"Metalheads"

[ghelded_kultz]

There aren't many metal songs I genuinely enjoy listening to. Shocking concept, isn't it?

Ok, it's a comment like that really irks the Metal head in me. It's not that fact that you say you don't like Metal, it's the fact you are sarcastic about it when it's clear from your other posts that you really know nothing about Metal (indeed it sounds like you think Metal is essentially Punk from said posts), but you are talking as if you had a complete knowledge about what Metal is. It's your appearance of ignorant cockingness that pisses me off. I would have been fine if you left it at "There aren't many metal songs I genuinely enjoy listening to".

Likewise, cocky Metalheads who are ignorant of other musical genres like this guy, assuming he isn't a troll, piss me off as well. Indeed, looking at that subject, it's annoying when Metalheads refuse to admit the influence of "ugly, simplistic Punk", on their "beautiful, complex Metal".

-Soft D. String DeHooves

Or I could be making a sarcastic joke aimed at people (ei: commenter screencapped) who get uppity about people disliking metal. What's this about being cocky? If I was cocky about disliking metal, I'd be cocky with calling EDM the 'god-music' or whatever you'd wanna call EDM if you were a little too passionate about it. It's just a bit of sarcasm, don't read into it.

Ok, imagine I wrote something about saying I didn't like ponies, ended it with "Shocking concept, isn't it?" and made it clear you haven't actually given the show a reasonable shot, maybe even it's clear I only think of MLP as being the G3.5 stuff. Wouldn't you be a little bit annoyed?

-Soft D. String DeHooves

[CaptainFluffatun]

In response to some of the metal hate in this thread, I'd like to call attention to this symphonic metal masterpiece. I'm completely serious. This is one of the best songs I've literally ever heard. Generalizing metal as "RAUGH RAUGH *indecipherable growling*" is unfair to the actually great metal out there. Sure, this isn't the "heaviest" of metal songs, but maybe that's just my style.



Crank up the quality on this video because it matters yo

[BlackElectric]

Don't tell the wrong people I said this, but imo edm is more hardcore than metal could ever be

There are some things that are just better kept to yourself.

[Foxtrot89]

I actually find it funny when one narrow minded person sends other narrow minded people on a rage. "Fuck EDM, this would be so much better as metal which requires talent." "Fuck you, bro, metal doesn't take talent, EDM does."

Meanwhile, people like me sit on the side, enjoying the show and appreciating good music as good music regardless of genre.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

Or I could be making a sarcastic joke aimed at people (ei: commenter screencapped) who get uppity about people disliking metal. What's this about being cocky? If I was cocky about disliking metal, I'd be cocky with calling EDM the 'god-music' or whatever you'd wanna call EDM if you were a little too passionate about it. It's just a bit of sarcasm, don't read into it.

Ok, imagine I wrote something about saying I didn't like ponies, ended it with "Shocking concept, isn't it?" and made it clear you haven't actually given the show a reasonable shot, maybe even it's clear I only think of MLP as being the G3.5 stuff. Wouldn't you be a little bit annoyed?

-Soft D. String DeHooves[/quote]

I never said I didn't give it a chance. Those are your words, not mine. I did actually have a decent browse on youtube when some friends were explaining metal to me, and I didn't like much of what I found. And for future reference, if I make a comment you dislike (face it, it'll happen at some point), just ignore it, please.

[ghelded_kultz]

In response to some of the metal hate in this thread, I'd like to call attention to this symphonic metal masterpiece. I'm completely serious. This is one of the best songs I've literally ever heard. Generalizing metal as "RAUGH RAUGH *indecipherable growling*" is unfair to the actually great metal out there. Sure, this isn't the "heaviest" of metal songs, but maybe that's just my style.



Crank up the quality on this video because it matters yo

This was actually the third album I bought. It's a good song, but it does go on for awhile. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I've heard longer songs that appear to go by faster.

I never said I didn't give it a chance. Those are your words, not mine. I did actually have a decent browse on youtube when some friends were explaining metal to me, and I didn't like much of what I found. And for future reference, if I make a comment you dislike (face it, it'll happen at some point), just ignore it, please.

