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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:21 pm 
 

MawBTS wrote:
There's a Robert Christgau review where he calls Rob Zombie "death metal". That dude's one of the world's most famous and respected rock critics.


This should tell you something about the actual credibility of mainstream critics, it's truly depressing that people spent decades hanging on the words of these morons when deciding which music to spend their paycheck on.
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HeavenDuff
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Joined: Sun Mar 07, 2010 10:35 pm
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:35 pm 
 

hells_unicorn wrote:
MawBTS wrote:
There's a Robert Christgau review where he calls Rob Zombie "death metal". That dude's one of the world's most famous and respected rock critics.


This should tell you something about the actual credibility of mainstream critics, it's truly depressing that people spent decades hanging on the words of these morons when deciding which music to spend their paycheck on.


It's still fascinating to me that you can have such a vast employment field be almost entirely filled with people who have basically no clue what they are talking about. Professionnal music criticis are among the "professionnals" I have the less faith and regard for basically anything they do. I remember listening to two of these pro wankers arguing that Rush was not good rock music and that it was a shame that they were intronized to the Rock Hall of Fame because their music was too complex, not catchy enough and wasn't poppy and accessible enough. I was floored by just how fucking stupid these people who, apparently, are making a living out of analyzing, scrutinizing and writing about music could have such horrible takes on such a great band.

Not only this but, like you said, often times they also have basically no clues, no kind of actual knowledge of musical theory and categorization beyond the shit that plays on the radio. Who the hell can call himself a music expert and confuse Rob Zombie for death metal? Jeez!

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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:49 pm 
 

HeavenDuff wrote:
hells_unicorn wrote:
This should tell you something about the actual credibility of mainstream critics, it's truly depressing that people spent decades hanging on the words of these morons when deciding which music to spend their paycheck on.


It's still fascinating to me that you can have such a vast employment field be almost entirely filled with people who have basically no clue what they are talking about. Professionnal music criticis are among the "professionnals" I have the less faith and regard for basically anything they do. I remember listening to two of these pro wankers arguing that Rush was not good rock music and that it was a shame that they were intronized to the Rock Hall of Fame because their music was too complex, not catchy enough and wasn't poppy and accessible enough. I was floored by just how fucking stupid these people who, apparently, are making a living out of analyzing, scrutinizing and writing about music could have such horrible takes on such a great band.

Not only this but, like you said, often times they also have basically no clues, no kind of actual knowledge of musical theory and categorization beyond the shit that plays on the radio. Who the hell can call himself a music expert and confuse Rob Zombie for death metal? Jeez!


The more I've thought about it, the more I am convinced that most of these morons make money because they are getting paided to tow the line for the major labels. In the case of the two dopes you noted bashing Rush, it could be a variant on click-baiting/trolling to get the attention of readers (Blender Magazine was notorious for pulling crap like this, which was why I was dancing the jig like a drunkard from County Cork when that ass-wipe of a magazine shut down back in the late 2000s). At other times I think there is regional bias with certain outlets, with the most blatant example being Rolling Stone magazine. Much of the early hippie craze of the late 60s was based in San Francisco, which also happened to be where RS was headquartered, so there was often an over-emphasis on bands coming out of that area, often to the detriment of others from other parts of the country. Even after the magazine relocated to New York, there was this odd obsession among their staff with promoting bands from Northern California and the Pacific Northwest exclusively, which explains why they were so singularly focused on the Seattle scene for several years.

But whatever the reason may be, I find 99% of mainstream rock critics and music critics in general to be vapid, ignorant hacks that aren't worthy of any consideration. The last time I purchased a physical copy of a music publication was way back in 1995, pretty sure it was an issue of Hit Parader (which had a top 100 list of greatest hard rock guitarists of all time, putting Ritchie Blackmore somewhere in the 60s and Kurt Cobain in the Top 10).
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Last edited by hells_unicorn on Mon Jul 19, 2021 11:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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oldmetalhead
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:55 pm 
 

I'm still wondering how this belongs on the metal discussion board. I've seen much more relevant and likely threads locked.

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Svarthavid
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Joined: Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:44 am
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 7:45 pm 
 

Why so? This is pretty sensationalist news in the metal community, weather we think this is a bad idea or not. This is rather relevant in my opinion, not more irrelevant than the thread about the black album being covered by a plethora of artists from other genres. Both are when you boil it down metal related.
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Kanonenfieber, Shylmagoghnar or Minenwerfer.


These names sound like you just made them up lol...I'll tell my kids these were the names of the three wise men.

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oldmetalhead
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 8:08 pm 
 

Svarthavid wrote:
Why so? This is pretty sensationalist news in the metal community, weather we think this is a bad idea or not. This is rather relevant in my opinion, not more irrelevant than the thread about the black album being covered by a plethora of artists from other genres. Both are when you boil it down metal related.

