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kalervon
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Sep 23, 2012 10:43 pm
Posts: 991
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Tue Jul 20, 2021 10:50 pm 
 

ZenoMarx wrote:
Can anyone think of other songs with drumming like Soundgarden's "Jesus Christ Pose"?
Mudhoney's Here Comes Sickness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6h1Rs83VuY
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RainyTheBusinessPerson
Metal newbie

Joined: Sat Oct 29, 2016 10:50 pm
Posts: 184
Location: Southern Hemisphere
PostPosted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 5:21 pm 
 

I agree with a lot of what Yuli Ban said, both about music and videogames, it's an interesting comparison, but it actually makes sense when you think about it. Also, it's interesting how much more thoughtful this thread became ever since it got bumped, the whole "grunge vs metal" thing or "metal died in 90s" is the most tired topic and anyone who's remotely into metal knows how dumb of a claim it is, because all music thrives and evolves through smaller scenes and anything that goes mainstream is usually a mere glimpse into a genre, barely the surface, and doesn't at all exemplify everything a genre (or hell even a band) has to offer.

And yeah, at times grunge is just soft-sludge (well maybe proto-sludge?), at times it's just alternative rock, and it's really complex to discuss. None of the bigger bands in the genre really like the term, and considered themselves punk, or at least punk influenced, etc. There was that comparison to old garage rock, and you know how that spawned many bands that are considered proto-punk or proto-metal, but aren't exactly metal or punk necessarily? That's kinda similar. Your average grunge band will have some songs that have a heavier sound to them, some more experimental and noisy, and some really soft and more accessible, being the radio hits, and basically forming the idea of what grunge was to a lot of people, once again, being barely a surface of what those bands would offer. But the whole thing was more of a scene than anything else, something that had only a bit of an image and ideals in common, otherwise, bands sounded extremely different. And to make matters more messy, a few bands that are often called grunge are in this very site, and thus obviously are considered metal to some extent, which just shows how things aren't black and white.

Example: The Melvins are sometimes considered the first grunge band by some, and they influenced Nirvana a lot (the band which is basically synonymous with grunge), the Melvins are also firmly planted in sludge, but... they dipped their toes in a lot of different stuff, not unlike a lot of popular grunge bands like the aformentioned Nirvana, but also Alice in Chains, Soundgarden (both of which are also on this site, thus are considered metal to some extent), Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam, etc.

As I said before, things aren't black and white, bands are free to bring variety and do stuff beyond a simple genre (which ties into what Vadara said). Hell, some songs can be more than one genre at the same time, y'know. Nirvana's Aero Zeppelin has a pretty metal section that starts somewhere around the 1:19 mark, and they're not a metal band. Mother Love Bone has a lot of songs that sound a lot like 70s throwback music, but it has its own spin, it's not exactly that. Pearl Jam in general sounds a lot more softer than any of the bands I mentioned before. Despite that, all these bands are considered to be part of the same genre. It's just really complex, at the end to the day, all these bands had so many influences, from stuff like psychedelic rock, blues rock, early metal, punk, garage rock, and so on. The ONLY thing that they had in common was really the dismissal of the rockstar image and what was going on in the mainstream in the 80s (the excessive, sorta shallow "let's party, drink and fuck groupies" attitude). Which despite what people may like to claim about grunge being an antithesis to metal, is a mindset way closer to what a lot of underground metal bands had (both in the 80s and 90s, and even today).
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Maggot penetration
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:16 pm
Posts: 274
PostPosted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:01 pm 
 

Never mind grunge, which I like better now than back then when I considered it badly dressed American shit mostly (let alone fucking Neil Diamond, which grinders seemed to worship). I still remember the day Cobain died and the band I saw called him a wimp. There was good metal but also other cool stuff from noise rock to techno, drum & bass, Jamiroquai (ahem...) and people enjoyed stuff like Danzig, Judgment Night, Ministry, hardcore punk had gone more mainstream as well and stuff like Fugazi. You had the whole, in retrospect quite shit, trip hop stuff, Aphex Twin stuff, gabber, extacy....and the old bands didn't sound like they used to. I kinda like, for example, the 90s Slayer albums now but back then it just sounded less good than before. And of course there was black metal and some bands I always followed, like Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse, mainly thanks to my more metal friends.

