Spiderbite

Where are you playing, Paff?

Decker

In the context of popularity, I have no idea what "overrated" even means. There are metrics for measuring an artist's popularity, such as album sales, Spotify streams and concert ticket sales. By those metrics, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift are two of the most popular musicians on the planet, if not THE two most popular. So how are they 'overrated'? Time Magazine picked Taylor Swift as Person of the Year because of her broad reach and appeal across popular culture in 2023, not because they thought she reinvented music.
In any case, calling someone "overrated" isn't an opinion, it's a statement that the collective opinion is wrong or at least exaggerated. 'Taylor Swift can't sing' is an opinion, 'Beyoncé's last album was boring' is an opinion. 'Bob Marley's musical output was modest and it's baffling how much he has been deified after his death, especially in the Caribbean " is basically saying the same thing as "he's overrated", but it at least gives some context to the opinion.

Paff

It's just this farm about 25 miles outside of my city, that they're trying to become a music venue. It's pretty small time. Guitar Center level sound system, the lights are literally Home Depot worklights. Heck, I'm not fully convinced it isn't a cult; they've got an A frame outbuilding that looks eerily like the climactic scene in Midsommar, I shit you not. The bands are almost all locals, with a few other non locals playing, but no signed artists.

But man, the birria tacos....

mndtrp

I'm the opposite. I mostly listen to metal, and most band shirts are so over the top and garish that I prefer when it's just the band logo. Maybe some small graphic, but not much.

Spiderbite

Haha. Okay. I guess you are avoiding saying the city you are playing it, but I get it.

If anyone is around my way (Birmingham, AL) and wants to see my wife's band play, check out their Facebook page. I am not on Facebook but their band is called What She Said. link - Facebook

Sorry for the hijack.

beavis69

I actually came across someone recently with an interesting take on band tshirts in that he hates tour tshirts. Meaning tshirts with the tour dates on the back. Said it was the lamest thing and he would never wear them. I thought that was an odd take, I see them as great souvenirs. So much so that I will chose who's tshirt I buy based on having tour dates and a good design. Cattle Decapitation, for example, seems to be a band that always puts their lamest design on tour tshirts. So they are one of the few I own that I bought at a show but doesn't have the dates.

cultshock

Yeah, I'll always go for a shirt with tour dates on the back when I see a concert. I'm disappointed when a band selling shirts at a show does not have one with that option.

Giantrobo

Sir...did you just MANSPLAIN the current state of HEAVY METAL to ME.

cultshock

Josh-da-man

Yeah, I find that metal, these days, is an incredibly broad and diverse genre. Probably one of the most diverse genres of music out there at the moment. There's still stuff like traditional metal and death metal, but you also have stuff like symphonic metal that uses opera singers and classical-influenced arrangements, folk metal, acapella metal, and uncategorizable stuff like Ghost, Poppy, and Babymetal.

Josh-da-man

At the time, I didn't really care for it because it seemed too synth-heavy and poppy, but a couple of decades later I can really appreciate as being sort of 80s cyberpunk fabulous. As a piece of mid-80s kitsch, it's aged quite well and became a worthy entry in the Priest catalog.

But, look at in the context of being a teenager at the time and coming off of British Steel, Screaming for Vengeance, and Defenders of the Faith... and then "I'm your turbo loverrrrrrr.... tell me there's no otherrrrrrrr!" That probably wasn't going to go down well in 1986, especially when we bought Master of Puppets and Reign in Blood that same year.

Toby Dramit

David Bowie's best decade musically was between 1993 - 2003. He and his band were at their peak when they performed at the BBC Radio Theatre in London on 27 June 2000 (2 days after headlining at Glastonbury). This later period of his career tends to be overlooked compared to the 70s and 80s but he wrote some excellent songs during this time and never sounded better.




Paff

^ I do find it amusing listening to some bands' 80s output, where they suddenly adopted the "new wave" look and sound, just in case that became a permanent thing (which it didn't). I'm talking about Billy Joel suddenly going skinny tie on Glass Houses, or Boston bluesers The J. Geils Band suddenly going all synth for Freeze Frame. One of these days I'll get Alice Cooper's Flush the Fashion out of the bargain bins. And my favorite of the bunch, Linda Ronstadt's Mad Love, if you didn't know who it was and someone told you it was outtakes from Blondie's Parallel Lines, you'd totally believe it.

Paff

I liked Tin Machine a LOT.

Toby Dramit

Reeves Gabrels remained a part of Bowie's band (and songwriting collaborator) until midway through the 'hours' tour in 1999.

