GoatmasterGeneral

Horna - Sotahuuto, Finland 2007 Svartsyn - Timeless Reign, Sweden 2007

Yeah believe me I don't go too deep with it either because it's insufferable. I only know the names of some of the higher profile bands in this sub-genre but I've never actually heard any of these nu-metal bands' albums or knew anyone that had any of them or anything, (except for my buddy Jon-O it seems) I've only heard whatever crap the media put in front of my face 20-25 years ago when this shit was having its hey-day. You just sounded like you really didn't even know what it was, so now you know and we can both go back to ignoring it.

C'mon man, I know you live in East Bum Fuck Victoria with the dingos, roos, deadly venomous snakes and a herd of cows, but you've really never heard Limp Bizkunt before?? Not even once? This is nu-metal, which is what many of us elitist types like to pejoratively compare anything that we don't like to, and what makes Megastaine pull his eyebrows out. Limp Bizkit - Rollin'

Listen to the first song "Fuck 'Em" and imagine adding guitars. That's nu-metal. Geto Boys - The Geto Boys, Houston Texas 1990

Start with their first two albums, Epicus Doomicus Metallicus from 1986 and Nightfall a year later in '87. Those are their classics. They have other good albums too, but those first two are widely considered to be their pinnacle. Their debut Epicus would be my favorite, every single song on there is 10/10 and it also has the best singer they ever had. Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, Sweden 1986

Listen to more metal! Works for me! But seriously, fuck those other kids in your school. Don't let them get to you, because you'll be grown up and out of school soon enough. To start let me be very clear that I'm no psychologist or anything, OK? So please don't rely on any medical advice from me. But it seems to me almost everyone has stress to deal with even if they don't always show it. You are not alone, many of us have large amounts of stress to deal with in our lives. Anti-anxiety medications are very popular here in the USA because so many people are so stressed all the time for a myriad of different reasons. It does seem women are almost twice as likely to be taking one of these meds as men though. No one here on a music forum who doesn't even know you can tell you how to best deal with your stress, because everyone is unique, different methods might work very differently for different people. I don't know what country you're in or if you have access to medical care as a minor (under 18?) but I promise you there is no shame in seeing a mental health professional. No one is going to swoop in and just fix this for you unless you take steps to deal with this yourself. We can offer you encouragement, but you have to do the work. In the meantime, listen to more metal if that helps you. It has always helped me. And good luck.

You don't know what ghetto is? You don't get out much do you. Ghetto, inner-city, urban. Yes, they started out as a Venice Beach street hooligan hardcore band in the very beginning when all Mike wanted was a fucking Pepsi. I owned and really liked their first album from 1983 once upon a time. But then as the 80's unfolded I think they tried to go from hardcore to crossover to thrash, but what actually happened was they transitioned into some kind of a cringe-worthy half-assed, nu-metally, groovy crossover skate punk band with a pronounced west coast funky/ghetto/urban flavor, or whatever you want to call it. To each his own but to me they sound like a ghetto kid who's never heard a metal album before's idea of what metal is supposed to sound like just from shit he's heard people say and from watching tv. And I have to add while Mike might be a charismatic front man he is not a good singer at all, not by any stretch, I really think he's the one who was holding them back. And why does he walk around blindfolded? He really looks like he's trying to be a Crip. But maybe the mainstreamers like that shit and think it's cool, who knows. By the 90's (or the Trujillo years) they'd gone all the way over the edge into "alternative" metal, and when that adjective is applied to metal bands it's basically another way of saying "nu-metal." The terms are essentially synonymous afaic. There's guitars, it kinda looks and feels a little bit like metal but yet it's really not. By '88 ST was not anything even remotely resembling a thrash band and it was only downhill from there. All that really separated ST from Limp Bizkunt by the time Rocky left in the mid 90's imo was LB had catchier songs. And that's fine for whomever might be into that kind of baggy-pantsed funky urban nu-metal thing, but count me out. I do understand Rocky George was a very talented guitarist, and I suppose there's a big market for that kind of thing. No doubt the band still has a lot of loyal fans out there til this day. And if you're a fan Orca (I'm pretty sure our Tassie mainstream metal maven Deadovic is at least a casual ST fan too) by all means go for it dude, please continue to enjoy your ST records as much as you want, don't let me stop you. Or as much as you can stand to anyway. But as I've said thousands of times, just because something is 'heavy' and might have some good guitar work doesn't mean it's any good. These guys couldn't song-write their way out of a wet paper bag. ST fans can do whatever they want, doesn't matter to me in the slightest. But for my part, I don't have any interest or any tolerance whatsoever for that commercial alternative urban funk metal shit. Dude 2nd from the left in the black t-shirt and sunglasses is Dave Lombardo of Slayer fame. He played drums. Not sure, but I suspect even you might have heard of Slayer even if you weren't a rabid thrashing headbanger in the mid 80's like me and the Orca were.

