As you all probably already know, i've well established myself as the token "metal guy" on the stream. I often talk about metal music on the stream and often bring up what's good and what's petrified dogshit in this particular genre of music. So in order to clear up some confusion and generally teach you something about the history on what uncle Ex's favorite brand of music is, i'm making this long ass thread.
Now you probably heard a song or two from
Metallica or
Iron Maiden in some point in your life, did you like what your virginal
soon to destroyed ear-pussies heard? If you did,
and by god you've better fucking have liked it. You've only scratched the surface on the world of Heavy Metal and Metal in general.
Now don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to convert you into the most depraved of antisocial basement dwelling "metal expert" out there, i'm mearly informing you, the casual listener about this kind of music.
Got that? Good. Let's throw ourselves into the unfriendly baphomet inhabiting world of music called
Metal.
Where and how did metal originate?Metal at it's cold frostbitten heart is essentially just a heavier version of
Hard Rock, something that originated in USA during the 1960's. Bands such as
Thin Lizzy,
Led Zeppelin and
Budgie were the leading innovating acts within this genre.
Later in the 1970's, bands such as
Judas Priest,
Black Sabbath, and
Motörhead took
Hard Rock's well established characteristics and added more speed, attitude and distortion, shaping the sound into something what we now call
Heavy Metal.
It's arguable who the first metal band was and what the first real metal album was, but in my opinion it's
Black Sabbath's self-entitled album from 1970.
What these four people from the United Kingdom created was the most evil fucking sinister sound to ever come out from an amp. It might not be as extreme today, but back in 1970 this probably scared the avarage hippie out of his goddamn pot corroded sandals.
This was basically the primortial soup of metal, but it stands true to this very day. Moving onto the 1980s.
Heavier Metal?With many bands now starting to play this convuluted style of music, some band strived to be the heaviest and most extreme.
Venom was one of those bands.
In 1981,
Venom released one of the most extreme ( at the time ) and evil albums ever to grace the world,
Welcome To Hell.
This album is comparable to the likes of
Black Sabbath's self entitled album. It was highly influential and later spawned even more extreme metal genres such as
Speed Metal,
Thrash Metal,
Black Metal and
Death Metal. But more about genres later.
Welcome To Hell boasted a low-fi sound with lots of echo and shitty production, but the agression and raw energy put into this record couldn't be denied, it was gimmicky-free and the shouted lyrics being about being
in league with satan and the
Sons of Satan. It was very cheesy, but overall it's shortcomings on the production just added to the effect of it being fucking
EEEEEVIL!.
PopularityBy now metal had been established as a genre of its own, Heavy Metal was beginning to creep up in album charts such as
Motörhead's album
No Sleep 'til Hammersmith. placing itself in the UK's top ten.
As with everything making money, some douchebags has to come along and profit on it. During the later 1980's, bands such as
Poison and
Cinderella we're being rotated heavily on MTV. These groups were playing
Glam Metal, an abomination spawned from
Glam Rock and
Heavy Metal. These sad excuses for human beings dressed like chicks and made millions of dollars by writing soggy anal waste such as
""Every Rose Has Its Thorn" and "
Somebody Save Me". i mean look at this fucking shit below.
Keep in mind these are guys.
WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOUR FACEThis kind of bullshit poser metal still haunts the world of metal today, with corporate manufactured bullshit genres such as
Nu-Metal and
Metalcore making a quick buck on the radio and on MTV.
Even though this revolting pig slop would vomit itself upon the world of metal during the late 80's, people eventually started buying less of this corporate audible cashrape in the 90's and eventually causing it to die off completley.
Sigh of relief? Right? NO.
The new bulllshit trend genre would soon take form in the 90's and be called
Nu Metal. This genre combining rap elements and abandoning everything that's "shreddy" about metal. No solos, adding a goddamn DJ remixing and scratching records while simple detuned guitars played laughably easy riffs.