I never said you didn't give it a chance, I said it appears you didn't give it balanced. For as far as I can tell you only looked at Extreme Metal from what you've said (Moshing and Screaming both came from Hardcore Punk, which isn't even Metal, and are only really common in Extreme Metal). With the analogy I gave looking into Metal by only looking at Extreme Metal is like claiming to have watched MLP when you have only seen G3.5 (I'm not saying Extreme Metal is bad, but it does have a more openly off putting effect). Have you at least tried to listen to the Blind Guardian song in this thread?

-Soft D. String DeHooves

[bartekko]

Don't tell the wrong people I said this, but imo edm is more hardcore than metal could ever be

There are some things that are just better kept to yourself.

There are some things that are just plain stupid and do not add anything to the conversation.
Now don't get me wrong. I produce a wide range of EDM and dabbled in metal, but to say that one is more hardcore than the other, or even worse making it a selling point is not the way to go as there are EDM genres that are focused on not being hard (chillout, often trip hop) and hard doesn't need to reflect quality.
Now the second part, you see, many of your posts only reflect what others have already said, only with worse grammar. I am not a saint, and you should not look at any of my posts until december 2011 because... well they were like your posts now. Please, if you do not have anything useful to add to conversation, shut up, dark shadow.
here's to not writing anything on mlr for next month
who the fuck adds X-es to their name to sound cool anyway

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

I never said you didn't give it a chance, I said it appears you didn't give it balanced. For as far as I can tell you only looked at Extreme Metal from what you've said (Moshing and Screaming both came from Hardcore Punk, which isn't even Metal, and are only really common in Extreme Metal). With the analogy I gave looking into Metal by only looking at Extreme Metal is like claiming to have watched MLP when you have only seen G3.5 (I'm not saying Extreme Metal is bad, but it does have a more openly off putting effect). Have you at least tried to listen to the Blind Guardian song in this thread?

I looked around a few different sorts, screamy loud stuff to calm emotion-driven stuff. When I say I dislike something, I mean I dislike it because I had a look at what it had to offer and didn't like it. I'm not some idiot who looks at one song of a particular genre and deems that genre to be all like that one song.

And no, I didn't bother to listen to that song. Because nothing is forcing me to. And I dislike metal as a whole. Not just the one type. As an entire entity, I dislike it. Am I clear enough now? I'm getting really sick of explaining myself.

EDIT: while I will not apologize for my opinions, I'm sorry that this was dragged out for as long as it was.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

It just doesn't really resonate with me, Kyoga. With a lot of the lyrical metal, I get the message they're trying to get across, but I kind of don't care about said message. And the instrumental ones still don't really interest me. And that's not from a standpoint of someone who really likes EDM, I still listen to a lot of band format stuff, it's just metal and country that bother me.

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

Don't tell the wrong people I said this, but imo edm is more hardcore than metal could ever be

There are some things that are just better kept to yourself.

There are some things that are just plain stupid and do not add anything to the conversation.
Now don't get me wrong. I produce a wide range of EDM and dabbled in metal, but to say that one is more hardcore than the other, or even worse making it a selling point is not the way to go as there are EDM genres that are focused on not being hard (chillout, often trip hop) and hard doesn't need to reflect quality.
Now the second part, you see, many of your posts only reflect what others have already said, only with worse grammar. I am not a saint, and you should not look at any of my posts until december 2011 because... well they were like your posts now. Please, if you do not have anything useful to add to conversation, shut up, dark shadow.
here's to not writing anything on mlr for next month
who the fuck adds X-es to their name to sound cool anyway

Note the OP. Note how it says nothing but "Discuss". Note how I said IMO before my statement. Note how the comment in the OP called EDM fans "pussies". Note how I did not relate hard to quality. Note your assumption about my name.

Then of course there's the fact that you assume all of my posts are unhelpful. Did you go to my profile, hit "search this user's posts" and check all of my posts? Or are you just saying this off of the last 3 posts you saw by me, recent or not?

