Melodic rock. Bands like boston,foreigner,journey,stage dolls,vertigo,norway,etc.:)

Been listening to Killswitch Engage 'As Daylight Dies' and 'Watch Out!' by Alexisonfire this afternoon.
Killswitch are incredible. They can alternate between brutal metal and beautiful, moving melodies like no other band I've ever heard. I saw them at Download festival last year, best band of the whole weekend.

I don't mind Killswitch Engage but I hated their END OF HEARTACHE album, I thought it was utter crap and it quickly went to the back of the CD collection.

Here's a real find and to be honest until today I didn't even know of their existence. It's a Phil Anselmo side project that he did with his ex-wife Stephanie Opal. They're called SOUTHERN ISOLATION and it's nothing heavy, just moody melodic acoustic Southern Rock. They only released one EP that's now very rare.

Check their MySpace page for a couple of songs (and an Alter Bridge song someone accidentally added). Hal, Tall Dude etc, this is for you! ;) just don't expect owt heavy.

And here's a quote from Phil Anselmo on his inspiration for it:

Anselmo always speaks sense. Think what you like of him (a lot of people dislike for apparently being a racist (as well as other things)... mind you you can't say shit these days without being branded as that) but he knows what he's talking about and is a nice guy beyond his troubles. He's a living ****ing legend if you ask me.

Yeah, he really is. Plus, he's a big horror fan to boot ;) I've got a Superjoint DVD and in one of the interviews with him he starts talking about how much he loves films like 'The Changeling' and 'Amityville 2' etc.
Thanks for the link Cloud, I'll give 'em a listen today. Usually love anything by Anselmo.

As for Killswitch, yeah, End of Heartache was their weakest album by far. I liked a couple of tracks on it but even they weren't anything really special. They certainly made up for it with 'As Daylight Dies'. I bought it on the same day as As I Lay Dying's last album 'An Ocean Between Us'. I was expecting to like AILD's a hell of a lot more but Killswitch's blew it out of the water. I was a bit disappointed with AILD's tbh, nowhere near as good as their previous albums.

To be honest I haven't heard that album. After End Of Heartache I gave up on them. I'll give a few of their newer songs a listen later but I really don't like Howard Jones' voice, it feels out of place to me.

Let us know what you think to Southern Isolation. The rest of their EP is up on YouTube if you wanna hear it. I love moody acoustic music.

I'm mainly listening to the new Oomph! (terrible name - but great band) album Monster and another German band called Eisenherz. Listen to quite a lot of German music - particularly Rammstein who i've seen a couple of times and are fantastic live.

Really like KSE as well, probably prefer Alive or just Breathing over End of Heartache. For some reason i haven't got round to buying As Daylight Dies yet - will have to bump it up the list.

Have you ever heard Blood Has Been Shed Cloud? If not they may change your opinion on Howard Jones, it's the band he was in before he joined KSE. Far superior to Killswitch IMO, absolutley furious, crushing, brutal mathcore/ hardcore/ Beatdown type music. Very different from Killswitch, and I mean VERY different ;). Theres none of that melody, singing about love and stuff (which i'm not saying is a bad thing, for Killswitch at least). BHBS's 'Spirals' album is absolutley superb :cool:

Yeah sure mate, I'll get back to you on Southern Isolation once i've listened to them. I really like stuff like that myself although I have to be in the mood for it a lot of the time.

BTW, If your gonna check out some of Killswitch's new songs I'd recommend 'Daylight Dies', 'This is Absolution', 'My Curse' or 'Unbroken'. There the best tracks off the album IMO.

PS. Thresh, if your planning on picking it up, go for the 2 Disc special edition as it features some pretty decent bonus tracks and a DVD featuring about 4 music videos. Think you can get it in HMV for about 8 quid now.

Got the End of Heartache special edtion so it'll be good to have the As Daylight Dies special edition next to it in the collection, and at 8 quid you can't go wrong! Will pop in to HMV during the week - cheers mate!

I haven't heard them but will give 'em a listen soon. I've never really been too fussed about this new wave of metal such as Metalcore and Hardcore etc. I find most of it too formulaic and plain boring. Since the short lived Nu-Metal era died out I'd probably be able to name the number of bands I've liked on one hand. The last time I honestly got excited by modern day music was when the British Metal industry was seemingly on the up with bands like Miocene and One Minute Silence. Then overnight that died and we were left with ****ing Emo bollocks. I'm getting depressed now. Still, there are some good Thrash and Sludge bands out there I guess still holding the metal flag high.

No offence to anyone who likes Emo btw, lol.

I know what you mean :rolleyes:.
I'm really into sludge at the moment, Annotations of an Autopsy and Suicide Silence are incredible bands. They're new but they're really flying the flag for old school death, grind, sludge metal.
I'm quite into hardcore, metalcore but not so much now as I was say a year ago. The whole thing got very old very quickly with hundreds of bands just knocking out the same formula - emo singing, breakdown, 'cookie monster' vocals etc. A couple of years back when the british metalcore scene first exploded it was quite exciting what with bands like Centurion, Architects, Clone the Fragile, Shaped by Fate etc. coming out all with their own unique styles and takes on the genre but as is always the case the whole thing got saturated with hundreds of copycat bands springing up and killing it off.

