Jer
A window to the west, a blazing star above
Feel free to block me if you actually believe this to be true. I won’t miss the strutting and posturing of your responses.
GREATEST METAL ALBUM CUP - Winner: Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son!
- Thread starter LooseCannon
- Start date
I think I agree that Bathory beating Van Halen is an upset, but I don't think it's an unworthy one.
In Rock has never had a huge following here. I think Machine Head will fare better. Honestly this isn't about the history of metal, it's just about what you like. @Cornfed Hick I promise there's lots you'll be behind when we get into the top leagues. It's all just top flight metal. All this prelim shit fades away when we get to the top two leagues.
Jer can be a dick, but that's a different conversation. Diesel can be stuck up too.
I've been drinking scotch so I don't care too much right now.
In Rock has never had a huge following here. I think Machine Head will fare better. Honestly this isn't about the history of metal, it's just about what you like. @Cornfed Hick I promise there's lots you'll be behind when we get into the top leagues. It's all just top flight metal. All this prelim shit fades away when we get to the top two leagues.
Jer can be a dick, but that's a different conversation. Diesel can be stuck up too.
I've been drinking scotch so I don't care too much right now.
I think if you like guitar-led music to an apex, there's a lot in Van Halen for you to like. Eddie was apex. But if you want the whole package, I can easily see that paling.
I voted against Fair Warning for two reasons: 1) I prefer other Van Halen albums, 2) it beat out Apex.
Might be fair, I've only listened to it once or twice. But the hits move people's votes. At the risk of spoiling things, Machine Head will likely be up against Superunknown and that ought to be a really interesting matchup.
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
I think you might be onto something there...
Oh sure, sure, a lot of my favourite power metal bands are cheesy af. So what makes Ratt and these other 80's dudes different? I don't know, maybe..
---
Wait.
Oh no, it's the "growls are ART, akschooally" brigade!
Fuck, seriously.
Either it's Jer's constant baby-bawling about how he can't take even a smidgen of harsh vocals, even when they were put there for contrast and/or atmosphere and/or variety...
...or it's the other side trying to present it as an expressive art on the level of classical singing.
I think that the consistent, pulsating pain scrambling through my brain might come from this forum.
P. S.
Hey, Jer, Jerbo, mah man! "Rappers aren’t singing when they’re rapping." A lot of rappers do use melody and inflection even in their rapping, let alone using actual singing for hooks and such. In your own words: Look it up.
There's a door if you need it!
I don't think growls are great in most cases - they certainly aren't high art. I understand that some might prefer them, and some are good in their fashion, but in the end, no, there's a reason growls are a minority of a minority genre. They are never going to appeal to the masses.
But complaining constantly about them to the point of upsetting people also sucks.
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
+ the avatar, right? That's why I included Jerry up there, because it annoys me as well and I don't stand behind growls that much, as was apparent from my post
(on the other hand, yes, somewhere they fit and are important, and somewhere I even like them e.g. the death-doom bands etc.)
But on the other hand you get "it's hard to master" = "it's good" and "how could you objectively say something so mean" and "EVERYTHING IS 11/10" and I might actually need the door.
Guys, if you can't listen to it isolated, on its own (at least I hope you couldn't) whereas you could do that with other stuff (like normal singing, or throat singing or even rapping, or heck even spoken word), one is objectively better.
Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
I mean... actually that sounds more interesting than 99% of death metal.
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
I agree. For five minutes. But I seriously hope you couldn't manage it for the length of a whole album.
Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
Nah, probably not. And there are only a handful of actually death metal albums I can sit through all the way. I don’t think death growls are the height of artistry personally, but I really dislike how easily people dismiss them as not being artistic at all. Y’know? There’s a time and a place for them. “Blackwater Park” wouldn’t be nearly the epic that it is if Åkerfeldt (or another vocalist) was singing cleanly.
