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~Guest 1195014
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PostPosted: Wed May 05, 2021 8:07 pm 
 

It's admittedly somewhat of a generic umbrella, but I think that's exactly why it would be useful - same as prog is a pretty broad umbrella (and can be anything from Opeth to a total shredfest), the same way "atmospheric" just gives you an idea what the emphasis on, but could fit many styles that do not really fit into other subgenres (as both post-metal and gothic metal have a pretty defined style).

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Wed May 05, 2021 8:32 pm 
 

Yeah, when I hear a band is "progressive" metal, I generally don't have much of an idea of what to expect. It's one of the widest tents and not very predictive of how a band sounds. I don't know about "gothic metal" being well-defined though, it's generally a mixture of a dozen or two different traits in varying quantities, with certain crowds arguing that some of those traits are more fundamental than others.

interstellar_medium wrote:
^"Gothic" is much abused as a term, true. But wouldn't "atmospheric" be confusing as well? For example, there is atmoblack, "atmospheric BM", which those bands don't really have much in common with...


Aren't "atmoblack" and "atmospheric BM" the exact same thing? It's a bit out of my realm of expertise, but I thought those are just both abbreviations of "atmospheric black metal". Probably in a similar way that you can have "melodeath" and "melodic DM", the latter of which I don't see much, but if someone used it I'd suspect it was all just a shorter way of saying "melodic death metal". Although on that tangent I wouldn't mind terms for death metal like say The Karelian Isthmus which is more melodic than average, but not enough to be fully MDM either. Or a term for some of the 00s bands with more clean vocals that don't make sense as metalcore or melodic groove metal.

But regardless, "atmospheric" is already laden with meaning, so I'd go to my saying "something like it", because using that precise term does muddle things. "Airy", "pneumatic", "aerated", "lithe", I'm not sure I'm thrilled with those, so I'm not quite sure.

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Thu May 06, 2021 6:31 pm 
 

^Yeah, atmoblack and atmospheric BM are the same thing, I used commas to mark apposition :)

...Most of the time when a relatively new band is described as simply "progressive metal", they do tend to sound the same, chromatic runs, keyboard-laden and all that :P

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Fri May 07, 2021 2:14 am 
 

Eh, sometimes, but not always. They might also sound like Opeth, Mastodon, The Ocean, Voivod, Enslaved, Obscura, The Human Abstract, Meshuggah, Soen, Mr. Bungle, etc.

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laxskinn
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PostPosted: Fri May 07, 2021 7:57 am 
 

Gravetemplar wrote:
laxskinn wrote:
I know RAC was been brought up before but I am still a bit curious about the concept. Is it and actual musical genre or does it require certain lyrics? If it is a true musical genre it should work regardless of the lyrics, right? In theory pro communist RAC should be possible.

If it's not a true musical genre, then should it really be used here on MA? Kind of how NSBM and Unblack/white metal isn't used here anymore.

The reason I'm wondering is that it seems to be used as a backdoor to sneak NSBM back as a genre on MA by classifying bands as "black metal/RAC". If RAC is a genre I assume it's some sort of Oi!/punk/heavy metal blend, and I doubt all the bands marked as "Black metal/RAC" actually do mix those genres with black metal.

Both actually. As you say, it has to be Oi!/punk/heavy metal blend and fascist lyrics.


Out of curiosity; is this the only "lyric genre" that is accepted on MA? Or I guess Depressive Black Metal has specific lyric requirements too.

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Mon May 10, 2021 2:12 pm 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
Eh, sometimes, but not always. They might also sound like Opeth, Mastodon, The Ocean, Voivod, Enslaved, Obscura, The Human Abstract, Meshuggah, Soen, Mr. Bungle, etc.


Those "soundalikes" would generally be (self-)classified as "progressive _insert_subgenre_ metal".

