Is DLR era Van Halen Metal?

Quote :

I hope this doesn't turn into an argument.

Too late for regrets now. You already pulled the pin on this grenade!

That's a tough one. I want to back you in the argument, Mike, and I also want to show respect to VH. After careful deliberation, in my head, I would have to say no. They are Hard Rock and not Heavy Metal. I want to say they are Metal and point to a few metallic riffs or their influences, but I know that exercise is futile. Proponents always point to the bands heaviest song as proof of their side in a subjective argument and the detractors do the same with the bands weakest tune (or ballad) in the catalog. It just goes on and on. If you think they are Metal, then that's really all that matters, brother.

DallasBlack wrote:

I hope this doesn't turn into an argument. All I want to know is everyone's personal opinion on DLR Van Halen being metal.

My personal opinion is that my personal opinion is just that...mine.  Your personal opinion should be the same...yours.  Why care what the hell anyone else thinks when it comes to genre classifications?

tohostudios wrote:

DallasBlack wrote:

I hope this doesn't turn into an argument. All I want to know is everyone's personal opinion on DLR Van Halen being metal.

My personal opinion is that my personal opinion is just that...mine.  Your personal opinion should be the same...yours.  Why care what the hell anyone else thinks when it comes to genre classifications?

My personal opinion IS mine, I was just curious.

DallasBlack wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

DallasBlack wrote:

I hope this doesn't turn into an argument. All I want to know is everyone's personal opinion on DLR Van Halen being metal.

My personal opinion is that my personal opinion is just that...mine.  Your personal opinion should be the same...yours.  Why care what the hell anyone else thinks when it comes to genre classifications?

My personal opinion IS mine, I was just curious.

I give up.  You're obviously looking for validation of your opinion in this dumb troll war of yours on YouTube.  So go ahead, argue with the trolls.  Debating genres is beyond stupid.  Why not debate something useful like opinions of bands or albums in general? 

Why do I think Van Hagar sucks big balls but Van Halen with DLR rocks?   That's an example of a much more useful can of worms to open IMO.  Who the hell cares how you classify the music of the band in any of its incarnations?

[quote="tohostudios"][quote="DallasBlack"]

tohostudios wrote:

Why not debate something useful like opinions of bands or albums in general? 

Why do I think Van Hagar sucks big balls but Van Halen with DLR rocks?

Because Van Hagar does suck!

Rock, hard rock, metal. Van Halen were like the cool kids in school who could hang with all the cliques and everyone liked 'em and that pissed so many outsiders off to no end.

tohostudios wrote:

DallasBlack wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

DallasBlack wrote:

I hope this doesn't turn into an argument. All I want to know is everyone's personal opinion on DLR Van Halen being metal.

My personal opinion is that my personal opinion is just that...mine.  Your personal opinion should be the same...yours.  Why care what the hell anyone else thinks when it comes to genre classifications?

My personal opinion IS mine, I was just curious.

I give up.  You're obviously looking for validation of your opinion in this dumb troll war of yours on YouTube.  So go ahead, argue with the trolls.  Debating genres is beyond stupid.  Why not debate something useful like opinions of bands or albums in general? 

Why do I think Van Hagar sucks big balls but Van Halen with DLR rocks?   That's an example of a much more useful can of worms to open IMO.  Who the hell cares how you classify the music of the band in any of its incarnations?

No Toho, I am not trying to validate my opinion I really was just curious. I was just going to use this thread to show that person (who hasn't even responded to me btw) that some people consider Van Halen metal. I even edited my original statement to reflect that. I wasn't even going to argue with them after I showed them this. I was actually just going to have conversation (not a trolling) with a certain someone on youtube about music I'm passionate about and turned to this place where I always went for opinions in the past because of the wide range of opinions from people who have listened to metal much longer than I have.

I guess I should have just kept it to myself. I forgot how touchy people can be around here. I'll just stick to the wrestling and beer threads, it provides for much more pleasant conversation.

If an admin wants to shut this thread down, I won't complain.

chewie wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

DallasBlack wrote:

tohostudios wrote:

Why not debate something useful like opinions of bands or albums in general? 

Why do I think Van Hagar sucks big balls but Van Halen with DLR rocks?

Because Van Hagar does suck!

Painkiller wrote:

mc666 wrote:

No

Now, I may be jumping to conclusions here, but is that a definite no?

tohostudios wrote:

Debating genres is beyond stupid.

If that's how you feel, then that's just dandy. I do find it odd that you feel compelled to post like 9 times in a thread created for that purpose. If you find it so dumb, then walk away.

In the lates 70s when they released their debut it was pretty heavy. Was it Hard Rock? Was it Metal? Who knows! It's all in the ears of the beholder. Hard rock and Heavy metal can be interchangeable depending on who you ask.Why did this ever become such a debated topic? Both are hard and heavy. You take a rock, it's hard and heavy. You take metal, same as thing.Its a never ending topic. Do I think they're heavy metal? No! But that's just my opinion. I've never considered them as anything but an awesome rock band.

I don't even think it's very ambiguous. If it's 1979, and you're cataloging heavy metal bands, you'd certainly have Van Halen right up there. Absolutely. And that's something you can't change later on. You can't re-write history.

Genres are a way to describe the style of music an artist plays. Sure, nowadays it might be a little awkward to call them heavy metal, but then at least refer to them as "70s heavy metal", because that's what they were. Sure, they went in different directions in the 80s, but at one point they did play the original style of heavy metal (among other things).

Nowadays "heavy metal" doesn't necessarily even really mean anything when describing an artist. Does anyone play just heavy metal? You pretty much always have to add an additional definition like "thrash", "power", "black", "industrial" or "folk" or "viking" or "melodic death" to your metal. Otherwise it's like a blanket statement that could cover everything from what is basically crossover pop to pure extreme noise.

