what makes metal, metal........

[Dreadbelly]

I understand what Dread is trying to say. I was never a huge metal head but there was definitely a different vibe to the metal of the early 70's than what you hear today. "Heavy Metal" to me will always be bands like Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Iron Butterfly, Judas Priest and even AC/DC. They created the genre and then the hair bands came along and tried to make everything generic. I really don't "get" a lot of the stuff today that is being passed off as metal. Speed Metal? Might as well be some of the techno pop that I can't listen to either. While I still listen to a radio station that plays alternative music (including some modern metal), I will still revert to my 70's punk collections when I'm home alone but that's a whole different debate on what happened to punk over the years.

I think you got it.

Metal did get a start in the 60s though. And like it or not, bands like Sabbath, LZ, BOC, they did define "metal" which was not much more than blues laid out to hard rock riffs. There is a lot of debate among actual metalheads as to what the last metal album really was... Some say it was And Justice for All, others, Appitite for Destruction. After that... The sound just sort of died. Everything went to power ballads.

Oh. And to really hear what that sound is, spend a day or two listening to the sugary pop from the 60s. Incense peppermints and what not. All that happy shiny flowery CRAP that just grinds away on my last nerve. After your brain has been damaged from all of that... Turn the stereo to 11 and turn on War Pigs by Black Sabbath. The doomsday whistle... Grinding riffs. The contrast from the shiny happy times just previous to War Pigs... Here is were words fail. I can't describe it. Or CSNY and the anger in some of their music... Like Ohio. Proto-metal.

Oh... And since he was mentioned... I LOVE ZAPPA. Nanook of the North, don't be a naughty Eskimo.

And don't abuse the sausage patties at St Alphonso's Pancake Breakfast either.

[shane the piper]

the king of kings
primal conrete sledge

[Nanook]

Oh. And to really hear what that sound is, spend a day or two listening to the sugary pop from the 60s. Incense peppermints and what not. All that happy shiny flowery CRAP

Who says that was the 1960s sound. Not in NYC, LA, London or Paris. Early 1960s was still very much folk, jazz and beat and a lot of it wack and quite far from "peppermint". By the mid 1960s there was an explosion of independent art labels out there.. ESP perhaps one of the more significant on the East Coast.. becoming cosmic, mystic and psychedelic. One also saw a growth of garage pressings.. and communal living of art, fashion and music. There was a flourishing scene developing in Munich with bands like Amon Düül and Embryo--- and not only are the genes still around but have not stood still--- and there was Can in Cologne... then home to German television and Karlheinz Stockhausen (Holger Czukay studied with Stockhausen). Heading to France.. From Soft Machine Daevid Allen got stranded in France and so Gong was born. On the other side of the channel back in the UK that scene got more free jazz. Free jazz and anti-commercial bias was the motor. Hey.. in the late 1960s Henry Cow was already touring from their hub in Cambridge. Heading south into Italy the 1960s saw odd mix of performance and music with radical politics. In 1970 Fo published "Morte accidentale di un anarchico"..... Like Amon Düül in Munich or the Warhol's Factory there was "Le Stelle di Mario Schifano" in Rome.. and things got more radical.. La Brigada Rosa and Neo-Fascists merging into pop Italian culture.. Going more south in Greece.. The military took over in 1967 (Chile style with a similar cast of background players) and a counter pop culture took fire.. The 1960s was anything but ...

[bunchdescendant]

I rest my case. The stuff today is not metal. It is decended from metal, no doubt, and some of it is quite good. It is just not metal. Metal began in the 60s (Arguably) gained substance in the 70s, as well as losing its soul with stadium rock, and fizzled out in the 80s. The moment the term "Hair Metal" was coined, the movement died. Completely. Grunge came along and brought back the best of punk and metal from the 70s in hybrid form. And the moment it was lept upon and commercialised, it died to... Right about the same time Kurt had his brains blown out.

Spinal Tap was kind of the nail in the coffin for metal. At that point, self parody was just about all that was left. It had become absurd and bloated. Execs were labeling it and it was coming out in neat little prepackaged apps designed to appeal to various social cliques in clean and tidy formulated for success packages.

This one goes to 11

"Don't touch it! No! don't even look at it!"

LOL! I had a friend that recently relabeled his Fender Twin amp so it had an '11' setting! We played in a garage metal band in the late 70's (The Atomic Monks). It's a good way to lose your hearing!

I have to agree that metal is dead. Long Live Metal!!

***starts thrashing on his Les Paul copy with his amp turned up to 'kill'***

Ray

[cloves]

ok...Dread I need you to be even more specific if you can. I need to know what your criteria for something to be considered metal is.
What is it that makes Deep Purple, Zep, Sabbath or BOC metal.

you said, grinding riffs, doomsday whistle etc....

I think if you listen to some dark norwegian black metal, or some drone, you definately feel a sense of impending doom. In fact, with the tuned down guitars, I dare say that it makes the above mentioned bands sound weak in comparison. It's certainly not my cup of tea, but I can't deny that it's terrifying.

To me, art is truly subjective. While I may not "get it." It doesn't make it any less valid.
I liken it to those trad kilt wearers who say that UK's or AK's aren't kilts. They are decended from trad kilts, but it doesn't make them any less a kilt.
they still have the characterisitcs that define the word kilt.

So if metal is meant to be loud, agressive, bombastist......then I think today's metal is no less metal than that of yester year.

[MadBagpiper]

Ok so far I've seen Iron Butterfy, Black Sabbeth, Deep Purple, Zep., AC/DC and others, but you guys have barely scratched the suface!! You didn't even mention Iron Maiden, the godfathers of metal, along with Slayer, Juddahs Preist, Pantera, Lamb of God!!!! All That Remains, At The Gates, Celtic Frost (don't let the name fool you, they are deff. not celtic metal, however that would be cool.)
Venom, Guns N' Roses, KoRn, DIO!, KISS, Megadeath, Metallica, Motor Head, Ozzy Osbourne, As I Lay Dying, War Saw, Pestilent Chior and I havn't even listed them all!

[Raphael]

I have stopped labelling music for a while. I found that it is almost impossible to label music these days without start an argument. Music labelling a marketing tool for the music industry. Every day, the Record Executives are using it to draw fans to buy what they are selling. A lot of music recording are cross breed from many genre. I just buy what I like these days and without worrying what my friends are going to say.

[LK-13]

listen to what you like.
don't worry about labels or being on the "cutting edge"
labels are not worth the bother.
and the "cutting edge" is soon blunted.
just remember:
LOUD!
I wanna hear it,
LOUD!
RIGHT BETWEEN THE EYES!

[Andrew Breecher]

I have stopped labelling music for a while. I found that it is almost impossible to label music these days without start an argument.

I agree. Most of the music in my iTunes is labeled "Alternative". There's a non-label! I think if it's a little heavier I label it "Rock" - which is really more of a nostalgic label; it includes Metallica, Def Leppard, The Pixies, Meat Loaf, Midnight Oil, and Queen. It's more about what I've "rocked out to" in the past than about what's really rock. I don't even have a "Metal" category.

Maybe it's also because most of the stuff I have that I'd consider metal is on tape, and not on my computer.

Andrew.

[Nick]

Ah, geeze, I was all set to get into a discussion of metalurgical analysis and comparative alloys.