Metal Reviews

I often read reviews or threads (mainly on other forums) discussing how Groove Metal is worthless as a genre and as a shallow commercial mass.

By Groove Metal we are referring to the bands that took over after Thrash such as Pantera and Machine Head as well as post-Arise Sepultura etc. Back when I was young we just called it post-Thrash.

For example in Metal Archives, Pantera and Machine Head are often accused of killing Thrash Metal in the early 1990's, This shows a sad lack of historical knowledge.

What became groove metal was already emerging before Pantera and Machine Head ever went down that path way. If you listen to Sacred Reich's American Way (1990), Overkill's Horrorscope (1991) and Exhorder's Slaughter in the Vatican (1990), they were already introducing groove into the music and stripping down the intensity and complexity. The Crossover guys ala Nuclear Assault always had a degree of groove in their music.

Furthermore most Thrash Metal bands were becoming increasingly commercialised and mainstream.

The underground on the other hand was embracing Death and Black Metal and Crossover had turned into Grindcore.

The other thing that the "Groove metal killed Thrash crowd" completely ignore is the emergence of Grunge. I remember that by 1993 when I first started listening to Metal, most Metal magazines focused exclusively on Grunge as well as Industrial stuff ala Ministry and funk rock ala early Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

So "Groove Metal" didn't kill Thrash Metal. What killed Thrash in 1992-93 was that Thrash had become mainstream and couldn't compete with Grunge in the commercial markets.

At the same time. Thrash's perception as mainstream metal meant that it couldn't compete against the new more underground Death/Black/Grind scenes.


The "groove metal" guys (phrase is modern) were shining beacons of light in a Grunge sea for those of us that didn't know about the underground extreme stuff (remember this is pre-internet).

In fact when Pantera went Number 1 with "Far Beyond Driven" it was the heaviest album to do so. It was in no way commercial especially when the heaviest thing you might hear on radio was Nirvana's "Come As You Are" or whatever Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilot song was doing the rounds.

It got even more intense Pantera's Great Southern Trendkill and Root, Bloody Roots by Sepultura were released (even though I don't like the Roots album). Again this was extreme stuff for the day.

By this stage even the Death Metal guys jumped on to the Groove Metal train (Morbid Angel with Domination, Napalm Death with Diatribes, Entombed with Wolverine Blues while Fear Factory had Demanufacture.

Some of these bands were now being mentioned in metal magazines and on alternative radio stations though it was only for a little glimpse because Nu-Metal was starting to rear it's ugly head.

Whatever the case, Pantera and Machine Head were revolutionaries in metal. They helped make the heavier sides of Metal more commercially viable as much as Metallica and Megadeth did a few years earlier.

And they wrote some great, memorable tunes that defined metal in the 1990's. And as much as people hate to admit it, they were a gateway for getting into heavier stuff.

And their influence is everywhere be it the maligned Nu-metal, Metalcore as well as Death Metal, modern Thrash (indeed Evile covered Pantera's Cemetary Gates) and Hardcore.

RANT OFF!

People complain about groove metal because it was geared towards neanderthals.

Yet again another rant propagated towards the raving lunatic fringe of the metal demographic. Groove is an element of the sound that has been present since the genres inception, listening to any early Sabbath album will reveal this. It's not an element that murdered thrash nor is it worthy of all of the keyboard warriors that deride Pantera.

This. It's music to drag your knuckles to.

90% of Metal is geared towards neanderthals. After all it is a music whose main market is teenage males.

And since when is Cannibal Corpse or Darkthrone or Slayer thinking man music? Or even Iron Maiden which in 1980 was pretty extreme and again the bulk of the people attracted to it were young males?

I always found it hilarious that Metalheads regard listening to Metal as a sign of intelligence.

To make it even more ironic, most adult Metalheads I've met have been seriously lacking in that department - they usually have a high school level education at best, have massive drug and alcohol problems and work in poorly paid menial jobs or not at all. Not exactly smart.



Very good post!

Music is music. No music is intrinsically worthless.

However people get very elitist about musical scenes.

Hey listening to Pantera made me a rocket scientist and staying at a Holiday Inn Express made me a college professor at Yale

Of the popular metal bands, Pantera are the ones I associate most strongly with this stereotype, so I think trapt has a point. I agree that "groove" is an element that makes music enjoyable, however I associate groove metal with retarded tough guy singers and overdone attempts to write riffs that are headbangable. It makes me feel like I should be drinking beer while watching football and bad Jason Statham movies 24/7.

Also all the adult metalheads I've met have been university educated, insightful, funny, energetic and productive people.

With subject matter about war, corruption, religion, inequality, literature, etc? Music is what you make it and metal provides quite an interesting amount of subject matter geared towards critical thinking unlike pop or generic rock music.

If you read books, which I'm not sure of at this point, check out Robert Walser's Running with the Devil. Heavy metal is a vast bank open to analysis since it is so immersed in class and social relations.

Adult? Define adult. Right now I work at a grocery store and the third guy from the top went to the same Judas Priest show I went to two summers ago. My old store manager went to see Motley Crue twice every summer and went to the same 'tallica show I went to last winter. Metalheads are competent people. My friends at university all listen to metal and hardcore.

Most Metal lyrics seems to be used just to match the music. Violent, dark music demands violent, dark lyrics.

Most of the bands sing about war, death etc because it fits the music and they don't sing about it any critical way.

The few that do usually espouse typical cliche left wing ideals etc that have been thrown about in music since the 1960's.



The only Metal band that actually had interesting morally and politically charged lyrics was Skyclad.

Furthermore Pantera and Machine Head have many songs about inequality, police corruption, ills of society pro-drug etc.

