The Source: Today's Metal Scene in Question

Sunday, March 20, 2011

Today's Metal Scene in Question

My faith in music has steadily declined in recent days with the exception of an elete few.(in my opinion at least)

Heavy Metal and "the scene" nowadays is just dime-a-dozen bands competing to be the fastest and most technical and most "brootal" band out there. Bands like The Faceless and Beneath The Massacre.......yes, of course they're good bands. No musician will tell you otherwise......but Christ....how far can we take this trend? EVERY band is doing it now (with the exception of an elete few, as I said before) its like there is no feeling, no groove, no heart in these metal bands. It's all just who can play the fastest double bass and hyper blasts into oblivion while doing the most technical off time shit you can think of with an occasional breakdown that SOME people can actually wrap their heads around. This isn't FUN music to listen to for me anymore. I mean yeah, it's astounding that some of the shit they can come up with is actually humanly possible to play....but when you hear it....there's no head banging, there's no groovin' along to the riffs.... its just sloppy show-offy bullshit that we've heard dozens of times before.

My personal musical interest nowadays has gone in the complete opposite direction as of late. SLOW AND LOW.

super downtuned guitars and bass, and just slow, steady, heavy, brooding and almost hypnotic music. these recent favorites of mine include but are not limited to:

-Black Sheep Wall (Bay Area)

-Kowloon Walled City (San Francisco based Sludge. rock/metal. Amazingly groove oriented but still enough variation and technicality to keep it interesting. Extremely heavy at times!)

-Admiral Angry(Sans their most recent creation, "A Fire to Burn Down the World" which is a 24 minute song/album that pretty much just sounds like the same minute of music repeated 24 times. But their first album was ground-breaking for me into my transition into my musical re-birth. DO NOT miss out on their first release called : BUSTER.)

-Mogwai

-Crowbar (Duuuude, it's fucking CROWBAR!)

-Pelican (Tasty atmospheric instrumental rock)

-Thorun (European instrumental psych-rock)

-Tool (Maynard, you son of a bitch. They never cease to amaze me)

-Will Haven (Back at it again, boys. keep it up)

-Electric Wizard (This band just SOUNDS like weed smoke. An absolute MUST for any stoner rocker/metal heads out there)

-Meshuggah (Exception to the slow and low categorization.. but still badass. Sounds like if Hitler and Einstein were fighting to the death with 8-string guitars tuned to Drop G whilst teaching Multi-Variable Calculus. Absolute insanity)

-Lesbian (Can't go wrong with a name like that)

-OM (Two-letter band names impress me, and so does their brooding music)

-The Abominable Iron Sloth (massively large grooves with a guitar tone that is pleasantly disgusting)

-Armed for Apocalypse (Another amazing Nor-Cal band doing it nicely. Based out of Chico, Ca.)

-DeadBird (straight up dark and dirty rock and roll, lifting up Metal's skirt for a quick peek here and there. )

-ISIS (Recently disbanded, Watch their music video for "Holy Tears" , it will blow your mind)

-Neurosis

So for all you music lovers out there, especially you metal-heads, check out these bands. Open your musical horizons, get some new shit in your ears.

and

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.... Christ. You're in a league of your own. You do everything right. It's such a bummer that i will be seeing you guys for the last time on April 10th, as i'm sure it will be crazy, but seeing THE most impressive live band i've ever witnessed for the 9th time isn't so bad. Kind of helps that i live about 45 minutes from their hometown, but I sure will be devastated after the break-up. With the members of this band being so musically diverse and creative, I'm sure a handful of other tasty projects will spawn from the demise of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and you can bet your ass i'll be listening.

As far as kickass rock n roll bands go; I love me some rock n roll but i dont frequent the genre as much as I do metal....but the following bands know what they're doin enough to keep my ear pussy cummin over and over again

-ScissorFight (Commanding bearded vocals with amazingly catchy riffs)

-Queens Of The Stone Age (Josh Homme, you're a genius.)

-Eagles Of Death Metal

-Tenacious D (still hilariously awesome)

-Earth

-Catch Hell ( of course i have a biased opinion because i know all of these guys and have for years, but honestly, they fucking rule. i love the music, its heavy, its southern, its groovin', and catchy.They are just a solid fuckin rock band through and through)

Them Crooked Vultures (THE most rockin super group consisting Dave Grohl from Nirvana and Foo-Fighters playing drums, Joshua Homme from Queens of the Stone Age on vocals and guitar and John Paul Jones from LED ZEP on bass. You can't go wrong. Impressive is an understatement)

All these bands are solid and legit and if you can take a break from your hyper blasts long enough to listen to them, then you'll know what im talking about.

---Guest Blogger Kyle Hoover

No comments:

Post a Comment