Rolling Metal 2016

I stopped worrying about being part of the commercial Zeitgeist about 20 years ago watching Oasis at Loch Lomond with 50,000 singing along to every word of bsides. After that you realise you can just do your own thing as you get older.

You dont need to belong to anything at a certain age but you dont have to stop liking new music either.

Im not interested in watching metallica and maiden yearning for the good old days of my youth when music was great and theres no good bands now.

Or indeed Oasis as they fit that kind of thing too haha

I disagree with Aero, obviously. I used to work for Roadrunner Records - I had a professional interest in metal bands winning Grammys, selling as many albums as possible, etc., etc. But even when I didn't, I never liked the whole "the underground is where it's really at/this is not for you, square" mindset - at least, not after I graduated high school. I don't only like huge bands, but I always want the bands I like to get huge. I like discovering things, but I also like sharing them with people. The whole point of writing about a record, after all, is to make sure that as many people know about it as possible. It's a gesture of outreach. And I'd much rather be in an arena full of people whose ages span a 30-year range, all screaming along to "The Number of the Beast," than in a dank, stinking basement club watching five death metal bands play. The underground is not my idea of fun, and hasn't been for a long time.

I agree with you that I like bands I love to get more successful, why else do we share tips to everyone? But as smithy says metal thrived on that kind of word of mouth as much as it did by winning grammys and that winning grammys isnt the be all and end all.

personally I selfishly root for bands to not become too popular because I am cheap and don't like big crowds

But it wound up reinforcing my own decision not to do year-end lists for Burning Ambulance

Will you post a list here at least? I like seeing the Burning Ambulance list.

yeah I mean I like for musicians to get paid - I have a stake in that, myself - but I disagree with the "get as big as is possible" mindset, and have for my whole career -- a career which would have been much shorter had I taken the advice of label people in the mid-90s, who, to a man, all told me I needed to get into a fancy studio and polish my lo-fi gems to a don't-you-want-to-reach-the-most-people shine. I didn't like the sound of that, and now we have a still-comparably-small audience...but for several of us, it's still our main day job, and it keeps the lights on. There's plenty of middle ground between playing a shitty closet and playing in mid-sized clubs where you've found an audience that'll follow you through many different inspirations. not all jazz has to be Diana Krall, and metal's most exciting to me when the conversation is about what's bubbling under and getting born, not what's-your-take-on-the-thing-everybody's-talking-about.

(nb yes, we did get into the studio eventually, on our own terms, where we continued to say "it's not about reaching the most people, it's about chasing some ideas here and there")

Voting in metal poll ends tomorrow night. Please vote!

I'd much rather be in an arena full of people whose ages span a 30-year range, all screaming along to "The Number of the Beast," than in a dank, stinking basement club watching five death metal bands play.

I disagree - I've been to more than a few mega concerts and I was always disappointed. Not because of the big crowd cause that's definitely cool, so many metalheads in one place - it's the watery beer in a plastic cup, the pushing and shoving, the invariably shit echoey sound and the distanceto the bands. A few months ago I was at a Phlebotomized gig (with three other 90s death metal bands) in yes: a glorified basement but it was like a goddamn high school reunion with only metalheads. Meeting with the band members between sets over good (bottled) beer, talking new and old music, cool merch, catching up on what the other oldschool dudes are doing now, etc. I also remember Anathema in 1994 when they ended their set and walked right into the (small) crowd to drink and talk at the bar. Thats my idea of a great gig, not see Rammstein, Maiden or Slayer play on giant video walls. I'll still go but it's mainly a social thing with my friends than an enjoyable musical experience.

I think it also depends on what kind of metal you like to see live. Death metal is headphone music for me. Live metal for me is melodic stuff - Ozzy, Priest, Maiden...I'd love to go to Germany next December to see Manowar at one of the arena shows they've got booked for their final tour.

seriously how can anybody rep for arena sound? I have never been to an arena show whose sound was any good

Metal has traditions and everyones expected to know the lineage and the classic bands/albums.

