The Greatest Metal Song Cup - Part II, Round 4, Matches 82-87

[Shmoolikipod]

Not a fan of Nightrain. Last Call was good, but Poison were most to my taste.

Wash It All Away is paint by the numbers edgy metal, The Real Thing at least has more substance even if it's not Really my Thing.

Helmet was okay, Life of Agony I've come back to a couple of times since the GMAC.

Gamma Ray obviously. I know it's not the most popular song from LOTF, yet it became my favourite. I dig this riff so much, and I love the alternative chorus. Gotta give it to Templars of Steel for being very enjoyable.

Evergrey aren't bad but they aren't Opeth either. The Drapery Falls is overhyped though.

In the End is great, Eat you Alive was actually surprisingly good too.

 

[Confeos]

There's just not enough quality in either of the other songs to even make me consider not voting for "Nightrain" - it's a timeless classic and one of G'n'R's very best songs. "Last Call" is definitely better than the other Ratt song, but I don't find it that memorable, while the Poison track pretty much sums up why very few glam metal bands appeal to me. Guns n' Roses.

"The Real Thing" might be the real thing, but it is not really MY thing, but "Wash It All Away" is horribly mediocre and obviously the inferior song here, so I guess I'm voting for Faith No More.

I'm not a fan of either of these songs, though I suppose "In the Meantime" grooved just marginally better than Life of Agony. Reluctant vote for Helmet.

The next match is also a tough choice, but this time for all the right reasons: I really like both tunes. If you compare the respective albums, Land of the Free is definitely stronger than its counterpart, but while "Templars of Steel" is one of the best tracks on Renegade, I could name a bunch of others I prefer to "Gods of Deliverance" (and at least one of those is still in the game). For that reason, I'm voting for Hammerfall here.

I still have a hard time getting into Opeth, but I can't deny that "The Drapery Falls" had some cool parts. Overall, I'm still not quite sold. I really want to love it, but sorry, once the chorus hit in "A Touch of Blessing", I just knew Evergrey would get my vote. It's not an amazing song by any means, but it managed to entertain me much more than Opeth's song in less than half the time. Evergrey - not that it makes a big difference anyway.

In the end, I'm not going to waste a single second listening to Limp Bizkit, so Linkin Park wins by default.

 

[Diesel 11]

"Nightrain" is a song I thought was massively overrated years ago, but damn if it doesn't kick some serious ass. I love the riff, I love the chorus, I love the outro where the chorus meets Slash's amazing guitar playing, it's just a banger of a tune. Then there's Ratt's "Last Call", which is nowhere near as good as "Lay It Down" from last round. I dunno, nothing about this song really does anything for me. There's a more Load-era Metallica sound than the Ratt I'm used to present in the corner, and Stephen Pearcy kinda just sounds like an older, sleezier Perry Farrell from Jane's Addiction. Nothing special. And then there's Poison! I really loved "Talk Dirty to Me" back when I listened to Hair Nation on SiriusXM, and nowadays I appreciate the song in a different fashion. It feels like a modernized '50s rock'n'roll dance song, especially with the drums and that cool guitar solo, and while there's an amateurish feel about the affair, it's incredibly fun, and I really love the melody switch in the line "lock the cellar door". The band gets a lot of slack but man some of their songs are awesome. I'll throw it a vote since it's losing anyway; "Nightrain" is the better song, but Poison deserves a little more respect than they get. They're like the Limp Bizkit of hair bands to Motley Crue's Korn, only this Limp Bizkit is actually good. (Foreshadowing, bitches.)

"Wash It All Away" is a better FFDP song than "The Wrong Side of the Heimlich Maneuver" and has a solid riff. Still don't wanna hear it again though. Faith No More really impressed me with this epic track; Patton's whiny voice is a bit ridiculous and the rapping is a bit weird but there's a lot to love about this song. Really cool.

Sorry to Mick Jagger but I think they were rolling stoned when they compiled that metal songs list. I have barely heard of these artists and I think I have a decently well-rounded knowledge of metal. Life of Agony was interesting but Mina's voice is not my thing. She sounds like she's trying to summon darkness while aiming too high and a lot of this song felt like Alice in Chains going nowhere. Helmet was a little better, kinda reminds me of early Tool but with punk vocals. Aimless round, this.

