Been to Wacken recently and a friend and I were discussing what could be seen as the biggest name in metal currently.
Since we're "old", we could only come up with yesteryears titans.

Are there any more recent names that currently dominate the industry? Get played on day to day radio like our childhood bands did?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

What do you mean by biggest? And what do you mean by metal?

Gojira just played the fuckin Olympics... They're probably the biggest metal band of all time by some metric at the moment. Like a higher percentage of households have now heard Gojiras music than Metallicas music. Wild.

Last year Sleep Token and Lorna Shore was all anyone was talking about.

Tim Henson is the first guitar god we've had since...idk Tosin Abasi? Alexi Laiho? But his band Polyphia is not exactly heavy.

Djent and Thall have kinda came and went, but there was Vildhjarta and Humanity's last breath for Thall, and Animals As Leaders and Periphery for Djent.

I'm sure Spotify has a different opinion than Billboard or record sales, etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Hehe yeah i kept it vague, to capture more of a slice of the mainstream consciousness. Maybe something that regularly shows up on the local "rock" radio.

True about Sleep Token and LS, I've been seeing some billboards out in the wild and Will Ramos is obviously a huge name in the metalcore community still.

Had no clue HLB was such a big one, i really enjoyed them recently after finding them in some mix. Nothing anyone in the wild would recognize though i think.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yeah the Thall style is an interesting subgenre. Think djent but spooky instead of angry? Lol that's the best I got.

Nah, who am I kidding: similar to djent with a kind of one-liner-comedian delivery of a dynamic range of riffs, interspersed with rhythmic candy, the thing that makes THALL stand out to me is a lot more playing with microtonal bends (which create a spooky aura). I would say a band like Veil Of Maya kind of represents the beginning of a shift into the existence of the genre... Vildjharta made the subtle variation that VoM brought sometimes, their whole thing.

Others followed but I'm old so idk much beyond them.

And if I am not describing HLB and Vildjharta right now, I don't know what I'm doing 😁

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Heh nice, thanks some more names to add to the mix!

Always cool to hear something fresh that breaks the mold a bit