Another interview with Warrel on Blabbermouth

[Talking Backwards]

I mean, Chris Cornell is my favorite singer of all time, so it's not like I don't like clean singers, it's just that I scoff at the idea that to be a good singer you have to be classically trained and able to hit a high G. We've already got Dickinson, Tate, and Halford, do we really need more?

At least we have one more thing in common I guess, although I scoff at the idea that there's only room for a select few clasically trained vocalists (even though Halford and Dickinson had no training). You may as well apply that logic towards any particular aspect you enjoy of any specific genre. It's like saying you don't need more than four or five great bands in any genre because everything else is just redundant, so just stick with them for your fix.

A great singer doesn't necessarily equal a good voice, speaking classically; a great singer uses the abilities he or she has, however limited, to get the greatest impact and serve the song as a whole.

Yes and no. You can get your point across with a bunch of gurgles or black shrieks, but why does it have to be nothing but that since more often than not that's essentially just the excuse bands with "vocalists" that have almost no real ability to sing use? People go on and on about how hard on the voice death/black is and that it takes a lot of training to not fuck up your voice. I'm sure it does, and it takes even more training to not sound like the Cookie Monster and to enunciate what the fuck you're trying to say. Look at bands like Opeth and Scar Symmetry (albums with Chris). They both use (in the case of Opeth, used to) clean and death vocals, and their death vocals actually sound a tier above the majority of everything else that's out there too. Pretty much every song is better because of it.

Do we also need a bunch of "layman" vocalists like Eddie Vedder? He almost always does a great job of conveying the point, but he isn't very talented in vocal ability. Same thing goes for all the stoner/sludge bands that all share the same southern, gravelly Brent Hinds or Zakk Wylde style. They might be using what they have to the best of their ability, but that doesn't make them good vocalists.

 

[craptastic]

Some of you are smoking crack.

Tons of amazing fucking albums in the 90s. Exposure was dead via mainstream but to say there was no good metal and to say nu - metal ruined shit. ..maybe if you had a boner for napster and got butthurt over MTV.

What the fuck is there to debate?

 

[Traxan]

I mean, Chris Cornell is my favorite singer of all time, so it's not like I don't like clean singers, it's just that I scoff at the idea that to be a good singer you have to be classically trained and able to hit a high G. We've already got Dickinson, Tate, and Halford, do we really need more?

Um, YES. These men aren't getting any younger and neither is Warrel. Halford has to sing in a standing fetal position to compress his diaphragm to hit the high notes. Tate can go fuck himself, that douche ruined Queensryche and they are better off without him (although really, no Di Garmo, no 'Ryche) and Iron Maiden are talking retirement.

The old guard is getting old. Like, senior citizens/AARP cards. Who is going to replace them? M. Shadows? Corey Taylor? Please...

 

[Dead Winter]

At least we have one more thing in common I guess, although I scoff at the idea that there's only room for a select few clasically trained vocalists (even though Halford and Dickinson had no training). You may as well apply that logic towards any particular aspect you enjoy of any specific genre. It's like saying you don't need more than four or five great bands in any genre because everything else is just redundant, so just stick with them for your fix.



Yes and no. You can get your point across with a bunch of gurgles or black shrieks, but why does it have to be nothing but that since more often than not that's essentially just the excuse bands with "vocalists" that have almost no real ability to sing use? People go on and on about how hard on the voice death/black is and that it takes a lot of training to not fuck up your voice. I'm sure it does, and it takes even more training to not sound like the Cookie Monster and to enunciate what the fuck you're trying to say. Look at bands like Opeth and Scar Symmetry (albums with Chris). They both use (in the case of Opeth, used to) clean and death vocals, and their death vocals actually sound a tier above the majority of everything else that's out there too. Pretty much every song is better because of it.

Do we also need a bunch of "layman" vocalists like Eddie Vedder? He almost always does a great job of conveying the point, but he isn't very talented in vocal ability. Same thing goes for all the stoner/sludge bands that all share the same southern, gravelly Brent Hinds or Zakk Wylde style. They might be using what they have to the best of their ability, but that doesn't make them good vocalists.

I'd rather listen to Brent Hinds than some prog frontman who can't sing a single note without ruining the entire performance with vibrato so thick it sounds like someone waving a metal cookie sheet in front of a microphone. That "same southern, gravelly style" is called SOUL, something of which the majority of prog and power vocalists are completely bereft.

