And while there definitely are metalheads who hate everything -core, arguing that -core music isn't metal, is not by definition something negative. Me, like many of the pseudo-intellectual gatekeeping elitists of MA, actually enjoy their fair share metalcore, hardcore, deathcore, post-hardcore and whatnot. Like I mentionned earlier, I enjoyed the first three All that Remains records. But I also really enjoy some Between the Burid and Me, Protest the Hero, The Human Abstract, etc.

On the other hand it's kind of true that during the 00's, -core stuff was so big, it was actually starting to take over metal festivals and to ruin some otherwise perfectly good bills. Like I remember some pretty terrible/mediocre deathcore bands cluttering the Summer Slaughter Tour and ending up on the same bills as death metal bands, even though they had very little in common.

Anyway, what SanPeron seems to be bothered with is the state of the mainstream now compared to the mainstream in the 70's and 80's and 90's, and how we didn't get to experience phenomenons like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Metallica and etc. being big, while what we have now as "mainstream metal" (or what is perceived as metal) is stuff like Falling in Reverse, Parkway Drive, Bring Me The Horizon, etc. (and I'll throw in other names like Ghost and the dreadful Sleep Token). And I mean, I see where he's coming from. It's a shame we (younger metalheads) didn't get to live these years, but at the same time, the musical landscape changed significantly, and there are a ton of solid metal bands nowadays still, and a ton of great music to listen to and festivals to attend to enjoy metal with a like-minded people, so I guess I don't really understand why it matters that much that there is no "big mainstream metal" scene right now (because I guess Mastodon, Gojira and the likes don't really count? I don't know).

I'm fine with my smaller scenes and not having to get a new mortgage to be able to afford show tickets.

I don't know what you mean exactly with "younger" (I'm 39), but I don't even see it as a shame. Being a superintrovert metalhead pushing 40 in 2024 is fucking awesome. I was too young to experience, for example, the Finnish death metal of the early 90's, but being into that stuff then would have required me to be much more sociable. Now I get all of that with a few presses of a button, while also experiencing the current vitality of metal from the comfort of my own home, or by going to shows which I wouldn't have had the money to attend when younger. Truly an incredible privilege. This is the golden age.

And yeah, All That Remains sucks and SanPeron has daddy issues.

You know, I say I don't like -core and that's generally true but then I remember that I think PTH's Fortress is a fucking masterpiece (and I will DIE on that hill) and although I haven't listened to it in quite a while The Human Abstract's Nocturn is pretty great too. I guess I just have very specific and narrow taste when it comes to core.
Now, we can debate if those records are metal or not, I would lean towards the answer being yes they are but even if Jesus, Satan, or Dio appeared right now and said "nope not metal" it would not lessen my enjoyment of them in any way shape or form.

ETA- I was a teenager in the 90s and though I was a little late to see Metallica and Megadeth in their prime, it was pretty cool (and I totally missed all the underground stuff at the time). Of course it's cool now to be older and be able to afford good seats to Maiden too, so you win some lose some. At the same time going to a show that's $20 at the door and being able to have a beer and chat with Jamison from Visigoth before his set is in a lot of ways better, as is being able to scroll through endless metal bands on Bandcamp.

I'm not suggesting that it was better before. Just saying that it would have also been nice to experience these things first hand. Like how I wish I knew Death before the passing of Chuck Schuldiner, or that I would have liked to know Bolt Thrower before they disbanded. I'm not saying these were better times, but it's a shame I never got to see these bands play live.

I'm also glad I got into metal in the middle of the 00's.

I'm 34, and I really enjoyed my teenager years and early adulthood experiences in the metal scene. I saw the whole boom of european bands reaching us in North America. I got to see Children of Bodom play live alongside Amon Amarth and Trivium for 20 bucks. I also got to meet the guys from Agalloch a few years later, and I truly love the experience of seeing bands in smaller venues and getting to meet the musicians and talking with other fans. The experience is different from like, seeing Gojira at a big festival with 40000 people, but I enjoy both of these experiences.

