The Best... Heavy Metal!

[Elliot Kane]

Because the Computer section threads worked so well, I figure a 'music by genre' series is a good plan, too and where better to start than what is arguably the widest and deepest genre of all - Heavy Metal.

If you go into any music shop, you'll find that Metal is really a catch-all category, covering everything from Hard Rock to stuff that's almost Opera or has an almost dream-like quality. The only real qualifier for Metal appears to be: if it fits nowhere else, it's probably Metal.

I don't see much point in going into every sub-genre of Metal, but illustrating the sheer width and breadth cannot be a bad idea.

So, these are a few of my favourite Hard/Rock/Metal artists/bands. They range from the operatic (Sonata Arctica, Meat Loaf etc) to the Prog Rock of Rush and Magnum. And naturally they will include the incomparable Iron Maiden.

On with the show! ;D

Side Note: This is a thread about Metal. Many songs will feature swearing, many videos will feature stuff those of a more delicate sensibility may prefer to avoid. Please take this warning as standard for every link in this thread

Operatic Metal:

Sonata Arctica are probably the prime exponents of this style. It probably comes under 'Power Metal' technically, but I know which term I prefer! ;D

Icewind have a fine grasp of this style, too.

New Wave Of British Heavy Metal:

Iron Maiden are THE band, here. They've lasted the years and put out more good albums than most. Legends.

Saxon may not be among the true greats, but they have their moments.

Judas Priest are another complete legend.

Whitesnake - included for Luci, coz I know she likes 'em Went off 'em a while back, but I may rethink... They were pretty darn good...

Marillion - indescribable, but awesome. Marillion were completely indistinguishable from a million other bands... until they released the Misplaced Childhood album, which ruled.

Prog Rock:

Rush - arguably the greatest band ever to come out of Canada, Rush were the first group I fell completely in love with. They started as really heavey Metal, then moved into Prog Rock. Neil Peart is one of the best lyricists in music.

Magnum are arguably the best Prog Rock band ever to come out of the UK. Just awesome.

Europe - most famous for The Final Countdown and for being a right pest to Google! ;D

More stuff I can't be bothered to label: ;D

Twisted Sister - more total and complete legends, TS created one of the greatest songs in Metal history - the fantastic rebel anthem We're Not Gonna Take It. Far from their only good song, too.

The Scorpions - arguably the greatest band ever to come out of Germany in any genre, the Scorpions are a fantastic Metal band who captured the mood of the entire world at the fall of the Berlin Wall, with Wind Of Change. Just awesome.

Aerosmith. Probably the closest thing to Rap I actually like, Aerosmith are another legendary group. Metal has a lot of them.

AC/DC - the 'Thunder from Down Under' could as easily be called the thunder from Scotland, but that wouldn't sound so good! ;D I'm getting tired of typing 'legend' every few seconds, but they are!

The House Of Lords - fantastic group, totally under-rated. I love these guys.

Thunder - another much-overlooked band who deserve wider recognition.

The Dogs D'Amour - lead singer Tyla is a poet, an artist and something of a philosopher. Oh - and also a darn fine singer. The Dogs are unique and utterly wonderful. A favourite of mine for many years now.

Femme Fatale - women are rare in Metal, but the good ones are great. Witness Lorraine Lewis of Femme Fatale...

Phantom Blue - possibly the finest female exponents of Iron Maiden style Metal.

Solo Singers

Ozzy Osbourne - a legend already with Black Sabbath, Ozzy's career only grew when he went solo. Forget the reality TV show - Ozzy was a singer first!

Alice Cooper - one of the best of the US solo singers, along with...

Meat Loaf - his stuff with Jim Steinman is all good, but with Bat Out Of Hell Meaty created one of the all time greatest songs. Legend.

Lita Ford. Can't be too many Metal fans who don't know Lita. Truly great.

Lee Aaron - the Metal Queen herself!

