In no particular order; note that I have omitted Heartwork, Domination, Like Gods Of The Sun and Slaughter Of The Soul for not making the cutoff point. Early-mid '90s, those.

Opeth- Blackwater Park, Deliverance
Nevermore- Dead Heart
In Flames- Colony
Soilwork- The Chainheart Machine
My Dying Bride- The Light At The End Of The World, The Dreadful Hours
Amorphis- Tuonela
Moonspell- Sin/Pecado
Meshuggah- Nothing (this is actually my favorite record of theirs; an odd choice, I know. I like its oddness)
Emperor- IX Equilibrium
Dark Tranquillity- Haven (see above; odd choice.)
Grip Inc.- Nemesis, Solidify
Fear Factory- Obsolete


For really br00tz, I enjoyed Nile as a sound but not as writers so much. Wall o' noise.

Honorable mention to Tiamat's Skeleton Skeletron, which is roughly as metal as Sisters Of Mercy.

Off the top of my head, though I've probably missed one or two.

Note that this is what I would have listened to then not necessarily now, with a few exceptions.

Hmm. At that point for violent music...

I was playing in a pretty metalcore(er.. what would become metalcore) band. I was listening to a lot of mathmetal, chugmetal, and like powerviolence.

Back then:

1. Coalesce - 002, A Safe Place, Functioning On Impatience.
2. Converge - When Forever Comes Crashing, Jane Doe
3. Botch - American Nervoso, We Are The Romans
4. Charles Bronson - Youth Attack!
5. Dillinger Escape Plan - Calculating Infinity
6. Discordance Axis - Jouhou, Inalienable Dreamless
7. Cryptopsy - None So Vile
8. Gorguts - Obscura
9. Candiria - Whatever records fit the window, probably The Process Of Self Development and 300% Density?
10. His Hero Is Gone - Monuments To Thieves
11. 7000 Dying Rats - Songs To Fan The Flames Of Fire

Also, back then i was rocking the shit out of my vinyl copy of IX Equilibrium. The falsetto bit on the fourth or so track still gets me fired up with hilarity and metal horns. I used to think that was the funniest awesomest thing ever. Like "OH FUCK Isahn thinks he is King Diamond now?!! HAHAHAHAHA! YES!"

I don't know what else should be here. I should open up the boxes of CDs and see what is there. I haven't touched most of them since about 2003 or so? They are probably arranged in the order they were last listened to even.

I will need time and a cup of coffee to consider this.

But let me just start by saying,

Dying Fetus - Destroy the Opposition

Oooh, and probably some Earth Crisis. Maybe Destroy The Machines? Heehee.

Take yer time. And I think Chris and I are both talking what we listened to then vs. what of it we'd still listen to now. I for one would, save for nostalgia purposes, probably lean toward the more violent end of the spectrum and dump the melodeath entirely.

Ooh, I do remember listening to an awful lot of Iced Earth around then as well. I thought of them as a thrash band vs. power metal, which I could never get into.

Saw them open for In Flames on the Clayman tour which would have been 2000? 2001? In Toronto, too, Mr. Geoff. At The Reverb, I think, with Skinlab and... Walls Of Jericho didn't play that night.

Elephant memory: we were two or three rows back from the stage near the left (stage right, performer perspective) PA and some stoners kept trying to start a two-three person pit and kept knocking into me and my friend Ruth, and some straightedgers there for Earth Crisis kicked their ass. Which I was okay with. I remember wanting to go up and unplug the one dude in Earth Crisis, having less of a tolerance for noise-guitar than I do now by maybe a little. Being gothique sophisticates of course we had little time for such hardcore tomfoolery.

I wonder what my perspective on a lot of the bands I saw back in the day would be now if I saw those shows again.

Yeah, totally, i am seeing it as a window into that period. I was playing in a bad hardcore band around '96-98, bad metal band from about '95 to about 2001, bad powerviolence band from about '99 to about 2002?

So i was listening to a lot of older hardcore stuff(i.e. pre-allottedwindow). Then a shitload of local stuff(which local around here would have been like everything from Cave-In(when they were still angry most of the time) to Isis(when they were still angry most of the time) to Unearth, to the terrible bands i won't mention(or can't remember? ).

Then an awful lot of mathrock/mathmetal/techbullshit that was sprouting up then, then whatever i could find that was as fast as possible and screamy.

OH. Ulver - Nattens Madrigal i listened to wayyyy too often back then.

Also that fucked up three inch CD that the first Locust (s/t) record came out as.

Oh hell, while not typical metal, Lightning Bolt's Ride The Skies was blowing my mind back then too. Bought it on impulse without having any idea what it was about. Pleasantly surprising noise emerged from the speakers. I listened to that one an awful lot.

Since I was in my adolescent years then, I'll just list my favorite 90's and early 2000's metal records.


Name a Pantera album from that era, seriously.

Machine Head - Burn My Eyes

Opeth - Blackwater Park/Deliverance/Damnation

Morbid Angel - Domination/Covenant

Cannibal Corpse - insert everything they've ever put out here.

Fear Factory - Demanufacture

Children of Bodom - Follow the Reaper ('01 counts)

As I think of more I shall add them to other posts.

