SHADOWS FALL = SHRED FOR ALL!
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 11:28am by Vince Neilstein
You know what I love about Shadows Fall? They’re just pure fucking shredders. It’s unfortunate that they got caught up in the whole “metalcore” tag, or for that matter any scene-y genre label at all, because if not for this fact they’d be in a completely different position today. Think about it: when Of One Blood came out in 2000 (and to an even greater extent, Art of Balance in 2002), no one in America was pedaling the kind of ’80s-influenced shred Shadows Fall were offering up on the regs. If the whole Massachusetts scene hadn’t blown up the way it did Shadows Fall would’ve surfaced as an oddity in the American metal scene, shredders amongst hordes of non-shredding masses. A true metal band in a sea of… not true metal bands.
All this occurred to me for two reasons:
1) A piece Christopher R. Weingarten wrote for Idolator about why jam band fans are better than indie rock fans (bear with me here):
1. Jam band fans don’t care about pesky shit like aesthetics.
Why does Bonnaroo get to have awesome, underrated thrash metal band Shadows Fall, but the Scion Rock Festival doesn’t? Because indie rock kids only care about fringe genres when they are fashionable. Shadows Fall, being a real metal band, bring a lot of zitty teenagers and honest-to-god longhairs to their shows, so indie blogs and mags don’t touch them. God forbid someone break up the steady stream of warmed-over stoner rock and black metal bands (only the ones Hydra Head endorses!) in your RSS, guys.
So true, amirite? Shadows Fall were on top of the metal pyramid in the mid 2000’s, and the minute metalcore blew up they were no longer cool. Total bullcrap.
2) Watching Kobra Kai, a band featuring Jon Danais and Matt Bachand of Shadows Fall, tear through a full set of ’80s covers at New England Metalfest including Cure, Van Halen, GNR, Queensryche, Metallica and many more. And it dawned on me that the dudes in The Shads are ’80s metal kids at heart, directing their influences through a modern metal formula — something I realized the very first time I heard Shadows Fall but had since forgotten.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because it seems that Shadows Fall have been unfairly tagged as something other than just pure, aggressive shred, and I will not stand for this classification. Word on the street is that The Shads have a new album dropping this year on Ferret/ILG, so we’ll see what they have to offer this time around without the baggage of a major label with major monetary expectations.
-VN
Good post! I’ve been saying this for years. I hate that they were lumped in with a genre they weren’t a part of.
hell yeah i remember when they were one of the only guitar bands worth following
…then dragonforce came around and EVERYTHING got fucked up
but shadows fall fall is pure delicous heavy fucking metal
totally right about dragonforce. i try to show people awesome guitar parts from Daath to Arsis and know cares. All i get is ” its not as good as Dragonforce
the solo in “stillness” is fucking sick
shadows fall are sick Kobra Kai is sick and Burning Human is just amazing
pure fucking shred
i disagree. art of balance was, if nothing else, a metalcore album. good, but not extemely groundbreaking..
I actually think that Shadows Fall is very metalcore. They have always been a pretty stereotypical metalcore sound to me, but that could just be me.
I hate to sound elitist, but they really have pussified their music over the last 4 or 5 years. Of One Blood and Art of Balance were their last albums that I swore had been written by a 3 week worn pair of faded, holy, piss and blood covered jeans.
I guess that’s some sort of “Boston Syndrome” nowadays. Hopefully they’ll go with what the rest of the previously pussified bands are doing and harden up after they realize it’s not all about the teeny boppers in the front row, but the die hard metal geeks in the back row who stole their mom’s change jar just to get last row tickets or lawn seats.
Meh, they were good but sadly have gone the way of the rest of the Boston metal band…christ, even Unearth’s last CD wasn’t that great and they were the last vestage of non-suck (of any band or sports team mind you) from Boston.
Dude, Anal Cunt is coming out with two new CDs this year. The Boston scene is not dead as long as Seth Putnam is around.
Oh, Anal Cunt has 2 CD’s coming out this year?!? Well shit… I stand corrected
“Seeing as how we’re unfamiliar with sarcasm I will close the register at this point”
/cbg
Some band called Converge is coming out with an album this year, them dudes from Boston. And they actually play worthwhile metal mixed with hardcore. What I don’t understand is why chug + dual guitar solo + gay singer was ever called metalcore.
But ugh, you guys can keep this super polished borefest of a band, I won’t miss them.
i agree with you about the “I don’t understand why chug + dual guitar solo + gay singer was ever called metalcore.” same with deathcore
Well the death-chode tag is pretty easy, since all it is is crappy death metal with WAAAAAY too many breakdowns, which would be the -core. And people are lazy.
breakdowns are not “hardcore”
Are semantics hardcore then?
that dude’s white boy dreds are fucking epic.
teaser pleaser is a kick ass shadowsfall tune…gotta heavy jackyl vibe…. check’r out for yourself
Teaser Pleaser is a cover
ohhh!! u just got told bitch!
It’s “Teas’n, Pleas’n” originally done by Dangerous Toys on their self-titled debut album in 1989. I believe the Dangerous Toys vocalist did a vocal cameo on the cover too.
