The Death of Hard Rock

Onhell

Onhell

Infinite Dreamer
I've been listening to Pandora.com lately, for those of you unfortunate enough to not know what it is, go there now and create a free account.

Anyway, it gives you information on the artists you are listening to most of the time and lately I created a list of Hard Rock bands like Deep Purple, Blue Oyster and Thin Lizzy. The thing is in reading blurbs about them (and not just on Pandora actually) These bands along with AC/DC and Led Zepplin are continuosly called "Heavy Metal". Why does this bother me? After all we have had enough discussions on this board on the subject of classification and how dumb it is, but I only think it is ridiculous when it gets a little to extreme (Viking/folk/symphonic/power/death metal!!!!) What bothers me is that all of these groups have self-identified as Hard Rock. Out of them all only Black Sabbath has embraced the "Heavy Metal" label, but Zepplin, Oyster and AC/DC have insisted on being "Hard Rock' and I for one am glad, because all of a sudden everything that is "heavy" is 'metal?" I don't think so. That they had their influence on the NWOBHM and Metal in general there is no doubt, but fuck, so did punk and nobody is calling early punk bands "metal." Are music critics and historians that ignorant now-a-days? Anyway end of my pointless rant.
 
A side note to this could be the fact that Steve Harris and Bruce Dickinson don't seem to agree on what kind of band Maiden actually are. I recall that 'Arry has said sometimes that he never really thought about Maiden as anything except "a rock band", this indicates he doesn't really care much for all the subdivisions of the rock genre. Sex Pistols? Rock. AC/DC? Rock. Metallica? Rock. Just different styles, but still rock. Bruce, on the other hand, is usually keen to thank the faithful followers of metal when he addresses the public during his rants. Take for instance the rant before Phantom of the Opera at Ullevi (ending with the famous words "If you don't like heavy metal, I advise you to go away before you have a heart attack and die" (aimed at the TV viewers. I was one of those and really enjoyed the concert). So it seems Bruce cares more for the different subdivisions of rock music than Steve does.

Calling AC/DC heavy metal when they always say themselves that they are straight rock'n'roll, nothing more, nothing less, is a bit strange. And those who label them Heavy Metal should go listen to High Voltage (the album). It's closer to blues than heavy metal (but still, very enjoyable).
 
Interesting topic, but

I hope that the continuous posting of such metal related topics on the general forum is not part of a possible ignorance or even disappearance of the metal forum section.
 
We've given Onhell the power to decide whether or not Metalfans lives or dies.

He has clearly chosen.
 
*sigh* and soon it will end up in the madness forum. It really is about HARD ROCK, that is why I placed it here... but whatever.
 
Sure, the subject is not related to metal at all.

:uhm:

Sorry if I made a point of it, but your topic is not the first, that's why I said something about it. I have another reason as well, did anyone read RW's topic? I'm curious what other people's opinions are.

Maybe the metalforums should be changed into "Other bands/music" forum, to prevent these situations(?)
 
Foro said:
Maybe the metalforums should be changed into "Other bands/music" forum, to prevent these situations(?)
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No.  Metalfans.co.uk is specifically for heavy metal.  We can have lots of discussions on it, but in reality, there's a grey line.  So far, people have been conservative when posting in the Metalfans forum - and that's okay.  Major threads about metal bands in general are there.

"General Discussion" is a catch all, and it's okay to post things here.  All three mods have seen this by now, or at least me and Perun.  And it's been let be.  If the objective for Metalfans forum changes, it'll come from the top, and we'll enforce as needed.

Till then, we'll leave hard rock discussion threads here, and move serious indepth discussions about affirmed metal bands (Sabs, Priest, IE) to Metalfans, as we have always done.
 
LooseCannon said:
All three mods have seen this by now, or at least me and Perun.
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And now the third has seen it...

Forostar's point is worth discussing. I don't agree with him (I'll explain why in a moment), but I think it was right of him to at least bring it up.

