99% of metal bass will either be: A) the most boring, barely audile, basic root note just follow the guitars bullshit or B) the most technically proficient, face-melting, physically- and theoretically-demanding bass work you've ever heard
Some times it’s the secret C option. C) The most technical, impressive bass lines that mix so well with everything else, but it’s barely audible. I’m talking about …And Justice For All.
I’ll explain it from a bass player perspective… my jam mates tell me to keep it the fuck down and just hold roots. The problem isn’t that is as bassists we don’t wanna make cool unique shit… it’s the guitarists tell us to basically fuck off and no one really cares
Yes...and why do you listen to your(should be ex) guitar player in the first place, on how to play your instrument he DOESNT play...i dont tell a keyboard player what to play...come on people...find a new band...START a new band
@@KeeperOfCliffsTone this is actually a lot harder said than done. Not a lot of guitarists actually see the value in bass because tbh a lot of them are driven by ego. The guitarist is usually the one that STARTS the band but he really has no intention of working with others. I've seen so many bands where the bass is turned way too low and can't even be felt. And even some bands just omit the bass altogether, which is wild cuz it just ends up making shit sound flat. I agree bass should have free reign to make shit interesting in their end of the spectrum.
My friend is a bassist and one of his first bands, the other band mates told him to turn it way the fuck down to the point it wasn't audible. And it was a disaster... Imagine a drummer trying to keep time with a guitarist that is soloing.
@@SleepingLionsProductions i know...then again i worked with many guitar players who were actual musicians, and very engaged and interested in bass(as well as other instruments) as am i...point is...i would never work with someone who wants to be 'solo with a backing staff' i once had such a guy in band, great playing skills, horrible musical attitude, he was out in no time...guy was able to keep on playing even if the rest of us(along with second guitarist) left the room...so go figure...anyone with no respect towards other instruments is not a true musician in my view
Lmaooo in my band it’s the opposite it’s mind altering 😂 our bass player is the bossy-you’re-playing it wrong-control freak 😂 go figure ? Makes me wonder if we aren’t living in the matrix
At first I was like “oh, another video complaining about bass in metal” but no this is actually what the problem is. It’s a great sounding instrument but it gets simplified, minimized, and buried every time because that’s what everyone insists it should be.
not really. in fact i'd argue it's the complete opposite. ridiculously low tunings, bass that has more strings than the guitars, and sludge fests are all the things that turned metal into a contrived genre, and that's why scene is dead.
Obscura, First Fragment, Beyond Creation, Archspire, Death, Atheist, Cynic and Coroner really push it with basslines in metal, and if you go looking deep enough you cam find bands that were doing some crazy shit with theur basslines in the post Burton era.
Was going to comment some of those. Even though it's true that bass is boring in most metal, saying that no one innovated after cliff is a huge exaggeration
@@timnordberg7204Cryptopsy as well. One of the best brutal death metal bands and they managed to get shreddy guitar solos and bass parts in without sacrificing brutality.
ryan martinie from mudvayne and fieldy from korn did make their basses stand out in different terrifying ways post burton era in metal. ryan makes his sound like a demonic seinfield intro and fieldy makes creepy clanky noises with his
@@traskirataYou earn extra points for mentioning Audie. Acid Bath remains underrated. Check out Acid Bath Archives on here, Sammy has full guitar playthroughs of both AB’s albums.
The fretless tone is farty as shit. If you want actually creative basslines and not noodling, listen to Scott clendininn's bass on the sound of preserverance.
Part of the problem is that for the longest time bass was turned way the fuck down. There's actually some cool shit going on in a lot of metal songs but you can't hear it. It's honestly a damn shame. I feel like modern production has finally let the bass shine a little more. The other thing is that guitarist keep getting more low strings and now the bass has to be eq'd to be a shreeky monstrosity to even cut through the mix. Idk just turn the bass up people lol
it is metal adjacent, and is sometimes heavy, but idk about metal... also you can have great basslines that aren't extra. watch a bass cover of obstacle 1 by interpol just up to the first minute mark. the basslines in that album are way better than Primus
Good guitars only get you so far. Good drums take you to new heights. Good bass glues everything together and defines the sound. Good vocalists help the rest of the band load their gear in and out.
A bad vocalist ruins a band for me. Maybe because I am a singer myself. But even tho the band might be very prolific, I can dig the instrumental part and all, but they won’t be on my earphones, because the vocal part is the most human part of a band and if it doesn’t connect with me emotionally I just can’t listening in a more intimate level and connect with it.
TOOL's Justin Chancellor toes the line of cool bassists. Although, a lot of TOOL's songs don't really feature a bassline as much as they feature a bassist.