Lamp of Murmuur - Saturnian Bloodstorm, LA. The new LoM is a bit of a departure in sound for M, productionwise it's very clear, could take a little bit of getting used to. Wonder if the shift to using full color album cover after a bunch of b/w covers has any significance? Ossaert - Pelgrimsoord, Netherlands 2021, superior Dutch one-man bm band.

Mike Muir removes bandana to reveal horrific exposed brain! Idk they look pretty nu-metal/ghetto to me. Strange as fuck to see Dave Lombardo standing there with them. But I guess he has bills to pay, I'm sure Kerry, Tom and the management were never paying him right.

Gosudar/Malignant Altar - Split 2022, Russia/Houston TX. It seems that Malignant Altar has broken up last year. Gosudar - Morbid Despotic Ritual, Russian death 2021

I love both genres and together they make up probably 90% of what I listen to, but I do prefer black. I consider death metal to be more entry level and black to be superior. Black has far more variety of sound, approach and presentation. Of course I do realize there are such things as progressive and technical death metal that aren't "entry level" but I can't stand any of that shit. I need my death metal to be heavy, straightforward, working class, meat & potatoes all the way. I prefer bands to stick to the template without too much experimentation, just give me heavy riffs. More than the very smallest amount of dissonance or atonlity will not be tolerated. None of that Ulcerate, Portal, Artificial Brain, Gorguts, Imperial Triumphant nonsense. (except Considered Dead is alright) I shy away from using the word "brutal" because that makes me think of deathcore (which is not good) but in general I do see brutal as a good quality for death metal. I like my death metal with hardcore influences, I like my death metal rotten and putrid, I like death metal mixed with grindcore, and I like my death metal blackened because that brings it closer to its superior sibling black metal. Death & roll is not a problem though. Groove is good, midpaced is fine, varied and shifting tempos is to be welcomed, I don't just want every song to a solid indistinguishable wall of blastbeats going 1,000 mph, that bores me. No plastic sounding drums please (that's an instant deal breaker) and the vocals have to be just right or it's a no go. Likewise with black metal I need the vocals to sound a certain throat shredding way. No weird vocals, no progressive, no avant-garde, no concept albums, no symphonic, no hipsters, no outside influences unless they're death metal, speed metal or hardcore punk. I'm basically just seeking pure unadulterated filth and caustic evil Satanic hatred that fucks my face. I like 1st wave, I like 2nd wave, I like Norsecore, and I like war metal. Hate disso black like DSO. In recent years I've found that occasionally I can handle listening to some black metal that's more atmospheric and/or more refined, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. And still it can't be too clean or I'm out. I'm 100% in favor of the 'trend' of intentionally making it sound retro or dirty or fuzzy or lo-fi for atmospheric effect. There's a limit though to how lo-fi I can go. I've heard some shit that was so bad and so fucked up it just sounded stupid, like you couldn't even hardly tell it was music being played through all the rumble and static and that's not at all what I'm after. I want to hear the riffs and the instruments. Black metal is a catharsis for me, it lets me get all those negative emotions and frustrations 'n shit out in a healthy way so I can feel unencumbered enough to walk around in real life being the nicest, kindest, sweetest, happiest little puppy dog you could ever hope to meet. Except when I'm being a fucking asshole of course. I am a New Yorker after all. There's only so much music can do for me.

