guess it depends what you classify as metal...

what've you tried listening to una?... there be some good leftfield noise-metal stuff... i'm certainly no expert though

Like ? ... Drop names or Ozzy will come around & bite the head off your fav pet !

ok, yeah, it's hard to pigeonhole bands into genres but... let's call it quotemetalunquote

Metallica, Slayer, Iron Maiden, Megadeath. I hate all of these bands.

I like; Alexisonfire, System Of A Down, NIN

are these even metal? Is anything metal? Do I hate nothing or everything?

i gotta say I dont get metal either, does absolute nothing for me, except make me pissed off on occasion, like none of those bands you mentioned Una, even the ones you like.

Metallica ugh!

Most music in general is crap. Metal is that bit harder to get into and there does seem to be a greater proportion of crap succesful bands in Metal.

Early Metallica is excellent but they've since gone Spinal Tap. Most of the stuff that is played downstairs in Bruxelles is great

I went to a Dio gig too.

It was pure cringe, death to disco man!

to be honest i think metal is s**te


im aware there are probably one or two good acts amongst the crap but im not bothered going down sucha road

Well, in this day & age, every band needs its own unique label ...

All we need do is look at the magazines covering the genre to see what is considered 'metal' ... One week, its Bon Jovi on the cover, the Next its 'Cradle of Filth'. 2 very different bands, under the one umbrella.

Most music is crap. Simple as.
You like what you like, you don't what you don't.

Have to agree, I think for the most part it is crap except for a few inspired moments from the likes of Led Zepplin, AC/DC and Black Sabbath. I remember a few years ago I used to buy tickets in the Sound Cellar and some of the s**te that they played used to hurt my ears.

But, if you think about it...

A lot of musicians in bands you probably like now would have originally started off learning to play guitar because of old metal bands like Metallica, Guns and Roses, AC/DC etc.. so you at least owe them that! :-) That kind of music may seem very dated now but like everything else it has it's place I suppose!

Strangegravy

I agree with Unarocks. Most metal is cock.

what about bands such as mastodon and isis?... musically speaking, these lads are worthy of note...

...what do you all think of them?

Hi Una, if you hate metal, maybe UnaRocks is a bit a misnomer cause surely metal is the hardest rocking genre of them all ;-)

You raise an interesting topic though. The "Most Metal is crap" can be used against any genre, just sub metal with whatever you like, or don't as the case may be. Everyone, myself included, has made those kind of sweeping generalisations against genres we either don't like, don't really know, or just don't get. Often I think it's the case that what you hear as being representative of the genre *is* actually crap, it's usually the most anodyne, lowest-common-denominator, mainstream, watered-down version of it. I used to think all country was crap cause all I had heard was Garth Brooks and acts like him and it wasn't til I dug a bit deeper that I began to discover that, like most genres, there's a lot more to it.

Defining what belongs to the genre is another issue. Metal as a genre is probably as amorphous as any other: one man's metal is another man's hard rock etc. For example, Black Sabbath may be the archetypal metal band but I don't really think of them as such, I think of them as just being a rock band. And why do Zepplin never get tagged a metal band when they bear a lot of similarites to Sabbath? Equally, I think a good case could be made for calling Soundgarden a metal band; some of their stuff is as heavy as anything called metal......I mean just go listen to Bad Motor Finger.

I take you point though about Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Iron Maiden. None of that stuff does much for me. But Metallica et al are probably the bands most people think of when they think metal, which was my point at the top of the mail.

Actually it's hard to go wrong with some of the early Sabbath stuff, if Ozzy wasn't such a parody of himself at this stage, they might get the respect that Zepplin gets, for my money they're a better band. After Ozzy left it was a different kettle of fish.......Check out the album Black Sabbath, it's really just heavy blues. Another band that springs to mind is My Dying Bridge, it's so over the top that it's almost operatic. They use violins as well as guitars. And they have the kind of light and shake that bands like Slayer lack. I find them hard to take seriously but like them at the same time. There's actually a whole sub genre of metal bands who go in the opposite direction of Slayer et al and play slowly. MDB are one, Cathedral another. (I don't know if Cathedral stood the test of time so well though). I have no idea of the state of contemporary metal as you probably guessed....

