5 Bands I Dislike, And 5 Bands I Don't Hate But "Should"!!!
Being a Metal Elitist or "Purist" isn't without it's issues. You can't win them all, as far as convincing others inside the Metal Milieu whether your taste is "justified" or not. Of course, "who cares what people think" should be the rule, but I figured an article like this would make entertaining fodder for discussion, as well as looking inside the mind of a Metal Fan who feels the Nineties (yes that decade) may have been the greatest decade for metal, at least in the underground and in Europe.
Without further adieu, here are 5 bands I just never could get into, and yeah, at times I've tried and tried and tried. I'll follow up those 5 bands with 5 more that according to my own standards and tastes, and more importantly (the hierarchical ideology of Metal "Elitism", which I'm using in a somewhat ironic and tongue in cheek way) I "shouldn't" like:
1. Korn.
I never liked Korn. I just found the mix of elements that they had (Alternative, Hip Hop, with a somewhat whiny "90's" clean vocal style when not screaming) irritating and just plain awful. I understand their "importance" and all that in the "nu (n-u, not "new") Metal" genre, I just can't for the life of me get myself into any of their songs.
2. Slipknot.
On that note, here's another band "lumped into" the maligned genre of NU Metal, though they kind of branched out a bit. They wear/wore masks. So what? So did MR Bungle. I just find the "heavy" riffs having the worst cliches of groove metal and that whiny vocal style again. I'll give you this- The first "album" (they now consider it a "demo") Mate Kill Feed Repeat DID have some Mr. Bungle style eclecticism (And some say they also got this from fellow Iowans Mushroomhead) that they unfortunately abandoned upon signing with Roadrunner, and a few of their latter day albums contains PARTS of songs that aren't awful. Next.
3. Marilyn Manson.
I'd see Marilyn Manson live just for the show for sure. But when I first saw his act live, opening for Nine Inch Nails, I thought it had already jumped the shark, or so I thought at the time. I just thought it was a refined, watered down mix of what bands like Alien Sex Fiend, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, and even NIN themselves were doing. Actually a mix of those elements could sound intriguing, but to me the recipe that Manson and company came up with sounded dull. Still better than the last two though, and I have total respect for his fans, since a huge percentage of them will know about those other references I mentioned. Many Slipknot fans probably don't even know there are other thrash bands than Metallica on the other hand!
4. Killswitch Engage.
Metalcore to me was both a blessing and curse when it came to it's impact on metal. On one hand, I appreciated that many in the Metalcore scene would acknowledge 80's Metal and even 90's Metal that WASN'T Nu Metal, (especially the Gothenburg Melodeath scene) as influences (they were very influenced by Groove Metal as well of course though) something that many in the NU Metal idiom lacked, or at least did not show it. I remember an interview with Korn where they basically made fun of Death Metal bands like Carcass, and this instilled a lot of hatred from me towards them as well. In the nineties, you had to kind of hide your 80s Metal influences, and this carried over to a huge extent to Nu Metal. So when Metalcore finally came back with twin guitar harmonies, actual guitar solos, and other trappings that are arguably more "metal" than Nu Metal will ever be, I was happy. But one of the most popular Metalcore acts, Killswitch Engage, always irritated me. I liked their brothers in arms, Shadows Fall, but Killswitch Engage, from the vocal melodies that remind me too much of pop punk (seems to be a problem with Djent as well), to the to the screams that to me, even as a person accustomed to extreme metal vocals (trust me, it's different as I will mention) annoy me to no end, to the somewhat formulaic and commercial songwriting, this is not what I wanted when I said I wanted metal to "return" to prominence, probably uttered by me sometime in the nineties.
5. Cannibal Corpse.
I tried to get into them, but I just can't sit through a whole album. I hate them less than others on this list though, lol
Now onto the bands I "should" hate but don't:
1. Disturbed.
I know I bash Nu Metal a lot, but I can't really fathom what it is about Disturbed that makes me not "mind" them over the other bands of their genre. Is it that the guitar tone is a little more compressed than say, Korn's tone making it more "metallic"? Is it that I find David Draiman's clean vocals to have some occasional catchy melodies? I don't know for sure, but I actually enjoyed their second album to a small extent. I know how that sounds, and yeah, I'll whip myself with a vinyl copy of Number of the Beast after I finish this article ten times for committing such a sin, but I can't help it!
Same goes with some System of A Down and even a few Sevendust songs I find/found catchy.
