu Metal being sung by a 10 year old girl trying to speak Engrish :p Other than that, I dunno, maybe Deathgaze?
samples:
Blood Stain Child - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPmF7JPhYuo
HPP - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYbZ205ROaQ
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The only one I know is Maximum the Hormone, who are kind of awesome in a hilarious way. :p
As far as obscure stuff goes, I've had a friend link me a few Alestorm songs, and they kick all kinds of ass. Woo pirate metal!
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What Japanese metal bands are there btw? I know X Japan is heavy metal. There's also Blood Stain Child which is kind of Techno + Metal. And there's Head Phones President which basically sounds like Nu Metal being sung by a 10 year old girl trying to speak Engrish :p Other than that, I dunno, maybe Deathgaze?
X Japan was good up until '98. They should have quit while at the top. Ever since their "comeback" a couple of years ago, they've basically been kicking themselves in the bollocks.
Of current bands, yes, Deathgaze is mostly metal. Galneryus is sort of like... I dunno, a Japanese Stratovarius, maybe? Dir en grey is probably the most popular Japanese band worldwide at the moment, with their last two albums having been more metal than rock.
I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones I actually listen. Might give a shot to Blood Stain Child.
Edit: Blood Stain Child seems rather interesting.
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I love metal. I'm mostly into melodic stuff, but I do have a few favorite black and death metal bands.
I'm surprised you guys know of Blood Stain Child. They're pretty obscure, but I find them pretty good.
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i tend to avoid anything japanese.
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While I do really enjoy the Scandinavian stuff my favorite metal band is an American one, Nevermore. Very rich and complex, though it takes a few listens for one's brain to truly "get it."
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nevermore isnt bad. but it kind of exists in a genre i dont really like. prog usually comes off to me as wankey elitist music that only sometimes sounds good to me. i usually tend to not look for new music in that particular genre. however if i find something i like, and it just happens to land in the prog genre, i will probibly still listen to it. opeth is pretty good for prog as well, mainly on the grounds that their sound is awesome. unfortunately their sound is often mimicked, poorly, by the mainstream. unfortunately, i cant add it to my list of american bands simply on the grounds that they're sweedish.
things that america does right are:
power metal (iced earth, at least their early stuff is awesome, anything with dio of course)
i usually avoid this genre on the grounds that most of it is flower metal that just sounds way too happy, but its one that america does well.
prog (nevermore)
so called thinking mans metal. or as i put it wankey elitist intellectual (to the point of incompetence) metal. lots of them in the usa, few i actually enjoy listening to.
sludge/drone (crowbar, eyehategod)
sludge does 2 things i like. first it brings back the blues sound to metal, which was kinda lost in the 80s. second is its kind of like black metal in reverse. low production quality, sometimes gritty vocals, but instead of being blistering fast it slows it down to a sub doom pace. and frankly the usofa is the only country that can do it without making it lame.
southern metal (pantera, down, superjoint, rebel meets rebel).
you know these bands, they pretty much all have phil anselmo in them. them mix in country (superjoint had hank williams III on bass) and blues, with a half thrash groove sound, and theyre not afraid of bass like most metal bands seem to be. this genre crosses over well with sludge. and it can only come out of the former confederate states of america.
bay area thrash (metallica and megadeth come from here).
dont really like many bands out of this. you can get better thrash from pretty much everywhere else (especially south of the border). i only mentioned it because it produced a couple big named metal bands that got me into the genre in the first place.
floridian death metal (six feet under, cannibal corpse)
also not a genre i like much anymore. you can get better death metal from lots of places, sweeden for example. i just wanted to point out thar america has a large death metal scene. unfortunately most of it is cookie monster metal.
of course you got the new wave of american heavy metal (NWOAHM), named after the new wave of british heavy metal (NWOBHM) that happened in the late 70's - early 80's and produced ledgendary bands like iron maiden and motorhead. neither were very well established genres, but rather a group of successful bands that came into being at about the same time. unlike with the brittish counterpart NWOAHM kinda sucks in comparison. its loaded with nom-metal influences, like grunge, punk, numetal and hardcore. i think it was pretty much a marketing play to try to make (fake) metal mainstream again. it was kind of a followup to the concept of numetal and hard alternative trends in the late 90's and in the 00's. people who actually liked those genres wanted something heavier. and the record industry responded by creating a new loosely defined genre that they could lump their marketing successes into. while the quality of nwoahm is greatly lacking, it is doing something good, which is getting people to listen to metal again. and solong as they dont get sucked into the fanboist black hole that lockes them into a really bad band, i can let them listen to my metal and they go, "****ING AWESOME!"