To be honest, Hal. The two bands mentioned there are too noisy for me. I just can't do brutality anymore without melody of some kind. I really have to feel something and be immersed in the song. I think I'm getting old before my time, lol.

Are you into Melodic Death Metal? Bands like In Flames, Arch Enemy, Soilwork, Amon Amarth, Extol, Gardenian, Dark Tranquillity, Insomnium, Carcass etc etc? That's the kind of really heavy music I like. With lots of brutality broken up by angsty melody.
Other than that it's stuff like the New Orleans Sludge/Stoner scene (Down, EYEHATEGOD, Crowbar, Corrosion Of Conformity, Acid Bath), Hardcore Punk, Thrash, Industrial, Industrial Metal, Nu-Metal, Progressive Metal, Trip-Hop, Grunge, some Black Metal, very very little "Indie" (Mansun are one of my all time favourite bands), Heavy Metal with a twist of Glam (i.e. Guns N' Roses, Skid Row, LA Guns). And more but that's off the top of my head.

Owt with a good mix of melody and brutality that doesn't feel too by numbers and that's on a conveyor belt.

Lol. Yeah, I do like melodic death metal a lot. I love In Flames stuff, I've got most of their albums, same goes for Carcass, their an awesome band. Quite like Amon Amarth, Soilwork and Arch Enemy aswell. Saw Enemy at Download a couple of years ago and they put on a good show (although it was kind of stolen by a fan who jumped 40 ft from the scaffolding lol). At the same time though I really love seriously brutal relentless music like Suicide Silence, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Misery Index, The Red Chord etc.

Saying that I do kind of feel i'm getting to the stage where I cant really listen to that stuff as much as I used to or as passionatley as I used to. I know what you mean about needing to feel immersed in a song to really enjoy it. Over the last few years I've increasingly branched out into different genre's to find new depths of stuff to listen to as the same old, same old brutal stuff does get a bit stale sometimes. When I was younger I could listen to Death metal for hours on end, guess i'm jut getting old :( LOL.

I'd say my favourite genre of music is emotional hardcore, bands like Poison the Well, Shai Hulud, Norma Jean, Hopesfall, Armsbendback and the like. For me thats got the perfect balance of heaviness and emotion, melody etc. I find myself listening to these type of bands more so than any others usually. The lyrics that tend to accompany this type of music are always brilliant aswell, quite often really poetic and really carry a lot of emotional weight without being too sappy.

Forgive me for interrupting, ( I like to read the Music Thread to see if anyone joins has the same musical taste as me ) but what I wanna know is, what is sludge bands / music.?

Sludge metal (or sludgecore) is like death metal but a lot slower and quite often features breakdowns (which death metal traditionally dosen't). The vocals usually alternate between 'Pig Squeals' and 'Cookie Monster' style. It's probably the heaviest type of metal there is. I'll let Cloud explain sludge/ stoner style music as apart from Down it's not something i'm too familiar with.

Hope that helps mate ;)

Sludge is basically a twist on the old Black Sabbath sound done Lousiania-style. It deals mostly with depressing issues played in a way that evokes feel and atmosphere. The style of play is a slow reflective style, you won't get Dave Mustaine-type speed or solos but instead will be showered in a deep southern feel. To simplify it even further it's basically balls to the wall metal done by men with beards ;).

Here's a YouTube video for you to check out Vips... Down - Ghosts Along The Mississippi

Hal, two questions, 1) what's the SJR DVD you made reference to? I kept forgetting to ask. I wanna check it out now, and 2) have you had a listen to Southern Isolation yet?

Yeah I listened to Southern Isolation cloud. Sorry, I forgot to mention it. Yeah, they're really good, I haven't checked out the stuff on youtube yet but I listened to 'Southern man' and 'Come back and let me in' on myspace. Really liked them, not the kind of stuff I listen to on a regular basis but if I'm in the mood I love stuff like that. Is the EP OOP now? Wouldn't mind picking it up.

The Superjoint DVD I've got is called 'Superjoint Ritual Live in Texas'. It was released after 'Use once and Destroy' (so unfortunatley dosen't feature any songs from 'Lethal Dose of American Hatred') It's a great DVD though. It's got a live set, which I think features all the songs from the album, and interviews with all the band members. My sister got me it for christmas or something a few years ago I think but you can get it on amazon for 6.99 if you wanna check it out mate.

Thanks, I'll be ordering one of those soon.

As for Southern Isolation, their EP is OOP but it can be bought on Amazon Marketplace for the bargain price of ?128.37... lol.

Is sludge the Southern equivalent of what Lee Dorrian was / is doing with Cathedral? Cathedral are fantastic. Well, first album / demo's were amazing, second album was worth a shot but admittedly I haven't heard much since.

What about Doomriders? They do a fantastic cover version of Danzig's "Possession", probably better than the original.

Thanks for the link Cloud.