Both Gamma Ray and HammerFall seem to have the same strengths and weaknesses here. The strengths - cool intros, great riffs. The weaknesses - the verses and choruses just do nothing for me. HammerFall had a more interesting build and the singer was better, but Gamma Ray have a really cool bridge (while Kai Hansen sounds like Udo Dirkschneider and Dave Mustaine being combined in a science experiment). Ultimately I must side with the Germans over the Swedes here, but it was an interesting matchup overall.

I was fully expecting to vote Opeth going into this round. "The Drapery Falls" is awesome, a track where I think Michael uses his clean vocals incredibly well, utilizing harshness only to further build the tapestry. The chorus, the way the intro comes back at the end, almost everything about this song slays. Very autumnal in nature, too. But I gotta give this one to Evergrey for really impressing me. I've been intrigued by this band since the GMAC but haven't heard much of anything from them. This track had some awesome guitarwork, great vocals, and a killer chorus. Very well layered and something that will no doubt help kick me into properly checking them out.

I love "In the End" a lot. It's a song about failed relationships, and I think the great thing about it is the way that it means a little something different for every listener. For some, it's being lost in a romance gone wrong; for my partner, it's his abusive father; for me, it's my struggle with my religious upbringing. And since 2017 it's hit home even harder as a memorable to Chester Bennington. And I just love how simple Mike Shinoda's rapped verses are in juxtaposition to Chester's passionate chorus. It's fantastic. What the hell is Limp Bizkit even doing here? This song is a clusterfuck. As a whole it's not totally without merit, there's a couple vocal melodies that remind of, wait for it, The Beatles; but as a whole it's a trainwreck, completely and utterly and extatically unaware of just how bad it is. And for the love of god, the lyrics are just about the worst we've had in this game yet. My fucking Jesus. My fucking Christ. Motherfucker just touch some fucking grass, PLEASE. Anyone voting for Limp Bizkit over Linkin Park should be placed on the FBI's watch list. Holy shit. At least Poison had some fucking decorum.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

Sorry to Mick Jagger but I think they were rolling stoned when they compiled that metal songs list. I have barely heard of these artists and I think I have a decently well-rounded knowledge of metal.

I'm quite certain the list is by the magazine, not the band.


Also

Anyone voting for Limp Bizkit over Linkin Park should be placed on the FBI's watch list.

Don't worry, I probably am anyway.

"The British government’s anti-terrorism Prevent unit has published a report that claims reading authors such as Tolkien, Lewis, Huxley, and Orwell could lead to “right-wing extremism.”

The “Prevent duty,” instituted by the UK in 2011, is part of an overall counter-terrorism strategy, called “Contest.” It aims to reduce terrorist threats through preventative measures. This includes “preventing people from being drawn into terrorism,” as the report states.

According to the report, published in February 2023, reading the works of Christian writers, such as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, could lead to “radicalization.” The government’s blacklist includes—in an instance not lacking irony— George Orwell’s 1984 and even a BBC documentary series following former Conservative minister, Michael Portillo, on train journeys across the country. Additionally, according to the report, key signs that people have an affinity for the “far-right and Brexit,”—apparently associating Brexit with right-wing extremism—include watching the TV series, Civilization and The Thick of It, and reading classics of political philosophy, such as Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government, and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France. The works of Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith are also on the list."

(all bangers)

 

[Diesel 11]

Anyone voting for Limp Bizkit over Linkin Park should be placed on the FBI's watch list.

Don't worry, I probably am anyway.

 

[Night Prowler]

Anyone voting for Limp Bizkit over Linkin Park should be placed on the FBI's watch list. Holy shit. At least Poison had some fucking decorum.

 

[Saapanael]

The Evergrey song isn't bad at all, and Spotify played another Evergrey song for me which was even better. I was tempted to vote for Evergrey over Opeth but decided not to. The guitar melodies (and the music overall) remind me a bit of Dream Theater.

Fun fact: when I first started using Youtube, Linkin Park's In the End was the most viewed music video on the platform with some 34 million views. It's not a bad song at all and the hate against "all things nu metal" on the forum is unjustified. It's a repetitive, often uninspired genre but look at power metal, you wankers. The Limp Bizkit song is really weird, though, it doesn't flow well and even if it's alright instrumentally, the vocals are just bad. The music video is irritatingly bad too. What's the story? It was annoying to watch and the singer seems like a giant douchebag.

