guess it depends what you classify as metal...

what've you tried listening to una?... there be some good leftfield noise-metal stuff... i'm certainly no expert though

Like ? ... Drop names or Ozzy will come around & bite the head off your fav pet !

ok, yeah, it's hard to pigeonhole bands into genres but... let's call it quotemetalunquote

Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Megadeath. I hate all of these bands.

I like; Alexisonfire, System Of A Down, NIN

are these even metal? Is anything metal? Do I hate nothing or everything?

i gotta say I dont get metal either, does absolute nothing for me, except make me pissed off on occasion, like none of those bands you mentioned Una, even the ones you like.

Metallica ugh!

Most music in general is crap. Metal is that bit harder to get into and there does seem to be a greater proportion of crap succesful bands in Metal.

Early Metallica is excellent but they've since gone Spinal Tap. Most of the stuff that is played downstairs in Bruxelles is great

I went to a Dio gig too.

It was pure cringe, death to disco man!

to be honest i think metal is s**te


im aware there are probably one or two good acts amongst the crap but im not bothered going down sucha road

Well, in this day & age, every band needs its own unique label ...

All we need do is look at the magazines covering the genre to see what is considered 'metal' ... One week, its Bon Jovi on the cover, the Next its 'Cradle of Filth'. 2 very different bands, under the one umbrella.

Most music is crap. Simple as.
You like what you like, you don't what you don't.

Have to agree, I think for the most part it is crap except for a few inspired moments from the likes of Led Zepplin, AC/DC and Black Sabbath. I remember a few years ago I used to buy tickets in the Sound Cellar and some of the s**te that they played used to hurt my ears.

But, if you think about it...

A lot of musicians in bands you probably like now would have originally started off learning to play guitar because of old metal bands like Metallica, Guns and Roses, AC/DC etc.. so you at least owe them that! :-) That kind of music may seem very dated now but like everything else it has it's place I suppose!

Strangegravy

I agree with Unarocks. Most metal is cock.

what about bands such as mastodon and isis?... musically speaking, these lads are worthy of note...

...what do you all think of them?

Hi Una, if you hate metal, maybe UnaRocks is a bit a misnomer cause surely metal is the hardest rocking genre of them all ;-)

You raise an interesting topic though. The "Most Metal is crap" can be used against any genre, just sub metal with whatever you like, or don't as the case may be. Everyone, myself included, has made those kind of sweeping generalisations against genres we either don't like, don't really know, or just don't get. Often I think it's the case that what you hear as being representative of the genre *is* actually crap, it's usually the most anodyne, lowest-common-denominator, mainstream, watered-down version of it. I used to think all country was crap cause all I had heard was Garth Brooks and acts like him and it wasn't til I dug a bit deeper that I began to discover that, like most genres, there's a lot more to it.

Defining what belongs to the genre is another issue. Metal as a genre is probably as amorphous as any other: one man's metal is another man's hard rock etc. For example, Black Sabbath may be the archetypal metal band but I don't really think of them as such, I think of them as just being a rock band. And why do Zepplin never get tagged a metal band when they bear a lot of similarites to Sabbath? Equally, I think a good case could be made for calling Soundgarden a metal band; some of their stuff is as heavy as anything called metal......I mean just go listen to Bad Motor Finger.

I take you point though about Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Iron Maiden. None of that stuff does much for me. But Metallica et al are probably the bands most people think of when they think metal, which was my point at the top of the mail.

Actually it's hard to go wrong with some of the early Sabbath stuff, if Ozzy wasn't such a parody of himself at this stage, they might get the respect that Zepplin gets, for my money they're a better band. After Ozzy left it was a different kettle of fish.......Check out the album Black Sabbath, it's really just heavy blues. Another band that springs to mind is My Dying Bridge, it's so over the top that it's almost operatic. They use violins as well as guitars. And they have the kind of light and shake that bands like Slayer lack. I find them hard to take seriously but like them at the same time. There's actually a whole sub genre of metal bands who go in the opposite direction of Slayer et al and play slowly. MDB are one, Cathedral another. (I don't know if Cathedral stood the test of time so well though). I have no idea of the state of contemporary metal as you probably guessed....

A book you should read is Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klostermann. It's very funny as well as taking a serious look at 80's metal. Although what he calls metal is more what I would have called hard rock, Poison, Motley Crue et al. But that's back to hairsplitting genre arguments...