Also, I'm pretty damn confused on what the HELL metal is defined as. Every time I call a song "metal", I get yelled at by metal fans that it's not. So can a DECENT metal fan PLEASE just show me one or two examples of a metal song, so that I may not be "confused" anymore saying that Sonata Arctica or Asking Alexandria are metal.

[ghelded_kultz]

Not a massive metal fan but here it goes:

First, a brief and generalized history:
Metal is a subgenre of rock stemming (mostly) from hard rock and psychedelic. In the mid to late 70s metal, as punk music started to get big, metal started getting faster and more aggressive, turning into the various extreme metal genres. Around the same time Power metal, Progressive metal and other like metals started to form. One of the most important movements in this time period was hair metal (also known as glam metal). Think 80s rock.
In the 90s crossover thrash, a form of thrash metal with more hardcore punk influence. As breakdowns and extreme metal influence got more prominent this became metalcore. Around the same time, alternative metal, a very ill-defined subgenre that often takes progressive and grunge influences (among other things) started turning into the hip-hop influence nu-metal. Nu-metal, Metalcore and glam metal are what most normal (no offense to anybody, I mean this as in not metal knowledgeable) people associate with metal (along with black metal, but that is a whole nother story).

So how do you identify metal? There are four main cases (that I can think) when identifying metal can be hard
1) Old metal (Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC, that sort of stuff) vs Hard Rock
2) Metalcore vs Post-hardcore
3) Nu metal/alternative metal vs Post-grunge/Rap rock and other fairly sucky genres.
4) Grindcore vs Crust Punk/Hardcore (Or if you consider Grindcore punk, than vs Death metal)

The difference between old metal and hard rock is pretty hard, but has something to do with atmosphere (darker, heavier and the like), less blues influence (but not necessarily), and double-bass drumming. There might be some other things too.

Metalcore and Post-hardcore are hard to tell apart because metalcore has heavy post-hardcore influences and many metalcore musicians came out of various hardcore scenes. This is where Asking Alexandria (who are metal) falls into. Metalcore is metal because of it's drumming, vocal styles and possibly guitar playing techniques. But there is a sort of contium from metal influenced post-hardcore to hardcore influence metalcore. It's quite confusing. The reason (some) metalheads refuse to admit metalcore is metal is because 1) It's popular, 2) Breakdowns, 3) Punk influences, 4) It's boring. These are all terrible reasons, especially 3 because most sacred cow metal (read thrash) is heavily influenced by hardcore punk.

Nu-metal and post-grunge it often depends on the song, but general nu-metal is down-tuned more, has harsher vocals and more electronic influences. This is not always the case though. For most borderline examples, think Linkin Park.

Case 4 really isn't worth looking at. I can barely tell the difference from some grind and some crust and some grind and some death. It's just too messy.

So to make a long story short: Metal is a subgenre of rock that is generally faster, heavier, more aggressive and darker than other forms of rock music. Punk and metal are probably the two major (meaning with lots of subgenres) genres that get mixed up the most since they are so incestuous.

PS- Sonata Arctica is also metal (as far as I am aware). It sounds like you know some very narrow-minded fans.

Somewhat crappy Examples:
Early Heavy Metal


Thrash Metal


Metalcore


Nu Metal


Not Metal (Post Hardcore)


Not Metal- Post Grunge


Someone with more knowledge should correct me and add onto what I have right.


Edit: I forgot to mention screamo. Screamo is not metal but many people use the term to refer to death or nu metal (sometimes metalcore too). Screamo is more introspective/agnsty post-hardcore that is heavier and uses screamed vocals.
Also, punk pretty much fits with my guide to identifying metal as it is also fast, heavy, and aggressive. But it sounds different enough that for the most part the difference should be fairly obvious (at least with some practice).

[Raddons]

I don't understand the hate on Metal, though.