Bands such as
Slipknot,
Limp Bizkit,
Linking Park and
KoRn are part of this so called
Nu Metal genre. You can compare
Slipknot to being the Halo equalient of metal music. it's for 12 year olds and sadly it's loved worldwide by taste impaired people.
Even
Vanilla Ice attempted to play this shit, i shit you not.
The Sound Of The UndergroundWith bullshit like
Poison farting violently into TV's and radios worldwide, some fans of metal decided to stray as far away as possible and create the polar opposite of
Glam Metal.
This saw the violent birth of
Thrash Metal an extreme sub-genre of metal that's kown for its very fast tempos and aggression.
Thrash Metal took heavy inspiration from bands like
Venom and basically added even more aggression, speed and screaming.
Metallica in their early days played a form of primtive
Thrash Metal on their debut album called
Kill 'Em All.
They later abandoned their underground fans on their self entitled 1990 album
Metallica and started writing acoustic ballads for MTV.
Horribly ironic that one of the first
Thrash Metal bands later became what they hated.
This kind of fanbase suicide sellout-ism continued to plauge several bands in their later careers. However bands that've stayed true throughout their careers hold a special place in my heart.
Bands like
Morbid Saint,
Dark Angel,
Sadus and
Attomica have all stayed underground, trend-free and true throughout their sometimes short-careers. These guys never intended to make big cash, but they really didn't give a fuck, they just wanted to
thrash their necks off and have a good time doing so.
This is from
Dark Angel's album from 1986,
Darkness Descends. An amazing slab of extreme metal.
Heavy Metal Kills YouAs always, the media has the blame something new for being
everything bad in the world.
Metal became the scapegoat of everything bad in the summer of 1990, when two teens committed suicide while listening to
Judas Priest. The band was accused for putting in subliminal message on the song
"Better By You, Better Than Me" from the their 1978 album
Stained Class. Sounds like complete bullshit right? It is.
The trail was dropped after failure to present proof that there would've been subliminal message hidden somewhere in the song when it was played in reverse.
Satan and Heavy Metal was like bread and butter, it was evil music. So naturally if you were shitty parent and your kid listened to metal during the 80's, he'd either blow his brains out or he'd be a worshipper of satan.
Below is an absolutley hilarious clip of Ozzy Osbourne trying to defend himself on the spot.
Unfortunatley metal has since then been associated with just this kind of spineless bullshit. Metal music and video games were largley blamed as the cause for the Columbine Shootings.
Sadly this wasn't the last time metal caused controversy.
Cookie Monster Is MetalAt the dawn of the 1990's metal had already caused controversy and was had well established its place in music. During this time two new Extreme Metal were being molded into creation
Black Metal and
Death Metal.
Both of these genres took inspiration from
Thrash Metal but had their own unique spins on it.
For instance
Death Metal's lyrics often deal with even more death, gore and slasher-flick shit, it's just fun unserious stuff, sometimes it's meant to shock and sometimes it's meant to be funny. Some people can't look past that, but for those who can, it's a fun genre.
Death Metal often use a "growling" vocal style, this harsh vocal style can somewhat be compared to Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. I know, Sesame Street is hardcore shit bro.
The first
Death Metal band was appropriately named
Death. Their debut album from 1987,
Scream Bloody Gore probably offers the most thought provoking, most poetic shit ever interjected into audio.
I mean just take a look at the these names on the album mentioned above.
1. "Infernal Death"
2. "Zombie Ritual"
3. "Denial of Life"
4. "Sacrificial"
5. "Mutilation"
6. "Regurgitated Guts"
7. "Baptized in Blood"
8. "Torn to Pieces"
9. "Evil Dead"
10. "Scream Bloody Gore" Now aren't these the most deep and sophisticated names you've ever seen? You better bet your pole smoking indie rock loving hipster eyes on that.
Now why write about the undead feasting upon some poor saps dismembered lower torso while doing a cookie monster impersonation? I don't know, it's just how things are, like magnets.
Here's an excellent example of your avarage blue collar
Death Metal band.
