Unpopular Rock and Metal Opinions?

DrumSteve wrote: »

( I meant to say black metal initially, always get them confused)

How do you manage to get those confused? Death Metal is the one with fast double bass drumming, distorted guitars and raspy guttural vocals, and Black Metal is the one with fast double bass drumming, distorted guitars and raspy guttural vocals. Simple. :pac:

iamthestig wrote: »

Dunno if this is unpopular or not but, Jason Newstead was the best bassist for Metallica, not Rob

Cliff? Nobody? :eek:

Amataratsu wrote: »

Technical playing and good song writing aren't mutually exclusive.

Dream Theatre themselves used to write cracking songs and I think it was the influence of Kevin Moore. The last thing really good they put out was "A Change Of Seasons", which was largely written when he was still in the band.

I'm not so sure it was the loss of Kevin Moore that did it, since A Change of Seasons, they'd had some cracking music with Rudess (and Sherinian). Metropolis, Train of Thought, Six Degrees, and even Falling into Infinity had it's moments. I think more of it has to do with the band themselves getting stale, their creativity as a whole going south.

iamthestig wrote: »

Dunno if this is unpopular or not but, Jason Newstead was the best bassist for Metallica, not Rob

I agree with this. Jason was too good for Metallica.

iamthestig wrote: »

Dunno if this is unpopular or not but, Jason Newstead was the best bassist for Metallica, not Rob

Jason was a fantastic bassist in Metallica very unlucky that you can't hear him on AJFA Cliff was a phenomenal bass player love the little things that he did...little run on The Four Horsemen, actually the bit he does in the middle of it is great too. Lovely tight grooves. The Call of Ktulu is another that stands out. Love the volume swells he does on MOP album at the start of some of the songs, just the little details. For me Orion is his masterpiece very Baroque in parts and then the solo with the harmony is beautiful. Any band would have suffered losing him they were blessed to get Jason and dickheads for the way they treated him.

Lithium93_ wrote: »

Kashmir is a far superior song to Stairway To Heaven

Fúckin' A. What a riff. Nothing beats tearing down the motorway, windows down, sunglasses on and Kashmir blasting from the stereo. Ace.

I definitely don't like Mastodon as much as I used to. They were a great band on their first 3 albums but I'm not particularly fond of the path they've wandered down since then.

I also think that their guitar solos on their more recent albums are completely pointless (in fact I generally think that 95% of guitar solos are completely pointless), they're just thrown in there for the sake of having a guitar solo.

I know bands evolve, sometimes for better and sometimes not, but I certainly miss the Mastodon that blew my mind and ears with Leviathan.

What are the big accusations that are routinely flung at, or in the general direction of, glam metal? Well, right off the top of my head:

-They were so commercial
-They were like clones of each other
-They followed a tried and true formula
-The scene became so clogged and bloated by the end of their era with all these "Crue-lite"/"Ratt-lite"/"Poison-lite" bands
-The look was stupid, overblown and silly
-They sang about nothing but fast cars, faster women, drugs and sex
-They destroyed heavy metal

Well... playing Devil's Advocate a bit here...

Grunge, and all derivatives thereof, are credited with saving metal/rock, slaying the bloated beast of glam metal and tearing apart all of the accusations above.

However, I believe that grunge was just as guilty of, if not more guilty, of all of the above as the glam bands were. They just had a sense of "credibility" to them that the glam bands did not, so they got away with it more.

They Were So Commercial

On the charge of being so commercial. For sure, the glam metal bands were MTV darlings, bothered the Billboard charts and sold squillions of albums. But, didn't the grunge bands do exactly the same in the early 1990's? Didn't bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden and so on do the exact same thing? They clogged MTV with their "introspective" and "meaningful" music videos, had albums all over the Billboard charts and their albums sold. And sold. AND SOLD. In terms of commercial success and so-called "selling out", grunge were just as guilty as the glam bands of the same levels of success, if not exceeding those success levels of the 1980's.

They Were Like Clones Of Each Other

For sure, the glamsters all took influence from early bands such as the New York Dolls, Van Halen, The Sweet, Angel and so on. Early glam metal bands such as Motley Crue, Ratt, Dokken, Quiet Riot and so on all provided a solid template of an image. Poison, Warrant, Slaughter, Cinderella and so on took that image and "cloned" the original. In both image and sound.

However, the same can be very much said for most, if not all, of the grunge bands. They took influence from earlier punk and alternative bands. They then took the image/sound that was laid down there and provided a solid template for what this genre should be like. Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, etc. all provided the "first wave" image and sound. Following on from them, came Stone Temple Pilots, Hole, Tad, Creed, Nickelback, Puddle Of Mudd, Audioslave, Staind, etc. These bands were different, but at the same time incredible similar to what went before. A bit tarted up, a bit gruffer, but one and the same. Exactly how the first wave of glam metal influenced a legion of "clones". Grunge was absolutely the same. Grunge bands all had similar sounds, image and subject matter. Generally speaking. The same as the glam bands had... generally speaking.

They Followed A Tried And True Formula

By the end of the reign of Glam Metal, the bands were following a formula that was a sure key to success. It was copy and paste, cut and dried, that was it. Nothing more, nothing less. Success in metal in the 1980's was measured by how outrageous the look was, how close to the bubblegum formula the music was and by how powerful the power ballad was.

By the time Grunge finally started to disappear up its own arse, the same can be argued about the plethora of bands that populated the grunge scene. Sing in a "yarl" style (popularised by Eddie Vedder and Layne Staley), wear beat-down flannel shirts, be edgy but unthreatening (Creed) and make sure you sing about your depressing childhood or about something cathartic and pure.

The formula was there, but one appeared to be purer and more honest than the other. But was it really?

