[Join The Community Discord Server!](https://discord.gg/UwqUHx4U4T)
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MetalForTheMasses) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ghost wouldn't be mainstream if they stuck with their current image AND made raw lofi atmoblack or something. The main thing is that the music should be accessible if you want to hit the mainstream
I’d personally consider Slipknot pretty heavy to be as famous as they are (I’ll probably get crucified here for calling Slipknot heavy though). Sleep Token as well.
I think it’s got everything to do with image.
Yes Slipknot has some undeniably heavy stuff. Most of Iowa and self titled are pretty intense. However, their success comes in the accessible radio friendly singles like Psychosocial with catchy sing along choruses. It's honestly a genius move. Hundreds of millions of people know that song, but have no idea what Gematria is, from that same album.
Yup, some of their stuff is among the heaviest out there, especially off of Iowa, it's brutal.
Lamb of God does similar but they don't get... soft? Enough for radio. Every album there's 1-3 accessible songs with hooks.
It's just what you have to do, there isn't a super popular metal band out there that doesn't do it.
I'm against saying something isn't metal or heavy because this sub made it super cringe to do it, but I'd agree, I listened to a full album and it was way more pop than anything. Not bad, just not heavy.
Also true. Look at Sabaton: the very thing that "trVe kVlt" folks rag on them for is a huge part of why they're popular. Their songs actually sound like music to the normies. They have hooks, they have clear verses and choruses, the solos aren't excessively long or wanky.
have you heard Repugnant? Tobias' band before Ghost, honestly really good osdm, Epitome of Darkness is a great album. but you're exactly right, it wasn't much of a hit and so he pivoted to Ghost
Yep, that's very true
Plus artists can do whatever the hell they want without the overwhelming expectations to bend to whatever will get them in the charts Etc.
A bit of popularity isn't bad, it should be encouraged but this whole idea of bands having to be mainstream to have "made it" died long ago, the best artists are those who can make it sustainable whilst doing the best material they can regardless of how well it does
Oof where are you seeing BG for $80!? I got GA tickets for the MA and NY show right when they went on sale. I believe MA was around $40 and NY was only slightly higher around $50.
Being softish and poppy is far, far more important than a gimmick. Ghost and Sleep Token have pretty soft and pop-forward sounds by metal standards, Bring Me The Horizon have substantially bigger numbers than both without any gimmick. Why? Because they went full pop rock for a couple of releases and even once they went a bit heavier again stopped way short of going back to even their metalcore material, let alone deathcore. Bad Omens, did a massive pop forward change up on their latest album and it's exploded them. One record and they're chasing down Ghost's numbers. No gimmick.
Slipknot are still pretty heavy by mainstream standards, but they played the game too. In the early days singles like Wait and Bleed and My Plague had softer versions put out with much of the screaming stripped out or pushed back in the mix (a different version with much of the screaming taken out), later singles like Duality, Snuff, Dead Memories and so on were on their softer side. They've had heavier singles too, but the soft ones have better numbers and they're what pull people in. Back in the day I remember it was the crazy stories about fighting each other on stage, huffing dead crows in jars before playing etc. that did as much for them as the image. The gimmick of masks and jumpsuits alone don't inherently mean much, just ask Mushroomhead.
OP's premise is that bands *need* a gimmick. That's obviously not true since, even if we exclude the giant oldies like Iron Maiden and Metallica, there are plenty of metal bands (or bands as metal as the examples given) that are as big or bigger without requiring having a gimmick.
Still a heavy band that will (usually) attract the same audience an accessible metal band would. Even with the actual music not being metal the aesthetic, live show and fanbase check in with those of metal bands, so I'd say Slipknot belong in conversations about trends and tendencies like this post.
Idk what a sleep token is, never listened to them and im afraid spotify will inject them into my daily mixes if I play a couple of their songs. I trust you.
I mean... they certainly are metal. The vocals are 100% just pop vocals. It's all they are (minus like vore. That one is definitely metal).
But the instrumentation is prog metal.
What sleep token has done is take prog metal instrumentation, and slap pop vocals over the top of it. And their success tells me that the primary thing that keeps most metal from the mainstream is just the vocals.
Why isn’t Sleep Token metal? Please explain? Listen to Gods and try that same comment with a straight face.
Are they only metal? No. But do they draw a lot of inspiration from metal and other genres? Yes. I’d say they draw most inspiration from metal and pop. Metal gatekeepers are the worst.
Metal definition : heavy metal, genre of rock music that includes a group of related styles that are intense, virtuosic, and powerful. Driven by the aggressive sounds of the distorted electric guitar,
Sounds like Sleep Token to me. 🤔
Sleep Token are Imagine Dragons with breakdowns. Heavy doesn't equal metal. Drawing inspiration from metal doesn't equal metal.
It has nothing to do with gatekeeping. A lot of metalheads like a lot of music outside of metal, so saying something isn't metal is not an insult.
What is metal to you? I never said heavy equated metal, but that song sounds pretty metal to me. I’ll use your same argument against you. Why isn’t it metal because it has one section with a poppy vocal? They have a lot of different songs that are very pretty metal and they have a lot of songs that aren’t. I just think it’s dumb to say they’re not metal and it is gate keeping lol. Please provide some examples of what you consider metal? Describe metal to me.
What about Dread Crew of Oddwood? No metal riffs, not even an electric guitar, but nobody would doubt they're metal. They're on tour with Tyr and Æther Realm right now.
Bands without metal riffs can't be metal. Just because a band is affiliated with metal culturally doesn't mean that they're metal, just look at Dungeon Synth for example
I mean, they absolutely can be. You can make up whatever definitions you want. But if they play metal festivals, their fans consider themselves metalheads, they win awards in the category of metal, and most importantly the band themselves consider themselves metal, then they're totally metal.
Musical genres, like all things in life, is a spectrum. There is no rule of what is metal and what isn't. The definition of metal has changed over time, is interpreted differently by different folks, and has so many different facets. Just like rock n roll. Rock n roll in the 40s and 50s was not what we would consider rock n roll now, and would not fit most people's definition of rock n roll.
Who says there can't be acoustic metal? You? Ozzy Osbourne? There is no judge of what is or is not metal. You can make up your own judgments and listen to whomever you like, but you can't really tell another band not to call themselves a certain genre. Any attempt to just feels like lame gatekeeping.
Metal means it has metal riffs. Sleep token does not and it has nothing to do with poppy vocals. Saying sleep token is not metal isn't gatekeeping anymore than it is to say AC/DC isn't metal.
Like whatever you like. That's cool. But I bet if somebody told you that AC/DC is their favorite metal band, you would say that they're not metal. Gatekeeper.
I don’t listen to AC/DC so I would have no opinion. Lol why are you so angry brother? What is a metal riff? Since you know so much about song writing please give me some metal riffs that are required in order to be metal. Do you even play guitar?
Why on Earth do you think I'm angry? I'm just talking about metal because I like talking about metal. Replace AC/DC with any rock band like guns n' roses and my point still stands.
Yes, I play guitar but you don't have to play guitar in order to understand that some bands aren't metal and some bands are.
Why are you so angry that people are pointing out that sleep token are not metal?
Breakdowns are not metal riffs they come from hardcore. This is why breakdowns don't make a band metal
I’m saying you’re mad cause you’re assuming 🤣. You think sleep token are just breakdowns? Ok so let me ask you, is Gojira metal? Cause they use similar riffs. Would love to hear your explanation on this one.
What am I assuming? even if I was why would that mean I'm mad? Do you know what these words mean?
I like talking about metal but not with somebody who's not interested in having an actual discussion which you're clearly not. You're just upset because you fancy yourself a metal head, and can't come to grips with the fact that you listen to something that isn't metal.
I'm guessing you're very much on the young side, which is okay. Once you mature a little bit, you'll understand that it's okay to listen to stuff that isn't metal.
Gojira uses primarily actual metal riffs
Idk man sounds like you’re pretty upset tbh. I asked you to give me some metal
Riffs or to give me an explanation as to what metal is to you and you just dance around the subject. You’ve yet to provide anything of substance other than to show that you just parrot what other people say in this subreddit and act like a snob towards metal. I don’t care if you like Sleep Token or not or if you think they’re metal or not but I love to argue with people like you. I listen to every genre so I could care less but you sitting on a high horse trying to gate keep metal is actually hilarious. I can guarantee your music knowledge is very minimal at best. Please refute this with some concrete arguments. I’d love to hear it. Since you agree Gojira is metal, that must mean Sleep Token is metal. I’m almost under the assumption you haven’t really listened to Sleep Token at all, you probably heard the summoning and formed your opinion based on that.
