Bands from the 90s who could have been big.

Coburger

Hey,
Can you think of any bands who should have or could have been bigger than they are now?

One band that comes to mind is Paradise Lost. They were building strong with Icon and then Draconian Times. I do like One Second, but I think that they should have gone for more of a metal approach like Draconian Times. I reckon they lost a few fans with One Second (which was then followed by the Depeche Mode like Host and Believe in Nothing).

scudzilla

Coburger wrote: »

Hey,
Can you think of any bands who should have or could have been bigger than they are now?

One band that comes to mind is Paradise Lost. They were building strong with Icon and then Draconian Times. I do like One Second, but I think that they should have gone for more of a metal approach like Draconian Times. I reckon they lost a few fans with One Second (which was then followed by the Depeche Mode like Host and Believe in Nothing).

As soon as i seen the thread title i thought 'Paradise Lost', before i even saw your post, first 2 albums were outstanding then they just went stagnant.

I went to Dynamo in '98 with a band (Misery loves Co.) and on their tour bus on way over i had a long chat with their manager Jez, who also managed PL, he asked me why thought they hadn't cracked it, i told him that as he had to ask that question then it may well be a management issue. Wasn't too happy with that answer :pac::pac:

jjpep

Pitchshifter. .com was a great album but they just never followed on.

BlaasForRafa

Iced Earth. They put out a bunch of great metal albums during the nineties but through no fault of their own had missed the boat due to the grunge fad killing metal in the USA.

ush

scudzilla wrote: »

As soon as i seen the thread title i thought 'Paradise Lost', before i even saw your post, first 2 albums were outstanding then they just went stagnant.

I went to Dynamo in '98 with a band (Misery loves Co.) and on their tour bus on way over i had a long chat with their manager Jez, who also managed PL, he asked me why thought they hadn't cracked it, i told him that as he had to ask that question then it may well be a management issue. Wasn't too happy with that answer :pac::pac:

They went from a gothic Metalllica sound to a metal Depeche Mode sound. Could explain it.

Anesthetize

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

Iced Earth. They put out a bunch of great metal albums during the nineties but through no fault of their own had missed the boat due to the grunge fad killing metal in the USA.

Eh, grunge didn't kill metal in the USA...

Nea

Warrior Soul.
Signed to Geffen in the early 90's, debut album was a stormer, it still is. Follow ups were great too.
The group themselves maintain they were killed by grunge.

Massive Paradise Lost fan but I think they were right to try change their sound at the time. I loved One Second and Host although Believe in Nothing was crap, their last 2 albums they have come back to form with savage albums.

jack presley

Kerbdog should have been massive.

cnocbui

Curve should have gone the way of Garbage and vice versa.

seachto7

jack presley wrote: »

Kerbdog should have been massive.

meh, I don't know. You listen back, and while they were good, they weren't *that* great really were they...

fiachr_a

Power of dreams - 4 decent albums, cursed by not fitting into a scene.

Anesthetize

seachto7 wrote: »

meh, I don't know. You listen back, and while they were good, they weren't *that* great really were they...

I remember giving On the Turn a listen not so long ago and it bored the pants off me. They were playing grunge when the grunge bandwagon had already been exhausted and there were countless 90's bands who they sounded just like.

berettaman

Warrior Soul..definitely

There was some amazing stuff on the first album. Define Big?

What about The Almighty? Should have done much more..

Wrongway1985

cnocbui wrote: »

Curve should have gone the way of Garbage and vice versa.

I agree cept not in the vice versa part perhaps.

Would Tesla fit into this? (Their first 2 albums in later half of 80's) very talented act, still reasonably sized in U.S. but never made their mark in Europe. Very underrated, they watched on as other obvious acts from the hair metal/hard rock scene became massive this side of the pond.

Anesthetize

berettaman wrote: »

Define Big?

Poison Idea were fairly big.

berettaman

Tesla definitely make the list...

BlaasForRafa

Anesthetize wrote: »

Eh, grunge didn't kill metal in the USA...

You obviously don't remember the early to mid 90's then.