The Metalfans forums, so far, have usually been about threads devoted to individual bands. And I would agree that other topics specifically about metal ought to go there - like the good one a few years ago about American vs. European metal.

However, this forum has developed a separate tradition where non-Maiden but music-related threads go in GD. And since this is about bands that get labelled as metal but aren't, GD is the right place.

However, Forostar's idea has some merit. There have been GD threads in the past that were about metal, either the music or the culture. It could be argued that those belong in the Metalfans forums. We're not going to move any old threads now, but the next time such a thread comes up it should probably be moved there. (Pending the agreement of the other two mods on this idea.)

And now, back on topic...

I've always had a reasonably clear demarcation in my mind about hard rock vs. heavy metal. But I've also found that most non-metalheads do tend to label anything hard or heavy as "metal". To me, the following are all hard rock: Van Halen, Scorpions, AC/DC, Motley Crue and Deep Purple. But I say that because I know about bands like Helloween, Opeth, Megadeth, Iron Maiden and Voivod - all of which are considerably heavier than the first five I mentioned.

In other words, being a fan of hard rock and heavy metal, I'm more sensitive to degrees of heaviness and other subtleties which escape other people. It's usually because of a lack of exposure for those other people. I work with a woman who loves hard rock (especially Van Halen), and thinks that it's heavy metal. I played her some Dark Tranquility once and she nearly shit her pants - she had no clue that anything heavier than Metallica even existed.

So the mislabeling is annoying, but until the rest of the world learns about metal the way we have, it's not likely to change.

And Led Zeppelin? I don't even call them hard rock. To me, Zep is just rock. That's because their output is too diverse stylistically to describe with a single label, unless that label is very generalized like 'rock'. There are a few other bands in the same situation. Queen and Frank Zappa come to mind as good examples... and even Zappa is too diverse for 'rock' to suffice. In my mp3 library, the 'genre' for all Zappa songs is just labeled 'Zappa', because that's easier to type than rock/jazz/reggae/pop/blues/comedy.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
she had no clue that anything heavier than Metallica even existed.
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Ah, the good old days.  When I was young and getting into metal through hard rock, I used to think Metallica was the ultimate in heaviness and listening to them made you instantly cool.  And this was based on my listening of Metallica's Load.

On topic: for me, also, the distinction between metal and hard rock is very clear.  What's more, I'd have to disagree with Onhell's comment that further classifying metal into thrash/power/death/whatever is extreme.  Metal is a wide genre, and personally, if I labeled all metal as simly "metal" instead of "thrash metal", "power metal", etc. then 90% of my music library would be under one label.  Not very practical, I think.  Of course there's a line, though; "extreme power metal", "blackened death metal", "melodic progressive death metal" (I think I saw this "genre" in Wikipedia actually!) are going a bit too far.

What about Motörhead, by the way?  I personally would call them heavy metal and not hard rock, though they insist on calling themselves rock 'n roll.  I can't really agree with the argument that a band itself decides what genre they are; Maiden could call themselves death metal, but that doesn't mean that they are.
 
The funny thing about NWOBHM is that it was a term given to seemingly any band with long hair hailing from the UK (predominately England), but the diversity amongst that genre alone was pretty amazing. Venom and Persian Risk, Maiden and Spider - they all got lumped together as NWOBHM even if their music may not have been, well, metal.

But I'm sort of certain (but not 100%) that phrase heavy metal was given to these bands after some journalist likened listening to Led Zeppelin[sup]1[/sup] to falling heavy metal. So it is no real surprise that these bands are given such a tag - and it may well be more down to the image of the band rather than the music alone. For example, a look at the members of AC/DC is not too dissimilar to almost any other metal band (Angus aside).

[sup]1[/sup]This could have been Iron Butterfly, but I could never be too sure.
 
Later I'll go on-topic but first, thanks for the reactions, which make it more clear to me! I appreciate that. Just a few more things.

