Ever since I was a 12 years old I had feelings of anger, depression, anxiety, exasperation, and loneliness towards the people I felt should love me the most, my family. A large part of my teenage years felt more like coping than anything else. My parents had already been through two separations, and when I was fourteen they split up for good. They're divorced now. I have often reflected on a very specific memory of mine. Up until I was 14 I had virtually no interest in music whatsoever. One day I was sitting in the back seat of the car. I think I was 12 or 13 years old at the time. It was summer. I had gelled my hair, but my brother who was sitting in front of me didn't care. He had the window rolled down which ruined my hair style. I complained to my dad, but he made some lame joke about it and basically took my brother's side. During the car ride they (my dad and brother) listened and sang along to The Backstreet Boys which was playing on the radio. How upset was I allowed to be about my hairstyle? Who cares right? I thought to myself, don't be so lame as to feel sorry for yourself about something like that. But what really bothered me was just the way that they didn't care. They just laughed with no thoughts towards my feelings. So I was pretty miserable for the whole car ride to wherever we were going. And I remember thinking to myself, as I reflected on how awful The Backstreet Boys were, there has to be the perfect music out there somewhere for me. Music that reflects on things like not feeling loved by the people you have the strongest human bonds with, instead of music that is about sex, partying, and feeling good for no particular reason. And I'm not sure where it came from, but "Screamo" popped into my head.
Well the first type of music I got interested in when I was 14 was Pop Punk, and from there I eventually moved on to Post-Hardcore. After High-school I was eventually introduced to some Metalcore, and I think I was 23 when I first started listening to real Metal. When I was 24 it dawned on me that I had never actually dug around to find this dubiously obscure "Screamo" that I thought must exist. Up until that point I had only heard the vaguest rumors. Well, I finally looked it up on the internet and after some searching this is what my first discovery was:
I pulled an all-nighter researching Screamo and talking about it on some internet message board. I fell in love. Screamo soon became 80% of my music library. The bands that hit me the hardest are still among my favorites, and I listen to them regularly. Here are a few.
Screamo has been the most influential genre of music in my life. While Post-Hardcore bands Alexisonfire and Thrice were the two bands I listened to the most as a teen and have stuck with me thus far, Screamo opened the biggest door into music for me. Within three weeks after that one all-nighter I listened to more bands than in my entire life up to that point, and the research I did discovering that music opened the door to researching many more interesting sub genres of Punk and Metal.
I'll use this thread from time to time to talk about music and post various bands that I'm listening to. That's all for now folks.
I don't love it, but there are some bands in the genre I enjoy. Judging from your tastes, you should like Crust Punk (if you don't already). Fall of Efrafa, Ekkaia, Dishammer and Alpinist are bands you should check out!
Sample:
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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.
Indeed those are all good bands. I think Ekkaia's first few songs they put out are absolutely golden. I guess it was because of how intense their singer's screaming was, but the crispness of his voice diminished in their next release and was completely gone by their third release. Their other material is still good, but doesn't hold a candle.
I'll talk more about Crust, Powerviolence, and other genres in the future.
That's a pretty powerful story Zotis, I had no idea that that was what lead you to the heavy music we often discuss. Also, apologies for not responding sooner, this thread seemed to have been avoiding me until now.
Orchid is an awesome Screamo band. Pg.99 is the only other one that I had heard of prior to you mentioning the other ones. I've already told you about how one of my favorite Screamo bands is The Saddest Landscape, mainly their older material though. It's not a genre that I listen to a ton, but there is stuff I can get into for sure.
Also, wow Mr. Minio! I would have never guessed that there would be another person on here that knew about Fall of Efrafa.
Anyways, I'm looking forward to future entries Zotis!
Good thread Zotis. My buddy is into screaming metal type stuff like this, so lately I've been around it a bit. I've never cared much for the screaming, really. I'm certainly open to it, especially more now than ever, but it still doesn't do a lot for me. I notice though, I tend to really dig the music aside from that. Maybe they aren't the same as this kind of stuff but one of my favorite bands is Animals as Leaders, which is more or less screaming metal without the screaming (or maybe not, but that's how I thought of them when I first found them out). And today, I was introduced by Sedai to Polyphia, who I have spent the day listening to. Their music reminds me a little bit of the "post-hardcore" stuff, but maybe I'm being crazy. These genres I've never delved into and am pretty clueless about.