It was all pre-internet. You had limited money and access. Lots of new stuff happened. Older bands had peaked. Grunge, to me, didn't really factor in. I guess there was also lots of rap.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 8:11 pm
Posts: 3576
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:24 pm 
 

Maggot penetration wrote:
You had the whole, in retrospect quite shit, trip hop stuff


Portishead is fairly popular around here. Plenty of other good stuff there too, Massive Attack, Hooverphonic, Recoil, Tricky and such.

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Maggot penetration
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu Jun 24, 2021 3:16 pm
Posts: 274
PostPosted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:53 pm 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
Maggot penetration wrote:
You had the whole, in retrospect quite shit, trip hop stuff


Portishead is fairly popular around here. Plenty of other good stuff there too, Massive Attack, Hooverphonic, Recoil, Tricky and such.


I liked some of it at the time but has aged badly for me. I still like some of the drum and bass from back then but trip hop...maybe the odd song. Probably was more aimed at young stoners with relationship troubles, I'm too old now :-)

Oh, and I think I confused Neil Diamond with Young. I had grunge flat mates but apart from the Nirvana and Soundgarden hits, and whatever else got played in alternative clubs and student parties, I just ignored it back then.

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Scorntyrant
Metalhead

Joined: Mon Nov 15, 2004 5:55 am
Posts: 1516
PostPosted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 10:14 pm 
 

Maggot penetration wrote:

young stoners with relationship troubles,


Haha, that was pretty much me at the time. I still like a lot of that stuff, a bit less ominous and more family friendly than SCORN, Coil, Meat Beat Manifesto etc which I also still listen to a lot.
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oldmetalhead
Metalhead

Joined: Tue Apr 13, 2021 1:30 am
Posts: 839
Location: Helltown, United States
PostPosted: Sat Aug 14, 2021 11:32 pm 
 

Desperta_Ferro wrote:
But again, it's a nice narrative and it fits. Oh no so decade old bands are releasing duds, big surprise.

It's not a narrative, it's the reality that record companies all wanted bands that sounded and sold like Nirvana. Lot's of good bands broke up, tried to change, lost their major labels because of this.

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AxeCapitol
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2021 12:38 pm
Posts: 589
Location: NYC
PostPosted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 7:40 pm 
 

I was born in 80 and here’s my perspective. When Grunge broke, you also had bands like faith no more, Metallica, gnr, rhcp, Def Leppard, et al, in heavy rotation. To my 12 year old mind, it was all different shades of heavy rock that were still all cousins of one another. Basically, my concept of hard rock or metal was limited to just that - I didn’t conceptualize any “sub-genres” per se.

Having said that, and now being much more educated on the subject, i still maintain that a lot of grunge was just metal dressed in flannel. Soundgarden, AIC, Melvins and Tad are just metal bands to me. Nothing more nothing less. Even Bleach has a very sludgy doomy metal vibe. PJ on paper we’re the least metallic (though no less awesome), but ironically, probably had the most metal roots of the major grunge bands.

McCready was in a metal band called Shadows which was basically Priest/Maiden worship, and he further claimed that his biggest guitar influence was Randy Rhodes. Stones favorite band of all time is Motörhead. And Jeff Aments preferred music to skateboard to is Venom, Hellhammer, and Slayer.

In sum, grunge rocks, and didn’t kill metal. It basically was metal.

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des91
Metal newbie

Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2014 8:51 pm
Posts: 361
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sat Oct 16, 2021 10:29 pm 
 

I wasn’t there at the time, but my guess is a lot of Metaheads aversion to Hrunge was the whole hype and commercialization of it. As in, everything but the music itself was hated.

The actual music of the biggest acts was really damn good and as mentioned above, already Metal or close to it. I’ve always been a fan of it.

