Metal School

Not a metal band or a metal record, but I can´t help but recommend Coheed & Cambrias "No world for tomorrow".
It´s a hard rock album with lots of great songs, the music is almost timeless in a way. Lots of retro rock,but everything feels fresh and alive. Highly enjoyable.

Asmo

Congrats Thunderfoot!

..Hello everyone. Some people might remember me...or not. *shrugs* It's whatever; been a while - quite a while, several months I think. Blah blah blah I'm back blah blah blah. Whatever, save the welcomes for someone who is a legend.

Anyways, I've read some of this thread but not all of it. However, I'm willing to bet the subject matter of Sludge hasn't been discussed.

The basics -- which I hope to expound on later; perhaps with Thunderfoot's help (your "book," if you're calling it that, is something I've been wanting to do; I'm glad to see someone more knowledgable not butchering it like I would have -- rolled a one on my Knowledge(Metal) check) -- is you take doom metal and toss it in a blender with hardcore punk. When you pour your smoothie out, add spices of blues and southern rock to it. Sit back and enjoy. This genre is agervated assault against your eardrums. Distortion and thick bass combine to make a wall of sound that oozes out of your speakers. Think: Black Pudding, except you don't melt.

Some Artists:
Eyehategod
Electric Wizard
Sleep
Cathedral
Candlemass
The Abominable Iron Sloth
Buzzov*en
Weedeater
Accept Death
Melvins
Mastodon
Isis
Neurosis
Bongzilla

Speaking of metal, I caught Iron Maiden in New Jersey a week ago today. Here's a (semi) humorous review I wrote: The Rime of the Aging Metalhead

Sometimes its cool to see the older bands in a more intimate venue than at the heights of their careers.

One of the best shows I ever got to see was BÖC at a club in Austin back in the 1990s. The set was pure "Best Of," so you know it was a singalong from the first crunching chord to the dying wail of the last bit of feedback. If I hadn't been forced to be a wallhugger (I was on crutches), I would have been able to high-5 Buck Dharma and the boys between numbers.

For the record, the opening band was Black Pearl- Austin natives with a lead singer whose pipes were amazing and who was pretty hot, too. They played a set so good they'd have blown even the great BÖC off the stage had it not been for their juicy setlist.

They were followed by Galactic Cowboys just days before they got signed to a major label contract. During Black Pearl's set, a huge drunk guy (their keyboardist, though I didn't know that until he got up on stage) was standing next to me, hitting on all the ladies, and occasionally almost falling on my injured leg. He was so drunk he was missing notes & off-tempo- simply awful. Apparently, he was fired shortly thereafter.

BTW- Iron Maiden is featured in at least one episode of Sundance Channel's Live at Abbey Road. Another harder band of note on the series was Muse.

(The series shows the bands practicing/performing a couple of their songs in the famous locale, interspersed with interviews.)

Chapter 4 – Rush and the Progressive Metal Movement
In the Late 60’s and early 70s several groups decided that Rock n’ Roll’s reputation as three chords and scream was both undeserved and unfair. While it is true that most Rock n’ Roll was easy on the ears and easy to replicate in a garage with untrained monkeys, the musicians themselves had all come from different ‘legitimate’ musical backgrounds. The Who, were known for there off tempo and sometimes raucous above the beat songs, but they started playing Blues clubs and shows and were listed as a Blues band for many months before their first album actually hit the Rock charts. Likewise, bands like Cream that were the godfathers of Heavy Rock were originally listed as Electric Blues. However, once groups Like Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer (ELP) began utilizing Fusion Jazz, things got really interesting.

Before Cream & ELP burst on the scene, odd time meant more than 3 minutes on a song thereby ensuring it wouldn’t get played on the radio. After songs like “White Room”, and “Carn-evil 9” things took a dramatic turn for the better. Art rock had finally been born and critics took notice, not only had these musicians managed to prove that they were talented, but made odd time signatures and poly-rhythmic tones catchy and mass marketable. Once Vanilla Fudge released their uber-slow and funked down version of the Supremes “Keep Me Hanging On” it was a safe bet that it was there to stay.

Meanwhile in Toronto a garage band was playing local high school dances and reveling in the sounds of Led Zepplin. They were a straight ahead rock trio, an oddity in it’s own rite, but they were very talented. Their first album was nothing more than Blues based Heavy Rock with a very Canadian sensibility, and at the height of their popularity, prior to the beginning of their U.S. tour the drummer quit due to health issues (diabetes). Immediately an audition was ordered by their record company and several hundred drummers applied. One entered after several days dragging his drum kit in a bunch of garbage cans. He had no prior experience and was a devotee of Keith Moon, but stated that he preferred Jazz to Rock. The guitar player and bass player/singer were a little more than skeptical but since they had no control over the whole thing cut into a classic hit of their own devising, which ground to a halt when the drummer decided that it needed a different beat than was originally written. The bass player and guitarist then listened and responded in kind launching into a new song they had been writing the drummer trotted out an odd time and the bass player tried very hard to higher him on the spot. While the record company was more than a little peeved, the band formed around this new sound and the classic Rush lineup was born.