Eyyyy awesome to see Opeth. But we can't forget TOOL. That is some just classically, widely accepted great metal bass. Also, people give it shit, but J-Metal has some genuinely phenomenal bass pretty consistently. They put some absolute savants on the instrument. I think there's a lot of snobbery against Japanese Rock and Metal, but even on a technical level it's genuinely got some phenomenal music.
@@ChristianIce thats true but with a guitarist like dimebag I think supporting his playing is the best move. And then his playing during solos is just so cool not to mention his tone is impeccable. As for songs where he isn't following the guitars, think floods, hollow, good friends and a bottle of pills
@@ashyvlogs1132 I mean, the video is suopposed to be provocative but in a funny way, I guess. Even Cliff Burton, for 95% of the time, was dubbing the rhythm guitars. Let's also say that unless they play harmoniztions, also the two guitars in metal play the same thing. It's functional, but yeah, the formula is kinda old and after 30+ years it has become kinda boring.
There’s definitely great Metal bass parts out there - First Fragment, Tool, Defeated Sanity, Death, you just gotta look for it. In my opinion, a great bassist is really what pulls the entire ensemble together. I mean, even Meshuggah where the guitars and basses are tuned in Unison most of the time, on Koloss the bass tone and performance is so sick it just amplifies the grooves to a new level
03:00 Kublai khan tx - self destruct is a song with a devastating bass breakdown at the end, and if im not mistaken the new knocked loose album has one too \m/
I dunno, Chris Wolstenhome of Muse did some cool stuff during Muse's more metal-esque early material. Plus Billy Sheehan did crazy shit during the '80s hair metal days.
Highly suggest you check out Chris Richards/Derek Boyer of Suffocation, Roger Patterson of Atheist, Eric Langois of Cryptopsy, and Steve Cloutier of Gorguts, theres much more than playing the root note.
@@shanedisner6586 Havok with David, Reece and Pete are very solid, but throw in Nick and they're absolutely ridiculous. Also he was wearing a kirkland hotdog shirt when i saw Havok which was just *chefs kiss*
What kind of metal are you listening to?... In my experience bass is essential and is definitely contributing a lot to the overall sound of most of the bands I'm listening to...
@@fredcavalcante1887 Oh let's see. Karnivool, Trioscapes, The Contortionist, Korn, Twelve Foot Ninja (even though I think they were, ironically, left without a bassist for their final album)...
Yes, the second comment today that appreciate Japanese metal scene! Not just metal, in Japanese rock too! May I recommend: Galneryus - Destiny Galneryus - The Followers
Bands with really neat bass Defeated Sanity Cryptopsy Hell (us sludge band) Mispyrming (Iceland) Stargazer Cryptic Shift Barn Artificial Brain There are many others. This video seems to ignore an incredible amount of quality metal music with prominent bass.
Couldn’t agree more with the premise of the video. I love when songs have some kind of counter motion between the guitar and bass parts instead of copying the guitar directly. The thing is the guitars need to restrain themselves a bit for that to be most effective, and restraint isn’t a metal guitarist’s strong suit. Btw the double tracked bass line you demonstrated can be achieved through parallel processing on most modern modeling equipment. Lots of bands get their bass tones that way in the studio and live through something like an AxeFx.
I love playing the pure basics of bass even if I can play fairly complicated lines. Judas Priest, Grave Digger, Accept and Running Wild are bands that doesnt need to have anything special on the bass most of the time. Not all bands needs to have spectacular bass playing.
IMO this is where tech and prog death metal shine for bass since you get a wide spectrum of playing styles. You even get bassists who incorporate fretless work in there as well which always adds a different sound. The problem seems to be those who think metal should just be chug and breakdown heavy and have no outside influence, when in reality those influences are tools that can help songs stand out and showcase why certain musicians are idolized. Bass in metal is awesome, but not all subgenres utilize its potential fullyl
There's a noisecore band called Sete Star Sept who uses bass and drums only, really really chaotic music but it shows how much mangling the tone of a bass can cause absolute audio destruction. There's a lot of other underground metal bands that base their sound entirely around bass (specifically grindcore and powerviolence), Thetan comes to mind. I was previously in a band that had TWO bass players, mine was fuzzed out and overdriven to shit and the other was clean. Made some KILLER tones there.
dude you gotta check out the funeral doom metal band called bell witch, i saw them live and got to talk to the bassist, he runs his bass into a bass amp and two guitar amps, sounds nasty
The bass in Hole In the Earth by Deftones is what you’re looking for. Listen to the bass (or the isolated track) during the bridge section, it’s so beautiful. Makes the song even more out of this world
Once the guitarist tunes low enough, they become a bass player that's in denial. Every time I hear a guitarist tuned lower than an 80-year-old's balls, my first comment is "Nice bass! What model is that? I'll have to get one of my own..." 25% of the time, a bass player copies the guitar player, it's the right thing to do. 25% of the time, it's because the guitarist demands the bass copies the guitar riff. 30% of the time, the guitarist demands bass copies the riff because the guitarist can't keep their side of things together while hearing a syncopated and/or counterpoint bass riff. 20% of the time it IS because the bassist actually sucks.
