@limomangus@arcticdeth
Through the late 70’s we only considered two bands "heavy metal." Black Sabbath and Judas Priest (post-Rocka Rolla). I thought the 1970 song Jury by Trapeze came close. I played the heck out of that album (Medusa) in 1973-4.
There was nothing I considered metal again until ’81 with Iron Maiden’s Killers, which I didn’t like. I thought it was too fast. My how times have changed. Some might include Anvil in ’81. The real start of the proliferation of metal began in ’82 when I heard Witchfinder General and Angel Witch. ’83 kicked it off with a vengeance with Slayer, Metallica and Mercyful Fate. And ’84 was amazing. The period between ’84-88 was loaded with phenomenal metal. There were still good releases from ’88-92, but you could feel that something had changed. There was a short period where groove metal appeared. Then we had a dry spell from ’92-04. Thrash bands went Nu-metal, and after death metal band Entombed woke everyone up in ’90, with a few exceptions death metal hadn’t quite found its form yet, and after the brilliant ’87 release of Candlemass’ Nightfall, doom metal fizzled. In 2004, my interest peaked again when some of the death metal and metal-core bands started to release some decent music, like Killswitch Engage’s The End of Heartache, Cataract’s With Triumph Comes Loss, Full Blown Chaos’ Wake The Demons and Kataklysm’s Serenity In Fire.
Metal is now this humungous category with a huge number of genres that are indecipherable except to hardcore metal-heads. Progressive metal and technical death metal seems to draw some of the best musicians in the world, mainly because they’re the only ones who are capable of playing some of that stuff (for example Dream Theater). There are thousands of releases every year, most of them pure crap, but a few gems seem to pop up every year. And some genres go downhill while others suddenly become relevant again. For example, around 2013 death metal started to go dissonant, while doom metal made a resurgence with quality releases. A couple, Trees of Eternity’s Hour of the Nightingale and Draconian’s Sovran are stunningly brilliant.
BTW articdeth, I don’t think metalarchives.com includes all metal. For some reason they refuse to recognize hardcore as metal. I can see if the band sounds derived from The Ramones, Bad Religion or Sex Pistols, but I think any metal-head who doesn’t listen to Nail’s Suum Cuique or Wide Open Wound because they don’t come across Nail in metalarchives has possibly missed out on two of the heaviest metal riffs of all time. Born From Pain’s brutally heavy Sands of Time is also missing. And they regularly mislabel the genres, such as listing The Destro as "Death/Groove" when they are really "Groove/Hardcore" with nary a blast beat, growl or tremolo picking to be found. Great band BTW.
I grew up at the perfect age, of the beginning of the NWOBHM musicMy first album was Black Sabbath’s Paranoid ... WHEN IT WAS A NEW RELEASE (facepalm/smh). Talk about feeling old. But as fits my personality type, I never got stuck on the music of my late teens like most people. I kept progressing up until today while retaining my enjoyment of some of the older stuff.
Through the late 70’s we only considered two bands "heavy metal." Black Sabbath and Judas Priest (post-Rocka Rolla). I thought the 1970 song Jury by Trapeze came close. I played the heck out of that album (Medusa) in 1973-4.
There was nothing I considered metal again until ’81 with Iron Maiden’s Killers, which I didn’t like. I thought it was too fast. My how times have changed. Some might include Anvil in ’81. The real start of the proliferation of metal began in ’82 when I heard Witchfinder General and Angel Witch. ’83 kicked it off with a vengeance with Slayer, Metallica and Mercyful Fate. And ’84 was amazing. The period between ’84-88 was loaded with phenomenal metal. There were still good releases from ’88-92, but you could feel that something had changed. There was a short period where groove metal appeared. Then we had a dry spell from ’92-04. Thrash bands went Nu-metal, and after death metal band Entombed woke everyone up in ’90, with a few exceptions death metal hadn’t quite found its form yet, and after the brilliant ’87 release of Candlemass’ Nightfall, doom metal fizzled. In 2004, my interest peaked again when some of the death metal and metal-core bands started to release some decent music, like Killswitch Engage’s The End of Heartache, Cataract’s With Triumph Comes Loss, Full Blown Chaos’ Wake The Demons and Kataklysm’s Serenity In Fire.
Metal is now this humungous category with a huge number of genres that are indecipherable except to hardcore metal-heads. Progressive metal and technical death metal seems to draw some of the best musicians in the world, mainly because they’re the only ones who are capable of playing some of that stuff (for example Dream Theater). There are thousands of releases every year, most of them pure crap, but a few gems seem to pop up every year. And some genres go downhill while others suddenly become relevant again. For example, around 2013 death metal started to go dissonant, while doom metal made a resurgence with quality releases. A couple, Trees of Eternity’s Hour of the Nightingale and Draconian’s Sovran are stunningly brilliant.
BTW articdeth, I don’t think metalarchives.com includes all metal. For some reason they refuse to recognize hardcore as metal. I can see if the band sounds derived from The Ramones, Bad Religion or Sex Pistols, but I think any metal-head who doesn’t listen to Nail’s Suum Cuique or Wide Open Wound because they don’t come across Nail in metalarchives has possibly missed out on two of the heaviest metal riffs of all time. Born From Pain’s brutally heavy Sands of Time is also missing. And they regularly mislabel the genres, such as listing The Destro as "Death/Groove" when they are really "Groove/Hardcore" with nary a blast beat, growl or tremolo picking to be found. Great band BTW.