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Yeah, I know there's very little discussion here these days, but I think we're obligated to have a thread that sums up this decade.

So, what defined the metal scene(s) in the years 2000-2009 in your opinion? Was it the comebacks of classic lineups, the birth of new sub-genres, the death of legendary musicians, bands changing styles, amazing albums, filesharing...? How good were the 00s compared to the previous metal decades (this is especially for those who were alive then...)? Post your thoughts!



Oh, and as for my opinion... the 00s rocked. Folk metal! Post metal! 70s retroness! Candlemass with Rob Lowe!
Although, what happened to power metal? Is it just me, or was this the worst power metal decade since the creation of that genre?

Power Metal had some moments, but man overall it just wasn't up to par. We got some decent albums from the classics and since Smolisky and Peavey teamed up in Rage (not sure if the names are spelled right) they have been somewhat unstoppable.

I was excited that Thrash has made a comeback in the 00s. It was slow starting but its in full swing now.

Could have done without the Metalcore and Deathcore saturation of the scene though. Don't mind the genres in general but they picked up far too quickly and burned out just as fast.

One thing I noticed was how Black Metal started to REALLY branch out, especially in the last few years. Bands like Krallice, Caina, Enslaved, Unexpect, Wolves in the Throne Room, etc are all pushing the boundaries of black metal back, and I'm pleasantly surprised.

There is also this "movement" in death metal, where the focus is more on the "ugliness" that it can create, as opposed to brutality and heaviness. Stuff like Dead Congregation, Funebrarum and Portal is spearheading death metal into a newer, uglier direction.

Really clever thread, I approve haha

i've only got into metal this decade, but as for the trends recently I do agree with darkreif, Deathcore and Metalcore have been annoyingly prevalent, and even if they have produced some good bands (Heaven Shall Burn, The Rotted, even Converge - look at how popular they've got this decade) the majority is annoyingly mainstream and generic. Metal has become slightly mainstream the last few years, and scene music has developed a bit more of a Metal edge which appeals to a majority of teenagers that went to rebel against their parents just slightly more than the average little emo child.

I do agree with the black metal comment as well, it seems to have outgrown the former stereotype of what black metal should be like Burzum and expanded onto more avantgarde and progressive extremes. In fact, I think this sort of applies to a lot of genre's, every genre seems be expanding into more avantgarde/progressive boundaries, if the 90's were there to establish the main stereotypes of metal genre's, then the 000's are there to perfect them and I feel like the 010's are there to expand upon everything and wander into more bizarre territories. I'd put a lot of money on the most successful bands for the next few years being the more stranger and expansive than ever before, people just aren't as impressed by your more straightforward acts anymore, because no matter how good something is, a lot of it has been done before, which is both a good and a bad thing. On one hand, we will get more unique, individual music that tries to break borders and not apply to stereotypes. And on the other hand, you'll miss out on more straighforward bands because of this new found need for uniqueness and individuality, but people don't seem to realise, just because something is different, doesn't mean its good - which will result in a lot of bands trying to be unnecessarily strange to appeal to this new overly pretentious market which has been developing for some time and taking it too far.

On the whole, what I've seen of a lot recently is the declaration of genre's running out of steam. Post-rock's not had anything new for years apparently, same with melodic death metal, black metal and thrash (minus the rebirth of the traditional scene that's come back in the last year or so), this means that bands try extra hard to stand out, resulting in more out-there concepts and unique aspects to music that would be otherwise be ordinary. While this creates some really interesting music that works, it also results in some complete shite that just tries too hard. So what I personally see in the next few years is a massive gap in quality between those bands that create some really individual and unique music and those bands that just can't pull it off at all- plus you'll get bands that still play music the old-fashioned ways and get ignored and called generic despite being pretty impressive (this has already begun to happen this year in particular), and while this could create an exciting decade for music, I can see more standard genre's dying out completely, for example, bands who play a style similar to Dark Tranquillity or older In Flames will simply be too old-fashioned to be relevant in the Melodic Death Metal scene, even if they create amazing music. Of course, you'll get comebacks of certain genre's if this does happen, which will be great to see, but overall, I can really see a lot more straightforward and hard hitting music dying out in place of more expansive and outward music in every scene.

Of course, I'm slightly tipsy while writing this, and it's all just my opinion, but I like what I've written sums up my thoughts nicely.

One thing that stands out for me is the way that Folk/Viking/Pagan Metal is following the pattern set by Thrash, Death, and Black Metal before it. There have been some great bands and some innovators, but I think that we are perhaps seeing the genre enter into its period of large-scale acceptance within the Metal community. Pagan Fest has become an annual event, and has spawned imitators like Heathen Fest, and the like. This is an indicator that the form has reached a large, sustained audience. However, it is also this type of success that attracts johnny-come-lately bands, and prompts the labels and promoters to saturate the market. I think that Folk Metal, like the others, will likely see a crash, but after a period of hibernation will come out of it refreshed.

Interesting points from all of you. Another thing though (which is kind of related to what Raven said about people not being content with straightforward stuff), that mostly applies to the second half of the decade: it seems many bands in the heavy/power metal genre tried becoming more epic by releasing concept albums. For example Judas Priest (Nostradamus - their first concept album), Manowar (Gods of War - their first concept album), Iced Earth (their two latest albums, and also the Gettysburg trilogy* - not their first concept albums, but certainly more ambitious than their previous ones) + others I can't remember. Some managed to do this better than others, obviously. I don't know if this is the result of old bands being bored and trying something new, old bands trying to copy the ones that do epic/concept albums successfully, or old bands trying to please new types of fans (ie metalheads are no longer brainless headbangers, but nerdy gamers). But I may be completely off.

