Why Metal probably isn't your cup of tea.

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"Screaming at the top of your lungs is for singers with blonde hair. You need to scream from the bowels of your lungs. The bowels". - Strong Bad

A. Um, no, it is not. Most metal has at least some actual singing in it. Try singing this:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E50QazmwP7M[/youtube]
Second, screaming actually does take talent in order to do it correctly. Most screamers in metal are at least proficient singers, and techniques used in Opera are used to scream
B. That's called an opinion, I find it more musically interesting than any other form of music. Metal does have melody in it, it has some of the most complex melodies in Rock. Only stuff like Grindcore are supposed to sound like just noise.

It sounds like your limit of knowledge of metal is listening to like Brutal Death Metal or something like that.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SLWJbn3k94[/youtube]

Carcass is a grindcore/brutal death metal band. One of the founders of the genre. Here is an example of a song of theirs that is clearly melodic and more than "just noise".

I love me some metal. These are some the bands I've seen live.

Iron Maiden
Lauren Harris
Judas Priest
KISS
New England
System Of A Down
Gogol Bordello
Rush
Blue Oyster Cult
Black Oak Arkansas
Blackfoot
Plasmatics
Shinedown
Three Doors Down
Staind
P.O.D.
Def Leppard

Last edited by redrobin62 on 22 Apr 2013, 5:18 pm, edited 2 times in total.

That used to be my opinion of metal until my friend who is a metalhead sat down with me and played me some of the music she likes.

I guess that must be why it's constantly stereotyped all the time. Look at various power metal bands like Blind Guardian, Rhapsody of Fire, Helloween and Stratovarius, they use the soaring and operatic vocals. Likewise Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth, he mixes death growls with clear singing and is regarded as one of the best frontmen in metal.

"Screaming vocals" are only commonplace in black metal, albeit in a raspy and reptilian scream.

I did not read the article. Music is subjective, which is partly why there are so many genres. But there are no fixed definitions of genre, and bands can span genres, change styles, invent new ones, even in a single album. Unfortunately, Nickelback, Korn, and Muse are all under the same genre blanket. One definition of music (Roederer's) is that music is: "A blend of regular ordered patterns alternated with surprise and uncertainty common to all sensorial input judged as aesthetic".
That sounds subjective to me. Also, some therapies include screaming, and people produce screamo, so it must have a market and an audience. Metal has had a bad rap (not including Faith No More), and other genres have been lumped in with it. If you were an old school trance fan, would you think someone was generalising if the described your music as disco? Personally, I like almost all genre, from most countries. With the exception of jazz. Atonal and arrhythmic non-patterns designed to be aesthetically displeasing, jazz is not music, despite causing pleasure in some people.

On the subject of metal, I enjoy most of it, and even some parts with screaming, as it can be used to express emotion. 'Metal screams' also show a massive amount of vocal range - listen to Rob Halford's and Bruce Dickinson's earlier vocals. Most metal bands also have less heavy songs. The people who can say that they dislike an entire genre, without extended exposure to it, cannot say it with any authority.

Since the early days of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, metal has grown into one of the most diverse and technically complex of all musical genres, and to label it as just screaming is a very lazy point of view. I'm not so keen on the likes of death metal, which I think sounds more like punk rock through a metal pedal, but that's just my opinion. The metal I listen to, I would definitely label as 'tuneful', otherwise I wouldn't bother with it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI7XiJgt0vY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViM34tafM44[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaBPiALh82g[/youtube]

It may be due to my age that I dont like metal I am going on 57 and never have liked metal, even it was IT in music. I am into 70's music, particularly Dylan, but metal, to me, just sounds like a bicycle chain in a cuisinart

Then why come on here and say "I don't like it" then? It's survived disco, new wave, grunge, nu-metal and will endure for years to come. I merely posted that link to show how passionate people feel about it.

well, wasnt the initial question "why metal isnt your cup of tea".. I responded to the question.

That was the name of the blog entry, not my own words.

Chill out, people can post something like 'I don't like metal' on a thread about metal.

And there are some good and a lot of incredibly awful "screamo" bands as well. Whether all hardcore or punk with screamed vocals is inferior to metal is again a matter of personal taste.

I like some metal. I'm just picky about it. I tend to gravitate towards metal with psychedelic rock influence, "stoner", "sludge", and "post-metal". I can't really get into Scandinavian black metal. It has no groove, just pounding machine-gun drums and repetitive walls of reverbing guitars. It sounds pretty extreme and emotionally overwhelming at first but gets tiresome to me after more than a few minutes.

I have absolutely no idea what "screamo" music is, but I have hears a lot of bands that sound like nothing but screaming to me. Cant recall names of any though.

Could it just be aspie stuff that makes me not like it? Because some music that people here describe as metal, such as metallica, Blue Oyster Cult, maybe a couple others, I can deal with.

It isnt sudden loud sounds that upset me. It is just certain types of sounds that make me want to jab a pencil in my eyeball