Anesthetize

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

You obviously don't remember the early to mid 90's then.

Depends if you're one of those people who believes that metal must be in the charts to somehow be alive. Death metal was going very strong in the early 90's with the likes of Death, Morbid Angel, Obituary and Decide. Hell, even Cannibal Corpse made a cameo appearance in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in 1994.

Or unless you're referring to hair metal. That was pretty much killing itself with too much hairspray, coke and rubbish music. Rap put it out of it's misery before grunge put the final nail in the coffin.

Lemmy Scott

I remember being impressed with LOVE/HATE -XENTRIX -TORANAGA -they could of being big then grunge arrived and killed the scene with only a handful of survivors

seachto7

Anesthetize wrote: »

I remember giving On the Turn a listen not so long ago and it bored the pants off me. They were playing grunge when the grunge bandwagon had already been exhausted and there were countless 90's bands who they sounded just like.

I agree. While I thought they were good back then, I listen back now and they were ok. Not brutal, but not good enough to be "big". But it's all subjective of course.

Most of my favourite bands aren't "big".

BlaasForRafa

Anesthetize wrote: »

Depends if you're one of those people who believes that metal must be in the charts to somehow be alive. Death metal was going very strong in the early 90's with the likes of Death, Morbid Angel, Obituary and Decide. Hell, even Cannibal Corpse made a cameo appearance in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective in 1994.

Who said anything about charts? However bands to need to make sales in order to fund bigger tours.

Floridian death metal had gotten repetitive and boring by 93, Norwegian black metal was about the only thing that was of interest in the 90's and it disappeared up it's own arse around 96 when they started to do that "progressive" black metal sh**e.

Anesthetize wrote: »

Or unless you're referring to hair metal. That was pretty much killing itself with too much hairspray, coke and rubbish music. Rap put it out of it's misery before grunge put the final nail in the coffin.

I'm not referring to hair metal. In any case rap and hair metal appealed to two vastly different markets, it had nothing discernable to do with it's demise.

Mainstream metal bands like Maiden, Priest, Dio went from selling arenas to selling theaters after grunge exploded. MTV and the metal magazines of the time dropped trad metal completely and adopted grunge wholesale.

Anesthetize

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

Who said anything about charts? However bands to need to make sales in order to fund bigger tours.

Bigger does not mean better.

Floridian death metal had gotten repetitive and boring by 93, Norwegian black metal was about the only thing that was of interest in the 90's and it disappeared up it's own arse around 96 when they started to do that "progressive" black metal sh**e.

Grunge had also gotten repetitive and boring by 93, I don't see how the two are connected. I also find progressive and atmospheric black metal more interesting than the early stuff.

I'm not referring to hair metal. In any case rap and hair metal appealed to two vastly different markets, it had nothing discernable to do with it's demise.

I wouldn't think so. Think about it, you're an angry white American teenager in the late 80's, who would you rather listen to Poison or Public Enemy? One of the reasons for rap becoming mainstream was because of white people bored with hair metal and wanting some fresh.

Mainstream metal bands like Maiden, Priest, Dio went from selling arenas to selling theaters after grunge exploded. MTV and the metal magazines of the time dropped trad metal completely and adopted grunge wholesale.

So trad metal was less popular in the early 90's, therefore metal, the entire genre must be dead. But wait, here come Pantera, Sepultura, Machine Head, Type O Negative and Fear Factory to grace MTV's Headbanger's Ball.

BlaasForRafa

Anesthetize wrote: »

Bigger does not mean better.

I'm not one of those people who thinks that artists need to live in an impoverished garret in order to make art.

Anesthetize wrote: »

Grunge had also gotten repetitive and boring by 93, I don't see how the two are connected.

Just because you want to stick your fingers in your ears and go "nanananana" and not listen doesn't change the fact that the media flocking to embrace grunge dealt a huge blow to metal in the US. Without media attention it's harder to reach the new fans you need to replace those who drop out due to getting married, getting mortgages, "growing up" etc.

