Noise Metal
210 videos • 39,942 views • by MarsHottentot http://rateyourmusic.com/lists/list_v... No fixed sub-genre, it could be anything from glam to thrash to death to black to whatever. Just a collection of abrasive, atonal metal. Not everyone's a guitar virtuoso - these metal bands use that atonality as a weapon; either they don't know any better (the best) or just want you to suffer (close second). Suggestions welcome including live video links of particularly discordant, out of tune, trippin' balls soundman, sludge fests by name acts or your local obscurity. When I was a kid in the 80's, our local thrash metal band (I've lost their name to time!) were pretty 'awful' - they had one guy who could play and everyone else just kinda thrashed along after him. I had their demo (I wish I still did) and listened to it constantly - a mix of sloppy originals and collapsing takes on Kill 'Em All era Metallica and Defenders era Judas Priest. I just fucking loved it. Yeah, they couldn't play for shit - but they were for REAL - they totally believed in what they were doing and it was it's own reward. And that's the feeling I get when I hear sloppy, noisy, pained metal - a bunch of guys who believe in it so bad, they're willing to make it happen whether they have the skills or not. IS IT NOISE METAL? A lot of metal bands play with noisy elements but once it becomes convention, it becomes harmless. Here's a checklist - in my book (surely, you'll have your own), in order to be considered Noise Metal a few criteria (but NOT all) need to be met: 1 - It has to be METAL. I've had a few suggestions of noisecore / punk bands. They're awesome, but they're not metal. The bands on the list have to have at least a few metal signifiers - metal styled riffs, vocals, imagery (Satanism, Occult, Fantasy, Sex), drum cliches, guitar solos, etc. 2 - Chaos. Is your immediate instinct to turn it down / off? Does it sound like two bands playing the same song at different speeds? Does it actually alter your state of being toward exhaustion or confusion? 3 - Casual attitude toward tuning. This is, I believe a big reason why so many 80's bands make the cut - most of these bands probably didn't use tuners and just went by ear - and probably on their own and not with other members of their band. Plus, with the advent of whammy abuse as a metal solo cliche on guitars with no locking tuners - that's a fast track to accidental atonal music. 4 - Shit production. A band that may otherwise be a fine metal group can be morphed into a terrifying noise unit simply by virtue of unbelievably inept engineering. Put a band who are already a sloppy mess of noise thuddery and bad production together and you're reaching Noise Metal Nirvana. 5 - No Actual Skill. Some bands literally have no fucking idea what they're doing but, Satan Take 'Em, they don't let that stop them from doing it anyway. 6 - The Drummer Has Shit Meter. A band that may have had a chance with someone that can keep time are almost always turned into a lurching slopadelic mess because their drummer has more highs and lows, tempo wise, than a bi-polar schizophrenic. The worst will make a band sound like a seriously warped record... live. Of course, a few groups don't really fill much of that criteria but are here because, historically they were considered noise metal 'garbage' in their day and opened the flood gates for ever more noisy metal bands. Can't you just fill the list with lo-fi black metal bands? No, and the reason being is that the lo-fi black metal aesthetic, like the blasting of grindcore and it's ilk and the feedbacky scree of sludge metal are all conventions of their sub-genre . Most of these bands are very self consciously following a set number of tropes to correctly fit within their chosen style. That's boring to me. Many of the bands on the Noise Metal list THINK that they are doing the same thing but, due to a number of mitigating factors, are so very much not. It's what separates Vomit from Voivod or Semen of Satan from Slayer. This is very interesting / sometimes amusing to me.