That being said, the cover pretty much sucked, and nothing from Shadow’s Fall has impressed me since “Of One Blood” with the exception of the song “Stepping Outside The Circle”.
The Dangerous Toys album was a surprisingly good example of 80’s hair metal, though.
Shadows Fall,,,Time will tell
Lump ‘em wherever you want, I just don’t like this band. Especially their latest efforts.
As as for Mr. Weingarten indirectly slamming the Scion Festival: I found that whole day to be pretty boner-inducing, and I certainly don’t fancy myself an indie-rock kid. And there is no way in hell that I would have chosen to see Shadows Fall over any of the bands that played that day. Vince, I’d be surprised to hear you say differently.
Also one of the only bands now a days that don’t dress like a bunch of fucking queers. Look at the picture. They don’t fit a stupid fucking mold or follow any scene.
GOOD post, good points.
on a related note, new Gorod album just leaked. we can all redefine “shred” now.
Thanks for the info…definitely checking this out.
Good post. This why I hate all this genre and sub-genre bullshit. Things like this will continue as long stuffy critics continue to make up words and slap “prog” at the beginning or “core” at the end (and yes MS you are guilty as well). It’s just so tired, and I think it hurts bands more than it helps them. Rock, hard rock, metal, thrash metal, and hardcore, THAT’S IT! That’s as detailed as it should be.
So what about death metal and black metal?
Genre names will always exist and so will people who disagree about what they actually mean. It’s not just “stuffy critics” who do this. I’ll decide if I like a band based on what I think/how I feel about their music, not because of someone else’s opinion about what label to pigeonhole them into…
Good point. I hate how critics write -core next to anything and it is automatically a metal subgenre. People don’t remember that metalcore is supposed to mean metal with hardcore punk influences. Now, though, the word is basically meaningless.
What a lot of people seem to refer to as “metalcore” these days sounds more to me like a slicker, americanized, “lite” version of 90’s Swedish Death Metal…to me Metalcore was bands like Merauder and VOD and but maybe that’s just because I’m older. Hell, when bands used to mix hardcore punk and metal together in the 80’s it was called Crossover..and the word hardcore meant different things back then too, often depending if you were in the East Coast, West Coast, or DC…
With time I’ve just come to accept that music, like any other art, is primarily a subjective experience above anything else, and we can argue about it, or make up different words that we disagree about to describe it, but that’s all they are – words that sometimes help and sometimes hinder.
I see what you’re saying but these “words” are also genres and a genre is a means for which to describe a band. I hear genres like metalcore, death metal, and grindcore thrown around all the time with no ACTUAL description behind them, and “Merauder is metalcore” and “Pig Destroyer is grindcore” IS NOT A DESCRIPTION. I mean description in terms of sound and/or a particular technique the band uses to be given such a label. I never hear these genres described properly, simply because most of them are completely meaningless and nobody really knows how to. Not trying to be a dick here, but can someone seriously give me the definitions of any of the above genres, in terms of sound and without referencing a particular band? Anyone? One of my favorites is the so called “stoner metal” genre, one of my all time favorite types of rock. I can’t help but wonder how big this type of music would be without such a stupid label, think of how many potential listeners have never given Kyuss, Electric Wizard, or Sasquatch a chance, thinking they are just mindless, talentless bands for potheads. I love how if Black Sabbath came on the scene today they would be dubbed “stoner metal.” Black Sabbath is metal people. Just metal.
So tired of putting labels on bands. Part of metal was the “fuck the establishment” way of life, now we go around trying to put everyone in a category. In the words of certain “steel” guys we know it should just be simply “Death to all but Metal”
It’s nice to see someone acknowledge how weird it is that “hipsters” like stoner rock and black metal right now. I feel kinda sad for em knowing they will never truly appreciate the joy that Queensryche or Megadeth or Anthrax. Wait, that might get cool in t-minus 6 months….
I don’t remember when I first heard Shadows Fall, but I do remember thinking to myself how much what I was hearing , reminded me of old school Anthrax. I couldn’t stop thinking I was hearing a modern version of what Anthrax was during the heyday of Spreading the Disease and Among the Living. I wasn’t too particularly thrilled by their latest effort, but I think that album didn’t do so well because of the pressures of a major label, and trying to go mainstream or whatever.
I like Shadows Fall, I loved The art Of Balance, The War Within and Of One Blood. I think the last two were nice also, but I expect nothing of the new album!
Betcha for 5 bucks that it’s going to be the same ‘Threads Of Life’ stuff….
When are you going to send me the Shadows Fall shirt I won from your contest? :(
I agree. Shadows Fall went from being everyone’s favorite up and coming metal band to an act that “wasn’t cool to like.” They are an underrated band that helped start a really positive movement in heavy music, and a terrific live show to boot.
That’s pretty much true. I remember when they were right amongst bands like Lamb of God, Chimaira, God Forbid, KsE, etc. circa 2003/4, and then they just seemed to slip under the radar after getting signed to Atlantic.
Then again, I didn’t care too much for Threads of Life, pretty uninspired tbh.
i never really liked this band, although i thought theyd blow up bigger than they did.