 

[KidInTheDark666]

I was always a big Limp Bizkit fan and Eat You Alive is a personal favorite of mine, but shit, even Turmion Kätilöt would've destroyed them here.

 

[Jer]

What's the story? It was annoying to watch and the singer seems like a giant douchebag.

That's pretty much the story. But at the time, it seemed like a great way for a lot of kids to annoy their parents!

 

[JudasMyGuide]

I was always a big Limp Bizkit fan and Eat You Alive is a personal favorite of mine, but shit, even Turmion Kätilöt would've destroyed them here.

I honestly don't mind nu metal as such ... at least there is a lot of exceptions I've already talked about (Deftones, SOAD, Sepultura, Soulfly...), but I especially hate it when it sounds... wimpy. Whiny. Weak. You know, the music that makes you want to bully the performers, even though you usually don't have a sadistic bone in your body.

And most of all I can't stand fucking Linkin Park, I thought that we've already outgrown that phase as a society, as humanity, but ever since Bennington topped himself, they started to be perceived as this "serious band" all of a sudden and everybody loves them and heaps praise on them, as if somehow all that shite suddenly didn't suck, despite all our ears... and I think I would vote against them for pretty much anything. You know, church burners, molesters (*cough *cough, Manowar, Rammstein), Tokio Hotel or crabcore. Anything just to piss off Linkin Fans.

Another nu metal band? So what? I'm not an American, I was never overexposed to the subgenre that much, I thought Durst doing Behind Blue Eyes, crippling it in the process, was colossally stupid, but I have no reason to hate them so much that I wouldn't vote for them. Over Linkin Park, you know.

 

[LooseCannon]

I hate voting for Guns N' Roses. I really do. But I think Nightrain is one of their best ever, and the other offerings are decent for Ratt, and laughable for Poison.

Five Finger Death Punch stinks out loud. I'd rather listen to 10000 songs with super Christian lyrics than redpilled nonsense like this, and everything else sucks worse than the lyrics. Faith No More.

Life of Agony was pretty interesting, and I've always found Helmet to be annoying.

This is a HammerFall song. All HammerFall songs are HammerFall. While I generally like their schtick, there's no doubting that Gamma Ray was the superior song and act.

Opeth is a band I've never really gotten into, but I have a suspicion that it might be time for me to take the plunge. A lot of my tastes have been arcing in that direction and I enjoyed this track. Certainly moreso than the Evergrey track, although it wasn't bad.

Linkin Park is the best nu-metal band for my money, certainly the most interesting. I have some nostalgia for Limp Bizkit, but not for this terrible track.

 

[srfc]

Guns N' Roses - Nightrain vs. Ratt - Last Call vs. Poison - Talk Dirty to Me
Talk Dirty to Me is pretty bad, but I enjoyed the Ratt track, pretty good, bar the Hot for Teacher style breakdown part which wasn't great but I would have turned a blind eye to it except for it coming back in after the track was effectively over. As enjoyable as it was, it's not in the league of Nightrain

Five Finger Death Punch - Wash It All Away vs. Faith No More - The Real Thing
Five Finger Death Punch was ok up until he started singing, I enjoyed the riff it reminded me of Snakes of Christ, but the singing was too nu-metal. The producer started getting too involved around the chorus too with loads of studio magic and the industrial style drum beat was surely at his prompting. The Real Thing is the best track on that album, and one of the best of their career The Real Thing

Life of Agony - This Time vs. Helmet - In the Meantime
A band who practiced up the road from me used to cover This Time when I was a kid, but I don't have any other recollection of it. Both these tracks are in the same ball park, but the Helmet one sounds better produced. Not mad about either, from a time when metal bands started becoming ashamed of being metal. In the Meantime

Gamma Ray - Gods of Deliverance vs. Hammerfall - Templars of Steel
Gamma Ray's track is pretty good, and I've said it before that they've a bit more about them than I expected, so if the game achieves anything, it's that. I like the first Hammerfall record and a selection of tracks from the next 2 or 3 albums, but like most of this genre there's no variety and when you've heard one track you've heard them all, Templars of Steel is one of the ones I like though. Templars of Steel

Opeth - The Drapery Falls vs. Evergrey - A Touch of Blessing
Opeth's track is pretty good except for the sections where a frog showed up. I've found these to be really frustrating after being exposed to them in this and the GMAC as their songs I've heard are almost like something I would really love and then just have a complete deal breaker section.

