I think this video is missing the point. No one in the "extreme drumming world" is operating under the assumption that kicks (or even snares much of the time) would be acoustic. Everyone is aware that triggers are used, and triggers are widely encouraged, especially for kicks, as it would be physically impossible to produce this type of music without them. The reason many of these drummers were getting called out was because they were uploading videos where they stated that the tracks were _unedited_. By unedited we don't mean devoid of triggers, we mean edits in post-production, such as aligning things to the grid and editing in samples where hits were missed or such. Everyone knows that most album recordings are grid aligned as well, but you can't do that live, so whoever gets the new role of playing drums for a band like Archspire has to be able to play it "clean enough" live, but it's never gonna be perfect like on an album.
this is a misinformed take, not that many people know about triggers and triggers aren't cheating. these guys claiming the videos aren't edited aren't lying you guys just complain about everything while being about as knowledgeable as a peasant in the dark age.
@@Jjsssssss claiming that it’s physically impossible to produce this type of music without triggered kicks is a delusional take. It’s completely possible to use raw, untriggered, unquantized bass drum audio in high-BPM, high-bass drum density extreme metal; as brutal death metal bands have been doing since the early 90’s. It may be impossible for them to be easily audible or well enunciated in a mix without triggering when playing 16th and 32nd notes nonstop at comically stupid speeds, but that’s an inherent flaw with this new ilk of artificial deathcore bands like Archspire, rings of saturn, infant annihilator etc., who write guitarpro drumlines with virtually no dynamics, often playing that nonstop machine gun double bass trite with double strokes instead of single alternating stroke with swivel technique like they should be played.
Dude if Archspire is not your thing, I get it. But if they wind up on the boat you should join me and check them out. I think they do bring the song writing as well as the technical 'holy crap' vibe.
Archspire's music is fucking GREAT. Don't get me wrong, there are obviously a fuckton of tech death bands you can accurately say prioritize difficulty of performance over musicality, but Archspire is not one of them. Very well-written songs
@@BittersweetDuality Possibly. Defeated sanity, epicardiectomy, devourment, brodequin, early decapitated, early dying fetus, pig destroyer, waking the cadaver, discordance axis do anything for you?
@theabsolute23 Yeah I love Decapitated and Dying Fetus. In fact Nihility has been my favorite tech death album for years and years. Defeated Sanity has been on my to-do list to check out but haven't gotten around to em yet
@ New Defeated Sanity is amazing they’re releasing another full length in a month which is gonna feel like Christmas morning for me, highly recommend you check out their old stuff beforehand too. The first half of Disposal of the Dead, Psalms of the Moribund, and Passages into Deformity are all perfect to me. I love Nihility too, kinda hard to pick between whether or not I like Nihility or Winds of Creation more.
They write boring tech death that's just basically tech9ine songs in cookie monster growls (I like death metal and cookie monster growls.... when it's good... like Atheist, Bloodbath, etc)
This style of drumming just sounds so silly, comical, and ridiculous to me. I can’t take it seriously, despite the immense amount of work and talent it takes to achieve it.
Yeah, he really should have chosen Rings of Saturn or Infant Annihilator as the main subject band, even though hes still watching the Archspire auditions. Archspire at least still plays live, without programming anything.
@@hhasteI’d say RoS, infant annihilator and archspire are all in the same boat as far as fake drum augmentation goes. At least RoS (who also fake and speed up some of their guitarlines) try (or used to try) to make some unique scalar lines to fit with the whole alien concept
@theabsolute23 I think Archspire's music is way more boring than RoS or IA, but ironically deserve to be kept out of this "overproduction quantized garbage" discussion considering that every single member of their band executes their parts live without issues or cheating. Their drummer can actually play that shit.
@@XueYlva they may be able to play their shit live but the studio records they put out absolutely sound like “overproduction quantized garbage” and undoubtedly are triggered to hell and probably quantized to grid too, so I’ll never be able to see them as anything else.
