Modern Metal makes me laugh...

Plenty of good modern metal if you know where to look. Nightwish, Dream Theater, Eternal Champion, Symphony X....

But if a band sounds like this, they should really drop music and take up gardening.


their instruments are all wet
 
Perhaps the new music that we hear as we grow older doesn't impact us as much as the music that we listened when we were younger. No matter what I listen now (I am 53) it doesn't touch me like when I listened for the first time the early Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, UFO, Scorpions, Uriah Heep, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Dio, Judas Priest, Saxon, Helloween, etc.


And also the old Prog Rock: Pink Floyd, Genesis (w. Gabriel), Camel, King Crimson, Yes, Rush, Jethro Tull, ELP... And at the 90's the Neo-Prog: Flower Kings, Marillion, IQ, Pendragon...

There is definitely an emotional component to it. First time I heard Iron Maiden, hanging out after school with friends when one of them showed up with the album. My real intro to Deep Purple was from a mix tape from a girl spent time with. Van Halen was hanging with my stoner friends on the smoking court in highschool. Ozzy's first album, drinking with friends in a field on a hot summer night. All really vivid memories of good times.

First time I heard Green Carnation's epic "Light of Day, Day of Darkness"? Who knows. Great album, but there isn't much I associate with it. Although I can place the first time I heard some modern metal bands, it would be something like, I was sitting at my desk at work, or maybe at a concert and heard it on the house music beforehand.
 
American metal has been a cesspool of mediocrity for years now. Anything worth listening to mostly comes out of Europe these days.

Revocation have been a favorite of mine for years now, putting out one great record after another.
Maybe give them a try.
 
My first contact with Metallica was « Fight Fire with Fire », sure that was something to remember !

I tend to think that metal is now a music for old teens....In the 80´s, the public was less than 20 years old. Now, metalheads average 40.

My kids are born in metal music but do not listen to it. They say that it’s a music for old people....

I’m listening to the last Periphery while writing this post.
 
My kids are born in metal music but do not listen to it. They say that it’s a music for old people....

I've got two boys, both with significant music talent. The more musically inclined one (who writes and produces amazing instrumental stuff on his computer) just rolls his eyes. The other (who is rapidly learning drums) digs it, but prefers electronic music most of the time.
 
Perhaps the new music that we hear as we grow older doesn't impact us as much as the music that we listened when we were younger. No matter what I listen now (I am 53) it doesn't touch me like when I listened for the first time the early Deep Purple, Rainbow, Whitesnake, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, UFO, Scorpions, Uriah Heep, Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Dio, Judas Priest, Saxon, Helloween, etc.


And also the old Prog Rock: Pink Floyd, Genesis (w. Gabriel), Camel, King Crimson, Yes, Rush, Jethro Tull, ELP... And at the 90's the Neo-Prog: Flower Kings, Marillion, IQ, Pendragon...

True, we are formed musically in our youth, when we are more open to new things and find our new identity. Keith Richards said that you spend half your life looking for the perfect riff, and the other half of your life constantly rehashing that riff. In that sense we do try to find what we liked in our youth and lament we can no longer find something similar. And then declare all modern music as shite.

The way I see it the problem with metal is that it tries too hard to become more extreme with every generation. 70's metal was so hard and edgy critics hated it from the get go, but compared with a few generations later, like in the 90's its tame already. Every generation tries to take it to the next level. The downtuning craze has now led to 7, 8 and 9 stringed guitars. Hair metal guys looked like a bunch of sissies? (rightfully so) Let's go bald instead! Some guys get tats? Lets cover ourselves from head to toes in tats! Hair metal guys, trash and previous generation sang like a bunch of choir boys? Bring in the cookie monster vocals.

But in the end its still the same it has ever been. Electrified blues based rock played at high volume with ever increasing intensity. It's been modified with some dissonant scales and ever crazy rhythmic insanities, but I can still put on a 70's Black Sabbath album and still hear that all the elements of metal as we know it now were there already. Metal needs a shakeup, not an ever more extreme and brutal sound.

Am I a product of my time preferring on the music of my youth? I confess I do like it still. But at age 50 I am not ossified still. I avoid Back to the (insert past decade of choice) parties like the proverbial plague. Whenever I am exposed to new music I still like new stuff. I've grown to like the stuff I have to use as a zumba instructor, and that's basically latin pop music. Maybe that's what metal should be doing. Instead of rehashing Black Sabbath we should pilfer reggaeton instead. Create metalton or something. Its not like the electronic synths that I hear could not be replaced by crushing metal guitars. Sepultura tried to mix in some latin elements into their sound in the 90's, who knows where it could have gone if they hadn't had a fall out?



The moment I heard the cookie monster vocals I immediately clicked stop. I had my doubts as soon as I saw the singer covered from heads to toes in tattoos, but the moment he screamed it was game over. Too much cliché, and not of the good tight in spandex kind.
 
Agree, I would think the future or metal is more interesting than gargling vocals, tattoos and same-old boring guitar cliche licks.

Darn, should I open up Logic and try something out instead of complaining :).

I wasn't bitching. I was looking for new tunes to check out. :)

Still, point taken.
 
It’s been studied and proven the your musical preferences are set at/by around age 14.

Anyway if you’re looking for new shit, the new Periphery album dropped yesterday and it’s absolutely dripping with hot, wet, sticky Axe-FX II and III action.
 
I'm game. What's come out in the last five years or so with melodic vocals (no cookie monster/Drano gargling vocals, please).

Some fun bands, IMHO, that have released albums in the last five years (not debuted in that time), are Sabaton, and Powerwolf. Both have a gimmick, but their shows are a good time. Also in the power metal arena are bands like Avantasia, that release albums regularly, and I think most of them are pretty solid. For pure power metal cheese, Gloryhammer and Alestorm.

For melodic prog metal, Seventh Wonder is pretty good. Same singer on the last couple of Kamelot albums.


This thread is by the guy that organizes the progpowerusa festival in Atlanta every year. It's his top 50 for 2018. I wouldn't agree with all of it, but if you can't find anything on this list that you like, then I don't know.

http://www.ultimatemetal.com/forum/threads/top-50-albums-of-2018.1385599/
 
...The moment I heard the cookie monster vocals I immediately clicked stop. I had my doubts as soon as I saw
the singer covered from heads to toes in tattoos, but the moment he screamed it was game over. Too much cliché, and not of the good tight in spandex kind.

Pretty much the same reaction I had. I want to hear vocal melody, not growling. And while I can appreciate the technical difficulty in playing drums and guitars with rapid-fire 1/128 notes at 160 bpm, that sounds like a race to me, not music. But I'm old, and that music wasn't intended to appeal to my demographic. And I suspect most of the people it does appeal to would think the music I like is pure crap.
 
Metal turned into boy bands with fancy haircuts and detuned baritone guitars. Basically a pop production, loaded with samples, sampled drums, all guitars surgically cut. The structures of the songs are all the same: ambient guitar intro coming from the distance, percussive riff A, percussive riff B, sweet singing, breakdown A, sweet singing, breakdown B. It's like listening to Guitar Pro. Literally thousands of such bands. A few new ones show up every day as a recommendation on Youtube. You click on it in hope you'll finally discover something interesting this time, nope, recycled riffs again, you don't hear any difference. It only looks a bit different, it's some other desert behind the band this time. OK, you can occasionaly hear at least an interesting song but it has been a while since I've heard a band that made a good whole album.
 
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