Broken Hope performing
Cannibal Crave on their 1991 album
Swamped In Gore. Some great "singing" about fucking the dead and eating body parts, great stuff.
"Graverobbing cemeteries, body parts I steal
Using the meat and flesh, to consist of my meal,
Often necrophilia invades my deranged twisted head,
Spending sexual tensions making love to the dead,
This is my way of life as now it shall remain,
Fetishes for organs sick thoughts within my brain."
The Blackest Of The MetalsIn the early 1990's in the cold regions of Norway and Sweden, a hellish form of metal was being conjured up.
Black Metal was its name and it didn't fuck around. People literally got shanked in the spleen, churches were burned in the name of satan and people got their heads blown off.
Black Metal took heavy inspiration from the masters of
EEEEEVIL! nameley
Venom. By borrowing the low-fi evil sound of
Venom's album
Welcome To Hell and adding even more filth, frostbite and satanic spewings.
Performers and fans are often facepainted in
corpsepaint, a somewhat similiar facepaint to what
Kiss uses, but in a more
EEEEEVIL! fashion.
This style's vocals are somewhat comparable to let's say, a
goblin getting stabbed in the dick. What the hell does a "
goblin getting stabbed in the dick." sound like?
Well, take a listen below.
Now why's there a picture of a burned churched on the cover? Well, the guy behind this band
Burzum named
Varg Vikernes really hated christianity, like i hate warm beer.
Varg took the whole "evil" aspect of metal literally. He burned churches as an act of retaliation against Christianity for placing a church on sacred, pagan grounds.
Varg also played bass in the local
Black Metal band
Mayhem, the guy handling the vocals called himself
Dead, something that would proven horribly ironic when he killed himself in April 1991. The band then proceeded to take a picture of his corpse and then use it as a cover for their live album
Dawn Of The Black Hearts. ( i won't provide you a picture here, but if you really want to see this, google "
Dawn Of The Black Hearts" ).
In August 1993,
Varg Vikernes murdered guitarist Euronymous over a contract dispute.
Varg Vikernes was sent into a prison with a 21 year sentence. During this time he continued to record music on a tiny casio keyboard and managed to actually release
two albums while in prison.
In 1994
Mayhem released their album
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas. A cornerstone of the
Black Metal genre. It's probably the only album in the world featuring the killer (
Varg Vikernes ) and the victim (
Euronymous ) playing together.
Even though
Black Metal's reputation had been horribly bloated and pissed on by
Mayhem and
Burzum's controversial shit, some band such as
Immortal and
Darkthrone just wanted to have a good time and write silly evil music.
Just take a look at these ridiculous loveable assholes from
Immortal and this guy from a band called
Graveland.
Present DayMetal is alive and well in the 21'st century, though
Nu Metal and other forms of falsehoods still run rampant througout the genre. We true metalheads see through their
Insane Clown Posse smelling bullshit. Now why do i love metal so much? Is it the energy, the agression, the amount of skill put into these compositions? I really don't know, i just really love the metal music. I hope you had a good time reading my tiny potshot at summarizing metal.
With that i leave you one of the best metal songs ever written,
Iron Maiden's song
Only The Good Die Young from the 1988 album
Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.
Feel free to ask me questions and ask away about this awesome orgasmic eardrum stimulation we call Heavy Metal.