This is true but I am genuinely interested how this works for younger or 'recently converted' metal fans. I know that I at least partly grew up with the genre, as the canonical classics were made.

I must say, as a kid I never paid much attention to before-my-time metal (basically NWOBHM and older) although I knew the names and reputations. I didn't start working my way back until I was ten years into metal. I don't expect some 18 year old kid who got into metal a couple years back through Sabaton or Epica or Brokencyde to diligently go through the whole lineage from Sabbath to Priest, Metallica, Slayer, Bathory, Possessed, Burzum, Paradise Lost, all the way up to their gateway bands.

I can only imagine to new metalheads it must feel like I feel about jazz or minimalist classical - there's a multiverse of great old stuff but I realise it'll never mean as much to me as it did to contemporary fans, with the shock of the new. Then again, classical music must've felt like that for centuries.

(long ass post to say I don't really know any young metalheads)

I will say this year's Maiden arena show was in my top 3 all time but i will still never forget seeing Immolation in 99 with 14 other people and having my mind blown.

Dive shows rule

The election-night Anicon show I mentioned on the metal poll thread was one for the books for me.

Oh my goodness did Phil ever hit the nail square on the head. This is 100% me, and I have said the same thing, less eloquently, over the years:

I never liked the whole "the underground is where it's really at/this is not for you, square" mindset - at least, not after I graduated high school. I don't only like huge bands, but I always want the bands I like to get huge. I like discovering things, but I also like sharing them with people. The whole point of writing about a record, after all, is to make sure that as many people know about it as possible. It's a gesture of outreach. And I'd much rather be in an arena full of people whose ages span a 30-year range, all screaming along to "The Number of the Beast," than in a dank, stinking basement club watching five death metal bands play.

I truly believe metal is better off when its own musical/cultural avatars are in full stride, making vital music, playing shows. Those huge bands unite people in a way that underground metal doesn't. But these days we're all (I've been as guilty as anyone) bickering about how "this mainstream band sucks" or "Revolver loves this band so they're obviously lame" or "this is just dad thrash" or "this is hard rock not metal" or "this is too growly" that such division and blind dissension feels like we'll never have another metal band that everybody likes. There's a generation gap and a critic/public gap now that both feel far too wide to bridge.

I don't think we'll ever have another anything that everybody likes tbh. Symptom of the age.

Anyway, this new Deathspell Omega's good but not as good as Paracletus IMO. It feels like a little bit of a step back to Fas, Ite but with the viciousness and frenzy cranked up 20%. Which is good but not gonna be everyday listening, I think.

Judas Priest's Turbo is getting the deluxe reissue treatment next year. When I saw it was gonna be a 3CD set I got excited, hoping they'd decided to resurrect the Twin Turbos idea (it was supposed to be a double LP with tracks from Turbo, tracks that ended up on Ram It Down, and several songs that never got released), but it's just the album plus a 2CD concert from the 1986 tour. Which, since that's the same tour that was recorded for Priest...Live!, seems mildly pointless, but whatever.

I'm on both sides. One of the reasons I prefer to see live metal shows over any other genre is how sincere the bands are. You generally don't see metal bands phoning it in like they'd rather be home doing the dishes, like you do at the Pitchfork Festival (at least the last one I attended, where I heckled all the shitty performances and wished I had gone to Judas Priest at Northerly Island that night). And the audiences are way, way more enthusiastic.

So 2 of my top three shows were Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath at the United Center. However, I DO prefer mostly going to smaller clubs, where this year I got to see legends like Saint Vitus, The Obsessed, The Skull, and Blood Ceremony, Purson, Horisont, Witch Mountain, Professor Black, Argus, Brimstone Coven, Demon Eye, Pale Divine, Syd Arthur, Golden Void, Baroness and Pallbearer. With the exception of Blood Ceremony at Roadburn and Baroness/Pallbearer at a sold out Metro show with a thousand people, most of those shows were pretty sparsely attended, with less than a hundred people. And that's a damn shame. There shouldn't be such a huge discrepancy, especially in a music town like Chicago, but there is. A few years back it was annoying when certain doom bands suddenly got the hipsters' attention and small shows would unexpectedly sell out, but I prefer it for the bands' sake.

