Monday, September 24, 2007

Metal veterans still rocking!


As I now have the luxury of knowing where all me records are (see earlier posting Lost Gems), I am able to enjoy specific albums which I have not heard in fooking years. Case in point is the very excellent Malevolent Creation & their superb debut album , Ten Commandments, from 1990. Just check out the video above fer a sample of their bone crunching metal.

But what I want to highlight is that I am truly fooking amazed that so many bands from the "golden age of metal" (ie the 80s & early-to-mid 90s) have survived till this very day. Now I admit when I first started listening to this genre, I never expected so many of its practitioners to still be around. Behemoths like Led Zep were around fer 13 years while Deep Purple & Scorpions will probably be around forever thanx largely to their classic tunes (& appeal among the mat rockers in this neck of the woods) but who would have seriously thought that the more extreme bands would still be banging after 20-odd years.

Just flick through the pages of extreme metal publications such as Zero Tolerance or a quick google will tell you that many of these hair merchants are still recording & touring outfits. Names such as Testament, Megadeth, Celtic Frost, Obituary, Morbid Angel, Bolt Thrower, Slayer, Napalm Death (who played here recently, see earlier post Still buzzing from the grind) &, of course, Malevolent Creation are just some that are still active entities despite receding hairlines & expanding beer guts!

Fills me with pride that these underground veterans from me generation are still at it & influencing a whole new generation of metalheads. Of course, some will argue that this is a bad sign that suggests little or no real movement in the genre. Not true. Plenty of new bands such Trivium, Mastodon, Slipknot, Chimaira, Opeth, Dimmur Boggir et la have pushed the boundaries over the years.

But like an old blanket or comfort food, it is nice to hear that these old timers are still heavily into severe cranium damaging metal. Before I sign off this posting, I'd just like to remind you of the quote that appeared on the back of Metallica's Kill Em All opus : "Bang the head that doesn't bang!"

PS: Please feel free to suggest some new bands to check out or post news items on these veteran metal acts.

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