***

Knew that would run long. Probably haven't finished yet, either. Did I mention that I rather like Metal? ;D

For the curious, I have albums by every band here bar Whitesnake (Though I used to) and Icewind (Who are on my 'to get' list).

[Elliot Kane]

Oh yeah: Just to make Flix & Kit scream ;D

Although This one is my favourite.

[kitty]

^ *still screaming* you're lucky that you are such a nice guy Eli...

(will contribute with a real comment a little later)

[Flix]

Wheeee!!

I'll really try to limit myself here to the best of the best. Sorry for any overlap with previous threads. And yes, despite a zillion sub-genres, the best metal defies categorization, so I'm playing fast and loose with genres.

Metal owes everything to Black Sabbath. There were hints of it in Hendrix and Cream, Led Zeppelin, and others. But Sabbath made it HEAVY. Downtuned guitars, occult lyrics, a healthy dose of 70's psychadelia, aahhhh...

Power Metal: Epic, bombastic, usually oh so fast, features highly melodic guitars and soaring vocals.

This genre owes a lot to Iron Maiden. Galloping bass, great riffs and harmonized guitar leads, Bruce Dickinson.

Blind Guardian started as a speed/heavy metal act and developed into a symphonic powerhouse. Mostly Tolkien and King Arthur inspired lyrics. Hansi is one of the greatest singers in metal.

Thrash Metal: The reason why people headbang to metal.

Metallica, as shown in this video, transcended the thrash of other 80's metal like Megadeth, Slayer, and Kreator, and eventually became their own monster in the 90's.

Iced Earth fused thrash with power metal - one of my major inspirations for becoming a metal guitarist. Jon Schaffer's riffs are fast, crisp and brutal, and Matt Barlow wails.

Melodic Death - Death metal is as heavy, fast and brutal as it comes, but Melo-Death tempers it a bit (and vastly improves it) with -gasp- guitar melodies and harmonies. Born and flourished in the mid 90's beginning in Gothenburg, Sweden.

In Flames represent the Gothenburg sound better than any other. They made death metal with hummable guitar riffs that stuck with you.

Unlike In Flames, who have begun to sound more like American whiny emo-core lately, Arch Enemy is a Gothenburg band that has just gotten better and better. They have a female vocalist that sounds just vicious, and the guitars are on fire.

Amon Amarth is a different breed of Melo-Death. Fiercer, meaner, and ever viking-themed music of triumphant conquering.

Doom metal: Takes its time, is not aggressive or fast. Beautiful yet bleak. For rainy days and sad times.

Funeral has an oppressively heavy and monolithic sound.

Agalloch always transports me to snowy mountains, tranquil forests under grey skies. They often make use of folk instruments, including deer antlers as percussion in one song.

Progressive/weird:

Dream Theater - every member of this band has enough talent at their instruments for 3 people.

Lake of Tears - Started as doom metal, morphed into sometimes trippy, sometimes dreamy band, with a melancholy-yet-hopeful sound. I don't know why this video has dragons.

Diabolical Masquerade - easily the weirdest thing on the list. A kind of hybrid between black metal and horror movie soundtracks.

Therion - this is currently my favorite band. Symphonic, operatic, has elements of power, speed, thrash, black, and some amazing vocalists (especially the girls!). Also has some of the most esoteric occult lyrics.

Borknagar have a huge and majestic wall of sound, a good mix of harsh/clean vocals, and cerebral lyrics

Amorphis is fantastic Finnish band. The music has prog, 70's, and folk influences, while the vocalist switches between a robust clean singing voice and deep growl.

Opeth is in my top 3 bands of all time. They started as black/death metal and eventually added so much mellow stuff that they were making albums of just the trippy prog stuff. I can't praise this band enough. They sound like nothing else, they paint images with their music that I can't put into words.

17 bands sounds like a good number. I probably could have doubled the size of the list.