Anesthetize wrote: »

I also find progressive and atmospheric black metal more interesting than the early stuff.

That stuff is black metal with it's balls cut off.

Anesthetize wrote: »

I wouldn't think so. Think about it, you're an angry white American teenager in the late 80's, who would you rather listen to Poison or Public Enemy?

Angry white american's didn't listen to hair metal, it was white american teens and twenty-somethings that wanted to party that listened to hair metal, you don't seem to understand the market at all. Rap was still largely a black phenomenon until well into the 90's.

Anesthetize wrote: »

So trad metal was less popular in the early 90's, therefore metal, the entire genre must be dead. But wait, here come Pantera, Sepultura, Machine Head, Type O Negative and Fear Factory to grace MTV's Headbanger's Ball.

None of those bands ever went on to sell out arenas which some of them would have done if metal hadn't been killed as a mainstream force in the early 90's. None of them really fulfilled their potential.

Anesthetize

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

I'm not one of those people who thinks that artists need to live in an impoverished garret in order to make art.

Neither am I, glad we agree on something. That wasn't the point I was making though.

Just because you want to stick your fingers in your ears and go "nanananana" and not listen doesn't change the fact that the media flocking to embrace grunge dealt a huge blow to metal in the US. Without media attention it's harder to reach the new fans you need to replace those who drop out due to getting married, getting mortgages, "growing up" etc.

It may have affected it's popularity for a period, but it didn't kill metal as you stated earlier.

That stuff is black metal with it's balls cut off.

I prefer to think of it as black metal with brains.

Angry white american's didn't listen to hair metal, it was white american teens and twenty-somethings that wanted to party that listened to hair metal, you don't seem to understand the market at all. Rap was still largely a black phenomenon until well into the 90's.

Do you honestly think that rap rose to mainstream success on the back of black listenership alone? The American media would have been paranoid as hell about that happening. Yes quite a lot of rap fans were obviously black, it's a genre that rose out of black culture after all. But there's no way rap would have gone mainstream if it wasn't for white people latching onto it and for artists like the Beastie Boys.

None of those bands ever went on to sell out arenas which some of them would have done if metal hadn't been killed as a mainstream force in the early 90's. None of them really fulfilled their potential.

If metal was killed as a mainstream force in the early 90's how did those bands get MTV rotation and sell bucketloads of albums? It must have been a miracle.

Dargull

Floodgate
Released one great album then were never heard from again.

Life of Agony
After their debut I thought they were gonna be huge.

3 Colours Red
Pist.On

Just on the Kerbdog debate. Their debut album for me is their strongest release. A more straight up hard rock album. I wasn't really a fan of On the Turn.

bnt

I've mentioned Thought Industry before, thought they had a lot of post-prog-metal potential, but they kind-of imploded around personalities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h5AQi6pXbI

peter1892

berettaman wrote: »

What about The Almighty? Should have done much more..

I don't know why they didn't make it - their sound changed a good bit from their first albums (kind of like The Cult) through a grungey phase to a much heavier sound on 'Crank' which I reckoned should have been a massive record. It almost was, they had a couple of minor (top 40) hit singles, toured with the likes of Pantera (and Warrior Soul!). But by the time the 5th album was out they decided to split.

Terrorvision could have been big, Therapy? peaked (commercially) around the time of Troublegum but never reached those heights again. Gun looked like they were going to hit the big time when they had a hit with their cover of 'Word Up' but there was a bit of a gap between albums and momentum was lost.

And of course, The Wildhearts. Should have been enormous. Brilliant band but but bunch of headcases and that hindered them.

fiachr_a

Stiltskin - number one hit wonders.

buck65

This forum is still living in the 1990's so give it time!

Coburger

There's a great Canadian band called The Tea Party. A great cross (at least on their firs two albums) of a cross between Zeppelin and the Doors. How they never sold loads of albums outside of Canada is beyond me.

fiachr_a

Anyone remember Irish band Hinterland? This song was great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giXSmDiCjVg

seachto7

Whipping Boy, I suppose had the potential to be bigger than they were.