Written by Guest on 28.05.2012 at 20:59

No My Dying Bride? M'okay

Different subgenre, different scene. (So is Candlemass, but I guess this is the last chance to get them on a tour like this.) I really can't imagine modern day My Dying Bride playing with Saint Vitus. They're part of the Peaceville Three with Anathema and Paradise Lost, that's a tour that would make sense.

Written by Cynic Metalhead on 28.05.2012 at 19:46

Help yourself out.

While that would suggest that a 'Big 4' of something is used in more cases than just in Thrash metal I still don't see why it should apply for doom.

Written by IronAngel on 28.05.2012 at 19:20

This thread is kind of stupid. It's about a proposed tour, and people argue about terminology. Nobody debated whether The Unholy Alliance was really unholy or if alliance was the correct technical term. It's just a promotional name, get over yourselves. >_<

The whole notion of a 'Big Four' of doom is kind of stupid. As you say, its just a promotional name and therefore, as I said, a pure gimmick. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to wonder why such is used and whether it holds any value or is indicating something beyond simply collecting a bunch of bands for a tour.

Well, the first post kinda answers that:

Over a two year period, from 1984 to 1986, all four of the Big 4 bands released defining debut albums; Saint Vitus released their eponymous album, Trouble released Psalm 9, Pentagram released Relentless and Candlemass released Epicus Doomicus Metallicus. Not only did all of those albums give the scene a united front and further the awareness of doom metal as a genre, but they would influence and inspire many well-known later musicians.

The organizers seem to think these four bands are the most relevant doom metal bands of the 80s who are still touring actively. I'm not sure about the status of many bands or how big they were in their day or currently, so I don't know if that's true. The commercially bigger bands Marcel listed, like My Dying Bride and Katatonia, wouldn't fit this tour by virtue of both their style and timing. So it's not like this is some group of bands randomly thrown together, there's clearly some cohesive idea here.

Of course it's grandiose, inaccurate and arbitrary to label anything the "big four" of a genre as diverse as doom metal with so many different phases, but people are just being self-important and anal about something that's really beside the point. A valid criticism would be "Hey they missed band X who was also big at that time and is touring at the moment", not "Well actually Swallow the Sun sold more than Trouble and limiting the title to just four bands, rather than three or five, is arbitrary." That may be true, but nobody here is contesting it, and ultimately all language is an arbitrary attempt to grasp reality. This topic is a collective exercise in intellectual circlejerking.

This seems like a stupid idea, the big 4 of thrash came as a result of a time period and happened naturally. This is just forced and unnecessary.

Nothing wrong with the bands though, or them going on tour. I just find calling it the "Big 4 of Doom" silly.

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

although i would be interested in a Big Four of Big Band tour - with hologram Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and Count Basie leading the way.

Written by BitterCOld on 04.06.2012 at 05:26

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

although i would be interested in a Big Four of Big Band tour - with hologram Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington and Count Basie leading the way.

Fuck yeah! Gene Krupa on drums