A book you should read is Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klostermann. It's very funny as well as taking a serious look at 80's metal. Although what he calls metal is more what I would have called hard rock, Poison, Motley Crue et al. But that's back to hairsplitting genre arguments...

One other thing that I think makes a big difference as to whether you can get into a genre is when you hear it. I still think of metal as being angry teenage music. That's why I can't get this stuff from Limp Biscuit/Blink 182 or anything called Emo, I'm now too old. For a start, I can't understand what exactly Emo is. It just sounds like rock to me. But to someone just getting into music and hearing it for the first time it may be the best music they've ever heard and remain a favorite of their throughout their lifetime.

For me it was the Pixies and Nirvana and the whole grunge era. Actually, when I heard Nirvana first, they were everything I wanted from a metal band, heavy and catchy and powerful. I was kind of surprized when the kids who liked Sonic Youth liked them as well. But to anyone a few years my senior when Nirvana and the Pixies came along first, they probably would have dismissed them as a rehash of what went before, in the same way I do now with Franz Ferdinand or band that sound postpunk. Every generation does that.

Maybe that's the real reason you can't get into metal now, you were too old when you were exposed to it first. And that's ok, you don't have to like every genre.....It's been proven that people tend to get more conservative in what they listen to as they get older. I mean I might listen to a wider variety of bands than when I was a teenager but it's basically still rock. I'll probably never get really heavily into dance, for example, because I never heard it much when I was getting into music first.

Sorry about such a long post..... Any other Cluasers own up to a fondness for metal in their past or present? There goes my indie cred......

Mully put it better (and shorter): Most music is crap, what you like you like.....

yeah, the thing is though, I can listen to almost anything else. I'd just as happily listen to jazz, drum and bass, rock, pop, techno, classical, grunge, indie, house, hip-hop, country, whatever but I just don't like metal at all. It's weird. Maybe I'm programmed not to like it or something, it's very strange.

AC/DC & Guns N' Roses = metal? i thought it was just regular rock music. anyway i only bought 'Back In Black' recently. It's great. I've had 'If You Want Blood' for years but never got round to buying anything else. Next up some more Bon Scott albums i think.

You don't like it. No biggie.

maiden rock!

Nope, sure metal has the image down, but musically, nah. I mean theres often a lot of shouting and lyrics about allegiances to the Dark Lord and death and destruction and stuff, but underneath it all, metal is actually a fairly disciplined genre, much of it has more in common with Bach than Bo Diddley (who IS rock and roll). It doesn't usually have that unhinged visceral rawness that early rock and roll or Garage or Punk rock does. There's an underlying nerdiness to a lot of metal too that's often ignored, lyrics about hobbits and tolkienesque stuff, or Iron Maidens referencing of actual historic events (e.g. Alexander the Great).

I find with metal, it's only a genre I can dip into, pull a couple of great tracks by a band, but leave a lot of dross of the same bands back catalogue behind. It depends what you class as metal? I love a lot of stuff that could be either classed as either riff-centric Hard Rock or Metal depending on your perspective, Hendrix, Deep Purple etc. There are a lot of Bands that while not entirely metal themselves have taken elements of it and incorporated it to good effect, like Smashing Pumpkins or Sonic Youth.

The Pumpkins owe a bit debt to metal alright. Have to agree with you on that and your other points Binokular. It really comes down to individual bands, if you like them, you like them, whether they're metal or not.

Is it too sexist to suggest that metal is more boy music than girl music, or perhaps that's just stating the obvious? Could be another reason you can't get into it, Una. But I wouldn't worry, you're under no obligation to like every genre.....