Heavy Metal Green Lights
This is the prettier sister thread of https://metal.academy/forum/23/thread/2224?page=1&#topic_19767.
This one is all positive vibes, "hell yeah brother", and "turn that shit up!"
1) Cronos. Literally everything he does. For example the intro to War Head is just him doing his signature growl. Holy Shit does that fire me up!
2) Bass Solo/Intro-I'm a bassist. Explains itself I think.
3)Tough guy intro-The opening to Omerta by Lamb of God for example.
4)Primal Scream-Think the way Chuck does the DIE (guttoral) DIE! (shreik) thring on the opening of Infernal Death from Scream Bloody Gore. My favorite one is the Scream Lord Lokhraed does for Nocturnal Depression on "Nostalgia".
(You weren't gonna look it up, if I didn't put it here ;-) )
5) Excellent Guitar riff right off the rip- I think this probably goes for all of us!
6) Breakdowns-Love or Hate for a lot of people. Love for me.
7) Fast Starts in General-I'm less into that slow build stuff. You have 30seconds to make your point, but i prefer if you do it in about 5. The sooner the better-with few exceptions.
8) Dirty Vocals-Strong preference for guttorals, shrieks, and animal noise over conventional singing.
9) Lyrics about Metal as an Army/Family-In otherwords ManOwaR. It's cheesy but it's my kind of cheese. Deliscious cheese.
10) Actually fucking awesome guitar solo-the cousin of Excellent guitar riff.
11) Thunderbird Bass Guitar-If the Bassist is playing a bird it's gonna be some serious Shit.
12) Orange Amplification-Kick ass bands use Orange stuff.
13) One Violin-My Dying Bride does this and it's the right amount.
14) Black Metal Band has Song about Elizabeth Bathory-It's good every time. Put it to the Test.
15) Slam Band with Non-Violent Album Cover or Animal Theme-Newtdick, Bananaslamma, Reptilian Brain, etc.
16) Funeral Doom/SDBM Band has exactly the right amount of keys and/or strings-Very hard to get this right, but when they nail it-Fucking Mint!
17) Southern Metal with obviously southern influence (Strong accent singer, Delta Bends, Rural Subject Matter, etc)-Speaks to my inner country boy.
18) Lead Singer is female but is in fact a METAL singer, not a OPERA singer in a Metal band-I almost always get behind this shit. More Wendy O Williams (yes punk band, but her voice is Metal as fuck!), and less Tarja Turunen please.
19) Female member of the band is not the singer. Bonus if she's the bassist.-Jo Bench, Liz Buckingham, Lena Abe, Ruyter Suys, Sean Ysault. Works everytime. We need more!
20) Self-Depricating Live Introduction. The more the band says they suck, the harder they kick ass.
"We are Weedeater from Cape Fear, North Carolina, and we fuckin' suck so get your money back dumbasses." (Dixie Dave Collins)-Proceedes to absolutely murder the crowd for 2 hours.
You Know what to do.
I will have to give this a bit of thought, but one thing I do love is lyrics about history - especially WWI or WW2, but shit like Maiden's Alexander the Great is great too (although I do avoid the power metal historical epics).
Oh, and singers with gnarly, grizzled voices like Lemmy or Wino.
The cavernous sound of old-school death metal in the vein of Autopsy. The deeper in the earth it seems to emanate from, the more I love it.
I will have to give this a bit of thought, but one thing I do love is lyrics about history - especially WWI or WW2, but shit like Maiden's Alexander the Great is great too (although I do avoid the power metal historical epics).
Oh, and singers with gnarly, grizzled voices like Lemmy or Wino.
The cavernous sound of old-school death metal in the vein of Autopsy. The deeper in the earth it seems to emanate from, the more I love it.
*Bolt Thrower, Weedeater, Cryptopsy. BTW Autopsy bass tone on severed survival is fucking awesome!
I have so many heavy metal green lights, but here's a few of them I could think of:
Epic buildup intro - Totally different from your "fast starts" green light (which I can also relate), Zach, but I like when the instrumentation slowly builds up before beginning its heavy marathon. For example, Trivium's "Kirisute Gomen".
Breakdowns gone all-out brutal - Particularly in deathcore, with the most crushing guitars and demonic screams. Since you also like breakdowns and dirty vocals, Zach, I would recommend the popular ending breakdown of Lorna Shore's "To the Hellfire".