Really does absolutely nothing for me. Sounds as ridiculous as the old Roland drum machine we had that we used to wind up to full speed in rehearsals just for a laugh. It may be clever, obviously some love it but to me a lot of it is just comedy gold.
I like that Glenn has conceded that for Archspire-level music, things like kick triggers are needed to sample the full power of a kick at that kind of speed. Also want to point out that Archspire's music itself is actually very well-written, the guitar melody lines are really memorable and catchy, and they're getting more popular as time goes on.
Fake drum playthroughs, fake guitar playthrough, fake vocal playthroughs. Welcome to the age of modern social media musicians. The metal space is the worst about it. Not a single authentic performance in site. Triggers are debatable for me. The bigger issue imo is post editing, and miming to an edited performance. In addition to playing half speed and then speeding up etc.
That is such a pet peeve of mine.. Metal musicians are so elitist they need all the expensive mics they can read about on gearslutz, only to sample replace them... and yet it still sounds like shit! In the 80s i ready people used drum synths/samplers and recorded live cymbals. That stuff sounds fantastic in my opinion. But honestly just mic a drumkit up with some mics and go to town and watch some youtube videos on mixing, its really not that difficult to get a decent/passable result.
It's not a trend. If you say something controversial or critical it's normal to not feel like being brigaded by crybabies for taking about it. Just general Internet culture these days
@@raxusquin nope, it's making deals with the algo.. as a trend; then later on changing the title or thumbnail, or both to something that would have made sense originally
@@raxusquin Yeah but this "I didn't want to do a video on so and so" and then proceeding to do a video like they ow us something is...weird. Hypocritical maybe?
I do wish people felt comfortable saying things that are going to be controversial without feeling the need to pre-emptively apologize and damage control with the “I didn’t wanna talk about this” line. Besides, the only people that are going to be upset about this video are the fake problem drummers themselves, archspire fans, etc., so who actually cares. Mike Caputo, Dan Presland; a lot of the drummers in the scene have already outwardly criticized the rampant editing and faking in modern metal drumming, it’s not like Glenn’s the first to say something, he’s taking an already established side
I agree that the dick-measuring contest to the “who can be the fastest” has never made sense to me. But saying this kind of playing carries no meaning/no message and isn’t musical, is the other end of a bad discussion. There are some amazing bands whom have drummers play these kind of styles who are ab-so-lute-ly musical. Fleshgod apocalypse writes classic baroque pieces layered with complete orchestras combined with technical death metal. When there are more than 300 layers of instruments going it makes sense to see the drums more as a layer in the overal composition. Above all, I’d rather have a musician who had to train and work to achieve a certain “style”, even is that being the human equivalent of a drum machine, than to have someone with no talent being edited/cleaned/auto-tuned to fuck.
Having tons of layers over white noise doesn't make the noise musical. This drumming conveys nothing. There's no rhythm, which is the fundamental point of drums.
Call me old or what have you, I still play my acoustic drums with mics. Every time I say anything I get attack of the fanboys, it's adorable, lets see these kids play live jamming with a guitarists amp cranked and no PA/triggers and hear their heel toe and gravity blasts over the amp.
So you can see the justification of amplification for a guitar, but not a drum kit, great. Also, congratulations on being able to play an acoustic drum kit without being evicted! If only everyone could be so lucky…
@@jackflynn-oakley1937 Justify playing electric guitar with no amp along with acoustic drums. Learn history as to the reason amps were invented. What you're ignoring is that every one of those drummers were playing acoustic drums with triggers for audition videos, blended with mics and they had to enhance the gravity blasting snare strokes even to hear it. Where do you get they can't play acoustic drums with out being evicted? They're all playing acoustic drums.
