Best decade for heavy metal.

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I have to disagree there, half of what the media consideres 'metal' today is actually metalcore or screamo or other non-metal. The older metal bands never ceased to be metal they are still just as metal as they where when they came out. Yes there are more metal genres now than there where in the past but its been around since the late 60s so that's not suprising.

And being a metalhead myself the genres do matter more or less, but its not a big deal......main thing that bothers me is when genres that clearly aren't metal get lumped in with it. Like metalcore, that will never be metal because its metal influenced hardcore....and hardcore is more related to punk than metal. Also it annoys me when people try to say something like 'Judas Priest' is not metal anymore, what gives these false metal fans any say in what gets kicked out of the metal genre.

What he means is metal fans have a narrow definition. It's the idea that if a metal genre gets "contaminated" by a different influence and becomes trendy at some point it ceases to be metal. In the early 90s bands that sounded a lot like sludge metal got relabeled as grunge as soon as they became popular. Anyways, most of the "metal" I like tends to have the punk-hardcore influence (though I'm somewhat picky about screams). I like stuff like Neurosis and Mastodon.

Last edited by marshall on 28 Dec 2011, 2:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Well most metal fans I've talked to me included.......do not commonly decide older metal bands aren't considered metal anymore, its usually the false metal fans who are actually quite clueless about metal and its roots that are trying to disqualify older bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest from being considered metal anymore.

Then you have a small number of metal fans with the attitude of hipsters who decide to hate anything that gets well known...on the basis of it being too mainstream to be metal.

The majority of metal fans actually like a wide range of metal and don't mind the more mainstream stuff, we do however get a little bent out of shape when genres that clearly arent metal are considered metal by the media and fakes who are just in it for the image.

can't tell if serious....

Who's debating? No idea what's giving you that idea. You started a thread asking a question about a topic I happen to love. I'm sharing plain and simple. Sorry if there's something about my posts you didn't expect or want here, but nobody's forcing you to read them.

EDIT: Okay, in all fairness, I guess it looks like a debate, but truthfully I never meant it to be. "You're all wrong" was meant to be tongue in cheek, not to be taken seriously. The truth is I like many different types of metal, from several different decades. The only reason I posted so much music is that whenever I get involved in a discussion like this, there always seems to be at least one person who wants to know why I like the Seventies metal best.

It should be pointed out that you were the first to post disagreement with me, challenging what I knew about it. In essence, you asked for it. In fact though, I only posted one reply to that post. The rest was nothing more than sharing. A lot of metal fans have never heard any of the stuff I've posted. A lot know nothing about how it developed. Some actually do want to know more, and appreciate hearing early metal they've never heard before. That's really the only reason I shared so much of it. It was never my intention to debate or claim that my own opinons are anything other than my own opinions.

Sweetleaf, the point is, it's all a matter of opinion. Genres, as they apply to classification in music stores (online and the old brick and mortar storess), have always been made up and decided upon by people in the industry. Some genres are picked up from terms fans first used, and some ("New Wave" is a perfect example), were totally invented by the industry. All of them are matters of opinion. One person's metal is another person's hard rock, another person's thrash, another person's grunge, etc. etc.

Just read any discussion on any forum about the topic. Look any of them up in Wikipedia and check the discussion pages. They're all debatable topics. Everyone's got a different opinion. Nobody's right and nobody's wrong. You like what you like, I like what I like, he she and they all like what they like. It's all good, as long as nobody forces anyone to listen to anything they can't stand. It's all good as long as nobody forces their opinions on others.

Just for grins, if anyone cares. This is the earliest documented recording of distorted guitar. The first seeds of distortion that would later become the very backbone of all Metal. Story goes that in those days it was a virtual no-no to record distortion in any record studio. This day though, the guitarist dropped his amp in the alley, blowing one of the two power tubes in it. There were no other amps to play with, so this is what ended up on the recording. 1951

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbfnh1oVTk0[/youtube]

At the end of the day, metal is metal. And the polls suggest that it's the 80's being the best decade with 10 to a solitary two for the 70's, shocking isn't it?

You make it sound like life was imitating art, when it was really more or less the other way around. Life sucked in the 80s too. You just have to take off those rose-tinted nostalgia glasses and look at things objectively. There were ultraconservative governments in the US and UK, still the specter of Cold War paranoia, recessions, poverty, mass layoffs, AIDS, drug epidemics, and a newly romanticized culture of corporate greed. The dominant paradigm of any facet of mainstream culture doesn't shift that dramatically toward doomcrying unless there are already pre-existing issues which have long gone unaddressed.



