The Shrine

Cool video, if you haven't seen it.

On the topic of metal, it seems to be the only genre that gets me from "Wow, this is fucking awesome!" to "GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING VOCALIST NEEDS TO FUCKING DIE!" in about 30 seconds. I hate growling. Really fucking hate growling. Or just obsessive screaming. Otherwise, I would be listening to so much potentially awesome metal.

What kind of good metal bands do you recommend? I'm a big fan of Dream Theater because it harks back to my love of prog rock. I also like old Metallica, KoRn, Bionic Jive, System of a Down, some Type O Negative, White Zombie, Drain STH, etc. I mean Astro-Creep 9000 was a really fucking good example of metal and an awesome guitarist, so why can't I find something else like that?

I listen to Darkest Hour despite their vocalist. The music itself is just so damn good. I've learned to listen "around" the vocals.

Darkest Hour - Sound the Surrender
Darkest Hour - Tunguska
Darkest Hour - Deliver Us

I also encountered a flamenco duo recently, Rodrigo y Gabriela. My first thought upon hearing a live performance of Hanuman was "This is metal." It's done acoustically on flamenco guitars but it sounds like metal. And sure enough, these two met in Mexico while playing in thrash metal bands and eventually moved to Dublin.

I'd recommend Isis - Oceanic (it's all good but check out False Light for a quick introductory to how the vocalist sounds). It's hardly a growl in the sense that I think you're thinking of... But if a bear had a voice box it would probably sound like him. Your favorite bands in the genre sound like mine before I discovered stuff like Isis.

You would probably love the shit out of some Red Fang (check out Prehistoric Dog and Bird on Fire), but I just personally like Isis more.

Maritime is a much more harmonic look at what they do here and there in their albums.





This video is just awesome

Yeah, that Red Fang video was awesome. I'll check some more of them out.

ISIS seems to have the guitaring prowess, but the vocalist is just barely tolerable. Still, I can listen to it, so I'll try out some more. Sorry, Kupek, I couldn't really work around the vocalist with Darkest Hour.

It just seems to be the common pattern with 90% of the metal out there: great music with a vocalist that ruins everything.

Check out one of their instrumentals:

Darkest Hour - Veritas, Aequitas (part 1)
Darkest Hour - Veritas, Aequitas (part 2)

Also, check out the flamenco guitar players. They're damned good.