"Judas Priest!" was the exclamation a lot of people my parents' age used when they wanted to say "Jesus Christ!" but they were worried about taking the Lord's name in vain and possibly even risking going to hell. Just like some older folks said shoot or sugar instead of shit or fudge instead of fuck or heck instead of hell. They must've really thought god was up there taking notes on how many times they cursed. Don't want to be taunting god now. Stenchcore is the name given to the heavier more metallic crust that has more death metal influence. There's that diluted word death again. There are several other micro-genres of crust like D-beat and neocrust that lean a bit more towards the hardcore anarcho punk side of things where crust was originally derived from. Here's a link if you're interested in learning about crust, this guy typed up a really good overview. Crust is my 3rd favorite sub-genre of metal right behind black and death. A lot of it's heavier than death metal and I really enjoy the extreme left wing anarcho kill all the politicians and corporations themes. Some days it's all I want to listen to. I only really found out about all these 90's and 2000's crust bands about a 12 - 15 years ago from my buddy Marko who posts here sometimes. Amebix from Devon in the west were the pioneers of UK crust back in the mid 80's, but I'd consider them (arguably) to be proto-crust. Discharge and Crass are other main influences. https://www.reddit.com/r/crustpunk/comments/bwrrbp/the_essential_crust_punk_albums_for_beginners/

I think the music makes the name. A lot of names are silly or dumb the first time you hear them, but then once you get to know the band they just become the names that go with their music. Meshuggah just wouldn't be the same with any other name. And I hate their music, can't listen to a note of it. Was so pissed when I read about Catch 33 winning all these music awards in Sweden so I bought the record blind and when I got it home I was like wtf is this shit?!? Never again. I have this overwhelming urge now to get some Goatpenis merch. Might be hard to find now since the dude died.

Oh yeah man, I was absolutely waaay more 'mainstream' than you were in the 90's. I was in my 30's in the 90's and busy working and trying to be an adult, then with a baby to take care of after the wife left at the end of '90. If you've ever seen that 80's movie Three Men and a Baby, that was us in '91 - '93 - except we had long hair, leather jackets, a bong on the table and a metal soundtrack on the stereo 24/7. I honestly had no idea there was this underground branch of the metal tree where they kept all your dangerous and subversive evil black and death metal (aka the good shit) and I wouldn't have had the time to dig for underground music back then anyway. I didn't get a computer and get hooked up to the internet until about '98, and even then it took me a few years to figure out how to use that thing to find the metal that I didn't know existed to be found. So the 90's is almost like a lost decade for me, when I scroll down my MusicBee library and look through the 90's I see band after band that I didn't discover until the mid/late 2000's or 2010's. Obviouisly by now I've been able to make up for lost time and catch up with everything, but it wasn't easy as an old guy in his mid 40's forcing himself to get over the harsh vocals hump in '04 and then having to digest this avalanche of 15 year's worth of extreme metal all at once. I had to sort through the rubble to find all the important bands I'd missed and see which kind of stuff I liked, and which stuff I didn't. I had people recommending shit to me from all sides and I had to learn whose tastes I meshed with and who was feeding me bullshit. I felt like I earned a 4 year degree in advanced underground metal in just 18 months and then spent the next decade getting my masters and Phd. Funny though you mention rap being your line in the sand, because (and I know this is going to come as a pretty big shock) that was my line in the sand too! And that's why I hated all those nu-metal bands because to me Jon, they all just sounded like rap with guitars, and that's no bueno. I won't even listen to Suicidal which most metalheads seem to accept as metal (or metal enough) and I see the rock press usually refers to them as some kind of thrash/punk hybrid, but to me it's just basically rap with guitars. Not interested. Rage, Suicidal, Balloon-knot, Bizkunt, Korn it's all the same to me, rap with guitars, and it all goes on the no fly list, "No Can Do" to quote Hall and Oates. Even Pantera goes on that no fly list, something about them's just not kosher to me. So you'll have to forgive me Jon if I find it hard to believe real actual metalheads over the age of maybe 20 who dig shit like Dreams of the Carrion Kind (an awesome album) & Descanting the Insalubrious (never got into Carcass, but not because they didn't pass the metal purity test) were also digging Life is Peachy and Significant Other. That's mind blowing to me. Obviously somebody had to buying all those millions of records but I didn't think it'd be many of us. (yes I do consider you to be one of us Jon, you'll be glad to know we will not be taking up excommunication proceedings against you for your past dalliances with Korn) But you'll have to excuse me, I have to take a shower now, I feel quite dirty from looking up and typing these nu-metal album titles. Oh and about Sir Cliff. I've looked him up yesterday and it seems he is the third biggest selling artist in UK history after the Beatles and Elvis. Who knew 🤷‍♂️ I do recognize a few of his song titles from his 116 year recording career, he did make it over to the states, I just wasn't familiar with his name or his face. I hear Cliff Richard and I think Keith Richards, so I want to call him Cliff Richards. But I know at the very least I've definitely heard We Don't Talk Anymore and Devil Woman on the radio in the past. In fact NY based heavy metal band Riot covered Devil Woman on their wonderful 1983 album Born in America. Terrible cover version, but I knew it was a cover of some old pop song I'd heard somewhere. That's typical for me, being so old I do recognize a shit ton of lame shitty old music from decades past when I hear it, but I'm not one who generally bothers to learn the song titles or artists' names of shit I don't even like. I can't even tell you song titles and band members' names of the current shit that I listen to every day. Cliff Richard - Devil Woman, now I feel doubly dirty after listening to this rubbish.

