Are Metal Drummers over-rated?

Frost

Silver Member
Tongue firmly in the cheek with this one.

I have nothing wrong with metal drummers but god they suck :p
 
well I'm sure there are a lot of good original metal drummers, but with the majority, for the most part, when you've heard one, you've heard them allllllll.

Very boring over use of double kick, very boring single stroke machine-gun fills every 2 bars... You know the drill.
 
Many certainly are. I think with metal drumming, as long as the drummer doesn't suck, if the band kicks ass then the drummer gets heaps of praise, y'know? Slayer's a great example. Love Slayer, but the drumming isn't exactly mindblowing. Yet Lombardo is often called one of the best metal drummers EVER. Same with Lars Ulrich.
 
I think being able to blast at high BPMs takes as much dedicated practice as doing anything else difficult. I couldn't do it. But can metal drummers resist all temptation to blow chops just because they can make it fit, and just keep "boring" time to a blues song?

The answer doesn't really matter. With music, there's literally room for everyone. It's misguided to think one genre is "better" than another. That's like saying what's the best state (in the US) to live in? Hey it depends what you like, oceans? deserts? farmland?

We're one big family, with many different and equally difficult facets.

OK Thaard might be the red headed stepchild, but besides that...
Thaard are you gonna just sit back and let me take potshots at you?
Cmon man open fire!
 
I think being able to blast at high BPMs takes as much dedicated practice as doing anything else difficult. I couldn't do it. But can metal drummers resist all temptation to blow chops just because they can make it fit, and just keep "boring" time to a blues song?
Some can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLRnltoKSZI
The thing with metal music is that a drummer will be derided for not putting enough chops wherever they can make it fit.
 
The problem I have with metal drummers, besides the fact that the music is noise, is that most metal drummers I've seen make it look so hard to do. I mean when you watch them with there arms swinging and playing all double bass it makes me tired just watching them. If you watch the great jazz drummers, not only do they play musically, but they make it look effortless. Maybe that's why some guys think metal drummers are better, because a jazz guy makes something very difficult look simple.
 
Some can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLRnltoKSZI
The thing with metal music is that a drummer will be derided for not putting enough chops wherever they can make it fit.

that was great! and that comment "must. not. blast." made my day.

I don't think that their overrated personally. I mean the point was made that they play repetitive patterns (and yes, sometimes I couldn't agree more) but is it any different then some of the rock guys (Nickelback, Theory of a Deadman, Hinder etc.)? Every genre is gonna have copies (and lots of em). So i guess the only thing you can do, regardless of what genre you play in is be original, and more importantly tasteful.

It'd be nice if Derek Roddy chimed in on this :)

-Jonathan
 
The problem I have with metal drummers, besides the fact that the music is noise, is that most metal drummers I've seen make it look so hard to do. I mean when you watch them with there arms swinging and playing all double bass it makes me tired just watching them. If you watch the great jazz drummers, not only do they play musically, but they make it look effortless. Maybe that's why some guys think metal drummers are better, because a jazz guy makes something very difficult look simple.

In most cases that's probably just part of the show. Most youtube clips I've seen of metal drummers "practicing" (not with full band), they look pretty relaxed (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXINemV8E_0 for example).
 
That was quite boring, if you watch what he's doing, it's all the same lick done over and over. It's purely physical with no creativity. I'm sure he practices in his little room on those double bass patterns for hours. Regardless, the music stinks, so what's the point.
 
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I think it depends on what kind of metal. I would say that the guys with no creativity are overrated. Just strait blast beat throughout the whole song is tedious and irritating. Guys like Matt Greiner, Jordan Mancino, and Blake Richardson are incredible. But, yes, most metal drummers are overrated.
 
I don't think any one style or genera of drummer is necessarily over-rated. You have to actually get involved with a style or genera to understand what it takes to do it. Like Larry said, it's all opinionated. But remember, more times than not, the great drummers have the ability to play every style and do so very well. Tell a drummer like Joey Jordison or Danny Carey that they are over-rated because of the style they have chosen to play.
 
The problem I have with metal drummers, besides the fact that the music is noise, is that most metal drummers I've seen make it look so hard to do. I mean when you watch them with there arms swinging and playing all double bass it makes me tired just watching them. If you watch the great jazz drummers, not only do they play musically, but they make it look effortless. Maybe that's why some guys think metal drummers are better, because a jazz guy makes something very difficult look simple.

When I saw Elvin Jones, he would be sweating buckets. He was very physical, perhaps in a different way, but he didn't make it look easy. Tony Williams was soaked with sweat after his clinic, and he was certainly a powerful player.

Many drummers from the swing/big band era would make big arm motions to emphasize certain licks or song section.

Metal drummers might have taken the whole arm movement thing to a new level, but they certainly didn't invent it.

Conversely, many of the newer extreme metal guys barely lift their arms, because they're playing so fast, there is no time to raise an arm.
 
Many certainly are. I think with metal drumming, as long as the drummer doesn't suck, if the band kicks ass then the drummer gets heaps of praise, y'know? Slayer's a great example. Love Slayer, but the drumming isn't exactly mindblowing. Yet Lombardo is often called one of the best metal drummers EVER. Same with Lars Ulrich.

I find it a bit odd people call Lombardo one of the best metal drummers of all time. I hear it all the time now, that he was so innovative, great, better than everyone else, etc.

But when I was a teenager in the 80's, I don't recall anyone saying such things about Lombardo at the time. People would say he was fast, had incredible foot speed, but not the heaps of praise he gets now. I recall everyone talking about Lars, because he was innovative, playing many things no one else was doing, with broken triplets, sextuplets, and all the odd time stuff he was doing in the 80's.

Of course, Lars then threw all of his innovations out the window in the 90's, stop practicing, stopped learning anything new, while a million kids took what he did and improved it to whole new levels.Meanwhile Lombardo kept practicing, learned new things, and is now a much better drummer than Lars, but Lars was the man in the 80's.
 
Metal drummers are overrated when it comes to being a musician. When it comes to being a senseless metronome, they excel.
 
Personally I like a lot of metal drummers, I made the discussion as a joke.

I don't like all metal drummers, some metal drummers focus too heavily on double bass kick fills and playing quickly, they are basically much faster, louder rock drummers.The thing I hate about a lot of metal drumming is the lack of dynamics, it's always loud, there isn't any real variation, this is exemplified with how they trigger the kick drum (for speed generally).

If you ask me many metal drummers are more athletes then musicians.

Here is a link to a metal drummer I absolutely love, I've posted this link before but the man is an artist, he's not playing someone else's work, this is a piece he wrote,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP-LbS7XEs0
 
I personally saw Flo Mounier play jazz (actually he studied Jazz in his curiculum) and then play metal and it was like two different drummer playing on the same drum set.
 
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