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collingwood77
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2021 3:43 pm
Posts: 334
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 11:37 am 
 

Nocturnal_Evil wrote:
This whole idea of grunge "killing" metal is pretty absurd. Yes, it changed the musical landscape greatly, but so far as metal goes, the only true casualties were bands/genres which were already on the way out already: namely hair metal/rock and aging thrash bands. Another thing it did was expose which bands in metal were just chasing trends.

Thrash happened to suffer in that area, but I think there's another factor at play there. Thrash was the heaviest metal there was in the early 80s, but obviously they were dethroned in that regard with the arrival of death and black metal. Once the 90s rolled around, the thrash scene was just trying to stay relevant, either by edging further toward death/black metal (hello death/thrash!), or trying to conform to trends.

Grunge weeded out the "poser" bands, by largely destroyed the hopes of gaining mainstream success by playing metal. It trimmed the fat so to speak, and what remained were bands that were in it for the metal's sake, as opposed to hopes of arena tours. Metal has always been a reactionary genre in some respects, and I don't doubt the appearance of grunge reinvigorated metal to go further into the realms of musical extremity in response to the radio-rock being passed off as "the new rebellious thing to be into." Seeing as heavy riffs are really what this is whole metal thing is about, I'd say that in a weird way grunge was a blessing to the genre.


This is a good comment. I don't know how old you are, but I will explain what it was like for me around 1992-94. I guess it coincided with the end of my college years, and the move into adulthood and shit jobs, so the demise in popularity of thrash and hair-metal was very, very depressing for me for a few years. My six-year-old metal identity was shaken up, as those two styles, and the associated look and culture, faded from the mainstream over night. I had the mullet, long hair and white or black T-shirt under leather jacket look - that look became uncool very fast and in a massive way. I'm over it now (!), but 1993 was a bad year for me in many respects. And remember that even guitar solos, long hair, and battle jackets were viewed as very, very uncool for most of the 1990s, which made it hard to adjust - I couldn't personally get into BM and I didn't like how it replaced Thrash and Heavy Metal.

This is why HammerFall's debut in 1997 and then the reunion of Maiden with Bruce were important - they made these older styles of metal acceptable again, at least within the metal scene. I hope this post doesn't come across as a pity-party (scold me if it does!), but I was just trying to explain how 1993-94 were very hard years for me, as my old favorite music and aesthetic had become way uncool and BM was just too different and extreme for me (although I play a bit of it now).

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gomorro
Too Slow to Owl

Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2008 3:54 pm
Posts: 964
Location: Peru
PostPosted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 12:30 pm 
 

The 90s were a decade for other genre to grow aside from Heavy and thrash... But I was wondering the other day, who would be the best traditional heavy metal vocalists to rise in the 90s??
Owens comes first to my mind, but who else?? (Don´t take in consideration power, thrash or prog singer)

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des91
Metal newbie

Joined: Tue Nov 25, 2014 8:51 pm
Posts: 361
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 2:45 pm 
 

gomorro wrote:
But I was wondering the other day, who would be the best traditional heavy metal vocalists to rise in the 90s??
Owens comes first to my mind, but who else?? (Don´t take in consideration power, thrash or prog singer)


Tough question for me, as I’m not the most well-versed in traditional singers in the 90s outside of Power/Prog/Thrash. Blaze Bailey maybe? Or maybe a Doom/Gothic vocalist? I don’t listen to those genres though so not positive.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 8:11 pm
Posts: 3576
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sun Oct 17, 2021 7:04 pm 
 

I wouldn't consider gothic at all traditional heavy metal, but Peter Steele is definitely one of the signature vocalists of metal in the 90s. You could say he doesn't count since he was already in Carnivore in the 80s, but that's not really his defining work. Doom in general and the gothic varieties are a little all over the place, and some of the vocalists are going for a quite different approach than trad metal. But you have people like Aaron Stainthorpe, Nick Holmes, Lee Dorrian, Vincent Cavanagh, Robert Lowe, Jonas Renkse, Ville Laihiala, Pasi Koskinen, Anneke van Giersbergen, Sharon den Adel, Liv Kristine, Vibeke Stene and such.

