That's fair comment about Exodus sadly, although for me their first four albums are all outstanding and enjoyable, with the fourth one being my favorite.

And anything from "Spectrum of Death" by Morbid Saint really. Those vocals make these songs demonic and totally out there and the instrumentation is not far behind.

Agreed.

A lot of the more ''extreme'' thrash (that helped create Death/Black metal) are far more extreme than Suffocation (and many other Death metal bands from that era). They're just unbridled fury of extremeness.

Mkay, I pick Pleasure to Kill by Kreator.[/quote]

Any anything from "Spectrum of Death" by Morbid Saint really. Those vocals make these songs demonic and totally out there and the instrumentation is not far behind.[/quote]
Agreed.

A lot of the more ''extreme'' thrash (that helped create Death/Black metal) are far more extreme than Suffocation (and many other Death metal bands from that era). They're just unbridled fury of extremeness. [/quote]


Lol wrong. Its alll subjective so your all entitled to your unpopular opinion. I actually enjoy all 3 of the thrash albums you guys mentioned, perhaps because i'm more of a death metal guy and all 3 of those albums definitely are extreme and should satisfy most death metal fans needs. I do agree sometimes thrash can seem more uptempo due to the pure speed of death metal lulling you to sleep without tempo changes. Something like Enmity doesnt feel as uptempo and urgent to me as Beneath The Remains because its just a wall of nonstop blur, Suffocation on the other hand hits harder than prime Mike Tyson. So i respectfully disagree and leave ya'll to your opinions.

Ok, here's another one:

Jazzy/technical bass playing distracts more than it does add to metal. Case in point - Di Giorgio's noodling on his fretless is what makes ITP one of my least favorite Death albums (it would bo near the top otherwise).

Dream Theater is a totally overrated snob band.

I just want to take a moment to draw attention to the irony of saying that something is wrong just to say it's all subjective in the next sentence. It can't be wrong if it's completeley subjective, just sayin'.



I don't agree with this as a general statement, but in practice, a good chunk of the bands who use this kind of jazzy/tech/prog bass don't do it too well. I disagree on the use on Individual Thought Patterns, and I also think that bands like Cynic and Atheist made a good use of this kind of bass. I also liked it in the context of a few modern death metal albums, such as Beyond Creation's debut, but it influenced others and created a trend, with bands like First Fragment making extensive use of it, and that's something I tend to dislike.

In general, I don't like bands who replace riffing with noodling. The standard bearers of this in modern death metal are bands like Obcusra and Augury (I know there might be more but I'm less familiar with this kind of death metal so...) that I personally don't enjoy, so I also don't like the noodly doodly wonky bass, but I also don't like anything the guitars are doing either, so it's not really the bass itself that bothers me. I just don't like the whole thing.

Pharaoh and Watchtower, and then other shit like Martyr and Spiral Architect, converted me to how great noodly, proggy bass in metal can be. I think it really adds a lot.

Here's one I was thinking about the other day

The band Anathema, I've literally only listened to Serenades Pentacrost III and Crestfallen but I think they're death doom shit is the best out of the Peaceville 3 at least in terms of the old shit

And the absolute most confounding thing about it is that they have the worst riffs of them all but idk something about the way the music flows just works, the emotion just makes it too good

This leads me to another one, it seems people have really obvious reasons for classifying what brutal is and to me its all surface brutality yeah that Suffocation song is pretty brutal and very good but has nothing on shit like Darkness descends because the riffs on Darkness descends just communicate this feeling of pure rage and sheer evil blinking you in the fucking eye and Suffocations riffage imo just doesn't do that

Same thing with how I find Chuck Schuldiners writing impossibly fucking brutal because I find he has a very good way of describing why something Is evil and breaking it down instead of just merely describing it I hear such anger in his voice when he criticizes something that's evil and I think having genuine emotion is far more brutal than stripping it away like most brutal dm bands seem to do

My post was laced with sarcasm my friend.

