Controversial opinions on metal

[no country for old wainds]

certainly agree about the first part. i don't really find necrophobic that dark to be honest, but that is one of my favourite swedish albums anyways.

harsh vocals have stood the test of time, have been employed by many many bands who worshipped the formative, clean-vocalled metal bands, and have been accepted by communities like this one which worship sabbath and priest above pretty much everything else. they're simply the logical endpoint of what has, whether you like it or not, been a fundamental motivation for many metal bands for a long, long time: to not only be uglier and filthier but faster, louder, darker, wilder etc. just because you want the genre to have some overarching goal that's more intellectually nuanced doesn't make it so. it's a ridiculous and frankly incorrect generalisation to say that metal was never driven by those things. this argument was lost decades ago, near everybody's moved on. it's a superficial hang-up that everyone goes through, but most aren't so arrogant as to think it's everybody else that's the problem, so they come out the other side with a bit of effort.

 

[CiG]

Venom are thrash metal and Judas Priest are extreme metal? Jesus this is cringe-worthy.

 

[GuiltySpawn]

I respectfully disagree 100% with everything you just said. I do not believe that harsh vocals are a logical endpoint to what metal stands for. I sincerely believe that heavy metal music is and always was meant to be an expression of power through melody and clarity, and that harsh vocals do nothing to serve this end.

If you want to truly grasp what heavy metal is all about, you need to look to the early, traditional metal bands of the late 60's and early 70's. They were more concerned with writing good music than they were with pretentiously trying to sound nasty and ugly. I feel that extreme metal bands completely miss the point of what metal stands for.

 

[JontRevolting]

^^ It's an obvious evolution and the reason why there as so many differing points of view/arguments. Some like the more aggressive/evil stuff and others like yourself don't, it's obviously your opinion and not necessarily the correct or wrong opinion @GuiltySpawn

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

You have to be a serious loser to get so bent out of shape and start slinging insults when the band that you like beats the band that you don't like. That's all.

Extreme metal began with Possessed, Venom, and Bathory. Even Venom on Welcome to Hell, as early as 1981, and Kreator (as Tormentor) in 1982, employed primitive forms of extreme vocals. Your guess of "the late 70s" is way off base. Venom existed in 1979 but didn't actually release anything until 1980. So there goes your whole argument.

These bands set up the foundation for other bands to build upon, and set up the race to create the most filthy, savage, and abrasive music they could. These bands were definitely the first extreme metal acts, and they definitely employed harsh vocals.

You forgot about Death, son. I know you love hating on the band any chance you get, but at least give credit where its due.

 

[RedStorm]

yeah well it seems that early Swedish death metal had more of a refined approach to their death metal and while most of the american stuff was a little grittier.

I prefer the American style only because thats what got me into metal

 

[Phylactery]

He forgot about Hellhammer! The biggest omission I think.

@GuiltySpawn

Maybe you should post us some videos of songs that you like but think that the extreme vocals don't fit?

 

[no country for old wainds]

If you want to truly grasp what heavy metal is all about, you need to look to the early, traditional metal bands of the late 60's and early 70's. They were more concerned with writing good music than they were with pretentiously trying to sound nasty and ugly. I feel that extreme metal bands completely miss the point of what metal stands for.

nah. most late '60s/early '70s bands were stoned off their faces and trying to make as wild of a trip as possible, which is no more highbrow of a goal than any of the ones you're railing against. if anything, that era was probably more homogenous and unthinkingly trendy than extreme metal is, though it had its fair share of gems. i'm resisting the temptation to laugh you out of the room for even talking about 'late '60s traditional metal bands' at all--i'm pretty loose about genres but c'mon, man.

anyway, forget the sounding nasty/ugly thing. to me, what defines metal as a genre from the beginning is the way it confronts the aspects of reality that popular music/culture buries under the surface. black metal and death metal are, again, the logical endpoints of this. i'm not saying they're better (i'm probably more of an '80s trad man than anything else when pushed), but they're the natural evolution thematically. the aesthetic just grows out of that. black sabbath were trying to sound darker than everybody else, trying to confront uglier truths. this isn't at odds with trying to make good music - indeed, they felt that music had to be this way TO be good. darkthrone and the rest are no fucking different, they just took it to greater extremes.

 

[Omni]

Black Sabbath was actually specifically trying to make ugly, scary, loud rock and roll.

 

[no country for old wainds]

^certainly at times, anyway. obviously not all the time, but then again lots of extreme metal is more interested in being dreamy or introspective or blah blah. it's the same deal.

 

[JontRevolting]

Fuck I remember my mother telling me about mainstream pop acts from those days, one shit dude particular that she brought an LP from and when she got home her father made her return the album. So a lot of those bands back then would've been fairly extreme anyway in their time.
I'm pretty sure it was a Johnny Young album,seriously.

 

[no country for old wainds]

ozzy isn't a good traditional vocalist and he wouldn't sound good in almost any other popular band of his period, but he's absolutely perfect for sabbath's style, which is precisely my argument in favour of what came later. there are so many parallels between every era of metal IMO, they face a lot of the same criticisms, which just further indicates that they've stayed true to the past. i'm sure sabbath will have seemed cartoonish and gimmicky and like one-dimensional, tuneless noise to a lot of people back then.

 

[CiG]

They were more concerned with writing good music than they were with pretentiously trying to sound nasty and ugly. I feel that extreme metal bands completely miss the point of what metal stands for.

I disrespectfully disagree with you.

 

[Master_Yoda77]

If we are talking proto-extreme metal I'd rather listen to early Master or Death Strike than Mantas.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Same fam, Possessed too. The Mantas material really isn't that good, a kvlt-production-above-all kind of thing.

 

[RedStorm]

yeah theres really only a few good songs in their pre death shit like legion of doom and power of darkness

 

[HamburgerBoy]

If we're including all their pre-album stuff, Archangel is a really great song (although I have to admit it took Atrocity's cover for me to appreciate it):

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

well most demos arent really that good. Especially when compared to the albums that follow them.

 

[CiG]

Especially with the earliest death metal, the Death demos are beyond raw, I can't really listen to them.

 

[RedStorm]

good cover for legion of doom

When i was obsessed with death and chuck schuldiner i would literally force myself to listen to them like a retard. I remember him saying he recorded it in a really unorthodox way, clearly evident on the recordings