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Benedict Donald
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Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2021 10:36 am
Posts: 3066
Location: United States
PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 10:27 am 
 

One often overlooked fact from this era that may have contributed to metal's diminished popularity was the long period of inactivity (in terms of new music) from some of the genre's most popular/successful bands.

Metallica (1991), Queensryche (1990), and Ozzy (1991) had all experienced the most successful albums of their respective careers (in terms of sales). Heck, Queensryche had a major hit on US radio in 1991. So, too, did the Scorpions with 'Wind of Change', a global phenomenon.
Same can be said of Van Halen, whose 1991 'FUCK', was a massive commercial success.

But the next Ozzy record wasn't released until 1995; the next Queensryche until 1994; new Van Halen didn't appear until 1995; the next Metallica until 1996.

Guns N Roses, not metal to be sure, but typically liked by much of the metal community, didn't even follow-up the massively successful '91 Use Your Illusions before devolving into irrelevance.

Slayer's follow-up to 1990's "Seasons"? Not released until 1994.

Skid Row and Motley Crue were two other bands who'd released hugely popular albums in 1990-1991 but waited ~4 years to follow them up.

And, obviously, Maiden and Priest were without lead singers during this period.

What would have happened had each of the bands released new material in 1992 or 1993?
Sure, grunge was the current 'big man on campus', but would the world not have accepted new material from Van Halen or Ozzy in 1993? At a minimum, the momentum of metal would not have stalled.

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Ace_Rimmer
Metal freak

Joined: Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:30 am
Posts: 4606
PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 10:30 am 
 

collingwood77 wrote:
Nocturnal_Evil wrote:
This whole idea of grunge "killing" metal is pretty absurd. Yes, it changed the musical landscape greatly, but so far as metal goes, the only true casualties were bands/genres which were already on the way out already: namely hair metal/rock and aging thrash bands. Another thing it did was expose which bands in metal were just chasing trends.

Thrash happened to suffer in that area, but I think there's another factor at play there. Thrash was the heaviest metal there was in the early 80s, but obviously they were dethroned in that regard with the arrival of death and black metal. Once the 90s rolled around, the thrash scene was just trying to stay relevant, either by edging further toward death/black metal (hello death/thrash!), or trying to conform to trends.

Grunge weeded out the "poser" bands, by largely destroyed the hopes of gaining mainstream success by playing metal. It trimmed the fat so to speak, and what remained were bands that were in it for the metal's sake, as opposed to hopes of arena tours. Metal has always been a reactionary genre in some respects, and I don't doubt the appearance of grunge reinvigorated metal to go further into the realms of musical extremity in response to the radio-rock being passed off as "the new rebellious thing to be into." Seeing as heavy riffs are really what this is whole metal thing is about, I'd say that in a weird way grunge was a blessing to the genre.


This is a good comment. I don't know how old you are, but I will explain what it was like for me around 1992-94. I guess it coincided with the end of my college years, and the move into adulthood and shit jobs, so the demise in popularity of thrash and hair-metal was very, very depressing for me for a few years. My six-year-old metal identity was shaken up, as those two styles, and the associated look and culture, faded from the mainstream over night. I had the mullet, long hair and white or black T-shirt under leather jacket look - that look became uncool very fast and in a massive way. I'm over it now (!), but 1993 was a bad year for me in many respects. And remember that even guitar solos, long hair, and battle jackets were viewed as very, very uncool for most of the 1990s, which made it hard to adjust - I couldn't personally get into BM and I didn't like how it replaced Thrash and Heavy Metal.

This is why HammerFall's debut in 1997 and then the reunion of Maiden with Bruce were important - they made these older styles of metal acceptable again, at least within the metal scene. I hope this post doesn't come across as a pity-party (scold me if it does!), but I was just trying to explain how 1993-94 were very hard years for me, as my old favorite music and aesthetic had become way uncool and BM was just too different and extreme for me (although I play a bit of it now).


That is true, which is why its kind of funny that the band that had the most commercial success of the "grunge" movement was awash with guitar solos. Pearl Jam always had extended guitar solos in songs like Alive, Evenflow, and Porch when they played live.