Parasitario - Everything Belongs to Death, Kamikaze death, Osaka Japan Wilt - Into Nothingness, German dumpling death

Maledictus Eris - Occasus Mundi, Guatemalan black metal Sumus Diabolus Incarnatus - Les Louanges de Baël - Livre 1, 2022 French black. Independent first release out of nowhere. I missed this one last April but this is a definite keeper, worth the €7 Euros. And it's not even filthy, it's well produced. I'll be keepin' my eye out for a follow up. Last Motörhead album, who ya gonna do next? Cliff Richard?

Thought you Aussies only ate Barramundi and Pink Snapper? Or is Emperor just another name for the Pink Snapper?

Only if you come over, sit in my lap and teach me the lyrics so we can sing aong with them in harmony.

I can relate to this. I don't understand why people who can barely speak English or have an accent so thick as to be minimally comprehensible frequently seem to end up in cutomer service positions. Especially when it's in the medical field where being able to clearly communicate important information is required. I hate having to ask telephone customer service reps if there's anyone there who speaks passable English. I've had a few get really annoyed with me too, as if it were somehow my own fault that I could barely understand them because they could barely speak English. There must be other kinds of jobs these people could get where they wouldn't have to speak directly with the public as the primary function of their job.

Diluted maybe but that was only one band I mentioned with "death" in their name. I also find it difficult to resist buying any album I come across with the word "Necro" in the title or in band's name. Goatpenis was Brazilian war metal and I get that's not your thing Jon, but c'mon man, what a fucking awesome band name. Almost as good as Goat Semen from Peru. As far as Nuclear Death Terror they're a completely awesome crust/stenchcore band from Denmark, no joke! Chaos Reigns