Linkin Park - In the End vs. Limp Bizkit - Eat You Alive

Poll closing so I never got to listen to the last 3 tracks

 

[Jer]

Well, at least "Last Call" was in a two-way split decision for second place using Joe Lieberman math!

Spoiler: Context

https://twitter.com/x/status/1221780863245070336

 

[MrKnickerbocker]

The amount of harsh vocal hatred around here is really wild. I admit to disliking a good majority of extreme vocals, but it's crazy to me that so many folks refuse to accept any music with any extreme vocals whatsoever (even when they are done perfectly, as in Opeth). Having no actual way to calculate, I would say 50% (or more) of all metal music features extreme vocals in some way.

It's nice to see some people looking beyond those sections to the music. Opeth was my gateway drug into harsh vocals. We'll get you one day...

 

[Diesel 11]

The amount of harsh vocal hatred around here is really wild. I admit to disliking a good majority of extreme vocals, but it's crazy to me that so many folks refuse to accept any music with any extreme vocals whatsoever (even when they are done perfectly, as in Opeth). Having no actual way to calculate, I would say 50% (or more) of all metal music features extreme vocals in some way.

It's nice to see some people looking beyond those sections to the music. Opeth was my gateway drug into harsh vocals. We'll get you one day...

Yeah, agreed. Sometimes clean vocals just don’t pack the same punch that harsh ones do. Sometimes you need to be sucker-punched across the room, and whispers won’t do that.

but I especially hate it when it sounds... wimpy. Whiny. Weak. You know, the music that makes you want to bully the performers, even though you usually don't have a sadistic bone in your body.

And most of all I can't stand fucking Linkin Park, I thought that we've already outgrown that phase as a society, as humanity, but ever since Bennington topped himself, they started to be perceived as this "serious band" all of a sudden and everybody loves them and heaps praise on them, as if somehow all that shite suddenly didn't suck, despite all our ears... and I think I would vote against them for pretty much anything.

A lot of Linkin Park songs are about vulnerability. Their biggest songs are all about addressing internal and external struggles, and certainly while I was growing up a lot of kids could relate to that. It’s not weak, it’s powerful. You’re embracing the fact that you can’t keep shoving down your issues. As to your comment about ‘bullying the performers’, all that would do is reinforce the societal standards to shut up and accept your cards instead of picking them out yourself.

And I think it’s only become more powerful since Chester’s passing because he lost to his demons. It highlights this vulnerability even more. A lot of broken people turn to music to help them through rough patches, and for them Linkin Park was a lifesaver. To see that even the singer couldn’t escape it is a very powerful message that there’s even more that needs to be addressed.

I’m not a big Linkin Park fan, my liking them only extends to the radio hits really, but I have a lot of respect for them as musicians and I think the messages their music leaves are so much more powerful than DAMN YOURE SO HOT I WANNA FUCK YOU.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

The amount of harsh vocal hatred around here is really wild. I admit to disliking a good majority of extreme vocals, but it's crazy to me that so many folks refuse to accept any music with any extreme vocals whatsoever (even when they are done perfectly, as in Opeth). Having no actual way to calculate, I would say 50% (or more) of all metal music features extreme vocals in some way.

It's nice to see some people looking beyond those sections to the music. Opeth was my gateway drug into harsh vocals. We'll get you one day...

Yep, for better or worse, it's merely an extended technique, using vocals as a percussive instrument. Not more, not less. I'm therefore suprised at how much are some people unable to get past that, despite my own experience with people telling me that you'll get used to pretty much anything you want to. Hence, my suspicion of obstinacy on these people's behalf.

I also didn't like harsh vocals at all and I avoided music that had those - but I remember reading about and trying out Death's Symbolic, with someone saying - just concentrate on the guitars ignore the vocals for now. I fell in love with the song Empty Words and loved the song although I found the vocals really unpleasant for the longest time.
And besides that, it was indeed Opeth for me as well - in particular this exact song that made me accept the dichotomy of beauty and ugliness, the hope and the despair, the light and the dark. The context. The juxtaposition.

