Exactly. I don't think the notion is as crazy as some people make out. I can easily see that a person who likes tradition metal like Dio or Saxon would not be into Death metal. Case in point, my father will quite happily listen to Saxon but has no interest in Death metal, he just can't handle the growled vocals.

I'm sure that there are genres outside of metal that people don't like, such as rap or country music.

I don't say that stuff I don't like is "weak" though. Just not my cup of tea.

It might be the biggest change for any BIG band, with the possible exception of Judas Priest with Rocka Rolla to Sad Wings of Destiny!

Yeah, because ...and Justice for All, and the black album are so alike.

I got the exact same impression when I first listened to Hammerheart, especially on One Rode to ASA Bay, but I still think the vocals are good for the softer and cleaner sections.

Agyl is a better vocalist than Eric Adams.

Well, I like extreme metal (Black, death, thrash, folk/viking/pagan), and compared to that Power metal is very weak.

I agree with the dude above me. There’s the idea of the music being sonically weaker sounding than other genres, and power/symphonic are among the weakest (if you don’t count glam metal as “true”). Traditional metal is also there when compared to extreme genres, and traditional metal is the shit. Being “weak” doesn’t at all mean bad in this context.

Plus, these are all opinions being spouted here and thus are subjective. Weak in the original statement inherently has a “to my ears” tagged on the end, I’d think.

Exactly, thank you.

And yes, it's to my ears only. A friend of mine loves Power Metal, and generally hates Extreme Metal.

Well, for me this thread is not about ''contrarian contests'' / doesn't look/feel like trying to convince you to change some of your own views/preferences.

I think this thread is good and helpful because it feels like a place where you can just write about any of your ''unpopular'' thoughts and feelings (both positive and negative) that are related to metal genre - and sometimes it feels quite 'therapeutic', and it's interesting/helpful/informative to read people's unpopular opinions that are related to your most/least favorite metal bands/albums and genres/styles/aspects of metal music.
The previous (well, at least the one that I've found) thread on MA that was similar to this one was locked because it looked like there were too many "list posts" - viewtopic.php?f=1&t=78886, but this one has a lot of posts with more detailed explanations/descriptions and there are interesting discussions so I really hope it 'survives'.

To be honest, questions and threads like these give me a "living under a rock" kind of feeling, because usually I am not sure / don't really know what opinions are/can be considered unpopular and what are not/cannot.
But if the answer(s) can be more about the lack of some specific components/styles (that are personal favorites/important/interesting/enjoyable/preferable) on metal albums, then I think I can write about a few of my personal preferences from this category (I hope it's OK)..

their name also doesn't end in -ation. i haven't seen people refer to any of those bands as the big # of anything, but i knew what they were talking about, 'cause the of the -ation thing

Figure of speech

- Helloween's Chameleon album isn't bad, at all! The album has so many good songs to call it bad.
- DSBM/Drone Metal are the worst metal genres and the most annoying.
- All those Satanic lyrics in Black Metal does get silly after awhile when you listen too many of them.
- Really enjoying the Electronic/Modern sounding added in metal, it adds a different layer to the music.
- As much as I want to like Iron Maiden's "Powerslave" album, there are really 3 songs that I like "Aces High", "2 Minutes To Midnight" and "Powerslave". The problem for me about this album that it's too galloppy and glunky. For the most of the album, all I hear is "Glunkitty glunkitty glunkitty glunk!" "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" feels very weak compared to the recent Iron Maiden epics. "Somewhere In Time" is a way WAY better album, in my opinion.

Here's another one: The Number of the Beast is the best 80s Maiden album. "Gangland" and "Total Eclipse" usually get ignored/flak, but "Gangland" is the only one that really deserves it. "Total Eclipse" really grew on me and that leaves the album with only one sub-par song, making it rise above every other record of theirs from that era.

I'd wager that's probably not that unpopular of an opinion. I know I rank it as the best 80s album, and plenty of others likely do as well. I find every 80s album seems to have its fair share of backers, with the exception of Killers. I don't find too many people touting that as the best of the 80s.

I disagree on "Gangland" though. Great track.

Totally!

Black Metal to Ambient are shit.

It feels lazy, in my opinion. Should you be paying Mother Nature some money royalties since she's doing all the work for you from all the nature noises and stuff?

Gangland is the 3rd best song on TNotB, after Hallowed Be Thy Name and Children of the Damned.

I'm interested in the remaining 1%...

if it includes Darkspace, Paysage D'Hiver, Spectral Lore and Midnight Odyssey... i can be ok with that!

Love to see the love for "Gangland"!!! It's a classic which has never smelled remotely like filler to these nostrils!