SinisterMinisterX said:
However, this forum has developed a separate tradition where non-Maiden but music-related threads go in GD.
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Even though I am not newbie, I have not really been aware of that development. To me it seemed more like a sudden revolution of the last 1 or 2 years. Especially when the topic involved metal bands, or when it was related to the genre.

SinisterMinisterX said:
However, Forostar's idea has some merit. There have been GD threads in the past that were about metal, either the music or the culture. It could be argued that those belong in the Metalfans forums. We're not going to move any old threads now, but the next time such a thread comes up it should probably be moved there. (Pending the agreement of the other two mods on this idea.)
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Understood. Thanks for your interest. :ok:
 
Invader said:
Ah, the good old days.  When I was young and getting into metal through hard rock, I used to think Metallica was the ultimate in heaviness and listening to them made you instantly cool.  And this was based on my listening of Metallica's Load.

On topic: for me, also, the distinction between metal and hard rock is very clear.  What's more, I'd have to disagree with Onhell's comment that further classifying metal into thrash/power/death/whatever is extreme.  Metal is a wide genre, and personally, if I labeled all metal as simly "metal" instead of "thrash metal", "power metal", etc. then 90% of my music library would be under one label.  Not very practical, I think.  Of course there's a line, though; "extreme power metal", "blackened death metal", "melodic progressive death metal" (I think I saw this "genre" in Wikipedia actually!) are going a bit too far.
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you do not disagree with me at all, you are saying the exact same thing. Maybe I wasn't clear. "Thrash metal" ok, "Speed Metal" ok, "Melodic Death metal" mmmmmmmmmk. "Viking-seafaring-gothic-skullsmashing-melodeath-power-symphonic-black-*take a breath*-metal?" extreme. (Notice I used hyphens (-) rather than backslashes (/) to avoid confusion this time 'round...

As for SMX's enlightening post: I never thought of Van Halen or the Scorpions (Yet definitely Poison...) as "Hard Rock, though lately that's the hunch I was getting. They just seemed on the lighter spectrum of Metal, rather than right at home in Hard Rock. Makes a lot of sense now though.
 
SinisterMinisterX said:
We're not going to move any old threads now, but the next time such a thread comes up it should probably be moved there. (Pending the agreement of the other two mods on this idea.)
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I don't have a problem with moving them to Metalfans, but I don't have a problem with them staying here either. It's no big deal for me, but if other members would rather have those threads moved, I'm at their service.
 
Best thing to label a band is to see how the band labels itself. Mostly an official site or a myspace site helps.

One of the most rediculous terms I've heard is "melodic metal".
 
Forostar said:
One of the most rediculous terms I've heard is "melodic metal".
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Forostar said:
Got my ticket for this great package (I'll post the dates soon). I already had a peak on the setlist and it surely looks interesting! I mean, these are two of the biggest metal bands of Germany (in the speed/melodic/power/whatever genre), who wants to miss that???
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Pot and kettle, eh Foro? :P  Sorry, I remembered that post and couldn't resist.

But I agree, the term doesn't really make any sense.  If it was an actual genre, we'd have to group everything from Maiden to Helloween to Dark Tranquillity under it.
 
Lol you got me there (your memory is too good!).... I guess I wanted to be popular or something...  :D
 
Invader said:
Pot and kettle, eh Foro? :P  Sorry, I remembered that post and couldn't resist.

But I agree, the term doesn't really make any sense.  If it was an actual genre, we'd have to group everything from Maiden to Helloween to Dark Tranquillity under it.
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And we do... Melodic Metal can be interchangeable with Power Metal. Melodeath (In Flames, Dark Tranquility), after all is power metal sung with growling vocals (in a nut shell, Blackie can and has broken it down further). It is very easy to distinguish from say, bands like Priest, Maiden and even Grave Digger who are universally labeled as simple Heavy Metal. IMO anyway :)
 
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