Here's a "best of" top 10 songs list based on each genre. ( I'm only including the most prominent ones )
Just paste these links at the end of
http://www.youtube.com ( forums can't have these many links embedded without derping. )
- Heavy Metal/NWOBHM
Iron Maiden - Stranger In A Strange Land /watch?v=q7IdqkaGyU8
Motörhead - Killed By Death /watch?v=-TcTjb9Uw34
Savatage - Power Of The Night /watch?v=AkuzeBeMovU
Judas Priest - Electric Eye /watch?v=b1B_pZC8aWU
Saxon - 747 ( Strangers In The Night ) /watch?v=BkKrUz45icE
Twisted Sister - I Wanna Rock /watch?v=S9bfRb1dS-w
Scorpions - Rock You Like A Hurricane /watch?v=CGfKi6kpdTQ
Manowar - Fighting The World /watch?v=bAozBgPUXRM
Dio - Stand Up And Shout /watch?v=rjCBV6o_DSE
Angel Witch - Angel Witch /watch?v=HXZc9-mtFDk
- Power Metal
Sonata Arctica - Wolf & Raven /watch?v=zc1fzwgYAGw
Hammerfall - Heeding The Call /watch?v=WtpJ7DXwGmA
Blind Guardian - Mirror Mirror /watch?v=5CP4bzlLXDo
Gamma Ray - Beyond The Black Hole /watch?v=M2Fxq8p_yyk
Rhapsody - Emerald Sword /watch?v=CM1BmmPm4FY
Helloween - Eagle Fly Free /watch?v=FuO3hHwQ-Sc
Hibria - Steel Lord On Wheels /watch?v=xKQstdpRstY <- Check this one out, how metal isn't fighting ninjas on a fucking bike?
Luca Turilli - Black Dragon /watch?v=AD8ryvO7mik
Stormwarrior - Heading Northe /watch?v=NVr6qzfpdas
Iced Earth - Ten Thousand Strong /watch?v=08AFQnVEWHE
- Thrash Metal
Dark Angel - The Burning Of Sodom /watch?v=BtRDX9gBeRc
Ripping Corpse - Anti God /watch?v=NDErkdqrzlg
Sadus - Certain Death /watch?v=90bgtLRQIEE
Slayer - Angel Of Death /watch?v=XNnaRHqtrDQ
Demolition Hammer - .44 Caliber Brain Surgery /watch?v=vwdXqrrsF9o
Wehrmacht - Shark Attack /watch?v=obSMBrnQecA
Sodom - Code Red /watch?v=qjfwEUGhXi4
Morbid Saint - Damien /watch?v=mz9QjTvkBP4
Attomica- Deathraiser /watch?v=uL_YNauETlc
Kreator - Blind Fath /watch?v=NmDQZQ5Jk64
- Death Metal
Baphomet - Valley of the Dead /watch?v=D2MWrvJu8zg
Cannibal Corpse - Gallery of Suicide /watch?v=-rKOZewwNKc
Crematory - Chunks of Flesh /watch?v=krWvR0gibAI
Entombed - Supposed To Rot /watch?v=7VEanElFUDs
Gorguts - Considered Dead /watch?v=cNcyREX5I1o
Bolt Thrower - Prophet Of Hatred /watch?v=cEdywEbRRLc
Morbid Angel - God of Emptiness /watch?v=eHAxYrYK698
Broken Hope - Cannibal Crave /watch?v=5qDlebT8sSg
Gutted - Cold In The Coffin /watch?v=UiTtX9pyvhE
Autopsy - Gasping For Air /watch?v=_sfqghm3KFE
- Black Metal
Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger /watch?v=4iaj2w7Bp58
Emperor - I Am the Black Wizards /watch?v=--UIECiIWu0
Immortal - Blashyrkh (Mighty Ravendark) /watch?v=32n1AK6o5i0 <- possibly the best music video ever recorded on tape.
Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas /watch?v=WeG72pp1KcI
Ulver - Bergtatt Ind i Fjeldkamrene /watch?v=v2Qrz1dH6jc
Bathory - Woman of Dark Desires /watch?v=6g549ekmpIA
Kampfar - Hymne /watch?v=MCyBvnC8a2g
Kvist- Svartedal /watch?v=9PepYRJVuu4
Burzum - A Lost Forgotten Sad Spirit /watch?v=uyRUbC6F_Uc&
Enslaved - Havenless /watch?v=sWyfnp-ghaE
Loads upon loads of metal genres left out on this list, but these are my favorites metal genres and i generally just happen to know these genres the most at heart.