@myopicautisticmetal9035 well thats not a flex, but you don't have to play to a grid to do gravity blast. Turn the click off and get good. Be the click you dragging drummer lol
People call it "yelling at clouds", but as an older guy who has also seen music go from "writing killer catchy songs with a hook", to "playing as fast as humanly possible" - it's more or less a taste thing. People can do shit we would never have imagined 20 years ago, and the fact it's possible now is fucking impressive (the techniques I see now are just crazy). But I agree with the fact that it feels less like what I consider music, and sounds more like 2 drum robots fucking at hyper speed to my ears. Good on all those dudes for pushing boundaries, but as a drummer I prefer imperfect hard hitting drums to super fast drums that need augmentation to match sound levels that sacrifice velocity for speed.
I’ve seen this band live twice with Spencer on drums, killer set, everyone killed it! Live it seemed like he had kick and snare triggers, but still an amazing job playing this. I agree, I want real hits on the record, but live I’m more ok with triggers as a utility
If 4/5 guys or girls can't walk into a room together as a band and play the hell out of their (cough) real acoustic instruments, it's bullshit. Especially to tape. Auto-tune, time aligned, sampled, quantized plastic POS. Music is made on an instrument, not on a computer screen. It's why music today
you don't get it.. You don't go to the studio to play music. You want to record. Nobody wants to have live recordings on a song. that's a whole different concept
@@xserienchiller86 you're the one that doesn't get it. I can sit down on any kit and play with a guitar player without need of a PA system and triggers to perform what I do, the problem is the inhuman standard set by programmed drumming over the last 20 years that has stagnated to the point that now we are expected to cheese it just to perform the beats on a recording live. We're not all playing festivals with 15K+ watt PA systems to power our drum kits. I saw a band in a bar with a small PA for just vocals but the drummer insisted on running his triggers through it, too, he drown the vocals out completely and blew out the speakers.
@@myopicautisticmetal9035 EXACTLY. But keep in mind, most of the views and comments come from teenagers...they don't grasp logic quite yet. They think they'll become famous by playing a genre only 2% of the population listen to.
There are few drummers that can actually do this; and the only one I know is George Kollias. The live demo he did with Pearl, playing "4th Arra of Dagon" shows it quite well. It's still way quieter than the sampled drums, but louder than most of these guys can do IRL.
Bone Forest Navigator is a pretty good name. Btw. have you recognized that every modern "core" bands look like a bunch of Students for Office administrations?
I think drums are the cornerstone of any band. They make or break a band. Vocals are the most identifiable part of a band, but a bad drummer can ruin everything; however, a good drummer can save a lot. I think that is a big reason heavy music has become largely unoriginal. I've written a lot of songs where the drum beat came first, but most of the time, I was jamming with a drummer who came up with the beat on the spot, and we discovered the beginning of a new song and worked it out from there. These days, and I just found this out relatively recently, apparently a lot of people will program drums first using the same loops thousands of other musicians use. Then we wonder why music has become unoriginal. As far as this video, it's just musician olympics. The only people who like someone pretending to play something impossible are gullible musicians. Everyone else just moves on, lol. I miss the days where if you didn't have a drummer, you didn't have a band, lol.
Nice monologue at the end, Glenn. Seriously, I’m with you. I imagine you’re going to get the same sh!t I do when I make the same criticisms on this style of drumming. I’m all for people having their own thing and doing and digging whatever, but this doesn’t style of drumming doesn’t appeal to me at all. I like drums that groove, that are clever and creative. Thanks for the video, man!
Yeah, you don't like it, you like groove, good for you. Some of us like the agressive and intense vibe that blast beats can bring. Who are you to say your taste is anyhow better than kids liking ridiculous blast beats?
@@tomaskacer8360 Jeez, dude, this is exactly the kind of reaction I'm talking about! I very clearly said I am all for people digging their own thing. I never said I was better than anyone for HAVING MY OWN TASTES. I simply stated that this does not appeal to ME, not that it's bad in any way. I don't give a shit what anyone else likes. I don't like country, rap/hip hop, pop, and death metal (mostly due to the vocals, I do appreciate some of the guitar work), but that doesn't mean I think my taste is better than anyone else's, other than how my taste relates to me. You do you, man. I just stated what I like & that I agree with what Glenn said in this video. Who are you to say anything about my tastes? Right? Good for you that you like blast beats. I don't. I won't tell you what to listen to, and maybe you shouldn't put words in my mouth.