Despite my cluelessness, there was a time when I was surrounded with post-hardcore, because one of my friends in 8th grade was really into it. So at that time I was listening to Circa Survive (who I still like), Chiodos (not so much), and The Sound of Animals Fighting. For that reason there is a certain nostalgia to emo and post-hardcore that still appeals to me a bit, with the right music.
My friend and I have been making our own music and I'm finding it's really metal-inspired, and that's something I brought to the table, not my friend, surprisingly. I guess I'm still influenced by Metallica, like they were ingrained into my subconscious back when I was around 12 and obsessed with them. I have recently rediscovered my love for Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets, and am starting to discover some more metal stuff.
While I don't know if the screaming will ever appeal to me, I'm certainly open to it, and will listen to your recs.
Awe, thanks guys. Your responses mean a lot to me. To answer your question Mr Minio, yes I do like some Noise, although it's mostly other stuff infused with noise. I can't say I'm a fan of straight up Noise. At least the stuff I've heard wasn't that appealing. A really good band that combines Screamo with Noisr is Combat Wounded Veteran, and a band I recently discovered that combines Noise with (I think) Metalcore and Metal is Melt Banana. They've actually been around for a long time and are quite well respected. Noise is definitely a genre I want to learn more about.
False Writer, we've talked privately a bit, and I'm glad there is another person here who likes this stuff. The Saddest Landscape is a band that by reputation is a pillar in the genre of Screamo and very well regarded. I admit I haven't particularly listened to them a ton. There are so many good bands that they kind of fell into the midst of the pile. So I listen to them now and then, but I do wish I could give so many of these great bands more attention.
Thanks for posting Donniedarko. I can't say I'm a fan of Dead Kennedys, but that song was not bad. I've never really been a fan of straight up Punk, but I have a lot of respect for it as the foundation for much of the music I love.
I enjoyed your story Swan. Yesterday I was at a friend's place, and we were showing each other music. He likes rap, which I don't, but I can appreciate stuff like Tupac and Wu Tang Clan. He played one track that was this chick rapping about her life story and how she was sexually abused as a child. It was actually pretty cool, even though I didn't care for the music or style I enjoyed her oldschool technique and the story was quite potent. The way she told her story was enthralling. It made me think about the nature of music beyond taste. It's hard to understand and appreciate tastes we haven't acquired, but I can see the potential benefit of acquiring a taste for virtually anything and everything.
I actually have a Circa Survive album, the one with the hot air balloons. They're a pretty decen't band. That Sound of Animals Fighting track was interesting. Whenever I hear bands with "animal" in their title I automatically think of the intense band Animals on Coke. But don't listen to them unless you want your ears to bleed. Personally I love it when my ears bleed from intense music.
Well everyone's going to have their own tastes and nostalgia.
Thing though is I don't think it's totally fair to compare the Backstreet Boys to the bands you listened, as though those are the only two options. The Backstreet Boys' music was made for 13 year old girls to swoon over, it wasn't even trying to be profound to begin with.
Throughout the decades there have been plenty of talented artists who dealt with deep and profound themes, and plenty of albums which much more fleshed out content than what you hear on the radio. Even popular radio songs which come to mind are "Janie's Got a Gun" by Aerosmith (dealt with themes of rape and patricide) and "Gypsies Tramps and Theves" by Cher (dealt with underage prostitution).
Hell even 80s rockers like Pat Benatar had very deep and quality stuff on their albums (she's only known to most for hits like "Love is a Battlefield", but she has songs dealing with themes like infanticide, domestic abuse, unemployment, and school shootings on her albums) and gangster rappers deal with real-world issues facing a lot of young people in today's inner cities.
That's why I totally recommend that no matter what a person's favorite type of music is, that they listen to a lot of different stuff from different decades and broaden their horizons instead of listening to just 1 thing 90% of the time. (Way back int the day I used to think rap was crap because of medicore tracks I heard on the radio - then I started actually listening to entire albums, especially those of the early 90s and the type of darker issues it dealt with and my opinion changed 180 degrees).
