Metal Reviews

I don't think there will be. Metal's just too fragmented these days for a band to appeal to both underground fans and fans of more mainstream metal bands. Actually, not being around in the early 80s, I've always wondered if when Iron Maiden were the biggest band in metal in 1983, if underground metal fans reviled them like they do big metal bands like Trivium and Slipknot today.

No there will not be unless Metal regains the kind of status it once enjoyed. No matter what, don't expect a metal album to sell 5 million copies anytime soon.

Godsmack are probably the closest thing we'll ever get to having a huge metal band anymore. Alternative metal (the industry term applied to anything not traditinally heavy metal) seems to be the mainstream these days. Traditional metal will take a few more years yet to gain a foothold on the collective unconscious.

tool

There might well be. I can see Mastodon crossing over and making it, Trivium, Avenged Sevenfold are well on the way. Lacuna Coil, if they stick at it. Tool, as Jeff said, although they need to make more albums and make them less technical if they're going to be that big.

Are Godsmack that big any more? I thought they went the Papa Roach way ages ago...

That is a tricky question... If I was a cynic I would say that were a metal band to get that big we'd end up denying its metalness.

This is hard. You have to understand that metal was REALLY big in the 80's, and everyone knew who the bands where, regardless if they were into metal or not. And metal even had some coverage in the mainstream media. Basically when people think of the 80's, they're not gonna think of the cheesy love ballads with synth, but as much as you'd be suprised, it's metal that comes to most minds.

At present, the whole media is different. Pop, RnB, rap and hip hop have taken over. And theres this small place for alternative rock. Metal has somehow gone into the black pit of obscurity in the eyes of mainstream media. Yeah, you do have bands like Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold getting some popularity votes, reason is, that thery're more towards alternative in some ways, thus appealing more to the media. And all the uneducated music fans WILL actually think these bands are the heaviest bands, and the best. So will there be another band as big as Metallica? Yes, it would either be Avenged Sevenfold, Slipknot, Lamb of God or some either bands in the same discipline.

S.O.A.D. could be as big as Metallica...

godsmack? what the hell? haven't heard one single song....

agreed on SOAD

No. As long as people steal music the appreciation levels will never be as high. No band will ever be as big as the bands were in the 80s and early 90s. Not unless someone figures out how to infect MP3s with viruses.

I really disagree. Looking at non-metal for a moment, the meteoric rise of the likes of The Arctic Monkeys, from nobodys to two huge hit albums, could well happen to a Metal band. Give Mastodon another two albums and a Timbaland remix, and see what happens...

More bands that could make it are Dillinger Escape Plan if they continue the proggy Ire Works thang, and Bullet For My Valentine (yuck) and Atreyu (yuck, yuck).

Tool still fall into "alternative metal" category, as they are not a traditional heavy metal act.

Godsmack and Tool both sell around 5 million records consistently every album. no other bands are really that close either. 100,000 is the gold standard of "really successful" sales for any traditional styles of metal (be it Black, Death, Thrash, Prog, Power, whatever)

I think Mastodon could be the next big thing if they keep it up. But really I don't think any bands can make it as big as metallica because no one can combine drama with hit songs so perfectly.

Hard to tell. Things were different then. Rock/metal were popular. Bands like Metallica and Maiden have not seen a dip in their popularity cos they have what it takes to maintain that. They have "The X Factor". Metal is not that popular anymore, so I don't think atleast, in the near future, a metal band will be able to make it that big.

Well, metal IS making a comeback here in the US. With bands like Lamb of God and Megadeth now cracking the Billboard Top 10. Even Iced Earth managed to crack the Billboard 100 with Framing Armageddon.

But I seriously doubt we'll be having another Metallica anytime soon. Today, it seems like "classics" are a thing of the past. Nobody, at least in the mainstream, is really innovating or doing anything too terribly new anymore (really, the last album we've had that was universally regarded as a "classic" was probably OK Computer by Radiohead - an album that came out more than ten years ago). And I honestly don't know what somebody could do today to achieve Metallica's widespread mainstream success (not saying it couldn't happen, but I certainly have no clue).

And since when was Godsmack a metal band? I always thought of them as more of an AIC ripoff.

I have always considered Godsmack to be hard rock/grunge. Metal does seem to be making a comeback in the US. But whether any band that has been able to break into the top 10 of the Billboard charts does so consistently for as long as their career lasts, inspite of metal loosing ground in the commercial world will probably determine how big they would be.

I Stand Alone kicks ass.

Well, let's take Anthrax for example. Sound Of White Noise reached #7 on the Billboard 200 when it was released. Just two years later, Stomp-442 was released and only reached #47. The band's albums have successively sold worse and worse (got this info from Wikipedia, btw). Sepultura's another band that was churning out commercially successful albums in the early/mid-90's, but more or less dropped out of sight in the late-90's. And hasn't really been able to recover ever since.

Well, seeing as they're not around anymore...

I honestly don't know if there are any metal bands about today who could break as big as Metallica. When Trivium got "the next Metallica" tag, they took it way too literally and lost a lot of fans in the UK with The Crusade. I dunno, maybe Killswitch Engage?

Doubt it. Metallica was special. They played a style of thrash metal that everybody from headbangers to rap fans could enjoy. How they managed to achieve that balance, I don't really know (I'm not a music scholar, after all). But they essentially proved to the world that metal music can be both thoughtful and intellectually stimulating, and then they helped to pioneer alternative rock with The Black Album (yes, I consider TBA one of the forefathers of alternative rock). Now that the world (well, some of it anyway) already knows what metal music's all about, however, I'm not so sure another band can "reinvent the wheel" and reprove it quite so easily.

How exactly has metalcore managed to become so popular these last few years anyway? Did the resurrection of Headbanger's Ball a few years ago have something to do with it, perhaps? Is it that metalcore has that "tough guy" vibe most mainstreamers associate with metal music? May be both? Because, until it became popular with the mainstream, metal fans didn't seem to really have any problems with bands like Lamb of God and As I Lay Dying.

Nile.