I do. To people who don't see the art in it, it's just loud and obnoxious noises to them. That and the often use of Satanic imagery, it's a lot to take in. And that's okay, they don't have to. It most certainty does not appeal to everyone.

edit: I've been awake for longer than 24 hours let me rephrase this

I don't understand a HATE for it either. I don't understand a hate for any genre at all. If you don't like it just shut the hell up and don't talk about it (ie practically everyone in this thread i mean seriously why the hell is this even a thread). I understand people not liking it, but seriously if you're going to down a genre AND it's listeners don't even bother talking to me ever.

seriously you're a big poop head

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

Thanks a TON Kultz. That's really helpful. Especially the part about Screamo at the bottom. I guess people (Including myself) don't really realize how broad of a genre metal is.

[CaptainFluffatun]

I never said I didn't give it a chance.

Have you at least tried to listen to the Blind Guardian song in this thread?

No, I didn't bother to listen to that song.

[BlackElectric]

First, a brief and generalized history:
Metal is a subgenre of rock stemming (mostly) from hard rock and psychedelic.

Metal actually came from the blues and psychedelic. Hard rock is a sub genre of metal.

[topitmunkeydog]

Don't say mean stuff about Sonata Arctica. They may be wimpy metal but that doesn't mean it's not metal. Besides I am pretty wimpy myself so that is why I like their music so.

[Foxtrot89]

I'm willing to bet everything you've called metal is some form of metal. People, in the metal genres and EDM genres like to bitch and moan about specific sub genres. I get just as annoyed when people go on about "this isn't tech house, it's post erotic mega bum fuck house... Noob."

I never understood why people piss and moan about genres. If its got heavily distorted guitars, there's a 9 in 10 chance that it falls into metal of some sort, regardless of what subgenre it's a subgenre of.

That said, I totally understand why people dislike metal, same as I understand that people don't like dubstep or electro house. The one thing I hate is people who piss and moan about genres and people who actively talk shit about a genre they don't like and as if their genre is any better than the others. I don't like bluegrass, but why compare that apple to my oranges? It's music, "better" is subjective.

[XXDarkShadow79XX]

Don't say mean stuff about Sonata Arctica. They may be wimpy metal but that doesn't mean it's not metal. Besides I am pretty wimpy myself so that is why I like their music so. :)

Whoa, no one was talking trash about SA! They're epic!

[ghelded_kultz]

Thanks a TON Kultz. That's really helpful. Especially the part about Screamo at the bottom. I guess people (Including myself) don't really realize how broad of a genre metal is.

Your welcome. I love doing this sort of thing and am kind of sad I only got to scratch the surface of metal subgenres. There are entire branches I barely touched on and so much more to discuss about what I did mention.

I'm also sad that no one has screen capped an idiot punk brony being an idiot so that we can make fun of him and his subculture. I guess there just aren't enough punk bronies

Metal actually came from the blues and psychedelic. Hard rock is a sub genre of metal.

I'll give you this, but the way I see it hard rock and metal are more of sister genres than anything else. At the very least hard rock isn't a sub genre of metal.

If its got heavily distorted guitars, there's a 9 in 10 chance that it falls into metal of some sort

That's a little over-generalized. Most punk and quite a bit of alt use heavily distorted guitars too and they are for the most part more ingrained in public consciousness than metal. So while heavy distortion increases the chance of being metal, it shouldn't be used as the determining factor unless you have other things to show it isn't punk or alt.

post erotic mega bum fuck house

I always preferred pre-erotic mega bum fuck house. Post embfh is such a duller and less inspired genre.

[Mr. Bigglesworth]

No, I didn't bother to listen to that song.

I'm sorry for not being terribly enthused to listen to something in a genre I dislike when I have no obligation or need to. Now please leave well enough alone.

[Foxtrot89]

That's a little over-generalized. Most punk and quite a bit of alt use heavily distorted guitars too and they are for the most part more ingrained in public consciousness than metal. So while heavy distortion increases the chance of being metal, it shouldn't be used as the determining factor unless you have other things to show it isn't punk or alt.