And mind you, I was mostly listening to opera then, so you probably don't get more boomer than that.

Now, these complaints feel to me like "hey, why don't we have this metal album only with acoustic guitars" - which are surely more beautiful than the electric ones - or "without drums" or something like that.

 

[DJ James]

Infestation is definitely one of their best overall albums, and totally worth checking out — but “Last Call” is the cream of the crop from that one. It’s a very pure distillation of everything Ratt was about, for all the reasons you mentioned, and for the delicious amount of sleaze in Pearcy’s delivery.

Tough draw against GNR, who folks around here really seem to love for some reason, but a guy can hope…

Glad to see another Infestation enjoyer, quite underrated! The guitar tone on that album is awesome. Ratt in general, especially those first two albums, I just love. They hit a very specific sweet spot of glam, hard rock/heavy metal and a sort of pop rock or AOR that just checks so many boxes in what I want to hear from a rock/metal band. Out of the Cellar rules

 

[JudasMyGuide]

A lot of Linkin Park songs are about vulnerability. Their biggest songs are all about addressing internal and external struggles, and certainly while I was growing up a lot of kids could relate to that. It’s not weak, it’s powerful. You’re embracing the fact that you can’t keep shoving down your issues. As to your comment about ‘bullying the performers’, all that would do is reinforce the societal standards to shut up and accept your cards instead of picking them out yourself.

And I think it’s only become more powerful since Chester’s passing because he lost to his demons. It highlights this vulnerability even more. A lot of broken people turn to music to help them through rough patches, and for them Linkin Park was a lifesaver. To see that even the singer couldn’t escape it is a very powerful message that there’s even more that needs to be addressed.

I’m not a big Linkin Park fan, my liking them only extends to the radio hits really, but I have a lot of respect for them as musicians and I think the messages their music leaves are so much more powerful than DAMN YOURE SO HOT I WANNA FUCK YOU.

I think you're taking me more literally than that was intended - I'm not against sensitive issues or sentimentality or weakness - I find that really powerful and it's been used to great effect by many a singer-songwriter, for example. Heck, one of my personal favourite albums by Maiden is The X Factor - an album that's full of that.

I was talking more about the sound. The whining, weak, annoying buzz. It's like... a mosquito. Like the whiny kid that starts the fight but then plays the victim. Dunno, something like that.
Again, don't take me all that literally.

Also

all that would do is reinforce the societal standards to shut up and accept your cards instead of picking them out yourself.

after how many decades of "fuck society, fuck authority, I'll do what I want" and glorifying that mindset, I'm not entirely against having some more of that other point of view, too. Society is important and its self-policing is also important, as an anthropological constant.

But that's beyond the scope of this thread, anyway, thanks for the answer, please don't be too offended, I just hate this particular band.

 

[DJ James]

I’m not a big Linkin Park fan, my liking them only extends to the radio hits really, but I have a lot of respect for them as musicians and I think the messages their music leaves are so much more powerful than DAMN YOURE SO HOT I WANNA FUCK YOU.

I don’t know what that’s in reference too but from the little amount of Linkin Park I have unfortunately been exposed to, their lyrics aren’t exactly high brow.

 

[srfc]

The amount of harsh vocal hatred around here is really wild. I admit to disliking a good majority of extreme vocals, but it's crazy to me that so many folks refuse to accept any music with any extreme vocals whatsoever (even when they are done perfectly, as in Opeth). Having no actual way to calculate, I would say 50% (or more) of all metal music features extreme vocals in some way.

It's nice to see some people looking beyond those sections to the music. Opeth was my gateway drug into harsh vocals. We'll get you one day...

Some of us are just old. When I was getting into metal it was absolutely not a feature of anything other than Death Metal, which was a completely niche genre. And I can kind of accept it in Death Metal as it's an extreme sound for extreme music, much like I can enjoy Mille Petrozza or Max Cavelera when they are singing with bands towards the extreme ends of my tastes. It's when an extreme element creeps into a non extreme area that I can't enjoy it, as ultimately I associate it with a niche novelty genre.