2. Trivium.
Speaking of Disturbed, David Draiman produced at least one of this Florida band's recent albums, though it was one of theirs I hated!
I can't help but like everything up to and including Shogun to a certain extent. For one thing, I can tell that Matt Heafy really likes Black Metal, he probably almost seems poseurish to die hard Black Metallers with all the Black Metal shirts he wears, but one thing is for sure: you can actually hear this influence in Trivium's earlier music if you listen VERY closely. An example is some of his clean vocal parts on Shogun remind me of Ihsahn's at times (and coincidentally, they're both friends) and the harmonic structures of the songs obviously signify a listening to classic metal, progressive metal and black or death metal. Also, the "scream" vocals of Heafy are usually more tolerable, as they are (slightly) more akin to extreme metal rather than usual metalcore screams. To a layperson, there's not much difference between extreme metal vocal stylings, but let's just envision this: Black Metal vocals usually sound like "Gollum", Death Metal vocals sound like an evil "Beast" from below, Metalcore often sounds like a possessed Fratboy getting a spike shoved up their ass by an alien!
Sure, they're one of the most hated bands in metaldom for various reasons (just read what people say about them on Metal-Archives), but some of their older stuff I find to my liking and I must say, their guitarists can really shred!
3. Avenged Sevenfold.
Now I'm REALLY pushing the boundaries of disclosure and risking far more embarrassment!
I find these guys appealing (to a lesser extent) in the same way that I do Trivium. They wear their influences too much on their sleeve at times, but if them blabbing in interviews about some classic metal albums gets a kid in Nebraska who wouldn't know better otherwise to purchase/acquire those said albums, then I'm all for them. I don't hate AX7, I do know they ripped off Overkill's mascot, blah blah blah. I do know they're corporate rock which is appropriating parts of underground metal culture, whatever, etc etc- I just can't bring myself to hate every single riff, song, or even vocal line these guys have done. And yeah, Hail to the King was a decent Metallica Black Album rip off. I remember the days when the band Sentenced were accused of the same thing, but LOVED for it!
4. Dragonforce.
Me and Dragonforce have a troubled history. It's hard to say that they're "hated" but the logical reason that I have expressed dislike in the past for them is one simple reason: The fans they made during their biggest years in the US (mid 2000's and beyond) many times had NO IDEA that they are not the first band to play the style of metal that they do! Gamma Ray did fast power metal in 1997 with Somewhere Out In Space, and the US Power Metal band Steel Prophet were putting "blastbeats" in Power Metal in the late nineties! So nothing that Dragonforce did was new, nor did the novelty always make for good music. I enjoyed the first two albums, then the novelty wore thin for me, and I proceeded to bash them when brought up in conversation. But something happened when they got a new singer and bassist. Their music became more varied, sometimes more concise and actually riff-driven at times (a lot of the power metal I don't like is because they lack the riff driven styles of yesteryear and they rely on gimmicks instead or are more vocal driven, like Sabaton for example). This was no doubt partially influenced in part by the acquistion of new bassist, Frédéric Leclercq, formerly of the band Heavenly, a band who had many tangible connections to the original German Power Metal scene with their guest musicians at one time including a certain Kai Hansen and a certain Piet Sielck (the latter who also produced their first album). Leclerq has had a huge hand in the songwriting of the last three Dragonforce records, and this has brought the band to newer heights of variance and songwriting talent. It's not that the earlier albums were a disgrace, but his hand is very obvious in the massive improvements that in my opinion that they've made.
5. Bon Jovi.
I careened back and forth trying to find a fifth band. I didn't want to mention another Metalcore band, though I must say bands associated with that scene that I like other than the aforementioned (bands like Shadows Fall, Between the Buried and Me, or Protest the Hero) aren't really HATED per se (though it's ridiculous in ways that BTBAM aren't on Metal-Archives, purely my OPINION), so I had to delve a little bit deeper into my past. Bon Jovi, after all, were the first "hard rock" band I got into at the tender age of eight years old, and other than reenacting scenes from Back to the Future, was the first "air guitar" I ever played. Slippery When Wet was an integral part of my childhood, leading me later to greater things like Iron Maiden and Metal in general. Without going into a rant about Hair Metal, AOR, my newer found liking of them or otherwise, I will just say that I still find much of their material catchy, at least up to a certain point, and am not ashamed to admit it. Full albums are a struggle but there was a definitely a time, when these "posers" (and there's nothing more "poser" than a stand in bass player used live because he's "better looking" than the guy who actually recorded the bass parts) made songs that were irresistible.
