Is extreme metal boring now?

16 Feb 2017, 09:22

I've seen this opinion expressed numerous times throughout my time listening to metal. And I think it makes for a rather interesting discussion. Do YOU think extreme metal is boring? Is all of it boring? Is just the new stuff boring? What makes it boring?

I have been back and forth on this topic. I don't find all extreme metal to be boring. Is some of it? Yes. What genre of music doesn't have boring bands though? That being said there are bands out there that make me change my mind all of the time. I understand the genre is diluted with bands that copy one another, and play the same riffs over and over, don't get me wrong, I understand that. That being said there's bands out there making fresh music, too, doing their own thing. I find that fun and interesting.

All of that being said I think a large majority of death metal being released right now is awful, again my opinion. Granted, I'm not one for the brutal death metal so many bands seem to release, or the overly technical death metal so many bands are releasing. Those two things are not my cup of tea, at all. I like my death metal fast, loud, gritty, and normally somewhat thrashy. And yeah, there are a lot of bands out there making that type of death metal now, but just like with the whole heavy metal, and the thrash revival most of that doesn't appeal to me a lot of it sounds over produced and just doesn't work for me. Not to say I don't like any of it; But a majority of it.. I don't.

And for black metal, yes, a large majority of it is carbon copy bands which are rehashing the same Burzum sounding songs over and over. There are fresh and exciting/fun bands out there though. IE; I find Panopticon to be pretty fun, and pretty refreshing comparing to much of the black metal out there now. It takes a lot of digging to find bands that are refreshing and interesting due to the large amount of junk diluting the genres, but I think that happens within a lot of genres.

By the way, I do understand there are people are there who DON'T like metal, or extreme metal, and that's understandable feel free to express your opinion on why you don't like it. My main interest though was hearing from people who have enjoyed extreme metal at some point in time, and no longer do.

3 Replies

16 Feb 2017, 19:16

Well as a metal head from the early 80's I can say that the age of the true "Metal" band is long over. You have plenty of them all doing the same thing and sounding the exactly the same on the DM scene but no one you will spend $100 a ticket to go and see that's for sure. Hell I wouldn't fork that out to even see Metallica with anymore, which in my opinion is the last of the true metal (not extreme) bands out there. Grunge killed metal imo... they definitely killed the 80's era of your typical metal\big hair bands.

Lamb of God is another one I can think of that is still trying to do it. The thing is there are no riffs left to discover, lol every freaking possible metal based chord progression has been used already in some song or another. You can't even write a metal tune anymore without someone saying "Hey that sounds like so and so" or "Who did you rip that riff from"? I forget who it was that said during a documentary I watched about metal music, he said "Pick another genre because Black Sabbath took all of the good riffs already, nothing left to do here"! and this was 10\15 years ago!

I agree that we all need a new kick ass metal band that we can all bang our heads to. Something that makes this 45 year old man want to strap on the Doc Martins and go throw some elbows in the mosh pits again. On second though I'll just keep my old ass in the balcony seats and watch from above!

"It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past." - Karl Von Clausewitz