It's All Been Done

Since I have free satellite radio for six months, I've been branching out from Raw Dog comedy channel and the 70's channel and the 80's channel and the 90's channel to see what else is out there. Because there are so many channels, most of them are laser-focused on a very specific sub-genre or theme. Kind of like the modern news media. You can get anything you want, there is an outlet for every view and every taste now. Oddly though, they only have one blues channel, and they just dump all blues into it. Boogie Woogie. Delta. Chicago. Texas. Memphis. From jug bands and juke joints to B.B. King to Back Door Slam, a span of 100 years, all piled up together. WTF. But for most music types, they have a channel for each sub-genre.

As an example, I give you channel 40, aka Liquid Metal. This is the Death Metal channel as far as I can tell. They bill it as the heaviest of heavy metal, but I think it's more focused than that. Back in the day I was a big heavy metal fan, you know, Sabbath, Aerosmith (pre-sellout), Ozzy, Ratt, Metallica (pre-sellout), etc...but this channel is a different kind. Allow me to show you some of the actual names of the bands this channel plays. See if you recognize any. If you do, I'm probably never going to let you anywhere near me again:

Sick Of It All
Hate Eternal
Cancer Bats
Generation Kill
Kingdom Of Sorrow
Deicide
Scar Symmetry
Throwdown
Amon Amarth
Sacred Reich
All That Remains
Black Dahlia Murder
Polkadot Cadaver
Fear Factory
Acid Bath
Bonded By Blood
Devil Driver
Goatwhore
Abysmal Dawn
Destruction

Straight Line Stitch
Death Angel
Nuclear Assault
Toxic Holocaust
Vampire Mooose
Mayhem Sweepstakes
Bolt Thrower
Slipknot
Living Sacrifice
Red Fang
Shadows Fall
Mushroomhead
Winds Of Plague
Whitechapel
A Pale Horse Named Death
Morbid Angel
Suicide Silence
In Flames
Unearth
Low Road
Arch Enemy
Autopsy
Darkness
Napalm Death
Death Ray Vision
Through The Eyes Of The Dead
As I Lay Dying
Cattle Decapitation
Every Time I Die
Baptized In Blood
I Wrestled A Bear Once
Coroner
Impending Doom
Winds Of Plague
Defecation
Killswitch Engage
Hate Breed

Holy moly. Cancer Bats? Goatwhore? And I used to think Black Sabbath was on the edge. Now I see that they aren't anywhere near morbid enough to be played on Liquid Metal. You should see the song titles. I can't even put them on my blog. Ok, fine. Here's one, a tame one: Corn Hole Armageddon. Ahh such sweet poetic imagery.

So we have this channel with all manner of Death Metal bands I never knew existed. And I have heard many of the songs in the last week because it's like a motorcycle accident - you can't look away.

Based on this I have come to the conclusion that they needn't have bothered because every single one of these bands, without exception, sounds exactly like Pantera, circa 1992.

 

Dimebag Darrell is rolling in his grave.

I used to like Pantera, although they were on the hard side even for me. They had a very bottom-heavy sound with Dimebag's guitar heavily filtered for "scooped mids" and very dry, and the singer sounded like he was right up from hell on vacation - and pissed off to boot. But they could play, and what works for one talented band doesn't usually come off well for a hundred mediocre wanna-be groups clumsily copying them. It just sounds forced, and lame.

If you have the guts and you want to hear the original songs that are being aped 24/7 on Liquid, take a listen to Walk or This Love off the Pantera album Vulgar Display of Power (1992). But just a warning, you'd better be in the mood for some serious head banging. But on the bright side, you'll never ever have to listen to channel 40 because, as BNL says "It's all been done".