In Search of Metal pt 7: The Final Chapter
You are summoned forthwith to pay homage to the one true king
All things considered, 2000 is not a very strong year for metal. Very few albums that might be considered epochal, or an artist's best release; mostly a lot of B and C tier records, looking at the bigger picture. Not a lot of invention happening, the 90s were an extremely fertile time for metal and developing countless strains of it, but by 2000 everybody seems to be resting on their laurels, indolent, churning em out. Still running on the fumes of the 80s and 90s, and most everybody's hedging their bets, sticking with what works. I suppose that's why I embarked upon this endeavor: generally between 10 and 20 metal or metal-adjacent albums (including the heavier punk stuff) qualify for each of these tournaments, which is a fair enough number, but looking over the releases this year I saw very few that struck me as shoe-ins, or even particularly likely, and I thought the heavy rock umbrella might struggle to get more than a half-dozen records into this'n. Sometimes you have to take the bull by the horns.
I've not done so consciously, but in the course of this series I've one-by-one ticked off a metal subgenre that appeals primarily to metalheads—except for alt metal, which is a bit of an abject silo unto itself, distrusted by critics and true believers alike. I prioritized covering the subgenres that struck me as least likely to qualify for the tournament. Now that there's under a week left until nominations are due, there's a plethora of metal varieties left that I would have liked to cover individually, but which *do* conveniently fall under one very very broad umbrella: what some forumdwellers might call "hipster metal"; the one thing that sludge, doom, post-metal, stoner metal, metalcore, and grindcore all have in common is you'll find them all littered among best-of lists by orthodox music critics this new millennium, to a degree that you just won't the others. They're not your dad's heavy metal, and they show little detectable influence from the two most influential metal bands after Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, or from mainstream hard rock, from which a lion's share of the form's flamboyance and boneheadedness descends. All six of the prior slices of the metal pie are largely music by and for nerds and/or meatheads—not necessarily the case for these others, which reach back to Sabbath (a safer critical bet) or don't reach back at all, often arising as much from punk and experimental music as "metal". The vanguard example of what I'm talking about is Mastodon, and Brent Hinds has somewhat infamously gone on record as not being a fan of metal. If there's one thing metalheads don't like, it's having their own exclusionary instincts turned against them, so many have an axe to grind against this more critic-friendly umbrella. I don't—I honestly pity people who are too embarrassed to be caught dead rocking out to Judas Priest—nor do, I think, all that many metalheads, but you definitely run into these True Metal guys online and I do think there's a detectable difference between the true metal and the ~false~ metal, it's very easy to grasp WHY certain kinds of metal end up on lists and others don't. It's the same divide between John Carpenter and David Cronenberg, it's the elevatedly abject vs the abjectly elevated. Eventually critics come around on The Thing, but The Fly gets the laurels immediately—just how it goes. I'm gonna go through each remaining metal subgenre (some of which are just leftovers and don't fit neatly into this true/false paradigm), rap a little, pick one album in each y'ought check out, not being as exhaustive as before, I'ma getting this over with.