Well funny thing is I've written positive reviews for all those bands except Spectral Lore who I still enjoy, and somr of them are for PdH's and Midnight Odyssey's dedicated ambient albums. But I wasn't referring to atmospheric black metal bands who use that influence in their metal material. I was actually referring to bands like Hate Forest or Ildjarn or Marblebog or the like releasing whole albums worth of lazy midi noodling and black metal dorks thinking they're some kind of novelty. Like goddamn, if some of these guys actually spent the amount of time listening to Steve Roach or Robert Rich that I do, they wouldn't give these half-assed black metal side releases the time of day.

I don’t, unless it really is. Like I said before, certain European power metal bands that are pop music for nerds who jack off to the SS, but don’t like black metal, because it’s against Jesus for people who play strategy games, and use Reddit, rather than pop to be played in a nightclub.

Like Sabaton. I can see some of the arguments, against Manowar, in recent pages, but I’d much rather listen to Manowar, and cringe a lot less at them.

There’s another thread, where someone referred to it as “tactical corset core.”

Hate Forest is a great band though. Well, at least music-wise, if you exclude the whole cryptofascism crap, their music is good. Nice ableism by the way. It's nice to see that you can insult both people who don't have the same musical tastes as you AND people who have asperger syndrom at the same time. Fuck you too.

Listening to Christ on Parade today. Great discography. Sounds of Nature and Thrasher comp tracks...amazing. First two Neurosis albums are really good. Aberration 7" as well. From then on, they're more boring than just about any other music I've ever heard. Irritatingly boring, not just boring.

Initial remark edited.

But c'mon. I said specifically their ambient material. That means Temple Forest and whatever the fuck the idea behind The Gates was. You actually think that's great?

I didn't understand your post like this. When you said "I was actually referring to bands like Hate Forest or Ildjarn or Marblebog or the like releasing whole albums worth of lazy midi noodling", I thought you meant their entire discography, not those demos specifically. "Ambient" black metal is such a broad and vaguely defined subgenre, and since much of their stuff repeats a lot, has a lot of reverb and drones away, I assumed that's what you meant. I mean, bands like Fell Voices are categorized as ambient black metal here on MA.

So I guess we aren't really disagreing here then. The insults bothered me more then your opinion on these bands, tbh.

He's right though. Most metal bands venturing into pure ambient just plagiarize 80s kraut bands. It's really shameful that most metalheads are fooled by some mediocre copycat of Tangerine Dream while at the same time prioritizing novelty over quality for metal projects.

At the very least, Fenriz admits it in the liner notes to one of the Neptune Towers albums. He literally tells you to go listen to Klaus Schulze's Timewind instead.

yeah, black metal musician ambient projects are definitely terrible almost without fail.

I agree.

Inspired by recent posts:

I could live without hearing "Hallowed Be Thy Name" ever again. Its not that it's a bad song (its a very good song, albeit not anywhere near my favorite Maiden song), I'm just tired of hearing it.

I've heard this mentioned a number of times over the years by friends who are deeper into both than I am. I listen to a fair amount of non-black metal-related dark ambient, so I've honestly not even bothered much with BM side projects in that vein. To me this might extend to dungeon synth as well. I also haven't heard much of it, but what I have sounds like "my first synthesizer" efforts, where they found an old DX7 or M1 laying around, dinked around on it for a bit and pressed "record". Maybe there's some good material in both areas, but I'm skeptical of most of it for now.

Everything John Bush did with Anthrax sucks. Bowlers hats don't belong in Anthrax.

If i'm in the right mood i can enjoy the charm of a "my first synthesizer" effort, not all naive stuff is worthless. However unlike some of my friends i don't spend evenings listening to random dungeon synth, i usually search for more or less trusted sources

In terms of side projects by BM musicians there are also some fairly well written ones, like Satyr's Wongraven (with keyboards played by Ihsahn!)

Since this is an unpopular opinion thread, I think Dungeon Synth as a genre is nothing but the generic cheesy synth intro to a black metal album, stretched to full-length for whatever reason.

For me its like listening to an old 80's/90's medieval styled video game soundtrack.

It does indeed most of the time XD
There's this - it's actually Adam Kalmbach of Jute Gyte, so a certain level of thoughtfulness is guaranteed:
https://voormithadreth.bandcamp.com/



To me, nothing really beats those actual soundtracks.

Am I allowed to say that Slam/BDM is just wigger nonsense?

I'll go even further and say that "Dungeon Synth" is a stupid tag for music that could have had a better tag derived from the Ambient genre. But this is the Unpopular Metal Opinion thread, so...

Load/Reload (which I consider a single album) are more interesting than the Black Album.