Metal bands that sound nothing like where they're from
Original post
Posted by Graveheart, 16.03.2007 - 21:48
Once I was wondering if every country had an original sound in metal, and also realised there are always some bands that somehow stand apart from their fellow countrymen. It's not specifically about who can hide their accents better than the rest or something. Instead I'm asking if you have ever listened to a band and only later found out about their homeland and then felt really surprised. That could be because their metal represents a completely another style that their home country isn't known to produce (such as progressive metal from Finland) or they do something familiar in a different way which is more characteristic to a band from some other country. Probably the most obvious example is Agalloch who sound far different from a typical American metal band.
Of course this thread requires you to know something about different metal scenes around the world. No one can blame you for trying, however it would be a lot safer to talk about French metal bands (for example) only after you have heard enough French metal to say which band from there is or isn't exactly like the rest of their offerings. At first I was going to advise you to avoid making stereotypes, but then I thought it over again and decided that we might actually need them. After all, this is all about stereotypes. It will result in hurt feelings and angry PMs, but stereotyping seems to be something that will keep this discussion going. It would also be interesting to see what kind of images people have about foreign metal scenes (native ones too) in an international scale.
Now make this work.
| Remus Posts: 711  |
Yeah, HIM is not exactly extreme power metal, is it? Ace of Base don't really have that melo-death/Gottenburg feel to them, do they! 
---- Procrastinate, NOW!
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| +{Jonas}+ I R Serious Cat Posts: 4955  |
Kamelot deffinitely doesnt' sound like an american band. Their power metal is on the level of many great Power metal bands. Actually I read somewhere that thy're considered the best PM band nowadays.
---- "Nobody wants to be the weird kid, you just end up being the weird kid. You don't know how you ended up getting there" - Rob Zombie http://jonas-bs.deviantart.com My dA, mainly photography, go check it out!
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| Warman Erotic Stains Posts: 7695  |
The best example I know is probably Deathstars from Sweden. When I first heard them I thought they were from Germany, and I know that a lot of other people also thought (or maybe still think) so.
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| Destryphior Posts: 397  |
Well, from finland there is Kiuas, power metal but more agressive than usual Finnish PM (Sonata, Stratovarius) Insomnium, when I first heard 'em I thought they were Swedes, silly me. Rapture, sounds European but not Finnish. HIM has been mentioned, but there's actually many Finnish bands playing, EMO-goth, HIM like music, e.g. Lovex, but they aren't too famous outside Finland. Bands from other places: Suidakra, playing folky gothenburg makes it fit in the Swedish or Finnish metal scene, but not really Germany. Theatre Of Tragedy being Norwegian was a total suprise for me. Woods of Ypres being Canadian didn't fit in my point of view.
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| +{Jonas}+ I R Serious Cat Posts: 4955 |
Written by Destryphior on 07.04.2007 at 18:50 I don't know... 'cause Children Of Bodom is from Finland as well, and they don't sound as the usual PM finish band either... Written by Warman on 07.04.2007 at 18:16 Hey I forgot Deathstars! They certainly sound german, the agressivity, the fact of being industrial and mainly the voice certainly soung german.
---- "Nobody wants to be the weird kid, you just end up being the weird kid. You don't know how you ended up getting there" - Rob Zombie http://jonas-bs.deviantart.com My dA, mainly photography, go check it out!
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| Destryphior Posts: 397 |
Written by +{Jonas}+ on 07.04.2007 at 19:48 Well the extreme PM bands are totally Finnish, but Kiuas has a more nonFinnish touch to their power metal. The name and the lyrics tells exactly were they come from.
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| Graveheart Posts: 1543  |
That's strange because I think that almost everything about Kiuas is very Finnish. The clean singer has one of the most protruding accents I've heard in a while, also their name is Finnish for a sauna stove, and I remember some of their song lyrics had some Finnish passages too... I guess it was Across the Snows. They also sing about Ukko ("Old man") who is a Finnish pagan god if I'm not mistaken. But it's true that musically they are different from most Finnish bands, sure they also combine power metal with melodic death metal, but what they do is somehow more "epic" than Children of Bodom for example.