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2021 5:51 pm 
 

But is it even possible to be just "progressive metal"? At minimum the earliest ones could have been called "progressive heavy metal", and it's been quite common to be "progressive power metal". This also starts to get into the nebulous qualities of progressive as a subgenre vs. as a descriptor. But ultimately the taxonomy of subgenres tends to be that there are groupings of bands who have overlap in a certain amount of a bundle of qualities that together distinguish them from other groupings of bands. And this at least as true for progressive at it is for thrash, doom, etc.

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~Guest 1195014
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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2021 8:08 pm 
 

It is a good idea at the first glance to be more specific, but the more I think about it the more it seems it would be impossible to distinguish clearly in many cases. Even Dream Theater for instance started as basically progressive power/thrash metal, but over time evolved into... progressive thrash/groove metal with prog rock ballads? I don't even know. There are bands like Opeth who pretty clearly fused prog rock with death metal and it's quite easy to pick one tag (until Heritage that is), but I think mixing up various metal styles is fairly common in prog and it would require way too many slashes and (early)/(later) tags to manage. And it gets even more blurry these days, with bands like Soen who seamlessly fuse more ballady prog rock with riffs that could come straight out of Blackwater Park.

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KayBur
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PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2021 8:36 am 
 

Death By Wall of Text wrote:
It is a good idea at the first glance to be more specific, but the more I think about it the more it seems it would be impossible to distinguish clearly in many cases. Even Dream Theater for instance started as basically progressive power/thrash metal, but over time evolved into... progressive thrash/groove metal with prog rock ballads? I don't even know. There are bands like Opeth who pretty clearly fused prog rock with death metal and it's quite easy to pick one tag (until Heritage that is), but I think mixing up various metal styles is fairly common in prog and it would require way too many slashes and (early)/(later) tags to manage. And it gets even more blurry these days, with bands like Soen who seamlessly fuse more ballady prog rock with riffs that could come straight out of Blackwater Park.


I don't know of a single band whose style hasn't changed over the years. The creativity of all performers is undergoing changes. Any performer changes in the dynamics of the development of his work, so I don't really try to find a definition of style anymore. I just divide the tracks into "like" and "dislike".

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2021 12:10 pm 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
But is it even possible to be just "progressive metal"? At minimum the earliest ones could have been called "progressive heavy metal"


Could've. But these days "progressive heavy" is something of an oxymoron, don't you think?

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2021 4:15 pm 
 

Other than USPM, what else would you call early Fates Warning?

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2021 6:23 pm 
 

^With Arch? I confess I only managed to live through those classics once... but they had nothing in common with the Judas Priest clones of the day.

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2021 6:31 pm 
 

...and I'm not sure you realised what I really meant.
These days, "heavy metal" in actual metalhead discourse is not the umbrella genre (that would be "metal") ; "heavy" basically equals "trad metal". "Traditional" and "progressive" are antonyms.
...and I'll say again that the "progressive metal" scene has been stagnating for quite a while. You won't be able to convince me otherwise)))

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2021 8:25 pm 
 

interstellar_medium wrote:
^With Arch? I confess I only managed to live through those classics once... but they had nothing in common with the Judas Priest clones of the day.


Yeah, though they continued a similar enough sound with Alder. I'm not the biggest fan of them myself, they've always been a band I want to like more than I actually spend time with, but I recognize their historic importance. And that's the point, that they didn't sound like a clone, they were steeped in the traditional metal sound, but were simultaneously taking it into new directions which made them unique and pioneering.

interstellar_medium wrote:
...and I'm not sure you realised what I really meant.
These days, "heavy metal" in actual metalhead discourse is not the umbrella genre (that would be "metal") ; "heavy" basically equals "trad metal". "Traditional" and "progressive" are antonyms.


