How to Appreciate Death Metal

[ohiogrinder]

everybody in this thread should listen to Necuratul. he knows what he's talking about.

Dazed And Brutal, here's your list

The Exploited
GBH
Discharge
Chaos UK
Siege
Negative Approach
The Necros
The Misfits
Minor Threat
SS Decontrol
Gang Green
Riistetyt
Mob 47
Anti Cimex
Black Flag
Gauze
Die Kreuzen
The Meatmen
TSOL
Dead Kennedys
Dirty Rotten Imbeciles
Bad Brains
Suicidal Tendencies
Cryptic Slaughter
Adrenaline OD

 

[RedinTheSky]

I keep hearing that later Discharge is terrible and haven't bothered to check it out. At least I have yet to come across a positive review.

@ RedInTheSky

While I commend you for making what appears to be a step towards overcoming your confirmation bias regarding this subject, you seem to have misunderstood the statement that you have quoted in your signature - not surprising giving the comprehension difficulties and musical ignorance you have displayed in this thread. Violent speed and aggression, while defining characteristics of thrash and hardcore punk, are not commonly found in classical/jazz/blues. Certainly not in a way comparable to that of punk and metal - although please, point out some fast/violent/aggressive jazz numbers that are better candidates for thrash influence than punk.

For musical purposes, violent speed and aggression is definitely apparent in classical and jazz, maybe not so much in blues... (where a lot of these bands got their riffs and solos) the point here is that you are probably at least as ignorant towards classical jazz and blues as I am towards punk. I never said I was the master of all that is punk. I've just been listening to metal of all kinds since the mid eighties, and playing a lot of the music that our current topic is based upon. ( It is about thrash metal, not about how many more interviews you've read vs. how much musical comprehension you may or may not have)
Classical : http://youtube.com/watch?v=o7ZnOZ5QNR4

Jazz : http://youtube.com/watch?v=cUaixZcIa98&mode=related&search=

 

[skeptik]

I don't remember seeing Slayer ever mention any classical, and I've been digging through old magazines quite a bit recently. Have any specific examples in mind?

 

[Scourge of God]

Not to mention Amebix, which, aside from Discharge, may be the most influential punk derived act on the underground almost across the board.

 

[Scourge of God]

I don't remember seeing Slayer ever mention any classical, and I've been digging through old magazines quite a bit recently. Have any specific examples in mind?

There was a great video interview floating around youtube for while dating to 1985 that includes references to both Beethoven and Bach (as well as the hardcore artists I alluded to before). It may or may not have been taken down, I'll see if I can dig up the url.

 

[RedinTheSky]

I'm not sure how this is being construed as a zero sum game where bands can either be influenced by 'punk' or they can be influenced by classical/jazz/folk/whatever, but they can't possibly be influenced by both. It should be obvious that jazz, classical and folk were all significant influences on metal from the get go, given the frequent allusions to all three in the Ur-metal band, Black Sabbath. It should be equally obvious that later metal owes a good deal of its riff lexicon and most of its rhythmic punch to punk, crust and hardcore.

This too, was true almost from punk's inception: can anyone honestly say that "Exciter" would have sounded anything like the song we know and love if punk hadn't burst into the popular consciousness just a few months before? And we're talking JUDAS PRIEST here, not some crusty underdog from the lower tier of speed metal.

On the flipside, the very same album includes "Beyond the Realms of Death," a song that not only includes severally overtly neoclassical gestures, but is very much an electrified version of a sort of British folk music that ultimately derives from the tradition of formal court ballads (usually tragic) of Tudor and Stuart England.

And really, what was (and is) pretty much all extreme metal from Slayer on if not the melding of the rhythmic intensity of "Exciter" with the epic sensibility of "Beyond the Realms of Death" - that is, the melding of the 'punk' influence and the classical and folk influences? Hell, go check out some of the classic Slayer interviews of the early and mid 1980s, When asked about their biggest influences, they rattle off the usual metal suspects - Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Venom - and D.R.I., Dicharge and The Exploited, and Bach and Beethoven. I don't know if it gets much clearer than that.

Good stuff here. My original reason for debating was that someone said punk had the greatest influence on thrash metal. I say no. Simply tallying up the ways that punk has innovated compared to classical, jazz, blues, folk etc, results to punk failing compared to one of the latter in almost every case imo. Or take heavy metal, it is obviously the closest to thrash, yet punk couldn't have had any more than a miniscule effect on it.

 

[skeptik]

My original reason for debating was that someone said punk had the greatest influence on thrash metal. I say no.

