Wintersunn O)))

"In all honesty, good music died about twenty years ago."

How far would you say you personally agree? Why?

I think that the nineties were a very bad time for the bulk of Heavy Metal, but a great time for Extreme Metal acts. I mean, no nineties, no Black Metal.
But Thrash, Glam and HM did not survive the grunge nascence, or the advent of Nu-metal. Something vital has been lost, IMO.

Vampiro

Six in one hand, half a dozen in the other.

There was a lot of great metal in the eighties and nineties, but there's also some really great albums still being made today. I'm of course exluding most scene acts and whatnot, since most "mainstream" metal is just really, really terrible.

Lord Dentyne Ice

I disagree.

Yeah, Death, Thrash and Power Metal saw their peak in the eighties and early nineties and since all the genres were relatively new, there was more room for originality. The explosion of bands creates an illusion of the times as being musically better. Nowadays what makes a genre has gotten fairly specific and the bands end up being more and more uniform. I mean for every five Dark Funerals or Tsjuders, you'll might only have one Xasthur or Mutiilation.

Still, on the other hand, the times do have different sounds. I mean, in the late 80's Death Metal still had a very Thrashy element about it (Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness, Cannibal Corpse - Eaten Back to Life) or it was basically a Celtic Frost rip-off (See: Obituary). The same thing goes with Doom and its evolution from Black Sabbath and Candlemass styled music, to the more modern Death Metal influenced material. So, it can either be an evolution that creates a certain sound or a simple trend; so I can see the other side of the argument. Both of which can be specific to a time period.

Either way, the sounds of the times can always be recreated with the same style and energy. I think the "the older days were better" idea was created by people overly concerned with being anti-trend.

Vampiro

Maybe I'm just tired, but I think I missed which you preferred.

But that last bit, I think, is due to nostalgia rather than anything else. It's like movies or video games. Most people remember the good times they had with that sort of stuff, so it based on emotions. If more people stood back and looked at what there is now, I think many would be pleasantly surprised to find out that music hasn't gone to shit.

Lord Dentyne Ice

I disagree with the idea that "good music died X number of years ago". I was saying it has nothing to do with time and the argument can very, very easily go both ways.

Good points by the way.

Klarth

There is no old school metal, and there is no new metal. Metal has been and always will be.

I don't like it when people differentiate between the two.

Vampiro

They're pretty different in culture and sound. Therefore, you can easily differenciate between them.