i also didnt list any doom bands because i really couldnt think of any from the us. i like doom as a genre, i just dont know any good doom from the states. also should point out that the us does everything. you can get black metal in the us. dark army (michigan) for example is awesome (and often confused with dimmu borgir for some reason). pretty much any genre of metal can be found in the us somewhere. its just every country often specializes in certain genres. such as black in norway and death in sweden.
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I pretty much find all of the doom/death stuff I've heard to be rather silly as a rule. (In fact, the only reason I like Dethklok so much is because it's a tongue-in-cheek take on the material.) It's a bunch of ridiculously-dressed bands trying to pass themselves off as "extreme" or "brutal" or "hardcore" and attempting to out-scream each other in the process. It usually elicits a snicker from me and not much else.
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doom != death. doom is like early black ****ing sabbath. dethclok is the monkees of deathmetal. furthermore death and doom metal arent usually the ones dressing in corpsepaint and drinking blood. while most black metal does that, usually the bands that you see doing it are 3rd wave sobs trying to imitate what was cool back in '93. while the metal is extreme (seriously what these guys do is in****inghuman, they play faster than most people think) the concept of "brutal" mostly comes from the floridian death metal scene. you need to go listen to some gothenburg sound (this is what dethklok imitates). "hardcore" has noting to do with metal at all, that is an offshoot of punk and is only found in nwoahm circles or nyhc. guttural vocals is not the same as screaming. hell the only bands that scream are numetal (!= metal), or are involved with power metal or 80s hair metal (or rob halford, but hes all badass about it).
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prog (nevermore)
so called thinking mans metal. or as i put it wankey elitist intellectual (to the point of incompetence) metal. lots of them in the usa, few i actually enjoy listening to.
I wouldn't call Nevermore a prog band, nor Opeth. There are prog elements in both, but they are both genre bending outfits and quite orginal. I get what you are saying about prog in general, but "wanking to the point of incompetence" I think is a bit harsh. For example, I don't care that much for jazz music in general, because to me it is all over the place without clear direction. I think you could make the same comparision to say some of guitar soloing in Dream Theater. But no one would say that jazz players are incompetent. It's just a style I can't relate to.
Secondly, every form of metal music gets critiqued by those who don't appreciate it as being excessive in one form or another. To bombastic, to loud, to fast, to many notes, to angery, to cheesy, to emo, to dark, to screamy, etc. You get my point. People are different, what you might want more of in a song may make it unlistenable to someone else. Certainly the musical landscape is big enough for a variety of styles and influences, and metal, to those in the know, is one of the most diverse genres out there. If I had to critique popular music it would be that there isn't a lot of variety in it. They are all trying to sound like the same band.
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Jag Panzer
most of what you guys are talking about is too much noise and not enough music for me. anything that screams is an instant NO.
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Chris Broderick, the old guitarist from Jag Panzer, toured with Nevermore as second guitarist back in 2005. In fact, there's a great video on Youtube from a Neveremore concert with Jeff Loomis and Chris performing a guitar duel. Great stuff!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5zV-IlSvP4
As for screaming, it depends. I like contrasts. If a band screams all the time it's impact is lessened, plus there isn't any emotional variety. If a song has a high soaring note and it's fitting that the signer screams it and doesn't, then the song can feel limp. I don't rule out songs based on what elements are present, i.e. a horn solo, but rather did the band succeed at what they set out to accomplish? Did I feel emotionally connected to the music?
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I can't believe no one has mentioned SLAYER yet.
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I can't believe no one has mentioned SLAYER yet.
theyre lead singer is too catholic for my tastes :D
but seriously slayer is pretty badass, i dont see why i forgot to list them with other us thrash bands. good band for when you really want to break something or hurt someone. though i kinda liked venom more because they are all satan worshipers.
prog (nevermore)
so called thinking mans metal. or as i put it wankey elitist intellectual (to the point of incompetence) metal. lots of them in the usa, few i actually enjoy listening to.