Part of me feels like I missed out on a lot because even at the comparatively old age of 44, I was in pre-school when Iron Maiden was at the height of their popularity and was debating the awesomeness of GnR's Appetite For Destruction with fellow 3rd graders when the New York and Bay Area thrash scenes were exploding. But after speaking with my oldest brother, who was into Metallica long before it became cool, and he said that the media tend to exaggerate this stuff, and looking on my own experience I can sorta see where he was coming from.

I've had people tell me they were jealous because I was the prime age to see the rise of bands like Pantera and how cool it was that I bought Slayer's Divine Intervention when it was brand new, and to this day I'm dumbfounded at how anybody could romanticize the music scene that existed between 1992 and 1997 in America, it was...hands down, the worst time to be a metal head. Even if I'd been into death metal back when it had its brief run of mainstream acceptance, we're talking a brief period of flirtation and exposure in 1 or 2 Hollywood blockbuster flicks like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. You were still treated like an outcast if you showed up to school in a Deicide or Cannibal Corpse t-shirt, assuming you'd be let into class wearing one.

I guess I'm a little guilty of doing this myself since I have this wildly romantic view of what it must have been like to have been living in Germany and catching Hammerfall and Grave Digger at the 1997 Wacken Open Air Festival (this would have also afforded me the chance to catch Dimmu Borgir when they were at the top of their game, though I didn't get into black metal until about 10 years after), but I think nostalgia can get out of hand and you miss out on what the present has to offer. I've been loving what the NWOTHM has to offer because, despite the styles represented being full codified, there are still plenty of new songs to come out of it that weren't written back in the 80s, and I don't think the originators of these styles are robbed by younger bands picking up where they left off.

I'm also a North American, and yeah, it should be quite obvious that, unless you were into Pantera and the whole nu-metal/groove trends of the 90's, or if you somehow were hanging out at the right place and the right time to experience the birth of death metal, the 90's weren't amazing for metalheads. There's this author here in Québec, named Stéphane Larue who wrote a book called Le Plongueur (The dishwater in the translated version) and he's 41 right now, and he talks about the scene in North America in the late 90's and how shitty it was before we started discovering european metal bands, and before the digital age that made us discover so many bands. I can definitely see what you mean.

I'm a bit younger then you are it seems, and my first explorations of metal were in the mid 00's, so it was a good time to get into metal as there was more and more things coming our way, but also, the local stuff was more broadly accessible. For instance, I got the chance to discover bands like Quo Vadis and Martyr around that time too, and I had no idea what these bands were before.

Also, I recommand Stéphane Larue's book. It's not just about metal, as it's kind of a fictionalized autobiography, and he talks about his life as a dishwasher, and his gambling addiction and whatnot, but it's nice to learn more about the punk and metal scenes of the time through someone who also experienced them first hand.

Between 1992 and 1998 I was basically dumpster-diving for 2nd hand copies of stuff from the 80s where I could find it, and both in the Baltimore and Philadelphia area it was extremely slim-pickings. Probably the highlight of that time period was buying Iced Earth's Night Of The Stormrider and happening upon a used copy of Helloween's "The Best, The Rest, The Rare" compilation at a flea market. The rise of Napster and Audiogalaxy was how I discovered that there was a booming metal scene going on in Europe, and online CD distributors became my best friend while everyone else was still mindlessly listening to whatever MTV dictated was cool and happening.

I initially had a negative reaction to the metalcore scene when it first blew up in New England because it seemed like a bastardized version of stuff that had already been done by In Flames and Children Of Bodom, not to mention that most of the fans of that stuff that I interacted with had very little appreciation for the older metal styles that had influenced it. In the past 10 years I've warmed up to it a bit more, but for me the best music to come out of that era was stuff like Gamma Ray's No World Order, Nocturnal Rites' Shadowland and Rhapsody's Power Of The Dragonflame, none of which were considered consequential at the time in North America.