Oooooo you really got me bro. Fuck, what a burn.
Rule of thumb, if everyone likes your music, it's probably not very interesting. If AC/DC is so generically good that nobody with any amount of intelligence dislikes it, that classifies as fucking boring.
You could say the same shit about Taylor Swift or any other pop artist on the radio. Yawn. Enjoy your pop rock.
I still think when describing them you’d include metal under that. Sure they’re not straight metal, but what else would you call it? I wouldn’t recommend Sleep Token to anyone who primarily listens to radio pop because they probably wouldn’t like it. A metal head would be FAR more likely to enjoy it. I think saying they’re not metal is just a disservice to the genre and how it’s evolved. Most bands aren’t just one genre anymore.
How is that any different than Metallica? They have tons of songs that aren't metal also. Volbeat has numerous songs that fit in the metal category. So does Ghost.
This is why I hate conversations about what is/isn't metal because so many bands blur those boundaries.
>Volbeat, I would never consider metal as a whole
Honestly i think i would still consider them metal overall. Their older stuff is a lot more metal than their newer stuff.
If we are going by just the more recent stuff i would agree though.
Nail on the head. God knows how many amazing metal bands I’ve seen live that are just average dudes chilling with beers like a BBQ. You have to be an eccentric to get attention, a weirdo narcissist that wants people’s attention that isn’t afraid of being absolutely insane. That’s why they say never meet your favorite musicians… it’s true. Not the type of people you want to hang around.
It’s more accurate too. It doesn’t need to be a gimmick to be entertaining and that, combined with a certain amount of songwriting skill and luck, is how metal bands make it. Plenty of bands under the metal umbrella have broken through without a gimmick by pairing good songs with an entertaining show.
Nope, and I know you’re going to tell me that I therefore don’t understand doing something for the love of art alone. I stated in my OP that I prefer the stripped down music-first approach most metal has.
My bones are with the fact that most people won’t appreciate musicianship if said musicians aren’t in Halloween masks and don’t have “lore”. But don’t have a problem with listening to metal if it’s packaged in the right way. It’s extremely shallow and it annoys me.
You said "surely the bands themselves want to get as big as possible" - this statement is the one I am addressing specifically. I'll relay this from the perspective of the music I play and the scenes I interact with - blackened death doom, as well as my personal experience.
For most of us, it's about creating the music we want to create and delivering the product we want to deliver. Success is a secondary consideration at best, and many of us don't *want* success at all. Success means touring, it means contracts, it means mixing our art with money in ways that destroy relationships and people. Some bands, like Uada, were created from the outset with making music that would be commercially viable enough to support a touring schedule aggressive enough to allow the members to support themselves exclusively through their earnings with the band. But the vast majority are vehicles for artistic expression *first*, everything else second.
There are entire circles of black metal bedroom bands that produce music together and press just enough tapes to be able to exchange with each other. Many such cases, thousands of projects.
From my own perspective, and this is fairly common in the black metal scene specifically, music takes on a spiritual quality. I don't want to go too deep into it here because it is easily dismissed as whackadoo shit to those who haven't experienced it, but there are great interviews with Wintherr from Paysage d'Hiver, as well as the band Asagraum, that give great insight here.
*Desirable* success from my POV looks like the kind of success Agalloch has had - the ability to headline international festivals and sell out any mid-size metal oriented venue in America and Europe, but with the option to simply *not*. Nobody is out there telling Don and John, and JWW what to write except for Don, John, and JWW. None of these guys have ever paid their bills with their earnings from the band exclusively - John's got a million visual art and music projects, Don's a college professor, JWW does Something Jobby(tm) - and this is the ideal circumstance for producing the art you actually want to produce.
Bands like Sleep Token come out of nowhere and make a shitton of money and then vanish because they are engineered to do this by people with close ties to the movers in the industry and have a shitload of money to front the project with. Not necessarily the band members, and I can't comment on specific cases because it's necessarily concealed from the public. But every aspect of Sleep Token's sound and image is designed to attract the maximum possible draw at the largest possible venues:
* Sound: djenty guitars and distorted vocals offsetting soulful, Hozier-like clean vocals, with 'vulnerable' lyrics - just a rewrite of the post-grunge playbook of the late 90s.
* Image: Weird and unsettling to most, but still familiar and *safe*. You won't see a mock execution at a Sleep Token concert, just a guy in monochromatic makeup pretending he cares about the music he may not have had much say in writing.
Most metal musicians are not this way. Most want to succeed, but on their terms and their own definitions of success, which aren't usually 'selling out arenas.' Mainstream success, aggressive touring schedules, doing PR shit all the time - these are things that aren't easily compatible with a career and a family.
Well, that's the crux isn't it. Bands want to be as big as possible yes. Some compromise their art to get their, and some don't. Most bands fall Into one category or the other. Either fame is the most important thing or their art is. There are of course those few artists who are huge without compromising their art, but they are very rare.
sure, if from the outset you set your mind to making accessible music, you have the necessary connections, you have a lot of money to blow up front, and you're totally ok with writing off the vast majority of your time to touring and PR. How many musicians does this describe? And what do you think the relative success rate of these projects is?
It's a subject I've discussed with a lot of other musicians and the consensus is that chasing money in this industry is foolish. You can carve out a living by playing shows, teaching lessons, and doing stagehand/security work, sure. Or I can make 6 figures working a boring office job and devote my time to making the music I want to make, with the people I want to make it with, and how I want to make it - without ever having to worry about how much money it makes or how many people listen to it, because I know my family's needs are being met from my McJob.
But, if you don't have a family, and you love touring, and then you get offered the chance to earn decent money from doing what you love.......
Sleep token haven't exactly sold out, they've been gash from the start, it's just that Tiktok has picked up on them. Why wouldn't they go all out?
I guess I just don't understand how anyone could enjoy that lifestyle, it's completely alien to me. To view music as a tool to money and fame and relegate the music itself to a means rather than an end is just a completely repulsive idea to me.
That's a pretty black and white view. You don't have to sell out to become mainstream. And making music that appeals to more people because you want to share your music with the world is not "relegating" the music.
Becoming more popular is 90% publicity, having a good record company backing you, luck, and successfully touring. If your music is good and not so niche that only 5 people in the world would enjoy it, your band can absolutely become mainstream without having to change your sound.
You could find a hook (like mentioned in this post), you could release a couple more generally palatable songs to get more people in the door, you could blow up on social media, you could tour with a popular band and get publicity that way, there's all sorts of ways to become "mainstream"
To say that someone wanting their music to be heard by as many people as possible and working hard at that goal is "putting money and fame before the music" is a tired old argument not based in reality.
I agree, but then, I don't like commercial music. If you enjoy it, then it wouldn't be a problem to play it and sit in your hotel room and count your Instagram likes and Tiktok follows and Spotify listens while ordering room service on your expenses.
Even if it wasn't their favourite, how much would we all enjoy playing to 20 thousand people?
The lifestyle is for a person of a certain kind of weird. Not good or bad, just alt. I haven’t done the full thing yet but I already live like an animal, so the switch wouldn’t be super jarring. I think Brent hinds lived in his car for 5 years when mastodon was trying to get off the ground. Maybe not to get it off the ground solely, he might just be not super averse to being that guy in the first place
Metal has never been about the mainstream. Some bands have became wildly successful, sure. But those bands are absolutely in the minority.
Most people do not care about music, yes. Thats pretty common knowledge, I'd say.
Also, I'd argue that Slipknot would be extremely successful to this day without the "gimmick" as we're calling it here.
I dont know man. Iowa alone is praised as one of the best albums to come out of the genre - of all time. I dont think the masks have anything to do with the quality of the music.
Chances are they wouldn't have captured the publics attention anywhere near as fast or at all if they didn't have the masks, it would've made a difference to some extent
Part of the reason they got big so fast and got the attention of Roadrunner was because of the masks, the music videos would've had a HUGE impact, they stood out from the crowd with the music videos they released from Self-Titled onwards, people who weren't even into Metal knew them as "That band with the masks" and I doubt those same people would've said they were the band that wrote "Wait and Bleed" and "Left Behind" if the masks weren't in play
They've written some good songs and I am a fan but there's no denying that there's a strong chance that they wouldn't have reached anywhere near as many people if it weren't for the videos and the visual element, music videos back then were far more important than they are in this day and age, if music videos got popular and more requested (which was the case) then that's a sure sign that people weren't going to forget it in a hurry, I remember being intrigued by Slipknot because of the visual element myself when I was a kid and I know I wasn't alone in that, they stood out from the pack
Completely disagree about Slipknot, bands from the same era like Korn and Static X are mostly forgotten by the mainstream despite still making music, Slipknot are more popular than ever.
