I was talking about the creation of new genres and different styles, like how black metal was created in the 90s.

Actually the general consensus is that it began in the 80s. You insist on giant leaps being needed to push metal music in any kind of direction but for the most part it's been small steps all the way.

Hooded black metal is trendy these days.
Mgla Uada, Gaerea, etc... Hoods are today what corpse paint was during the 90's and 00's.

Metal is constantly evolving, and these micro revolution, fon one reason or another, sometimes hit the mainstream, but in general Metal is an underground based genre. If what you mean with trend is "mainstream presence", then yes, the "core" thing has been tha last thing done, and died, like everyting in the mainstream, as soon as something else called the attention of general public. But inside the underground you cant deny the constant creation of new things, even if that means new mixtures of old stuff. The succes of these innovations sometimes are trendy and sometimes are not.

Every Finn McKenty opinion is a bad opinion on my book

I think it's stuck in the past, cuz at least for me growing up in the 2010s, the popular rock music was pure fuckin wimp shit, and of course that's what all those classic death metal bands thought in the 80s too, it's just kinda over in terms of having the lasting impact on culture at large so where the hell else am I gonna look at that time y'know.

Finn McKenty as a source of authority lol

Guy said that if you like Eyehategod you're probably on the way to being a drug addict and need to get therapy.

I think those days are over generally. Music coming in these huge waves that took over the majority of the listening public was more a function of the near distribution model at the time. A handful of record labels decided whether anyone but the most ardent music enthusiast would hear your music. Digital distribution has made it easier than ever before to cultivate a niche if you're the artist, and to live in it if you're the fan. With the exception of pure pop like Taylor Swift, there's nothing left to "crossover" to.

I think those days are over generally. Music coming in these huge waves that took over the majority of the listening public was more a function of the near distribution model at the time. A handful of record labels decided whether anyone but the most ardent music enthusiast would hear your music. Digital distribution has made it easier than ever before to cultivate a niche if you're the artist, and to live in it if you're the fan. With the exception of pure pop like Taylor Swift, there's nothing left to "crossover" to.

If we're extending the topic to rock, and on the subject of 'wimping out', I was at the gym recently and they were playing upbeat dance music remixes of both Nirvana and AC/DC. I was wondering how Kurt Cobain and Bon Scott would have taken that.

go deposit the royalty checks

People arguing that metal (or music in general) is going stale, not evolving, or whatever, without taking into consideration how much the landscape of music creation and distribution has evolved since the 70's are bound to paint these extremely innacurrate pictures where the lack of extremely popular and commercially succesful single artists/bands within a specific scene is somehow used as a proof of the deterioration of said scene. These folks tend to forget that there are far far far more diversity in metal (as in more ramifications) nowadays, compared to the 70's, 80's and 90's. Understand here that I'm not arguing that metal is better or worse now compared to these decades, but it's definitely different. I used to word ramifications because I tend to think of metal as the roots of a tree where, of course, earlier in the genre existence, it was one, two, three big roots, because the genre was young, but, with time, the big roots splitted in smaller roots that all evolved in their own direction, sometimes getting intertvined with other roots of metal again, or with roots of other trees (other genres of music, such as hardcore, jazz, rock, punk, name it).

Those who think that unless another big subgenre of metal like death, thrash, black, sludge, power or whatever is born, it means that metal is going stale and/or dying, are looking at metal with a perspective that doesn't seem to take into account just how much the digital age has changed music. In the 70's only a few bands could get away with experimenting so much and fucking around with synthesizers and making random electronic and guitar noises for 10 minutes, as nowadays you have entire niche subgenres dedicated to pushing the boundaries of basically everything. Powerviolence, brutal death metal, cybergrind, avant-garde dissonant black/death metal, blackened sludge/crust punk, noise rock, drone doom, horrorcore, industrial hip-hop, all these are completely and entirely a product of the digital era. You couldn't possibly imagine any of that stuff being produced, recorded and distributed 40, 30, 20 years ago.