I know what you're getting at in terms of the nomenclature evolving over time, but I still don't think I completely agree. What would you call Metallica's self-titled? It doesn't sound like traditional 80s metal groups, it's no longer really a thrash album, but it hasn't fully leaned into the hard rock feel they developed on Load. Or how about Dickinson's and Halford's solo albums in the 90s? They don't sound as "retro" as the 80s albums from their bands, or like the NWOTHM bands. To me they sound just like pure heavy metal that doesn't really fit properly into any particular subgenre.

interstellar_medium wrote:
...and I'll say again that the "progressive metal" scene has been stagnating for quite a while. You won't be able to convince me otherwise)))


To the extent that is true, I think it's because we've definitionally excluded bands from it (even outside of bands that most music fans would consider metal but we don't find them riffy enough to fit here). In the 90s it was still a quite new subgenre, but at some point with the dominance of bands like Dream Theater the metal community codified the tropes of the style, and anyone who tries to deviate too much from them gets some other label, whether avant-garde metal, djent, progressive metalcore, technical death metal, etc. This also gets into the argument again that I touched on in the other recent thread relating to DT about progressive as a subgenre vs. as an adjective. But broadly speaking there are still a lot of bands in recent times doing interesting things that you could easily call "progressive metal", from Ne Obliviscaris to Leprous to Haken to Ihsahn to Threshold to Between the Buried and Me to Caligula's Horse to Persefone to Devin Townsend to Diablo Swing Orchestra to Triosphere to Galneryus to David Maxim Micic to Animals As Leaders to Myrath to Borknagar, etc.

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~Guest 1195014
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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2021 9:35 pm 
 

KayBur wrote:
Death By Wall of Text wrote:
It is a good idea at the first glance to be more specific, but the more I think about it the more it seems it would be impossible to distinguish clearly in many cases. Even Dream Theater for instance started as basically progressive power/thrash metal, but over time evolved into... progressive thrash/groove metal with prog rock ballads? I don't even know. There are bands like Opeth who pretty clearly fused prog rock with death metal and it's quite easy to pick one tag (until Heritage that is), but I think mixing up various metal styles is fairly common in prog and it would require way too many slashes and (early)/(later) tags to manage. And it gets even more blurry these days, with bands like Soen who seamlessly fuse more ballady prog rock with riffs that could come straight out of Blackwater Park.


I don't know of a single band whose style hasn't changed over the years. The creativity of all performers is undergoing changes. Any performer changes in the dynamics of the development of his work, so I don't really try to find a definition of style anymore. I just divide the tracks into "like" and "dislike".

I think it tends to be more radical in case of prog bands, though. If you take bands like Maiden or Sabbath, they have definitely changed over time, but it's still pretty clear they belong to the subgenre(s) they were always associated with. Same goes for a lot of other well-established metal bands I can think of, some of whom had an experimental period but despite the changes, their sound is not light years away from their roots (Paradise Lost - gothic/doom in every era except the synth/industrial stuff; Kreator - almost always thrash even with more melody; Vader - always gravitating around thrash/death; etc. etc.).

Prog bands often have a much more drastic way of evolving. I gave Dream Theater as an example and some people still complain they are "too safe and predictable", whereas there are bands like Opeth (from prog death metal to vintage-ish prog rock), Pain of Salvation (they could have a separate subgenre list for each album), Porcupine Tree/Steven Wilson (from psychedelic prog rock to borderline prog metal to literal pop) or even Katatonia and Anathema (from death/doom pioneers to almost alternative rock). Basically, most bands I know which have undergone extreme changes in style have had something to do with the prog scene in one way or another.

interstellar_medium wrote:
...and I'll say again that the "progressive metal" scene has been stagnating for quite a while. You won't be able to convince me otherwise)))

Then you're wrong. There are few genres that are more alive and constantly evolving out there. It's just that this site is particularly and unnecessarily limiting towards modern prog metal bands.

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tomcat_ha
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PostPosted: Sun May 16, 2021 5:47 am 
 

modern prog metal isnt actually metal most of the time, big deal who cares.

prog metal changed quite a bit as it solidified over the 90s. However I want to say that it become like progressive rock. a the accurate term for the genre would be complicated metal. However that sounds infinitely more annoying.

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Sun May 16, 2021 11:19 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
they were steeped in the traditional metal sound, but were simultaneously taking it into new directions which made them unique and pioneering.


Exactly, and then other folks took these new directions and froze them solid, and we have our "prog metal" scene.

