Meatlheads Opinions On Punk Rockers

[The Great Lord Baal]

This is for true metalheads out there what is your opinions on punk rockers and punk rock in general?My opinion is they suck and it sucks

[Sheyna-Lou]

How do you class punk rock? Like Pani! At the Disco and MCR?

[The Great Lord Baal]

Yes But mostly anything without long riffs and shouting

[Sheyna-Lou]

oookay then.....I'd better run away before my poor little emo/goth ass gets bashed by angry metalheads then....

Before I do though, my friends have a metal band you might like. If I liked metal I'd probably like them, but I don't. Hopefully you will. They're really popular in Harrogate and Leeds. Called Waking Theo.
www.myspace.com/wakingtheo

Good luck with your thread.

[The Great Lord Baal]

there song shadow of doubt is pretty cool

[Sheyna-Lou]

Lol. Yay! My friends are good!!! Woohoo!
I shall inform them! If you've got myspace would you mind adding 'em? Soz to be rude.
Personally I love the music, but Mikey's 'singing' is slightly grating.

[The Great Lord Baal]

The grating can be worked out but it does give a certain edge to it

[Sheyna-Lou]

Ermm..... okay! Sure. You like them though?

[The Great Lord Baal]

Yes

[Sheyna-Lou]

good good. Thankyou. right, will stop posting a thread dedicating to bashing my favourite music now. byeeee

[TheXym]

Are you looking for old-school metal/prog metal heads or numetal heads? There is a HUGE difference, imho, but I'll try to refrain from the full-sized dissertation on it.

I'm a huge old-school/prog metal head, my top two bands are Queensrÿche and Dream Theater, not that the pics in my sig give it away or anything. Some people like them, some don't care, some despise them. What I like about certain aspects of metal are the virtuoso musicianship, both instrumentally and vocally (notice - having cookie monster on lead vocals is decidedly NOT virtuoso musicianship. An edge on the voice can be a good things, but when all's said and done and the vocal chords are shot...).

Part of my outlook is due to my formal musical training. Three chords and out bores me to tears. Running eighth notes on the root bass lines bore me. If I can learn the bass part in less than 10 minutes after hearing it once, I'm not going to be impressed. I've heard way too many punk bands that throw extremely simple stuff together and turn up the distortion pedal and proceed to figuratively deficate on their instruments (I can say the same about other genres as well). Does this mean I'm looking for Dream Theater-esque leads in every song? Absolutely not, there's a difference between a virtuoso solo that fits the song and outright musical m@$turb@tion.

There have been times where I've heard a punk group and while they weren't playing the most complicated stuff, they at least threw some secondary chords or suspensions into the harmonic mix that worked quite nicely. Warren Zevon's chord progressions were decidedly simple, but a LOT of his work is, imho pure genius. Plus he's a heck of a great lyricist, albiet extremely dark. Then on top of that, they were VERY tight as an ensemble. THAT is what impresses me about a group. They had a good time on stage, and more importantly, sounded good doing it. That, imho is what a band SHOULD be.

I'm willing to give anything a listen at least once. If it's good, I'll give it props, regardless of whether or not I particularly like it. I don't have to like something for it to be good, but the ensemble musicianship/vocal skills/etc. will stand on it's own. It's kind of like the whole debate about Mark Hoppus (Blink 182) over on a bass forum I frequent. What you hear him play on the CD's is really nothing special from a virtuoso perspective, but IT FITS THE ENSEMBLE. In his context, he's a good bassist. In the grand scheme. of course a Billy Sheehan, Stuart Hamm, John Myung, Jeff Berlin, or Jaco Pastorius, et al would absolutely destroy him on the instrument, but it's not always about the individual musician. In the metal arena, I don't think anyone can argue Slayer's influence/longevity, but most bassists would not put Tom Araya as one of the most influential bassists (note, I'm not really a Slayer fan, but it's a good example)

My negative reaction towards punk in general is due to it's very simplistic chord structure/individual instrument parts, but there is some good stuff out there. I've heard a lot of punk "bands" that can't actually play their instruments well at all and the result is a sonic assault consisting of screaming 'vocals' and mass distortion failing to cover up gratuitous instrumental deficiency. Still,there is some punk I've heard that isn't bad and a couple things that are actually quite good. Is it my first choice to listen to? No. Blindly bashing an entire genre is, imho musically narrow minded, and you never know what you might miss.

The bottom line is, you'll like what you like, I'll like what I'll like, and others will like what they'll like. To me, everyone can have their own tastes and more power to them. When I taught jr. high general music, we'd have discussions about the music people liked, and it was a give-and-take forum. Compare/contrast all you like, BUT you need to be able to defend your opinion. "Because it sounds cool" or "Because it sucks" were NOT acceptable answers. WHY does is suck? WHY does it rock? (The comment a G chord is a G chord regardless of who plays it comes to mind)

Sorry for the long post, but believe it or not, it's actually a short version

[The Great Lord Baal]

This for all metalheads we all start out in the old stuff wherever we go after that