Yeah, Billy Joel had the new-wave look at the time but Glass Houses is a pretty solid rock album (still have the vinyl). Always liked Clones (We're All) by Cooper ...

cultshock

I love all the diversity and genre mashups in metal. Black metal (my favorite metal genre) seems to be especially good at this, it goes with almost anything. Look at bands like Zeal and Ardor, who mix black metal with African-American spirituals (and somehow it actually works) and Imperial Triumphant who combines black metal with experimental jazz (they are a little too avant-garde for me though). Just the other day I was listening to a black metal band that incorporates an accordion (they have Eastern European folk influences) and improbably it works. As you say, metal is indeed very broad and diverse these days, there is literally something for everyone in the genre. I can't think of any other music genres more diverse, the average person has only been exposed to the very tip of the iceberg when it comes to metal, they have no idea how rich an artform it can be.


I picked up an absolutely mint original vinyl pressing several years back for a whopping two bucks. I really like that album, along with Alice's other "blackout" albums, especially 1983's DaDa which is one of my favorite Alice albums (there's an unpopular opinion that helps get this back on track )

beavis69

I think the death metal revival that started around 2015 is starting to die down a bit and black metal is having a renaissance. Guess another unpopular take of mine is the early BM stuff out of northern Europe is the most boring version of BM. Love the modern combinations that you would think wouldn't work well with BM, like America folk with bands like Panopticon or Wilderun.

Saw Imperial Triumphant and only about 50 people were in the crowd. They played that show like there were 500. Damn good band live, everyone was really blown away.

cultshock

I have to agree with that, most of the early 90s Norwegian BM is a little too low-fi and monochromatic for me. I have an appreciation for the BM music of that era and do like some of the early Emperor and Darkthrone songs, but when the production started getting better and more interesting influences and diversity in tempos, sounds, etc. starting being introduced, the genre got more intersting for me.

Imperial Triumphant is a band that I really want to like, I think they have a great art deco style image with their masks, album art, etc. and are very unique but their music just doesn't speak to me, and I've really tried. I'd still check out a live show if I ever got the chance, that's cool that you saw them in such an intimate setting.

Josh-da-man

Pantera ruined American metal.

Mind, I was an early adopter of the band, the first kid on my block to get "Cowboys from Hell." And I thought CFH, VDOP, and FBD were breaths of fresh air at the time.

But between stuff like the rebel flags and Anselmo's bullshit macho posturing, it attracted a lot of redneck assholes into the scene. And by the mid-90s, all of the local bands who had been playing speed metal and thrash metal all started playing shitty groove metal and acting like knuckle-dragging assholes. (And, when I look them up on social media, they're still those same knuckle-dragging assholes, only somehow worse now that they're middle-aged.) It represented a real sea-change in the mood of the whole thing that it's never really recovered from.

cultshock

Agreed. I've never been a fan of the band at all, and Anselmo is an asshole. When they were popular back in the 90s, I was already deep in the underground metal scene (mostly black metal, due to me loving their influences like Bathory and Celtic Frost/Hellhammer back in the 80s) because the "mainstream" metal stuff like Pantera and Load/Reload era Metallica had zero interest to me as a metalhead. And ugh, let's not even get into Nu metal.

JeffTheAlpaca

Diary of a Madman is better than Blizzard of Ozz

morriscroy

I would agree. I picked up Diary of a Madman a year before I ever picked up Blizzard of Ozz. (Previously, I picked up Speak of the Devil as an impulse blind buy based on the record cover).

I was listening to Diary of a Madman and Speak of the Devil a lot at the time. By the time I picked up Blizzard of Ozz and Live Evil (Black Sabbath), I didn't find them as interesting.

morriscroy

My Priest perspective in those days, was somewhat "incomplete". On the turntable set to auto repeat, I only really listened to Screaming side 1, Defenders side 2, and Sin After Sin side 2. At the time, I rarely listened to the respective flip sides of these records. It was only years later that I realized the better and heavier/faster stuff were on the flip sides such as: Sinner + Starbreaker on Sin After Sin, title track + You Got Another Thing Coming on Screaming, Freewheel Burning + Sentinel on Defenders. So the perspective I had from repeatedly listening to the "wrong sides" (on auto repeat) on these Priest records, were the "lighter" less intense songs.

By the time time Turbo was released, I was already accustomed to their "lighter" stuff and not their heavier/faster stuff. For example, I thought the song "Turbo Lover" initially sounded a bit like The Hellion.

beavis69

Eh, Pantera were just another in a line of sub genres of metal that brought in the “bro” crowd. Hair metal before them, nu metal annd metalcore after them. The opinion I have about Pantera is that the Abbott brothers needed Phil way more than Phil needed them. The evidence for this is the many great bands that Phil has fronted after that and the absolute pile of shit the Abbott brothers made after. I will never understand how you can have that many really good musicians in a band and still put out what HELLYEAH did.

cdollaz

I will never understand how a group would actually name themselves “HELLYEAH”. Surely one person would have raised their hand and said “do really want this to be our band name?”