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
there are still a lot of bands in recent times doing interesting things that you could easily call "progressive metal"


Surely, we could, but we don't. I mean, imagine that Jute Gyte turned into a fully-fledged band that played live, and you were in charge of an actual "prog metal" fest, with someone like Townsend as headliner. Would you want Jute Gyte on the bill or would you offer that spot to someone more accessible to the fans you'd expect to flock in to see Townsend?

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
Triosphere


I am honestly amazed that this band still has fans after their 2014 release, with all those love songs and guitar solos that wouldn't be out of place on a Poison ballad. Unless... it's what people enjoy?

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
To me they sound just like pure heavy metal that doesn't really fit properly into any particular subgenre.


Why not just "metal"?

Death By Wall of Text wrote:
Then you're wrong. There are few genres that are more alive and constantly evolving out there. It's just that this site is particularly and unnecessarily limiting towards modern prog metal bands.


You mean that what you consider to be "prog metal" is something like the djent scene?

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Smalley
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PostPosted: Mon May 17, 2021 12:11 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
I know what you're getting at in terms of the nomenclature evolving over time, but I still don't think I completely agree. What would you call Metallica's self-titled? It doesn't sound like traditional 80s metal groups, it's no longer really a thrash album, but it hasn't fully leaned into the hard rock feel they developed on Load. Or how about Dickinson's and Halford's solo albums in the 90s? They don't sound as "retro" as the 80s albums from their bands, or like the NWOTHM bands. To me they sound just like pure heavy metal that doesn't really fit properly into any particular subgenre.
While some people slap the unofficial label of "Half-Thrash" on The Black Album to describe its sound, I think that term applies more to something like Countdown To Extinction instead; me, I would call TBA an "Arena Metal" album, sort of like the Metal version of Journey, with its less heavy, mid-tempo riffage, big, polished, glossy Bob Rock-approved sound, and ballads designed to be played in packed stadiums as people wave their lighters (or phones, these days) back and forth. Whatever you call it though, it really shouldn't be lumped into the same category as old-school Maiden, Priest, or Dio's various projects, which were generally more melodic, but also not as commercially-oriented in their sound.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Mon May 17, 2021 8:55 am 
 

interstellar_medium wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
they were steeped in the traditional metal sound, but were simultaneously taking it into new directions which made them unique and pioneering.


Exactly, and then other folks took these new directions and froze them solid, and we have our "prog metal" scene.


That happens in every subgenre though. Depending upon what selection of bands you check out, all of them could seem frozen, but it generally takes a bit more exploration and digging to find the more interesting ones. Sometimes they're not even always called "progressive metal" even if they essentially are. Your issue might be more with how you conceptualize the "scene" and the ambiguity of that vs. its current status as a particular style.

interstellar_medium wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
there are still a lot of bands in recent times doing interesting things that you could easily call "progressive metal"


Surely, we could, but we don't. I mean, imagine that Jute Gyte turned into a fully-fledged band that played live, and you were in charge of an actual "prog metal" fest, with someone like Townsend as headliner. Would you want Jute Gyte on the bill or would you offer that spot to someone more accessible to the fans you'd expect to flock in to see Townsend?


The commercial considerations that come with hosting a festival are a whole different ballgame. But even at those you still tend to find somewhat more odd bands at times that are chosen for variety. And again, would a festival for every other subgenre really be that much better in that regard?

interstellar_medium wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
Triosphere


I am honestly amazed that this band still has fans after their 2014 release, with all those love songs and guitar solos that wouldn't be out of place on a Poison ballad. Unless... it's what people enjoy?


I have to wonder if we're talking about the same album here. I can't speak to the lyrics since I rarely pay attention to them, but the only real ballad is the last track, which is a pretty song anyway. The rest are just very well-executed prog/power pieces. I'm not sure what your concern with the guitar playing is, a lot of of it is typical enough for what they're doing, but it has a decent amount of variety, from the fairly technical bits in "The Sentinel" to the more bluesy/soulful cleaner stuff in "Breathless", which is cool and a bit unusual for a band like them. Maybe that's the solo you hate, I don't know. They're certainly not the most innovative band on the list that I mentioned, but they are rather unique, and I picked them because I know they have a bit of a fanbase here, and I quite like them as well.

interstellar_medium wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
To me they sound just like pure heavy metal that doesn't really fit properly into any particular subgenre.


