Play, Keep or Wood Chipper?
- Thread starter Securb
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Chistopher
malapterurus electricus tonewood instigator
Each of those guitars cost as much as two PT cruisers
GuitarStv
Sock Market Trader
And the PT cruiser looks better . . . just.
80's_Metal
Underglazed Hair Metalologist
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80's_Metal
Underglazed Hair Metalologist
Pantera turning thrash metal into groove-oriented tough-guy posturing lead directly to nu metal and dealt a simultaneous death blow to thrash and death metal, the only two forms of metal that hadn't completely sold out yet in the U.S.
As someone who has lived in DFW for 21 years (but is fortunate enough to be moving back to Houston soon!), their effect has been doubly wretched on this metroplex. If I never see another opening band where both guitarists are playing Dimebag sigs, it'll be too soon.
As someone who has lived in DFW for 21 years (but is fortunate enough to be moving back to Houston soon!), their effect has been doubly wretched on this metroplex. If I never see another opening band where both guitarists are playing Dimebag sigs, it'll be too soon.
I agree about thrash, although I think it was in the air and we could just as easily say grunge took all the oxygen just like it strangled hair metal. But death metal didn't die. It went through a bit of pop-structure oversimplification in the late 90s, and some bands jumped the shark, but early 2000s DM bounced back with its own character. I don't love most of that early aughts era of DM but there's still new stuff pushing the boundaries (more or less) 20+ years later. Whereas with thrash it's pretty much all retro acts.
80's_Metal
Underglazed Hair Metalologist
Understandable.
beaubrummels
Well-known member
First set where I'd chip all of them. None of them look useful or appealing.
That pop-structure oversimplification (which death metal still hasn't recovered from) was a direct reaction to Pantera. Pantera sent the word out to all of metal that the way to "make it big" was to write dumb bouncy groove riffs with a tough guy attitude, and it poisoned death metal just as much as thrash metal. Even all of "technical" death metal mostly follows this trend, by putting the "shocking" dissonant chord on the upbeat in the exact same way that Pantera convinced all of the nu metal bands to do.
GuitarStv
Sock Market Trader
It's all been downhill since those blues guys in the '20s started playing a b3 over a major progression.
Metallica was putting out catchy accessible tunes and hardcore bands were writing boneheaded tough guy stuff with dumbed-down thrash riffs when Pantera were still nobodies wearing spandex. The trends were there already, Pantera just capitalized on them. I think you're giving them too much credit/blame. But being from TX I'm sure you've had way more Pantera-derivative stuff inflicted on you than the rest of us, so it makes sense that even hints of it would grind your gears.
As far as death metal goes, that sounds like it's a matter of taste. Totally fair if you prefer the old school stuff and don't get into much after the early to mid 90s. 92-93 is when I started listening to DM so it's a golden era for me. My point is, a lot of different creative stuff has kept happening in death metal since then, so whether any of us likes it or not, it's not the case that it was killed off.
I'm not trying to heckle you, hope it doesn't come off that way. Just shooting the breeze.
"Cowboys from Hell" was a year before the black album. Pantera beat Metallica to the punch there, not vice-versa.
For me, death metal peaked in the '88-'92 era. Albums like the first two Deicide albums, first two Morbid Angel albums, and the first Incantation album were just magic. Everyone who came later seemed to miss the point -- hence why the early second wave black metal bands all disparaged the "jogging suit death metal" that had become the norm at that point, before *that* gained too much visibility and everyone forgot the point of it, too.
Oh, no, I'm talking about Master Of Puppets. Although Justice is where they really went wrong IMO. Who's the real curmudgeon here. Maybe it's me.
The early 2nd wave black metal dudes wrote some awesome music, but they were also a bunch of pretentious jagoffs with extraordinarily skewed priorities. Another one of my favorite scenes from when I was growing up, regardless. Considering how many of them jumped ship from the death metal scenes over there when they imploded, it's no wonder they felt that way. The DM scene in the Nordic countries really did die off. Over here plenty of the bigger bands lost the plot, but NYDM carried the torch in the late 90s. Good stuff out of Canada too. But at the time, I jumped ship too. Most of the DM bands I liked had fallen off and I started listening to BM and doom. Also got really into Opeth. Then hardcore and grind and posty stuff like Isis in college. And then in the mid 2000s I was talking with one of my friends about how death metal had died off, and he played me a bunch of newer stuff that I had missed, and boom, I was back on the team.
I imagine Bruce will want to feed both of us into the wood chipper if this goes on. Sorry Bruce.
Eh, while MoP was clearly a shift to a mainstream direction, it's doing it in a very different way than Pantera did it. MoP was a vicious thrash band touring with Queensryche, seeing their success, and going "hey, let's throw in a lot of semi-prog bits to attach ourselves to that rocketship." It's ironic that you mention liking Opeth, who did pretty much the same thing to death metal. Selling out by throwing in some cheap prog (and Metallica were far from the only culprits there -- Iron Maiden were damn near as bad about that starting on "Somewhere in Time") wasn't nearly as harmful as the tough-guy bounce-core that Pantera made.
I'm not saying that you should blame Metallica instead, or that Pantera wasn't influential. I'm saying the trends were already there and they were bigger than any one band. The pop-structure songwriting, the tough guy posturing, the bouncy grooves - I think all of that would've happened with the melting pot of hip-hop, thrash, hardcore, and commercial pressure even if Pantera had called it quits in the mid 80s.
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Play, keep, or chip from my personal collection. My top 3 electric guitars:
Left to right:
2020s Schecter C7 SLS Elite, BKP Warpig set, aftermarket FR 1000 "Pro" series bridge
2014 Gibson LP 7 string, BKP Warpig set
1998 Gibson Explorer, "Gothic" edition, BKP Cold Sweat b/Gibson 496R n, Graphtech Resomax bridge