I love this new Battle Beast track. More heavy metal-disco, please.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lKYdrL-AAw

Battle Beast are a lot of fun. A few years ago, they covered the Giorgio Moroder song "Push It To The Limit" from Scarface:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0mJQi1Rs5g

And their version of W.A.S.P.'s "Wild Child" is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGxfT00NZl8

Machinae Supremacy Machinae Supremacy Machinae Supremacy Machinae Supremacy Machinae Supremacy Machinae Supremacy out now.

big metal bro at the DEP show who yelled "I touched him!!!" after getting a high five from Greg Puciato, you made life good today

Really cool Norwegian black thrash that just came out:
http://www.terrorizer.com/news/listen-new-album-vesen-rorschach/

The production is a little on the "soft" side, so it doesn't cook your brains like, say, Aura Noir does. It gets crusty at times, too.

Did anyone get the A Decade Of Dio 1983-93 box? An opportunity to reassess Lock Up the Wolves and Strange Highways?

Yeah, I bought it. The remastering job is really good, and those latter albums aren't great, but they're hardly dismissable. (Also, for the total RJD obsessive, Elf's Carolina County Ball and Trying to Burn the Sun were recently reissued.)

I have it, but I haven't listened to the later albums yet. I like the remastering. My only gripe is that there's a really annoying piercing ringing coming from the cymbals on some Holy Diver tracks, especially "Caught in the Middle". I think it's more prominent in this remastering. I find it hard to listen to that song as a result.

Strange Highways is in fact great, but it's sort of like when Ozzy went with Zakk Wylde -- Tracy G is kind of a competing voice in the songs. The dour and grinding feel of it reminds me of Dehumanizer in parts. It does feel very 90s, though. Not a lot of those Dio show tunes vocal hooks.

Fuck Brumpxit its the 2016 Metal and Hard N' Heavy Rock Poll Results Thread (With spotify and bandcamp links)

Weird death metal with saxophone and some kinda exotica-esque instrumental interludes. Track 5 is killer.

http://exocytosis1.bandcamp.com/album/multipotent-progenitor

RIP Team Rock (publishers of Classic Rock, Metal Hammer, and Prog, and hosts of the Golden Gods Awards and the Classic Rock Awards).

lol that paywall had the feel of a dying throe

had no idea it was based in High Blantyre. that sucks

Sad news about Team Rock, but they really looked desperate in the last year. I honestly thought Metal Hammer would hang in there longer than the rest of the metal mags.

I wrote for the US version of Metal Hammer, which existed for about a year in 1999-2000.

anyone got a screengrab of the crowing pro-Brexit article Team Rock did in late June then took down when they got shit for it

today a friend linked me to some cybergrindcore from the future https://psudoku.bandcamp.com/album/deep-space-psudokument

Hey new Flight of Sleipnir album next year:

http://records.eisenton.de/album/skadi

fuck me Mesarthim have released another one TODAY

jfc

is Mesarthim the Elvish word for prolific or something

klingon iirc

tribble

wow the new new mesarthim is incredible

it is 2016's end credits music

New Antaeus man. At first I was like "ahh man, why'd I buy this, it's just blistering, blastering stuff I'm not really in the mood for" and then "Flesh Ritual" started unhinging things a little bit and by "Angels of Despair" I was in luuuv.

There's a 3CD tribute to Summoning just out In Mordor Where The Shadows Are, also featuring (who else than) Mesarthim.

http://www.invisibleoranges.com/overlooked-albums-of-2016-by-dan-lawrence/

Woah I had no idea the Musk Ox guy had made a metal album this year!