The scene became so clogged and bloated by the end of their era with all these "Crue-lite"/"Ratt-lite"/"Poison-lite" bands

Of course, there is nothing more true than this. By the end of the 1980's, the biggest bands of the glam era had spawned dozens (if not hundreds) of imitators, all hoping to become the next big thing in the metal scene. Nothing was really "new", it was all the same, just being recycled and done in a slightly different way. This led to so many bands all looking and sounding the same.

But the same can, once again, be said of the grunge-era. By the time Kurt Cobain died, the amount of bands who were desperately trying to break big by aping the big boys of grunge was painful. The scene was clogged to the brim with guys trying to make it big by wailing about their unhappy childhood, wearing flannel and by trying to write songs like Kurt/Eddie/Layne.

Unfortunately, they were the exact same as the lite-imitators of the previous generation; bringing nothing new to the table, being the same and just recycling a successful formula and hoping to break it big. There was no difference, but it was just that grunge had a much shorter reign at the top than glam did, so the imitators were not as noticeable as glam's were.

The look was stupid, overblown and silly

Nobody can argue with this, especially towards the end of the 1980's when even older guard metal bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Whitesnake tarted up their image to varying degrees and either completely jumped on the bandwagon or just went a little towards that image/sound.

But the look of the spandex, leather, make-up, hairspray, flashy colours and teased out hair is almost synonymous with the 1980's nowadays. It is the stereotypical image of 1980's heavy metal, not just glam metal.

It was, at first, avant garde and new. But it quickly descended into a farce as some bands ended up looking so feminine and overblown that it was just begging to be put down.

However, in an effort to extremely distance themselves from this androgynous yet uber-hetero image, the grunge bands went overboard and bordered on parody of themselves with their own image.

Out went everything glam, in came the most grimy, dirty, bland clothing you could imagine. In fact, so desperate were these bands to distance themselves, it went beyond silly. It's just that their silliness was harder to identify. It wasn't hard to spot glam metal's silliness; high heels and permed hair on a bloke tend to do that. But a bloke wearing beat up hoodies, t-shirts, ripped jeans and dirty runners was a lot harder to spot. But it was constant. They put so much effort into appearing "grunge", that it became sad. Even sadder than a bloke wearing make up and spandex. They put so much effort into not putting effort in that it became ridiculous.

Kurt Cobain even resorted to wearing a dress onstage. And so ashamed were AIC of their former glam roots, they refuted it for a while until photos emerged...

They sang about nothing but fast cars, faster women, drugs and sex

For sure, glam metal was bonehead music. They never were into "deep" subjects. They never challenged serious issues, they never engaged in deep or meaningful songwriting. They wrote songs that were fun, good times and all about the carnal things in life that brought pleasure. Deep, it was not. Fun, it was in spades!

Grunge, for sure, was deep. It sang about serious issues. It never sang about fast cars, fast women, drugs (in a fun way) or sex (in a fun way).

It was never about fun. So much so, that grunge's songs were so much about the same as the glam songs were. Instead of fast cars, faster women, drugs and sex, grunge gave us unhappy childhoods, angst, depression, drugs (in a bad way), sexual abuse, social alienation, apathy, confinement and so on. All the same territory re-trod, over and over again.

But, because this stuff was "deep" and "meaningful", grunge got away with it. Glam, however, was flippant, stupid and puerile because of its subject matter. No doubt about which genre was more mature. But surely, if we're going to slam one genre for singing constantly about similar subject matter, shouldn't the other genre get slammed for doing just the same???

They destroyed heavy metal

This is the big one, the daddy of them all. Glam metal has long been accused of killing heavy metal by some critics and fans. Bull. Glam, for all its faults and foibles, brought metal to the mainstream and made it more popular than it had ever been.

And even if glam was in danger of killing the true, beating heart of heavy metal, bands from the thrash genre were there to keep the "true faith" going. Add in the older guard bands such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and so on to keep the metal heart ticking over, whether glam was there or not.

However, I believe that destroying/killing heavy metal can be laid almost squarely at the door of grunge. Fair enough, glam arguably did need to slow down a bit, but killing it totally? A bit much. Grunge was the antithesis of glam and grunge swallowed glam up and spat it out.

But grunge did so much more than that. Not only did it succeed in slaying its arch-nemesis, but in the process, the collateral damage was also staggering. Literally any band with metal chops or a "traditional" heavy metal sound, were suddenly found wanting in the 1990's. Virtually no band who had been popular pre-1991 in the metal genre survived unscathed. The only ones you could argue would be Bon Jovi and Metallica who truly remained as popular as they had been. Apart from that, every single other metal band (glam or not) suddenly found a chill wind blowing around their leather clad-crotches. The audiences evaporated, charmed by the sludgy sounds from Seattle.

Fair enough, metal reorganised and some bands came back and things levelled out again following grunge, but it was never the same. The Golden Age of Heavy Metal was gone, and it could never come back. Sure, the bands have reformed or had key members return (see: Motley Crue, Ratt, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Dokken, etc.), but they no longer are as fun. It's just a little too nostalgic and too much time has passed. We were shown how the magician did his tricks by the grunge bands, and we are now no longer as impressed.

Glam metal killing heavy metal? Nah, not a chance. Grunge did that. Well, almost. Metal, the traditional metal, was dealt a blow from which it is still recovering. Grunge possibly only meant to take out glam, but it nearly decapitated the whole genre while it was at it. Thankfully, it's hard to keep a good man down, and many bands have returned to the fold. But it is not the same. Grunge disfigured a beauty queen.



The rantings of a bitter glam metal fan? For sure!!! But some home truths contained therein? Quite possibly...

Unpopular??? I'm just waiting for the backlash now!!!!!!!