So that's it. I've exposed some of my guilty pleasures, but also maybe pissed a few people off in the process. Oh well. It's all a matter of personal taste, but I had fun writing this anyway!
Without further adieu, here are 5 bands I just never could get into, and yeah, at times I've tried and tried and tried. I'll follow up those 5 bands with 5 more that according to my own standards and tastes, and more importantly (the hierarchical ideology of Metal "Elitism", which I'm using in a somewhat ironic and tongue in cheek way) I "shouldn't" like:
1. Korn.
I never liked Korn. I just found the mix of elements that they had (Alternative, Hip Hop, with a somewhat whiny "90's" clean vocal style when not screaming) irritating and just plain awful. I understand their "importance" and all that in the "nu (n-u, not "new") Metal" genre, I just can't for the life of me get myself into any of their songs.
2. Slipknot.
On that note, here's another band "lumped into" the maligned genre of NU Metal, though they kind of branched out a bit. They wear/wore masks. So what? So did MR Bungle. I just find the "heavy" riffs having the worst cliches of groove metal and that whiny vocal style again. I'll give you this- The first "album" (they now consider it a "demo") Mate Kill Feed Repeat DID have some Mr. Bungle style eclecticism (And some say they also got this from fellow Iowans Mushroomhead) that they unfortunately abandoned upon signing with Roadrunner, and a few of their latter day albums contains PARTS of songs that aren't awful. Next.
3. Marilyn Manson.
I'd see Marilyn Manson live just for the show for sure. But when I first saw his act live, opening for Nine Inch Nails, I thought it had already jumped the shark, or so I thought at the time. I just thought it was a refined, watered down mix of what bands like Alien Sex Fiend, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, and even NIN themselves were doing. Actually a mix of those elements could sound intriguing, but to me the recipe that Manson and company came up with sounded dull. Still better than the last two though, and I have total respect for his fans, since a huge percentage of them will know about those other references I mentioned. Many Slipknot fans probably don't even know there are other thrash bands than Metallica on the other hand!
4. Killswitch Engage.
Metalcore to me was both a blessing and curse when it came to it's impact on metal. On one hand, I appreciated that many in the Metalcore scene would acknowledge 80's Metal and even 90's Metal that WASN'T Nu Metal, (especially the Gothenburg Melodeath scene) as influences (they were very influenced by Groove Metal as well of course though) something that many in the NU Metal idiom lacked, or at least did not show it. I remember an interview with Korn where they basically made fun of Death Metal bands like Carcass, and this instilled a lot of hatred from me towards them as well. In the nineties, you had to kind of hide your 80s Metal influences, and this carried over to a huge extent to Nu Metal. So when Metalcore finally came back with twin guitar harmonies, actual guitar solos, and other trappings that are arguably more "metal" than Nu Metal will ever be, I was happy. But one of the most popular Metalcore acts, Killswitch Engage, always irritated me. I liked their brothers in arms, Shadows Fall, but Killswitch Engage, from the vocal melodies that remind me too much of pop punk (seems to be a problem with Djent as well), to the to the screams that to me, even as a person accustomed to extreme metal vocals (trust me, it's different as I will mention) annoy me to no end, to the somewhat formulaic and commercial songwriting, this is not what I wanted when I said I wanted metal to "return" to prominence, probably uttered by me sometime in the nineties.
5. Cannibal Corpse.
I tried to get into them, but I just can't sit through a whole album. I hate them less than others on this list though, lol
Now onto the bands I "should" hate but don't:
1. Disturbed.
I know I bash Nu Metal a lot, but I can't really fathom what it is about Disturbed that makes me not "mind" them over the other bands of their genre. Is it that the guitar tone is a little more compressed than say, Korn's tone making it more "metallic"? Is it that I find David Draiman's clean vocals to have some occasional catchy melodies? I don't know for sure, but I actually enjoyed their second album to a small extent. I know how that sounds, and yeah, I'll whip myself with a vinyl copy of Number of the Beast after I finish this article ten times for committing such a sin, but I can't help it!
Same goes with some System of A Down and even a few Sevendust songs I find/found catchy.
2. Trivium.
Speaking of Disturbed, David Draiman produced at least one of this Florida band's recent albums, though it was one of theirs I hated!