The Metallica "Blacklist" thread was about an actual thing that happened, not a pop singer speculating on singing Death Metal. I'm more relating to the DiGeorgio playing bass for Megadeth thread that got immediately shut down. It's still in the realm of possibility and I don't know why it wasn't more or less worthy of discussion than this thread.

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Svarthavid
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 8:26 pm 
 

Even though this is just speculation from Sheeran's part, I'd rather see this being discussed than those album ranking or what if threads that's been all the rage here lately. Besides, I think the discussion went pretty smooth with different viewpoints and some insightful replies.
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Metal_On_The_Ascendant wrote:
Forever Underground wrote:
Kanonenfieber, Shylmagoghnar or Minenwerfer.


These names sound like you just made them up lol...I'll tell my kids these were the names of the three wise men.

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Hexenmacht46290
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 19, 2021 10:24 pm 
 

Robert Christgau has always been a poser(if he was pay to play, I wouldn’t be surprised).

On topic though, if it’s not butt metal of some kind, and has no annoying electronic dance music stuff, no wankster attempts at awful rap(higher volume of lyrics only lets bad ones shine), and is not intended for juggalos/joker worshiping, fruity crap vaporizer smoking falses posers, and is some style of actual metal, written because he wanted to, it could be good.

If he is going to rap, and it was like a more metal rage against the machine, or that six feet under song with Ice-T, it could kick ass. But, a good rap/rock crossover requires good instrumentals and good lyrics.
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Necrodictator
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 20, 2021 6:58 am 
 

Pretty sure he meant Slipknot the crossover band. So I guess the album gonna sound like a cross between Cradle of Filth demos and Slipknot '89 EP.

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Gas_Snake
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 5:39 am 
 

Being "mainstream" generally correlates with appealing to the lowest common denominator. Look at almost any form of heavy music past the 80s that got anywhere close to mainstream popularity (nu metal, power (?) metal, metalcore, deathcore, djent, whateverthefuck). You had a select few bands that pioneered a new sound, and then a metric fuckton of other guys would go and reduce it to a series of endlessly imitated cliches, where you just take the basest surface level elements of the style and write some non-songs with minimal effort put into the writing process. The listeners who were "in the know" and actively sought out new things to listen to would then move away from the style or look for outliers (good luck with that when people are to this day making internet memes of djent being sonic binary code). The others would keep spreading their inane copypasta and making the outliers that much harder to actually find. It would just become one big cesspool of memes, poserism and general vapidity.

From what little of Sheeran's music I've heard, he seems to firmly fit that definition. I cannot reasonably distinguish his music from that of other pop artists of similar notoriety. In layman's terms: If he's actually gonna do it, it's gonna suck. If he's not gonna do it, well... our souls have been spared for an indeterminate time period. Either way I see no reason to give any millifucks, microfucks or nanofucks about all of this.
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Vadara
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Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2016 11:14 pm
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 3:33 pm 
 

Gas_Snake wrote:
Being "mainstream" generally correlates with appealing to the lowest common denominator. Look at almost any form of heavy music past the 80s that got anywhere close to mainstream popularity (nu metal, power (?) metal, metalcore, deathcore, djent, whateverthefuck). You had a select few bands that pioneered a new sound, and then a metric fuckton of other guys would go and reduce it to a series of endlessly imitated cliches, where you just take the basest surface level elements of the style and write some non-songs with minimal effort put into the writing process.


This describes a huge amount of actual metal genres (in fact metal and punk were some of the first genres where new bands would explicitly try to copy their forbearers instead of being needlessly experimental). There are hordes of DM bands that all sound the same with recycled riffs, modern thrash is constantly derided for being an endless retread with no innovation, BM is like 90% bedroom bands copying riffs and playing then shittily. When Deafheaven got big their style quickly got imitated to the point of being a joke. 99% of all slam bands are shitty devourment ripoffs.

If anything, those genres GOT this from their metal father, so its your fault in the first place.

Also none of the genres you mentioned were mainstream except for nu metal. And no, DragonForce being a meme for a year because of guitar hero does not mean power metal was ever mainstream. (Fun Fact: Iron Maiden has more Spotify followers than basically every single relevant mxc/dxc/djent band ever and the biggest of those genres barely crack one sixth of Maiden's total)

Quote:
listeners who were "in the know" and actively sought out new things to listen to would then move away from the style or look for outliers (good luck with that when people are to this day making internet memes of djent being sonic binary code). The others would keep spreading their inane copypasta and making the outliers that much harder to actually find. It would just become one big cesspool of memes, poserism and general vapidity.