@DoomedTraveler yeah, if you don't think extreme drumming can be as much creative and clever as whatever you Are into, than you are the Silly Billy here... Also, aren't you a bit old for this lame and silly passive agressive writing? Here's this sneaky fella for a good measure too. " :) "
@@tomaskacer8360 But isn't a 300 bmp bass beat that's sampled just like another 300 bmp bass beat that was sampled? The drummer might as well be R2D2 or a DJ.
@@tomaskacer8360 There's nothing creative or clever about it. It's just "go as fast as possible". Nobody can hear the difference between one song and the next. You can't even tell one band from the next. It's boring as hell. Like listening to static on the radio.
Yeah, over time metal have turned into mostly of a math, technique and physical limits genre. Used to be my jam, but i'm getting really tired of it. A lot of the the atmosphere, themes, groove, songs comprehension and story telling goes missing in it imo. I often rather listen to black metal recorded on a potato powered cassette recorder these days. It might be missing the groove, but at least it have the storytelling, the atmosphere that you can relate to.
Do you guy realize groove isn’t everything? Like many styles simply doesn’t groove, classical music, ambient music, noise, traditional choirs… are those music bad?
I think you missed the point no one is faking triggering its pretty obivous in this genre you have to trigger kick and snare. The "faking" of the videos is people claiming they are live recorded, unedited takes when they are not.
So you consider triggers to be cheating? I mean.... how is that different from using gear to get the most out of a guitarists performance? I mean no its not an apples to apples comparison but you get my drift
I know this video is about drums but I am so proud that I am an accidental owner of the Gotoh HB guitar Glenn has on his wall (see my profile pic). Although mine is the "robin" blue and it lost a lot of it's colour but who cares. Plays and sounds awesome. Just need to practice more.
I don't know, man, I have to disagree with you on htis one. I have absolutely no problem with ultra-processed music, drum triggers and all that - a lot of people like that sonic aesthetic. But I see it as something closer to beat making or EDM production, than actual musical performance. But... that's fine - nothing wrong with that, it's just a different genre of music! 🙂 Lots of people like EDM and it would be ridiculous to criticise that genre for their use of "fake drums"... drum machines are the foundation on which the genre was built! It's the same with this new wave of metal music; it's just a different musical genre, and people, by and large, happen to like it. The only thing I would possibly take issue with, is if someone meticulously edits their performance to "perfection" and tries to pass it off as a live take. That's the same as a singer being autotuned to hell and back, and trying to claim it's their natural voice. As long as people are up front and honest about it, there's absolutely zero problems. BUT - I don't think kick drum triggers fall into that category! Ever seen a live MPC finger-drumming performance? Is that "fake and bullshit" because they're just launching samples? I don't think so!
"The only thing I would possibly take issue with..." That's what I thought this video was going to be about, and now I'm just confused. I think Glen may be trolling here.
No offense, but the issue is the lying. Nobody cares if they trigger or edit as long as they don’t lie about it. Ricardo and Lord Marco lied. They lied about it. That was the issue.
Most people would be surprised how few mics you need to get a good drum sound. My answer is 4 mics and a good player. A kick mic, a scare mic to feed in to the reverb, and then a stereo spaced pair, higher and further toward the drummer. Of course, if your drummer is hitting the cymbals hard and the drums softly, there is no hope of a good sound. (Another note, I have used this setup live, but the reason for close micing drums is to prevent bleed and feedback, so it won't work on loud stages.)
I thought Motorhead's Ace of Spades was fast, but it's only 140-144 bpm which is the same as Adele's Easy on Me and Let It Be by the Beatles. What makes something sound fast is more than bpm.