For the porpoises of this, I'll say '97-'02-3. These are points when we're, I think, seeing shifts in the scene, too, in terms of production values (this is big and IMO had a serious impact on the music, I think for the worse all told, unfortunate as it is), outside influences, and then after that American bands strongly influenced by the European scene from the years prior (ie. metalcore nicking In Flames/At The Gates riffs and harmonies).

But yeah, take it how you will. I think it was a genuine artistic high point for that music; a lot of good stuff came out around then, and I think a big part of that is the bands we've all mentioned had individual character. The "fuck you, this is our noise" aspect of it appeals to me. I like hearing a band go off and do their thing.

This was what I listened to around this time:









Granted I was 9 in '97 ....

It was an interesting time for me. I moved to NYC in i think 2003 or so. I went into kind of an informational black hole at that point. I went back and for about three or four years, i didn't buy anything new, just lots of 60s and 70s pop and stuff that was influenced heavily by 60s and 70s pop...

I was really kind of surprised when i came back here three or four years later, and started looking back into metal stuff...

And realized that there was nothing really that had been going on with it since i left?

Except that Unearth had become some kind of supernational/international touring beast, all of a sudden people knew who Converge was, and a lot of bands were coming out sounding a lot like a combination of the two.

That was fucked up for me. Really it was kind of coincidental that i cut out at exactly the time that a whole fuck ton of things changed(or rather, became quite popular and ceased to change) all at once, and i missed it. It still doesn't make any sense to me. Before 2003-ish so much was changing so often as far as what bands were trying to do, and failing or succeeding at. One constant though, is that just about NO ONE in bands in that scene expected to make any money ever off of it. Strange to have been there in the middle of it, and to have dumped it just as it caught on.

That is probably another mental illness of mine. That of ejection when popularity nears. By the time i heard Zao though, i was quite done with playing that kind of metal. Once the Xtian kids get involved, IMO, one simply has to GTFO. Fight or flight response maybe.

Really, i wouldn't want to have to be playing songs off that demo these days anyhow. In a way i guess a bullet was dodged. I wonder how the Unearth doods feel about it. Getting paid to rock must be at the very least, decent goings. I suspect they don't mind it much if they have to encore a bad metal song they wrote in '99 every now and again...

I know you love you some chugmetal.

I seem to remember Doktor S. initially liking a couple Grip Inc. tracks I posted, but those did flirt with industrial groovery, though they were as likely as not to play modern thrash versus experimetal. If I really looked hard through the catalog of that time, I bet I could find a good... half-dozen songs that would pass mustard to someone who would give KMFDM, Combichrist and Vision Thing-era TSOM the time of day.

On that note, Paradise Lost, One Second. Though that one, like Tiamat, had gone full-on goth at that point. I remember it being described to me as "the bastard child of Alice In Chains and Depeche Mode". Unsurprisingly, I was okay with this.

Another good one along those lines:



Definitely more mope vs. Paradise Lost's wrawk. Love the Mellotron and drumming on this. I'd be curious to hear whether Chris wants to cannonize the singer here.

What, on the Katatonia track?

Not at all. I like how that one is sung. It sounds natural, not comically affected or effected, with no boyband flourishes or otherwise unpleasantnesses. That is about all i ask.

It is hard to describe why a singer might get cannonshot. I can only say: that i know it when i hear it.

I was 6-13 years old so I wasn't listening to any legit metal at the time (however I rockin' some hardcore shit with Linkin Park) so I can only list albums I like now.. So hear it goes;

Morbid Angel - Domination (Though this is '95)
Meshuggah - Nothing (Also my favorite Meshuggah record, Snax-O )
Decapitated - Nihility
Suffocation - Despise The Sun
At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul
DESPISEDMOTHERFUCKINGICON - Consumed By Your Poison
Spawn Of Possession - Cabinet

There are a lot more, but these are the ones that really stick out to me. I think my favorite part of this era of metal was the production, pretty much complete lack of triggered toms and snares, audible bass and generally very-to-slightly gritty textures.

Yeah, the Katatonia track. I ask partly because I'm kinda curious re: the criteria and partly because I think the vocal on that is actually... rather beautiful, honestly.

There is, I think, an honesty to it vs. a theatricality that I suspect is yer usual reason for disliking a vocalist- too affected, too forced, done with an un-ironic nudge and a wink, especially when the content is more serious. See: Muse, Opeth. My assessment is there's a line where it hasn't crossed over the line to complete campiness, but there's this element of "you're trying a bit too hard, aren't you?", at least with those kind of singers- perfectly technically adept, not going for some cornball American Idol thing or the like, or be Meatloaf or Rob Halford or whomever, just... I get the impression that it's those who you see as trying too hard to be good or perhaps great when they should just say eff-that and sing the song, and the affectation distracts from or lessens their impact.

This is a complete guess, and I could be wide of the mark. I'm curious.

If I may pick yer brane a bit more, what's yer take on Layne Staley (as a harmony duo, Messrs. Staley & Cantrell are pretty hard to fuck with, the latter having a totally unpretentious, even plain (if expressive) voice) and Chris Cornell?