The only genre you mentioned that this actually happened to is nu metal. The others are all continuing on in their own healthy scenes that show no sign of dying.

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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 3:58 pm 
 

I'm going to have to side with Vadara regarding power metal being mainstream, I think the closest that the style ever got to mainstream acceptance was a couple of Helloween's music videos getting play on MTV in the late 80s. Within metal circles, power metal went through a phase from about 1997 until 2002 when it was competing with melodic death metal for the biggest numbers in the metal scene when compared against more extreme styles during that time (to be fair, death and black metal were experiencing something of a lull at that time), but both scenes were generally supplanted and dwarfed by metalcore circa 2002. DragonForce is probably the closest that the style has gotten to mainstream acceptance since then, and that was fairly short-lived. Emperor and Deicide are doing better numbers on Spotify than most of my favorite power metal acts, and Dimmu Borgir is doing similar numbers to many of the bigger bands in the power metal scene, none of which gets close to what Metallica and Iron Maiden are doing.
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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 3:59 pm 
 

Power metal had some bands that got pretty big like Nightwish and Sonata Arctica, but a lot of the really good bands are as underground as any of your more extreme favorites.
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Gravetemplar
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:41 pm 
 

Yeah, I'm with Vadara too and even nu-metal is like every other genre, a few well known bands (SOAD, Slipknot, Deftones, Limp Bizkit, Korn) and then a myriad of lesser known bands, a good chunk of them being pretty underground.

Saying metalcore is mainstream is obviously wrong too. There are a couple of bands that got big (Slayer big, not Metallica or Maiden big) and the rest of it is pretty underground.


Last edited by Gravetemplar on Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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ZenoMarx
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 4:46 pm 
 

A young me would have found a problem with this idea. The older me doesn't care at all, and with the halfwits and questionable characters making a lot of the music I like, I'd be hypocrite and asshat to find this all that objectionable. The well is already poisoned with nonsense. Have at it, feller.

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Vadara
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 10:29 pm 
 

hells_unicorn wrote:
I'm going to have to side with Vadara regarding power metal being mainstream, I think the closest that the style ever got to mainstream acceptance was a couple of Helloween's music videos getting play on MTV in the late 80s. Within metal circles, power metal went through a phase from about 1997 until 2002 when it was competing with melodic death metal for the biggest numbers in the metal scene when compared against more extreme styles during that time (to be fair, death and black metal were experiencing something of a lull at that time), but both scenes were generally supplanted and dwarfed by metalcore circa 2002. DragonForce is probably the closest that the style has gotten to mainstream acceptance since then, and that was fairly short-lived. Emperor and Deicide are doing better numbers on Spotify than most of my favorite power metal acts, and Dimmu Borgir is doing similar numbers to many of the bigger bands in the power metal scene, none of which gets close to what Metallica and Iron Maiden are doing.


yea, to add on to what I said: I was there. I got Guitar Hero 3 when it came out as a kid and went down to best buy and grabbed Inhuman Rampage (that cover still gives me a bit of nostalgia, lol), and for that summer those songs were constantly on my ipod. I was spinning that stuff nearly every day.

I never ever listened to any other power metal. Ever. I didn't search it up, I didn't even look at Dragonforce's other stuff. Like million of middle schoolers, this one album was the haha funny meme album with the SUPER HARD GUITAR HERO chart and hahafunny bleep-bloop guitars that we all listened to as a bit of a joke and then abandoned once we got bored of it. I didn't even know WHAT genre DF was and I did not care in the slightest. That album was nothing but dumb random luck and it didn't really help power metal. Even to this day, nobody really remembers Inhuman Rampage: they just remember Through the Fire and the Flames, but every other song on that album is a complete non-entity in pop culture.

If you check their discography Inhuman Rampage barely charts, then Ultra Beatdown did pretty good to be frank, and then the later albums just plummet down to before:

Image

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Lord_Of_Diamonds
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 10:34 pm 
 

Hexenmacht46290 wrote:
If he is going to rap [like] that six feet under song with Ice-T, it could kick ass

I hope you're joking.
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LycanthropeMoon
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 21, 2021 11:10 pm 
 

Vadara wrote:
hells_unicorn wrote:
I'm going to have to side with Vadara regarding power metal being mainstream, I think the closest that the style ever got to mainstream acceptance was a couple of Helloween's music videos getting play on MTV in the late 80s. Within metal circles, power metal went through a phase from about 1997 until 2002 when it was competing with melodic death metal for the biggest numbers in the metal scene when compared against more extreme styles during that time (to be fair, death and black metal were experiencing something of a lull at that time), but both scenes were generally supplanted and dwarfed by metalcore circa 2002. DragonForce is probably the closest that the style has gotten to mainstream acceptance since then, and that was fairly short-lived. Emperor and Deicide are doing better numbers on Spotify than most of my favorite power metal acts, and Dimmu Borgir is doing similar numbers to many of the bigger bands in the power metal scene, none of which gets close to what Metallica and Iron Maiden are doing.


yea, to add on to what I said: I was there. I got Guitar Hero 3 when it came out as a kid and went down to best buy and grabbed Inhuman Rampage (that cover still gives me a bit of nostalgia, lol), and for that summer those songs were constantly on my ipod. I was spinning that stuff nearly every day.