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| The Alchemist Metalchemist Posts: 1589  |
I was surprised too, when I knew that Kamelot has european influences, specially Khan from Norway, because like I said before, Kamelot sounds like typical american music, imo.
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| Grey_Dandelion Posts: 132  |
when i learnt that Agalloch were from united states i fell from the sky.....more sensible would be if they were from Mars....
---- Don't turn away just take my hand and when you make your final stand i ll be right there i ll never leave all i ask of you is believe...
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| Doc G. Full Grown Hoser Staff Posts: 9718  |
well more of hard rock than metal, but Hardcore Superstar I was sure the came out of the US, probably hollywood until I found out there from sweden.
---- "I got a lot of really good ideas, problem is, most of them suck." - George Carlin
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| Nixx Account deleted |
Nixx
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I must also add "Guardians of Time" to this thread. They have the sound of a finnish/german power metal band, but they're Norwegian 
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| Oracle Orcinus Posts: 1425  |
i used to think that Kamelot and Black Majesty were European but then i looked them up on MS and found out that Kamelot are from the US and Black Majesty are from Australia 
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| Raiden Down Under Staff Elite Posts: 8292  |
Well saying a band sounds like they're from a certain country just helps stereotypes along. Is a band's country supposed to make them sound a certain way? A band can use instruments native to a certain country, and that could attribute certain country-like qualities to their music. As could accents and language from a vocallist, but from the perspective of general metal instruments, I don't think that a band should sound like a certain country. A certain country might have a lot of bands sounding a certain way, but if a band from another country plays the same way it doesn't mean that they are "like" the other country. Take the Black Majesty example. They're nothing like...Destroyer 666 say. Or Damaged even, they're different again. Australia has the "Black/Death/Thrash" sound going in some of our bands, but if another country's band plays like that they're not "playing like an Australian" or whatever.
---- "Scream for me Melbourne!!!!" - Bruce Dickinson "I don't see any god up here" - Yuri Gagarin (while in orbit, 1961)
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| Opium Account deleted |
Opium
Account deleted Written by Oracle on 18.04.2007 at 15:01 And you're an aussie too! Shame on you!
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| Oracle Orcinus Posts: 1425 |
Written by [user id=12867] on 18.04.2007 at 17:06 I know i know shame on me 
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| ..HumanError.. Account deleted |
..HumanError..
Account deleted Written by Warman on 07.04.2007 at 18:16 Yeah!! I've made that mistake when I first heard their music. I was even quite disappointed with myself because I had a quite long Industrial period, a couple of years ago, it lasted 3 years, and the only thing I would listen to was German Industrial bands, thus I thought I know the genre well. But, I didn't even think they could be something else than German. There is another band I could name : Sirius, which is a GREAT Symphonic Black Metal band. They sound so Norwegian, from Northern Europe, or even Eastern Europe... But I found out they were from Portugal. It's just too bad the band no longer exists  .But I usually don't give much importance to the band's nationality, but, it does help sometimes, it gives me information about what could have been the influences etc etc ...
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| Dane Train Beers & Kilts Elite Posts: 8902  |
Ok, I have one for you all. Kekal. "Christian" Avent-Garde Black Metal from INDONESIA. I didn't even know there was Black Metal there, let alone a band like Kekal. When I first heard their album "Beyond Glimpses of Dream" I thought they had to be from Norway or someplace like that. Or maybe even the USA. But Indonesia!?
---- (space for rent)
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| Raptus666 Posts: 27  |
Written by Bitch Boy on 28.03.2007 at 19:44 But that melancholia in lyrics can only be from Finland 
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| The Alchemist Metalchemist Posts: 1589 |
It seems that Black Metal can be found everywhere, which can make confusions...