Interesting hypothesis Jon, but no, I never had to deal with Korn. I was quite interested in current metal in the mid 90's obviously, but I don't know maybe it depends what you mean by "come across" Korn. I'm sure I must have heard a few songs of theirs on the radio in the mid-late 90's as I drove around NYC in my truck without knowing who sang all those songs on the radio as they didn't always say, and even if they did I was in and out of the truck a lot so usually missed it. I didn't listen to the radio at any other time except in the work truck, any other time either at home or in my own car I'd have been listening to my own purchased music. The 1990's was a strange and difficult time for me musically speaking though, because that's when real metal went underground and nobody had even thought to tell me! I'd had a kid in June of 1990 and was working two jobs for awhile there, so going to the city at night for metal shows had all but stopped for a bit. And they stopped releasing a lot of things on vinyl around '91-'92, trying to promote CD buying I guess, so record store trips were getting fewer and fewer as I was quite resistant to switching over to CD's, and in fact I didn't buy my first cd until 2004. No internet yet in the eraly 90's so I was limited insofar as resources to find out about new music. I had the radio, MTV and music mags that I got from the book store. So for the first part of that decade I was still heavily rocking out with my 70's & 80's record collection I had accumulated which was quite thrash heavy by 1990 and also included plenty of speed metal, crossover, nwobhm and other 80's heavy metal and punk bands, Fate, Candlemass, Circus of Power, The Cult, Sisters of Mercy, lots of different things I was into then besides just thrash, but all of it was metal or metal related, hard rock or the heavier end of punk. Staying with bands I already knew and trusted as they released new stuff was one fairly reliable way I found new stuff to buy in the 90's, album reviews in magazines and random grabs at the record store were my other methods. I found Paradise Lost that way in '92, just saw their Shades of God album in the store knowing absolutely nothing about them and randomly took a chance on it. As it turned out that album Shades of God and the following year's Icon became my personal soundtrack to the 90's. I played those two albums over and over again incessantly. I'd chucked them on either side of a 90 minute Maxelll tape and just played the shit outta that thing on repeat thousands of times in my car until it wore out and then I'd make another one. I was also still heavily into Overkill and Celtic Frost and Motörhead and Slayer and Sepultura and Testament and all my 80's stuff. 1991's Horrorscope was a biggie for us back then, we were all Overkill fanbois at my house after the wife had left on Boxing Day 1990 and we wore that one out. Motörhead's 1916 was a biggie for me in '91 too. I did get into a few new mainstream "heavy" rock bands in the 90's grunge era, Alice in Chains & Soundgarden became big favorites of mine in the early-mid 90's that I found on the radio. I even bought the first 2 STP cassettes and got into some other lesser known grungey stuff like Tad, My Sister's Machine and Gruntruck. Found Type O Negative's Bloody Kisses in '93, I bought that on cassette the same day as Sacred Reich's Independent, and both of those became a big bands for me in the 90's. Social Distortion was a really big 90's band for me, not metal they're punk rock, but I still love and listen to them even now. COC was one of my 90's bands, also loved L7 and Circus of Power. By 1994 after my marriage had broken up I left town to go over the road trucking with just my little case of 24 cassette tapes. So for a couple of years there '94-'95 I basically checked out of the world and drove all around North America in my big rig with just my cassette tapes for company. Wore them bitches out. Occasionally they'd let me go home for a few days and I'd get to buy a new cassette or two. I remember one time around '93 or '94 MTV did a feature on new upcoming bands and they had Monster Magnet from New Jersey featured on there, and not long after that I saw their record in the store and I became a huge Monster Magnet fan. Huge I tell ya. Dopes to Infinity in 1995 became another album I used to play on endless repeat in my car for weeks at a time, as did the next 3 albums they released after that in '98, '00 & 2004, and to a lesser degree 4-Way Diablo in 2007 because by then I had already gotten heavily into death & black metal, but still I did a full decade of Monster Magnet worship. 2004 marks when I found extreme metal and everything turned upside down for me musically as within a year I had switched over to death and black metal becoming my primary listening choices, but that's another story which I've already told here a few different times. Supersuckers - The Evil Powers of Rock 'n' Roll was another big album for me in '99 while you were apparently a 24 year old Auckland lad skateboarding with your buds to Korn in your baggy pants and backwards cap. Closest I ever came to flirting with nu-metal was a couple of bands I found on the radio. I owned White Zombie's Astro Creep record, and I bought the first two Godsmack albums on cassette around 2000, if either of those bands can be considered nu-metal. I also had 2 Puddle of Mudd albums on cassette in the early oughts, but I don't think they count as nu-metal that's just straight commercial hard rock. Also really loved the first Audioslave album in '02, (hated the 2nd one) but I don't think that's nu-metal just because Cornell's backing band happened to be the remnants of RATM whom I'd never liked at all. And I really liked that It's Been Awhile song by Staind they played on MTV that everyone else I know hated, even though I never bought their record or anything. But that's about it man, no Korn for me, no Slipknot and definitely no Limp Bizkunt. Because even without being aware of all that 90's 2nd wave black metal or death metal that I now listen to until several years after the decade had ended, (because that stuff had disappeared underground in the early 90's as the mainstream music industry was busy transitioning their customers from poppy hair metal crap of the late 80's over to Nirvana and grunge) I was still easily able to navigate the 90's heavy music landscape and find stuff I enjoyed listening to staying around the outskirts of the mainstream without ever having to deal with utter garbage like Korn or Limp Bizkunt. I even made it through the 90's just fine without having to stoop to crap like Pantera or even Tool. So there's nothing "revisionist" about my revulsion for rap-rock and nu-metal Jon-O. Korn, Bizkunt and Balloon-knot, that shit has always disgusted me. I have absolutely no problem with anyone else who might happen to dig any of that stuff though, to each his own, live and let live. We just had vastly different experiences with music in the 90's you and I Jon since I'm 14 years older than you we were at completely different points in our lives, two rad dudes from different backgrounds, different generations, living in different parts of the world. I find it amusing that you think just because you were into Korn 25 years ago that means everyone else into metal must have been into them as well. Like Korn were some kind of a juggernaut too big to ignore, simply inescapable and we're all just lying to cover up our sordid pasts. And who the fuck is Cliff Richard?