I'll check out that book you recommended, sounds like an interesting read. I did have a brief fixation with the local 90s hardcore scene in Philadelphia, including playing in a couple bands that opened for a few of the heavy hitters of that era.

Dumpster diving! Yeah exactly. While I did catch Pantera in like...'96 I think which was cool for a 15 year old, the fact is you were shit out of luck if you wanted anything else besides stuff that was at least moderately popular (this I'm sure varies on your locale). I remember being absolutely stoked when I found the Japanese import of AJFA with the bonus tracks on it. So hard to find (I'm also in NA). If that was hard to find, from METALLICA, good luck finding something truly underground.
I had a good time and I have a lot of great memories, but 2024 is a much better time to be a metalhead...if only I wasn't old enough to want to be in bed by 9:30 now lol.

You're not kidding, Columbia House hooked me up with most of Megadeth's discography on cassette, ditto most of the other important works by the Big 4 prior to 1991 and Dio's discography. Funnily enough, Slayer's Hell Awaits was extremely hard to come by at the time, I basically lucked out when I managed to grab an original cassette issue of it on clearance at Sam Goody. The amount of shit I got for listening to Sabbath's Heaven & Hell on my CD-man on the bus in 10th grade was utterly ridiculous, but the greatest feeling in the world was driving my '89 Mercury Cougar into the high school parking lot the next year after getting my license and blasting Neon Knights at full volume with the windows open.

Nowadays if I happen to be rocking some of Saxon or Iron Maiden's classic 80s material in my car at a drive thru, I get nothing but approval from whichever teenager is handing me my order. 2024 is hands down a better time to be a metal head than at any point in the 90s. And yeah, the raging headache I had the next morning after getting home from attending the last Saxon and Uriah Heep show in The Poconos had me feeling my age. It's tough getting home at 1am when you're in your mid-40s.

Ah man, good memories. I was blasting MOP or Piece of Mind on cassette in my '89 Bronco on my way to school...god what a great feeling!

Having to go to work and act like a normal human being after a late show now is a nightmare "hey Hardworlder, you okay today, looking a little rough" "oh yeah I was up late watching that uh British show about like...rich losers in castles or whatever, definitely not drinking beer at a local dive watching a metal show that would be insane for someone in their 40s".

Though the 90's metal definitely fell off big time in my part of the Midwest, but Pantera and the alt/nu metal stuff was huge. I didn't have access to much in the way of underground heavy metal magazines and I was still listening to the big 4 along with some of the 80's giants, but it was definitely a low point in my metal fandom. Then I discovered Napster in mid 99 and holy shit. I think the first band I ran across was Iced Earth, and then I went down the rabbit hole big time. Within a year I had discovered Blind Guardian, Vader, Nevermore, etc and then I discovered a metal specialty shop out in the county that had pretty much everything from all the various genre. Man I loved that store...

It all changed when I found Limewire...

Well, Iam glad this went better than I expected, sorry for derailing the thread into another conversation about the state of metal. I won't talk about this for some time. But since everybody is telling their experience with the past, it seems like a good opportunity to tell the South American side of the story, at least from Argentina.

In the 80s after the Malvinas/Falklands war ended and the Military Junta's dictatorship fell to the ground and democracy returned, we got less isolated from the world and got to experience the beginning of the metal scene in here. The vinyl interchange and the import of international music got us the first metal records, while bands like Black Sabbath were playing metal in the 70s, the culture started here around the 80s. It got popular really quicky, we have our fair share of well-known bands in the Hispanic hemisphere down here like Riff, V8 and Rata Blanca.