Lol I thought about responding to that too and saying "you think he doesn't realize that lol

I actually kinda like this place sometimes its very amusing

In all fairness it says he's form Quebec, maybe there is a little difference in language barrier in terms of picking up on sarcasm, or maybe i just didnt make it clear enough. Either way, no harm no foul, just wanted to let him know i wasnt trying to be malicious to anyone, just poking some fun.

With a thin voice, patchy lyrics and often so-so production values? To each his own, but with the exception of Death's early stuff, brutal certainly isn't the word that comes to mind. I'd rather go with ''pretentious''.

I listened to a bit of Twilight Dominion, and it's actually not bad. Far from the best thing ever but definitely not outright shitty.

Modern classic in my estimation. Iconic riffs and songwriting.

Yeah after reading those posts I went back and listened to Usurper's 'Twilight dominion' again properly after only a cursory listen quite a while ago.
Great stuff and you can tell they fucking mean it, but yeah, not really groundbreaking (then again I doubt they even meant it to be).

I don't really think he's very pretentious tbh, I don't really know where that accusation comes from, I think His writing shows he's a very bright guy and I think so because I listen to songs like Mentally Blind or Low Life and I just see myself in them, having an addict personality I have done a lot of very harmful things to people I care about and I think Moreso than a lot of metal, I can listen to Deaths music and actually feel the evil that was lodged in my brain, that the alcohol fed until it eventually took over completely, and everything he was critical of is things I felt before, and I think they're things that deserve to be criticized quite frankly.

I have a much more personal perspective on why I enjoy Deaths music, but imo he had a very poetic sense about things and that means a lot to me. What I get out of it is that reality is far more brutal than any artistic interpretation of it could ever be.

Of course Leprosy is still better than later death so I'm just kind of full of shit too so lol

I love Twilight Dominion, but I wouldn't say it excels at songwriting, actually some songs are pretty much skippable imo. Then again the riffs are indeed great, albeit far from unique, yet its biggest trump is the juicy sound - which combined with the fairly straightforward yet very effective riffing packs a real knockout punch. In fact, it may be the heaviest sounding metal album I can think of right off the top of my head. Great and fun album for sure, but a classic? Sadly, no, not really.

Nah I'd say it's all excellent. The songwriting combines a classic metal style with this Celtic Frost brutality - right up my alley really.

No it's not very unique in an avant garde/groundbreaking way, but it's a case of a newer unabashed trad band that doesn't feel like a ripoff. Ironsword and Wolf's The Black Flame are some other examples... other times newer trad bands/albums that do such a thoroughly old school sound don't resonate nearly as hard with me.

Not sure how unpopular this is but Breeding the Spawn is better than both Effigy and Pierced, not by an astronomical amount or anything but I definitely came around to that one pretty hard a couple months back and I just think the songs are more morbid, and I think even moreso than brutality I think Suffocation was one of the first to take morbidity out of death metal, which sucks because breeding the Spawn shoes they're exceptionally good at making really fucking bloody technical death metal, Effigy and Pierced are too thump thump thump to be truly morbid, despite both being fantastic albums.

Oh yeah previous posts remind me that I like Monotheist but anyone claiming that's better than To Mega Therion or Into the Pandemonium or Morbid tales Is out of their fucking minds I'd say, hell half the time I'd rather listen to shit off of cold lake or vanity nemesis or even that parched with thirst shit, Monotheist isn't even a bad album but it's certainly fairly boring and quite frankly not very memorable besides a few certain moments still not a bad album maybe like a 6 or 7 but it's certainly their most uninteresting to me and the one I'll listen to the least

St Anger is actually not terrible, like metal fans give a fuck about snare drums, listen to the average BDM album from the 90s you'll hear the same garbage can sound, and obviously I'm not saying it's really good but it's music I can respect, can't say the same about a lot of other shit so I think people should kinda back off that one, the jokes kinda old now lol

Black Sabbath didn't "invent" heavy metal all on their own, nor did it happen all of a sudden. It was an evolution of sound that started with Cream and The JH Experience in 1966.