The first song I memorised was Blink 182 - The Party Song, but I don't care for it, or Blink 182, at all any more. Although that was the first song I listened to enough to memorise, the first song I really fell in love with was No Use for a Name - Life Size Mirror.
I still do like it, but I don't listen to them or Pop Punk any more. I saw No Use for a Name live and the lead singer refused to give us an autograph after the show. He even went so far as to lie to us and tell us he was just a roadie. Other bands I was really into when I was 16-17 were Sum 41, Goldfinger, Reset (who's members later formed Simple Plan, which I hated), Rufio, Mest, Yellowcard, Pulley, Choke, and other similar bands. Of those bands the one that I probably enjoyed the most, and still admire, is Rufio. I don't mind listening to some Pop Punk, but I rarely do anymore. It might be more nostalgia than anything else.
Yellowcard's album, Ocean Avenue, was fairly solid. It's considerably more refined then their older albums, but after it they also had a turning point which I felt was for the worse. The main problem was that one of their guitarists quit the band, and they hired a replacement. I think his name was Alex, anyway he worked really hard and was a pretty decent guitarist. But the problem was that at that point they actually started getting successful and becoming quite popular. That was the album that made everyone hear about them and start checking them out. I think they even placed on pop charts. When that happened the guitarist who left the band came crawling back, and they decided to give the position back to him and said goodbye to the replacement guitarist. Most fans felt it was very unfair, because that guy had really worked hard and passionately to earn that spot, where as the other guy had basically abandoned the band because they weren't that successful and only crawled back when it turned out they were becoming successful. Anyway, nothing they made after that drew my attention again. I have listened to a few of their songs since out of curiosity, but all I remember is they didn't appeal to me at all.
A kind of weird band that I was into was Choke. Their singer had a weird, but interesting voice and style of singing. I still have a couple of their albums, and I still find them interesting. Listening to them just now, I like it, but I haven't actually listened to them in years. I kind of lumped them in with Pop Punk, but I'm not really sure how to classify them. I remember at the time I knew nothing about genres, to me it was all just Punk. Anyway, I think this album is sick:
My friends and I used to often ridicule Simple Plan. They were in the same scene, and sometimes they'd be at shows with bands we did like, but we always hated on them. They were one of the most widely ridiculed Pop Punk bands at the time. It was the kind of thing that really lame 14 year-old girls, who thought they were Emo because they wore black, dyed their hair black, painted their nails black, and wore Converse shoes, listened to. Someone found out about this band, Reset. I think it had all the same members as Simple Plan, and it was before they changed their style and their name to Simple Plan. When I heard it at the time my reaction was, "And it has the same guitarist? Why did he go from being good to sucking?" Who knows, but it was a pretty half decent band. I don't really care for it anymore though.
A band that I soon became a huge fan of, and still am fond of, is Rufio. Rufio was my tag in online games and forums, and I still use it frequently. Their fast guitar playing was, and still is, amazing. Probably their weak point for me though was their vocals. I also started getting interested gradually in heavier music. I started moving away from Pop Punk and into Post-Hardcore. But as other bands like Yellowcard, Blink 182, Sum 41, Goldfinger, and Pulley started dropping off my playlists, Rufio remained for years to come.
Around this time, I was 17 or 18, I reached a very critical turning point in my experience with music. Back then the internet still felt very new, and I wasn't particularly versed with it. I chatted with friends on MSN, posted on Lucasforums (I was a huge Star Wars fan), and played Counter Strike addictively. Back then I would mostly learn about new bands from friends. I didn't really know how to find new music, or explore genres. I didn't even know how to identify the music I liked other than by comparing it with other similar bands. Well, one of my friends showed me this band called Thrice. I remember not really liking them at first and saying, "Every song sounds the same." But sometime later, maybe a month or two, I listened to them again and fell in love. I couldn't believe I accused their songs of all sounding the same, because they actually had a lot of individual character. In retrospective I've learned that when the album The Illusion of Safety came out there were line ups around the block at record stores and it was selling out like crazy. It was their third album, but their first two albums were actually pretty obscure. Their next album, The Artist in the Ambulance, held 16th place on the US top charts with the title track.
