Metal Training Wheels
Not all of us came out of the womb holding a Nachtmystium album while wearing a Graf Orlock shirt and Amon Amarth sweatpants. For me, it took a while to arrive at what I think could be deemed as a “good taste in music”, good metal specifically. I was trading music with a friend the other day, he didn’t have anything on his hard drive that wasn’t super mainstream. But, he had a bunch of ripped CDs that I donated to Goodwill a few years ago – a butt ton of crappy nu metal. So of course I grabbed all the stuff I hadn’t listened to in years and took a trip down memory lane. Bad idea, it was mostly crap and I remembered why I donated it. It reminded me of my years long path of metal trial and error though. I need to repent and admit to …the errors:
Static-X
YEAH YOU PUSH IT
I admit, these rat bastards probably started me off into metal. I saw the video for ‘Push It’ on MTV and thought it totally kicked ass. I immediately bought the album. That dude had a huge goatee and obviously the metal-ness of the music is proportional to the length of your facial hair. When I learned to play guitar, I realized that song has two fucking riffs in it. Two riffs, maybe three chords total. I felt ripped off. Later, an acquaintance of mine that posts on this blog who shall not be named TERRIE would be caught buying Shadow Zone, long long after he had discovered good music. For this he shall never be forgiven.
I gave Wisconsin Death Trip another spin, and skipped 9 of 12 songs due to sheer crappiness. ‘Push It’, ‘I’m with Stupid’, and ‘Bled for Days’ are tolerable. Barely. They’re mostly gibberish. The rest of the album is garbage.
Fear Factory
let's rip off every good pantera riff and add robot noises
My second college roomate introduced me to Fear Factory. I heard Edgecrusher and my primitive brain exploded. It was the heaviest thing I’ve ever heard. The crunchiest riffs. The hardest, most hateful lyrics. It was brutal, like a futuristic robot metal band. We would rock this stuff in the dorm to rage against the Dave Matthews machine that everyone else seemed to be listening to.
Later I would discover Pantera, who were actually hateful. I then realized that Fear Factory just picked three or found good Pantera riffs, added a bunch of keyboard twiddly-beep-squonks, and made 50 songs out of them. Due to the size of Dino’s fat hands, no songs ever reach past the 6th fret. His fingers are also too large to play solos apparently.
To top off the shit sandwich, they covered ‘Cars’.
Seriously though, ‘Body Hammer’. The intro riff to that song is good. I still bust it out sometimes. Both chords.
Powerman 5000
what the..... hell?
I got into Powerman 5000 after I heard ‘When Worlds Collide’. That song was bad ass. The band members had bad ass names like Spider and M33. These are obviously some hard core dudes. And the main guy was Rob Zombie’s brother so it had to be good, right?
I thought it would be a good idea to grab their first album off my buddy’s hard drive. I actually bought this album back in 1999, so it had to have some redeeming value, right? Holy shit, I’ve never been so wrong in my life. There is not a single bearable song on this entire album. I tried listening to ‘When Worlds Collide’ and threw up in my mouth a little as I imagined the intro to every sporting event in the past 10 years.
Honorable Mentions:
Orgy – I think it was at least a year before I realized Blue Monday was a cover. All other songs are guaranteed unlistenable.
Rob Zombie - Inventor of the word ‘Yeah’. I still like Rob Zombie so stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
Korn – Some marginally good songs, but the crap-to-good ratio is overwhelming. Recent attempts to cover Metallica are embarassing.
Spineshank – I bought this album, I can’t remember why. Hopefully this band faded into oblivion.
Post the crappiest bands you ever liked in the comments so I don’t feel so ridiculously misguided.
You forgot to talk about Fear Factory’s first cd – soul of a new machine, which is still to this day, pretty brutal.
The growl at the beginning of Scapegoat is terrorizing – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB548GPzF3E
Also, in the crap bands category, I would admit to some coal chamber and machine head. Although I will give old old machine head a listen now and then. You know…before they turned gay.
I’ll admit to being a casual listener to Garbage. I don’t know what it is really. Shirley Manson is a babe. The production is flawless. The songs are catchy. Shirley Manson is a babe…
They aren’t even close to being “metal” though so…I don’t know. Shirley Manson is a babe.
I suck at life.
BIG TRUCK
Coal Chamber. One or two verses sang two or three times. What a formula.
I think it was over for Coal Chamber when they were more focused on their makeup and fishnet shirts than making the metals.
Also, I dont know who started the crap slap bass that korn and coal chamber used but I am glad it’s gone. The bassist’s hands are moving but it’s all the same note. Flug Flug Flug. – http://tr.youtube.com/watch?v=MEi6if-s1-g
I went through some shit-band love affairs:
Coal Chamber: In high school I saw Pantera and Anthrax and Coal Chamber opened. I thought they were awesome. Come to find out they were gayer than IWABO at a Wham concert.
Limp Bizkit: I consider this a time of immense retardation in my life and choices.
Disturbed: See above
Fear Factory: I really liked the drums, that was it, I swear
Godsmack: They named themselves after an AIC song, that seemed cool, for a second