One other thing that I think makes a big difference as to whether you can get into a genre is when you hear it. I still think of metal as being angry teenage music. That's why I can't get this stuff from Limp Biscuit/Blink 182 or anything called Emo, I'm now too old. For a start, I can't understand what exactly Emo is. It just sounds like rock to me. But to someone just getting into music and hearing it for the first time it may be the best music they've ever heard and remain a favorite of their throughout their lifetime.

For me it was the Pixies and Nirvana and the whole grunge era. Actually, when I heard Nirvana first, they were everything I wanted from a metal band, heavy and catchy and powerful. I was kind of surprized when the kids who liked Sonic Youth liked them as well. But to anyone a few years my senior when Nirvana and the Pixies came along first, they probably would have dismissed them as a rehash of what went before, in the same way I do now with Franz Ferdinand or band that sound postpunk. Every generation does that.

Maybe that's the real reason you can't get into metal now, you were too old when you were exposed to it first. And that's ok, you don't have to like every genre.....It's been proven that people tend to get more conservative in what they listen to as they get older. I mean I might listen to a wider variety of bands than when I was a teenager but it's basically still rock. I'll probably never get really heavily into dance, for example, because I never heard it much when I was getting into music first.

Sorry about such a long post..... Any other Cluasers own up to a fondness for metal in their past or present? There goes my indie cred......

Mully put it better (and shorter): Most music is crap, what you like you like.....

yeah, the thing is though, I can listen to almost anything else. I'd just as happily listen to jazz, drum and bass, rock, pop, techno, classical, grunge, indie, house, hip-hop, country, whatever but I just don't like metal at all. It's weird. Maybe I'm programmed not to like it or something, it's very strange.

AC/DC & Guns N' Roses = metal? i thought it was just regular rock music. anyway i only bought 'Back In Black' recently. It's great. I've had 'If You Want Blood' for years but never got round to buying anything else. Next up some more Bon Scott albums i think.

You don't like it. No biggie.

maiden rock!

Nope, sure metal has the image down, but musically, nah. I mean theres often a lot of shouting and lyrics about allegiances to the Dark Lord and death and destruction and stuff, but underneath it all, metal is actually a fairly disciplined genre, much of it has more in common with Bach than Bo Diddley (who IS rock and roll). It doesn't usually have that unhinged visceral rawness that early rock and roll or Garage or Punk rock does. There's an underlying nerdiness to a lot of metal too that's often ignored, lyrics about hobbits and tolkienesque stuff, or Iron Maidens referencing of actual historic events (e.g. Alexander the Great).

I find with metal, it's only a genre I can dip into, pull a couple of great tracks by a band, but leave a lot of dross of the same bands back catalogue behind. It depends what you class as metal? I love a lot of stuff that could be either classed as either riff-centric Hard Rock or Metal depending on your perspective, Hendrix, Deep Purple etc. There are a lot of Bands that while not entirely metal themselves have taken elements of it and incorporated it to good effect, like Smashing Pumpkins or Sonic Youth.

The Pumpkins owe a bit debt to metal alright. Have to agree with you on that and your other points Binokular. It really comes down to individual bands, if you like them, you like them, whether they're metal or not.

Is it too sexist to suggest that metal is more boy music than girl music, or perhaps that's just stating the obvious? Could be another reason you can't get into it, Una. But I wouldn't worry, you're under no obligation to like every genre.....

I used to listhen to alot of metal when i was younger and i think it gets to the stage where you kinda become a metal geek like a sci fi fan or a horror fan , alot of sci fi fans will watch anything thats sci fi ! Even if its crap because there fans of the genre . The only bands i would listhen to from those days are AC/DC and the Deftones .

I tried the same myself but to no avail. A mate in college was into metallica and the like. I got him to put some of his collection on my MP3 when I got it and most of it is long gone at this stage. I've since given up trying to understand metal

I once saw a documentary on the beach boys which said that about 5% of any musical movement adds something to the progression of music and the rest just hangs off the coat tails. I whole heartedly agree with that. I just have to find that 5% of metal bands

Metal makes your ears bleed. Its deadly !

When I was younger I bought Ace of Bass's album when all my friends were listening to Deicide, Sepultura, Metallica etc.. that takes guts.. it also takes s**t taste in music.. but also guts none the less! But sure we all have our musical skeletons in our closets!

Don't we..?

*nervous*

that also took guts!

PQ

I liked that single "I saw the Sign".

Ah I'm sure everyone's got at least one CD in their collection that they hide when they invite friends over! ;-) One of my friends, into Helmet, QOTSA and similar heavy-ish music had a Spice Girls CD stuck in the middle of his collection, and wasn't ashamed of it either!