When I was 18 I got really depressed. I was living with my Mom and my two younger brothers, and it was like a storm of chaos in the house all the time with everyone fighting. At times I remember hating my brother, Stephen, who was a year and a half younger than me. We got into a few fist fights. Now, I was born and raised Christian. Both of my parents graduated from Seminary, and my Dad was even the pastor of several churches over the years. We went to church every Sunday. I went to Christian private schools, and most of my friends were Christians. Well my brother Stephen ended up moving in with my Dad. I started getting really depressed with school because due to missing school for 6 months when I was 16, and neglecting homework and studies, I had fallen back a year. I also started in a new school that year which was a very small private school. There was only one other person my age (one of my best friends for a couple years prior), and the next two oldest kids in my school were my two younger brothers. Well, my friend left the School to be home schooled, and I was all alone with no friends going to school with a bunch of little kids. Things at home were just aweful with all the fighting. I was working part-time at a grocery store, and because I was 18 and my Mom wasn't getting money from the government for me (or my other brother since he had moved in with my Dad) things were really tough for my Mom financially. So I was actually paying my own school tuition which was $200 a month because it was a private school. I got suspended from school for not doing my homework. I got really depressed from being behind and thinking about when I would graduate at the rate I was going. I eventually just stopped going to school. I just wouldn't even get out of bed in the morning. My Mom wasn't strong enough to physically make me, and she eventually would have to leave to go to work. I remember just sitting in bed crying, alone in the house, having skipped school. I didn't know what to do. Then one day, after about three days of that, my Dad came over. My Mom must have asked him to help. He came and comforted me and talked to me about my options and my future. I started spending more time with my Dad. Since I was 14 I hadn't really seen that much of him. My brothers and I would visit him occasionally, but it just felt like it wasn't that often or for very long. With all the fighting that had been going on at home with my Mom, she would occasionally say to me, "Well then go live with your Dad if you don't like it." Or she'd say something along those lines. When I really started connecting with my Dad I said to myself, "the next time my Mom says that, I'm going to say, 'okay I will move in with Dad.'" When I said that to myself it happened the very next day. So I ended up moving in with my Dad. I dropped out of school with the intention of working for several years and then going to college or university as a "mature student." I still felt depressed on a fairly regular basis, but things had at least stabilized.
Thrice was a band that had an interesting blend of singing and screaming. They were the band that really got me interested in screaming. Instrumentally they were awesome, with fast creative guitar riffs and well structured songs. Lyrically they were poetic and philisophical singing about the meaning of life and the state of ignorance of most people in the world. I really started thinking about the meaning of life, and "truth." I used to listen to their two albums, The Illusion of Safety, and The Artist in the Ambulance daily. And gradually I started liking their heavier songs more and their softer songs less.
I started moving into the world of Post-Hardcore. My friends were gradually listening to heavier music, and so was I. It matched my emotional state more too when I started going through serious depression. I don't really associate this type of music, or heavy music in general, or screaming, with anger and depression. This kind of music actually soothes me. Hearing Britney Spears or The Spice Girls or other really lame superficial shallow pop music makes me feel angry. Anyway, I started listening to bands like Finch, Funeral for a Friend, Thursday, and Atreyu.