Why not just "metal"?


I don't have particularly strong feelings either way, honestly. I have more entrenched qualms with various other more confusing labels. But I generally find it easy enough by context to use or grok when people say "heavy metal" to refer to an older style vs. a no frills type of sonic presentation vs. as an umbrella term for the genre as a whole. I'll probably continue to use it as long as sites that I use a lot like our own or Rate Your Music do.

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Tue May 18, 2021 5:37 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
That happens in every subgenre though. Depending upon what selection of bands you check out, all of them could seem frozen, but it generally takes a bit more exploration and digging to find the more interesting ones. Sometimes they're not even always called "progressive metal" even if they essentially are. Your issue might be more with how you conceptualize the "scene" and the ambiguity of that vs. its current status as a particular style.


True - I'm not impressed with the state of things in metal in general, but it's most jarring with something that calls itself "progressive".
I might be cursed or something, but whenever I hear a new to me band marketed as progressive-something, it's not exactly groundbreaking, to put it mildly. Yesterday there was a "prog black" album on BMP... yeah right.

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
The commercial considerations that come with hosting a festival are a whole different ballgame.


They're still largely driven by the fact that even within metal, subscenes don't overlap that much in terms of audience.

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
I can't speak to the lyrics since I rarely pay attention to them, but the only real ballad is the last track, which is a pretty song anyway. The rest are just very well-executed prog/power pieces.
......the more bluesy/soulful cleaner stuff in "Breathless", which is cool and a bit unusual for a band like them. Maybe that's the solo you hate, I don't know.


That word, "pretty", is exactly what I'd use to describe the whole album. It fits the lyrics. It's... almost a "sellout".
I mean, there's a lot of "pretty" female-fronted bands with love songs out there. Triosphere initially were seen as an alternative to those, especially given that Haukland was also a bass player, unlike "all those".
That song is the worst offender, but there's a lot of that blues/hard rock thing going on throughout. It might be "unusual" for a Norwegian band, but it does not endear the record to a listener who overdosed on that sort of music long ago.

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Vizzom
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PostPosted: Tue May 18, 2021 7:11 am 
 

I definintely agree with what Litho said. There has been quite an expansion in the sound variety. And I tend to see quite a bit of other interesting advancements in guitar and keyboard sound signature, but if you play a bit too low it's djent, a bit too much choir-y and elegant and it gets labelled as symphonic metal, with no consideration for their prog tendencies, or basis rather. And this seems to be a real recurring issue.

And notably both of these genres (symphonic and djent) really have lots of wide interpretations that can be narrowed down to how a keyboardist or guitar player likes to play. Although Symphonic is usually pretty black and white in some well-established cases.

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Tue May 18, 2021 9:41 am 
 

Could "symphonic djent" exist?

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Vizzom
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PostPosted: Tue May 18, 2021 1:59 pm 
 

interstellar_medium wrote:
Could "symphonic djent" exist?

This does very well indeed exist. If you search it up, you can find quite a bit of examples. But this shouldn't be too much a surprise considering there is symphonic black metal.

But Djent isn't really an exact genre, haha, as I'm sure you may probably know. Although I'm sure there are probably some more oxymoronic terms you could find by mixing certain genres with ambient/drone stuff.

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Tue May 18, 2021 7:53 pm 
 

There was a recent thread about bands with weird combinations of genres. I keep on going back to it to check random mentions out; nothing has grabbed me in particular so far, but still, the weirder the merrier.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 20, 2021 2:26 pm 
 

interstellar_medium wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
That happens in every subgenre though. Depending upon what selection of bands you check out, all of them could seem frozen, but it generally takes a bit more exploration and digging to find the more interesting ones. Sometimes they're not even always called "progressive metal" even if they essentially are. Your issue might be more with how you conceptualize the "scene" and the ambiguity of that vs. its current status as a particular style.


but it's most jarring with something that calls itself "progressive".
I might be cursed or something, but whenever I hear a new to me band marketed as progressive-something, it's not exactly groundbreaking, to put it mildly.