I wouldn't call Nevermore a prog band, nor Opeth. There are prog elements in both, but they are both genre bending outfits and quite orginal. I get what you are saying about prog in general, but "wanking to the point of incompetence" I think is a bit harsh. For example, I don't care that much for jazz music in general, because to me it is all over the place without clear direction. I think you could make the same comparision to say some of guitar soloing in Dream Theater. But no one would say that jazz players are incompetent. It's just a style I can't relate to.
Secondly, every form of metal music gets critiqued by those who don't appreciate it as being excessive in one form or another. To bombastic, to loud, to fast, to many notes, to angery, to cheesy, to emo, to dark, to screamy, etc. You get my point. People are different, what you might want more of in a song may make it unlistenable to someone else. Certainly the musical landscape is big enough for a variety of styles and influences, and metal, to those in the know, is one of the most diverse genres out there. If I had to critique popular music it would be that there isn't a lot of variety in it. They are all trying to sound like the same band.
dont get me wrong. i love bands that are hard to fit into a specific genre mold. opeth and nevermore are no exceptions. also you have bands like therion and arcturus which just cant be placed anywhere. i wasnt trying to imply that prog bands were incompetent, but some of the things they consider to be intellectual, i really dont consider so. i can agree with your second point as well. that metal is diverse. but its easy to spot the imitators because they are the bands that match the genre cookie cutter perfectly, and those are the bands which the outsider tends to hear. i find it disapointing that the person getting into metal is presented with a bunch of bands that are just generic copies of eachother.
Chris Broderick, the old guitarist from Jag Panzer, toured with Nevermore as second guitarist back in 2005. In fact, there's a great video on Youtube from a Neveremore concert with Jeff Loomis and Chris performing a guitar duel. Great stuff!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5zV-IlSvP4
As for screaming, it depends. I like contrasts. If a band screams all the time it's impact is lessened, plus there isn't any emotional variety. If a song has a high soaring note and it's fitting that the signer screams it and doesn't, then the song can feel limp. I don't rule out songs based on what elements are present, i.e. a horn solo, but rather did the band succeed at what they set out to accomplish? Did I feel emotionally connected to the music?
i like vocal diversity in a song. even in black metal. listen to swedish bm band marduk (at least the old stuff, the last 2 albums have been better vocally). it was pretty much flat with the same exact vocal sound in every track. it gets very old very fast. then take dimmu borgir (specifically the albums spiritual black dimensions, and puritanical euphoric misanthropia) where they had 3 distinct vocal tones (two different guttural tones and vortex's clean tenor) which were well mixed. another bm band with distinctly different vocals, primordial, almost completely does away with the guttural vocals and the majority is done in irish tenor.
old skool black metal (before mayhem, burzum and company) was very vocally diverse. many, like celtic frost and venom, were thrash bands with the typical yelling that goes with that genre. merciful fate/king diamond used more traditional style vocals (and probibly the originator of corpse paint). sarcofago had a very evil guitar sound but used something between a death metal growl and a blood curdling scream (very few bands scream mind you) but the sound was dynamic and the vocal style changed throughout the song. then you had bathory, whos original sound would become the trademark black metal vocal tone, of course they later mellowed out into and epic style we would later call viking metal. the only real requirement for early black metal was satanic or evil themes and at the time the vocal style didnt make the genre.
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After that there's nothing more to listen to on american radio since it's all ****. I mean really, papa roach and linkin park became emo boy bands?
I know I shouldn't be posting in the thread that discusses metal music, but since when has Linkin Park been anything else but emo?
EDIT: Quote added
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American metal!!! No mention of Metallica?? :nervous:
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Metallica? Was that the sound of a can of worms being opened? LOL
Actually, I like old school Metallica, then they went a musical direction that I didn't really care for. I believe that their latest "Death Magnetic" is a good return to form, but for me there are better bands out there doing the heavier/faster stuff at the moment so I tend to pay attention to them more.
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They are still the biggest metal band in the world, and American............ :shaking:
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i pointed them out in my list of american metal bands that didnt suck (or were at least noteworthy). metallica got me into metal, but there are way better metal bands out there.
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it is my opinion that Metallica is the second most overrated band in history, right behind U2. Metallica fans please note that I did not say they are terrible. (I will say that about U2 though)