After I turned 19 I went to more shows in local bars. I saw quite a few of these bands live in their heyday. It was a pretty awesome music scene. The most inspiring concert I have ever been to in my entire life was Alexisonfire in 2003. At that time I was still on the fence with them. They were a lot heavier than anything I was really used to at the time. When I saw them live, as much as I liked the sound, my biggest hesitation was just not being able to understand their lyrics. As soon as they ended, before the crowd dispersed, I held up a sharpie and yelled out for an autograph. The lead singer took the sharpie and signed my shirt. Then people started shoving hats and things towards him for him to sign. He signed things for a while and the crowd gradually started dispersing. He came down into the small crowd that remained, after he finished signing everything that was handed to him, and just started talking to the fans. They were saying things like, "You cut your hair," and he replied, "Yeah, I'm impulsive." The whole concert, and the humility of the lead singer just captivated me. I started listening to their album a lot more. This is to this day my #1 favorite album of all time. I still listen to it frequently. I love it to death. I don't care for anything they've made since (except one demo, Math Sheets). The singer wore out his voice with the intensity of his screaming by their second album. But I think it was worth it. It embodied everything I felt. Their lyrics are among the most profound poetry I've ever heard in music. Their instrumentals (while not having quite as much character as Thrice) were incredibly skilful and the melodies so interesting. I love the balance between melody and raw heaviness. It's one of the purest forms of Hardcore music that I have ever heard. I will always cherish this album. I've listened to it so much, I've found errors in the lyric sheet. But some lines can't even be deciphered. I enjoy the mystery too.
"Jennifer, they lied to you when they said you couldn't breathe under water. I lied too when I said I was hard because I'm softer than a thrift store sweater, and twice as worn thin. I was cast away, but I will be found again. This I promise you, for sure."
I was around 14-15 when I began listening to music seriously. Before that I had never understood the point of listening to music. In fact when I was around 13 my father asked me if I didn't like music at all. I don't remember what I answered at the time. Problem was that all the music I knew was just, well, boring and didn't resonate with me and indeed all the mainstream music doesn't resonate strongly with me, if compared to other people who get all emotional about some really silly music (I it still find it puzzling how people can love so hard stuff like Ramones, Beatles, Pink Floyd, among other Anglo-Saxon musicians, but anyway...), then it all changed when I got an Iron Maiden DVD documentary as a gift.
There was real music in there. Music that truly resonated within me, that took itself seriously enough for me to take it seriously and not as some silly nonsense as typical mainstream music sounds like. I don't believe metal has in principle anything to do with the feeling of being disliked by other people, though it's common lyrical theme. To me metal is just music that intelligent sensitive people who know what is good listen to.
In the first couple of years after I discovered Iron Maiden I could only listen to Iron Maiden. If I listened to something else I felt like: this is bad, it doesn't sound just like Iron Maiden, hence, it's not good! Oh, I was so close minded back then. I am really open minded, I listen to many bands in all genres: from speed metal, to traditional heavy metal, to NWBHM, to thrash metal, to European power metal, to North American power metal (exp. Jag Panzer, Ample Destruction, typical North American power metal very different from European power metal), to European death metal, to black metal and folk/viking metal. Though I like some North American death metal I disliked most of what I have listened to in terms of the genre. I also started listening to other genres of music besides metal, I listened to some progressive rock (Yes, Dream Theater, Rush, the good ones, not that Pink Floyd nonsense) and classical as well (Beethoven, Schubert, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky are among my favorites) Still I think there is so much great music to discover.
What changed my opinion of other bands were Judas Priest and Helloween, bands that in the beginning I regarded as weaker than Iron Maiden but now I listen to them more than Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden is a good entry band for heavy metal but it is not as extremely good as other bands can be with it's more aggressive approach, pushing the artistic limits of music further in the directions Iron Maiden helped to develop in the "distant" past. Iron Maiden is to metal what Miyazaki is to animation: a good entry drug, accessible to newcomers and still loved by veterans with highly experienced ears/eyes. And the fact that Judas Priest was already more extreme and heavier than Maiden was and they were doing so a couple of years before Maiden, though Judas Priest lacked the good production in their early albums so the guitars sound really thin, also attracted me to Judas Priest.
Judas Priest (1974):
Same song played with modern guitar production and amplification technology:
Same effects happened with Black Sabbath's early albums though they were still better produced than Priest's.
Eventually Judas Priest displaced Iron Maiden as my top favorite band, though Iron Maiden is still my official number 2, though I am more excited about releases from Helloween than either Judas Priest or Maiden these days (these old guys are just to old now). Helloween can be understood as a more extreme version of classical heavy metal. They themselves consider their band as a more extreme version of Accept. Though after a few years the mellow influences of Michael Kiske lead the band to become super light for a while, after he quit the band (because real metal is too evil and aggressive for him), Helloween returned to their core sound but with a more Weikath flavor instead of the dominant artistic influence of Kai Hansen. Who is Kai Hansen? He is a god, one of the greatest musicians of all time. Helloween with Weikath, Hansen and Kiske was godly but that lasted for only 2 albums, such combination of overwhelming musical talent was epic.