You've hit it right there, it's a marketing issue. "Progressive" in musical contexts now has so many specific connotations at this point that PR people use it to connect to people interested in those qualities. They'll use other words like "experimental", "innovative", "genre-bending", "pioneering" (whether or not they're actually true) if it's more indefinable.

interstellar_medium wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
The commercial considerations that come with hosting a festival are a whole different ballgame.


They're still largely driven by the fact that even within metal, subscenes don't overlap that much in terms of audience.


Hmm, I feel like that should really be its own thread, I can immediately think of both examples and counterexamples, but I'd have to work through it a bit more first.

interstellar_medium wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
I can't speak to the lyrics since I rarely pay attention to them, but the only real ballad is the last track, which is a pretty song anyway. The rest are just very well-executed prog/power pieces.
......the more bluesy/soulful cleaner stuff in "Breathless", which is cool and a bit unusual for a band like them. Maybe that's the solo you hate, I don't know.


That word, "pretty", is exactly what I'd use to describe the whole album. It fits the lyrics. It's... almost a "sellout".
I mean, there's a lot of "pretty" female-fronted bands with love songs out there. Triosphere initially were seen as an alternative to those, especially given that Haukland was also a bass player, unlike "all those".
That song is the worst offender, but there's a lot of that blues/hard rock thing going on throughout. It might be "unusual" for a Norwegian band, but it does not endear the record to a listener who overdosed on that sort of music long ago.


We're probably just going to have to agree to disagree. I don't hear those elements as at all dominating their sound, and when they are incorporated it is done quite tastefully. "Marionette" on the previous example is another good example. But I'm not sure why you singled out their '14 album, since all three are similar, and there's far more power and thrash influences throughout them than "pretty" bands like your Within Temptations and such.

And in terms of "love songs", it's a far cry from something like, oh, I don't know, HIM.

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interstellar_medium
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PostPosted: Thu May 20, 2021 3:22 pm 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
You've hit it right there, it's a marketing issue. "Progressive" in musical contexts now has so many specific connotations at this point that PR people use it to connect to people interested in those qualities.


Yes, and not just the PR people but the bands themselves, especially those operating without any record labels.

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
Hmm, I feel like that should really be its own thread, I can immediately think of both examples and counterexamples, but I'd have to work through it a bit more first.


Sure, take your time.

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
"Marionette" on the previous example is another good example.


The beginning of the end, to me =D

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
But I'm not sure why you singled out their '14 album


Because I can't close my ears to those lyrics.

The first album had hints of a relationship in the Onwards multi-part epic, but it was more metaphorical, it could be anything, sisterhood, whatever. The other songs had that SF sort of aesthetic, and that was awesome. You don't get that sort of topics that often with high-quality female fronted bands.
The second album was trying to get more "socially conscious" and "personal", and it was something of a letdown for me (I much prefer metaphors - you can write extremely soul-baring stuff that way, and it will have staying power due to the layers of meaning). And the third, well. Just count how much more often the word "love" is used and in what contexts. Ugh.

And it's exactly because of the lyrics why I never got into HIM despite Valo being the outstanding singer that he is (and despite certain crazy fangirls of his among my friends).

Love songs can be done well... but the more a lyricist uses cliches, including the word "love", the more trite and worthless those lyrics become.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu May 20, 2021 5:14 pm 
 

It looks like your primary objection is lyrics, and that's usually just about the last thing I focus on, so there's the divide.

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Vizzom
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PostPosted: Fri May 21, 2021 2:02 pm 
 

How about some of the other stuff like in regards to "Kawaii Metal", which still pose quite a bit of metal elements, but notably have higher voices and merge a bit with pop. Since I know that quite a bit of bands here have been rejected for being in the Kawaii/J-pop category, even if they still seem to be almost oxymoronic?? Would be curious to hear some of the thoughts on that.