I never ever listened to any other power metal. Ever. I didn't search it up, I didn't even look at Dragonforce's other stuff. Like million of middle schoolers, this one album was the haha funny meme album with the SUPER HARD GUITAR HERO chart and hahafunny bleep-bloop guitars that we all listened to as a bit of a joke and then abandoned once we got bored of it. I didn't even know WHAT genre DF was and I did not care in the slightest. That album was nothing but dumb random luck and it didn't really help power metal. Even to this day, nobody really remembers Inhuman Rampage: they just remember Through the Fire and the Flames, but every other song on that album is a complete non-entity in pop culture.

If you check their discography Inhuman Rampage barely charts, then Ultra Beatdown did pretty good to be frank, and then the later albums just plummet down to before:

Image

Yeah, power metal most certainly isn't mainstream, outside of a select few bands in Europe specifically. Nightwish and Sabaton have obviously done very well for themselves in Europe and can headline stadiums over there. In the USA, they still play club venues - they pack 'em, sure, but they can't play anything bigger than that unless they decide to open for a band like Iron Maiden or (in Sabaton's case a couple months from now) Judas Priest. DragonForce may have managed to get a gold album here, but I think that's mainly due to streams of "Through the Fire and Flames" finally pushing it over the edge into gold territory. I saw them open for Kamelot twice in the same year, on two different tours. I managed to catch a headlining gig in 2019 after "Extreme Power Metal" dropped, and it was a 500 cap venue.

As for metalcore, it came closer to being mainstream in the States than power metal did (see: Killswitch Engage having three gold selling albums) but certainly didn't reach the same level as oldschool heavy metal. Oh, and as for deathcore and djent... if anyone think those are mainstream, they're deluding themselves, lol. Something can be relatively popular without being mainstream - I highly doubt your average person on the street knows who All Shall Perish is.

Anyways, Ed Sheeran should make a power metalcore album with djent characteristics or something, I dunno.

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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 12:03 am 
 

Even Nightwish barely counts as power metal. They've been de-emphasizing that part of their sound over time, and there's hardly any of it left on the Floor albums.

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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 12:22 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
Even Nightwish barely counts as power metal. They've been de-emphasizing that part of their sound over time, and there's hardly any of it left on the Floor albums.


Indeed, I'd argue that they had almost completely abandoned the power metal style by the time Once was released, and everything since then has been more of a semi-Gothic tinged brand of straightforward symphonic metal. They took out all of the fast elements, Emppu barely solos anymore, and Tuomas is so obsessed with building these massive Wagnerian symphonic arrangements that it's a wonder that he doesn't switch from playing keyboards to picking up a baton and conducting.

P.S. - Not to be disagreeable, but Sonata Arctica hasn't really been a power metal band since they released Unia, I wouldn't count them either.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 1:22 am 
 

I haven't spent all that much time with their post-Reckoning Night albums, but my memory is that they still had a power metal core, they just ineffectively diluted it by trying to expand beyond what they were good at. I'm not even sure Hopolainen wants to be in a metal band anymore, he's waiting for a call from Bob Chapek.

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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 1:28 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
I haven't spent all that much time with their post-Reckoning Night albums, but my memory is that they still had a power metal core, they just ineffectively diluted it by trying to expand beyond what they were good at. I'm not even sure Hopolainen wants to be in a metal band anymore, he's waiting for a call from Bob Chapek.


You're not missing much, everything following Reckoning Night has been lackluster to downright terrible, Pariah's Child was the only album that I kind of dug when it first came out, but it's nowhere near the same caliber as what they were doing back in their early days. And agreed, Tuomas created some certifiable masterpieces, but honestly I've struggled to stay interested in anything he's done since Tarja was booted from the band.
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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 9:09 am 
 

I meant both in the early '00s when they did play PM when I said that above.

I like all the Sonata Arctica albums. They're not really for people who want PM but they're good. Fans of stranger, less orthodox metal sounds will find things to like in a lot of em like Talviyo or Unia. Ninth Hour is a sort of new take on their old style though.

