ZeroSymbolic7188's Forum Replies

Personally, I'd be down to play there knowing what I know now, but my vocalist is a much less forgiving about these kinds of things. We are going to compare notes at practice, explain points of view and make a team decision.

Today the Detroit Metro TImes picked up the story, and you can read the article here: https://www.metrotimes.com/music/harpos-owners-apologize-for-hosting-neo-nazi-metal-show-38430887

Key takeaways: The show was stopped during the 2nd band's set, and the owner claims they did not know ahead of time. That they were mislead about the nature of the bands.

r/detroit takes are here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Detroit/comments/1ibco4o/so_uh_what_happened_at_harpos_over_the_weekend/?captcha=1

Note: The original post was made before the metro times article came out, so if you are visiting here from reddit. Let me frame how I came to know about the show:

My vocalist called me the morning of yesterday and told me "Harpos hosted a NSBM show, and therefore he did not want our band to play the venue". I asked him what he knew about it, and he just said that several people at his workplace had been talking about it. He explained to me that the show was not publicly advertised on Harpos website or on their social media, and he showed me a flyer for the show that stated "Venue to be Announced Day of Show".-It looked really shady.

I feel better knowing that they pulled the plug, but it still shouldn't have happened, and would not have happened had the owners done research into the bands. They said as much themselves, but I also understand that shit happens. Whether I will personally play there or go to shows there will be a band decision after we talk about everything at practice. 

Got around to the Sargeist tune today. That is fucking great and fits right in. Good Swap IMO!

Cool tune and I like Album cover too. Delightfully goofy! Quiet Riot 2 Was only released in Japan, so I always associated "Slick Black Cadillac" with Metal Health Album-they re-recorded it for that. 

So I went back to investigate, and yes the Quiet Riot II version is balls. It's not worlds different but it's weaker than the Metal Health version by a significant amount.

Well the big bosses said no, so it ain't gonna happen, but I was thinking it would be a good idea specifically because of the polarizing opinions. It would give the fans of that stuff a place to go, and it would also filter that stuff away from the more pure traditional stuff.

This type of metal is not my cup of tea, and yet I enjoyed this set list Andi, so I'm not gonna do anything to it.  My reptile brain says there should be a Killswitch Engage song somewhere, but I wouldn't know where to put it.

My wife (Kosie) will be here later with a more expert opinion than mine. 

For me I'm going to swap "Face Deletion" with "Edge Crusher" from Fear Factory's Obsolete album. It seams like a straight across upgrade to me. 

1. The Kovenant - "The Human Abstract"

2. Skrew - "Cold Angel Press"

3. Health, Lamb of God - "Cold Blood"

4. Fear Factory-"Edge Crusher"

5. Mechina - "Tartarus"

6. Godflesh - "Don't Bring Me Flowers"

7. Turmion Katilot - "Verta Sataa"

8. Ministry - "No W Redux"

Oh man I don't know if I'm doing it right or not (I lack familiarity outside of the big names here), but I will try.

Wife and I listened to the full set and felt that Memphis May Fire had the weakest track in the set. So I am going to push that one out, and replace with some In This Moment and hope they fit the genre. It sounds good to my ears.

1. Evanescence – "Lithium"

2. New Years Day – "Relentless"

3. Mushroomhead – "Fall In Line"

4. In This Moment-"Adrenalize"

5. Spiderbait - "Shashavaglava"

6. Disturbed – "Torn"

7. Godsmack – "1000hp"

8. Linkin Park – "Two Faced"

Aight.

I liked Storm the Gates from 2018!

Venom INC kicked ass, sadly Jeff Mantas couldn't be there, but the gentleman they got to fill in was great, and Tony Dolan is an absolute treasure.

Ritchie Blackmore is a notorious douchebag.

Welcome David. My name is Zachary. Hit me up anytime about anything. Cheers!

That's pretty fuckin' cool Shadow.

Daniel, I love you brother, but we look at the genre in very different ways. The good news is there is room for both points of view.

Yeah man, that song just never did it for me, and I've listend to Diamond Head many times over and over. Just not my flavor.

If I said there is something vaguely metal about this definitely not metal song, would ya'll feel me?

I am also a "War" enjoyer, but the Holy Moses song does fuckin hit!

OK Sonny explain it to me, what is the thing with "Am I Evil"? I've never really gotten on with that tune or with Diamond Head.

^Yup that's going  on a future playlist.

