Thrash metal or Death Metal?

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TheSpiritualist243
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Thrash metal or Death Metal?

Post by TheSpiritualist243 »

Although I absolutely love death and cannibal corpse, I kind of prefer thrash to death metal.

What's your (the forum users) opinion?
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PsYcHo
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Re: Thrash metal or Death Metal?

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I use System of a Down and In This Moment as a measure.

Rock hard, rock loud, but if If you sound like you are gnawing an animal bone while simultaneously screaming into a microphone, I'm not gonna listen long.

Dating myself maybe, but Gwar had cool lyrics, but you had to look them up to understand them. (And that was before the inevitable hearing loss caused by listening to metal as loud as possible.)

So.. whichever ones I can understand with a bit of effort, and get the hell off my lawn. :twisted:
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Re: Thrash metal or Death Metal?

Post by Dream Sphere »

I prefer black metal to both, but that's besides the point of this thread, so...

While I like both quite a lot, I'm going to have to go with death metal since it's a more broad and diverse subgenre.

Also, while I like classic thrash metal, most of my favourite thrash metal is either mixed with black metal or death metal, like Aura Noir, Vektor, Absu, and Melechesh. While I like a larger amount of classic death metal along with the more experimental, genre mixing stuff too, which seems to apparently be much more abundant in the DM subgenre.

Edit: maybe later I'll make a list of examples of death metal's greater diversity.
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Re: Thrash metal or Death Metal?

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Hmm. Stupid question, how many genres of Metal are there now, and is there a convenient place that summarizes them?

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Re: Thrash metal or Death Metal?

Post by Dream Sphere »

PsYcHo wrote: Mon Jun 26, 2017 3:27 am Hmm. Stupid question, how many genres of Metal are there now, and is there a convenient place that summarizes them?

Dear flying spaghetti monster, I have tattoos older than people talking about Metal now. :(
Wikipedia does a decent job, but I'll give you a list of what I know, some of which is more specific than what the wiki goes into. There's also a website called mapofmetal which is pretty in-depth.

The primary subgenres of metal, with their sub-subgenres are as follows...

Traditional Doom Metal, or also known as just plain Doom Metal was pioneered by Black Sabbath in the early 70's. Offshoots/subgenres of this genre include Epic Doom Metal pioneered by Candlemass in the 80's, the fusion genre Death/Doom Metal pioneered by Katatonia, Paradise Lost, and My Dying Bride in the 90's, and another four subgenres like Drone Metal which I don't know very well, which I think either emerged in the 90's or 00's, but an example of which would be Sun O))), Stoner Metal which is Bluesy/Psychedelic Doom Metal like the band Ancestors, Sludge Metal like some of Neurosis' stuff, and Funeral Doom Metal like Ahab. There are also other fusion genres which include Doom Metal influence, but I'm not going to list them all here. One example would be Folk/Doom Metal like Mael Mordha.

Traditional Heavy Metal also known as just Heavy Metal was pioneered by Black Sabbath and Judas Priest in the 70's, and later when the New Wave of British Heavy Metal came around in the early 80's, spearheaded by Iron Maiden along with other bands like Satan and Angelwitch, they ended up further developing the sound into something more epic.

Speed Metal is a bit of a nebulous genre to me and to be honest nowadays feels like an unnecesarry bridger between other subgenres. This subgenre was likely most relevant in the early-mid 80's when bands were pushing the limits of Heavy Metal into something faster and more aggressive (which would become Thrash Metal,) or something more bombastic and epic (which would become Power Metal.) Example bands of this genre which lie more inbetween the main genres would be some of Judas Priest's 80's/early 90's stuff, Motorhead, and Venom.

Thrash Metal was pioneered by US bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Overkill, Slayer, and others in the early-mid 80's. In the mid to late 80's there emerged European Thrash Metal bands with a distinct sound like Sodom, Kreator, and Destruction. Some bands taking inspiration from Thrash Metal evolved the sound into early extreme metal genres Death Metal and Black Metal, so by nature, early examples of these genres have a strong Thrash influence. Some examples of later intentional Thrash fusions with other genres include the Black/Thrash bands Aura Noir, Absu's two most recent albums, and Melechesh. Also, Technical/Progressive Thrash Metal was pioneered by Voivod and Coroner. Oh and another subgenre of Thrash Metal is Groove Metal which was popularized by Pantera in the 90's. It's basically mid-paced groovy Thrash, usually with rough vocals. Another band in that subgenre is Lamb of God.