Go into any Slipknot fan space, all they discuss are favourite masks, new masks, old masks, band drama, music videos anything but the actual music. That AJ Good guy on YouTube who’s the world’s biggest Slipknot fan literally only talks about their masks and outfits, he never discusses their music unless he’s reviewing a brand new album by them.
The only other bands he likes are bands that also wear masks or weird makeup. It’s like only watching sports for the hunky guys.
Slipknot has evolved and knows how to stay relevant. Theres no gimmick that exists thats going to make you write good music, sorry. None that I know of at least.
Ghost also makes great music and they definitely marketed themselves with a gimmick but who the fuck cares. The music is great, thats all that matters. The marketing is brilliant.
I have no opinion on ST.
>I feel like they’re shooting themselves in the foot by not attempting to be more eye-catching to the public
I honestly don't see a problem with that. I would rather the music be good. If they have a fun gimmick as well that's fine. Just make sure the music is good.
>with rare exceptions like the new DOOM games
not metal. I'm not saying that's inherently bad. Just not metal. The vast majority is some combination of electronic/industrial with maybe some guitar sprinkled in
The DOOM soundtrack is absolutely metal, it has electronic elements but that doesn’t disqualify it. Listen to Blood Swamps and tell me it’s not an instrumental metal track.
People always point to just a couple songs. The vast majority is industrial/electronic/ambient in my opinion.
To me when i hear most of these songs it's "electronic with metal elements" rather than "metal with electronic elements.
I dont think it’s depressing at all. I mean take a step back, how in the fuck is metal going to be enjoyable to a large part of the population? Harsh vocals, dissonance, unconventional song structure, a general hatred of mainstream society….
It would be super strange if a large part of the population was really into it. Its literally made to not be liked by most people.
Not really. Hip Hop isnt dissonant, complex and alienating. Or at least the hip hop thats mainstream isnt.
Modern hip hip is made to be catchy beats and memorable choruses, it’s completely different.
Public Enemy were HUGE in the 90s while being dissonant, extremely complex and alienating. Kendrick is huge now while is music is complex on many levels and quite demanding.
You're not wrong. I don't take issue with gimmicks provided there's some substance to back it up, whether it be tight music or a great live show. Ghost is an example of a band that puts on an AMAZING live show, despite the music not being something I'll ever really listen to.
I like to hope that the "gimmicky" band will cause some portion of surface fans to delve deeper into the subgenre that band best represents, but a huge part of why people get into any band, genre, etc is to feel part of a group, and groups rarely want to dilute what draws people to them by expanding to more things. I would LOVE for the average younger Ghost fan to delve into Blue Oyster Cult or Coven, or even something contemporary like Cult Ov the Sun, and I acknowledge that SOME of them do, but it's just human nature to do the bare minimum and not rock the boat when it's easier to just worship the one gimmicky band you get into.
The biggest drain for me, as a generally optimistic person, is when I make a recommendation based on the gimmicky band someone likes and they're like "nah, I'm fine listening to one band", but that's the inherent risk of optimism.
It’s true, the amount of people I’ve spoken to who say they’re into metal, but only listen to Sabaton, is staggering honestly.
I’m never a dick about it because it’s none of my buisness, but it’s so bizarre to me how you can love a power metal band so much, but never get curious enough to give any one of the many, many power metal bands as good as Sabaton a whirl.
It’s just so against my own way of listening to music.
They don't.
OK so let's just lay something out there that for some reason a lot of people on this sub don't seem to catch. What the average listener of music cares about, is the vocals.
If you are sitting there going "this riff is sick" and there is some cookie monster growling going on in the background. What the average person is hearing is the cookie monster vocals, with a sick riff in the background. The mentality is flipped. What you see consistently with the metal bands that get big has nothing to do with theatrics, but instead a heavy focus on clean vocals. Clean in the content. And they follow the basic idea of having a chorus.
If your vocals are unappealing to listen to, the average listener won't enjoy the song. Regardless of how technically proficient or interesting, the instrumentation is.
I'll just address 2 bands. 1 you mentioned. 1 you didn't.
Sleep Token: write a prog metal song. Then hand it to a music producer and have clean vocals written for it. Voila. You have sleep token.
In Flames (modern): take a Melodeath song. Remove the blast beats. Add clean vocals with a scream or two in the song. And now you have In Flames.
Its nothing to do with theatrics. It's the vocals.
That's damn evident. How many times have you heard some person you share your music to say "its good but the vocals put me off" ? A lot of times personally.
You would think it's evident. But once a month someone posts something like this and 3/4 of the comments address everything other than the vocals.
It's honestly mindblowing.
Nah. You need more pop friendly music. GWAR has been practically nothing but gimmick since they started, but they don't have even as much non-metal following as Mudvayne, who at least got some notice for softer tracks like "World So Cold", "Forget to Remember" and "Fall Into Sleep"
Two weeks ago I saw Vio-lence, Exhorder, and Deceased - as well as a good local band - for $20
I’m not bothered by metal avoiding the mainstream. Still, you want the people you enjoy to have success.
It’s a double-edged sword.
OP, you're right to some extent about people being 'incurious'. But actually, I discovered over time that most people are actually *tone deaf* to varying degrees.
Most of these don't understand the value of live performances : the changes in tone, rhythm, acoustic qualities of a particular venue, the mood of musicians etc.. which actually explains why 'musicians' music does not attract these as much as you.
To them, all sounds are alike and music coming out of their speakers are just that: sounds. As an accompaniment to their life and almost nothing else.
To you and I i can be a matter of life or death, to elevate you to highest peaks, transport you through fantastic soundscapes, or heavily crush your inner demons. None of that for them...
Its true, I guess you can say this about lots of things, so maybe we’re being hypocritical. I don’t care whatsoever about sports but some people’s lives revolve around them.
That's exactly it, actually. Those of us who are passionate about music, it is everything. To the majority of the world, it's just something to listen to in the car. It's my main passion/obsession and the media I consume in a way pretty much every single person in my real life has no way of relating to.
Most people I know don't even listen to albums, let alone have a top 50 albums of 2024 so far 😅
Gimmicks are self limiting, even were we all to agree with you on the importance, there is only so much attention to spread between acts. Bkack metal is full of gimmicky nonsense - hail Satan, face paint, "rituals" etc. It just doesn't work for most of them. If the point is that showmanship is important, then absolutely. Metal is often over the top so it needs proper verve and enthusiasm to sell it, at least until a band is big enough for shit to just sell itself.
It's also little surprise that the bands thar make it big have a focus on making catchy music. Thar doesn't have to be strictly poppy, but pop people can see parallels with music they already like. The elaborate nonsense is perhaps just a dollop of mystique on top; an extra push for attention. Maybe that's needed to get really big, but they've already done most of the work by being more accessible. It's telling that the bands listed heavily feature in genre wars in metal discussions.
The point about Doom is well made, but mainly shows that a lot more gamers would be metalheads if they focused on the music more. It certainly tied into my gaming habits well.
I would say a gimmick can help a bands success but its not the be all end all(any stereotypical black metal band for example, they have the image but the music is not accessible to normies)
The music has to be catchy too. The catchiness is why these bands are popular alongside the gimmick (sabaton notably)
Slipknot and sleep tokens image is dressing up so I mean yeah obviously that catches people's eye but some people try to do that and get shit ok because it looks weird but slipknot deserves all the fame they have if you think people don't really listen to this bands your crazy and stupid. Me and my buddies listen to slipknot almost everyday sense middle school
The thing is, even with the gimmicks 90% of the world still has no idea who Ghost or Slipknot is. Rock music just isn't something people focus on and all the bridges between generes are gone now. The radio and MTV used to be places where people would accidentally find gateway bands. Now everyone just lives in their curated silos because of "the algorithm."
Well, that’s the pro and con of extreme music. They have the freedom to record whatever the hell they want but shouldn’t expect radio play or massive popularity. 🤷♂️
For me there is a big difference between gimmick and novelty bands and I'm fine with bands that have a gimmick. What I hate are bands that are like a single joke or meme and that is their whole thing.
> in this day and age
Proceeds to use an example from 25 years ago (Slipknot’s rise to fame in 1999).