As for your first argument, that's pretty much the truth these days. You really DON'T need more than the four or five great bands in a particular genre these days because most everything else is a watered-down copy. Everyone else who's doing anything interesting is under the radar and isn't trying to compete. This decade is shaping up to be more like the 90's in that respect, where tons and tons of underground, poor bands are writing great music in their basement and aren't making a dent in the mainstream or with bigger bands; they're completely under the radar and sometimes you'll discover something that you like better than the four or five great staples you're used to. They're giving their albums away for free on Bandcamp, and most of the time they're better than the mainstream. With the bigger bands, most of the time you'll just end up going right back to where you started. You'll hear something new and think, "Oh this is nice!", and then by the time you get to track 4 you've already deleted the album. I mean, do we really need to hear another prog metal band play a mediocre song in 7/4 time and then do some guitar shredding over keyboards while the vocalist does his best to ape his 80's heroes? And then all the instrument nerds circle jerk and point out every single flaw or deviation from the original at their concerts, completely missing the point.

This is why the 90's were so important and this is why most of those bands either broke up or went underground. The public had enough with their look-how-awesome-I-am, you-can't-do-it-that-way-because-I-said-so attitude, and the music world is much better off for it.

 

[Dead Winter]

Um, YES. These men aren't getting any younger and neither is Warrel. Halford has to sing in a standing fetal position to compress his diaphragm to hit the high notes. Tate can go fuck himself, that douche ruined Queensryche and they are better off without him (although really, no Di Garmo, no 'Ryche) and Iron Maiden are talking retirement.

The old guard is getting old. Like, senior citizens/AARP cards. Who is going to replace them? M. Shadows? Corey Taylor? Please...

What I'm saying is that you're not going to find anyone these days who isn't derivative of those guys, that we should just be grateful to have lived in the time of these great vocalists and move on.

Tate is a douche, true, but the new Q'ryche is just as sad. "Ooh, we actually use distortion now, pay no attention to the bro-metal we're writing and just listen to our new singer who sounds exactly like Tate even though that's not his real vocal timbre or style!"

Who's going to replace them? There are tons of great singers out there who can replace them and not have to hit a high G. I'd rather hear anything from Devin Townsend than Todd LaTorre.

 

[Traxan]

The only innovation in singing is coming from the symphonic metal bands that you guys all bash so much. Fact is, you know when you hear Tarja, Sharon, Floor or Simone. Each woman has a distinctive voice.

But I tell you who really shocked me was Speed from Soilwork. Did you hear that 70s band side project of his? Damn that was different. And he could do it with Soilwork, too. He sings the chorus to "The Flameout" clean and sounds pretty good there, too.

Has 'Ryche released new material since firing Tate? I thought they were still working on it. And unless they catch De Garmo on a day off, it won't be as good anyway.

 

[Dead Winter]

Sorry mang, I've just had enough of the symphonic bands...probably due to where I live. Throw a rock in any direction and it'll go down the throat of some chick in an evening gown on some stage somewhere mid-vibrato.

As for 'ryche, do you mean the album with Todd LaTorre? TBH it's not a bad album, but neither is it very good; it just sounds more like a Queensryche cover band playing their own material. It's got some decent riffs but it's nothing special, no matter how many fanboys are creaming their pants over it. Beware the hype. The catchiness is gone and replaced by heavier distortion and mediocre songwriting, which equals bad songwriting for a band of their caliber.

It wouldn't be a bad album if it weren't Queensryche. I'm not a Tate defender, but Queensryche fanboys must also be huge fans of the game Halo due to their complete denial of it being an inferior product.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vYDI-ImYX4

 

[Talking Backwards]

Lol, the comments on that video. There is absolutely nothing on that song that hasn't been heard a thousand times over the last fifteen years. But just because their creativity dried up, that doesn't mean there's no one else that has any kind of originality left; which is what you implied on the previous page.

Also, I highly suggest you all read this article.

Where's the new music scene?

Ultimately, the 90s golden age saw so much great music appear that the scenes transcended age and borders. Everyone was so heavily into music that it's surely no wonder that music sales went berserk during that period. But this declined in the late 90s and things haven't improved.

Are there huge music scenes happening at schools around the world now? No. Are the airwaves filled with music from hot new bands? No. In the UK I'll vouchsafe that they're still deluging the public with pop, in Australia the most popular music stations play mostly 90s music and I suspect that America is still full of genre-based stations with no united music scene getting people excited.

Is it any wonder that music sales have been in decline since the late 90s? Music since that time, at least comparatively, has not inspired the creation of heaps of new bands, or got people looking into musical history and rock family trees or buying back catalogues. Simon Cowell, arguably the global leader in mainstream music, is credited with saying that a song won't be a hit if it doesn't appeal to 14-year-old girls.

Why does the music industry expect current revenues to be the same as the 90s or even higher? Aren't we in a time where new music passes many people by save for the occasional epic hit like Lady Gaga's Bad Romance - just like the 80s? Shouldn't the music industry expect revenues to subsequently match the 80s and not the 90s?

http://www.abc.net.au/technology/articles/2012/05/24/3510494.htm

I can put a rough date on the first nail in the coffin for me - the day when devouring new music ended and I went back to listening to music from those bands I already knew - mid 1994

This, is how it was for me too, although I never actually stopped listening to those bands in the first place. There just wasn't anything interesting coming out (that was easy to find...).