I can't help but like everything up to and including Shogun to a certain extent. For one thing, I can tell that Matt Heafy really likes Black Metal, he probably almost seems poseurish to die hard Black Metallers with all the Black Metal shirts he wears, but one thing is for sure: you can actually hear this influence in Trivium's earlier music if you listen VERY closely. An example is some of his clean vocal parts on Shogun remind me of Ihsahn's at times (and coincidentally, they're both friends) and the harmonic structures of the songs obviously signify a listening to classic metal, progressive metal and black or death metal. Also, the "scream" vocals of Heafy are usually more tolerable, as they are (slightly) more akin to extreme metal rather than usual metalcore screams. To a layperson, there's not much difference between extreme metal vocal stylings, but let's just envision this: Black Metal vocals usually sound like "Gollum", Death Metal vocals sound like an evil "Beast" from below, Metalcore often sounds like a possessed Fratboy getting a spike shoved up their ass by an alien!
Sure, they're one of the most hated bands in metaldom for various reasons (just read what people say about them on Metal-Archives), but some of their older stuff I find to my liking and I must say, their guitarists can really shred!
3. Avenged Sevenfold.
Now I'm REALLY pushing the boundaries of disclosure and risking far more embarrassment!
I find these guys appealing (to a lesser extent) in the same way that I do Trivium. They wear their influences too much on their sleeve at times, but if them blabbing in interviews about some classic metal albums gets a kid in Nebraska who wouldn't know better otherwise to purchase/acquire those said albums, then I'm all for them. I don't hate AX7, I do know they ripped off Overkill's mascot, blah blah blah. I do know they're corporate rock which is appropriating parts of underground metal culture, whatever, etc etc- I just can't bring myself to hate every single riff, song, or even vocal line these guys have done. And yeah, Hail to the King was a decent Metallica Black Album rip off. I remember the days when the band Sentenced were accused of the same thing, but LOVED for it!
4. Dragonforce.
Me and Dragonforce have a troubled history. It's hard to say that they're "hated" but the logical reason that I have expressed dislike in the past for them is one simple reason: The fans they made during their biggest years in the US (mid 2000's and beyond) many times had NO IDEA that they are not the first band to play the style of metal that they do! Gamma Ray did fast power metal in 1997 with Somewhere Out In Space, and the US Power Metal band Steel Prophet were putting "blastbeats" in Power Metal in the late nineties! So nothing that Dragonforce did was new, nor did the novelty always make for good music. I enjoyed the first two albums, then the novelty wore thin for me, and I proceeded to bash them when brought up in conversation. But something happened when they got a new singer and bassist. Their music became more varied, sometimes more concise and actually riff-driven at times (a lot of the power metal I don't like is because they lack the riff driven styles of yesteryear and they rely on gimmicks instead or are more vocal driven, like Sabaton for example). This was no doubt partially influenced in part by the acquistion of new bassist, Frédéric Leclercq, formerly of the band Heavenly, a band who had many tangible connections to the original German Power Metal scene with their guest musicians at one time including a certain Kai Hansen and a certain Piet Sielck (the latter who also produced their first album). Leclerq has had a huge hand in the songwriting of the last three Dragonforce records, and this has brought the band to newer heights of variance and songwriting talent. It's not that the earlier albums were a disgrace, but his hand is very obvious in the massive improvements that in my opinion that they've made.
5. Bon Jovi.
I careened back and forth trying to find a fifth band. I didn't want to mention another Metalcore band, though I must say bands associated with that scene that I like other than the aforementioned (bands like Shadows Fall, Between the Buried and Me, or Protest the Hero) aren't really HATED per se (though it's ridiculous in ways that BTBAM aren't on Metal-Archives, purely my OPINION), so I had to delve a little bit deeper into my past. Bon Jovi, after all, were the first "hard rock" band I got into at the tender age of eight years old, and other than reenacting scenes from Back to the Future, was the first "air guitar" I ever played. Slippery When Wet was an integral part of my childhood, leading me later to greater things like Iron Maiden and Metal in general. Without going into a rant about Hair Metal, AOR, my newer found liking of them or otherwise, I will just say that I still find much of their material catchy, at least up to a certain point, and am not ashamed to admit it. Full albums are a struggle but there was a definitely a time, when these "posers" (and there's nothing more "poser" than a stand in bass player used live because he's "better looking" than the guy who actually recorded the bass parts) made songs that were irresistible.
So that's it. I've exposed some of my guilty pleasures, but also maybe pissed a few people off in the process. Oh well. It's all a matter of personal taste, but I had fun writing this anyway!
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