Metal Reviews

That's precisely why I mentioned them. These bands started in the 90's or early 2000's and they had a greater influence on black metal in the 2000s than Weakling did.

Weakling, in comparison, influenced barely a handful of bands. And you state in the last four years? Ok, let's compare this to the birth of nearly every other genre/sub-genre or new wave of anything. In fact, let's compare this to the 80's and the birth of metal's primary sub-genres. During the time there was a process of bands not necessarily being entirely influenced by each other, but who fed off each other in some way or other while taking it a step further in whatever direction they were going in.

If we look at albums like Ace of Spades (or, heck even going back to the late 70's Motörhead albums) or Welcome to Hell as foundational albums in extreme metal as far as getting the ball rolling (though really metal had technically been steamrolling in all directions since the beginning), then we also see that within a year or so many of the bands that would begin to make up heavy influences for the three big extreme metal genres had already sprung up. By '81 there was already Metal Church's Red Skies demo that arguably holds the first bone fide thrash of the 80's. At the same time you already had bands like Sodom and Hellhammer releasing demos influenced by Venom by 1982 and 1983 respectively. In just two years to a year after that these guys were already taking metal by storm along with the likes of Bathory, Slayer, Celtic Frost, Exodus and others. Funny enough, bands had more immediate influences in the age of tape trading than in the MP3 age for Weakling-influenced bands.

Jumping ahead to the later spawn of this extreme metal madness you get the Norwegian scene. And how long until that Norwegian/Scandinavian scene influenced a lot of the early American bands? Not particularly long. And in far greater numbers than a handful of shitty bands that are only recognised as anything by certain people as doing anything interesting or new (which is their supposed claim to fame).

You can't really even begin to compare that to influencing 5 shitty bands.

Weakling has not influenced anything near as massive as the amount of bands influenced by Darkthrone, Burzum or Emperor alone (even looking at that influence in the 90's), or any sub-genre of black metal. This "influence" is restricted to a fairly small group of bands.



The thing is that they did not and, today, do not influence the whole genre of USBM, nor have they really shifted the sound of the genre. My argument with Weakling and bands like Krallice or Liturgy is that they do not actually create any sort of "new sound" for black metal. That's like saying Kvlt of Azazel created a new bm sound by simply playing what they were trying to immitate very poorly. And that's what Weakling did. There's an obvious influence from Norwegian and earlier USBM bands...but Weakling fails at actually figuring out how to play the black metal he's trying to immitate. But this is where personality/image takes over from the music, and I think it is that "alternative image" that has influenced bands like WITTR, Liturgy and Krallice, but when it comes to music they are nothing but poor immitations of an immitation. The "image" is something new, not the music. They bring nothing new to the spectrum of black metal beyond connecting the hipster indie scene to black metal. Really the only argument for how this is supposedly something new is fans saying it makes them "feel" different than what existed before it or along side it (zomg teh emoshunz!)...but technically there is not much that is actually different going on, beyond diverging away from black metal riffs entirely (probably because they wouldn't know one if it hit them in the face)...which then makes one wonder what the fuck they are actually playing beyond poor attempts at black metal.

As far as dominating...define dominate. The thing is that there is a "niche" for this sort of thing, but outside of a handful of bands it really has little to no influence. And I wouldn't take magazines as any real indication, since they pimp a lot of idiocy.[/i]

Jane Doe, Colors, Si Monvmentvm, Frances The Mute, and Blackwater Park are all well on their way to becoming classics, if they aren't already.

Why not add Children Of Bodom's Hate Crew Deathroll to that list as well.

Yes it's clearer with graph + the explanations, thank you very much.

I don't know what to think of my shitload of mp3s right now...

(I promise I stop using the word shitload, starting tomorrow.)

but technically there is not much that is actually different going on, beyond diverging away from black metal riffs entirely (probably because they wouldn't know one if it hit them in the face)...

I think you're reducing the influence quite a bit. I think their influence can already be seen but I'm not claiming they've taken root like Darkthrone but I think they might be in line to do that. USBM isn't talking about Krieg, Leviathan or Xasthur anymore. Liturgy, Woe, Panopticon, Krallice, Skagos, Ludicra, WITTR, Ash Borer, Fell Voices, Fall of Rauros, Lake of Blood (I'd even include Altar of Plagues, Fen and Terzij De Horde albeit not US). They're all obviously incorporating various degrees of hardcore, post-rock, Drudkh, Agalloch, but I think we can point to Weakling as being an influence. And honestly you say that Weakling do a shitty rendition of black metal, I think Venom did a shitty rendition of NWOBHM and look what it has influenced. I'll abstract from my dislike of Venom but no matter how shitty Weakling is or you think they are it is influencing these bands and these bands are the bands being talked about.

