The demise of hard rock/heavy metal

Lack of musical taste in the general population!

Eyesore wrote:

Chairman_Smith wrote:

You know what I don't get? People who have all this Emo, Alternative, Nu Metal and Rap in their Music Preferences, but also list Metallica and AC/DC.

How is that hard to get? My collection has all that and more!

You are not what I'm talking about, the people i'm talking about would hate bands similar to AC/DC and Metallica.

ultmetal wrote:

It has lots of interesting fact about the more
mainstream bands. A few tidbits I didn't know. A few 'rumors' listed as
if they were fact, such as Gene Simmons claim that they originally were
gonna call the band "F**K" but decided on the next best thing "KISS"
since that name would have hindered getting a contract. That's just a
b.s. story that Gene made up, but the book has it listed as fact.
Otherwise, I'm halfway through the book now and they he's getting into
facts about the 80's bands. A fun read.

ult

That can't be right? What about "Knights In Satan's Service"?!?!

I feel a semi lengthy rant comin' on here, so bear with me.

It always kinda bugs me when people refer to heavy metal's "demise" or say that it "died" in the early 90s. In my book, it never "died," except in the eyes of the mainstream. What metal did in the early 90s was go back underground, which IMHO is where it BELONGS anyway. Mass acceptance is never a good thing for any musical movement. Yeah, sure, it's nice for the musicians who get to play the enormo-domes for a while and buy big houses, and it was nice to be able to walk into the Sam Goody store at the mall and find just about every conceivable metal CD readily available, but there's always an expiration date on that sort of thing. Once the major labels and MTV get hold of something, its days are numbered from then on. The big labels oversaturate the market, they flood the airwaves with endless clones of proven bands (how many two-bit Metallica wannabes and third-or-fourth division hair bands got picked up by the majors between 1987-1990?), they milk the "scene" for all it's worth and then as soon as people's attention starts showing signs of waning they go "OK, this stuff is dead now," they throw it aside and they move on to the next thing.

People blame Nirvana and Kurt Cobain for it all, as if he woke up one morning and decided to spearhead a vast conspiracy to wipe metal off of the earth, which is ridiculous. That guy was so wacked out on heroin that he's lucky he was able to dress himself every morning, much less lead any kind of youth movement. What happened around 1991 was that the metal scene had become TOO big and was becoming stagnant. People were getting tired of sub-par records from bands who were running on auto-pilot.

I'm probably gonna take some flack for saying this, but y'know what? Nirvana's NEVERMIND was a pretty damn good album. (BLEACH too. Their post-NEVERMIND album, IN UTERO, however...ehhhh, not so much.) NEVERMIND sounded fresh in 1991 and it's aged well. I equate that record with GnR's APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION, in that it shook up what had become a very stale, safe musical environment. No, it's definitely NOT metal, but it's a solid hard rock record. I'm sure Kurt was as surprised as everyone else when it blew up the way it did. That guy would've been happier (and would probably still be alive today) if it hadn't, he would've been satisfied criss-crossing the US in a beat up van playing in dive bars for the rest of his life. The only thing I blame Cobain for is inspiring the major labels to sign zillions of other useless flannel-backed bands that followed in his wake, but then the labels were merely sticking to their normal business model. (Just like the endless wave of crappy hair metal bands that followed in the wake of Poison/Bon Jovi/Warrant and the tons of two-bit thrashers that followed the Metallica formula).

We can all be thankful that the European scene kept the metal sound alive while everybody in the U.S. went to sleep for a couple of years, maybe we all had to pay big prices for import CDs for a while but at least the 90s showed us all who the metal lifers were and who the fly-by-night, fair weather "fans" were... and Metal didn't need those fair weather fans anyway. Those of us who REALLY stayed true to our metal, knew where to find it.
And that's my two cents! (Stepping off soap box now)

P.S. Alice In Chains and Soundgarden were pretty kick-ass too!

Fat Freddy wrote:

I feel a semi lengthy rant comin' on here, so bear with me.

It always kinda bugs me when people refer to heavy metal's "demise" or say that it "died" in the early 90s. In my book, it never "died," except in the eyes of the mainstream. What metal did in the early 90s was go back underground, which IMHO is where it BELONGS anyway. Mass acceptance is never a good thing for any musical movement. Yeah, sure, it's nice for the musicians who get to play the enormo-domes for a while and buy big houses, and it was nice to be able to walk into the Sam Goody store at the mall and find just about every conceivable metal CD readily available, but there's always an expiration date on that sort of thing. Once the major labels and MTV get hold of something, its days are numbered from then on. The big labels oversaturate the market, they flood the airwaves with endless clones of proven bands (how many two-bit Metallica wannabes and third-or-fourth division hair bands got picked up by the majors between 1987-1990?), they milk the "scene" for all it's worth and then as soon as people's attention starts showing signs of waning they go "OK, this stuff is dead now," they throw it aside and they move on to the next thing.

