What is sludge metal?
I take pride in being able to recognize a metal song's genre (or describe it) by just listening to a song. But sludge metal is one of those metal subgenres that I'm just never able to recognize... So I decided to listen to some of the biggest bands of the subgenre to gain some kind of understanding of it. I went to Wikipedia and started to go over the bands on the article called List of sludge metal bands. I accidentally listened to four songs by the first band, so for fairness sake I listened to four from most of them (all but the last one). I just took whatever songs they had as their top 4 on Spotify.
Sounds like the Wikipedia describtion, with a lot of variation between songs. Jezebel was maybe a bit too heavy, Cheap Vodka and The Blue were good, but I really liked Scream of the Butterfly.
Blood Circus' Six Foot Under, Blood Man, The Outback & See Those Eyes Again.
Again, fits the describtion, but somehow sounds very different from Acid Bath. Tbh, I couldn't probably tell this is sludge metal, because their combo of doom metal and hardcore punk just ends up sounding like punk rock (like, not the original punk of the 70s, but the new wave of it in the 90s-2000s, especially The Offspring). This isn't metal to my ears, it's punk rock. Idk how the band themselves feel, but someone clearly thought this is sludge metal...
Buzzov•en's At A Loss, Plow, Don't Bring Me Down and Unwilling to Explain.
At least the first song has much more effects on the voice than Blood Circus, which had a very unedited vocal sound, like punk usually does. If Buzzov•en truly is one of the biggest bands in their subgenre, I think they have this sound on purpose. Partially created with intentionally choosing bad recording equipment, partially in post-production (or that's how it sounds to me), it sounds like it was recorded in someone's basement or garage. I get it, since it's a thing in extreme/underground metal. You want to sound more obscure and more isolated from civilization and therefore more scary and that's why you do it. And I'd imagine a hardcore punk band sounds more authentic if they don't use professional studio equipment. So, I get it and appreciate it. But do I want this on my Spotify? No, not necessarily. I appreciate them, though. They seem very authentic and like they know what they're doing.
Corrosion of Conformity's Clean My Wounds, Vote with a Bullet, Albatross & Stare Too Long.
Singer sounds very talented. He sounds like a punk singer, but with a perfect / very good pitch. He's intentionally, with his technical singing skills, making his voice sound like a typical punk singer. I think.
Clean My Wounds sounded like mainstream rock, like Foo Fighters or Rise Against. Vote With A Bullet had more of an underground sound with the mixing, the "intentionally bad" I just talked about. Albatross has a sort of a psychedelic rock sound to it, I really liked it. Stare Too Long also has psychedelic rock kinda guitars, but a very mellow and a bit country-esque / 2000's Avenged Sevenfold ballad kinda vibes. The band's sound is very diverse.
Crowbar's Planets Collide, REPULSIVE IN ITS SPLENDID BEAUTY, Existence Is Punishment and THE LASTING DOSE.
I feel like vocal technique is something quite distinctive - something I could use to differentiate them from other metal genres. The intrumental is some kind of a unique mix of punk and doom metal, but the vocals seem to be consistently similar to punk vocals, but with doom rhythm/tempo... Typical song lenght seems to be 3-5min, where punk songs are 1-3min and doom songs 5-15min...
Crowbar is heavy like doom, but drumming, tempo etc. remind me more of punk. This particular singer's voice isn't my thing, though. In general, I think that's what I'd miss if I listened to only sludge metal for a while... like I'm doing now 😅 ... the clean vocals. I need both, cleans and screams.
Down's Stone the Crow, Bury Me In Smoke, & Lifer.
I recognized Phil Anselmo's vocals. I do like Pantera's music, but not the racism expressed by some of the members, including Anselmo. Why are so many talented people such assholes?
You know what? I think I'm done with the genre. I think I could maybe recognize a sludge song now. I didn't finish the Wikipedia list, but the point of this post was to learn to recognize a sludge song when I hear one.
Comments
Post a Comment