I fuck with that^

Adding Midnight Witch to my investigation list to comment on later. For now I just want to speak for my boys in Weedeater. If I am remembering correctly a lot of our most active members hail from Europe and Australia. Weedeater is a specific brand of Metal that speaks to America's rural South, and as a man of rural America, their specific brand of anger just really hits for me. You gotta go smoke a pack of Winston Selects, Drink a 5th of Jack Daniels, eat some BBQ with sweet tea, and then go jump in the creek. That's when Weedeater starts to click. 

I think my upbringing flavored my tastes a little differently. I like them Weedeater boys.

This is like 30 pages late to the party but I'm revisiting the original post which poses two questions:

1. What percentage needs to be metal to qualify as a metal release?

2. What do you think is the ground zero release for metal?

My personal feelings:

Before I can answer that, we have to answer the endlessly debated question: What is Metal? 

I've thought about this a lot over 30ish years, and I personally believe it comes down to 2 components:

A) Does the band embrace the Heavy Metal community and accept the genre label?

B) Does the Heavy Metal community embrace the band as part of it's culture?

In other words, you must apply and be accepted. 

This is my point of view, but it leads to some common arguments as follows:

*Criteria A-Met, Criteria B-Not Met.
This situation describes bands like Ghost. The mainstream music scene wants to call them a heavy metal act, but for the most part they are often mocked in Metal circles. Many bands fall into this circumstance. Yes bands meeting criteria A have the technical label of being a metal act, but the community at large does not usually accept them.

*Criteria A-Not Met, Criteria B-Met.
Led Zepplin, and Deep Purple, are commonly considered along side Black Sabbath as foundational Heavy Metal. However, I know that Robert Plant and Ritchie Blackmore hated that label. Thus to me those bands are not metal, because they resented the genre-label. Robert said the term was silly, and Blackmore really hated it, he said it described noise and was listened to by knuckledragging morons I'm paraphrasing, but his quote was something very close to that. Therefore, in my book, Zepplin and Deep Purple are not Metal bands based on criteria A.
In similar fashion, Motorhead would not be a Metal band to me, despite the fact that I pretty much worship at the altar of Lemmy Kilmister. I play bass guitar, I have connected mutton chops, and I dress in a sort of heavy country-western fashion. However, for over 40 years the man himself was insistent "We are Motorhead, and we play Rock and Roll." I never dispute an artist as the ultimate authority of his own art.
ACDC is another example of this type of thing. They have some dark songs, they even talk about satan and hell, but for most people they fall solidly into the Hard Rock category, and they definitely look and feel more like a rock and roll outfit. 

*Both Criteria Met, but not all the time.
Metallica is a metal band, they accept the label 100%, and the metal community holds them in high esteem. However, Load, Re-Load, and St. Anger debatable are hard rock albums moreso than Metal albums.

So I acknowledge some holes in my own nomenclature, but I haven't found a better way yet. I'm open if you got something.

With that out of the way we can now move to the posed questions:

1. What percentage needs to be metal to qualify as a metal release?

Obviously for me it's got to be 100% as meeting both of my above criteria, and it has to be throughout the album too in image and feel. "She's so Heavy" and "Helter Skelter" are sometimes mentioned as early metal offerings, along with the heavier offerings from Cream, Iron Butterfly's "In a Godda Da Vida", and the band Blue Cheer. I've even seen cases made for old blues men like Howlin' Wolf and Screamin Jay Hawkins. Wolf's voice scared this shit out of people, and Hawkins would dress up in voodoo inspired costume and face paint as well as invoke smoke and fire heavily in his life performance. Neither man had access to the kind of electricity and distortion we come to associate with modern metal, but think of how blues influence Black Sabbath's Debut really was! Yet I wouldn't call any of this 100% devotion to metal, the blues men didn't have the electricity, and the hard rock bands didn't have the image. Image is important in heavy metal.

2. What do you think is the ground zero release for metal?

Basic bitch answer here, but it's going to be Black Sabbath's self titled debut album. That album cover, that ambience, that distortion, those subject matters. All of it undeniable 100% Heavy Metal. Every inch! It's true that at the time Black Sabbath called their music "Scary Rock and Roll", but when the term Heavy Metal was presented, it may have taken them a while to warm up to it, but they never expressed such distaste for it as Zepplin and Deep Purple members did. 

IF that doesn't satisfy you, and you insist that Black Sabbath preferred the Rock and Roll moniker then I would fast forward to...