Power Metal emerged in the mid to late 80's, in Europe pioneered by Helloween, along with Blind Guardian. As said before, this subgenre took the lighter, epic sides or Heavy Metal and turned them up enough as to be a new subgenre. This subgenre underwent massive developments in the 90's and many more bands emerged in the 00's as a sort of secondwave/new generation of the genre. On the other hand US Power Metal which also emerged in the 80's has its own distinct sound. Examples of US PM include Manowar and Manilla Road. Though, being from a certain country doesn't necessarilly determine the sound of a band, it's just how the local music scenes developed and evolved at the time and laid claim on a stylistic variant of the genre. So a European or South American, etc. band could be in the style of Power Metal that was initially developed in the USA and vice versa, obviously. Also, I don't consider Folk Metal, Symphonic Metal or Progressive Metal to be their own standalone genres, but rather variations/subgenres of Metal's primary subgenres. Some examples of Symphonic Power Metal include later Blind Guardian (albums A Night at the Opera, and Beyond the Red Mirror), and Nightwish, and examples of Progressive Power Metal include later Blind Guardian (album A Night at the Opera), and Dream Theater. And most Euro PM has folksy tendencies.

The First Wave of Black Metal emerged in the mid-80's and included bands such as Bathory, Celtic Frost, and Mayhem. Another band in the general style which helped pioneer extreme metal in general was the South American band Sarcofago. This style built on the more ambient and aggressive Heavy Metal and Thrash Metal like Venom, Slayer, German Thrash Metal, and Mercyful Fate/King Diamond.

The Second Wave of Black Metal, also known as just plain Black Metal emerged in the early-mid 90's. Many Scandinavian bands took part in shaping the genre. These bands included Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Ulver, Gorgoroth, Satyricon, Hades, Bathory, and Dissection among others. This is where the tremolo riffs and dissonant/ambient/raw production values fully emerged as staples of the genre. Black Metal along with Death Metal have many subgenres and fusions, so I won't give an explanation of everyone, but I will list them along with an example band.

Melodic Black Metal is Second Wave BM mixed with melodies of Heavy Metal, examples include Dissection's first two albums, and Immortal's At the Heart of Winter. A regional scene with its own name "Sognametal" is essentially Melodic Black Metal, bands from this scene include Windir, Vreid, Mistur and Cor Scorpii. There's also Hellenic (Greek) BM like post-Genesis album era Rotting Christ which has its own take on mixing Heavy Metal with Black Metal.

Symphonic Black Metal includes Cradle of Filth, Fjoergyn, Dimmu Borgir and others.

Raw or Orthodox Black Metal is another name for early low-fi, minimalistic types of Second Wave BM or later bands which mimick the raw style. This includes Burzum, early Watain, early Darkthrone, and Marduk among others.

Atmospheric Black Metal isn't much of a distinct subgenre as many different types of BM fall into this category too, but examples include Burzum's Filosofem, Ulver's Bergtatt, Summoning, Caladan Brood, Midnight Odyssey's Shards of Silver Fade and much more.

Post-Black Metal also known as the Third Wave of Black Metal can mean one of two things, an evolution of Atmospheric Black Metal which puts emphasis on atmosphere and has a fair bit in common with types of Post-Rock, examples include Deafheaven, and Janvs. Or Black Metal which mixes itself with various genres and the term Post-Black Metal is basically a blanket statement for which without needing to go into listing five genre names to cover it.

War Metal is a specific subgenre of extreme Black Metal which pushes the limits of the genre. Iirc a band called Conqueror helped pioneer it.