Can't defend Nightwish though. Their last few are really just very enervated versions of their good stuff from now like 15-20 years ago.
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Kalaratri
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 10:21 am 
 

LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
I haven't spent all that much time with their post-Reckoning Night albums, but my memory is that they still had a power metal core, they just ineffectively diluted it by trying to expand beyond what they were good at. I'm not even sure Hopolainen wants to be in a metal band anymore, he's waiting for a call from Bob Chapek.


If Tuomas doesn't want to be in a metal band it's strange that he joined Darkwoods My Betrothed as a full-time member recently. Playing keyboards in a symphonic black metal band isn't the career move I would make if I wanted to get away from metal.

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Curious_dead
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 11:23 am 
 

Empyreal wrote:
I meant both in the early '00s when they did play PM when I said that above.

I like all the Sonata Arctica albums. They're not really for people who want PM but they're good. Fans of stranger, less orthodox metal sounds will find things to like in a lot of em like Talviyo or Unia. Ninth Hour is a sort of new take on their old style though.

Can't defend Nightwish though. Their last few are really just very enervated versions of their good stuff from now like 15-20 years ago.


Here they were semi-big around the time from Winterheart's Guild to Reckoning Night. The shows they performed in Montreal were packed, the audience was absolutely into it. I remember at their first or second show here, the audience went crazy when the DJ playing music between bands played one fo their songs. It was crazy hot though.

I regularly saw people with Sonata Arctica t-shirts in town (even on TV); SA t-shirts were probably the t-shirts that garnered the most attention from fellow metalheads given the number of times people just stopped to tell me they were fans of the band too, ask if I had seen them live, etc. Which was really cool since they were (and are) my faovrite band.

Like you I like all their albums (though I go back and fort between hating and liking Unia), but it's clear after RN they lost a lot of their shine for many (most?) fans. I wonder where they'd be now if they hadn't ditched so many power metal elements from their music.

...

As for Nightwish, their latest albums weren't great. Not sure exactly where they're going, but they're not using their awesome members to their fullest. Floor is a great singer but she cannot elevate the latest Nightwish songs, and I love Marko's singing too, but he too isn't given material that lets him shine. Human Nature in particular is pure shit with crap on top. It's one album where I can honestly say I don't like a single song.

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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 11:42 am 
 

Tony Kakko was always approaching things in a different manner even back then and I don't think it's in him to color inside the lines, so to speak. I don't think there's a way he would've only stuck to the PM style.
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Lyrici17
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 1:12 pm 
 

Funny, I always sort of attributed the loss of Jani Liimatainen on their change in sound. I am now realizing he is on "Unia" too, so I guess that hypothesis isn't very strong.
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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 22, 2021 2:00 pm 
 

Lyrici17 wrote:
Funny, I always sort of attributed the loss of Jani Liimatainen on their change in sound. I am now realizing he is on "Unia" too, so I guess that hypothesis isn't very strong.


Jani is an excellent guitarist and I would argue that him leaving hurt any chance of SA bouncing back after Unia, but I'm pretty sure that Tony Kakko was writing nearly 90% of the songs from the get go, so the band basically lived and died by his whims. Having said that, I think Unia was likely the reason why Jani ended up leaving the band and starting the Cain's Offering project, which basically was a reversion back to the Reckoning Night sound with Timo Kotipelto and Jens Johansson being involved.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 3:59 am 
 

I'm pretty sure I'd read that the reason Jani left (actually was fired IIRC) was because Finland has mandatory military service, which he tried to avoid for awhile, but eventually caught up with him. Maybe one of the Finns knows more of the details about the specifics of that compulsory service, but that's the cover story that I remember. Regardless, power metal guitarists are fairly easy to come by, and while he was good, there are numerous better ones around, and as much as I love their early albums, I always thought his tone was weak and held them back a bit. It's the songwriting that didn't work as well later on, not necessarily the playing or personnel.

Kalaratri wrote:
LithoJazzoSphere wrote:
I haven't spent all that much time with their post-Reckoning Night albums, but my memory is that they still had a power metal core, they just ineffectively diluted it by trying to expand beyond what they were good at. I'm not even sure Hopolainen wants to be in a metal band anymore, he's waiting for a call from Bob Chapek.


If Tuomas doesn't want to be in a metal band it's strange that he joined Darkwoods My Betrothed as a full-time member recently. Playing keyboards in a symphonic black metal band isn't the career move I would make if I wanted to get away from metal.


Well, I am half-joking, but that may actually explain it. Perhaps now he has a better outlet for his metal side in that band, and thus has less interest in Nightwish remaining very metal.

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S9NE
Magical Metal Girl

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:17 am 
 

He's just trying to get accepted to MA, that's all.
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Gravetemplar
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 8:50 am 
 

S9NE wrote:
He's just trying to get accepted to MA, that's all.