And this is coming from a huge Sabbath fan!

Cream and The JH are nothing but derivations of the sound developed by John M. Barry back in 1957, and this is from a big Cream fan.

And if you go far back enough, all music is derivative of stone age bone flutes and skin drums

Well RestlessChild is right, Sabbath took it the furthest but there was a lot of other shit that molded up into metal. Nothing against Sabbath but I've just found it increasingly interesting to get into shit like Budgie, Blue Cheer, etc and see how that sound just seemed to be on everyone's consciousness back then. Jimi Hendrix had some thundering stuff at times too. It's all just intriguing to look at.

I just posted in the new Megadeth thread, and it made me think about an unpopular opinion I have about them. I actually think of The System Has Failed as one of the best Megadeth records. If I had to rank them, I think my top four would go Rust in Peace, Countdown to Extinction, The System Has Failed, and Peace Sells.

It's like evolution. You can point at the frog. You can point at the toad. You can point at the frogs that came after that frog, and the mutant froggy things that led up to being a toad. But Black Sabbath is the first thing you can definitively point at and say, "Here! It's here where the frog-toad mutants finally became full toad!"

Yeah exactly, that's pretty much how I think of it.

If Black Sabbath should be credited for something, it's inventing the art of being a full time heavy metal band. I will agree they were the first on doing that (even if accidentally so at first), and doubling down on it with each release, culminating in Master Of Reality, which I think of as the heaviest album of ALL the 70's.

But I don't think Black Sabbath wrote the first metal song. That's a whole different topic. To me, heavy metal (the music) started with Cream.

Cheers.

Some say that 1964 saw the release of the first two true metal songs:
1) the Stones' "Satisfaction" may in fact be the very first metal song, It definitely has the riff, the edge, and the 'danger' often associated with metal. I can see a case for this.
2) The Kinks' "You Really Got Me" -- has the riff, perhaps less dangerous, but still insanely over the top for its time.

Agree 100%

Nah. Those bands/songs still did not have that heavy metal sound. The technology for equipment at the time also has a lot to do with the creation of heavy metal, which is something a lot of people seem to overlook. By 1966, you had enough distortion and fuzz available that shit just started happening for metal. Cream, The JH Experience, The Amboy Dukes, Blue Cheer, Iron Butterfly, and a few other more underground bands were around just in time to innovate and start the ball rolling for heavy metal. They are the first metal bands imo.

Also, don't bother making smartass remarks 'cos I'll just ignore you. I only care to share my views/thoughts with people who care about metal's true origins.

Check out: Things To Come - "Speak Of The Devil" (1966)

Twas released as a single, months before the first Cream album, and it already sounded like a mix of Iron Butterfly and Black Sabbath (both future bands).

As someone else said before, the quest for the first heavy metal song never ends! Haha. But maybe, JUST maybe, this might be it.

Just some quick, unpopular opinions just for fun: Black Sabbath's self-titled is a better record than Paranoid, Chaos, A.D. is Sepultura's best record, and Killers is a better record then Maiden's self-titled, Number Of The Beast, Piece Of Mind, or Seventh Son.

Vol 4 is Black Sabbath's best album by far.

I prefer IX Equilibrium by Emperor over "Nightside" and "Anthems" as they finally got a proper production and really pushed some of the riffs. Decrystallizing Reason was my go to track for years on comps and turning people on to the band.

No Exit is Fates Warning's best and most consistent album.

Here's another one: Metal Archives is NOT a good source for traditional heavy metal.

Good source for just about any type of extreme metal, including doom.

But traditional heavy metal? If anything, this site has done a huge disservice to it. I always tell my friends this. MA is NOT a good source for traditional heavy metal.

Praying Mantis.

How so? Why?

Thrash metal is the most boring metal genre. Don't get me wrong, I like thrash at times and some albums are amazing but overall the genre is stale and so predictable. If I give a thrash album a chance I can often predict exactly what's going to happen and it gives me nothing. There are to many copy cat bands and to few bands that dare to do something different.