Let us review how we got here, how things are going, and where we are going.
122 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, history of metal, sadistic metal reviews, smr, spirit of metal
Let us review how we got here, how things are going, and where we are going.
122 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, history of metal, sadistic metal reviews, smr, spirit of metal
Spurred on by the epiphanic New Wave of British Heavy Metal, heavy music exploded in the United States during the early 1980s with literally thousands of bands spawning across the country. Taking obvious influence from seminal acts such as Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motörhead, and Dio-era Black Sabbath, US heavy metal managed to acquire a character and life of its own, manifesting in some cases in a more muscular sound while others pursued more progressive or melodic leanings.
11 CommentsTags: brocas helm, Heavy Metal
Among seemingly insatiable hunger for all things old school or concept-oriented, it seems unbelievable that Doomstone were once an anomaly. Bypassing the early 1990s underground metal boom, Doomstone embraced a deliberately retrogressive channeling of the “evil” side of 1980s heavy metal.
30 CommentsTags: doomstone, Heavy Metal
To appreciate metal means that to a degree one appreciates its roots and constituent influences, sometimes even when they incorporate elements of newer subgenres. Seax makes classic heavy metal in the Iron Maiden or Judas Priest style as if it were Master covering it: stripped down, uptempo, and riff-powered.
4 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, seax
Where did black metal go wrong? Like Western Civilization, it forgot the goal and the why and focused on the how in order to keep together a growing group of people who were more interested in being shopkeepers than warriors, kings, geniuses, and shamans.
9 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, vinterland
After slaying the world with North From Here, Sentenced reverted to the Iron Maiden and Queenrsyche side of the equation, trying to come up with a hard rockin’ version of death metal, in the process turning off most of their fans.
6 CommentsTags: Heavy Metal, sentenced
Birth Ritual records added Sentenced Down to its roster of tapes licensed from Century Media. Originally released in 1996, the album showed where Sentenced went after the formative North From Here, and while it was quality heavy metal, it missed out on the mystical atmosphere of earlier releases.
No CommentsTags: birth ritual records, Heavy Metal, sentenced
Continuing the legacy of progressive/folk heavy metal band Absu, Proscriptor McGovern’s Apsû releases its self-titled debut this year. Now, the band has released the first single, “Caliginous Whorl,” from the upcoming album.
1 CommentTags: absu, apsu, Heavy Metal
Longstanding mythological metal act Absu collapsed in a series of legal challenges to the name last year, but the core of the band — songwriter Proscriptor McGovern — continues with a new band named Proscriptor McGovern’s Apsû which plans to release its debut Proscriptor McGovern’s Apsû later this year.
1 CommentTags: absu, apsu, Heavy Metal
From a recent publication of Perfect Sound Forever, some information echoing our FAQ about the origin of heavy metal:
Leaving out the blues element in the late ’70s, metal pioneers Judas Priest and Mötörhead had used their heaviness while keeping in line with the attitude of punk to create a sound that was heavy rock n’ roll punk filled with economic guitar solos, much like those heard in the Ramones and Sex Pistols. In fact, Mötörhead’s 1977 self-titled debut, which had included the element of speed, had often mixed the sound of classic rock with punk and the ’70’s glam rock of Bowie and Slade. This would soon would be followed by ’80’s metal pioneers Saxon, Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Diamond Head and Girlschool who had added a great amount of guitar dexterity to the mix becoming a prime characteristic of ’80s metal music from the beginning.
In addition, the article addresses some of the concerns with commercialization and assimilation that came straight out of the 1980s:
When considering ’80s metal, one has to recognize that although the spirit of punk from which it came had mainly focused on anarchy, anti-consumerism, anti-corporate control, much of it, particularly glam, had taken on a strong commercial aspect in the rise of a particularly increasingly commercial period. Mixed with a sporty look and big hair when an enormous mix of different music and styles had existed, after following on from punk and much that was derived from classic rock, metal music in the ’80s had flourished as corporate rock in a period when the commercialization of music saw the rise of an unstoppable corporatization on a wide international scale- indeed, major U.S. record companies were selling themselves to media moguls in Japan and Europe. In fact, metal was a music engulfed by a “give me the money decade” full of excess – drink, women, hair, drugs in a period which saw the beginning of fragmentation in music when the rebelliousness that once seemed to possess more innovativeness and originality from which it had originally stemmed from became swallowed up by commercialism.
In fact, one of the original ANUS articles, now lost to time, was about the difference between commercialism of a non-commercial genre and being within a commercial genre like Queensrÿche or Iron Maiden, who did their best despite coming from the aboveground.
4 CommentsTags: 1980s, assimilation, commercialism, Heavy Metal, underground