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
And there we can 100% agree. Thank you! (seriously)
P. S. - there is quite a few death metal albums - even brutal death metal albums - I can enjoy the whole way through. Same goes for (some) black metal, even deathgrind (the latter albums by... e.g. Cattle Decapitation are very unique and worth listening to at least few times, IMHO). Of course there's Opeth - one of my favourite bands ever - or Swallow the Sun - who use it from time to time. But let's be sober and realistic, is all I'm saying.
I mean if someone loves broötal death metal, I'm not telling them not to. We all love what we love. But there's a level of expectation.
Jer
A window to the west, a blazing star above
When there’s melody they’re no longer rapping, they’re singing. Thus, “rappers aren’t singing when they’re rapping”. Thanks for the condescension and all, Judas, Jujubee, Jubaby, but you weren’t telling me anything I didn’t already know and hadn’t already said.
This metric makes no sense. The full arrangement is part of the craft of making music. You probably wouldn’t listen to an isolated bassline of a full album either, is bass objectively worse than other instruments?
The problem with this growls vs no growls discussion is that you guys are trying to attach a level of objectivity to personal preference. In the end, everyone just sounds unreasonable and petty.
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
"Rapping (or rhyming, spitting,[1] emceeing,[2] or MCing[2][3]) is a musical form of vocal delivery that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and street vernacular",[4] which is performed or chanted in a variety of ways, usually over a backing beat or musical accompaniment.[4] The components of rap include "content" (what is being said), "flow" (rhythm, rhyme), and "delivery" (cadence, tone)
Stylistically, rap occupies a gray area between speech, prose, poetry, and singing.
Raps are sometimes delivered with melody. West Coast rapper Egyptian Lover was the first notable MC to deliver "sing-raps".[96] Popular rappers such as 50 Cent and Ja Rule add a slight melody to their otherwise purely percussive raps whereas some rappers such as Cee-Lo Green are able to harmonize their raps with the beat. The Midwestern group Bone Thugs-n-Harmony was one of the first groups to achieve nationwide recognition for using the fast-paced, melodic and harmonic raps that are also practiced by Do or Die, another Midwestern group. Another rapper that harmonized his rhymes was Nate Dogg, a rapper part of the group 213. Rakim experimented not only with following the beat, but also with complementing the song's melody with his own voice, making his flow sound like that of an instrument (a saxophone in particular)."
Also, if we want to be really pedantic:
"A melody (from Greek μελῳδία, melōidía, "singing, chanting"),[1] also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity. In its most literal sense, a melody is a combination of pitch and rhythm, while more figuratively, the term can include successions of other musical elements such as tonal color."
So yes, technically speaking, even "melodyless" rapping has a melody. Growling has a melody. Watermill clapping has a melody.
JudasMyGuide
Ancient Mariner
First of all, yes, bass - much as I love it - is an objectively less expressive instrument than e.g. a guitar or a violin. That's its function as a part of a rhythm section. Second of all, yes, even isolated bass track can still be called "musical" in the broadest sense of the word and is conceivable to be listened to as is, so it retains its objective musical qualities more than growls.
Isolated growls are also "musical"- almost every sound is, really - but much less so and its expressiveness nears zero.
Well, sorry, but I believe that there is an objective Truth and objective Beauty which don't care about your (or my) opinion and preference and that we are called to try to objectively discern it. Yes, I believe even aesthetics can be objectively measured and are a science of sorts (a soft, "higher" science, of the "liberal arts" sort, like economics, philosophy, theology, not an empirical one).
As for your other complaint
and I do try. I really, really do. Might not seem that way, but I honestly do my best. Sorry.
But okay, I promise I won't discuss growls here anymore. But please, could you all try as well to not fall back into this particular discussion again? Pretty pretty please?
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srfc
Ancient Mariner
and it wasn't even Pantera's big album!
If some prog geek band beats Machine Head I'm officially going to put a knife through the next football that comes into my back garden! You damn kids!