Neil Peart brought more than just drums and musical influence, being an avid reader and road scholar (note the spelling) he began writing alternate lyrics to the bands tunes in rehearsals, once Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson realized what he was doing, he quickly became the primary lyrists for the band. His first major opus being the J.R.R. Tolkien inspired song ‘Rivendell’ as well as the Ayn Rand inspired “Anthem”. It was obvious that the band that had made in roads to popular Rock n’ Roll with “Finding My Way” and “Working Man” was gone and a new band was emerging from their shell. Their third release, though less popular than the previous two it set the stage for the future by introducing two Magnum cum Opus songs, “The Necromancer” and “Fountains of Lamneth”. When their next album 2112 hit the airwaves, a revolution was born and Heavy Progressive Rock was here to stay.
If not for Rush and the in roads the created in the 70s staples of the Progressive Rock Arena would never have seen the light of day, such as fellow Canadian Rockers Triumph, New York/New Orleans rockers Zebra and such stellar acts as Queensryche and Dream Theater. Though there is a larger underground movement of darker Metal infused Progressive Rock, they too would have been nowhere without the solid background and foundation that Rush provided, and more mainstream art Rockers like Yngwie Malmsteen would have never had the chance to get out of the gate. If you haven’t ever delved into the Progressive side of metal, do yourself a favor and take a trip sometime. Spend a few days listening to the older, ‘grown-up’ versions of the bands you listen to now, sure the music is dated and, gasp, even less controversial now that the events surrounding the songs are faded into history, but their significance cannot be denied. As a side note, if you have an opinion on any of these bands prior to listening to them, find something by one of these artists that is less well known before forming a true opinion (specifically Thunder Seven by Triumph and Operation Mindcrime by Queensryche come to mind as oft maligned bands based on their later more commercial successes)

On an unrelated note – an era has passed as I recently donated my hair to Locks of Love and now have a trendy spikey hair-do. I do this every so often to do my good turn for those less fortunate. Weep not for my hair but for those who must live through debilitating diseases such as cancer. Now get out there and Rock your Rolls off!

There were some developments going on in those seven years between the respective debuts of Vanilla Fudge and Rush that probably should be mentioned with regard to the roots of heavy prog; Uriah Heep, certainly. They were doing fantasy lyrics before Rush, and plunged deeper into fantasy themes than Led Zeppelin did.

There were also a number of prog bands that weren't really metal but had one or two really heavy songs in their catalogue - King Crimson and "21st Century Schizoid Man" was influential, Genesis and "The Knife", Atomic Rooster as well. Deep Purple's earliest albums were very Vanilla Fudge-like, and of course there was that whole "Concerto" experiment. This was still in the days when Black Sabbath and Yes toured together; metal had yet to be really defined as a movement back then and there just wasn't a lot of it around yet, so I would say that "pure" prog bands were still strongly influencing the course that prog metal would take.

And if you only know Journey from the '80s with Steve Perry and "Don't Stop Believin", you might be surprised to learn that they were actually a prog band with some fairly heavy material when they started recording around the same time as Rush in the '70s - try listening to their 1977 instrumental song "Nickel and Dime" back-to-back with Rush's "Tom Sawyer" sometime.

Moulin Rogue said:

There were some developments going on in those seven years between the respective debuts of Vanilla Fudge and Rush that probably should be mentioned with regard to the roots of heavy prog; Uriah Heep, certainly. They were doing fantasy lyrics before Rush, and plunged deeper into fantasy themes than Led Zeppelin did.

There were also a number of prog bands that weren't really metal but had one or two really heavy songs in their catalogue - King Crimson and "21st Century Schizoid Man" was influential, Genesis and "The Knife", Atomic Rooster as well. Deep Purple's earliest albums were very Vanilla Fudge-like, and of course there was that whole "Concerto" experiment. This was still in the days when Black Sabbath and Yes toured together; metal had yet to be really defined as a movement back then and there just wasn't a lot of it around yet, so I would say that "pure" prog bands were still strongly influencing the course that prog metal would take.

And if you only know Journey from the '80s with Steve Perry and "Don't Stop Believin", you might be surprised to learn that they were actually a prog band with some fairly heavy material when they started recording around the same time as Rush in the '70s - try listening to their 1977 instrumental song "Nickel and Dime" back-to-back with Rush's "Tom Sawyer" sometime.

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Excellent points! Before the pop-synth years Journey was a Fusion Jazz band. They were originally built around the virtuoso guitar talents of Neil Schon, former guitarist for Santana (The guitar solo during "Black Magic Woman" is him, not Carlos (he was 14 at the time) and former Santana keyboard player Greg Rolle (The vocal/organ talent on said song).
And while Uriah Heep wouldn't have been on my list, I agree that their music was in that same vein (nice catch Rogue).

My first memory of Santana was a late-night concert tv-show...King Biscuit or Don Kirshner perhaps?

The cameraman couldn't tell which of Carlos or Neil he should be focusing on- frequently, he was on the wrong guitarist during at least part of the solos.