What are the biggest trends in metal right now? In terms of popularity? Commercial success? Mainstream appeal? Number of bands evolving within that trend? I don't know. But with bands like Teitanblood, Ad Nauseam, Deathspell Omega, Ahab, Blut Aus Nord, White Ward, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, Hammers of Misfortune, Sigh, Messa, Atlantean Kodex, etc., you can't convince me that metal is stale or that there is nothing new and original being made. Are there big and significant movements like the Bay Area thrash scene of the 80's nowaydays? I don't know, and quite frankly I don't care. There is amazing new and original metal being made all the time, and every year I have a hard time wrapping up my top 10 albums of the year because of how much quality stuff there is.

Re. metal supposedly going stale, having its best and most important years behind it... I dunno, I'm of two minds on this (maybe a couple more).

If you'll excuse a (brief!) philosophy nerd reference, Ray Monk's Wittgenstein biography has an endearing description of the man somewhere, in which a friend asks his opinion of some recent big-name novel or play or symphony or something that had received a lot of attention and praise, and Wittgenstein (apparently in one of his moods) lets out a tired sigh and says "It's probably great." That description made me smile, and stuck with me. I sometimes think of it when my buddies gush about their current favorite series on Netflix or whatever that "YOU JUST HAVE TO WATCH."

My feeling is that there will be brilliant, imaginative, innovative art as long as there are brilliant, imaginative, innovative minds - but those minds and their creations and the communities that develop around them are, ISTM, mainly younger people going through phases of growth, exploration, and self-discovery, which generally slow down at some point in life, and not necessarily (nor even usually) because of laziness.

I'm beginning to approach 40, and I'm still listening to metal, but not nearly as avidly or excitedly as I was 20+ years ago. When I was just getting into it and getting my mind completely blown, I might occasionally try to share it with someone who happened to be twice my age or more, and I'd just be puzzled to see them shrug indifferently, or at most interpret it from the lens of a classic rock fan ("It reminds me of such-and-such bands, just with more emphasis on so-and-so elements"). If they then said something like, "Music just isn't as good as it was when I was young," I would think they were obviously wrong. And I still think that today. But now (you see where this is going) I think I can see where they were coming from, subjectively.

I take it almost as a given that there's a ton of "exciting" music out there, which I could to some degree appreciate in the abstract (meaning something like: recognize its uniqueness/originality, acknowledge the thought and talent and passion that go into it) without connecting to on a deep, vital, personal level. It's "exciting" in that it excites a certain audience (of which I can hardly hope to be a part at this point). And the audience isn't wrong to be excited, of course; it's great music. It's just that I've had most of my fun already, so, time to pass the torch. And when the time comes, the torch will be passed again.

I'm in my 30s and can confidently say I'm more open-minded and interested in more kinds of music than I ever was.

Most people here aren't too bad about the "no new good music" attitude. I think a lot of folks who are like that just tend to be those who don't have a great interest in discovering music in general, anyway.

And yeah - it's funny to look at the stereotype of older people stopping exploring new art. Usually you have the most pompous exclusionary opinions in your teens and 20s since nothing really matters at those ages.

There are some pretty good comments here, I loved that you guys shared your different takes on the matter. I hope I can listen to something that makes me change my mind over the new stuff, maybe it has to do with age like someone above me said. (For clarification I love some new bands like Slugdge, Black Breath, Power Trip, etc)

As others said, metal now is very different from what it was decades prior. Maybe like you guys commented, today's metal is more focused on underground and niche stuff rather than expanding the audience or creating new styles, since is a lot more difficult to do so now than in the past. I also blame the recording industry and the way commercial music changed over time.

However the first objective of the thread was to read what you guys thought were the most important bands of the 2020s and that if there is some kind of trend or new style going on, I think that the answer to that question is that there isn't any, at least not in the way that we conceived metal in the past years.