Have any artists ever done this? Purposely releasing an obvious metal album/EP/single just to get included on the Archives.

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des91
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 10:11 am 
 

^^ That would be really “cute” for lack of a better term.

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Fearoth
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 11:05 am 
 

Gas_Snake wrote:
Being "mainstream" generally correlates with appealing to the lowest common denominator. Look at almost any form of heavy music past the 80s that got anywhere close to mainstream popularity (nu metal, power (?) metal, metalcore, deathcore, djent, whateverthefuck). You had a select few bands that pioneered a new sound, and then a metric fuckton of other guys would go and reduce it to a series of endlessly imitated cliches, where you just take the basest surface level elements of the style and write some non-songs with minimal effort put into the writing process.


Was deathcore really ever "mainstream"? Except for Suicide Silence being a huge outlier for a few years of course (with a couple 30m-100m views videos on youtube, unheard of for such a niche genre today), but the interest dropped immensely after their charismatic frontman (Mitch Lucker) died. In fact with any other vocalist I think they would have just been another average deathcore band in terms of popularity as musically they were probably a little too "brutal" on their early material for the average listener, with some members actually being Suffocation/Nile fans.


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DecemberSoul
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 12:19 pm 
 

des91 wrote:
^^ That would be really “cute” for lack of a better term.


or "endearing"
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hells_unicorn
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 1:47 pm 
 

Vadara wrote:
yea, to add on to what I said: I was there. I got Guitar Hero 3 when it came out as a kid and went down to best buy and grabbed Inhuman Rampage (that cover still gives me a bit of nostalgia, lol), and for that summer those songs were constantly on my ipod. I was spinning that stuff nearly every day.

I never ever listened to any other power metal. Ever. I didn't search it up, I didn't even look at Dragonforce's other stuff. Like million of middle schoolers, this one album was the haha funny meme album with the SUPER HARD GUITAR HERO chart and hahafunny bleep-bloop guitars that we all listened to as a bit of a joke and then abandoned once we got bored of it. I didn't even know WHAT genre DF was and I did not care in the slightest. That album was nothing but dumb random luck and it didn't really help power metal. Even to this day, nobody really remembers Inhuman Rampage: they just remember Through the Fire and the Flames, but every other song on that album is a complete non-entity in pop culture.

If you check their discography Inhuman Rampage barely charts, then Ultra Beatdown did pretty good to be frank, and then the later albums just plummet down to before:

Image


My perspective on DragonForce is probably a tad unique because I started following them about 5 minutes after they released their 2000 Valley Of The Damned demo under the DragonHeart name (this was back in the days of mp3.com and Audio Galaxy). I actually advanced ordered my copy of the official 2003 LP release of Valley Of The Damned. To further bolster your point, DragonForce became fairly popular early on in underground circles (they broke the record for the most streams on mp3.com at the time), but nowhere near what they did once they started incorporating those gimmicky video game sounds on Inhuman Rampage. I don't know if you've ever heard Valley Of The Damned, but it's basically a faster and more technical version of the quintessential Helloween sound that everybody was emulating from 1996 until 2002, which makes sense given that half of the album was written back in the 1999-2000 period.

Mainstream listeners are extremely fickle and are more often than not attracted to bright, shiny things. Metal, in any of its forms, has a fairly strong orthodoxy built into its very nature, and apart from a small contingent of glam-leaning acts trying to revive the Sunset Strip sound of the mid to late 80s, there's not any shiny imagery to draw in the zombies. Ed Sheeran, tattoos or not, has the sort of pretty boy schtick that most pop stars feature when promoting their music. I don't think even ZP Theart can pull that off, let alone guys like Piet Sielck or Nils Patrik Johansson.
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Vadara
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Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2016 11:14 pm
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 6:06 pm 
 

Fearoth wrote:
Gas_Snake wrote:
Being "mainstream" generally correlates with appealing to the lowest common denominator. Look at almost any form of heavy music past the 80s that got anywhere close to mainstream popularity (nu metal, power (?) metal, metalcore, deathcore, djent, whateverthefuck). You had a select few bands that pioneered a new sound, and then a metric fuckton of other guys would go and reduce it to a series of endlessly imitated cliches, where you just take the basest surface level elements of the style and write some non-songs with minimal effort put into the writing process.


Was deathcore really ever "mainstream"? Except for Suicide Silence being a huge outlier for a few years of course (with a couple 30m-100m views videos on youtube, unheard of for such a niche genre today), but the interest dropped immensely after their charismatic frontman (Mitch Lucker) died. In fact with any other vocalist I think they would have just been another average deathcore band in terms of popularity as musically they were probably a little too "brutal" on their early material for the average listener, with some members actually being Suffocation/Nile fans.