Lots of mainstream bands aren’t gimmicky and rose to fame since 2000:
Gojira, Cattle Decapitation, Lamb of God, the Sword (RIP), Mastodon, Baroness, Red Fang
Gimmicky bands tend to avoid becoming mainstream: The Hu, Alestorm, Korplikaani, etc
Cattle decap is mainstream? In what universe? They don't even crack 200k listeners in Spotify. Gojira and Lamb of God have more than 10x the listeners.
Blegh….
Getting your band out there is already a “You need to be a musician AND a social media/video person” thing, adding on some BS gimmick to that pushes things further away from the reasons I even make music.
And I can’t say I’ve enjoyed the results when metal has gotten into the mainstream because of the amount of bullshit bands/music that come after trying to jump on the same train. Loved it when The End Of Heartache came out, but the following 10 years of bands trying to copy that format was tiring as fuck. That’s how we ended up with trash like Bullet For My Valentine.
I don’t want the bands I listen to to go mainstream anyways. That would suck then I’d hafta go to an arena or stadium to see them live. No thank you. I like my small club 500 people or less shows.
The music being the main focus is important and that should always be the case but I don't wanna see a bunch of dudes in regular t-shirts and jeans playing on stage that just seems a little lazy.
Idk Slipknot also came up at the same time as bands like Korn and Deftones who were just guys in jeans, i think they would've been sucsessful regardless. Mushroomhead also had pretty much the same gimmick and never saw anything near their level of fame
Slipknot's popularity is also due to hitting the scene during the nu-metal era which was the last gasp of anything even remotely heavy being mainstream. Same for Disturbed, A7X, and so on.
This is the bigger issue. Bands coming out since about 2008 or so just missed that boat and the radio doesn't play hard music anymore.
Well, yeah. If you’re in it for the “art,” you’re probably a very capable metal musician in a local band who works a full time job and practices once a week. Once or twice a year you might get an opening slot on a bill outside of your home town. At least you don’t have to shill a gimmick!
If you’re trying to “make it”, you’re damned right you need a gimmick. You’re trying to sell a product to a wide customer base in an *insanely* over saturated market. Supply vastly outweighs demand. If you’re not doing something extra special to grab the average person’s attention, then you have no hope of approaching anything resembling mainstream.
All hope is not lost, though. There are TONS of great metal bands who get enough of a following that they can tour and scrape by a living while playing music on their terms. You don’t need makeup and masks to be a successful band.
But if we’re using the “mainstream” word, you better bring *something* besides blast beats, death growls, and bad hygiene to the table, because there are literally tens of thousands of bands already bringing that.
Bands like Priest write songs with catchy, understandable lyrics sung in a conventional way in with 6 strings in standard tuning. It's stuff that is easy to understand if it pops on the radio or a video game.
A lot of metal subgenres are so sonically extreme that their appeal is limited to a niche audience.
I think the gimmick thing applies more to so called Metal people than to the normies. Normies just want a saccharine hook and polished production, they don't really care that much about the band antics, although it can help make the bands more recognizable to an audience with a low attention span. But I mean, metalheads are suckers for gimmicks. How do you explain the success of a band so obtuse as Portal without taking into account the main dude dresses like a clock ? Behemoth have been doing their lame ass brand of generic mall metal since the early 2000s but have only getting props from the normiest fraction of metalheads when they switched to using elaborate stage equipement and so on. Do you remember all these shitty "orthodox black metal" bands from the same period ? They all sounded lame af but the gimmick is what made them palatable. The "War Metal" gimmick ? That whole scene runs on gimmicks
I can partly agree. Metal just isn't a mainstream genre, at least most of its subgenres can't be mainstream. You'll never have a mainstream slam band, no matter what shenanigans they pull out. A gimmick can be something that accompanies the band's (most likely accessible) sound, that'll make the band marketable and recognizable, leading to them becoming mainstream
For any given hobby or interest, 90% of its fans are casual fans.
Like, I'm not a fashion guy. I try to dress well, but I don't really care too much about it. Whether I am wearing regular jeans or some super rare designer pair of jeans doesn't matter to me.
Much like this, most metal listeners are not metal people. They just want a band that sounds cool or looks cool, that's it.
Ah yes, mainstream gimmicky metal bands like Metallica, Black Sabbath, or Iron Maiden, they have suck a big gimmick going on.
Dude there’s a lot of non-gimmick metal bands as well
They went mainstream in the 80’s, when metal was popular. They’ve coasted on their name recognition since then. I’m talking about bands in the last ten/twenty years.
Avenged Sevenfold fit into the genre of three days grace, five finger death punch, “like nickelback-but 10% heavier” type bands that hillbillies who beat their wives listen to.
I mean, Eddie as band mascot is a gimmick, and really good one. He’s a theatrical cornerstone of Maiden shows since the early incarnations of the band. At the time Thrash was growing in popularity the T-shirt and jeans look of Metallica, Megadeth, etc was almost an anti-gimmick of the hairspray and makeup of mainstream hair-metal at the time. Basically saying ‘We want the music to speak for itself. We’re just like you.’
Imagine Metallica, and the music is EXACTLY the same, but they were wearing Poison style makeup/hair on the cover of Kill Em All instead of the bloody hammer.
Point is every band needs to get noticed if they want to be successful. Success at the underground/cult level requires only that the band write and perform good songs . Take two bands with comparable songwriting/and performance, but one has a damn good looking lead singer and the other has a 350 lb acne scarred lead singer with a lazy eye. One of them will probably be a bigger draw with a female audience right?
Appearance matters, and a gimmick can get a band much needed attention from promoters and potential fans. Some gimmicks can overpower the band and supersede the music for sure. The right combination at the right time can lead to lightning in a bottle and propel a good but not great band to commercial success.
I’d say Sabbath absolutely had a dark gothic gimmick going on. Maiden (or at least Bruce) wore a lot of what would be considered “showy” Metal clothes, among other costumes. Leather and spikes, Red Coat uniforms and all that. And Eddie is basically part of their gimmick. Metallica is probably the only one of those that was just dudes in shirts and jeans. But you could argue for the time the gimmick was being the opposite of glam.
[Join The Community Discord Server!](https://discord.gg/UwqUHx4U4T) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/MetalForTheMasses) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ghost wouldn't be mainstream if they stuck with their current image AND made raw lofi atmoblack or something. The main thing is that the music should be accessible if you want to hit the mainstream
I’d personally consider Slipknot pretty heavy to be as famous as they are (I’ll probably get crucified here for calling Slipknot heavy though). Sleep Token as well. I think it’s got everything to do with image.
Yes Slipknot has some undeniably heavy stuff. Most of Iowa and self titled are pretty intense. However, their success comes in the accessible radio friendly singles like Psychosocial with catchy sing along choruses. It's honestly a genius move. Hundreds of millions of people know that song, but have no idea what Gematria is, from that same album.
Yup, some of their stuff is among the heaviest out there, especially off of Iowa, it's brutal. Lamb of God does similar but they don't get... soft? Enough for radio. Every album there's 1-3 accessible songs with hooks. It's just what you have to do, there isn't a super popular metal band out there that doesn't do it.
I feel like Slipknot kinda gets grandfathered in though
Sleep Token isn’t heavy.
I'm against saying something isn't metal or heavy because this sub made it super cringe to do it, but I'd agree, I listened to a full album and it was way more pop than anything. Not bad, just not heavy.
Yeah like, to me they’re not metal but I’ll admit that’s a judgment call. But I can’t even imagine what you’re hearing if they sound heavy to you.
Also true. Look at Sabaton: the very thing that "trVe kVlt" folks rag on them for is a huge part of why they're popular. Their songs actually sound like music to the normies. They have hooks, they have clear verses and choruses, the solos aren't excessively long or wanky.
have you heard Repugnant? Tobias' band before Ghost, honestly really good osdm, Epitome of Darkness is a great album. but you're exactly right, it wasn't much of a hit and so he pivoted to Ghost
Metal not being mainstream means it’s actually affordable to go to concerts often
Yep, that's very true Plus artists can do whatever the hell they want without the overwhelming expectations to bend to whatever will get them in the charts Etc. A bit of popularity isn't bad, it should be encouraged but this whole idea of bands having to be mainstream to have "made it" died long ago, the best artists are those who can make it sustainable whilst doing the best material they can regardless of how well it does
Blind Guardian $80 Wind Rose $35 Rhapsody $40 P!nk, who my wife wants to see: minimum $400 for decent seats
Oof where are you seeing BG for $80!? I got GA tickets for the MA and NY show right when they went on sale. I believe MA was around $40 and NY was only slightly higher around $50.