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~Guest 298739
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 13, 2021 12:08 pm 
 

What, like Amaranthe?

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In_Zane
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 21, 2021 2:26 am 
 

Nhor wrote:
What, like Amaranthe?


Nah, Amaranthe doesnt fit in with ''Kawaii Metal''. It'd be like Babymetal.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 21, 2021 8:57 am 
 

It's a similar concept, mixing extreme metal with pop hooks and sensibilities as well as electronic influences, but Kawaii metal is definitely a more regionally-specific term. One of the earlier and better examples of the overall idea is Germany's Deadlock, particularly on Wolves. Others have come up with assorted versions of it since then, like Blood Stain Child, Rage of Light, Dust In Mind, Starkill, etc.

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Nocturnal_Evil
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 26, 2021 3:24 pm 
 

Was gonna make a thread for this, but figured this one's better for it. What do you all think of death thrash? Is it a legit genre? If not, how do you go about categorizing the bands which are on the fence into each genre?
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tomcat_ha
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 26, 2021 6:59 pm 
 

its not a genre specifically its just metal that has elements of both, you can call it a hybrid but i wouldnt even call it a hybrid subgenre like grindcore or metalcore are.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 26, 2021 7:06 pm 
 

What would you say is necessary for a mixture or hybrid to be considered a genre (or subgenre)? Metalcore especially on this forum is kind of odd as well, because there are multiple strands of it that only have surface-level similarities to each other.

I would count death/thrash as a subgenre, or maybe even sub-subgenre if we want to get more pedantic. The dividing line is Possessed Seven Churches. Anything with more death (like Scream Bloody Gore) is death metal (of course still with heavy thrash influence), anything with less is thrash, like Demolition Hammer's Tortured Existence (which does still have a number of death elements). But broadly speaking, I would count all three as part of death/thrash.

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Nocturnal_Evil
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 27, 2021 10:28 pm 
 

Yeah, Lithosphere. Those are exactly the kind of bands I was talking about. I consider death thrash a legitimate subgenre myself, for precisely the reasons you mention. I'd throw in stuff like Protector, Merciless, Opprobrium/Incubus, Sarcofago (if only because they termed the genre) and Morbid Saint.

The main thing with me is the vocals. A lot of these bands employ death metal riffing and dirtier production than thrash, but still have sufficient traces of the shouty thrash vocals in the music as well.
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oldmetalhead
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 5:09 pm 
 

Stupid question here but looking for opinions.

What genre do bands that were near thrash but not quite, get labeled, E.g - (Early) Metal Church, Savatage, Accept, Wrathchild America and a host of others, just to name some that had a degree of commercial success.

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Nocturnal_Evil
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 8:08 pm 
 

I can only speak for a few of these bands, but Accept has always been true blue heavy metal. I know they have some fast tracks, but those are more than outweighed by their more plodding "Balls to the Wall" paced material.

Metal Church also falls into this category. They came up in the same scene and era of thrash, but musically, they never really stepped over the line to thrash. Moreso rough-around-the-edges heavy metal I'd say.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 3:22 am 
 

Savatage is also mostly just straight up heavy metal in the early days. There is a USPM component to their sound at times, occasionally some hard rock, and then by the late 80s they're incorporating more progressive influences (essentially becoming one of the bands that shaped that movement).

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Smalley
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:24 am 
 

oldmetalhead wrote:
Stupid question here but looking for opinions.

What genre do bands that were near thrash but not quite, get labeled, E.g - (Early) Metal Church, Savatage, Accept, Wrathchild America and a host of others, just to name some that had a degree of commercial success.
Speed Metal?
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oldmetalhead
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 11:26 pm 
 

I didn't want to pollute the sludge band favorite's thread that has already gotten muddied, so I'm asking here in the appropriate place, what is the difference between sludge, doom, stoner and even post metal? The first three all seem to have in common, downtuned, slower played powerchords, where post rock/metal seems to have more atmospheric sonic's. I don't know, tell me.

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