Yeah, I don't understand the typical metalhead idea that any form of -core was mainstream except maybe post-hardcore. These genres had a minor bit of success but they quickly faded back into the underground. No one knows the term "metalcore" or "deathcore" like they do "nu metal".

Like, as I said before: Iron Maiden has 6 MILLION spotify followers, and they're a band whose fanbase skews towards older people who don't use spotify as much. The absolute biggest metalcore bands barely reach 3 million and they're solely the older ones who aren't relevant at all to the modern scene (and often have abandoned the genre anyway) like Killswitch Engage, Trivium, and Atreyu.

Bands like ERRA, Polaris, Currents, Northlane, Periphery, Beartooth, Ice Nine Kills, Invent, Animate, Silent Planet, and their genre siblings barely crack 500L to 1.2M. And like, the vast majority of those bands I listed at at the bottom of that range.

I mean, yeah, the genre is a bit more popular than "real" metal: Blood Incantation is the talk of the town amongst metalheads and have a paltry 23K followers (honestly that's surprisingly low). But not that much more. For the record, Suicide Silence has a whopping...550K and Infant Annihilator has 170K. Slaughter to Prevail has 500K but they're a meme and are basically "slipknot but deathcore" now anyway.

Metallica has 18 fucking million for the record.

That is more than EVERY SINGLE Metalcore and Deathcore band I named in this post. Like, twice over. Judas Priest has more followers than every single one of those bands individually except for like two of them. The same applies to Slayer, Pantera, Motorhead, Megadeth, and Black Sabbath (who in particular beats every single one of the core bands individually). If you put Cannibal Corpse in this list they would beat nearly half of the -core bands I mentioned.

There's a reason "death metal" is the term all the normies know and the one Sheeran used.

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Slater922
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 6:18 pm 
 

Vadara wrote:
There's a reason "death metal" is the term all the normies know and the one Sheeran used.

This got me thinking: What if Ed said he was open to making a black metal record instead? :roll:
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HeavenDuff
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 7:13 pm 
 

Vadara wrote:
Fearoth wrote:
Gas_Snake wrote:
Being "mainstream" generally correlates with appealing to the lowest common denominator. Look at almost any form of heavy music past the 80s that got anywhere close to mainstream popularity (nu metal, power (?) metal, metalcore, deathcore, djent, whateverthefuck). You had a select few bands that pioneered a new sound, and then a metric fuckton of other guys would go and reduce it to a series of endlessly imitated cliches, where you just take the basest surface level elements of the style and write some non-songs with minimal effort put into the writing process.


Was deathcore really ever "mainstream"? Except for Suicide Silence being a huge outlier for a few years of course (with a couple 30m-100m views videos on youtube, unheard of for such a niche genre today), but the interest dropped immensely after their charismatic frontman (Mitch Lucker) died. In fact with any other vocalist I think they would have just been another average deathcore band in terms of popularity as musically they were probably a little too "brutal" on their early material for the average listener, with some members actually being Suffocation/Nile fans.



Yeah, I don't understand the typical metalhead idea that any form of -core was mainstream except maybe post-hardcore. These genres had a minor bit of success but they quickly faded back into the underground. No one knows the term "metalcore" or "deathcore" like they do "nu metal".

Like, as I said before: Iron Maiden has 6 MILLION spotify followers, and they're a band whose fanbase skews towards older people who don't use spotify as much. The absolute biggest metalcore bands barely reach 3 million and they're solely the older ones who aren't relevant at all to the modern scene (and often have abandoned the genre anyway) like Killswitch Engage, Trivium, and Atreyu.

Bands like ERRA, Polaris, Currents, Northlane, Periphery, Beartooth, Ice Nine Kills, Invent, Animate, Silent Planet, and their genre siblings barely crack 500L to 1.2M. And like, the vast majority of those bands I listed at at the bottom of that range.

I mean, yeah, the genre is a bit more popular than "real" metal: Blood Incantation is the talk of the town amongst metalheads and have a paltry 23K followers (honestly that's surprisingly low). But not that much more. For the record, Suicide Silence has a whopping...550K and Infant Annihilator has 170K. Slaughter to Prevail has 500K but they're a meme and are basically "slipknot but deathcore" now anyway.

Metallica has 18 fucking million for the record.

That is more than EVERY SINGLE Metalcore and Deathcore band I named in this post. Like, twice over. Judas Priest has more followers than every single one of those bands individually except for like two of them. The same applies to Slayer, Pantera, Motorhead, Megadeth, and Black Sabbath (who in particular beats every single one of the core bands individually). If you put Cannibal Corpse in this list they would beat nearly half of the -core bands I mentioned.


