Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Well I guess there's just no way of pleasing everybody.

Id have to agree with Kevin. Didn't find that to be all that great. Actually kind of just turned me off them more.

So do tell me, what does a metal band need to have in your guys' opinion to be a "Great" metal band?

Most metal I just view as a bunch of non-sense. Its just not that musical to me. Its typically some guy singing badly and a guitarist soloing. Or in this case the bassist I guess. Which from what Iv seen, Im starting to view him as a cheap copy of a metal guitarist. Maybe theres something there Im not getting tho. Who knows.

Im going to view songwriting timing and all that good stuff as more important. To me playing a bunch of notes just isn't that interesting any more.

Fav metalish band King's X. I also like Black Sabbath but dont listen to them much any more. More so just a big part of my past. Or Altered State, Id consider them kind of metalish. Love those guys.

"So do tell me, what does a metal band need to have in your guys' opinion to be a "Great" metal band?"


Rober Fripp

::::runs away::::

I'm a couple hundred years old, grew up on the Beatles, never gave a second thought to Metal, until Metallica's Black CD with "Enter Sandman", "Sad But True", "Nothing Else Matters".

Shoot, the whole disk flattened me. Great stuff!

I never cared much for metal at all for the same reasons Jacob gives. Last year a co-worker turned me onto progressive metal and now I can't get enough of the stuff. Right now I'm listening to a lot of Dream Theater and Porcupine Tree but I'm told they are just the tip of the iceberg. As it turns out, a lot of prog-metal bands are inspired by 70's progressive rock.

I never would have thought DT and PT were in the metal genre....

Dream Theater isn't metal?! Wow, I must be missing something. Dream Theater are kind of the premier prog metal guys out there today. I don't think they've made a single album that *wouldn't* be considered metal. Even "Falling Into Infinity" counts as metal to me.

Porcupine Tree are awesome, but I don't consider them to be a metal band, per se. They've done some metal-ish stuff, especially on "Deadwing and "In Absentia", but they're not primarily metal. Same with King's X; they do a lot of metal, but I wouldn't say they're a metal band. I dunno where the dividing line is, but in my mind, I think of them as hard rock with progressive and metal tendencies. Doug Pinnick rocks out like no other. But yeah, bands like Porcupine Tree, King's X, and Coheed & Cambria and such started out very un-metal-ish and have moved towards incorporating more metal into their music over time, but I don't think of any of them as metal bands. Yet.

Metal in general, for me, is very hit or miss. I like some Metallica, but not all of it. I like some Iron Maiden, but not all of it. I like some Judas Priest, but not all of it. I like some Black Sabbath, but not all of it. I'm not a huge fan of modern metal bands, though, because most of them seem to be going the "hardcore" rout, where their lead singer growl-screams unintelligibly while the 4 distorted 7-string guitars and 5-string bass all play the same line and the drummer plays 16th notes on the kickdrum. That gets *really* boring *really* quickly.

There are few metal bands that I listen to a lot, but I would say the main ones are Tool, Dream Theater, and Mastodon. And Deep Purple (if they are really metal). And I guess Nine Inch Nails, if industrial counts as metal. Like all genres of music, there's a whole lot of junk and you have to root through it to find the good stuff.

In that case, other then Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath as well as possibly megadeth (not to much but its okay) I dont listen to any metal at all.

I know its fun jamming with metal heads because you can play a groove on just one note and they dont know how to handle it and get lost lol.

Then that should say something about those individuals' musicianship. Not about the genre itself.

Duff MacKagan (Former Guns N Roses Bassplayer) stated in a Bassplayer interview that He and drummer Steven Adler would play along with Prince records to devellop groove and tightness as a rythm section. That philosiphy is reflected in the kind of drumkit Adler used to play, he went from a double bass with thriple rows of toms to the bare essentials, Bass, snare, tom, hi-hat, floor tom and two cymbals.

Jacob summed it up pretty well for me.
I basically grew-up in the metal / hair band era. I graduated from High school in 1985. While all my friends were listening to Maiden / Priest and stuff, I was into early Sabbath / Rush / Yes / Zeppelin / Floyd. I had three older brothers that had me listening to the Beatles / Stones / Who when I was 4. I remember my brother Mike bringing home the new Stones album Exile on Main St. when I was 6!
I never could relate to metal.

Well as stated above: you can't please everybody at the same time and place. But having said that I already spent a few hours watching Cliff Burton stuf on you tube dot com. And yes I turned the drive knob on my bassdriver and rocked for hours - and it was great fun. On of these days I unpack my Wah again and then the feast begins......LOL

Oh man, I forgot about G'N'R. Definitely metal there, though much bluesier than, say, Metallica. I always wanted a Wah pedal for my bass, but not because of Cliff Burton; Dave Meros in Spock's Beard uses one every so often, and I always thought it would be fun to try and play the solo to "Thoughts, Part II" complete with Wah.