Yeah, Cathedral's first album was great. That's the only one I've heard though. I saw them live once and they were really good. Hard to believe Lee Dorrian was the original vocalist for Napalm Death. Their Scum album featuring him is an absolute classic, the album that pretty much single handedly invented Grindcore.

Did you watch the video Vip's? what did you reckon to them?

If you wanna check out the other type of sludge (sludgecore) then check out Suicide Silence's video for 'Destruction of a Statue'. Remember to crank your speakers up to full first though ;) :D

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=iu4iSndrofM

Was'nt that keen on the first one but the second ones definetly more to my liking.

I wish you'd check out Nine Below Zero on the Young Ones or some of the electric live concert footage as its really much harder than the link Cloud put for them.

Let me just point out though that Stoner Sludge is completely different to Deathcore. Deathcore is all out brutality with no melody, Stoner Sludge is all out melody.

Sludge is similar to Doom Metal (Cathedral), the key difference though is that there is no Gothic ambiance in Sludge... just all out WHITE PRIDE! :D

Vipco WHAT?!??? You preferred Suicide Silence to Down??? I'm shocked.

I would listen to Nine Below Zero again but I'll end up with sore knees :p.

Definetly Cloud.
Suicide had a sound that if you were at that gig you'd be jumping about grabing and pushing people. Great Stuff.

BTW Cloud, did you know in the early days of nbz their gigs were pretty dangerous places to go to .

Nic Bullen was the original vocalist, that's him you can hear tearing through the A-side of "Scum". Dorrian only appears on the B-side.

This fact astonished me when I first found out.

Woah. Me too. I didn't know that. Damn, I'm embarassed now :D Theres me thinking i'm a big Napalm Death fan aswell. LOL. I've seen them live before but it was with Barney Greenway on vocals (my girlfriend fell asleep during the gig :eek: I couldn't believe it, at a naplam death gig! I didn't even think it was possible :p)

I've gotta say mate, I'm surprised aswell. Cool, hey, if you want more where that came from just let me know :D

btw, at those type of beatdown gigs it's not so much grabbing and pushing people but more like beating the absolute shit out of people. Lost count of the times I've come home with black eyes, fat lips and bruised knuckles, it's a seriously brutal affair, a great night out for all involved ;) :D

You mentioned Napalm Death Hal, I saw them live in the Empire Belfast in the late 90's.
That was one loud gig.

So we won't be making a Down fan out of you then Vips? Hmmm, alright just for you I'll link you to this song, perhaps Down's best ever song?

Hail The Leaf

So who else you into apart from NBZ? I might have asked this before so if I have then apologies.

I never really listen to any one else to be honest, 9BZ bring me back to happier times when I listen to them.
Probably Edith Piaf would get a listen every week .

Did'nt like that Down song Cloud, I dont like their sound. I liked Suicide's sound much better.
I couldn't smoke to that Cloud, ( not that I would ) , listen to The Doors ' Riders on the Storm' for an experience. Beautiful.

Riders On The Storm is indeed a good song. To be honest though I think The Doors inspired softer Stoner bands like Kyuss, Queens Of The Stone Age and Fu Manchu. Down are Heavy Metal all the way.

Have you heard Snoop D's mix of Riders. Cloud. ?
The rapping with Morrison singing works quite well.

I like some West Coast Rap and i've always liked The Village People.

I dont expect you to like the VP but what about Rap or Gangsta Rap.?
I've always thought Biggie Smalls's Suicidal Thoughts or Suicidal Tendisies, especially the mix with Bob Marley to be a classic.

How about you Hal an Trench, any views.?

Not very keen on rap as a whole but I love Wu-Tang Clan and Cypress Hill (now theres a band you can smoke to :D). I used to be into rap a lot more than I am now back when I was younger and got into the nu-metal scene.
I used to be quite into Insane Clown Posse and Twiztid at one point aswell but it didnt last too long.

Which rap artists are you into Vip's?

Sorry Vips, I hate Rap with a passion. Some Rap Metal is good though.

'Stone the crow' for me Cloud.

When we get a CD recorded in December I'll have to put a link up to my bands myspace so you guys can check out some of our songs. I'd like to hear what you think. We recorded a few demo tracks a few months ago but the sound quality is appalling, not much point in listening to them. Were doing a 4 track EP and mixing it ourselves so not sure how its going to turn out yet.

Thats great news Hal, Good luck.

Dont forget to put a link to your bands material. I'd love to hear it.
What do you play.? bass, lead, drums, etc.

My all time musical hero's are Dennis Greaves and Keith Moon.

I used to work in a dance club and at patries after work i'd try listen to Biggie, Tupac,Public Emeny Cypress Hill, Big Daddy Kane and some of the gansta stuff, but everyone else was into trancy stuff , so I never really got into that much as it didnt work for most people .

I was really into the Hard House scene though in the 90's , all the Tidy stuff. I was into Jungle as well.

But now I just listen to a little Edith Piaf, and 95%nbz, its hard to turn your back on a band I first seen live at 14 , 24 years ago, 25 years on December , unless im 'relaxing'. hehehe, then something like AIR's quite good or The Doors.

Anybody heard of a Japaneese giatarist Myriva (forgive spelling), the guys awesome .

I also like Primal Scream.