Admittedly, I don't have any particular evidence to present here, but I was just watching My Coolest Years: The Metalheads on VH1 and it got me thinking that I've been hearing a lot more about metal music in the news/media the past year than I had in a long time. Is anyone else noticing this trend, or is it just one of those things where once I began to notice it, I started picking up on it more than I normally would have (like you hear a word for the first time, then you start hearing it everywhere, where you never noticed it before)? With Motley Crue coming back and the whole DamagePlan thing, not to mention the admittedly *mainstream* popularity of Ozzy these days and the Battle of the Bands thing MTV is doing? We all know these music things going through their phases and I could see it coming back as an antithesis to all the fruity pop out there.
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Is metal coming back?
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Definitely. I have noticed the trend myself. The genre of power metal is on the rise in Europe and these bands are becoming more and more popular than ever before. It also helps that there's A LOT of talent in these bands such as Rhapsody, Edguy and Sonata Arctica. Trendy and untalented mainstream bands like Linkin Park don't really add much, musically, to the genre as a whole but they do expose the mainstream to a bit of metal that will inadvertently cause some of them to explore the genre more.
Star Power
Member
hopefully not.
LinesInTheSand
Banned
Hopefully.
The Take Out Bandit
Member
Yeah, I've got no hope for the American Power Metal scene, but Europe has been kicking ass and taking names.
It seems the VH1 stuff is simply the byproduct of all the 80's worship.
That's quite alright, I've got my Iron Maiden CD collection to remember my childhood and my Rhapsody CD collection to usher in the new era of power metal that doesn't suck.
I've never gotten much into death / black metal. I used to dig on some speed / thrash, not sure what they call that these days; if it's still around.
It seems the VH1 stuff is simply the byproduct of all the 80's worship.
That's quite alright, I've got my Iron Maiden CD collection to remember my childhood and my Rhapsody CD collection to usher in the new era of power metal that doesn't suck.
I've never gotten much into death / black metal. I used to dig on some speed / thrash, not sure what they call that these days; if it's still around.
Ninja Scooter
Member
metal is only back in the sense that trendy fuckers like to wear faded "vintage" Judas Priest/Iron Maiden/Black Sabbath/GnR shirts even though they never listen to the music. In other words, metal is still dead.
Ninja Scooter
Member
swoon said:
i don't know wtf that is, that explains it.
Shazapp
Member
Matlock said:
Appetite surely came out before 1990. Like 1987. I remember because I saw GN'R in April 1988 on the Appetite tour BEFORE "Sweet Child O' Mine" was even on MTV. Hell, GN'R was opening for Alice Cooper and Ace Frehley in 1987.
As for a metal resurgence, I'd love to see it. I really would. But I don't think it will ever happen.
Ninja Scooter
Member
Nirvana didn't kill anything really. This shit just happens in cycles. By the early 90s, the whole hair metal thing was fading away. It started becoming overexposed and you started to see fake, corporate puppet bands (like Nelson) jumping on the bandwagon, a sure sign that a trend is dead (same thing happend in the mid-90s with grunge...)
I love power metal (Angra's "Temple of Shadows" is my favorite CD of 2004. BUY IT!), but I think it's destined to remain a mostly European -- and to a lesser degree, Asian and South American -- phenomenon. Its image is far too "pompous" and grandiose for most American fans, who seem to like their metal angry and abrasive. Although, interestingly enough, Nightwish is starting to make some pretty noticeable inroads in the states.
Litigation Manuel
Member
Personally, I would hope the next big thing in music was something more interesting and new, and not a rehash of old styles and ideas. However, that's just hope, so I wouldn't be too sure of that happening. Now I've made myself sad, I need to go eat some ice cream.
The Take Out Bandit
Member
I don't know about that. I think it's just the public perception of Power Metal fans. Singing about wizards, dragons, and elves just isn't mainstream. However, I still think Rhapsody with the right marketing angle and a good video could surely capitalize on the LotR film market. It's the same shit, only in audio format.
There's a market for fantasy stuff, novels and movies. It just seems the music isn't reaching the proper audience.
I like angry / aggro metal too, but America is just lacking for that. What we get instead are whiny pussies who growl, growl, growl, then whine, whine, whine; or you can replace the whining with shitty white boy rapping in between the growling. America is a failure as a democracy and as a producer of good angry music.
For angry tunes, I'd prefer to just listen to Blood for Blood who are unrelentingly pissed off, and not fashionably so. The day I hear them whining like little bitches like Disturbed or those other Top 40 acts, is the day I'll stop caring.
Incidentally, this thread needs more Juliya.
Didn't the record companies try that around 1998/1999 before dropping it like a hot potato? I seem to recall the Canadian airwaves having a better selection of eletronica than America. Kind of surprising, because I was expecting their radio stations to be polluted by the same Top 40 rap that gets played here.