I'm sorry. As someone who grew up in the 90s, I beg to differ. Barring the pop crazes that plagued the charts throughout the decade, there was some seriously fantastic, emotional, important music that came out of the alt-rock explosion. It wasn't just Nirvana-- it was Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, STP, Nine Inch Nails... the list goes on, really. Let me tell you, for someone whose childhood fell during that decade, it wasn't at all forgettable.

And anyway, this dichotomy which you complain about in the 90s was just as present in the 80s too, just in different formats. There was dark, depressing and angry music-- Metallica, Slayer, Suicidal Tendencies-- and there was what some might call hollow party music-- Poison, Motley Crue, Winger. I mean, come on... Master of Puppets was one of the most significant heavy metal albums of the decade, and it was full of lyrics about war and violence and institutionalization and loss of self-control to drugs and Lovecraftian demonology. How much more bleak and depressing can you get?

Where is the guitar in this song?
Anyway it's an example of everything NOT metal. It's way to "bouncy", metal is never "bouncy".

A distorted guitar is only one element of metal.
A heavy rhythm section (drums & bass) is also critical for metal.
Metal also has to have a somewhat dark mood to it.
There is no such thing as positive, happy metal. If it's positive & happy, it's just hard rock.

Don't get me wrong...I'm not so sold-out to hard-rock/heavy-metal that I don't appreciate other styles. I can listen to Metallica and turn right around and listen to Depeche Mode. I'm primarily a synthesist and only know enough about guitar to crank out a few power chords every now and then. I liked a lot of synth-pop back then, too. And while this isn't really the thread to discuss it, I think 90s synth-driven pop sucked a lot more than the 80s did, too. And there's an easy explanation for that... Back in the 90s, the people who were playing synths had begun tiring of the inaccessible nature of digital synths. Take the DX7, for instance, which practically defined the 80s synth sound and garnered strong influences and reactions from other manufacturers. It had some great presets, but you had to be one dedicated synth nerd to program new sounds into the thing. I own one that I'm prolly going to eBay soon (I used it playing live, but I've outgrown it), but I also have a TX802 and a TX7 that I keep in my synth rack--the TX7 can't even be programmed from the front panel at all, but rather assumed you already owned a DX7 to program it with. Now you have iPad apps that will do the job just as well... My point is that 80s synth manufacturers meant well--moving away from the chaotic nature of analog synthesist to the stability of digital. But they failed in making their synths as easily patchable. The 90s represented a shift backwards towards ease of use. And, unfortunately, a result of the increased availability of sampling, especially with hip hop sampling the crap out of the 70s, and the hybridization of digital technology with the performance feel of analog, a lot of the sound of the 90s was influenced more by retro 70s.

And if you were a synth player in the 90s, you'd be listening to a lot of disco. And I hate disco.

But even worse was the attitude of "looking backwards" rather than looking forward. Jackson 5 was a great group for their time. And MJ a decade later was an innovator. Later boy-bands were just sloppy imitators of NKOTB, and NKOTB was horrible (I hesitate to admit this, but I actually did see them in concert).

Back to metal...

I don't feel that the bulk of 90s metal really carried that torch forward effectively. I'm not ignoring that life sucked for a lot of people, that the party that defined the 80s eventually did come to an end. But life didn't suck THAT BAD. And I think that the music of the time does show a clear dichotomy between the emergence of gloom-n-doom increasingly underground styles such as rock and metal and Barbie/Ken-doll optimism. Think about it--the technology boom, the internet, affordable housing, low-interest credit. Real life in a lot of ways was much more optimistic than the 80s. What killed a lot of the 80s optimism in music, I'm convinced, is a tiny suburban counter-culture of teen angst and a lot of poor little rich girls not getting valium right when they wanted it. And it was probably rich, cocaine-snorting parents ignoring their kids and highly permissive parenting styles that contributed to it. So...yeah, life did imitate art back in the 90s to a degree. And I think the media overplayed Nirvana and allowed themselves to be manipulated by a niche market. It killed metal music. And once the kids started waking up, there was little left except maybe Korn and Linkin Park.