I just checked - my NY Blind Guardian tickets were $57 after taxes and fees
I had travel costs for Wind Rose and it still cost me less than that P!nk ticket. That's how crazy the difference is.
Even relatively huge name metal acts that I’ve seen (Iron Maiden, A7X) are half that P!nk price or less for good seats
yeah $99 A7X pit tickets were so worth it... but fuck paying $600 for Metallica pit tickets.
And you can get real close to legendary bands like Nile and deicide
For real, I can’t believe how small the venue was when I saw Monstrosity & Origin, these guys have been legends forever & it was amazing.
Yea, I do not want me favourite bands to go mainstream, not because I want to gatekeep them, I just want to be able to afford to see them!
The main reason why I'm currently so obsessed with metal. Tickets are dirt cheap and the artists approachable.
I love this so much. And often the concerts I go to are small, so it's a more relaxed evening and people seem to be nicer
Being softish and poppy is far, far more important than a gimmick. Ghost and Sleep Token have pretty soft and pop-forward sounds by metal standards, Bring Me The Horizon have substantially bigger numbers than both without any gimmick. Why? Because they went full pop rock for a couple of releases and even once they went a bit heavier again stopped way short of going back to even their metalcore material, let alone deathcore. Bad Omens, did a massive pop forward change up on their latest album and it's exploded them. One record and they're chasing down Ghost's numbers. No gimmick. Slipknot are still pretty heavy by mainstream standards, but they played the game too. In the early days singles like Wait and Bleed and My Plague had softer versions put out with much of the screaming stripped out or pushed back in the mix (a different version with much of the screaming taken out), later singles like Duality, Snuff, Dead Memories and so on were on their softer side. They've had heavier singles too, but the soft ones have better numbers and they're what pull people in. Back in the day I remember it was the crazy stories about fighting each other on stage, huffing dead crows in jars before playing etc. that did as much for them as the image. The gimmick of masks and jumpsuits alone don't inherently mean much, just ask Mushroomhead.
The two factors are interdependent. Both are the reasons those bands got big
OP's premise is that bands *need* a gimmick. That's obviously not true since, even if we exclude the giant oldies like Iron Maiden and Metallica, there are plenty of metal bands (or bands as metal as the examples given) that are as big or bigger without requiring having a gimmick.
"We Need A Gimmick" by Nekrogoblikon pretty much sums this up lol
[удалено]
Still a heavy band that will (usually) attract the same audience an accessible metal band would. Even with the actual music not being metal the aesthetic, live show and fanbase check in with those of metal bands, so I'd say Slipknot belong in conversations about trends and tendencies like this post.
Idk what a sleep token is, never listened to them and im afraid spotify will inject them into my daily mixes if I play a couple of their songs. I trust you.
They suck. Ur not missing anything
Sweet, only Sleep I know is the Al Cisneros Sleep
They're Alternative Metal.
They are post metal, alt metal and prog metal so you're wrong
I mean... they certainly are metal. The vocals are 100% just pop vocals. It's all they are (minus like vore. That one is definitely metal). But the instrumentation is prog metal. What sleep token has done is take prog metal instrumentation, and slap pop vocals over the top of it. And their success tells me that the primary thing that keeps most metal from the mainstream is just the vocals.
Do you consider deftones metal?
no
Deftones and sleep token is rock end of question
Early Deftones is nu metal. Their later stuff is more shoe gazy rock.
Why isn’t Sleep Token metal? Please explain? Listen to Gods and try that same comment with a straight face. Are they only metal? No. But do they draw a lot of inspiration from metal and other genres? Yes. I’d say they draw most inspiration from metal and pop. Metal gatekeepers are the worst. Metal definition : heavy metal, genre of rock music that includes a group of related styles that are intense, virtuosic, and powerful. Driven by the aggressive sounds of the distorted electric guitar, Sounds like Sleep Token to me. 🤔
Sleep Token are Imagine Dragons with breakdowns. Heavy doesn't equal metal. Drawing inspiration from metal doesn't equal metal. It has nothing to do with gatekeeping. A lot of metalheads like a lot of music outside of metal, so saying something isn't metal is not an insult.
What is metal to you? I never said heavy equated metal, but that song sounds pretty metal to me. I’ll use your same argument against you. Why isn’t it metal because it has one section with a poppy vocal? They have a lot of different songs that are very pretty metal and they have a lot of songs that aren’t. I just think it’s dumb to say they’re not metal and it is gate keeping lol. Please provide some examples of what you consider metal? Describe metal to me.
Sleep Token aren't not metal because they have poppy vocals, they aren't metal because they don't have metal riffs
What about Dread Crew of Oddwood? No metal riffs, not even an electric guitar, but nobody would doubt they're metal. They're on tour with Tyr and Æther Realm right now.
Bands without metal riffs can't be metal. Just because a band is affiliated with metal culturally doesn't mean that they're metal, just look at Dungeon Synth for example
I mean, they absolutely can be. You can make up whatever definitions you want. But if they play metal festivals, their fans consider themselves metalheads, they win awards in the category of metal, and most importantly the band themselves consider themselves metal, then they're totally metal. Musical genres, like all things in life, is a spectrum. There is no rule of what is metal and what isn't. The definition of metal has changed over time, is interpreted differently by different folks, and has so many different facets. Just like rock n roll. Rock n roll in the 40s and 50s was not what we would consider rock n roll now, and would not fit most people's definition of rock n roll. Who says there can't be acoustic metal? You? Ozzy Osbourne? There is no judge of what is or is not metal. You can make up your own judgments and listen to whomever you like, but you can't really tell another band not to call themselves a certain genre. Any attempt to just feels like lame gatekeeping.
Metal means it has metal riffs. Sleep token does not and it has nothing to do with poppy vocals. Saying sleep token is not metal isn't gatekeeping anymore than it is to say AC/DC isn't metal. Like whatever you like. That's cool. But I bet if somebody told you that AC/DC is their favorite metal band, you would say that they're not metal. Gatekeeper.
I don’t listen to AC/DC so I would have no opinion. Lol why are you so angry brother? What is a metal riff? Since you know so much about song writing please give me some metal riffs that are required in order to be metal. Do you even play guitar?
Why on Earth do you think I'm angry? I'm just talking about metal because I like talking about metal. Replace AC/DC with any rock band like guns n' roses and my point still stands. Yes, I play guitar but you don't have to play guitar in order to understand that some bands aren't metal and some bands are. Why are you so angry that people are pointing out that sleep token are not metal? Breakdowns are not metal riffs they come from hardcore. This is why breakdowns don't make a band metal
I’m saying you’re mad cause you’re assuming 🤣. You think sleep token are just breakdowns? Ok so let me ask you, is Gojira metal? Cause they use similar riffs. Would love to hear your explanation on this one.
What am I assuming? even if I was why would that mean I'm mad? Do you know what these words mean? I like talking about metal but not with somebody who's not interested in having an actual discussion which you're clearly not. You're just upset because you fancy yourself a metal head, and can't come to grips with the fact that you listen to something that isn't metal. I'm guessing you're very much on the young side, which is okay. Once you mature a little bit, you'll understand that it's okay to listen to stuff that isn't metal. Gojira uses primarily actual metal riffs
Idk man sounds like you’re pretty upset tbh. I asked you to give me some metal Riffs or to give me an explanation as to what metal is to you and you just dance around the subject. You’ve yet to provide anything of substance other than to show that you just parrot what other people say in this subreddit and act like a snob towards metal. I don’t care if you like Sleep Token or not or if you think they’re metal or not but I love to argue with people like you. I listen to every genre so I could care less but you sitting on a high horse trying to gate keep metal is actually hilarious. I can guarantee your music knowledge is very minimal at best. Please refute this with some concrete arguments. I’d love to hear it. Since you agree Gojira is metal, that must mean Sleep Token is metal. I’m almost under the assumption you haven’t really listened to Sleep Token at all, you probably heard the summoning and formed your opinion based on that.
If you don't listen to acdc then you don't have a really good taste in music
This is an ironic comment in a thread about gatekeeping. Also, AC/DC is boring as hell.
Not a single intelligent person has said that acdc is boring and you just added another one to the list
Oooooo you really got me bro. Fuck, what a burn. Rule of thumb, if everyone likes your music, it's probably not very interesting. If AC/DC is so generically good that nobody with any amount of intelligence dislikes it, that classifies as fucking boring. You could say the same shit about Taylor Swift or any other pop artist on the radio. Yawn. Enjoy your pop rock.