This is actually why I said it's a 9 in 10 chance. That, admittedly made up, statistic might be a bit slanted, but I think it's fair to say that a good deal of the time when somebody says "this is metal" it's probably some form of metal, even if it's a sub genre of a sub genre of a sub genre.

Your average person would never mistake alt or punk for metal. (Perhaps this is giving too much credit to the average internet dweller, though.)

[ghelded_kultz]

This is actually why I said it's a 9 in 10 chance. That, admittedly made up, statistic might be a bit slanted, but I think it's fair to say that a good deal of the time when somebody says "this is metal" it's probably some form of metal, even if it's a sub genre of a sub genre of a sub genre.

Your average person would never mistake alt or punk for metal. (Perhaps this is giving too much credit to the average internet dweller, though.)

Okay, this works. And I know the average person would never mistake alt or punk for metal (except at the cases where it gets blurry), just being a stats-ass here. And yes when people say this is metal, it generally is metal. Anyway this inspired a new, semi-related prompt.

How do you articulate the difference between punk and metal to people who aren't familiar with either? (and no, I do not have any trouble telling the difference. Just explaining it to other people) They are both fast (for the most part), aggressive, and angry sounding, etc, but the difference sounds so obvious. Does have something to do with punk being more upbeat or something?

[ghelded_kultz]

I'm willing to bet everything you've called metal is some form of metal. People, in the metal genres and EDM genres like to bitch and moan about specific sub genres. I get just as annoyed when people go on about "this isn't tech house, it's post erotic mega bum fuck house... Noob."

I never understood why people piss and moan about genres. If its got heavily distorted guitars, there's a 9 in 10 chance that it falls into metal of some sort, regardless of what subgenre it's a subgenre of.

That said, I totally understand why people dislike metal, same as I understand that people don't like dubstep or electro house. The one thing I hate is people who piss and moan about genres and people who actively talk shit about a genre they don't like and as if their genre is any better than the others. I don't like bluegrass, but why compare that apple to my oranges? It's music, "better" is subjective.

Ok, let met show you something:

This IS a Metal song:


However it is also a softer ballad.

This is NOT a Metal song:



It is Noise Rock, which is even more distorted than Metal, but definitely isn't Metal. The same goes for Hardcore Punk.

As I'm the resident Metal fan in Ghelded Kultz I'll expand to what "Matt", the other Kultz, said. First, keep in mind I am no expert, I'm just basing this on various discussions I've read in the past comparing Metal to other Rock genres, and what I think I found from personal experience. I am also not an expert in musical theory, so I might be misusing some terms. The following is looking at a lot more technical differences between Metal and other Rock genres, and for the most part should only be taken in to consideration if you are in severe doubt. That being said, let's begin.

It is correct that Metal is summed up as being faster, darker, and more agressive than other Rock, and that is usually enough to identify it, but there is also some subtler differences in the composition between it and other Rock genres. Generally, the best way to figure out the difference is by contrasting Traditional Heavy Metal with Hard Rock. As mentioned before, one of the biggest differences between Hard Rock and Heavy Metal is the drumming. Besides just the double bass pedal, one of the biggest differences is the rhythm. Hard Rock follows a very conventional Rock and Blues rhythm, I think it's 1-2-1-2, while Metal is a bit more atypical, often based around 1-1-1-1 and also doing weird things with the rhythm. Metal can have a 1-2-1-2 rhythm, but I've heard Hard Rock cannot.

Also, another big difference is the function of the guitar. In Hard Rock the guitar mainly plays chords and follows the vocal lead. In Heavy Metal the guitar plays riffs that are based in more complex melodies, not chords, and it's melody is independent of the vocals. Finally, I'm pretty sure most Hard Rock is in a Major Key while most Heavy Metal is in a minor key. I don't know if that's true, but it makes sense. Metal is usually regarded as being more complex than Hard Rock.

Finally, if you decide to not just look at things musically, Heavy Metal can be differentiated from Hard Rock by things such as lyrical themes, imagery, and fanbase. Genrally that can be summed up by saying Hard Rock has more of a Party Hard, Cock Rock mood, while Metal has a darker mood. Hair Metal is a notable exception to that role.

