Tag Archives: Guido Rants
Friday Top 10: Most Influential Metal Bands
Remember when I posted my wacky comments on Kerrang! magazine’s Top 10 of the most influential rock bands of the last 30 years? Well, it’s time to post the metal equivalent of that Top 10, only we’re not limiting ourselves to time, so it’s the most influential bands of metal history.
Also, only metal bands can make the list. Not bands that aren’t metal themselves but influenced a wide array of metal bands, so exclude AC/DC, Deep Purple etc.
Now, make the jump to see if my list is better than Kerrang’s list.
It is.
Burning wood with metal
Heavy Metal is a music genre but metal is not only about the music itself. The artworks for albums are very popular, made it into fashion via merchandising and sometimes inspire artists to try something different to create their own interpretation of the art.
Like in the case of David Thompson, vocalist of two Death Metal bands (and in one, he also plays the guitar), who used a wood burning wand to burn Heavy Metal logos and artworks into wood.
You can see a sweet example of that above, with Slayer’s logo, and you can find some more pictures after the jump, including some words by David Thompson himself whom we reached out to recently.
Kerrang votes Most Influential Rock Bands
So first off, I need to set the record straight. I’ve never bought or read a Kerrang! magazine myself, just like I’ve never read a Metal Hammer magazine. The only metal magazines I get once in a while are Nuclear Blast’s BLAST! magazine and a couple more Merchandising magazines. I’m informing you of that because I want to make clear that my following rant is not meant to be offensive towards a magazine I’ve never even read myself.
With that being said, Kerrang! magazine are having a Top 10 — about the most influential rock groups of the last 30 years — in their next issue and, at first look, it’s incredibly bad and people on other websites are already bitching about it. But you have to take three things into consideration before you make a judgement about said list.
- The list was voted by the readers of Kerrang! magazine, therefore it’s not Kerrang’s fault if the list is garbage.
- A Top 10 list, especially about a topic like that, is pretty hard to tackle and some people are always going to disagree with some, or all, of the places.
- Commenters on Blabbermouth are bitching. So fucking what? That’s all this site is known for.
Now, make the jump to finally see the list and to read my comments about each band, that made the list.
Atheist vs. Death?
So, I just woke up and read a couple of news posts on Blabbermouth and then I saw the headline “ATHEIST Frontman: CHUCK SCHULDINER Did Not Create Technical Metal“. Now, that sounds kind of interesting, doesn’t it?
So, I read the article which features an interview with Atheist singer Kelly Shaefer and he talks pretty respectfully about Chuck Shuldiner and Death. He does include the line that Schuldiner didn’t create Technical Metal, sure, but I felt like the headline of the article was pretty misleading. Just read the most important part of the interview yourself:
“Everybody has a branch on the tree, and Chuck was definitely a thicker branch on the tree, a very important part of what we all do. We owe him a great deal of gratitude for being the pioneer that he was. I have a lot of respect for what he’s done and accomplished. But truth and matter of fact is that technical metal was not created by Chuck Schuldiner.“
So to me it seems like Blabbermouth took that last line out of context to create a headline that makes people want to read the article. Don’t get me wrong, we do that as well at times but we usually set it straight when you start reading the article.
The issue I’m having with this headline is not that it’s putting Atheist in a bad light, which it does, or that it’s trying to set up a feud between two legendary bands, which it does as well. My issue is that Blabbermouth turned Metal news into ordinary gossip and that doesn’t sit well with me.
Maybe I’m just trying too hard to be an elitist here, but I still view metal as something that can make people bond, something absolutely positive. I don’t even remember how often I got into a conversation with people because of the band shirts I’ve been wearing. There’s just something about “Hey, that dude wears a shirt of a band I like as well” that makes people bond. It’s not like everyone around you is a metalhead so it’s cool to meet new ones and I kind of think we should stick together and Blabbermouth is doing the exact opposite of that.
Blabbermouth is trying to create a feud not just between Atheist and Death but also between Atheist fans and Death fans. Personally, I view both bands as almost equally important to the scene so this is no Metallica/Megadeth situation, it’s more like a Judas Priest/Iron Maiden situation, albeit in a much smaller way.
What I’m trying to say is that especially metal sites should try to be better than Perez Hilton and not follow his example. Let’s try to unite metal fans, not divide them.
Spotlight Reloaded: Best Of
As you probably noticed, I used to post a Spotlight review article every Monday for 8 editions. You can find them all here. Now, I’ve put the Spotlight reviews to death a while ago but that doesn’t mean that we won’t write about rather unknown bands anymore. You can still contact us and we’ll listen to your stuff. I just didn’t feel like short reviews like that do the bands/albums justice, so we’re going to review them as we do with more known bands/albums from now on aswell. Just seems more fair to me.
Now, there were some pretty awesome albums part of those reviews though, so I’d like to present you the best of Spotlight. Here are the three bands that got the most favorable reviews out of me:
1. Rival Sons – Rival Sons EP
Spotlight Review — MySpace — Facebook
2. The Lost Broadcast – Antennae
Spotlight Review — MySpace — Facebook
3. Titans Eve – The Divine Equal
Spotlight Review — MySpace — Facebook
Check them out because they’re all killer. And don’t forget to get in contact with us if you’re in a band and would like us to review your work.