You guys are twisting the words of others here by number of followers on Spotify and charts ranking, ESPECIALLY charts ranking, when people are talking about "mainstream". We are indeed talking about mainstream for heavier music. I don't think anyone in this thread tried to argue that any modern metal band is anywhere as popular as Drake, Ed Sheeran or Beyoncé.

Metalcore was extremely mainstream in terms of "heavy music" but not now, of course. The heydays of the genre are way back. Metalcore was a genre of the 2000's, of course bands picking up the genre in 2021 are not going to have as many followers as bands who play in a genre that didn't go out of style 10 years ago, come on. When Atreyu and Trivium dropped metalcore it was because the genre was losing speed and they wanted to stay relevant, or at least stay commercially viable.

You can't compare the popularity of any band of any "heavy" music genre or subgenre to the popularity of Iron Maiden or Metallica to try an make the point that said band isn't mainstream. The market for extremely commercially succesful bands just isn't there anymore. Not only is there not any metalcore band that's as popular as Metallia or Maiden, there is simply no metal, no nu-metal, no djent, no metalcore, no sludge, no hardcore, no nothing "heavy" that's as popular as these two. This is not a good metric to evaluate if some band is "mainstream" or not.

I remember a time when Suicide Silence, All that Remains, Protest the Hero, Bring Me The Horizon, Atreyu, Trivium, Bullet For My Valentine, As I Lay Dying, etc. were very popular. In the mid 2000, we metalheads all had these friends who couldn't name a single death metal band, but who listened to stuff like Suicide Silence or Bring Me The Horizon. I don' tknow about BMTH, but Suicide Silence was huge around the time they released The Cleansing. Bands like Bullet For My Valentine were even bigger, even opening for bands like Metallica, Korn, Guns N' Roses and, yes, you guessed it, Iron Maiden during their 2006 north american tour. That was a mere 1 year after releasing their debut in 2005.

So yeah, that's as close as you can get to mainstream success in terms of heavy music. Metalcore was very popular in the 2000's.

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Hexenmacht46290
Has a GED in Gamercide

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PostPosted: Fri Jul 23, 2021 10:14 pm 
 

Lord_Of_Diamonds wrote:
Hexenmacht46290 wrote:
If he is going to rap [like] that six feet under song with Ice-T, it could kick ass

I hope you're joking.


Let me be clear, six feet under is not a great band. But I find that to be a good song. Sheeran makes stuff I would never listen to. If it was a traditional heavy metal/hard rock album, it could be alright. But he said “death metal(it’s debatable, whether he knows the meaning of the phrase),” and he uses rap vocals, occasionally, from what I understand, so why not?

I’m not against pop, but I am against wuss music. And, while I can’t endorse all the lyrics of “one bullet left,” like using “faggot” as an insult, they’re, for the most part, pretty good. If the Beatles had just worn black suits forever, their fair weather, non-music nerd fans would’ve just moved on to the next trend. So, they made slightly more overt references to drugs, and sex, and dressed in a hippie style, provoking normie conservatives.

Eventually, Sheeran will need to prove that he’s a “serious” artist(normie music criticism considers Britney Spears this, and Justin Bieber is getting there). What better way to do this, than by having heavy instrumentals(he could even play rhythm guitar, while rapping, something almost no one does), and lyrics about invading the haters homes, spraying gore? Telling people to “barricade the block, with the ATF, (he doesn’t) give a fuck, bitch, (he) pray(s) for death,” and “call CNN, it’s on, get this on TV, last one’s for me, aim with the pipe down, dead in (his) head, and squeeze, leave the whole wall red?”

He could explain to people, that some lyrics are metaphor, or even things that are just supposed to be fictional, and not meant to be taken seriously. People would listen to him. Yes, I just spent way too much time analyzing this, that I’ll never get back. But, I’m my original post, I mentioned rage against the machine, who aren’t six feet under, and if you want a better example of death metal, with rap, he could take influence from the knuckle deep band, which had members of Dying Fetus, and no Chris Barnes.
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LithoJazzoSphere
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 24, 2021 5:59 pm 
 

HeavenDuff wrote:
In the mid 2000, we metalheads all had these friends who couldn't name a single death metal band, but who listened to stuff like Suicide Silence or Bring Me The Horizon. I don' tknow about BMTH, but Suicide Silence was huge around the time they released The Cleansing.


I think you're confusing two timelines a bit. Metalcore was indeed relatively popular in the mid-00s (starting in the early 00s), but deathcore didn't really take off until the late 00s/early 10s. [i]The Cleansing[i] is SS's debut, but that's in '07, and their peak doesn't come until a few years later.

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