whats with the retro trend in metal?

[Tmoran]

anyone else noticing this retro trend in metal music these days? mastodon with orange amps and retro looking guitars and metal bands like bring me the horizon on first act retro guitars? I remember when metal music was jackson, charvel, bc rich and esp. These days its like to play metal your gonna need to be playing a danelectro. I mean its not all that bad I play metal on my carvin semi hollow due to its mean ass growl but I just cant wrap my head around this current trend of 60's style gear with a circle pit. Any thoughts?

[Fender]

Metal was forged on Strats and Les Pauls, going back to our roots is maybe not a bad thing. Besides, i say all you need to make the garbage they call metal today is a slab of ply wood, some EMGs and strings plugged into a dual rectifier and there you have it.

[Endrik]

Many retro bands sound a lot cooler than all this overproduced, sterile, balless shit that's going on mostly, it's nothing new by the way, sludge/stoner bands have doing if for decades. I like when the band goes all the way though, not just using a vintage guitar but everything else too in the recording process (including the recorders, microphones and micing thechniques, mixing etc.). Taking inspiration from the 60's is great as it was the most creative and innovative time in modern music. Back then they actually recorded with the purpose of getting the energy and the chemistry between the musicians on the tape. These days it is more like, let's use pro tools to make everything mathematically correct and process the shit out of everything because sounding like a machine is a good thing.

[Pointy]

First of all, metalcore is not the same as metal! Emo kids with danelectros wouldn't surprise me at all - many of them can play though.

As for the retro thing, well everything is retro these days but also there is a greater freedom image-wise for the artists, they don't have to have a particular piece of gear to be cool nowdays. Also, there hasn't been anything cutting-edge new since the 80's - in the mainstream anyway - and as Fender said people have been using 50's guitars since day one.

[Newc]

Not to mention these smaller retro gear companies know that a Les Paul and Strat are so fucking cliche`, it's cliche`!

So they want something old-looking but that plays better than the old stuff (before anyone knew about double-acting truss rods, proper fret dressing, improved design, etc) and isn't blindly allegiant to a classic blueprint simply so someone can say "this brand new guitar is made exactly like they were in the 1950s, down to the most tiny detail, and we'll call it Vintage Original Spec, even though 50 years of advancing the state of the art is being thrown out the fucking window to appease a few rich fucknuts".


And maybe they all finally figured out that a good enough player can play anything on anything - that you don't NEED a Charvel or Jackson or BC Rich to play Metal, or a Strat to play Blues, or a Tele to play Cuntry, or a giant hollowbody to play Jazz.

But these days you can do Metal on a White Falcon with Filtertrons through a Bassman 4x10 and a POD.

[markD]

+1 to what everyone else said. another thing to consider is that some of that retro gear sounds AMAZING! get a "heavy" sound doesn't have to mean playing with SO much gain and bass on your amp that you sound like a mosquito with elephantitus. low wattage amps, lower wattage amps, simple EQ....if used properly ALL of those things can give you a CRUSHING sound.

live,i use a fender telecaster with a low output humbucker in the bridge for our drop-D songs. other guitarist go apeshit over how crushing it sounds. it gets the job done in a way that none of my "metal" guitars were capable of. my "metal" guitars sound too thin and even in their frequency response to my amp. haha, they are too refined! if i want an aggressive sounding guitar, i go to my tele, my LP jr, my hamer studio, my flying V....all guitars that are basically retro designed guitars. for leads in the studio, i play a stock vintage strat.

i just got a vox night train. that little head sounds WAY more raunchy and "heavy" than my rivera amps. a big part of it is that when i have it cranked it is going into meltdown. it is 15 watts. my riveras? 100 and 120 watts, respectively. yes, they have all the fancy pentode/triode, full/half power switches, but they still react differently. it is not the same. same thing with other bits of retro gear. sometimes using the old approach gets you more of what you want....a cranked JMP marshall, a cranked fender champ/princeton, a cranked AC30, a cranked orange 30 watter, a cranked HIWATT - those amps will get you into the realm of heavy if you let them....will it be "brootal"? no. it WILL be thick, meaty, and HEAVY!!!! add that old MXR ditortion + if you wanna play leads and you are there!!!!