The problem I want to point out in your genealogy is that you're acting like Dead as Dreams has been out for twenty years. It is just now being taken up so to proclaim its lack of influence or even its influence beyond anecdotal lists is problematic. We need more time to make any broad claims but I think my claim is safe to make. Ace of Spades it may not be in terms of that instant success but people going back to it in time doesn't make it less of a classic. Artillery and other early power metal bands lacked influence but are finding a resurgence influence in stuff like Slough Feg.

Fair enough on it remaining to be seen, but I just don't understand why you're so quick to call this a classic when it's clearly nothing new or spectacular. Especially when bands like Drudkh, Windir (Likferd and 1184) and Negura Bunget would be far better examples of bands that put out highly influential and truly classic albums in the 2000s, who have proven to be influential throughout the last ten years in many sub-genres of black metal. Especially Drudkh who even formed in the 2000s. Compared to these bands Weakling is a joke.

Welcome back, BTW, I've always considered you to be one of the better contributors here.

USBM, by and large, is a very weak niche.
There are a (very) few exceptions, as always.

We had the exact same discussion last time IronDu- I mean, Sceadugenga was here. Someone really doesn't like Weakling.

What Weakling did was influence a very well established genre, which is still pretty impressive, summoning a lot of bands like them in a short time. And those bands are making quality music and are getting more popular.

I also checked out Hammer of The Gods by Angelcorpse since our last argument and I really liked them.

riffs are important in metal so diverging away from black metal riffs is something actually different going on imo

Well, I personally think it comes down to hardware. If you own a modern computer it likely has 32/24 bit resolution with at least 96Khz sample rate you are in good shape. At that point Mp3 is going to make you suffer. Back 5 years ago was the last time I did a serious comparison and couldn't tell the difference on the old 48Khz/16-Bit cards. Sound cards have come a long way. My onboard card is far superior to my old Audigy 24-bit card I had at one time.

Old Computer (like my old 2001 Toshiba): may not be good enough to even produce MP3 faithfully or may be so noisy that everything above a certain frequency is going to be just noisy enough to mask all the "delicate" Highs anyway. Sounds dull and noisy, but powerful and heavy.

Newer Computer (Like my 2008 Sony): Will play 24-bit 192Khz Master Tapes 100% flawlessly with close zero noise. Sounds bright, detailed and accurate without being glassy or having a metallic sheen. Excellent lows and mids too.

Other than WITTR, Krallice, Liturgy, Panopticon, Fen and Altar of Plagues (the last three even less popular, I'd say. I hear more people talking about the latest Profanatica or Gravewürm than some of these) I don't think I've heard any talk at all about the others.

@ Kath and Trapt, agreed to disagree.

But Trapt, I'm still gonna stick a last one in and say that riffs are a huge part of what makes black metal to begin with, and you can't really have black metal without the proper riffing. That's a big part of what joins 80's bm to the bm that came after genre-wise.

That's fine. Fuck your genre distinctions.

That's fine. Fuck your genre distinctions.

Alright, so would you suggest I closely listen to cd-rips I made a long time ago with shitty hardware, and see if I can hear differences with the actual output (mp3s) ?

Hell, when I think of the names of the bands potentially affected by this and the number of re-rips I would have to do...

The problem is that the nature of a riff changes depending on the genre of metal. Tremolo-ing a power metal riff (as an example) does not a black metal riff make. And it's changing the structure of a riff that can "blacken" it or, instead, make it a happy power metal song with tremolo picking. Ignoring the effect a riff has on music means that a band ignores what actually makes up that genre.

I wouldn't even say that. If you have a more recent computer, ditch the MP3's. I mean if your music worth the cost of a hundred dollar external hard drive?

The quality of the rips doesn't matter really. I still used a 7 year old copy of LAME that worked perfectly fine compared to the new one. I needed the old one because it had a switch to stopped filtering. Since maybe 1% of "High Quality" rippers even know about this swtich, that is a good enough reason to re-encode right of the bat if you absolutely insist on MP3.