It's a shame really because no one has ever said the guys can't play well, just pointing out the editing and faking some how makes us seem like we hate it or them personally, but it's just fake playing, how dare we want real talent on display.
The drummer from archspire told everyone that he only uses trigger samples and he even said that he is not capable of playing those songs without axis pedals with built in triggers and his rich dad has been paying for spamming comment treads for the last 10 yrs trying to hype the band. But now the $$$ is gone 😆
Glenn, come on. Album stuff and metric fucktons of processing are one thing - sometimes the "whatever it takes" approach is the go to. That's what the studio is for, after all. But people expect all this insanely precise diarrhea of notes to be played on the stage (samples or not) and THERE ARE actual humans in the extreme genres who can pull it off. Of all people, I'd rather expect you to be the one to remember that triggered drums also need skill and precision. Especially from a drummer who's supposed to do this live. People hate the fake auditions because these players try to get views by blatantly lying.
As someone who makes videos, I love this. Music videos outside generally need to be mimed. I've done lots of actual playing in the room and it is tough!! Everyone should try it.
Archspire, Aborted, Cattle Decapitation are some of my most beloved bands. You can't compare extreme technical modern death metal to bands like fucking steel panther and whatnot. That's like comparing steel panther and all those boomer metal bands to Acoustic Country music and saying "yeah distortion on guitars is bullshit and kills the message". I get where you're coming from and i usually agree with most of your rants, but you really missed the mark here, Glenn - because the "real ones" in these genres are still doing it for the message and not to be the "most mathematical" - i guarantee you that.
Thing about triggers , you BETTER not mess up , it's PAINFULLY obvious when you do (unless you put everything to the grid). Live , there is NO chance in hiding mistakes when using triggers. I used ddrum triggers for years until I got sick of them.
Drumming has literally become a sport. A guy I know went to NAMM around 2009 or 2010 and entered into the World's Fastest Drummer competition. He was competing against guys like Mike Manginni of Dream Theater and Extreme fame... AND HE WON. In fact, he set a record for Fastest Feet, erasing Manginni's previous record. I will say, the speeds these guys were reaching did not make sense musically... but, as my acquaintance pointed out, if you were going to set these records, you needed two things... muscle endurance and flawless technique. I've heard him play live and seen his RU-vid channel before, and the guy is a great drummer in addition to being a literal machine. 😂😂😂
As an old dude, I don’t get this extreme drumming trend. I think it takes away more than it gives. The RS and AC/DC sold more than 500M albums with simple drumming that fit the songs. The drumming nowadays equates to ego lifting in the gym.
Tasteful extreme drumming is good, though. Neil Peart, for example. Today it's noisy speed...and one finger drop whatever tuning, and a "singer" who CAN'T sing. lmao.
EXACTLY.. Seriously, if they call that drumming, they can have it and will never be famous like the real DUDES, such as "SCOTT TRAVIS, NICKO McBain and so forth.... Ridiculous who can play faster. Whats the freakn' point. Not to worry, ROBOTS will be replacing these Dudes sooner then they think !! 😝 Compressorhead - Ace of Spades ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9gMX_hR-RoM.html
I can gladly said I never fake my guitar video on youtube. Unlike some of my peers 😂 Edit: I have no qualms with trigger, it’s the miming of the prior recording that I have beef with. Especially if it’s just a simple cover. It is discouraging for the young audience to see the plateau that they can’t reach only to then knew it’s fake.
@@getshwiftygaming447 on layman terms this is what I truly think do I still find it’s weird in 2024 putting mimed demo in RU-vid? >Yes Mistakes are what made it humane. Obviously i would love to see a tight take. Do I think it is unnecessary for demo >No If it is a play over video with tabs I considered it educational (tho the tab kinda not accurate in some video) Does there exist people that did great demo without miming shit >Yes I’ve seen few of em in person. These people were monsters. Do I still find guitarist that still mime simple playthrough as a hack >Yes Keyword I’m implying here is simple. You know they pretend it’s just a simple track but obviously it’s edited to hell. Some even claimed their take is non edited track when it’s obviously is not tho. This is where I draw the line for mime take.