Groove metal: Groove metal is the hinge upon which metal swung between the oldschool and the new, it's the last new development in metal that the stubbornest oldheads tend to have any time for, and the wellspring of almost all that's come since with its combination of blistering guitar pyrotechnics with syncopation, lower tuning, and a harsher, more confrontational punk edge. There's not a whole lot of what you'd call groove metal from this year for the simple reason that groove metal evolved into nu-metal and became much more successful, and pure groove metal was getting to be a bit old-hat. When every release in your genre is compared to Pantera, your genre is going to suffer, and when you step too far away from the Pantera template you just become something else, be it nu-metal, industrial, metalcore, deathcore. Groove metal is almost more a mode than a genre, it's an approach. I only listened to two albums I'd really consider closer to pure groove metal. One was by Black Label Society, Zakk Wylde's band. The other was by Pantera. As it happens, last night I went to see the surviving members of Pantera play with Zakk Wylde on guitar, and it was fucking incredible. Rock and roll's original 1950s form was perfect, and in my opinion there have been three separate times that rock music has been perfected since: Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, and Pantera. I'm not saying those are the best bands, I'm not saying they're the best songwriters. I'm saying they're perfect, you could not change anything about their approach without diluting it. If you want to ROCK, those are your best options. Pantera is a very real contender for best band of the 90s, and most influential band of the 90s, and if you think that's an absurd statement it's only because you're not very familiar with metal. Pantera are the only thing every metal fan agrees about, musically-speaking. They are all things to all people, equally bonecrushing to oldheads and hipsters. There are only two explanations for anyone disliking Pantera: one, they have been defeated by how awesome they are. Or two, they think Phil Anselmo is an asshat, which is fair. Anselmo's response to accusations of racism tend to amount to "sorry I'm a stupid meathead who flies off the handle sometimes there's no hate in my heart" and considering he's claimed to be "mixed-breed" because he's Italian and French I'm inclined to believe him. At any rate. In 2000 Pantera released their final album, Reinventing the Steel, and it's almost universally regarded as their worst post-80s album. And it probably is. But post-80s Pantera has one of the most untouchable discographies of all time, so it still fucking RIPS. No band has ever sounded angrier than Pantera, they sound like they're gonna reach out through the speaker and rip your head off. It's awesome. Black Label Society is good too but it's no contest, nominate Pantera, REINVENTING THE STEEL.
My score: ☆☆☆☆½
Sludge metal: I'm gonna keep it real—I don't really understand what sludge metal is. I can only tell when something is sludge metal by process of elimination. "Oh, it's blown out and rough and mid/slow-tempo'd, so it sounds like stoner or doom metal, but it's kind of too unpleasant to be either of those. Has some hardcore punk edge but is way too metal for that. Some dynamic/experimental playing but you couldn't really call it prog. Must be sludge metal". I again only heard two albums that are considered sludge metal, Eyehategod's Confederacy of Ruined Lives and Isis' Celestial. Eyehategod have a groove metal flavor to them (once again: the last three decades of metal flow from Pantera) and they're good but their best days were the 90s, whilst Isis are one of the leading lights of 00s metal, and one of the bands most frequently cited as good by people who don't otherwise like much metal. Celestial is a very good album, low-key and atmospheric, and I think it's fairly likely to qualify with or without my help.
My score: ☆☆☆☆
Metalcore: I'm not great at recognizing metalcore either if I'm being honest, mostly because it tends to sound like other stuff. Lot of it sounds like groove metal. Lot of it sounds like really heavy hardcore. Some of it sounds like more metallic post-hardcore. The one thing it all seems to have is a lot of chugging and breakdowns, enough of those and I tend to concede I'm listening to a metalcore album. Heard four metalcore albums from 2000: Lamb of God's New American Gospel (as much a groove metal album), Killswitch Engage's eponymous debut (many metal fans complain that metalcore sounds "whiny" and this is the whiny one of this bunch), No Retreat's Rise of the Underdog (the most "legit" of these, but a bit one-note), and the one I'm spotlighting, Underoath's Cries of the Past. If you know Underoath it's probably as Gold-selling purveyors of Christian melodic metalcore during the genre's mid-00s peak, so it's jarring to hear them on this—as much a black or death metal band as metalcore, this is a relentlessly heavy record that hits you with more shrieks, breakdowns, solos than most anything else you'll hear this year, they pummel you over the course of five long-ass songs. Never heard anything else that combined these sounds this way.
My score: ☆☆☆☆
Doom Metal: Didn't get around to much doom metal this year, sadly, not much of note with one enormous exception. I am assuming that Electric Wizard's Dopethrone will qualify so not gonna dwell but suffice to say it needs to make it. Otherwise I only listened to Shape of Despair's Shades Of...., which is a solid atmospheric record, slow and gentle doom with a gothic streak.
My score: ☆☆☆½
Drone Metal: Doom metal's experimental cousin, drone metal could also be called ambient metal and capture the spirit of it. This subgenre was still in its infancy and fittingly the only thing of note representing it this year is Sunn O)))'s debut, ØØ Void, which is solid.