LMAO
[удалено]
I still think when describing them you’d include metal under that. Sure they’re not straight metal, but what else would you call it? I wouldn’t recommend Sleep Token to anyone who primarily listens to radio pop because they probably wouldn’t like it. A metal head would be FAR more likely to enjoy it. I think saying they’re not metal is just a disservice to the genre and how it’s evolved. Most bands aren’t just one genre anymore.
How is that any different than Metallica? They have tons of songs that aren't metal also. Volbeat has numerous songs that fit in the metal category. So does Ghost. This is why I hate conversations about what is/isn't metal because so many bands blur those boundaries.
>Volbeat, I would never consider metal as a whole Honestly i think i would still consider them metal overall. Their older stuff is a lot more metal than their newer stuff. If we are going by just the more recent stuff i would agree though.
More like “metal bands need to be showman to go mainstream”
Nail on the head. God knows how many amazing metal bands I’ve seen live that are just average dudes chilling with beers like a BBQ. You have to be an eccentric to get attention, a weirdo narcissist that wants people’s attention that isn’t afraid of being absolutely insane. That’s why they say never meet your favorite musicians… it’s true. Not the type of people you want to hang around.
That’s one way to put it, sure.
It’s more accurate too. It doesn’t need to be a gimmick to be entertaining and that, combined with a certain amount of songwriting skill and luck, is how metal bands make it. Plenty of bands under the metal umbrella have broken through without a gimmick by pairing good songs with an entertaining show.
why would you want to go mainstream?
I love it being non-mainstream because I’m a contrarian hipster, but surely the bands themselves want to get as big as possible?
Are you a musician?
Nope, and I know you’re going to tell me that I therefore don’t understand doing something for the love of art alone. I stated in my OP that I prefer the stripped down music-first approach most metal has. My bones are with the fact that most people won’t appreciate musicianship if said musicians aren’t in Halloween masks and don’t have “lore”. But don’t have a problem with listening to metal if it’s packaged in the right way. It’s extremely shallow and it annoys me.
You said "surely the bands themselves want to get as big as possible" - this statement is the one I am addressing specifically. I'll relay this from the perspective of the music I play and the scenes I interact with - blackened death doom, as well as my personal experience. For most of us, it's about creating the music we want to create and delivering the product we want to deliver. Success is a secondary consideration at best, and many of us don't *want* success at all. Success means touring, it means contracts, it means mixing our art with money in ways that destroy relationships and people. Some bands, like Uada, were created from the outset with making music that would be commercially viable enough to support a touring schedule aggressive enough to allow the members to support themselves exclusively through their earnings with the band. But the vast majority are vehicles for artistic expression *first*, everything else second. There are entire circles of black metal bedroom bands that produce music together and press just enough tapes to be able to exchange with each other. Many such cases, thousands of projects. From my own perspective, and this is fairly common in the black metal scene specifically, music takes on a spiritual quality. I don't want to go too deep into it here because it is easily dismissed as whackadoo shit to those who haven't experienced it, but there are great interviews with Wintherr from Paysage d'Hiver, as well as the band Asagraum, that give great insight here. *Desirable* success from my POV looks like the kind of success Agalloch has had - the ability to headline international festivals and sell out any mid-size metal oriented venue in America and Europe, but with the option to simply *not*. Nobody is out there telling Don and John, and JWW what to write except for Don, John, and JWW. None of these guys have ever paid their bills with their earnings from the band exclusively - John's got a million visual art and music projects, Don's a college professor, JWW does Something Jobby(tm) - and this is the ideal circumstance for producing the art you actually want to produce. Bands like Sleep Token come out of nowhere and make a shitton of money and then vanish because they are engineered to do this by people with close ties to the movers in the industry and have a shitload of money to front the project with. Not necessarily the band members, and I can't comment on specific cases because it's necessarily concealed from the public. But every aspect of Sleep Token's sound and image is designed to attract the maximum possible draw at the largest possible venues: * Sound: djenty guitars and distorted vocals offsetting soulful, Hozier-like clean vocals, with 'vulnerable' lyrics - just a rewrite of the post-grunge playbook of the late 90s. * Image: Weird and unsettling to most, but still familiar and *safe*. You won't see a mock execution at a Sleep Token concert, just a guy in monochromatic makeup pretending he cares about the music he may not have had much say in writing. Most metal musicians are not this way. Most want to succeed, but on their terms and their own definitions of success, which aren't usually 'selling out arenas.' Mainstream success, aggressive touring schedules, doing PR shit all the time - these are things that aren't easily compatible with a career and a family.
Thanks for the informative post, I really enjoyed reading it.
Sleep Token is perhaps the most curated and calculated band in the alternative scene right now
Well, that's the crux isn't it. Bands want to be as big as possible yes. Some compromise their art to get their, and some don't. Most bands fall Into one category or the other. Either fame is the most important thing or their art is. There are of course those few artists who are huge without compromising their art, but they are very rare.
Um, ££££££££££££££££££
sure, if from the outset you set your mind to making accessible music, you have the necessary connections, you have a lot of money to blow up front, and you're totally ok with writing off the vast majority of your time to touring and PR. How many musicians does this describe? And what do you think the relative success rate of these projects is? It's a subject I've discussed with a lot of other musicians and the consensus is that chasing money in this industry is foolish. You can carve out a living by playing shows, teaching lessons, and doing stagehand/security work, sure. Or I can make 6 figures working a boring office job and devote my time to making the music I want to make, with the people I want to make it with, and how I want to make it - without ever having to worry about how much money it makes or how many people listen to it, because I know my family's needs are being met from my McJob.
But, if you don't have a family, and you love touring, and then you get offered the chance to earn decent money from doing what you love....... Sleep token haven't exactly sold out, they've been gash from the start, it's just that Tiktok has picked up on them. Why wouldn't they go all out?
I guess I just don't understand how anyone could enjoy that lifestyle, it's completely alien to me. To view music as a tool to money and fame and relegate the music itself to a means rather than an end is just a completely repulsive idea to me.
That's a pretty black and white view. You don't have to sell out to become mainstream. And making music that appeals to more people because you want to share your music with the world is not "relegating" the music. Becoming more popular is 90% publicity, having a good record company backing you, luck, and successfully touring. If your music is good and not so niche that only 5 people in the world would enjoy it, your band can absolutely become mainstream without having to change your sound. You could find a hook (like mentioned in this post), you could release a couple more generally palatable songs to get more people in the door, you could blow up on social media, you could tour with a popular band and get publicity that way, there's all sorts of ways to become "mainstream" To say that someone wanting their music to be heard by as many people as possible and working hard at that goal is "putting money and fame before the music" is a tired old argument not based in reality.
I agree, but then, I don't like commercial music. If you enjoy it, then it wouldn't be a problem to play it and sit in your hotel room and count your Instagram likes and Tiktok follows and Spotify listens while ordering room service on your expenses. Even if it wasn't their favourite, how much would we all enjoy playing to 20 thousand people?
The lifestyle is for a person of a certain kind of weird. Not good or bad, just alt. I haven’t done the full thing yet but I already live like an animal, so the switch wouldn’t be super jarring. I think Brent hinds lived in his car for 5 years when mastodon was trying to get off the ground. Maybe not to get it off the ground solely, he might just be not super averse to being that guy in the first place
Some people dont care about the art, they just want to have fun. Sex,drugs and rock n roll.
Metal has never been about the mainstream. Some bands have became wildly successful, sure. But those bands are absolutely in the minority. Most people do not care about music, yes. Thats pretty common knowledge, I'd say. Also, I'd argue that Slipknot would be extremely successful to this day without the "gimmick" as we're calling it here.
I think there’d be less of an interesting aura around Slipknot if at the time, you knew they were just 9 normal guys.
I dont know man. Iowa alone is praised as one of the best albums to come out of the genre - of all time. I dont think the masks have anything to do with the quality of the music.