And you're still wrong. Punk undoubtedly had a substantially more important and direct impact on the development of Thrash Metal.

 

[RedinTheSky]

And you're still wrong. Punk undoubtedly had a substantially more important and direct impact on the development of Thrash Metal.

I have my opinion, you have yours. That is the only certainty here.

 

[Scourge of God]

And you're still wrong. Punk undoubtedly had a substantially more important and direct impact on the development of Thrash Metal.

Scale and importance are not quite the same thing. The incorporation of punk elements was done on a larger scale, but I would argue that it was only among the bands who had incorporated or at least internalized classical influences that the new musical idiom really emerged as a comprehensive artistic grammar to be shaped into something more than the sum of its parts.

 

[skeptik]

What new elements were added to the Metal lexicon through Thrash Metal via Classical, Folk, and Jazz that were not already there in prior forms of Metal? Any at all? Any more significant than the vast shift ushered in my the wave of Punk music? Surely not.

 

[Scourge of God]

What new elements were added to the Metal lexicon through Thrash Metal via Classical, Folk, and Jazz that were not already there in prior forms of Metal? Any at all?

The heavy use of chromatic progressions came out of a classical context: so did the widespread use of rhythmic counterpoint between separate guitar lines or between the main theme and the bass, as well as the increasingly narrative structures of speed ('thrash') metal. Thrash leads were very often resemble crude jazz improvisation, much more so than the banged out noise of hardcore leads, though this latter style was just as common, sometimes appearing in the same bands (i.e. Slayer, where Jeff Hanneman's more refined jazz style appeared side by side with Kerry King's Discharge-esque shrieking [both deployed very effectively, at least during those early years of creative fecundity]... man, brackets inside a parenthetical phrase, that must be some humdinger of a run-on sentence [and, oh! it is that...]).

Any more significant than the vast shift ushered in my the wave of Punk music? Surely not.

Nor, I think, any less significant - punk influences brought the rhythmic intensity and a more alienated and violent sensibility, while classical/jazz influences provided a more elaborate and expansive architecture over which to develop that violent alienation into something more coherent than the viscerally emotional howls of protest that characterized hardcore. They're equal partners in what emerged, and there's no need for the sort of revisionism that tries to diminish the one in favor of the other.

 

[skeptik]

Are you saying chromatic scales were not used in Metal prior to Thrash Metal? I'm not arguing the influence that Classical and Jazz ultimately had, but I am arguing where these influences came from, and it seems as though the Classical and Jazz influence is achieved primarily vicariously through earlier Heavy Metal and Hard/Progressive Rock bands, rather than Classical and Jazz proper. In juxtaposition to this is obviously the burgeoning Punk explosion, a near contemporary form and a hotbed of influence and inspiration for young, disaffected headbangers tiring of the classically derived Hard Rock and Metal of the days of Yore. Basically, what I'm debating is how much of it is Jazz and how much of it is remants of the influence that Jazz had on Heavy Metal.

 

[Thoth-Amon]

I can't believe you guys are still arguing about this shit!!

 

[Jreg]

Are you saying chromatic scales were not used in Metal prior to Thrash Metal? I'm not arguing the influence that Classical and Jazz ultimately had, but I am arguing where these influences came from, and it seems as though the Classical and Jazz influence is achieved primarily vicariously through earlier Heavy Metal and Hard/Progressive Rock bands, rather than Classical and Jazz proper. In juxtaposition to this is obviously the burgeoning Punk explosion, a near contemporary form and a hotbed of influence and inspiration for young, disaffected headbangers tiring of the classically derived Hard Rock and Metal of the days of Yore. Basically, what I'm debating is how much of it is Jazz and how much of it is remants of the influence that Jazz had on Heavy Metal.

In other words, many metal bands with jazz-derived elements weren't really influenced by actual jazz---just by other jazz-influenced bands. Based on many metal musicians I've known, I think that's definitely a valid point. Of course, you could argue the same thing about punk. There are lots of metal bands who dislike punk, yet their music has indirect and latent traces of it because they are heavily influenced by Metallica, Bathory, Slayer and many other bands who DID like punk immensely.

Either way, this is how I see it: Metal and punk both emerged at around the same time, both as relatively more edgy countercultures that played louder, lewder forms of the guitar-driven rock that influenced them, and they both have remained significant commodities in the music industry to this day. They even share common ground geographically, both having strong roots in the UK. Sure there have always been fundamental differences and animosities between the two, but the similarities are too numerous for them not to have fed off of each other for the last several decades. The fact that classical and jazz lack many of those same social ties with metal makes it difficult for me to believe that their influence is quite as strong as punk's.