SlickWilly223
Time ta STEP IT UP
Ninja Scooter said:
I have a GnR Chinese Democracy Concert shirt
It's sexy.
Bands like Lamb of God, Shadows Fall and Fear Factory aren't really mainstream either, but they're way more popular in the US than a band like Rhapsody could ever be. I like Rhapsody, and even I have a tough time taking a bunch of guys seriously who dress up in armor and frilly shirts every time they do a photo shootThe Take Out Bandit said:I don't know about that. I think it's just the public perception of Power Metal fans. Singing about wizards, dragons, and elves just isn't mainstream. However, I still think Rhapsody with the right marketing angle and a good video could surely capitalize on the LotR film market. It's the same shit, only in audio format.
I don't think that LotR and sci-fi/fantasy fans would warm up to bands like Rhapsody just because of the swords and sorcery themes. The music is still metal, after all, and if they didn't like metal before, chances are they still won't like it no matter how many dwarfs and goblins are mentioned in the lyrics.
Shadows Fall, Lamb of God, etc. are actually quite good at the aggro business, and they have the killer riffs and musicianship to back it up, too. I can't stand most of the "nu-metal" tripe, either.I like angry / aggro metal too, but America is just lacking for that. What we get instead are whiny pussies who growl, growl, growl, then whine, whine, whine; or you can replace the whining with shitty white boy rapping in between the growling. America is a failure as a democracy and as a producer of good angry music.
Property of Jumpship
Banned
Now that Dimebag Darrell is dead, so is metal. All others are just a shadow in comparison.
The Take Out Bandit
Member
I like Rhapsody, and even I have a tough time taking a bunch of guys seriously who dress up in armor and frilly shirts every time they do a photo shoot
I just take it as part of the package. It's the kitsch / zeitgeist of power metal. I'd go so far as to jokingly imply there's a direct correlation to the amount of chain mail and prop swords the band poses with which relates directly to the quality of their music.
It's all smoke and mirrors, at the end of the CD I'm thinking of wacky shit like Dargor the Shadowlord and not Lucca Turilli posing with a sword.
I'm not saying everybody who went to see LotR would be wearing Rhapsody shirts and rocking out the next day, but what are the odds that people that used to listen to metal; like myself, who don't have a good local college radio station or other means of hearing this sort of music wrote it off for dead. I certainly did, until I got sick of what was being played on the radio and upgraded my Iron Maiden tapes to CD and embarked on a quest to find more awesome metal.
It's the same way in which people are expected to "mature" and stiop reading comics, even though they're technically an art form; even if the creators aren't do much to back that up. Your tastes in music are ostensibly expecting to "mature", i.e. stop listening to the stuff you used to like and pop in some Michael Bolton, instead of maturing in the sense that you add new music to your playlist in addition to the stuff you have always enjoyed.
What I'm saying is that perhaps if awareness were raised, these bands would do better. I discovered Rhapsody on a fluke, downloading Dream Evil MP3's. Some tool, bless their soul, mislabelled a Rhapsody tune and I was hooked.
All I'm saying is that there's an audience out there that isn't aware these bands exist because the industry is shoving Britney Spears, Limp Bisquick, and Chingy down their fucking throats. :X
In that respect, file sharing / music stealing and the Internet have become an invaluable tool for small, or obscure bands.
Thanks for the names, I'll do some sniffing and see if they're to my tastes.
Haha. Well, while I think it's silly, I will admit that I might be less inclined to enjoy Rhapsody without all the cheese.The Take Out Bandit said:I just take it as part of the package. It's the kitsch / zeitgeist of power metal. I'd go so far as to jokingly imply there's a direct correlation to the amount of chain mail and prop swords the band poses with which relates directly to the quality of their music.
Trust me, it used to be much, much worse. Whereas now Rhapsody have fairly good distribution in the US , five or six years ago it was pretty much impossible to find them anywhere but at a mom and pop record store for anything less than 30 bucks. Nowadays, thanks to labels like Century Media and Nuclear Blast, things have improved immensely, but metal is one of those genres that most likely will never have much mainstream acceptance, so get used to it.What I'm saying is that perhaps if awareness were raised, these bands would do better. I discovered Rhapsody on a fluke, downloading Dream Evil MP3's. Some tool, bless their soul, mislabelled a Rhapsody tune and I was hooked.
That's true, but I'm saying that American metal fans tend to gravitate towards the heavier, angrier, more aggressive stuff like Lamb of God, Children of Bodom et al, hence power metal doesn't appeal to them very much, even though they DO know about it. This is probably why those bands have become more popular in America than say, Blind Guardian or Iced Earth, even though they receive about the same amount of distribution and promotion.