My score: ☆☆☆½
Stoner rock and metal: Stoner rock/metal tends to be premised on heavying up the sounds of classic rock to be more friendly to the inattentive modern ear. It's not often my favorite thing, I often find it a little cheesy, there's an ironic quality to it, if you see a band called some shit like The Badass Bigfoot Hell Machine you best believe that's a stoner band. Has a lot in common with the obnoxious "garage rock revival" stuff from around this time, hard rock in quotation marks, not my bag baby! For 2000 you have Queens of the Stone Age's Rated R, which I'm not overfond of but I assume will make it in. You also have Fu Manchu's King of the Road and Monster Magnet's God Says No, two fairly fun but slightly smarmy rock offerings. You've got Spiritual Beggars' Ad Astra, which is a heavier version of that. And then you have my spotlight pick, High on Fire's The Art of Self Defense, which is stoner metal in a more literal way: sounds like the earth has cracked open and molten weed is bubbling out. Just sounds awesome. Most stoner rock is about being a badass who rides a motocycle or whatever, but High on Fire sing about Conan the Barbarian type shit, which is better.
My score: ☆☆☆☆
Grindcore: If you want hardcore punk that's harder, harsher, noisier, faster and shorter, grindcore is what you want. It's the musical equivalent of getting curb-stomped. The two pure grindcore releases I heard this year are Nasum's Human 2.0 and Discordance Axis' The Inalienable Dreamless. Both go stupid hard but the thing about grindcore is it's all basically the same so it's always a question of who goes harder in less time, and in this case Discordance Axis wins handily.
My score: ☆☆☆☆½
Gothic metal: Gothic metal shares the same gloom that gothic rock spotlights, but doesn't have post-punk influences, it's more like softer, ethereal doom metal or very grim and despondent alt metal, lotta keyboards and atmosphere. Only heard two, HIM's Razorblade Romance and Sentenced's Crimson. There's also Jack off Jill's Clear Hearts Grey Flowers, which I probably ought have included in alt metal, I'd almost call it gothic punk, it's good stuff. Found HIM cornball as hell so Sentenced win handily, strong songwriting here, very hooky.
My score: ☆☆☆☆
Post-hardcore: I'm not too worried about how much post-hardcore makes the bracket and I suspect it won't need the help but it does get cited in a lot of metal lists so I'm compelled to cover it. I will say that whoever called it "post-hardcore" instead of "emo metal" probably kept a bunch of metal forum guys from going postal. Y'all know At the Drive-In, that's a shoe-in, fuggedabout it. Orchid's Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow! is real good but it's so brief it'd be a shame if it qualified over more substantial albums. Shellac got a good one. Number Girl got a good one, Japanese band, nifty stuff. Glassjaw's album leans cringe but it goes hard. Really dig Cave In's Jupiter. AFI's The Art of Drowning is a fun melodic one. Hot Snakes' Automatic is a garage-flavored example, goes hard. BUT if I had to pick one heavy punk-flavored album that I really want to make the cut, it'd have to be Mindless Self Indulgence's Frankenstein Girls Will Seem Strangley Sexy, a grating, electronic smorgasbord of spastic intensity. This feels like a precursor to the crunkcore that plagued my high school years (in more ways than one, regrettably), but my god is it creative and hype, this is Monster Energy piped directly into your ears.
My score: ☆☆☆☆
And that's it for heavy rock music of the year 2000, I expect you jackals to take some of these words to heart. I'm nominating the Godspeed You! Black Emperors and the Mojave 3s, the least you can do is let go your inhibitions and ROCK and then nominate Universal Migrator pt II: Flight of the Migrator. While I'm here, if I were gonna boost one not-remotely-metal album, it'd be Pram's The Museum of Imaginary Animals, which is like experimental exotica. Sounds much like Stereolab, but better because it doesn't have the French bullshit. France and rock got no business mixing, I'll be frank, you bring a FROG or god forbid a French Canadian in front of me I'll tell em that to their face. Anyway, rock hard, ride free. HEAVY METAL, or no metal at all—wimps and posers, leave the hall.
Dismissed