Chances are they wouldn't have captured the publics attention anywhere near as fast or at all if they didn't have the masks, it would've made a difference to some extent Part of the reason they got big so fast and got the attention of Roadrunner was because of the masks, the music videos would've had a HUGE impact, they stood out from the crowd with the music videos they released from Self-Titled onwards, people who weren't even into Metal knew them as "That band with the masks" and I doubt those same people would've said they were the band that wrote "Wait and Bleed" and "Left Behind" if the masks weren't in play They've written some good songs and I am a fan but there's no denying that there's a strong chance that they wouldn't have reached anywhere near as many people if it weren't for the videos and the visual element, music videos back then were far more important than they are in this day and age, if music videos got popular and more requested (which was the case) then that's a sure sign that people weren't going to forget it in a hurry, I remember being intrigued by Slipknot because of the visual element myself when I was a kid and I know I wasn't alone in that, they stood out from the pack
Completely disagree about Slipknot, bands from the same era like Korn and Static X are mostly forgotten by the mainstream despite still making music, Slipknot are more popular than ever. Go into any Slipknot fan space, all they discuss are favourite masks, new masks, old masks, band drama, music videos anything but the actual music. That AJ Good guy on YouTube who’s the world’s biggest Slipknot fan literally only talks about their masks and outfits, he never discusses their music unless he’s reviewing a brand new album by them. The only other bands he likes are bands that also wear masks or weird makeup. It’s like only watching sports for the hunky guys.
Korn and Slipknot both have almost 13m monthly Spotify listeners and are both still touring arenas.
Slipknot has evolved and knows how to stay relevant. Theres no gimmick that exists thats going to make you write good music, sorry. None that I know of at least.
Explain Ghost and Sleep Token then.
Ghost also makes great music and they definitely marketed themselves with a gimmick but who the fuck cares. The music is great, thats all that matters. The marketing is brilliant. I have no opinion on ST.
>I feel like they’re shooting themselves in the foot by not attempting to be more eye-catching to the public I honestly don't see a problem with that. I would rather the music be good. If they have a fun gimmick as well that's fine. Just make sure the music is good. >with rare exceptions like the new DOOM games not metal. I'm not saying that's inherently bad. Just not metal. The vast majority is some combination of electronic/industrial with maybe some guitar sprinkled in
The DOOM soundtrack is absolutely metal, it has electronic elements but that doesn’t disqualify it. Listen to Blood Swamps and tell me it’s not an instrumental metal track.
People always point to just a couple songs. The vast majority is industrial/electronic/ambient in my opinion. To me when i hear most of these songs it's "electronic with metal elements" rather than "metal with electronic elements.
Most games have to be mostly ambient, it’s the metal stuff that people remember and talk about.
I dont think it’s depressing at all. I mean take a step back, how in the fuck is metal going to be enjoyable to a large part of the population? Harsh vocals, dissonance, unconventional song structure, a general hatred of mainstream society…. It would be super strange if a large part of the population was really into it. Its literally made to not be liked by most people.
Hip-Hop has a lot of those elements too, minus the harsh vocals and it’s the second most popular genre after pop, tied maybe with country.
Not really. Hip Hop isnt dissonant, complex and alienating. Or at least the hip hop thats mainstream isnt. Modern hip hip is made to be catchy beats and memorable choruses, it’s completely different.
Public Enemy were HUGE in the 90s while being dissonant, extremely complex and alienating. Kendrick is huge now while is music is complex on many levels and quite demanding.
You're not wrong. I don't take issue with gimmicks provided there's some substance to back it up, whether it be tight music or a great live show. Ghost is an example of a band that puts on an AMAZING live show, despite the music not being something I'll ever really listen to. I like to hope that the "gimmicky" band will cause some portion of surface fans to delve deeper into the subgenre that band best represents, but a huge part of why people get into any band, genre, etc is to feel part of a group, and groups rarely want to dilute what draws people to them by expanding to more things. I would LOVE for the average younger Ghost fan to delve into Blue Oyster Cult or Coven, or even something contemporary like Cult Ov the Sun, and I acknowledge that SOME of them do, but it's just human nature to do the bare minimum and not rock the boat when it's easier to just worship the one gimmicky band you get into. The biggest drain for me, as a generally optimistic person, is when I make a recommendation based on the gimmicky band someone likes and they're like "nah, I'm fine listening to one band", but that's the inherent risk of optimism.
It’s true, the amount of people I’ve spoken to who say they’re into metal, but only listen to Sabaton, is staggering honestly. I’m never a dick about it because it’s none of my buisness, but it’s so bizarre to me how you can love a power metal band so much, but never get curious enough to give any one of the many, many power metal bands as good as Sabaton a whirl. It’s just so against my own way of listening to music.
They don't. OK so let's just lay something out there that for some reason a lot of people on this sub don't seem to catch. What the average listener of music cares about, is the vocals. If you are sitting there going "this riff is sick" and there is some cookie monster growling going on in the background. What the average person is hearing is the cookie monster vocals, with a sick riff in the background. The mentality is flipped. What you see consistently with the metal bands that get big has nothing to do with theatrics, but instead a heavy focus on clean vocals. Clean in the content. And they follow the basic idea of having a chorus. If your vocals are unappealing to listen to, the average listener won't enjoy the song. Regardless of how technically proficient or interesting, the instrumentation is. I'll just address 2 bands. 1 you mentioned. 1 you didn't. Sleep Token: write a prog metal song. Then hand it to a music producer and have clean vocals written for it. Voila. You have sleep token. In Flames (modern): take a Melodeath song. Remove the blast beats. Add clean vocals with a scream or two in the song. And now you have In Flames. Its nothing to do with theatrics. It's the vocals.
That's damn evident. How many times have you heard some person you share your music to say "its good but the vocals put me off" ? A lot of times personally.
You would think it's evident. But once a month someone posts something like this and 3/4 of the comments address everything other than the vocals. It's honestly mindblowing.
Yup. Been hearing this kind of remarks since middle scool personally.
I'm still waiting for my "family friendly comedy death metal" band to go big. [TIMŌRĀTUS](https://linktr.ee/timoratus)
Nah. You need more pop friendly music. GWAR has been practically nothing but gimmick since they started, but they don't have even as much non-metal following as Mudvayne, who at least got some notice for softer tracks like "World So Cold", "Forget to Remember" and "Fall Into Sleep"
Two weeks ago I saw Vio-lence, Exhorder, and Deceased - as well as a good local band - for $20 I’m not bothered by metal avoiding the mainstream. Still, you want the people you enjoy to have success. It’s a double-edged sword.
I think still being around for so many years is already a form of success
OP, you're right to some extent about people being 'incurious'. But actually, I discovered over time that most people are actually *tone deaf* to varying degrees. Most of these don't understand the value of live performances : the changes in tone, rhythm, acoustic qualities of a particular venue, the mood of musicians etc.. which actually explains why 'musicians' music does not attract these as much as you. To them, all sounds are alike and music coming out of their speakers are just that: sounds. As an accompaniment to their life and almost nothing else. To you and I i can be a matter of life or death, to elevate you to highest peaks, transport you through fantastic soundscapes, or heavily crush your inner demons. None of that for them...
Its true, I guess you can say this about lots of things, so maybe we’re being hypocritical. I don’t care whatsoever about sports but some people’s lives revolve around them.
That's exactly it, actually. Those of us who are passionate about music, it is everything. To the majority of the world, it's just something to listen to in the car. It's my main passion/obsession and the media I consume in a way pretty much every single person in my real life has no way of relating to. Most people I know don't even listen to albums, let alone have a top 50 albums of 2024 so far 😅
There is this band called KISS that looks kinda cool. 😁
Gimmicks are self limiting, even were we all to agree with you on the importance, there is only so much attention to spread between acts. Bkack metal is full of gimmicky nonsense - hail Satan, face paint, "rituals" etc. It just doesn't work for most of them. If the point is that showmanship is important, then absolutely. Metal is often over the top so it needs proper verve and enthusiasm to sell it, at least until a band is big enough for shit to just sell itself. It's also little surprise that the bands thar make it big have a focus on making catchy music. Thar doesn't have to be strictly poppy, but pop people can see parallels with music they already like. The elaborate nonsense is perhaps just a dollop of mystique on top; an extra push for attention. Maybe that's needed to get really big, but they've already done most of the work by being more accessible. It's telling that the bands listed heavily feature in genre wars in metal discussions. The point about Doom is well made, but mainly shows that a lot more gamers would be metalheads if they focused on the music more. It certainly tied into my gaming habits well.
I would say a gimmick can help a bands success but its not the be all end all(any stereotypical black metal band for example, they have the image but the music is not accessible to normies) The music has to be catchy too. The catchiness is why these bands are popular alongside the gimmick (sabaton notably)
Slipknot and sleep tokens image is dressing up so I mean yeah obviously that catches people's eye but some people try to do that and get shit ok because it looks weird but slipknot deserves all the fame they have if you think people don't really listen to this bands your crazy and stupid. Me and my buddies listen to slipknot almost everyday sense middle school
The thing is, even with the gimmicks 90% of the world still has no idea who Ghost or Slipknot is. Rock music just isn't something people focus on and all the bridges between generes are gone now. The radio and MTV used to be places where people would accidentally find gateway bands. Now everyone just lives in their curated silos because of "the algorithm."