In the 90s after the Berlin wall fell and socialism ended, we entered into our first truly neoliberal democratic government, pretty close to the USA and our currency was in very good shape, one peso equaled one dollar. So, after the economy stabilized, this meant that a lot of international bands came to play here for really accesible prices, metal and rock became gigantic here and the musicians loved to play in here thanks to the passion of the audience that weren't accustomed to hearing metal. In the 90s almost all the important metal bands of every genre came to tour in here, you name it, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Saxon, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Dio, Motorhead, Cannibal Corpse (with Chris Barnes), Pantera, Faith No More even bands that weren't really well known in those times like Biohazard or Agnostic Front (We had a pretty cool hardcore scene in those times too).

When the 2000s arrived, this is my scene and what I have known of first hand. All the big bands returned, with even better sound production and with an audience that was ready to hear all the music that was being created, metal festivals became pretty common and metal occupied one of the most important places in those festivals, metal was at its highest peak, genres like nu metal were loved here but there wasn't a heavy distinction between the new guard and the old one, for example my first concert was in 2008 and had the luck of seeing both Ozzy Osbourne, Black Label Society and Korn in one show, I think it only costed something like 20 dollars or even less, it was very affordable. And it went that way for some time, CDs were still being sold but pirated music was also very popular, first Peer to Peer programs here were called Emule and Ares, those were like a more South American Napster for you to imagine.

Then at the middle of the 2010's Metalcore/Deathcore was the last scene I saw, we had our local bands and shows, All That Remains, As I Lay Dying, Job for a Cowboy and Killswitch Engage all played in medium size theaters, and then something happened. The kids started to not give a fuck about rock music and started to listen to trap and pop, most rock festivals had to change their schedules to not get bankrupt and the rest is history, we entered in the scene that we are today, one that exists mostly on the internet. Metal became something more like a niche of music fans or for people that lived in those times that I told you. If I sound a little bit nostalgic, as a tango fan and Argentinian is in our blood to be like that but is because it was a better time for culture, it felt good, it felt real.

I know my posts sometimes could be interpreted as being rude to the newer scene or being a little bit apathic to newer bands, but Iam sure it has to do with growing up and cheering a time that sadly ended.

It’s all good dude. Different perspectives.

I'm not from Argentina and never visited there, so I don't know how it is where you live, but don't you still have a local metal scene? I was always under the impression that South America, in general, had a big metal community. Also, a quick google search showed me that Abbath, Batushka, Carcass, Lucifer, Megadeth, Cirith Ungol, Possessed, Venom, Abigail, Havok, Midnight will all play (or recently played) in Argentina. These are good bands to go see live!

I'm not saying that you're wrong about teenagers and young adults not really being into metal. Like, yeah, metal is not mainstream, but you can still attend metal concerts, and there is definitely a community outside of the internet.

But also, if you're into smaller niches of metal, then yes, metal will mosty be an online thing. I have offline (or "real life") friends who are into metal music, but only one I can say really share my passion for the more extreme stuff, and who is knowledgeable enough for us to have good conversations about it.

One point that I would just like to emphasize is that as someone who is just barely old enough to remember what it was like when metal was at its peak popularity and who had two older brothers who were totally in the thick of it, it should be noted that the version of metal that most would consider heavy had a very brief run as a mainstream phenomenon, and even then it wasn't usually as commercially formidable as Def Leppard's AOR era from 1983-1992 or the deluge of Sunset Strip bands that either coincided with it or followed its lead. Metallica and Iron Maiden were extremely successful on the road, but were always considered fringe players by the mainline entertainment media, terrestrial radio and the general public. This romanticized version of the past that some have is largely fictitious, we've always been on the dissenting side of the argument, which is as it should be, in my opinion.

Yeah, though there was a point where rags like Rolling Stone started having articles on Metallica around the AJFA period, and we were like "Fuck yeah!". But there was never a point in the USA where you would see Kreator or Slayer being some kind of mainstream deal. Metallica without a doubt became a massive phenomena with TBA, and Megadeth got pretty big but not like pop band big, and Anthrax had their moment where they were actually on a TV show. But even when metal was platinum for fairly extreme bands for the time, it wasn't like they were talked about on the same level as U2 or such fare. Even Ozzy who was fairly mainstream, was never selling 10 million copies of an album in the USA like Def Leppard, or later Metallica.

used that one quite a bit, and spent many an hour trying to get malware off of computers because of it.