I would consider them metal for sure. Or at least, I wouldn't bat an eye if someone referred to them as metal. Also, some times I think calling it 'heavy metal' changes the idea, versus just calling it 'metal'. Like, maybe grinddeathcoregorebrutalslam isn't heavy metal, it's metal. But VH could be heavy metal. If that makes any sense.

Also, I love Hagar-era VH. I didn't always. Probably around 6 or 7 years ago, "Why Can't This Be Love", I think, came on the radio and I found myself out of nowhere being really into it. I started re-investigating some of VH's second era, and really liked it a lot. Some of it I probably like more than DLR-era now. Which 10 or 15 years ago would've been such a ridiculous notion to even myself.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Also, I love Hagar-era VH.

I do too. It's just fun radio rock.

mc666 wrote:

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Also, I love Hagar-era VH.

I do too. It's just fun radio rock.

Same here. I never had a problem with it.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Also, some times I think calling it 'heavy metal' changes the idea, versus just calling it 'metal'. Like, maybe grinddeathcoregorebrutalslam isn't heavy metal, it's metal. But VH could be heavy metal. If that makes any sense.

Certainly. And as an example, Wikipedia with their list of heavy metal bands has gone to listing only the bands that were there originally before the genre broke down to different subgenres

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heavy_metal_bands

Lari wrote:

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Also, some times I think calling it 'heavy metal' changes the idea, versus just calling it 'metal'. Like, maybe grinddeathcoregorebrutalslam isn't heavy metal, it's metal. But VH could be heavy metal. If that makes any sense.

Certainly. And as an example, Wikipedia with their list of heavy metal bands has gone to listing only the bands that were there originally before the genre broke down to different subgenres

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_heavy_metal_bands

Damn, man. I never really thought of looking up a list like that on Wiki....there is a lot to chew on there, and a quick glance shows me a bunch of 70s bands I need to check out and see if I need to investigate further. Like the rest of the music community, bands like Cactus, Dust and other early 70s heavier bands are something I've been digging on...seems like a never ending genre, heh, so I'm excited to have more to look into.

007 wrote:

mc666 wrote:

ZombieHavoc wrote:

Also, I love Hagar-era VH.

I do too. It's just fun radio rock.

Same here. I never had a problem with it.

Likewise. I listened to 5150 a few months ago and it's an excellent album.

DallasBlack wrote:

Simple question, is early Van Halen metal? I say yes and I think many of you agree but I want to get a consensus on this for a possible argument I may have with someone (I will direct them to this thread).

There wasn't much heavier or metal than them in 1978. Yes, they moved away from heavy metal as they went into the 80's, but c'mon. Eddie changed the musical landscape for metal in 1978. Sure other guys were doing the tap-on thing before Eddie, but the way he did it was so heavy that suddenly every guitarist was wanting to learn how to do it.

In 1978, Van Halen were touring, and out-playing Black Sabbath. In 1978 we all called Van Halen "heavy metal". I don't know of anyone who would have disagreed at that time. Of course the genre has splintered off into a million different sub-genres and many people think that if a band doesn't sound like Maiden or Slayer than they are "just hard rock", but that certainly wasn't the case in the 70's and into the 80's. In fact, I don't remember anyone arguing the point until the 90's and later.

You can tell that Ult and I are close in age cuz we both said pretty much the same thing.

...tho I seem to remember that whatever "metal" cred Van Halen had started evaporating around the release of the rather blah Diver Down album, and was completely gone as soon as "Jump" hit the airwaves and everyone started yelling, "Synthesizers? WTF Eddie?"

ultmetal wrote:

Of course the genre has splintered off into a million different sub-genres and many people think that if a band doesn't sound like Maiden or Slayer than they are "just hard rock", but that certainly wasn't the case in the 70's and into the 80's. In fact, I don't remember anyone arguing the point until the 90's and later.

Weirdly, I feel like a lot of the extreme metal crowd, especially the younger ones, look at stuff like Maiden as hard rock more so than metal now. I disagree, of course. But you'll have like extreme black metal guys refer to "South of Heaven" as pop metal. Ha. And course, it's all what young kids might call "Dad Metal".

I remember I met this guy, it was a little over 10 years ago, so I was in my mid-20s, and he was probably like 19 or something. It came up that he liked metal, so we started talking. Every thrash or traditional or 80s speed metal band that I liked, he considered too...tame, I guess. Too slow. Like he admitted to possibly thinking early Slayer was "okay" and really only had interest in the grindiest of grindy blast-beaters. So I'm sure that dude, at least then--who knows how he thinks now around 30 years old--would've most certainly given a hard "NO" to the thought of VH being metal. Ha.

ZombieHavoc wrote:

ultmetal wrote:

Of course the genre has splintered off into a million different sub-genres and many people think that if a band doesn't sound like Maiden or Slayer than they are "just hard rock", but that certainly wasn't the case in the 70's and into the 80's. In fact, I don't remember anyone arguing the point until the 90's and later.

Weirdly, I feel like a lot of the extreme metal crowd, especially the younger ones, look at stuff like Maiden as hard rock more so than metal now.

Ha. And course, it's all what young kids might call "Dad Metal".

That is a fact. I've actually had that discussion on Facebook a few times now. Iron Maiden, Saxon and Judas Priest were never heavy metal but were "just hard rock". I always love how they have to put "just" in front of it to sort of downgrade these bands from being heavy metal.

In fact, I saw a post that I didn't bother to get involved with that stated that "The Big 4 - Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth and Anthrax" are boring "Dad-Rock" and the prevailing good bands were some total shit with sentences for names. The only band name I even remember was Black Veil Brides.

This image below might be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but unfortunately it seems to be the new prevailing opinion.