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OrthodoxEaster wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:14 pm Some of these are a little more obscure, but:

Gore.
Caspar Brötzmann Massaker.
Melvins.
Khanate.
maybe Sleep.

Branca is some of my favorite music ever, but he was too abstract and brainy to be heavy in a "rock" way. Plus his drummers just tended to thump eighth notes on the kick drum and tumble around on the toms w/o dragging the beat or creating much conventional heft. Huge influence on Swans, though.

Flipper and Drunks w/Guns kinda sorta fit the bill but are perhaps a wee bit too punk and too comical.

How were Flipper comical?

What's the criteria, how heavy the band is? If so, what are the metrics of heavy? Are we talking bands that aren't in the purely metal genre? Bands that have some doom or sludge factor? I still don't think the 3 bands mentioned are that comparable, though the Swans influence in Neurosis is pretty clear, but I think I understand that we're talking bands that are not superficially similar but all have an astronomical weight to their music. I want to say something like Throbbing Gristle or some other experimental act but TG doesn't get there in sonic weight.

Talking about comical (and yes there is some humor in Flipper)... Melvins and Sleep are too goofy for this list.

I'm not really into sunn o))) but I think they are a top pick for the 4th band.

boilermaker wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:18 pm

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:14 pm Some of these are a little more obscure, but:

Gore.
Caspar Brötzmann Massaker.
Melvins.
Khanate.
maybe Sleep.

Branca is some of my favorite music ever, but he was too abstract and brainy to be heavy in a "rock" way. Plus his drummers just tended to thump eighth notes on the kick drum and tumble around on the toms w/o dragging the beat or creating much conventional heft. Huge influence on Swans, though.

Flipper and Drunks w/Guns kinda sorta fit the bill but are perhaps a wee bit too punk and too comical.

How were Flipper, comical?

Well, they're named Flipper

ChudFusk wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:23 pm What's the criteria, how heavy the band is? If so, what are the metrics of heavy? Are we talking bands that aren't in the purely metal genre? Bands that have some doom or sludge factor? I still don't think the 3 bands mentioned are that comparable, though the Swans influence in Neurosis is pretty clear, but I think I understand that we're talking bands that are not superficially similar but all have an astronomical weight to their music. I want to say something like Throbbing Gristle or some other experimental act but TG doesn't get there in sonic weight.

Talking about comical (and yes there is some humor in Flipper)... Melvins and Sleep are too goofy for this list.

I'm not really into sunn o))) but I think they are a top pick for the 4th band.

Right, I'm making this up myself, but I would guess the criteria is "scary sounding and earnest". So if you have any sense of humor at all, you are out.

Flipper's "Sex Bomb" is basically a joyous send-up of frat rock, complete w/whooping and party sax (the latter in one version). It's their "TV Party." That aside, the group covered "The Old Lady That Swallowed the Fly," had an LP cover the turned into a board game, and slurred stage banter like "Am I Billy Idol yet?" and "Wanna see my left testicle?" Definitely almost as funny as they were hard and mean.

Ok, if humor is not allowed, forget Flipper, DWG, and Melvins. Too much levity. Sunn is almost like parody costume rock and I take it less seriously than I do Sleep, so that doesn't really rank for me. It's almost Spinal Tap by accident. The first couple Earth records are appropriate, but that band changed a hell of a lot, plus there are no drums on their most conventionally heavy record. I do think heavy requires a drummer or a facsimile thereof. TG might have a heavy mood but pretty much none of the music is heavy at all; hell, the lighter number are almost synth-pop. Noisy, yes, but not heavy.

The Finnish band Mana Mana (cf. the Totuus Palaa LP) would be appropriate here, but hardly anyone outside of the Nordics knows what it is.

I think it's also mandatory that you don't look comically scary...so I'm scratching off any black metal.

Black metal's way too thin and buzzing, anyway. Rarely does it lumber. Doom stuff might rank when it's not too goofy.

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Tue Oct 11, 2022 2:14 pm Branca is some of my favorite music ever, but he was too abstract and brainy to be heavy in a "rock" way. Plus his drummers just tended to thump eighth notes on the kick drum and tumble around on the toms w/o dragging the beat or creating much conventional heft. Huge influence on Swans, though.

The drumming admittedly the weak link, but if this jam from 1981 were out of place on a SWANS record in 2022, then I will eat my hat. Maybe it could use some spooky quietly growled vocals or something.

Early Sabbath?

I suppose when I'm talking about the ultimate kind of heavy that these 3 bands represent very well, I'm refering to music that is:

. Based in the rock paradigm but not easily categorisable in a sub-genre (i.e.: if you can pigeon hole it easily it then it's not quite up to the standard required here).

. Taking the intensity of the most intense punk / hardcore into musical realms well beyond those genres' limitations but keeping the nihilism / despair factor cranked to full (like, the unrelenting doom vibe on those early Discharge records or the explosive anger on the early Black Flag stuff).

Earth go there on the debut but get way more arty and abstract thereafter, the Melvins went there on Gluey Porch Treatments and Lysol but their humour (however cynical it was) is an instant disqualifier.

I guess (for my money) the sludge bands on Pessimiser records (like Grief, Noothgrush, Dystopia or 16) come close but are a little too close to extreme punk / metal territory and lack the "arty" angle to take them into the big leagues- I guess the spectacularly depraved and perverse aesthetic that EyeHateGod mined just about push them into the conversation w/ the original three bands, but I think they aren't quite THAT great.