 

[Dead Winter]

That article is great. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels that way.

However, you can't discover new music on the radio...it's just not gonna happen. You have to scour Bandcamp and Twitter for new bands, and I have discovered a veritable fuckton of amazing bands that way.

 

[rebirth]

Who's going to replace them? T

Hey do your own homework there are heaps

On relapse records

 

[Shpongled]

How do you find bands on Twitter?

 

[Traxan]

^^^ What he said.

Terrorizer isn't bad for introducing new bands. Nor is Outburn if you can find it. Revolver, eh. I think they are too close to Sharon Osborne for my liking.

Blabbermouth used to be good but now it sucks. There are some good blogs out there as well. You can find them, if you look.

 

[Traxan]

Who's going to replace them? T

Hey do your own homework there are heaps

On relapse records

Really? Name for me a young singer with the range, power and presence of Rob, Bruce, RJD or Warrel.

 

[Dead Winter]

How do you find bands on Twitter?

1. Type in whatever genre of music and hit search (I use doom/stoner/sludge)

2. Find Twitter fan site or blog all about said music

3. Check out all the bands they post from Bandcamp multiple times per hour on Twitter (they'll post a description and then the link, and it's usually free)

4. Profit.

The Sludgelord is a huge one, as well as Southern Lord records. Invisible Oranges, too (best name ever). There's a guy running a Twitter feed called Heavy Planet that posts about 20 new bands per day. Some are fucking great like Planks, and some are meh. Still, it doesn't hurt to try.

I used to read Terrorizer back in the day, and it is a good way of discovering new bands. However, it's too broad usually and falls into the same trappings of any other media run for profit. Twitter and blogs are usually much better at narrowing down what you're looking for.

For post and ambient stuff, check out TheSirensSound.com

Stonerobixxx is probably the best site for stoner/doom/sludge, though. He's got a blog and a Twitter feed, and you can follow either one to discover great shit. That's how I discovered Conan, Tombstones, and a bunch of other great stuff.

 

[lorinc]

Well, the 90's gave us the best Nevermore and In Flames albums, lets not forget that.

On a side note, you are all bashing nu metal shit, but if Korn had not released Follow the Leader in '98 with the success we know it had, there would probably not be any metal bands alive by now. The nu-metal shit revived interest in the metal genre as a whole and drew many people to bands like Nevermore, which in turn got sufficient followers to make music. Seriously, without nu-metal, every metal artist would have had the destiny of Paul Di Anno...

 

[El Stormo]

I respectfully disagree with that, lorinc. You make it sound as if many bands wouldn't have even started making music if it wasn't for Korn 'reviving interest' in metal. That's a questionable statement for several reasons, but mostly because most of the people who liked Korn and all the other nu-metal shit never moved on from there and are still doing their spastic dances to their Killswitch Engage and Avenged Sevenfold .mp3s. And nu-metal really is an entirely different genre from 'real' metal, so I'm really not convinced that it helped actual metal in any way apart from an influx of posers.

 

[Traxan]

No kidding. Korn did not revive the genre. It was new acts like Lamb of God, Killswitch and Mastodon, plus the old guard got their shit together. The Big Four all released excellent albums in the late aughts, and I think Overkill had the best of the bunch with "Ironbound." Korn did us no favors. DJs scratching records have no place on a metal stage.

Would be nice of Mr. Sentient would weigh in, but we've covered so much ground and he's not known for writing a lot, there's probably no place to start.

 

[rebirth]

Linkin park rules I might add!!!

It's all noise but it's nice noise for my delicate ears!!

 

[rebirth]

Lorinc - correct korn members all played ozzy Osborne/ ratt/ overkill / rush in their early yrs...

They just went with 7strijg playing and took the lead.

 

[Dead Winter]

I respectfully disagree with that, lorinc. You make it sound as if many bands wouldn't have even started making music if it wasn't for Korn 'reviving interest' in metal. That's a questionable statement for several reasons, but mostly because most of the people who liked Korn and all the other nu-metal shit never moved on from there and are still doing their spastic dances to their Killswitch Engage and Avenged Sevenfold .mp3s. And nu-metal really is an entirely different genre from 'real' metal, so I'm really not convinced that it helped actual metal in any way apart from an influx of posers.

Also, Follow the Leader was a shit album. Life is Peachy is their best album, and that was in 1996. It was before there was such a thing as nu-metal; it was still just called "metal". The first album people didn't know what the fuck to think, but by Life is Peachy, they had invented what would become nu-metal. Ironically, it was all downhill from that album. The thing is, there were a bunch of other underground death/black/thrash bands who had been doing their thing since the early 90's before Korn ever came onto the scene.