Does Heavy Metal music benefit from a high end audio system?

Mr. Show
funny metal band skit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XUlPtcz2rA

It’s always fun to read a post about the beginnings of heavy metal and nobody even mentions The Misunderstood. I was 12 when I stopped listening to Blue Cheer. Dig around a little fellas. We used to have to do this through mail order. 

Back to the main topic, I think both metal and punk can sound better if the source is better - problem is the majority of music produced in these genres didn’t focus heavily on good production and their listeners at the time didn’t have the equipment to know better. Even worse is garage music. I love me some early sixties garage bands - but my system makes them sound like they are broadcasting from inside the electrical outlet between my speakers. 

Wow, The Misunderstood! Have the lost Acetates cd.sound quality is as suspected, hollow, what seems like a bad transfer, similar to my 4 cd Pat travers set my the “majestic rock” label. Horrible, glad I popped for all the Japanese mini lp reissues few years back, night and day difference,…….anyway back….to.. Their full on guitar solos, when they do them, are pretty ear shattering, NOT in a bad way, it’s like giving a guitar great 20 beers, a couple microdots, and some Jameson chasers. All over the place, with little regard for rhythm or keeping the beat. This is a GOOD THING! they never really had much of a career, lots of 7”s’ I remember children of the sun, in 80, I thought it was a remake by bill Thorpe, no different all together, the Thorpe one is produced better, and makes sense, the Misunderstood one is just, in your face, and a psychedelic (maybe) or the guitar freak, took small lessons from Pete Townsend ( ?? )

Going to dig through some boxes to find one cd now,.
Wow, they were ahead of their time from the earlier sound. They went full on rip, on some songs.not all, if you’ve not heard them, or want to, stay away from “the lost acetates” cd, sq is live from a thin walled aluminum trash can, (on my system anyway)

man, I love it when gems like this are unearthed!…….UNEARTHED,…..WOW, just remembered the Y&T unearthed CDs, if your a fan check them out. Some very good stuff on them, Meniketti is a beast.
thank you.


not that familiar with them, the cd didn’t get much play at all, will investigate my cd further this weekend!
   And give a chance and full listen ,…sober at first, then after a few Negro Modelo beers. 

@limomangus@arcticdeth

I grew up at the perfect age, of the beginning of the NWOBHM music

My first album was Black Sabbath’s Paranoid ... WHEN IT WAS A NEW RELEASE (facepalm/smh). Talk about feeling old. But as fits my personality type, I never got stuck on the music of my late teens like most people. I kept progressing up until today while retaining my enjoyment of some of the older stuff.

Through the late 70’s we only considered two bands "heavy metal." Black Sabbath and Judas Priest (post-Rocka Rolla). I thought the 1970 song Jury by Trapeze came close. I played the heck out of that album (Medusa) in 1973-4.

There was nothing I considered metal again until ’81 with Iron Maiden’s Killers, which I didn’t like. I thought it was too fast. My how times have changed. Some might include Anvil in ’81. The real start of the proliferation of metal began in ’82 when I heard Witchfinder General and Angel Witch. ’83 kicked it off with a vengeance with Slayer, Metallica and Mercyful Fate. And ’84 was amazing. The period between ’84-88 was loaded with phenomenal metal. There were still good releases from ’88-92, but you could feel that something had changed. There was a short period where groove metal appeared. Then we had a dry spell from ’92-04. Thrash bands went Nu-metal, and after death metal band Entombed woke everyone up in ’90, with a few exceptions death metal hadn’t quite found its form yet, and after the brilliant ’87 release of Candlemass’ Nightfall, doom metal fizzled. In 2004, my interest peaked again when some of the death metal and metal-core bands started to release some decent music, like Killswitch Engage’s The End of Heartache, Cataract’s With Triumph Comes Loss, Full Blown Chaos’ Wake The Demons and Kataklysm’s Serenity In Fire.

Metal is now this humungous category with a huge number of genres that are indecipherable except to hardcore metal-heads. Progressive metal and technical death metal seems to draw some of the best musicians in the world, mainly because they’re the only ones who are capable of playing some of that stuff (for example Dream Theater). There are thousands of releases every year, most of them pure crap, but a few gems seem to pop up every year. And some genres go downhill while others suddenly become relevant again. For example, around 2013 death metal started to go dissonant, while doom metal made a resurgence with quality releases. A couple, Trees of Eternity’s Hour of the Nightingale and Draconian’s Sovran are stunningly brilliant.

BTW articdeth, I don’t think metalarchives.com includes all metal. For some reason they refuse to recognize hardcore as metal. I can see if the band sounds derived from The Ramones, Bad Religion or Sex Pistols, but I think any metal-head who doesn’t listen to Nail’s Suum Cuique or Wide Open Wound because they don’t come across Nail in metalarchives has possibly missed out on two of the heaviest metal riffs of all time. Born From Pain’s brutally heavy Sands of Time is also missing. And they regularly mislabel the genres, such as listing The Destro as "Death/Groove" when they are really "Groove/Hardcore" with nary a blast beat, growl or tremolo picking to be found. Great band BTW.

Great post! I am a R&R lifer. Also a musician until I was 35. I purchased Electric Ladyland the day it was released, same with his other albums. Same with Blue Cheer, all Zep, Black Sabbath... Like many of you. 
The difference is although I still purchase all those remasters. But I kept looking forward. 
I too ended up (like a drug addict) to want more, deeper, more complex, challenging music. Many have been mentioned here for the daring....
I offer the 2019 Grammy winning song for Best Metal Performance.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D2R69gVyZ0