Now, I don't know if Viking Metal (an example of which would be Blood Fire Death, and Hammerheart era Bathory,) could be classified as its own thing (some contest that it has its own riffing/pacing/atmospheric style,) but to keep things simpler I consider it a sub-subgenre of Black Metal, the subgenre being a fusion of Black Metal and Folk (aka Pagan Metal or Folk/Black Metal), the sub-subgenre being Viking Metal which is analagous for specifically Scandinavian Folk music mixed with Black Metal. Other sub-genres of Folk/Black Metal include Anglo-Saxon Metal (English Folk mixed with Black Metal,) Oriental Metal, and Gaul Metal.

Other BM sub/fusion genres include Progressive Black Metal, Black/Death Metal, Black/Doom Metal, Black/Death/Doom Metal (aka Caverncore,) Industrial/Electronic Black Metal, Avant-garde Black Metal, Black 'N' Roll (which is Hard Rock inspired BM,) Folk/Black/Doom Metal (aka Dark Metal,) and Psychedelic Black Metal.

Death Metal shares most of the subgenres with BM, but I haven't yet heard any Psychedelic DM, and while there is some Folksy DM, Folk isn't as prevalent in the genre as it is in BM. Plus, they call classic DM Old-School Death Metal, and not "Orthodox or Raw." Also, while modern Melodic Death Metal is more situated in DM, early Melodeath took a lot of influence from BM and it was more of 50% Black, 50% Death in its origins, the same could be said for some, not all, Melodic Black Metal like early Dissection. One subgenre DM does have which BM doesn't really is a subgenre of Progressive DM called Technical Death Metal. This takes the technical aspects more to the extreme. Then there's Brutal Death Metal which is sort of their version of Raw BM. A pioneering band of Brutal DM was Suffocation.

Metalcore fused Hardcore Punk and Melodeath/Heavy Metal and emerged originally in the 90's. I don't know 90's MC much at all, but it's very different from 00's Metalcore supposedly. The 00's wave of Metalcore includes Avenged Sevenfold's first two albums and Killswitch Engaged's stuff. There Metalcore that mixed their sound with Thrash like some of what Trivium has done, but I don't like and therefore I don't know this style very well.

Deathcore emerged from Metalcore in the 00's but I'm not much of a fan of it either. There was a recent development in Progressive Deathcore/Death Metal which has been called Djent (it's onomatopoeia for the guitar's tone/sound) which was popularized by Meshuggah and it's related to Mathcore which was popularized by The Dillinger Escape Plan. I'm not a fan of most of these core genres, so that's all I can really tell you here.

I'm somewhat of a fan of Grindcore, though. It mixes DM with Hardcore Punk, and it started to develop in the late-80's and early 90's with the bands Napalm Death and Carcass. (Carcass later helped develop Progressive/Technical DM, Melodic DM and Death 'N' Roll, btw.)

Finally, there's Alternative Metal, this started to develop in the 90's and hit mainstream success in that decade as well as the 00's. A subgenre of Alt-Metal is Nu Metal, but not all Alt Metal is Nu Metal. Alt-Metal includes Korn, Limp Bizkit, System of a Down, Avenged Sevenfold's midcareer, Slipknot, Drowning Pool, early Linkin Park and others. I also think that what's called the New Wave of American Heavy Metal arguably fits best under Alt-Metal, so that includes A7x as said before, and other bands like Five Finger Death Punch and Trivium. Lamb of God and other modern Groove Metal also sort of goes hand-in-hand with The NWoAHM. I would also put New German Hard Rock/Metal like Rammstein in this category. I'm not a fan of much Alt-Metal.


So there you have it. That's my summation of Metal's subgenres, though I may later elaborate on Death Metal since I just skimmed over it. Also, I don't feel that these "genres" are truly mutually exclusive styles, but instead, rather they are adjectives that describe a quality of sound and bands can drift between many different sounds. Hence all the fusion "genres."
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Re: Thrash metal or Death Metal?

Post by PsYcHo »

Dream Sphere wrote: Mon Jun 26, 2017 1:41 pm So there you have it. That's my summation of Metal's subgenres,
Hey thanks!

Being more informed, in response to the OP Thrash metal is better than Death metal, but my personal preference is Alt-Metal.
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