Aooga did mention the stereotypical young metalhead who is "highly opinionated, close minded and exclusive" in their tastes. Which is kind of normal. You're shaping up your identity at this age, and a lot of younger folks who gravitate to metal, especially in their teenage years, do so because of how unconventionnal, rebel and out of the mainstream metal tends to be. I was like that in many ways, and for a couple of years, I'd tell anyone who was crazy enough to listen to me, why metal was better then pop.

From my experience, we metalheads tend to outgrow this kind of mentality. However, and regardless of how common it is, I don't think it's a good thing and definitely not as justified for older metalheads (or just people in general) to regress and become more and more close-minded as we age. People getting too comfortable, set in their ways and returning to this kind of juvenile hostility towards difference is just... sad...

Like... I was reading these comments on Facebook about the last Metallica show in Montreal, and some random older women was complaining about people with tattoos, saying it was horrible, nasty, mutilation, etc. And when people told her she was rude and disrespectful, she argued that she was too old to change her mind about this. Which kind of baffled me. I mean, usually people don't seem to aknoledge that they are being old farts, but this one was completely, 100% comfortable with having shitty outdated views about other people's choices for their own bodies.

I'm in my 30s and can confidently say I'm more open-minded and interested in more kinds of music than I ever was.

I'm turning 40 in 6 months, and I'm exactly the same (thanks in large part to this forum).

I'm 50 and wish I was still in my 30's but beyond that I do seek out new albums. BUT!!! Sometimes I wonder if I need to. I'll go to the record store just to flip through the stacks and see if I find something to fill in a hole in the collection, or pick up something new I heard about. then I wonder if it will end up with the probably hundreds of albums I have that I spun 3-4 times then never listened to again. Is this new thrash, trad, power, or death metal band doing anything on this record that 30 other albums I already have aren't already doing? Probably not, but maybe there are some good tunes on it even if they are more of what I already have. And somtimes its fun to listen to but in the end forgetable, and sometimes it just clicks and after one listen I seem to be able to hum all the melodies and guitar lines. And in the end part of being into music for me is the random chance everytime I go to the music store. What will I find? I go looking for 2-3 albums and come back with 2-3 totally different albums. That's fun.

I think part of why I've been listening to more country music is, well I moved out of the city and to a rural area, and its still fresh to me. And once I moved past the pop "bro" country and found stuff like Sturgil Simpson I realized there was a lot of amazing stuff for me to discover musically that scratched some different itches. If you would have asked 33 year old me if I would be listening to that alongside Slayer I would have laughed.

Problem (for me) is that records are so arduous! DAMN! Take it out of the sleeve, put it on the turntable.....listen.....flip....put it back in the sleeve and repeat. There is that nostalgic feeling associated with playing records I admit....but damn, it's so easy (obviously) to dip into Apple Music and play a playlist that I made. With all that blabbing being said, I still do get records from my local record store...that also serves beer
Sturgil is kinda cool though I gotta admit. "Keep it in-between the lines"

Problem (for me) is that records are so arduous! DAMN! Take it out of the sleeve, put it on the turntable.....listen.....flip....put it back in the sleeve and repeat. There is that nostalgic feeling associated with playing records I admit....but damn, it's so easy (obviously) to dip into Apple Music and play a playlist that I made. With all that blabbing being said, I still do get records from my local record store...that also serves beer
Sturgil is kinda cool though I gotta admit. "Keep it in-between the lines"

That's what I love about vinyl! The ritual, and the greater investment required to play it, compared to CD and digital..my CDs have been gathering dust and mouse shit in a closet for over a decade, but my vinyl is proudly shelved and displayed. I also like that fact that it's physical, the sound is mechanically reproduced from the needle running over the grooves, instead of cleverly arranged 1s and 0s. I always seem to pay more attention to an album when I throw on a record than when I play it from my computer or phone.

By records I mean CD and vinyl, but yeah it is an involved process. Which I don't mind if I'm sitting in my music room and having a drink while I play some records. But more often I'm listening to a digital copy off my phone or media sever.