Well we're back again to the history of indie music. When we last left off we learned that "glam metal" bands (like Aerosmith) dominating the alternative MTV music scene in the 70s, were ousted by grunge rock bands (like Nirvana with their "Smells Like Teen Spirit" in the last post) who appealed to the new generation of emo teenagers.

Aerosmith - Dream On


And of course, grunge did gradually evolve into emo rock that we know today such as "My Chemical Romance", "Jimmy Eat World", "30 Seconds to Mars", some of which I have introduced.(However, Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance stated in an interview that "emo is a pile of shit", and that his band was never emo. His statements are of course also piles of shit)

So what happened? While glam metal broke into and dominated mainstream, more extreme metal pervaded the underground movement. In the 80s, thrash metal, which is known for its speed, low pitched guitar riffs and complex high pitched shredding solos, finally broke into mainstream with the efforts of the "Big Four": "Metallica", "Slayer", "Anthrax", and "Megadeth". For your interest, this is the music our captain listens to when he headbangs in his room after an argument, and most remarkably the music that keeps him focused when he studies alone at the windy benches. While I will never ever understand how anybody can keep sane while listening to all the snarling thrash metal or why anybody would even listen to it at all, here's an example from Megadeth, our captain's favourite metal band:

Megadeth - Symphony of Destruction


Of course, in the end MTV thought that the heavy metal genre was becoming too extreme, as genres like black metal, death metal (which we shall not discuss here for james would want to break their legs) emerged, and it started to die out from mainstream music. Of course, heavy metal has kinda made a comeback in mainstream music recently, especially with the more recent genres like Nu metal, which combines hip-hop and metal, and the more melodic forms of metalcore, which combines heavy metal and hardcore punk. An example of the former would be Linkin Park, which needs no introduction, and for the latter, examples include Avenged Sevenfold and Bullets for My Valentine, which our J1 Marcus fills his iPod with i think (along with Blink-182, some punk rock band that both he and Kenneth thinks is damn cool...-shrugs-).

Avenged Sevenfold - Afterlife


Then of course, though heavy metal sorta died out, indie rock bands took influences from earlier and milder heavy metal bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin to develop grunge, which ushered in emo rock and kept metal influences alive in mainstream long enough for it to make a comeback in the form of metalcore.

Well, since we have been talking so much about our team's indie music tastes, might as well end it off with less known metal genres which our J1 Eugene subscribes to. Well, we know as heavy metal influences spread to Europe, it got all mixed with the gothic culture over there, and evolved into the kind of slow, eerie and theatrical doom, symphonic, melodic and gothic metal, which sorta raises my hair. (So no gothic metal and thrash metal for me...) An example would be a band that i think only Eugene listens to in our team, Theatre of Tragedy:

Theatre of Tragedy - Let You Down


Then of course, American bands adopted some of this genre to create related alternative power and progressive metal genres. This is where Eugene and Ansai's favourite band Kamelot resides:

Kamelot - Ghost Opera


I suspect Evanescence belongs here too, and I think they are the only American metal band which adopts a rather mainstream approach to things.

Evanescence - Lithium


Yea, well I tried to cut the long story short. And I hoped that you all have gained a deeper insight into indie music from this lol, although I don't really know why I'm telling you all this rubbish. For now, that's all folks. Thank you, class =D!