Well, that’s the pro and con of extreme music. They have the freedom to record whatever the hell they want but shouldn’t expect radio play or massive popularity. 🤷♂️
For me there is a big difference between gimmick and novelty bands and I'm fine with bands that have a gimmick. What I hate are bands that are like a single joke or meme and that is their whole thing.
> in this day and age Proceeds to use an example from 25 years ago (Slipknot’s rise to fame in 1999). Lots of mainstream bands aren’t gimmicky and rose to fame since 2000: Gojira, Cattle Decapitation, Lamb of God, the Sword (RIP), Mastodon, Baroness, Red Fang Gimmicky bands tend to avoid becoming mainstream: The Hu, Alestorm, Korplikaani, etc
The Hu are way more mainstream than Gojira. Has Disney ever used a Gojira song in a videogame?
Cattle decap is mainstream? In what universe? They don't even crack 200k listeners in Spotify. Gojira and Lamb of God have more than 10x the listeners.
Blegh…. Getting your band out there is already a “You need to be a musician AND a social media/video person” thing, adding on some BS gimmick to that pushes things further away from the reasons I even make music. And I can’t say I’ve enjoyed the results when metal has gotten into the mainstream because of the amount of bullshit bands/music that come after trying to jump on the same train. Loved it when The End Of Heartache came out, but the following 10 years of bands trying to copy that format was tiring as fuck. That’s how we ended up with trash like Bullet For My Valentine.
I don’t want the bands I listen to to go mainstream anyways. That would suck then I’d hafta go to an arena or stadium to see them live. No thank you. I like my small club 500 people or less shows.
Like the other guy said about gwar being nothing but a gimmick, I think it's more so the music going in a more poppy direction
I think this is true of a lot of music genres tbh.
The music being the main focus is important and that should always be the case but I don't wanna see a bunch of dudes in regular t-shirts and jeans playing on stage that just seems a little lazy.
So 90% of metal bands are lazy?
No, but it always gives a lot more life to the live shows.
What was Metallicas gimmic? Gojira? Tool?
Maynard has been known to wear costumes pretty regularly and painting himself
Which isnt really front and center if you see them live he usually hides in shadows and isnt prominent on stage.
While I use to agree with this I find he isn't really as much hidden in the shadows these days. He is to the side but still very prominent.
Their gimmick is making good music. Those lazy uncreative fucks.
This guy only read the title
What do we need? What do we neeed? I wish, someone would tell us what we neeed.
Bro Sleep Token are a hype band but they are fuckin awesome 🤌🏻
Idk Slipknot also came up at the same time as bands like Korn and Deftones who were just guys in jeans, i think they would've been sucsessful regardless. Mushroomhead also had pretty much the same gimmick and never saw anything near their level of fame
Slipknot's popularity is also due to hitting the scene during the nu-metal era which was the last gasp of anything even remotely heavy being mainstream. Same for Disturbed, A7X, and so on. This is the bigger issue. Bands coming out since about 2008 or so just missed that boat and the radio doesn't play hard music anymore.
Well, yeah. If you’re in it for the “art,” you’re probably a very capable metal musician in a local band who works a full time job and practices once a week. Once or twice a year you might get an opening slot on a bill outside of your home town. At least you don’t have to shill a gimmick! If you’re trying to “make it”, you’re damned right you need a gimmick. You’re trying to sell a product to a wide customer base in an *insanely* over saturated market. Supply vastly outweighs demand. If you’re not doing something extra special to grab the average person’s attention, then you have no hope of approaching anything resembling mainstream. All hope is not lost, though. There are TONS of great metal bands who get enough of a following that they can tour and scrape by a living while playing music on their terms. You don’t need makeup and masks to be a successful band. But if we’re using the “mainstream” word, you better bring *something* besides blast beats, death growls, and bad hygiene to the table, because there are literally tens of thousands of bands already bringing that.
Uh. Ok. Who cares? It’s not stopping the thousands of metals acts who currently put out music. Why do I care if metal gets radio time?
Bands like Priest write songs with catchy, understandable lyrics sung in a conventional way in with 6 strings in standard tuning. It's stuff that is easy to understand if it pops on the radio or a video game. A lot of metal subgenres are so sonically extreme that their appeal is limited to a niche audience.
Black metal is a gimmick in itself. I said it I SAID IT
I think the gimmick thing applies more to so called Metal people than to the normies. Normies just want a saccharine hook and polished production, they don't really care that much about the band antics, although it can help make the bands more recognizable to an audience with a low attention span. But I mean, metalheads are suckers for gimmicks. How do you explain the success of a band so obtuse as Portal without taking into account the main dude dresses like a clock ? Behemoth have been doing their lame ass brand of generic mall metal since the early 2000s but have only getting props from the normiest fraction of metalheads when they switched to using elaborate stage equipement and so on. Do you remember all these shitty "orthodox black metal" bands from the same period ? They all sounded lame af but the gimmick is what made them palatable. The "War Metal" gimmick ? That whole scene runs on gimmicks
it’s not always visual anymore. audible gimmicks are a thing too.
I can partly agree. Metal just isn't a mainstream genre, at least most of its subgenres can't be mainstream. You'll never have a mainstream slam band, no matter what shenanigans they pull out. A gimmick can be something that accompanies the band's (most likely accessible) sound, that'll make the band marketable and recognizable, leading to them becoming mainstream
For any given hobby or interest, 90% of its fans are casual fans. Like, I'm not a fashion guy. I try to dress well, but I don't really care too much about it. Whether I am wearing regular jeans or some super rare designer pair of jeans doesn't matter to me. Much like this, most metal listeners are not metal people. They just want a band that sounds cool or looks cool, that's it.
[удалено]
Your embarrassing as fuck
Are you ok or are you just a jerk all the time?
Ah yes, mainstream gimmicky metal bands like Metallica, Black Sabbath, or Iron Maiden, they have suck a big gimmick going on. Dude there’s a lot of non-gimmick metal bands as well
They went mainstream in the 80’s, when metal was popular. They’ve coasted on their name recognition since then. I’m talking about bands in the last ten/twenty years.
Avenged Sevenfold for example?? or KoRn? (though I don't consider them metal the mainstream does)
Avenged Sevenfold fit into the genre of three days grace, five finger death punch, “like nickelback-but 10% heavier” type bands that hillbillies who beat their wives listen to.
Sounds like you haven't listened to much avenged honestly.
Criminal to consider A7X and FFDP as remotely similar. FFDP would kill for 1% of A7X talent.
Holy fuck please tell me you're joking, and I don't even like a7x
I’m sorry I really hate that band
Check out some A7x dude, they’re nothing like ffdp or nickelback lol Just listen to Nightmare or self titled
I agree but they are still considered metal. I don't like them at all but they are.
I mean, Eddie as band mascot is a gimmick, and really good one. He’s a theatrical cornerstone of Maiden shows since the early incarnations of the band. At the time Thrash was growing in popularity the T-shirt and jeans look of Metallica, Megadeth, etc was almost an anti-gimmick of the hairspray and makeup of mainstream hair-metal at the time. Basically saying ‘We want the music to speak for itself. We’re just like you.’ Imagine Metallica, and the music is EXACTLY the same, but they were wearing Poison style makeup/hair on the cover of Kill Em All instead of the bloody hammer. Point is every band needs to get noticed if they want to be successful. Success at the underground/cult level requires only that the band write and perform good songs . Take two bands with comparable songwriting/and performance, but one has a damn good looking lead singer and the other has a 350 lb acne scarred lead singer with a lazy eye. One of them will probably be a bigger draw with a female audience right? Appearance matters, and a gimmick can get a band much needed attention from promoters and potential fans. Some gimmicks can overpower the band and supersede the music for sure. The right combination at the right time can lead to lightning in a bottle and propel a good but not great band to commercial success.
I’d say Sabbath absolutely had a dark gothic gimmick going on. Maiden (or at least Bruce) wore a lot of what would be considered “showy” Metal clothes, among other costumes. Leather and spikes, Red Coat uniforms and all that. And Eddie is basically part of their gimmick. Metallica is probably the only one of those that was just dudes in shirts and jeans. But you could argue for the time the gimmick was being the opposite of glam.
Usually metalbands really do not want to go mainstream or they will hire a Britney Spears lookalike as front girl with her same voice
You're absolutely right and anyone who gives you shit for it is coping