Judas Priest "Sad Wings of Destiny" it meets all the criteria, and Rob Halford and the boys undeniably fully embraced the Heavy Metal label, and wore it proudly. 

Truth be told I am also not a huge Uncle Acid fan, I like them well enough but they wouldn't be absolute favorites. Their inclusion here is partly for being right on theme, and mostly because my wife loves that song. Gotta check out some Burning Witch when I get home if they are as nasty and trippy as you imply here.

Thank you Sir. Glad you enjoyed it. I want to do a Volume 2 of this theme that includes "Lights Out" that song is an absolute banger! I am also a Uriah Heap enjoyer, "The Wizard" and "Lady in Black" both get heavy rotation around these parts. Cheers!

NOTE: AFTER SOME THOUGHT I REWROTE THE FORMAT FOR THESE THREADS, PLEASE REVIEW THE OP AS THINGS WORK A LITTLE DIFERENT NOW. HOPEFULLY IN A WAY THAT IS MORE FUN.

I just checked the song, and nice work Sir! I think I would shift the track list around and stick it in between "Terminate Damnation" and "Phobofile" but that's semantics. As far as Obituary is concerned "Suffocation" was the first full Death metal song I ever heard, and it still goes hard. That album is very important to me-no bad choices on it. Cheers!

Whatever you want to do brother. Just have a fun reason.

8. Detroit Rock City-Kiss

7. The Last Command-WASP

6. Caught in a Most-Anthrax

5. Children of the Grave-Black Sabbath

4. Hellraiser-Ozzy+Lemmy

3. Motorbreath-Metallica

2. Warriors of the World United-Manowar

1. Black Metal-Venom

Welcome back, Zach! I found some more dinosaur-themed bands in Metal Archives, more than just death/extreme metal:

The only bands in the list that I've heard of are European power metal bands (here they are, Daniel!) Hevisaurus, SauruXet, and Victorius. Also this Mastodon track kind of counts as Jurassic metal, starting with the mighty roar of a T-rex in Jurassic Park:

I'll have to get to those later, maybe this weekend. I was playing the game earlier with a guy whose username was Skraekoedian. 

It's not really about Dinosaurs, but it does feature a prominent Roar (it's kinda funny)

Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

This is on spotify and it was worth it in every way.

1971

1973

I don't even much like pop-punk but this song is just great.

Thank you. We look forward to doing more soon..

What times work good for ya Pelle?

O nifty I will Migrate this.

OH wait a minute. I crossed up two diferent concepts. The idea isn't that Sabbath isn't metal-as in hard rock that shouldn't be here that's what I had in my tortured mind. This is just about moving it from Guardians to Fallen. I dunno man. I guess I don't feel strongly about either one.

At the risk of stirring the pot, because for the life of me I can't seam not to...

Genre classifications were developed for marketing, broadcasting, radio stations, and record store reasons. They served as a rough guide to what you might be getting from an unknown artist. In an era where streaming is the most common form of music consumption what purpose do such debates really serve, or even reviews for that matter? You can read my rating and review of an album sure, but in the same amount of time you could have queued it on you platform of choice and been 5 minutes deep into actually hearing it yourself. I'm obviously not against such things as I vigorously participate in this website, but the creative and restless mind keeps me wondering if we could look at music criticism in a new light and find something more constructive and fresh to do with this passion? 

I dealt with ignoring the entire first wave of Black Metal, but if were going to start saying that Black Sabbath isn't Metal that blows all credibility. 

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.

Rex, I already found the exit door on this one bro.

If you're going for most influencial then you have to include Black Metal. Which IS a first-wave black metal album, and it gave the sub-genre it's name. Quite a lot of the first and second wave artists site it as a primary influence. 

Remember the first wave was little bit more relaxed in it's parameters than the second wave. Mercyful Fate is also considered a first-wave black metal band, and they are farther away than Venom from what became the "pure" template.

Quoted ZeroSymbolic7188

The difference is that the list is most influential black metal releases, not releases that were influential on black metal. If it was the latter, then Hellhammer, Mercyful Fate and Venom would be top of the list.

I'm sure you can find references online to Venom being labelled black metal (you can find anything online), but if the album doesn't actually contain the major components of black metal, then I see no reason to label it that way.

Not gonna argue with ya on your own site big dawg. Just showing where I'm coming from with my take. I sha'll say no more on the subject.

Im gonna go with Abbath, Nergal, Tom, and Grutle Kiellson on this, but ya'll do as you like.