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80's and 90's metal vs. nowdays metal


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On 8/9/2018 at 11:00 AM, Tortuga said:

I agree!!! I do not care if a song was written 40 years ago or 3 months ago, by a 60 year old or 16 year old: if it is good then I'll listen to it, buy the CD, or buy it online and download it...if there is no other option available! Time is something that I have never really understood or had a good concept of and it has nothing to do with my music choice. Metal has a long history: if you include classical music which a lot of metal is based on then it hundreds of years old. And well, sticking exclusively to one or two decades with in more than five centuries or more, seems very limited.

But as for personal preferences: the 1993 to around 1995 did nothing for me music wise!

 

And that’s perfectly fine because it’s personal taste.

For me though, albums like ‘De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas’, ‘In the Nightside Eclipse’ and ‘Storm of the Lights Bane’, to name but three, are the near pinnacle of metal evolution and the beginning of its devolution.

Throw ‘Turn Loose the Swans’, ‘Bloody Kisses’ and hell, even ‘Demanufacture’ in there and we are starting to look at a special time in musical output. 

Hail 1993-1995.

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I think it really depends. There was a lot of shit metal back then too, we just don't remember it and it didn't stand the test of time. Today we have it all at our fingertips, literally. You can go to youtube or google and find just about anything, including good AND bad bands.  Sadly, as metal became more "mainstream" the record companies pushed the acts that they could sell to the lowest common denominator, which tends to be easy listening type metal.  I LIKE that you have to search for good metal in a sea of crap.  It makes finding that gem of a band that much more satisfying.

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I agree with a few others. There was some amazing music from 80s 90s and some amazing music now. Although I would say the 90s was not a great time for traditional metal with such heavy hitters such as exodus, testament, even slayer struggling to know how to adapt to nu metal and grunge which was dominant then. Although obviously alot of people must love the 90s grunge and nu metal. Not for me though. ??still some great music in 90s early opeth is some of my favourite, chaos ad album fuck yeahhh etc. For me there is no classic era because in every era from 50s to today there is amazing music if you search hard enough with intelligence. Obviously some would disagree but thats my opinion.

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Simply put, nowadays metal, cause it keeps on getting heavier, and the styles I like the most (metalcore, tech death, etc) are having their big time now, or were having it just recently. 

Also, production values, musical complexity and sophistication keep growing in metal (and some other music genres as well), and I like that too.  

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When people tell me that the 80's was the heyday of metal I tend to give them weird looks as I think the 90's was better. The 90's is when 80's gothic music fused with metal to create gothic metal, my favourite sub style of metal.  What sub style of metal is your favourite tends to determine what decade you think metals heyday was in. Another reason I tend to think the 90's were better than the 80's for metal was that metal took lots of ideas from other styles of music in the 90's and fused that with metal and out of that you got such awesome bands like Rammstein, Rage Against The Machine, Nightwish, Rob Zombie, System Of A Down, Type O Negative  and countless others.      

On 2/22/2020 at 9:29 PM, blaaacdoommmmfan said:

I agree with a few others. There was some amazing music from 80s 90s and some amazing music now. Although I would say the 90s was not a great time for traditional metal with such heavy hitters such as exodus, testament, even slayer struggling to know how to adapt to nu metal and grunge which was dominant then. Although obviously alot of people must love the 90s grunge and nu metal. Not for me though. ??still some great music in 90s early opeth is some of my favourite, chaos ad album fuck yeahhh etc. For me there is no classic era because in every era from 50s to today there is amazing music if you search hard enough with intelligence. Obviously some would disagree but thats my opinion.

It was not until the the 1999 album Still life (what an amazing album) that Opeth became the band we know and love today. Their albums before Still life are all just very average black metal sounding albums.  

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3 hours ago, Strawberry said:

When people tell me that the 80's was the heyday of metal I tend to give them weird looks as I think the 90's was better. The 90's is when 80's gothic music fused with metal to create gothic metal, my favourite sub style of metal.  What sub style of metal is your favourite tends to determine what decade you think metals heyday was in. Another reason I tend to think the 90's were better than the 80's for metal was that metal took lots of ideas from other styles of music in the 90's and fused that with metal and out of that you got such awesome bands like Rammstein, Rage Against The Machine, Nightwish, Rob Zombie, System Of A Down, Type O Negative  and countless others.      