The other bands you mentioned--Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, NIN... Those three groups in particular are products of the 80s, not the 90s. Pearl Jam and Nirvana represent a solid BREAK from 80s trends, though Pearl Jam at least retains some semblance of quality songwriting and production. I thought they were a great band. I thought RHCP were a fantastic group all the way up to Californication, and that's where they lost me since lyrically it belongs sometime around '93 (in comparison with related bands--lyrically their earlier music didn't make much sense...it didn't HAVE to!). NIN is really just dark synth-pop with some guitars, I can't think of any negatives to say about Trent Reznor. I think Manson is a little TOO over-the-top for even my tastes, but I still have to respect the guy in the same sense as Reznor.

Yeah, Pearl Jam was a great band. And someone else in the 90s I liked was Creed. I suppose if I sat down with a list of new groups popular in the 90s I could probably pick out maybe 3 or 4 more that I liked. But at the same time I have to say that I'd become fed up with mainstream music by '89 and was into music that diverged so sharply from what I'd been into you wouldn't have known I was the same person. I'd become more into classical music and by 92 was deep into New Age and ambient--and a lot of it was an interest in instrumental music. The other part was self-defense.

I also reject the notion that metal is ONLY minor keys/modes and dark lyrics. I see metal as a broad, general term whereas within that style or genre you have a plethora of distinct sub-genres. If we're going to get technical about it and claim Nickelback isn't metal, then we should drop the term altogether and look at bands like Metallica as, say, alt-rock or progressive rock--and I think alternative fits more with bands like Smashing Pumpkins and RHCP even though they are completely different groups in practically every way. Like I've said before, Nickelback is just Metallica on click tracks and happier/funnier lyrics. The overall attributes of their studio recording sound is just too eerily similar for me to qualify it otherwise.

And I have nothing AGAINST dark moods, either. I can get into nu-metal because it's forward-looking while not entirely abandoning its roots. I find what Linkin Park did back in the day to be genuinely artful. Evanescence is another lovely band that is everything a late-80s band should have been but couldn't be due to technological constraints (Evanescence wouldn't be Evanescence without Pro-tools, and not everyone had a Synclavier or even Gigasampler back in the day). But even with Linkin Park and Evanescence you had at least the glimmer of hope. With Metallica and even Pearl Jam you knew you were going to hell in a hand basket, but at least you'd enjoy the ride! Same thing with Black Label Society. You can't say the same thing about Nirvana. You're going to hell, you might be lucky to get a hand basket, and it's going to suck the whole way.

I'm going to go listen to some Cinderella now, and right after that I'm going to listen to some Edgar Froese. I have a lot of work to do today.

I don't understand the idea that life has to suck for someone to enjoy darker music. I really see the success of early 90s grunge as a break from the hyper-masculinity of the 80s hard-rock / metal scene. It became okay to express genuine emotional vulnerability and still rock as hard as ever. Anyways, I think angst and expression of personal anguish has always been something connected with punk more so than metal. The darker content of heavy metal has always been more abstract and stylistic as opposed to personal. Nirvana was unusual in that it was the first time that music with a lot of dissonant chords and tones entered the mainstream. I personally find Nirvana a little boring and prefer more technically interesting music, but nonetheless, I get what it was about.

In any case, I don't think the "darkness" of the early 90s hard-rock scene had anything to do with "life sucking". It was simply a reaction to the emotional sterility and hyper-masculinity of the late 80s mainstream hard-rock scene. Also, unlike now, back then there wasn't wide access to underground music with darker content. There was a niche to fill by playing something different on the radio or MTV. Now there isn't really as people interested in counter-cultural type music no longer look to mainstream media but to the internet.

i cant hear a guitar either what stands out is theres a really dirty double bass sound - is that actually guitar?

I said the 90's in the vote but I like metal from all the decades so I would rather choose them all ;D

70's - Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Budgie, Judas Priest
80's - Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Metallica, Judas Priest
90's - Megadeth

There is obviously some flexibility when it comes to genres but no matter how you slice it metalcore and metal are not the same thing, most people probably don't bother worrying about specific genres but metalheads like me do...I know what metal is and I know what metal is not there is some basis for what makes a band part of a genre and yes sometimes it is debatable.

I am fine with liking what I like and others liking what they like, but something is not metal just because I like it or not metal just because I don't like it for instance.