BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!!!
December 1, 2008 by Scott
The plague in metal grows by the minute. It’s an epidemic that’s getting worse than the bird flu, SARS or even the Ebola virus.
A friend (Martin) and I went to a local show last night here in North Carolina to check out the band Seneca that recently got signed to Lifeforce Records. It was at a very small venue but due to it being a Sunday and Thanksgiving weekend it was very dead. Maybe 30 people in the place and that included members of the 5 bands that were playing. Oh yeah, There was three karate moshers. Well two karate moshers and one dude that had three moves, one of which I swear looked like a silly, non-perfected ballet move. And what the hell is up with people wearing hoods inside? Anyway the bands were good (talent wise) but very little set them all apart from each other.
The first band up was The Lineage who were ok, but nothing I’ve never heard before. The heavy, crunchy deathcore. The same goes for the next band, Joe Grizzley. The singer of Joe Grizzley sang a little less of the deathcore/death metal style and opted for a more hardcore sound at times. The bass player’s voice actually sounded better to me. The third band up was a younger bunch called The Harbingers Way. Now these guys sounded slightly different in that they had a little bit more of a melody to them. Seneca was hard and heavy and Wretched had some really good guitar playing, but none of these bands really set themselves apart from each other.
The plague I’m talking about is nothing new and hasn’t already been talked about a million times over. I’m just starting to see the trend more and more. This deathcore/metalcore trend is so redundant in that a new band pops up with every other breath you take. It’s like kids cruising on myspace and hearing a band and saying “We can do that”.
The first problem with this trend is that it’s getting old to me really fast. The next problem and not so much for me but for the bands that play this same type of music is that they think they are great and expect to get signed sometime soon. Newsflash!!! YOU SOUND LIKE EVERY OTHER BAND OUT THERE! You might get lucky (or unlucky) and get signed to some basement, indy label, but if you don’t set yourself apart everyone else you’re just going to get lost in the mix of all the others out there. If you’re just out there doing what you love to do and like touring for pennies, then yippee for you but sooner or later you’re going to need a good job. Tickets were $8 last night to see 5 bands and this place was dead. The bands didn’t make much, if any money last night.
Another thing that kills me is the lack of good song structure these days. The songs are short and aren’t good for much more than standing in one spot and banging your head, just to stop for some strange out of place breakdown somewhere in the mix. Breakdowns and bridges are great in the right places. You know what else is good? A good rhythm hook and a fist pumping, sing along chorus. A chorus and rhythm that get’s people pumped. A lot of people don’t like hardcore and bands like Hatebreed but the reason that people do like them is because of the Choruses. “Destroy Everything!”. I mean how silly and cliche does that sound? Very, but people love it and it gets a crowd moving…and sells records.
All the big bands are big because they know how to write a good song with structure and feeling instead of a flat, lead filled, “This song just started but now it’s over.” tune. Sure some say that they write the songs for themselves and that’s all fine and dandy…but if you want to be remembered next month or even next week you have to write a song that people remember. You have to write songs that don’t sound like the last song you played. You have to write songs that make people want to visit your merch table for a cd or a tee shirt. If you don’t set yourself apart then who are you besides just another trendy band with maybe a cool name. That’s the last thing fans really want.
So how do we as fans and/or musicians of metal vaccinate this plague, this virus within our genre? Absolutely nothing. It’s one of those that you have to let run it’s course and hope it dies off on it’s own sooner or later…and it will. Either that or it will “genretically” mutate and start another trend.
I really feel where you’re coming from here man. I’m 24 and I’ve been into metal for more than half my life, but lately I’ve had a strong urge to distance myself and my band from the metal community, largely because of what you’re talking about: the homogenization of metal.
The sheer number of bands all doing the same sound is flabberghasting to me. Breakdowns, screaming, double bass, everyone sounding like Unearth. When it first came out, it sounded like an evolved Fear Factory kind of thing and I kinda liked it, but I got bored with it really quicky. These bands are blatant one-trick ponies: Angry, aggressive, pound-pound-pound kinda stuff. There’s more to life than being angry, which is something that metal’s main constituents – angry white adolescent males – don’t seem to realize. They sure know how to consume though, which is why the labels keep signing the Unearth Xerox bands and the clubs keep selling beer.
My band gigs regularly with other mid-level Boston area metal bands, and we find that while most of the bands we play with are heavier than us, few of them really play with any kind of soul, which is what this new metalcore trend lacks altogether. Long live the blues.
In a related topic, I would appreciate any feedback that any of you could give me about my band’s music. While we have a lot of room for improvement, I also think we manage to stay true to many of the older influences that have been forgotten in metal lately. Go ahead – tear it apart if you want – but at listen to it and tell me what you think:
http://www.myspace.com/adarkinthgelight
Band plugging aside, I feel you about the recent evolution of metal, and I’m kinda worried about it. I’m not going to sit around and wait for it to change, though: I’ve been waiting for the death of reality television for 15 years.
I actually like Unearth because they have the decent song structure.
I agree. I think that Unearth is at the top of their game; they’re the best in that genre, but everyone else just seems to be following too closely in their footsteps. I also feel like their new album is really predictable, and doesn’t really show any growth since their last effort.
i can’t agree more with this post. In my old band i tried to stray away from some of the trends but my singer couldnt understand why we shouldnt use demonics 99.9% of the time.
i agree all this bands sound the same and don’t have the good song structure and i guess most of the time you enjoy this music better listening from the cd than going to the shows.
It wasn’t so much the show last night. Like I said, the three latter bands were pretty good. It’s so many other bands out there right now too and a lot of them are signed to some of the bigger independent labels.
So i’m not the only one who thinks all this myspace deathcore rubbish is getting majorly out of hand. Maybe if we ignore it long enough they’ll figure out that people really are sick of all this mediocre bullshit?
The same thing is happening with Black metal. Everyone thinks they can paint their face and play black metal now too. Trends come and go…some just don’t go quick enough though
well one thing you can do is to not buy anything from bands that you think are “copy cats” or not worth it. They will eventually change or die off. The problem is that enough people are out there that listen to these bands that they are getting enough money to stay alive
I think “That Other Guy” hit the nail on the head with “MySpace deathcore rubbish”, cause that’s basically what’s going on here. Any schmuck can write a metalcore song, record it with ProTools and throw it on MySpace. Well, ok mabye not ANY schmuck, but apparently quite a few anyhow.
One thing that I think is going on is that the metal scene is heavily driven by the kids, the teenagers. Or at least the commercial end of it is. Think about it: who are the most ridiculously dedicated fans? The ones who wear the t-shirts every day, spend countless hours online, and basically live, eat, and breathe metal? The teenage listeners. I’m not saying they’re more real than older metalheads, but they are certainly more inclined to spend their money and their parents’ money on metal.
These younger listeners don’t have a perspective either on older metal (except for the stuff that the metalcore guys reference, like Maiden), or on the pre-internet music industry. Metal is in a flux period right now, floundering between the old era – when a band HAD to tour to make a name for themselves – and the new era, in which the playing field has been leveled through internet marketing and distribution.