Fresh Prince
Banned
Hopefully commercial party, rimz, hoes rap will die off in the charts then artists would stop 'selling out' so much.Ninja Scooter said:
The Take Out Bandit
Member
Trust me, it used to be much, much worse. Whereas now Rhapsody have fairly good distribution in the US , five or six years ago it was pretty much impossible to find them anywhere but at a mom and pop record store for anything less than 30 bucks. Nowadays, thanks to labels like Century Media and Nuclear Blast, things have improved immensely, but metal is one of those genres that most likely will never have much mainstream acceptance, so get used to it.
Oh, I could really care less about it going mainstream per se, but I would definitely like to see more people exposed to it. ^_^
But things in my area, rectum of the United States aka Cleveland (Kind of funny since the trailer trash here fancies themselves the rock capital of the world, WMMASS), are still rubbish. In addition to being the poorest city in America, there are really no good metal record stores in the area. You're not going to find Rhapsody in Best Buy or Circuit City, or even F.Y.E. or any of the chain stores. The best you'll do is Hammerfall's Legacy of Kings at Best Buy. It's as if Hammerfall ever only released one album.
If I want metal, I have to travel 60 miles total to Ultrasound Records *plug* *plug* in Mentor, Ohio.
I thank god for on-line distribution. I just went ahead and purchased the latest Rhapsody album on-line, and I've bought some albums off of iTunes from other acts.
The biggest problem with a lot of the euro metal is that they cant develop their ideas fully. Most the the songs for from one part to another and really dont develop on a theme so we get a song with enough material to cover a few more song. In addition, some times the lyrics are pretty painful (Edguy) and quite unsure how to fix that; however, i just heard the new Europe on XM 41 (XM radio owns) and it is shit on marble rye.
What can happen is the bands start releasing the same albums over again like the newer stratovarius, even though they broke up but i can see the same for Edguy or the rest of them.
What can happen is the bands start releasing the same albums over again like the newer stratovarius, even though they broke up but i can see the same for Edguy or the rest of them.
If metal is coming back, keep it the hell away from me. Heavy riffs are one thing, insanely stupid 80's hair metal is another. I lived through that shit, and it was crap then. It's still crap. Maiden and classic Crue are one thing, but Poison, Warrant, etc are stains upon history.
I don't know squat about the euro scene, but if that video somebody linked to in the Black Metal pics thread is any indication....I just hope there are better bands playing than that. Ugh.
I don't know squat about the euro scene, but if that video somebody linked to in the Black Metal pics thread is any indication....I just hope there are better bands playing than that. Ugh.
Lyte Edge said:
I hope that doesn't include Nelson. :lol
Not to derail the thread, but even though I liked some of the more popular metal bands (Guns and Roses), it just seemed so lame when grunge came out. In high school it seemed like all I listened to was Pearl Jam and Nirvana. Grunge became pretty lame at the end too and was sadly killed off by Britney Spears and Back Street Boys. At least metal was killed off by something cool.
Dandy Warhols, "Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth."sp0rsk said:
A couple of other thoughts:
1) Guns N' Roses were NOT metal -- they were simply the Rolling Stones taken to their logical extreme. For what it's worth, "rock" music always felt more like its blues heritage to me, whereas "metal" used entirely different chord structures to create a different feel.
2) I think Matlock's recollection of history is wrong. The glam rock resurgence sort of started in the mid-80s with bands like Whitesnake and Def Leppard, but once the bands from the Los Angeles scene exploded onto the international view in the late 80s (bands like Poison and Motley Crüe), "hair bands" ruled everything for a while. But the metal scene was already going strong at that point -- Metallica had already released some of their classic albums by then (Master Of Puppets was 1986 if memory serves), bands like Megadeth and Slayer and Testament and Anthrax were huge stars, and of course bands like Iron Maiden who had been laying it down since the dawn of time were releasing some of their best work. In my experience, at least, people were either into metal, or they were into glam -- not both.
By the time the early '90s hit, though, both scenes were largely stale. Some of the glam rockers had turned to a harder sound to try to get some of the metal fans to crossover, the ones who stayed glam became an ever-more-fey caricature of themselves, and the metal scene had spawned death metal and grindcore and all kinds of variants which were just unlistenable shit. There was some experimentation with funk, punk, and hip-hop elements, but it honestly felt like we were all waiting for something ELSE.
My brother and I used to religiously tape "Headbangers' Ball" every Saturday night and watch it the next morning at breakfast (my parents were SO tolerant...they rule). The first time we saw the video for "Smells Like Teen Spirit," we didn't say a WORD after it...just rewound it and watched it again twice. I'm not kidding -- the first thing we said to each other was "wow...metal is DEAD."
3) For what it's worth, I have a really offensive theory on metal music and its popularity which I won't share here. Suffice it to say that I've moved on, and aside from an occasional bit of nostalgia, I'm quite happy never listening to that stuff again.
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