Metallica's notoriety in mainstream media circles during the AJFA era was a fluke that was largely accredit to the success of the "One" music video, which basically paved the way for MTV's brief fixation with thrash metal that turned the rest of the Big 4 into household names. To be fair, Anthrax had some crossover appeal with the L.A. scene because of their comparatively lighter and more melodic approach. It should be noted though that Metallica didn't really come to mainstream success until they stripped 90% of the thrash out of their sound and spent a ridiculous amount of time on the road playing their less frenetic material.

I don't hold it against metal bands of any stripe if they just accidentally stumble into mainstream view, but I'm not a fan of metal bands trying to chase mainstream attention because it inevitably impacts the quality of the music being created. I don't mean this to simply be a condescending elitist, but over the years I've noticed that the average pop music consumer prefers oversimplified and safe sounding music because they tend to be, by nature, passive listeners. Passive listeners also tend to be fickle and will shift with the wind any time a brief breeze comes through, which is why the L.A. scene enjoyed such success, and also why it was discarded and later dismissed as a purely visual art form. I've always been a rabid loyalist to whatever music I enjoy, which is probably why I had issues with my classmates whenever the subject came up. To varying extents, I think this holds true for most metal heads, or just about anyone who doesn't just blindly chase the flavor of the moment for that matter.

Early lessons in malware removal lol


As far as Metallica and even Iron Maiden- two of the most successful metal bands as far as mainstream notoriety goes, even in the 90s on rock stations (101.1 KUFO!) I recall them only playing a handful of each. Mostly black album stuff- Enter Sandman, Sad But True...I think the Unforgiven ocassionally, Nothing Else Matters...One. For Maiden I really only remember the Trooper and Run to the Hills.

I think I tend to agree with the comment earlier that we may be suffering from some nostalgia or viewing the metal scene through rose colored glasses. Again, I'm sure this also depends on your geographic location and the crowd you ran with... if you were lucky enough to have a friend group of metalheads maybe your experience was different.

I'll be 53 later this year and feel the same way about the giants of the 70s. I'd give my left eye for a time machine that would transport me back to a Zepplin gig circa 1970, or Sabbath circa 1970, Deep Purple, Rainbow, Thin Lizzy, Jethro Tull, etc.

I got into metal in 1983-1984 & missed the heights of the NWOBHM which would have been a pleasure to witness in 'real time'. I bought "Powerslave" on the day of its release but missed Maiden's meteoric rise from the underground. They were already huge when I discovered them.

That said, I feel fortunate to have "been a part of" the rise of thrash from a truly unknown, underground phenomenon into being the bluest flame of metal by 1987, or so.
And, while death metal didn't captivate me to the same degree as did thrash, it was cool to witness it's nascent years, too. I bought "Seven Churches" in early '86 after hearing Possessed being promoted on a local college radio station as being "the next Venom". I purchased "Scream Bloody Gore" before it was officially released on a whim, due to the recommendation of a record shop owner. I was there to buy Testament's "The Legacy", and the shopkeeper said "If you like thrash, you'll love this new thrash band, Death".

I know we haven't talked about All that Remains that much in this thread about their upcoming album, but damn, that first single is weak...

It wasn't terrible to me, but it was pretty by the numbers. My big problem with most of the metalcore that has been put out lately is that it's too much like the ultra-formulaic stuff from the mid-2000s. Honestly, most of the better stuff to come out of the style recently has been European rather than North American, especially the recent albums out of Heaven Shall Burn and Caliban.

Well, I didn't say terrible, I said weak. Weak as in everything you described. It's mediocre, formulaic, played out.