Benedict Donald wrote:
One often overlooked fact from this era that may have contributed to metal's diminished popularity was the long period of inactivity (in terms of new music) from some of the genre's most popular/successful bands.

Metallica (1991), Queensryche (1990), and Ozzy (1991) had all experienced the most successful albums of their respective careers (in terms of sales). Heck, Queensryche had a major hit on US radio in 1991. So, too, did the Scorpions with 'Wind of Change', a global phenomenon.
Same can be said of Van Halen, whose 1991 'FUCK', was a massive commercial success.

But the next Ozzy record wasn't released until 1995; the next Queensryche until 1994; new Van Halen didn't appear until 1995; the next Metallica until 1996.



Sure, but Metallica toured on the Black Album until August 94.

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AxeCapitol
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Oct 13, 2021 12:38 pm
Posts: 589
Location: NYC
PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 2:07 pm 
 

Check this PJ solo out. It’s pretty “classic metal” sounding. Comes in around the 2:00 mark.

https://youtu.be/AtXwXp8AtPM

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collingwood77
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Jun 23, 2021 3:43 pm
Posts: 334
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 4:20 pm 
 

Benedict Donald wrote:
One often overlooked fact from this era that may have contributed to metal's diminished popularity was the long period of inactivity (in terms of new music) from some of the genre's most popular/successful bands.

Metallica (1991), Queensryche (1990), and Ozzy (1991) had all experienced the most successful albums of their respective careers (in terms of sales). Heck, Queensryche had a major hit on US radio in 1991. So, too, did the Scorpions with 'Wind of Change', a global phenomenon.
Same can be said of Van Halen, whose 1991 'FUCK', was a massive commercial success.

But the next Ozzy record wasn't released until 1995; the next Queensryche until 1994; new Van Halen didn't appear until 1995; the next Metallica until 1996.

Guns N Roses, not metal to be sure, but typically liked by much of the metal community, didn't even follow-up the massively successful '91 Use Your Illusions before devolving into irrelevance.

Slayer's follow-up to 1990's "Seasons"? Not released until 1994.

Skid Row and Motley Crue were two other bands who'd released hugely popular albums in 1990-1991 but waited ~4 years to follow them up.

And, obviously, Maiden and Priest were without lead singers during this period.

What would have happened had each of the bands released new material in 1992 or 1993?
Sure, grunge was the current 'big man on campus', but would the world not have accepted new material from Van Halen or Ozzy in 1993? At a minimum, the momentum of metal would not have stalled.


This is really interesting and you got an incredible grasp of the metal history of those years. So I guess it was many factors contributing to the decline of traditional and thrash metal in the 1990s, and I'm sure that the lack of new records by those big acts in those years was a contributing factor. However, every single one of those bands were formed in the early-1980s or before and possibly many people were getting somewhat bored by all those bands (other than the diehard fans). It's almost like it was meant to be (!) - a decade of stagnation and decline followed by the return of the classic-era singers to Maiden and Priest and rebirth in the 2000s.

Also, the original Norwegian BM ideology of despising traditional metal genres didn't help the ability of those traditional genres to keep fans and stay popular. Fenriz (for example) hasn't always been as nice and inclusive as he is today!


Last edited by collingwood77 on Tue Oct 19, 2021 7:10 am, edited 1 time in total.
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LithoJazzoSphere
Veteran

Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2020 8:11 pm
Posts: 3576
Location: United States
PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 6:11 pm 
 

It just seems that the late 80s/early 90s was probably the greatest proliferation in metal history of different subgenres, so the last thing people wanted as the 90s went on was more of the same old 80s trad and thrash metal they'd already had, they were more about the burgeoning genres of death, black, groove, doom, gothic, prog, melodeath, Euro power, stoner, folk, sludge, grind, industrial, early metalcore, even nu at the tail end of that period.

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Ace_Rimmer
Metal freak

Joined: Wed Jun 14, 2017 11:30 am
Posts: 4606
PostPosted: Mon Oct 18, 2021 7:00 pm 
 

Where I'm at it death or black metal didn't even come up on the radar. Everyone was still listening to thrash but the new shit was groove.

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