Triggers on the kick became the norm for the ultra technical bands in death metal and deathcore. That's just what the music and fans demand and wanna hear from what I know from friends who are fans of that kinda stuff
I'm an aging guitarist with a self recognized, and also much feedbacked, lack of timing. I used to play lead in metal bands (from Hair to Leather to Plaid) in the 80/90's. So, I always stood to the right of drummers so I could watch the front kick drum skin as I looked down the neck of my guitar. That way I could just nod towards the drummer and shrug. The first guy to use a double kick peddle on a single kick drum was not my friend. I got into guitar around the neck spins, jumping splits, shoulder rolls, you name it, I did it. Now, at 59yo, I can barely walk, my neck sounds like two pieces of sandpaper rubbed together and I have a bone spur the size of a pine cone growing out of the top of my right shoulder. That man is still not my friend. So that was a long way of getting around to asking for opinions on El Estepario Siberiano. Cheers all.
For a band that does this kind of thing and grooves I’m a huge fan of First Fragment. Their bassist changed my outlook on approaching metal bass. Someday I’ll see them live
Metal became more and more safe for the overly-sensitive newbies. I miss the days when metal music was powerful, scary, and 100% rebellious against the Norm, the kind of music that would piss off normal people so easily.
Excellent video Glenn. The same happens in the bass world, especially within the slap frat. Some of those players are huge technically, but musically..nope Soulless...absolutely.
Archspire are really talented guys but yeah I've kinda noticed over the time that alot of extreme metal drumming isn't always a 100 percent raw performance on the drums. The samples are kinda necessary when playing at these super high speeds but nontheless you're still not hearing a 100 percent authentic performance
Modern metal drumming is one of the big things that broke up the last band I was in earlier this year. They brought in and outside drummer who was besties with the vocalist, dude was from a much more modern style metal background and basically turned our band into deathcore garbage. Non-stop blast beats and everything hooked up to drum triggers and a massive, unnecessary PA that drowned out all the other instruments and made us all deaf. The music I do now is the complete opposite and I don't miss that band at all
I like Archspire. They're one of my favourite bands. I saw them live in Dublin in March of last year. Spencer is a phenomenal drummer and I'm sad he's gone from the band. He was always transparent about using triggers and heel toe technique on the bass drums. He actually fills them to keep them muffled. The band plays to a click track in their in-ears to stay tight live. The vocalist Oli is the technical death metal version of a stand-up comedian. I get what you're saying about time alignment and quantizing. But I got over that because they're a fun band with personality and what they play is better than listening to guys chugging away at the low strings and not going passed the 5th fret. Edit: Dave Lombardo is my favourite drummer of all time though.
This kind of reminds me of videos and shorts of people singing in a kitchen or a car with someone where they supposedly just magically and spontaneously fell in tune or harmonized then started singing but the audio track is clearly not what was captured in the video, but a heavily edited, auto tuned, compressed track of voices clearly added in post. This might not be like that at all, but it surely reminded me of it.
This is happening with vocals and every instrument on RU-vid. The trouble is that highly paid acts are doing the same thing at concert. People are paying hundreds of dollars to see an act play a CD.
So glad to see that "world's state of the art speed metal band" tagline again. Megadeth was never a thrash band. Today, they're not even speed metal... more like an edgier version of Nightwish.
I am pretty good , heel toe both feet Jumped in with a metal band at my rehearsal place Thought i was whipping good And the girl vocalist from Machinist said It was good if we played speed jazz I was crushed
Just my 2 cents.....this whole epidemic lol started with guitarists using programmed drums incessently with pre production of albums. Yes it is a useful tool for songwriting but i really believe this conditioned people to think "thats how it should sound"