People blame Nirvana and Kurt Cobain for it all, as if he woke up one morning and decided to spearhead a vast conspiracy to wipe metal off of the earth, which is ridiculous. That guy was so wacked out on heroin that he's lucky he was able to dress himself every morning, much less lead any kind of youth movement. What happened around 1991 was that the metal scene had become TOO big and was becoming stagnant. People were getting tired of sub-par records from bands who were running on auto-pilot.

I'm probably gonna take some flack for saying this, but y'know what? Nirvana's NEVERMIND was a pretty damn good album. (BLEACH too. Their post-NEVERMIND album, IN UTERO, however...ehhhh, not so much.) NEVERMIND sounded fresh in 1991 and it's aged well. I equate that record with GnR's APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION, in that it shook up what had become a very stale, safe musical environment. No, it's definitely NOT metal, but it's a solid hard rock record. I'm sure Kurt was as surprised as everyone else when it blew up the way it did. That guy would've been happier (and would probably still be alive today) if it hadn't, he would've been satisfied criss-crossing the US in a beat up van playing in dive bars for the rest of his life. The only thing I blame Cobain for is inspiring the major labels to sign zillions of other useless flannel-backed bands that followed in his wake, but then the labels were merely sticking to their normal business model. (Just like the endless wave of crappy hair metal bands that followed in the wake of Poison/Bon Jovi/Warrant and the tons of two-bit thrashers that followed the Metallica formula).

We can all be thankful that the European scene kept the metal sound alive while everybody in the U.S. went to sleep for a couple of years, maybe we all had to pay big prices for import CDs for a while but at least the 90s showed us all who the metal lifers were and who the fly-by-night, fair weather "fans" were... and Metal didn't need those fair weather fans anyway. Those of us who REALLY stayed true to our metal, knew where to find it.
And that's my two cents! (Stepping off soap box now)

P.S. Alice In Chains and Soundgarden were pretty kick-ass too!

I enjoy Nevermind, I've had alot of fun with it. I've found it a bit hard to get into bands with certain labels because of what my peers think, but i'm trying my best to avoid that now.


I was going to post something similar to what you said. Whenever someone says Grunge stole metal's fans, I always think that if they jumped ship, who needs EM!

I think its all Bush's fault.

T-Roy wrote:

I think its all Bush's fault.

Excellent point!

But I like John Bush

I became a metal head around the shifting point. Metallica had just released the Black Album, Megadeth-Countdown to Extention, Anthrax-Sound Of White Noise, and Queensryche-Empire. Being new I didn't understand the differences between metal and other forms of hard music so I was also into Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, etc. Thank God for Headbanger's Ball or I would have continued down the road to Alternative. That allowed me to be exposed to Exodus, Pantera, Sepultura, Flotsam and Jetsam, etc. Then there was my local radio station Z-Rock which introduced Judas Priest, Helloween, Testament. I also got into more pop oriented metal like Slaughter, Warrant, Ratt, etc. Then when I became a freshman in high school things started to take a dive. First Headbanger's Ball got cancelled and to make matters worse Z-Rock got turned into a Tejano station. I started to think that metal was dying off along with metal albums showing up less and less in music stores. But through used CD stores and Metal Maniacs magazine (when I could find it) I realized that metal was not dead and now with all the reunions and the European metal scene that metal will never die no matter how the mainstream tries to kill it (keep in mind that the only mainstream that abandoned metal was the American mainstream). Popular styles of music will come and go but Metal is FOREVER!!!!

As far as metal belonging in the underground I couldn't agree more. I have only been to four metal concerts two at clubs and two in arenas. The arena concerts were not bad but because you have to book the seats I ended up quite a distance from the stage no matter how early or late I showed up. However, the ones at the clubs allowed me to get up close and personal to the stage if I just showed up early.

2 quick things, albums sales = money and ticket sales = BIG MONEY for a band. As far as genres of music fading or coming full circle, the past 17 years in Metal radio for me haven't reallly change much as far as listener request. For me that's awesome, diversity=longevity........open minds!!-TJ

T-Roy wrote:

I think its all Bush's fault.

Which one? George W., John, or the band?

the sentinel wrote:

T-Roy wrote:

I think its all Bush's fault.

Which one? George W., John, or the band?

GW!!!

the sentinel wrote:

T-Roy wrote:

I think its all Bush's fault.

Which one? George W., John, or the band?

GW!!!

T-Roy wrote:

the sentinel wrote:

T-Roy wrote:

I think its all Bush's fault.

Which one? George W., John, or the band?

GW!!!

No doubt!!