Slow guitar solo followed by fast one - That's one reason why DragonForce is one of the only power metal bands I still listen to today. And this also occurs in many metal songs from Metallica's "Blackened" to the title track of Trivium's In the Court of the Dragon.
Extreme metal gone symphonic - The amount of heaviness and symphonics should be in the right balance, enough to spawn symphonic death metal masterpieces like Waltari's Yeah! Yeah! Die! Die! and Dethklok's The Doomstar Requiem, along with bands like Trail of Tears and Lorna Shore.
A female member of a band performs occasional vocals - This time I'm not talking about a band with a female co-vocalist (e.g. Trail of Tears), I mean a female band member performing an instrument occasionally singing. I agree that she should sound METAL, though I don't mind her being operatic. Examples: Make Them Suffer, Skillet
-I need to listen to "In Waves" I think you suggested that to me.
-I am aware of the vocal acrobatics of Will Ramos. I just don't care tremendously for the music that surrounds him. I do respect his talents though.
-I gave sincere consideration to Trail of Tears, because her voice is extremely captivating, but I was sad to see that she hasn't done any other bands. I'd love to see her in something a little more hefty.
Yeah, what a shame we don't get to hear Cathrine Paulsen outside of Trail of Tears, though according to Metal Archives, she was also in symphonic black metal band Lucid Fear that only made a couple demos. For the other two female vocalists, Helena Iren Michaelsen was also in Epica (when they were originally named Sahara Dust) and Ailyn was also in Sirenia. But those two bands are more focused on symphonic metal and therefore not the right bands for you, Zach. Anyway, the best Trail of Tears album to start with for Cathrine's captivating vocals is Bloodstained Endurance.
I'm Blasting In Waves right now. First album of Summer as school's out.
In Waves is what first got me into metalcore and other heavier more modern metal genres. Here's my review for the album for the whole story, and I look forward to seeing your thoughts about the album, Zach: https://metal.academy/reviews/5677/5352
My take on it is up. Didn't blow my mind, but was quite solid, above average even. https://metal.academy/reviews/34617/5352
On to Blood Stained Endurance... and pass. I love Catherine but the dude vocals just suck so hard.
So anyway I tracked down Lucid Fear:
Now the band is better, but Catherine is worse. DAMN.
Here are a few things that I'm a stickler for:
1. The more elite exponents of extreme metal drumming - Give me a super-human metronome of a drummer & I can listen to almost anything without feeling the need to skip. It's a little strange when you consider that I'm a guitarist but I'm always more impressed by drummers.
2. I'm also a sucker for huge, glossy & expansive production jobs & find that they can often see me really enjoying what might otherwise be a fairly generic release. Examples of this can be found in genres like progressive metal & deathcore.
3. I love me some rhythmic complexity when it's used subtly, creatively & is tightly incorporated into the song-writing rather than simply being there for show. The old-school progressive metal, tech-death & tech-thrash bands understood this concept well. Many of the new-school bands unfortunately do not.
4. Relentless brutality & the blackest darkness of all - I like my metal as savage & blasphemous as (in)humanly possible. Give me Christ-raping, church-burning, zombie-impaling, planet-annihilating ultra-violence any day of the week.
Expansive production and rhythmic complexity are also what I look for in genres like progressive metal, deathcore, tech-death, and tech-thrash, or a combination of the 4 (all 4 together would be quite wild).
I'm Blasting In Waves right now. First album of Summer as school's out.
Glad you like that Trivium album despite the issues you have found, Zach. With that, here's another Trivium song I would recommend to you, from their follow-up album Vengeance Falls. In that special outside-world event earlier today, there were some music performances going on, and that included some local rock/metal musicians (extreme metal allowed to be played in the public outdoors, who knew!?), then a few people, including myself, were given the opportunity to sing our own songs. One of the songs I covered was this Trivium song, and I've done the singing and screaming quite well, if I say so myself:
Needless to say, the other song I was singing was Linkin Park's "Friendly Fire", as a tribute to the late Chester Bennington, and that song is much softer, in contrast to Trivium's heaviness.
I like that song a lot. Heftier than the "In Waves" material and it sounds like they got the cymbal-bleed cleaned up a little better. It's still got more treble in the mix than I'd go for but it's pretty good. 4/5
To me Lincoln Park is just a boy band in heavy metal costume.
I think it was One More Light, their final album with Chester Bennington, when the band dropped pretty much all of their rock/metal aspects and sounded like a boy band, though they still played their greatest hits in the final tour.