Now I am exploring more into folk metal bands, specially those with a lot of viking imagery in the cover of their albums and music that is a mixture of melodic death metal with more classical heavy metal influences. A very nice mixture indeed. I love how epic and serious they manage to sound:
Their first and best album and the best album of the decade. Really powerful and inspiring music, with artistic flair and display genuine serious emotion, not weak silly mainstream music emotion.
Besides metal, progressive and classical I also experimented with some J-pop lately as well as classic bands like Legiao Urbana and Queen. As many anime contains a lot ofJ-pop styled music I decided to try listening to some of it for a while, it's very superficial music and I couldn't digest more than 15 minutes, I also felt the same way about bands like Beatles and Led Zeppelin.
Also I'm not sure why the OP is putting "metal" in the same group as punk and "hardcore" - I mean songs like this are pretty much the polar opposite of an "Offspring" or "Rise Against" track:
Good thread Zotis. My buddy is into screaming metal type stuff like this, so lately I've been around it a bit. I've never cared much for the screaming, really.
Most metal doesn't contain screaming vocals though. Some have very feminine delicate sounding vocals in fact, almost like Celine Dion :
Some made the joke that if you have a power metal band then you either need a female vocalist or a vocalist who sings like a girl. Though these two bands are not power metal but symphonic metal, perhaps the lightest genre of metal.
I'm certainly open to it, especially more now than ever, but it still doesn't do a lot for me. I notice though, I tend to really dig the music aside from that. Maybe they aren't the same as this kind of stuff but one of my favorite bands is Animals as Leaders, which is more or less screaming metal without the screaming (or maybe not, but that's how I thought of them when I first found them out). And today, I was introduced by Sedai to Polyphia, who I have spent the day listening to. Their music reminds me a little bit of the "post-hardcore" stuff, but maybe I'm being crazy.
I think these bands sound like more progressive rock than anything. Remind me a little about Dream Theater when it became progressive rock. Also, one thing that bothers me is people saying that bands with a lot of distorted guitar sound is metal, well, even J-pop songs these days have a lot of distorted guitars playing in the background. What defines metal is that the guitar is centerpiece, the most important element of the song, not the vocals, and that the song is characterized by a focused aggression/strong sense of theatricality. Anyway, metalheads know when metal is metal and when it is not. Most bands Americans call metal are not metal (true metal has not been popular in the US since 1990, while in Brazil most Brazilians have a better sense of what metal is). Neither of these bands are on listen on the database of Metal Archives, a database that contains over 100,000 metal bands, including punk/hardrock bands that are borderline metal.
Also I'm not sure why the OP is putting "metal" in the same group as punk and "hardcore" - I mean songs like this are pretty much the polar opposite of an "Offspring" or "Rise Against" track:
Indeed. Metal is completely different.
This thread needs some real ***** metal!
Proper New Wave of British Heavy Metal, one of the greatest NWBHM songs of all time:
(Saxon, Crusader)
Proper Viking metal:
(Bathory, Hammerheart)
That's proper American power metal (from the 1980's when the US had many great metal bands):
No Use For a Name and YellowCard sound too polished, too radio-friendly. Choke sounds cool, but I'm not a fan of the vocals. Reset sounds alright, I guess it would be a good music to listen to while playing GTA: San Andreas. :P Rufio's alright, too.
I used to love Thrice back when I was listening to this kind of music. I especially liked this song:
Finch, Funeral for a Friend, Thursday, and Atreyu and all that stuff sucks! Huehuehue.
I will listen to alexisonfire album in its entirety pretty soon. I hope you're not gonna hate me if I bash it. :P
PS: I base these 'opinions' on the clips you posted, of course I listened only a minute of every one of them, so don't take these too seriously.
Plus rep for Guap, too, but there are some things in his post I don't like: "To me metal is just music that intelligent sensitive people who know what is good listen to."
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