It was not until the the 1999 album Still life (what an amazing album) that Opeth became the band we know and love today. Their albums before Still life are all just very average black metal sounding albums.  

They consciously changed their sound up for My Arms, Your Hearse. Still Life was a more refined iteration of those ideas, and probably an easier pill to swallow since they'd already laid the foundation for it. As a big fan of the first two albums it took me a while to get my head around their "new direction" back in the day. I'm curious what makes you lump them in with black metal - some combination of melodies, atmosphere, vocal style, and overall sound? 

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On 3/7/2021 at 5:05 PM, FatherAlabaster said:

They consciously changed their sound up for My Arms, Your Hearse. Still Life was a more refined iteration of those ideas, and probably an easier pill to swallow since they'd already laid the foundation for it. As a big fan of the first two albums it took me a while to get my head around their "new direction" back in the day. I'm curious what makes you lump them in with black metal - some combination of melodies, atmosphere, vocal style, and overall sound? 

  

6 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

Because that is what the lead singer of Opeth as called them. I've seen Opeth life 3 times now and everytime they placed something from an album before Still life the lead singer has said ignore the stupid black metal lyrics and just enjoy the song which always made me laugh. I do not like any of the albums before still Still Life. Still life would easily be in my top 5 albums of all time.

 

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3 minutes ago, Strawberry said:

Because that is what the lead singer of Opeth as called them. I've seen Opeth life 3 times now and everytime they placed something from an album before Still life the lead singer has said ignore the stupid black metal lyrics and just enjoy the song which always made me laugh.  

 

Well, you'll get no argument from me about Still Life, I think it's a phenomenal album. It came out while I was in college and it was a constant companion for painting and drawing class, lots of great memories. I love everything up through Ghost Reveries. I think the first time I saw them was right around Blackwater Park, and I was lucky enough to see them with Nevermore as well as a couple of times with Katatonia. Absolutely awesome. I even liked their newer stuff in a live context, although I don't connect with the albums. I wouldn't take Åkerfeldt joking about the lyrics as evidence that their older stuff was black metal, though, especially considering his goofy sense of humor onstage. They always considered themselves to be part of the death metal scene. I hear lots of similarities between melodic black metal and melodic death metal from that era, but they don't have any more in common with black metal than the other bands on the melodic side of death metal that were coming up around the same time. 

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20 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Well, you'll get no argument from me about Still Life, I think it's a phenomenal album. It came out while I was in college and it was a constant companion for painting and drawing class, lots of great memories. I love everything up through Ghost Reveries. I think the first time I saw them was right around Blackwater Park, and I was lucky enough to see them with Nevermore as well as a couple of times with Katatonia. Absolutely awesome. I even liked their newer stuff in a live context, although I don't connect with the albums. I wouldn't take Åkerfeldt joking about the lyrics as evidence that their older stuff was black metal, though, especially considering his goofy sense of humor onstage. They always considered themselves to be part of the death metal scene. I hear lots of similarities between melodic black metal and melodic death metal from that era, but they don't have any more in common with black metal than the other bands on the melodic side of death metal that were coming up around the same time. 

I have the Roundhouse Tapes on double CD by Opeth which is a live gig record at London in 2007 and on there Åkerfeldt says before playing one of the slower non heavy songs "This is the song that is going to get us laid backstage." So yes he did have a sense of humor. Ghost Reveries would be my second favourite Opeth album and Blackwater park my third.   

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On 3/7/2021 at 1:29 PM, Strawberry said:

When people tell me that the 80's was the heyday of metal I tend to give them weird looks as I think the 90's was better. The 90's is when 80's gothic music fused with metal to create gothic metal, my favourite sub style of metal.  What sub style of metal is your favourite tends to determine what decade you think metals heyday was in. Another reason I tend to think the 90's were better than the 80's for metal was that metal took lots of ideas from other styles of music in the 90's and fused that with metal and out of that you got such awesome bands like Rammstein, Rage Against The Machine, Nightwish, Rob Zombie, System Of A Down, Type O Negative  and countless others.      