EK, your list is mostly composed what I think of as my "Dad's metal." No offense, obviously, cause it's those artists that got me into the genre in the first place. But I wanted heavier, harder, faster. I went through a phase in high school where it was all Korn and Slipknot and all that radio junk metal before I discovered the wonderful world of European metal.

[Ubereil]

Def Leppard? Have they done anything worth mentioning? I checked them out a while ago and all their songs was... not noteworthy. Like, at all. I mean, they weren't bad, but they were absolutely nothing special either.

And I've always thought Neil Peart's capacity as a lyricist is greatly described by a Joy Division quote: "I've got the spirit but lose the feeling". He definently tries to create interesting, good and insightful lyrics, but he's just not up for it most of the time.

...and who needs Iron Maiden when you have Megadeth? ;D (Stupid Youtube soundquality btw.)

Übereil

[Flix]

Apr 18, 2009 1:04:45 GMT Elliot Kane said:

Oh yeah: Just to make Flix & Kit scream ;D

Although This one is my favourite.

Actually I bet its better than any of the music she usually sings over. Luckily I have no preconceived notions about Def Lepard that could be ruined by the vid. ;D

Ubereil, you do realize your country is responsible for most of the best metal this world knows? You know how lucky you are?

[Ubereil]

I know that Flix. I'm not really a metal fan/don't listen to that much metal though, so I don't consider myself that lucky.

Übereil

[Elliot Kane]

Ube - to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Def Leppard, though I know they do have a rather immense fanbase. I DO like Love Bites but otherwise they usually leave me cold. Usually. I also think their collaboration with Taylor is one of the best musical team ups I've ever seen. Not only do her songs sound better, but their's do too. If CMT ever get their act together, that's one DVD I'd buy in a second. Her voice is the perfect complement to their sound.

Flix - most of the bands you list don't really do it for me, as I'm sure you can guess. The overlap between our tastes is clearly not all that huge. The heaviest I normally go for are Twisted Sister & Judas Priest, which I don't think you would consider very heavy at all. For me, Britain created the best Metal back in the 80s and still does now. Almost everything owes a great debt to NWBHM in terms of influence.

Not that I won't be adding a few more to the list, of course... ;D The trick is where to draw the line with Rock, which should by rights get its own topic. But there are still a few really good Metal bands I listen to I have yet to add - and even a few more recent ones, believe it or not! ;D

[Flix]

Apr 18, 2009 12:35:34 GMT Elliot Kane said:

Flix - most of the bands you list don't really do it for me, as I'm sure you can guess. The overlap between our tastes is clearly not all that huge.

Which just goes to show how deep and wide the realm of metal really is!

As long as you can concede Sabbath and Maiden, you're gold. Metallica would round out the holy trinity though...

I thought you might like Dream Theater. They're not like anything on your list, then again they're not like anything else on my list either.

[Elliot Kane]

Can't argue Sabbath or Maiden. Total legends. Metallica I'm not so keen on, though I do love Enter Sandman. Mostly they leave me cold, especially the Thrash years.

Dream Theatre - again, I love The Killing Hand but I never really got into them. That said, I never heard much by them.

And I totally agree that all this proves the sheer breadth and depth of the genre.

[kitty]

I have the feeling we could play that game by most genres. I'm sure all of our poptaste or rocktaste would differ just as much - what is good.

(btw i can still not contribute with a real answer...the compter here is too slow to load youtube properly (what did people do before computers?!)

[Elliot Kane]

We'll see when we get to the other genres, Kit! This whole 'best of' thread thing appears to be working really well!

When this one dies down, we'll do Pop or Rock...

[Flix]

Aw too bad Kit...just give us a list with some reasons why the bands are good and we can look them up ourselves.

[Elliot Kane]

More Metal bands:

The Darkness - hailed as the saviours of Metal when they first appeared, they kind of ruined it by splitting after two albums - though both albums are awesome.

Hot Leg - Justin Hawkins' (Of The Darkness) new group. Sort of Darkness 2, you might say.

