It is beyond incontestable that heavy metal, in all its glorious incarnations, is the greatest music to ever befall the humble members of the human race, so it only makes sense that a whole lot of people really really want to lump whatever bullshit they listen too right on in with it. People, you cannot jam a square cock up a round arse. Attack Attack, for instance, are a good band, one of which I am a confessed fan, who spawned an original concept that has unfortunately gained numerous mediocre impersonators that have brought shame on their music. They are not however worthy of the glorious title that is ‘metal artists’.
At the other end of the spectrum you have bands that, by the textbook definition, are metal, or at least possess metal elements; or bands that try as hard as they can to sell themselves as metal, yet somehow manage to suck harder than your mum on a Friday night deadline. And as with anything that is terrible, you people cannot seem to stop jamming it into every orifice on your spineless, gelatinous body.
Fear not, for I am here to enlighten you. If you listen to any of the following bands on a regular basis please do not try to convince me that you are a metal fan, or you shall be smote by the mighty hammer of Thor. After all, God claimed he got rid of sin when Jesus died. Thor claimed he murdered all the Ice Giants in Scandinavia. I don’t see too many ice giants getting around, do you? Thor gets shit done. You have been warned.
Parkway Drive
Let’s lay down a blanket rule here. Metalcore is not a genre. You are either metal, or you are hardcore punk. I mean actual punk, not bullshit chordchordchord nasallyvocals good charlotte isn’t-highschool-hard pop-punk bullshit. I mean actual punk, invented by the same people who invented not giving a good solid fuck (the British). Bands like Refused pioneered the sort of thing that people these days are calling Metalcore. Just because something is heavy and aggressive does not mean it is metal. An obese woman who didn’t get her dessert at McDonalds is heavy and aggressive but fat people are the least metal people on Earth. Refused were an awesome band at what they did but in no way are they metal and no one went around saying they were ‘blackened punk-core’ or any of the pseudonym bullshit people are slinging around these days. They were a hardcore punk band. So are Parkway Drive.
Deep Blue was the last rat fleeing from the sinking ship that is Parkway Drive. They spent too many years touring off the back of their first two albums and followed it up with a totally unimpressive heap of garbage that only further identified Winston and the boys as the one-trick pony they are. They had their moment in the sun but ran out of steam and have since been surpassed in their own genre by much better musicians. Take them out to the back pasture and fucking shoot them.
Bring Me The Horizon
Oli Sykes is a 7 year old girl covered in tattoos. He acts like a fucking brat, and has been at the helm of a generation of women who like men that ACT like 7 year old whiney girls. Because teenage girls will do absolutely anything to be different. Unfortunately that includes listening to terrible music to try and enrage their parents. His music is slow, boring, illegible and technically underwhelming, which is basically the complete opposite of metal.It sounds like a Panzer Mk3 being driven down a gravel driveway by a bunch of shrieking toddlers.
Girls, please, on behalf of men everywhere, we do not find you refreshing or interesting because you listen to this crap. So please. Please. Just stop.
Trivium
Trivium may be the saddest story ever told in the history of metal. The same band that once released Like Light to the Flies, a song that was at least competently riffed, is now stuck churning out this bullshit.
Where did it all go wrong? Then again, though I can admit occasionally Trivium do dabble in the actual metal now and then, I have never really been a fan. Personally I think Heafy’s voice sounds so forced that his larynx will imminently fly out of his body and catapult into orbit. But plenty of you will look at the song above and say ‘hey Cowan, you douchebag, that song is super fucking metal!’. To you I say ‘Sir, you are exactly the problem with metal today.’ Let’s see if you are smart enough to pick a pattern.
If you consider yourself a metal fan you probably sang along to at least one of these songs. Because these bands do not write metal songs. They write anthems. These songs are fairly simple, technically and structurally, but most importantly they all have predominantly ‘brutal’ vocals with little clean sections, usually in the chorus, that invite you so temptingly to sing along. And you fall for it. You worms.They are designed to get stuck in your head, for maybe a few weeks. You might listen now and then when you’re feeling nostalgic but beyond that they are totally forgettable. You singing along to this bullshit is no different to a club full of drugged up douchebags singing along to a Duck Sauce remix. You like this shit because it is catchy. Not because it actually has any merit.
Hell, I’ll admit it, In Waves is on my playlist. I fall for this shit sometimes. But at least I know it. I know I harp on a lot about Opeth (for good reason), but compare, say, Scream Aim Fire to Blackwater Park, the single greatest song ever written (if you have not heard it before, please do this song justice by not listening to it through shitty laptop speakers):
Most of you would listen to the first minute then turn it off. One minute into a song and only one riff? No quick intro riff before we get to the part that will be stuck in your head all day? Madness! How boring! Because it is complex. It has structure, it has feeling and complexity on a level most bands can only dream of. I heard this song months ago for the first time and I am still finding stuff I did not notice in it. Most ‘popular’ metal songs are only about as long as the intro to this bad boy. Every movement in this song lasts precisely as long as Opeth meant it too to make you feel exactly the way they wanted you to feel. It is art in its purest form.
In Waves is a song about one time when Matt Heafy got a bit introspective and realized that he was gonna die some day, so he wrote a song about it in which all the verses consist of literally two words. Forgive me for not being lost in philosophical pondering.
Slipknot
OH COME ON! Surely now I’m just trying to be controversial. Nope. Remember way back at the beginning I said there were two problems, unmetal bands claiming they were metal and metal bands that just aren’t all that fucking impressive? Slipknot is the second type.
Musically, in a lot of ways I really don’t mind Slipknot. But they are just trying way too fucking hard. They always have. The masks, the forced brutality, the way-too-many-band-members. It’s all too reminiscent of a child riding a bike for the first time flinging its arms in the air yelling LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I’M SO AWESOME JESUS HIMSELF WOULD QUIVER IN MY WAKE. They are compensating for a lack of substance by amplifying every other aspect of the metal band persona in what has always been a gimmicky attempt to put asses on seats. There are way better metal bands that can get by just on their music and their talent without adding all the bells and whistles. Not only that but any band who insists I be labelled a ‘maggot’ for being a fan of their is not going to win my vote in a hurry.
UPDATE: DragonForce
Power metal is all well and good. You do need a counterpart to the raw devastation that is the most brutal depths of death metal. But to do power metal you need to be good. Really good. You need to have vocal power of a fucking opera singer combined with the shredding potential of a V8 Blender. Can you guess which one dragonforce does not have?
Let me get one thing perfectly straight. Herman Li is better at guitar than me. He is better than I probably ever will be. But when you can’t even play the song that made your band famous live without fucking up every second note, you do not belong in the worlds most famous power metal band.