It was not until the the 1999 album Still life (what an amazing album) that Opeth became the band we know and love today. Their albums before Still life are all just very average black metal sounding albums.  

That's cool you like still life album, I liked the cover but i've never really got in to there stuff after morningrise. I mean it's very  good  and I've bought some of there music and listened to some on you tube but its not music I get really excited about, maybe too refined for me. It kind of became bit repetitive for me.  The first two are the most interesting for me especially there orchid album.which I just really liked for all the counter point music they did on that record and all the variety. In fact some say that's why it's called orchid because there's loads of varieties of orchids like there's lots of different genres of music featured in orchid.  There's so much going on. I just love it because I'm not sure what's going to come next but it will sound great. Not a bad debut😁 bit like emperor debut. Both classics for me. Both from 90s too. 

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I, personally, very much enjoy modern metal. Home recording obviously had a huge impact on the scene and there's currently a flood of releases. Sure, there's some meh stuff, but we have the opportunity to listen to musicians who previously wouldn't have gotten a chance to release their music at all. I mostly linger around the black metal area, and the genre is currently going through some sort of renaissance, which I'm welcoming with open arms. Second wave is obviously great, but I also like how the newer bands are exploring song structure, chord progressions and so on.

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I like a lot of metal from different time periods, but I can't definitively say that the 80s or 90s were better for metal than the current era. A lot of truly legendary albums came out of the 90s: Goat Horns & Nechrist (Nokturnal Mortum) Thousand Swords (Graveland), In the Nightside Eclipse & Anthems to the Welkin At Dusk (Emperor), Stormblast & Spiritual Black Dimensions (Dimmu Borgir), Angels Fall First & Oceanborn (Nightwish), Wildhoney & Clouds (Tiamat), Sleep's Holy Mountain (Sleep) Down (Sentenced)... I mean tons of great stuff came out of the 90s; a lot of albums that really set the standard for what I think that metal should be, but that doesn't mean that good albums aren't coming out now.

Some of the best albums I can think of that came out recently: Evil Sound Screamers (Acid Witch), Eternal Hails (Darkthrone), The Heresiarch (Nupraptor), Worm Ritual (Nekrofilth), Roads to the North (Panopticon), Evil Strikes Again (Witchtrap), Hour of Ragnarok (Graveland)

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On 2/15/2022 at 10:44 PM, Stormblaast said:

I feel like the 80s and 90s were the golden ages of heavy metal, while many of the bands I like today started out in the late 90s or early 2000s and are still producing music to this day.  I feel like metal has become more diverse through the years, there are more sub genres that I find interesting and enjoyable.

 

I think the subgenre growth peak was 1979-2000:

1979-2000

Alternative - late 1980s, early 1990s

Avant garde - mid 1980s

Black - 1st wave was 1981, Norwegian early 1990

Crossover thrash - mid 1980s

Death - mid 1980s

Death n Roll - 1990s

Death Doom - late 1980s

Deathgrind  - 1990s

Epic Doom  - mid 1980s

Folk - late 1980s

Funk metal - late 1980s

Funeral Doom - early 1990s

Glam - 1980s

Gothic - early 1990s

Grindcore - late 1990s

Groove - early 1990s

Industrial - late 1980s/early 1990s

Mathcore - late 1990s

Melodic death metal - early 1990s 

Metallic hardcore - early-mid 1990s

Melodic metalcore - late 1990s

Neo-classical - late 1970s/early 1980s

Nu-metal - mid 1990s

Post metal - early 1990s

Progressive - mid 1980s

Progressive Death Metal - mid 1990s

Rap metal - mid 1980s

Sludge - early 1990s

Thrash - early 1980s

Technical thrash - late 1980s

Technical death - early 1990s

Power - late 1980s

Speed - early 1990s

Symphonic black - mid 1990s

US Power Metal - 1980s

Warmetal - 1990s

 

Subgenres post 2000

Blackened heavy metal (won't include blackened speed/thrash because that is what Venom, Sodom, Bathory et al were doing from early 1980s).

Black Gaze

Post black metal

Deathcore

Djent

Drone

Symphonic death metal

Pirate Metal (1980s Running Wild were speed metal and never sounded like actual pirates whereas Alestorm do!)

 

 

 

 

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