Emperor's a pretty good name even though I'm not much of a fan of symphonic metal, but I don't personally think Immortal's a very good name. I woud say from where I sit some of the best metal band names I've ever heard have been: Destroyer(666), Darkthrone, Inquisition, Pulverizing Lethal Force, Mayhem, Incantation, Nocturnal Sorcery, Celtic Frost, Archgoat, Goatpenis, Prehistoric War Cult, Terminal Filth, Antichrist Siege Machine, Deathhammer, Nuclear Death Terror, Extreme Noise Terror, Napalm Death...you get the idea.

I love this 3 albums of the week thread, I just forget to look for it. Haven't been hunting for new shit too hard at all yet this year, it's only the last 2 weeks I've really started looking to see if anything good had come out this year yet and grabbing a few things. Verminous Serpent - The Mailgn Covenant, Ireland. I've been playing the shit out of this one on Youtube the last few days and this morning I bought it. This is my front-runner for aoty so far, just can't stop going back to it. Daemonlust - His Vast Coldness, Finland. Discovered this band just yesterday even though their new one has been out for a month now and already I can see them becoming my new obsession. Both of their albums are killer. Disfear - Soul Scars, Swedish D-beat crust 1995. Had myself a little crust marathon for a few days earlier this week, and this one got the most plays I think, probably because I didn't have this particular album of theirs before this week. Zoe - The Last Axe Beat, 2004 Japan. Another recent crust discovery, this EP is utterly fantastic. More musical than a lot of Japanese hardcore.

Alright Mr Backwards Cap, when I said the nu-metal "craze" was short-lived, I meant the hey-day passed. Not as many new bands being formed in that nu space past a certain date. I understand many of those bands still exist and some of them have been and remain extraordinarily successful. No music genre ever really dies, sales wane, their waves of popuarity just run their courses and their hey-days end. You scrotes turn your ball caps back the right way 'round, put on your big boy pants and go on with your middle class plant-based lives, wife, kid, hybrid in the garage. And when I said "most serious metalheads" didn't fuck around with nu-metal, I wasn't talking about young impressionable ball cap wearing teens and angsty testosterone fueled 20-something dudes like yourself who were nu-metal's main target audience and the ones making it into a big thing. I meant older guys like me who had been card-carrying metalheads for 20 years by the time Korn blew up in '98. I was ony vaguely aware of nu-metal's existence around that time, I didn't even know it was called nu-metal or know any of the bands' names or anything til some years later. I had just noticed there were some horrible baggy-pantsed rap-rock bands popping up at the tail end of the decade that I must've seen on MTV and I remember hearing that Bizkunt song Rollin' at the titty bar after work a few times on a Friday night. And then suddenly these kinds of bands were getting airtime on the "alternative" rock radio stations that had previously been playing grunge n stuff. Fortunately the nu trend blew over at some point, but I wonder if when those angsty teens and young 20-somethings from Y2K have kids of their own one day, and if they'll discover their parents' record collections, could nu-metal possibly see a resurgence? God for-fucking-bid.

HOR - Exitium ...Greek black Daemonlust - His Vast Coldness, Finnblack