* Yes, the entire Glorious Burden is a concept album and Horror Show is too, but not of the epic kind I am thinking of.

I think this is a very important point. With the internet taking off, the metal subculture has been washed out, you can't spot a metalhead by the length of his hair and his rugged denim. Of course I'm not old enough to really remember "old times", but I imagine the number of gamers listening to metal has skyrocketed.

And if that's true I guess that this decade will be the one when some of "those" fans start to create music themselves. Could be interesting...

(quotation marks on "those" because I am one of them. I don't plan on creating any music though...)

Metal gamers is now only supported by the fact that the new God Of War game will have an EP of strictuly Metal music. That game is ridiculously Metal though and one of my favorites. Be nice to see Iced Earth do the soundtrack to that kind of game!

The 00's are really summed up by 4 major things in metal:

1. The resurgence of death metal. Though it really started in the late 90's the 00's witnessed a major explosion in "regression." Many of the old school bands started putting out quality releases again, we started to see a new generation of bands influenced by the great works from '87-'94 (ish), start putting out great music because the classics had been putting out that garbage. The Swedish Stockholm death metal sound probably had the greatest resurgence of all, and though many people aren't big fans of them, Bloodbath had a whole hell of a lot to do with it. I can't say that the 00's was the decade of death metal completely though as...

2. The extension of black metal. Though we have definitely seen a lot of quality traditional black metal acts (and I'm talking about traditional in the sense of black metal actually having a sound, not the arbitrary tagging of anything Satanic) there was definitely a huge explosion in the "progressive" black(ened) metal world. I'm not going to really reiterate what has already been said in the thread though. The only reason this doesn't hit my number one, as taste wise I generally prefer blacker music, would be that DM will most likely always be popular.

3. Thrash: Really doom (and affiliated genres) is the only extreme genre that didn't experience a massive movement in the 00's. Thrash had a couple actually: A) Retro-thrash movement: Do I really need to clarify? B) Reunion Movement: Most are garbage but we did get a few gems. C) Rise of Black/Thrash - Death/thrash had its major movement in the late 80's into the 90's, but that also coincided with the formative years of death metal. Most black/thrash from the early days was tagged black metal, or is just Satanic. The 00's witnessed so many new black/thrash acts, along with the masters continuing to put out great music. Even the retro-thrash movement in a lot of cases was painted very black.

4. The rise of metalcore, resulting in the fall of nu-metal. At least its something that can generally be considered metal popping up in the mainstream, with the most popular actually being one of the least cliche of the bands (Mastodon). Of course, I wonder what this decade will bring, the 80's killed real rock with the hair bands, grunge would have been called metal if it weren't for the image of the hair bands, and nu-metal, well, some of the bands actually eventually transcended into metalcore, but that era of rock is fortunately pretty much dead. What's going to be the new trendcore?

I saw someone mention "the creation of new sub-genres," now I really don't think this has happened since the early and mid 90's, and even then it was just sub-genres solidifying a sound (black metal and doom) instead of having the tags get dropped on so many bands only linked by something interchangeable like vocal style or lyrics (the mid-90's being the very poorly named Melodic "Death" Metal, which is more of a combination of power metal and thrash than anything death metal in most cases, some simp just had to call it "death" because it had harsh vocals. We're unfortunately stuck with that). Now, metalcore definitely wasn't created in the 00's, it was just expanded. The only real other area of note would be in the Progressive category, and I'm not talking about what "progressive metal" has come to mean to many. Artists like Ihsahn, Code, Enslaved all transcended their original roots and blended many genres together to get a mishmash that just doesn't fit anywhere. Of course, there really aren't too many artists out there like that, its mostly notable because of names involved.

Regarding folk metal: Other than the rise of a few acts that blend black/death/thrash with folk, and there aren't many of them actually, most of the folk metal bands clearly fit in other genres. Folk metal is mostly a marketing term these days, and really the comments earlier in this thread just back that up (especially considering some of the bands on these "pagan" tours aren't very folk at all). I do think there was a mass influx of folk/traditional and folk/black metal bands in the last decade, there could be a further explosion, but really I don't see it as all that significant. I simply believe that its just going to be a marketing term that continues to get thrown around hard and eventually ignored (simply because the bands just fit in their actual respective genres).

If you want to get technical both of those albums have themes, but are not concept albums. Concept albums tell a story ;-). The new Grotesquery is a pretty solid concept album.

I'm too lazy to actually dig it up, but I know a couple years ago one of the NHL hockey games had an unlockable team with many Swedish metal luminaries.

without trying to sound like some elitist prick, they was only a handful of good albums/ep's released in the last decade. (the only thing released in the last 10 years thats still got me yerning for another listen is meshuggah's ep i)

but i agree with alot of whats been said in this thread, alot of very good points being put across

Don't worry, any mention of Meshuggah eliminates ANY possibility you will be referred to as an elitist. However, apparently your taste would make my life very painful.

here's my problems with death metal on a whole

1) every death metal band is starting to sound like nile/behemoth, and i cant stand them bands bar 2 or 3 songs
2) deathcore/breakdowns
3) blast beating for the sake of blast beating (hate eternal/nile/etc)
4) absolute perfect production sapping the life out of albums, it sounds soulless. perfect example is arch enemy's root of all evil, sound quality is perfect, playings good, but it lacks the energy and passion the first albums had
5) opeth are possibly the most boring band in existance

and to ask the question, why would my taste make your life painful?