Differentiating Punk and Metal is a bit different than differentiating Hard Rock and Metal, it's sounds very different from Hard Rock/Heavy Metal, which sound a lot closer to each other in comparison, but still has distortion and agression and stuff, and describing the difference is harder than it should be. I think it can be best summed up by saying Punk is more agressive, rougher, less dark, and a lot simpler at it's core, but of course it's a little bit more complicated that. Like Hard Rock, Punk is mainly based around Chord Progressions while Metal is more Modal, but Hardcore Punk is more like Metal in that it's more extreme than Hard Rock. However, there has been a ton of incest between Punk and Metal so that it's gotten harder to differentiate them, and now it seems like the easiest way to tell them a part is to try to see if it sticks to Punk drum beats like the D-Beat. (Ironically enough, while the Blast Beat is associated with Metal it actually emerged as a devolution of the D-Beat (and even more ironically it was first found in Jazz in completely different evolutionary path))

For the most part the difference between Noise Rock and Metal is like the difference between Punk and Metal, but Noise Rock is a lot more experimental than Punk is.

Now to explain "Soft Metal" (see all those power ballads, albums like Halford III, and bands like Sonata Artica). For the most part I think a "Soft Metal" song would be softer sounding than most Hard Rock songs, but and for some reason still get labled as being a Metal song. I think the big thing is that despite being softer they still came out of the Metal scene. I think there is two main explanations These can be first be explained by saying that it takes compositional elements of Heavy Metal more than other Rock genres. For example, looking at musical textures the heaviest of Classic Music sounds a little like average intensity Metal, especially when compared to most Popular Music, and the softest of Metal sounds a little like average intensity Classical music, and the same can not be said for all Rock genres. The same goes with Prog, but there are still distinct compositional differences between "Soft Metal" and Prog. The other thing might simply be that these 'Soft Metal' songs were created by a Metal band.

But in the end, Metal is the most widespread of the heavily distorted Rock as Noise Rock was never popular and all the popular Punk offshoots either got less distorted or fused with Metal, so yes, 9/10 something with heavily distorted guitars will be some sort of Metal. Now, remember, genres are mutable, so some people will classify things differently, not everything in a genre will fit the traits of said genre perfectly, and the genre consensus of what a genre means changes over time. With the current Metal scene the old difference between Hard Rock and Heavy Metal is a lot less clear, so it can be argued that retrospectively Hard Rock is a subgenre of Heavy Metal as well as more traditional Rock, and on the other side while the term Heavy Metal was originally used to refer to Led Zeppelin most people now consider them Hard Rock and not Heavy Metal, at least on the most part. Anyway, music is a spectrum, some things will lie on the cusps between genres. It's really not that important where these bands fall, genre does not determine if a song is "good" or not, but people will continue fighting over their placement anyway.

-Soft D. String DeHooves

EDIT: "Matt" has another post right before this one, on the last page. I guess this is really more of an extension of that post than it is a reply to the quoted post.

EDIT 2: Ok, those weren't the two best examples I could have gave in the videos, I didn't actually have a chance to listen to them recently before posting them, but I hope you still get the idea.

[topitmunkeydog]

The way I always recognized metal music was from the complex classical-like guitar arrangements and tremolo picking or whatever. I don't play guitar so I can't say I know what the names of these things are but I can definitely tell. Most of what I think has already been said so I won't reiterate anything.

[Foxtrot89]

There are definitely other defining factors, and distorted guitars =/= metal. The only point I was trying to make is that people get pissy about genres too easily, when 90% of the time you call something metal it probably is to some extent. People, namely on youtube/the internet just expect metal, at least these days, to be ultra fast palm muted low tuned nonsense when that's just the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot of insanely cheesy metal out there. I consider myself a metalhead (among other things) but I'll be the first to admit that there's some really nice/pretty songs, and there's a whole boat load of cheesy stupid garbage. Haha!

Still, a fun read.