My own love of Heavy Metal is because I love the music and I find the juvenile nature of it appealing.




Heavy Metal is the music of mainly white, lower middle class males who are misfits and generally feel somewhat alienated. It's the same as Punk, Emo, Goth whatever.

There's not much social aspect to it other than that.



Adult - greater than 18 years old. Most of the guys I knew where 25+.

Besides I've got two degrees (Commerce - major in Finance and International Business and Arts - major in political science. I was on the Honour Roll 3 years out of 5).

I was probably the only guy in the local metal scene that had gone to university. Most of the others were unemployed while some worked in menial jobs ala shop assistants, kitchen hands in restaurants etc.

The only 2 guys that I knew that where into Metal music and who had done well in life actually did not associate with the scene in any way and didn't bother with heavy metal iconography. They were basically middle class people who liked Heavy Metal in whatever form.

Most Metalheads I knew referred to them as posers. Again the elitist nerd rage that dominates alienated subcultures comes to the fore.

Here's an interesting article on how Heavy Metal and Classical fans share the same personality traits.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... raits.html

"Apart from the age differences, they were virtually identical. Both were more creative than other people, both were not terribly outgoing and they were also quite at ease."

Given that my second favorite genre is classical, it rings true for me. I mean, nobody would seriously denigrate the 1812 overture as being juvenile, brutish and appealing to cretins, even though it glorifies war, makes loud noises, and doesn't even have words.

I also find the best attended metal shows in my city are at the University, where, you guessed it, university students attend. I personally work in IT, which is full of creative introverts, and is definitely another place you will find more metal fans than average.

I'm pretty sure a hell of a lot of the people on this forum either have degrees or are studying at the moment.

You are so way off base it's not even funny. I mean where do you get your statistics from? Did you ever interview every metal listener in the world huh? Did you ever take surveys on who listens to metal or what demographic listens to them? Where's your statistical analysis coming from because what you have been saying is a bunch of bullshit.

It could be that in Australia where I'm from there is a different demographic that's attracted to Heavy Metal.

In my experience Aussie metalheads are for the most part drunken stoners who generally have not done much in life. As stated most are unemployed, poorly educated and many live in squalor or with their parents into their 30's. They're a very elitist bunch too.

The ones that work generally worked as kitchen hands, cleaner, service station attendants, forestry workers etc . All decent jobs - I don't believe that there is such a thing as a bad job.

But they were not jobs that required much intelligence.

So I'd say that average Australian metalhead is a social welfare dependant white Anglo-Saxon misfit with substance abuse issues or at best a white Anglo-Saxon lower blue collar worker.

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It could be different in the rest of the world - though the footage of Metalheads I've seen in American seems to reinforce that stereotype I just applied to Australia.

I think it's different in Europe. When I've been to Europe the subcultures didn't seem as strong as they were in Australia.

It was acceptable to be an accountant who liked Metal and in his spare time was a techno DJ.

As stated it's from personal experience here in Australia.

As for statistical analysis, according to Jeffrey Arnett, Peter Christenson and Donald Robert ( http://books.google.com.au/books?id=6ZE ... &q&f=false)

According to these chaps the average DM fan in the US is:

1. White
2. Male (65.7%)
3. Middle Class
4. 58% are adolescent, 42% are over 20
5. Education level is on par with rest of US population
6. High unemployment factor (20% not in employment or school/training)
7. Political knowledge is on par with rest of population
8. Political apathy is slighty less than rest of population.

I'd like to see stats for Australia.




Besides the point of this thread is that Groove Metal is not some vile thing that killed Thrash Metal and that it's not some nasty vile commercial abomination of Metal.

I don't think your typical bogan is reflective of the wider world when it comes to taste in music.

Groove metal was cool when it was first established in the early-90's. Pantera more or less brought it into the heavy metal mainstream. And Sepultura, with Chaos AD, brought downtuning and slower tempos into the mix.

The problem is that, after a while, just about every metal band was trying to copy those two bands in some way. Starting with Machine Head. And then Testament, Slipknot, Lamb Of God, etc.

Nothing wrong with a bit of groovyness. That said, maybe it isn't "groove metal" that grooves the hardest?

Isn't that a logical evolution? The same happened with practically every genre/style of music, no?
So I don't really see the problem in that.

You seriously have issues. I'm going to go out on a limb and say none of these, I could be wrong, descriptions fits anyone on this forum. Not that I would judge them for that if they were but I just think you are way off base.

Wrong. One by Metallica defeats that, not to mention all the political and moral arguments we have on this forum about stuff. This completely ignores a lot of black metal. Drudkh, Panopticon, Jarost Marksa are all political bands with very intriguing and challenging views, just off the top of my head.

I would claim that they weren't critically addressing those issues. Anselmo wrote about his own misfortune with drugs which isn't critical and Machine Head addressed some social ills but I don't think the themes were framed in a way to reach the audience unlike the way other bands do.

That may be true but that very fact as a lot more social resonance than you're giving it. The music itself captures hegemonic and anti-hegemonic tones and those in and of themselves provide a very interesting field for analysis.

As for the metalheads are failures at life shit and wash dishes, well, that is often true for some but it is by no means inclusive to all. A lot of younger metalheads nowadays are going to university, ie, the people on this forum.

I disagree. While I know several metalheads that can fit that bill, I know plenty that are just like everyone else... And even that being said, I'm not one that believes the world view of what " normal " is or " intelligent ". Just because someone didn't go become a rocket scientist and works at a gas station doesn't mean they're not intelligent, or decent people.

And there's a difference between your " I love Metallica and Pantera lulz " metalhead crowd, and ones like us who are very involved with metal.
And like Trapt says I doubt your description fits anyone on this forum.