To each their own I say..

most metal is terrible granted, and i think metal is in the unusual position that when it's awful it's really shockingly bad, it plumbs depths of uselessness not often seen in other genres.

however, the stuff that's great, mastodon, meshuggah, nile (and try reign in blood by slayer again!) is absolutely astonishing.

meshuggah in particular have been an obsession around these parts. incredibly visceral and brilliant music, doing more to advance the potential of guitar based rock music than almost anything out there. if you can stomach it check out their mini ep, "I", it's one track, 21 minutes of the heaviest sludgecore twisted with beefheartian dynamics and just leaves me breathless. "catch 33" is similarly fantastic.

things like zeppelin and qotsa or NIN definitely ain't metal either

maybe you need to try something to bridge genres and ease your way into it. check out either 'pink' or 'heavy rocks' by boris from japan

Or ... not strictly metal but loud and sunburned is Comets on Fire, Avatar.

that is indeed excellent... but is not metal...

...for those wishing to try out something different (as per dudley's post), both mastodon and isis are playing dublin in the coming days / weeks...

All music is crap if you don't get it. Simple as. The problem with metal, I've found, is that there is a much greater proportion of s**tty one-song, instantly forgettable bands than in most genres, so it's harder to find the gold.

uh oh...I usually dont join in the metal discussions in person cos it wrecks my head that some of my mates will chatter with apparent authority on metal when I know the heaviest thing they have is a beer belly and an Alice in Chains CD collection, but here I can walk away! )
I listen to so many types of music cos of a music mad family upbringing and getting involved with alchohol at much too young an age. Two genres get a roasting. Jazz gets a tough going over from alot of people (Homer Simpson's legend of a line) but by far metal gets the hardest time.
Maybe thats why I like it, you never get many people that are on the margins at a good metal gig. Best audiences to be a part of by a long long long shot. Never any hassles or attitudes from fools, nor is there too many feckin camera phones (seriously like I'm gonna start a campaign or something so many nights ruined cos of some eejit taking terrible videos of a fantastic gig).
I'd recommend that anyone with a passing interest go to a GOOD metal gig...you may want to hunt me down for ruining an evening or you may have the best buzz in ages...Slayer live is something unreal. (whether they are you're cup of tea or not, they have been consistent in their recording career also) Especially in a cool venue like the Ambassador or the upcoming show in Cork. The energy is mad. Very intense and angry. Thats all you get but you get alot of it! And yeah there is something adolescent about metal, musicians tend to be competitive about unusual aspects of playing (e.g. technique over melody) but fukit, its better than a folk singer desperatly tryin to seem world weary in his/her early twenties! (insert your chosen victim here! ))
However if you take for example Slayer and S.O.A.D., they spend most of their last albums attacking the right wing of American politics, relegion being used justify horrible acts and what they see in general that they dont like about their country (remembering that those who love a country will sometimes also give out about its faults, per John Lyndon's comments about God Save the Queen)...so dungeons and dragons are no longer a major lyircal theme, to be fair, in most metal. (Btw...dont some Flaming Lips songs concentrate on robots and mad scientists?!P) I'm not slaggin FL, just that thing about throwing glasses in stone houses or something)

Remind me, I can only think of Jimmy Rabbits in The Commitments about Jazz being musical w**king. Glorious.

If you like mogwai and explosions in the sky, it wouldn't take an emormous musical leap to buy a pelican, red sparowes, isis or jesu cd. you would then be listening to metal.

You could try
Meantime by Helmet or
Angel Dust by Faith no More or
..And the Circus Leaves Town by Kyuss
though not strictly leather jacket and drainpipe metal, it's still at least 50% metal.

dismissing all metal as rubbish is the same as the lads on metalireland who dismiss anything vaguely 'indie'. And if you don't like War Pigs by Black Sabbath then you don't like music.

I think I love you, drummer pete.

Heavy bands that rule:

Mastodon
Isis/Pelican/Red Sparowes/Jesu (I think of these guys as post-metal, Jesu actually sounds rather shoegazery)
Converge (one of the most brilliant bands making music today)
Opeth (one of the most brilliant bands making music today)

I'm much more into doom metal than I am what passes for typical metal today, though. Yob/Middian, Electric Wizard, High on Fire, etc.

I also enjoy metal much more live than I do on iTunes.

Heehee.. the number of views for this post was just at 666 there..


well I thought it was funny..

...so... eh...sue....what are you doing this saturday night?

I'll be watching Spinal Tap with my husband. Thanks for asking though!

Speaking of Homer i do remember him being a member of the Trade Union of "Nuclear Technicians, Pastry Chefs and Jazz Musicians."