 

[thisisaformicatable]

I'm not sure how this is being construed as a zero sum game where bands can either be influenced by 'punk' or they can be influenced by classical/jazz/folk/whatever, but they can't possibly be influenced by both.

It isn't. Thrash has elements of influence from all of the above, but the argument is that punk is the most important one. Thrash's influence from classical/jazz/blues were by and large obtained indirectly from previous metal and rock bands, but the aspects that distinguish thrash metal from the metal previous (fast/aggressive/violent) comes from punk.

Recapitulation:

Thrash is different from the metal of the 1970s, what influenced this change? Was it some sudden discovery of elements of jazz/classical/blues that were under explored by previous metal generations and have gone mysteriously unmentioned and undiscussed to this day, or did it come from punk: the genre that thrash metal musicians were widely known to listen to, be fans of, perform covers of, and actively cite as influences? That this is a topic of debate from some people serves only to demonstrate their personal bias, certainly not its controversial aspect as a concept.

For musical purposes, violent speed and aggression is definitely apparent in classical and jazz, maybe not so much in blues... (where a lot of these bands got their riffs and solos)

To reiterate, I have been speaking of violence and aggression in tone as well.

I'm anti-social
An-ti-so-cial
An-ti-so-cial
I hate the world
...
Mutilated corpses and charcoal flesh
Litter the battlefields
...
Why should I fight in their fuckin' wars?
Why should I do their killing and be killed?
They declare it!
...
It's no use I can't take no more abuse
I'm tired of the fuckin' lines
I'm losing my mind I'm going to... explode
I've had it!
Killin' all your dreams

Thrash didn't get that from Miles Davis.
(Experts from pre-thrash Skrewdriver, Discharge, Black Flag)

the point here is that you are probably at least as ignorant towards classical jazz and blues as I am towards punk.

I find that doubtful, as far as listening goes you don't care for punk and seem to have listened to it only cursorily through a friend, while last.fm tells me that my top ten artists include Dvořák, Wagner, Borodin, Schubert, Villa-Lobos and Stravinsky. So I at the very least listen to this genre regularly, as much as I do to metal anyway. Jazz I will give you, I carry an active dislike for the genre and despite playing in a jazz ensemble for a number of years some time ago I rarely have the motivation to force myself through some active listening of it. Blues I enjoy but like you with punk I listen to it only occasionally through a friend.

I never said I was the master of all that is punk. I've just been listening to metal of all kinds since the mid eighties, and playing a lot of the music that our current topic is based upon. ( It is about thrash metal, not about how many more interviews you've read vs. how much musical comprehension you may or may not have)
Classical : http://youtube.com/watch?v=o7ZnOZ5QNR4

Jazz : http://youtube.com/watch?v=cUaixZcIa98&mode=related&search=

Got one that sounds like a thrash song? Got one that you can say "this is where thrash got the idea from"? Got one that applies to thrash specifically more than metal in a broad sense? Got one that a thrash band covered? Isn't that what this is about?

 

[Hatebreeder]

Why don't you save your material for some future college-level met-ucation courses instead of wasting your time and knowledge here? This is all so superficial; either people already have a decent grasp on this shit or don't know and don't care.

 

[skeptik]

Why don't you not post if you have nothing to add? This is a discussion forum. God forbid a conversation that has at least a degree of worthwhile discussion should take place on the board.

 

[Hell Awaits Us All]

God forbid a conversation that has at least a degree of worthwhile discussion should take place on the board.

seriously though, this board is 95% crap (as much as I love it, I can still easily ackowledge this). This has been a fascinating discussion and these kinds of discussions should always be encouraged.

 

[thisisaformicatable]

Why don't you save your material for some future college-level met-ucation courses instead of wasting your time and knowledge here? This is all so superficial; either people already have a decent grasp on this shit or don't know and don't care.

The ignorant apathetic demographic is adequately represented on the rest of the forum, I think. Feel free to avoid this thread in the future if turning your brain on for a few moments is too great an inconvenience for you.

 

[Hatebreeder]

The ignorant apathetic demographic is adequately represented on the rest of the forum, I think. Feel free to avoid this thread in the future if turning your brain on for a few moments is too great an inconvenience for you.

I'm okay with the discussion, but it's not so much a discussion as it is a flaunt of one's omniscient hindsight into metal's history of influence. It is also repetitive and most of the main points have been reiterated several times each.

I've enjoyed reading these conversations, but it would've been much more so had it not been repetitious.