Vow Wow - very hard to get in Britain, sadly, Vow Wow are quite possibly the best band you've never heard of. Just terrific.

Domain - another great German Metal band.

Rammstein - Industrial Metal has no finer proponents than the mighty Rammstein.

[The Sonar Chicken]

Yeesh that's one long list of stuff. I'll slowly check it out. By the way, I don't listen to metal/rock much 'cos after a while, everything starts to sound the same. :/

[Elliot Kane]

A lot of Metal is highly derivative, Luci, yeah - as with pretty much every other type of music, to be honest. The trick is to know where to find the good stuff. Because a lot of Metal never makes it into the mainstream, that's far from easy.

[Flix]

I think that goes for any genre one is not familiar with. To me, all rap sounds indistinguishable, and most country sounds the same (and don't even get me started on techno/electronic). I would hope no two bands on my list sound alike - the point was to showcase unique-ness and creativity, not the same tired old musical cliches you hear on radio or tv all the time.

I neglected the "softer" side of metal in my first post. It seems counterintuitive that metal would even have a soft side but somehow it does. No growling or even much distorted guitars to be heard here, the key term in this realm is atmosphere

Todesbonden makes folky, mellow, beautiful dreamy stuff for lying on riverbanks and staring at clouds, with a talented female front singer.

Primordial this is hypnotic song by an Irish band that has strong folk music influence

The Gathering started as doom metal, then picked up an entrancing female singer and turned into a kind of mystical gothic melodic rock.

Anathema melancholy and driving, with some heartbreakingly fragile moments.

Maudlin of the Well - I don't even know how to classify this band, because no two songs sound alike. There is jazz, classical, metal, ambient, and metal spread across every album.

[The Sonar Chicken]

Apr 19, 2009 19:42:37 GMT Elliot Kane said:

A lot of Metal is highly derivative, Luci, yeah - as with pretty much every other type of music, to be honest. The trick is to know where to find the good stuff. Because a lot of Metal never makes it into the mainstream, that's far from easy.

Hmmm... you might be very right on that and it also has to do with tastes, I think.

For example: I find that a fair bit of rock/metal is written to allow part of the band to stand out: said bassist/guitarist/singer/etc. That tends to overpower the song and much as I admire <said person's> instrument ability, I tend to prefer songs where everything moves together so that it's more about the band and song.

And sometimes, you hear them playing the same chord progression or using the same melody one too many times. So, I'm much more of a <randomly creative> person than someone who admires people just for playing well to a melody.

If and when it comes to lyrics, I tend to prefer musicians who constantly explore a huge variety of subjects as opposed to singing about love or just <fantasy material>.

Edit: Forgot to write this down but somehow, a fair bit of music makes me highly depressed. Don't ask me why, it just does. Like melody/pitch of singing/certain instruments, etc.

Finally, I'm more of someone who likes the overall sound of various instruments. If you've seen my recent posts, I tend to heavily favour experimentation and improvisation that blend in elements from various genres and tons of instruments. And constant change. Unless I like the overall sound a lot.

Note: I'm not a <rock/metal/electronic/etc.> fan but someone who likes <music> overall. I can and will listen to about just any genre to give them a try but I tend to tire easily 'cos after a while, my mind starts to break down many things and sequence it all. Like pitch, rhythm, melody, timing, etc. And it's annoying as it's a skill I wish I never had. And yes, it only happens to certain specific singers or groups.

I still can't figure out my tastes, except that I'm a music fan. LOL. 'Cos it's bewildering to me how I can move from singer to singer, group to group, genre to genre. I've gone through new age, world music, rap, hip hop, techno, trance, dance, drum and bass, western/chinese classical and way more items.

[Elliot Kane]

Yeah. You wouldn't believe the amount of ignorance there is about Metal. Someone once tried to tell me that Metal was all about shouting. I pretty much gave up on them at that point...

[The Sonar Chicken]

Hey Flix, will listen to your songs soon as I stop getting depressed from random non-trippy songs. :/