Dont know anything about this band..... Gives me a kmfdm vibe. Heavy as shit. ANyone heard of Samael?

All i know of them is this compilation i have that they were on:



(best part about that one is, as you can see, the real match (!) that is included in the jewel case, for all of the listeners' church burning needs, obvi)

I wasn't that into what they were playing then. I guess i would call it progressive black metal? They struck me more as followers than leaders in that genre.

This electro version of them is maybe a little more interesting though.

lots of epic bands on that cd you have there.

Yeah, that comp was hot shit when it came out. IIRC, i got it for free at a Dillinger Escape Plan/Nile/Neurosis show? I certainly don't remember buying it.

That show was fucking strange as hell, all kinds of weird Century Media freebies beyond the typical sticker/poster shit.

Like this fairly epic bottleopener/lighter:



I mean, Neurosis is okay, but really that, as a lighter design, is fucking sweet.

This is sweet.

I have Passage and Eternal. I haven't listened to them in a good long while though. They started off as a pretty straightforward blackened-death kinda band. Started incorporating industrial elements around Passage by using programmed drums and synth. The bits I've heard in the past few years make me think there's Real Live Drums (their drummer did all the programming, and has a weird hybrid setup live from pictures I've seen) mixed in now again, which is cool.

I enjoyed that.

I have the old Century Media Identity 5 comp from like '97 kicking around. I discovered a lot of good bands through that, like a lot a lot. Seen a good number of 'em live too. I probably bought every record that had a track on there save for the hardcore stuff and Angra. Everything else I have or had, I think.

There were a lot of really creative bands in metal in the late '90s.

I want that lighter or at least one in a similar design. Will now go out of my way to find something similar but in a nice brushed aluminium finish.

Samael are an early black metal band... Very influential, in fact I'd argue that Vorph laid the groundwork for the standard black metal vox... They did sound kind of death/thrash, as did most bm from before Norway... By 1994 though they got sick of that shit and went electro.

That is interesting. I guess a case for me, of hearing the wrong thing first, and thinking that the borrowing of sounds went the other way.

Ah yes I've done that a lot... Does historical significance mean a lot or is music just music? I have a friend who'd argue the latter, but he might just not care to pay attention to such things...

Its totally a case by case thing for me. Some things that were blatantly ripped off become shitty when you hear what they ripped off, but sometimes the ripoff survives the revelation of the original. Depends on how the copying goes down.

I mean, it is actually possible , IMO, for a band to aim to copy another band, but wind up doing it better. Writing better songs, or just generally working the sonic angles better.

Though also... generally i am one to pull some 'first is best' type of elitism, to some degree. I do think that it should count for something. Even if what is built new, is improved later by someone else.

I try not to get too stupid with it though, because no one likes an insufferable jackass who does that. Like: "no, The Velvet Underground were NOT the first metal band, dick."

There are a lot of different aspects to it though. For Instance, if everyone copies a sound, do you think less of the original band if they keep doing that sound too? I kind of do. Even though it isn't exactly logical. It is tricky.

Ooh! I wanna pick yer brane here. Do you have a good example of said phenomenon? I'll agree it's totally possible, but there's so many second-rate imitations that totally lose the subtleties of the original it's hard to think of one off the top of my head. Especially in metal.

Likewise, re: early '90s Euro-metal, I find the original incarnations of a lot of those bands... well, boring, to be honest. Samael among them. Sentenced, Amorphis, Tiamat, to name a few. I think Haven is my favorite Dark Tranquillity record. Moonspell, another... Now, this isn't to say I'm thinking they're producing their best work now but say ten years ago, I would have said they were. It could be a nostalgia thing for me because in the late '90s I was really into that stuff. I think that was also a high point for creativity among the European bands. I was never, even when I listened to a hella lot more metal, one of the "their first album is their best, d00d!" types. I think bands need time to grow and develop and find themselves as a collaborative thing. I think those bands got really interesting when they incorporated elements outside of their original sound. I also think they sorta ran out of steam, as bands are wont to do, but we got a few good records out of 'em.

This is also going to inspire a spinoff thread...

Quick answer to your last question, Chris... I hate In Flames. Not because they suck, but because they were ripped off so hard that I can't stand the original music anymore. Don't like At the Gates much either for the same reasons.

In Flames has three really good records (I never was into Jester Race that much... it's the next three) and At The Gates one great one in their catalogs. I'll revisit SOTS once a year or so and haven't touched In Flames in forever. In Flames is also in the odd position of I think having been influenced by things that are influenced by them, which is a little odd. I also listened to them a ton and went to see them in random places when that stuff was new, which may account for my take. And Mr. Nordstrom's work did for better or worse help shape the sound of metal since and get more than a few people into making records. Hearing Whoracle when it came out might have pushed me down that road as much as Trent Reznor did.

Off the top 'me skull, a recent one, that band Nails with their very Entombed-ripping Unsilent Death record. It is basically what is good about that era Entombed, completely minus what is notsogood. It is concise, efficient, well-edited(meaning it has experienced the judicious cutting-out of dreck) well recorded, well produced. And it is over in thirteen minutes, ten songs.

There is nothing new there, really. It is just done well. For what i want from metal, i would even say: done better.

I would have to think more for other metal examples though.

Metal's a hard one because of the nature of the thing, so much of it's influenced by itself.

Mmmm I beg to diffrar!~!

The old stuff has value IMO for completely different reasons than their catchy stuff.
But my main point is that Terminal Spirit Disease fucking rapes, in almost the same way that SOTS does. Just a little more complex, which for me is good compared to SOTS. There is a lot more depth, but it's still quite stripped down compared to the old stuff. Fucking love the counterpoint riffery here.

I forgot about that one. I suppose a bit part of why I like SOTS is the song structures and how sorta... compact it is. It is, for death metal at least, catchy and accessible, but it's a damn sight meaner sounding than In Flames or Arch Enemy. Oddly, I like the first few Soilwork records and don't like anything after that really largely because it's meaner and less accessible.

Fuck, I really love Tomas' vocals.