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| Taktsekte Your Ad Here! Posts: 2808  |
Written by Raiden on 18.04.2007 at 16:59 Haha! When I think about Australia, I think of my favourite band hailing from there, Vanishing Point, a Power Metal one My vote goes to Dol Ammad, a band hailing from Greece. When you hear about Greek Metal, you probably focus on the direction of dark, obscure and (most of the times) Extreme Metal: Astarte (Black Metal), On Thorns I Lay (Doom Metal), Rotting Christ (Black Metal), Inveracity (Death Metal), Zemial (Black Metal) or Septic Flesh (Death Metal), but Dol Ammad decided to create a brand new style, "Electronica Art Metal" or Sympho-Prog-Power-Heavy-Electro-Prog(again)-Symphonic(again) Metal, a very interesting and brave music style (yet not complex enough for Progressive Metal standards, anyway) in my opinion. My personal favourite Dol Ammad album is their last release Ocean Dynamics, by the way. Written by Graveheart on 27.03.2007 at 22:59 Hey, we do have winters here! And we have bigger mountains than Finland! You should check a new band called Nivaira (website: http://www.nivaira.bravehost.com/ ), a Spanish Gothic Metal band consisting of two Spaniards and a Russian female vocalist. They sing in English and Catalan, and some of their lyrics are related to the concepts of winter, ice and snow.Written by Warman on 17.03.2007 at 00:37 On last.fm, somebody tagged them as "Yellow Metal", which I find extremely funny.
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| GT Coffee!! Staff Posts: 5101  |
Just found out that the band The Sin: Decay is from Finland...they sound so German
----  Dreams are made so we don't get bored when we sleep
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| Raiden Down Under Staff Elite Posts: 8292 |
Written by Taktsekte on 08.05.2007 at 21:44 Heheh, well we do have some nice Power Metal bands, indeed (check out Black Majesty, Lord, etc) but I think we're more well known for our extreme metal.
---- "Scream for me Melbourne!!!!" - Bruce Dickinson "I don't see any god up here" - Yuri Gagarin (while in orbit, 1961)
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| The Alchemist Metalchemist Posts: 1589 |
Talking about Australia, there's a band called Avrigus, something like orchestral/symphonic gothic/doom metal. Great band, dark atmosphere... I thought they were from Europe, specially Norway Another band that comes to my mind now is Trans-Siberian Orchestra, some of their songs are a mix between classical music and metal, in this case they sound european, as for christmas songs... well, in this case they sound more american
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| A.J Thunder Posts: 120  |
Written by Grey_Dandelion on 11.04.2007 at 21:16 ^^yeah totally, i had thought they were European, music that beautyful cant be made in the U.S (just joking..a lots of good bands come from the U.S. Agalloch for example!!).
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| Judas The Amputator Posts: 2043  |
The whole Celtic/Folk/Pagan sound is pretty much localised to European countries, with the more famous bands coming from Ireland (Cruachan), England (Skyclad), Italy (numerous bands), Spain (Mägo De Oz) and a few from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, but then one name and nationality will hit you in the face due to its incongruency - Tuatha De Danann, from Brazil! I wouldn't have picked Himinbjørg as a French band either, although in their case I'm talking about the whole Black/Viking scene not having a hotspot in France. England is a country famous for Heavy Metal; hell, the N.W.O.B.H.M. has the damn island's name in the genre! But, these days, bands like Akercocke and Bal-Sagoth are coming up. The former has what I would call either a Swedish or a German sound to them, and Bal-Sagoth are horrendously cheesy in the way only Nordics, Germans and Italians can get away with.
---- "Once the game is over, the king and the pawn both go back into the same box."
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| Warman Erotic Stains Posts: 7695 |
I actually thought Dream Theater were european at first, from UK or something like that. Don't know why really... 
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