King gizzards metal stuff has some cool bass stuff, and it’s mixed very well too. I also like how with hardcore and punk, the bass may not always be doing something interesting, but their tone is so heavy and it’s always heard in the mix, it adds another level of heaviness that you can’t get with guitar.
I'm on this. I play Open C on a 5-string (GCGCG). I'm gonna look into this. I was a lead songwriter for a 3-piece death metal band in the mid-90s, inspired by the holy trinity of Lee, Butler and Burton. I still remember in the middle of the first two Black Sabbath albums Geezer ripping a solo at the same time Toni Iommi did and it ROCKED. Let me look into this.
Even brewer has some amazing bass lines for the band entheos. He really does a great job at bringing bass lines that compliment both the guitar and drums while being mostly slap style.
Yes, or... Let's use the same samples everybody is using to trigger the kicks and the snare, let's load that kemper profile called "every metal band ever" and let's put a kick every time the guitar plays the lowest open string. That would also do... :)
basses can be so cool live, I've only been to small gigs but I've seen bassists go into the crowd and shred, seen basses just start tapping a riff with both hands, just being cool and shit you know... I can't hear it most the time in recordings except for when they're given a small section to shine in the beginning. Like something like with 'cobra speed venom' or peace sells... or a lot of rage against the machine stuff has good bass.
it infuriates me how badly bass is under-utilised in metal. most bands would barely lose anything if they dropped their bass player altogether. it's criminal especially in DOOM that bands STILL don't make proper use of the bass when there is so much room and precendence for cool fucking bass. it seems people are treating it as a melodic instrument, not a rhythmic+percussive instrument. it should straddle somewhere between those two. making use of things as simple as going up an octave and back down to make a kind of pseudo-beat in the low end of a track. it should emphasise groove. in our band i play the guitar but FFS i want to be a metal bassist so i can do it RIGHT
This is what I love about being a bassist who has confidence, I don't post riffs that I write the only way people ha e found out about how I play is by word of mouth and still I've been invited to three bands, none o them function cause 90% of them are too lazy to make music (not just them, me too but highschool takes time) why do people want me to play bass for them? Because I stand out amongst the see of geddy lee fans and people who like primus except for when he doesn't do "bass stuff". Sound good, get distortion, boost the lows, do crazy shit. Hell there's a trick to getting harmonics anywhere on the neck by tapping. Nobody knows about it cause they're too busy playing the note E
Everyone here needs to listen to the album "Conference of the Birds" by OM. There is no guitar in on the album, only bass and drums, and it is WICKED. Nobody has bass that sounds like OM.
The line 6 helix for me completely changed the bass. I'm running guitar amps with some beefy boi amps and delays for days and I make some of the best stoner metal noise ever. I'm to lazy to record it, but it's a shame there isn't more of it.
I love digital, i wanted my own B7K but love it and hate it because majority of bass distortion sounds like it but when it came out i already had only an ipad with Bias FX 2 and since them attempted to recreate that sound and loving my split chains between bass amps in one channel and high gain guitar amps and cabinets. Currently i’m trying to dial something like Alex Weber tone in Wormhole’s album Weakest Among Us that has this crazy distortion blended with a chorus on it that sounds amazing
Dude same. Ive got an HX Stomp, but I'm a pro at getting everything I need out of it (I get more of it than most do with a helix). Bass with that is awesome. I'll often do a mix of bass amp, distorted guitar amp, sansamp, and DI. It allows you to create a touring rig of the greats without spending thousands or having to kill low flying birds with a giant Ampeg stack. 😂
Hello, metal bass player here. Everything you speak in this video is factual. Sure there are bands in metal as well as exceptional bass players that break the mold that you described (Jared Smith, Forest, Jacob Umansky, etc). The problem is that every band wants bass to sound like Nolly, or even doesn't bother with bass players at all and just uses sims/plug-ins to achieve the sound they want with no regard with what a competent bass player can add to a composition. Conversely, we as bass players need to get our asses up and start pushing boundaries too. There's too much complacency among the overarching bass player community to re-tread the steps made by past players (bass boomers that want to pretend to be James Jameson or Jaco). Start innovating for fuck sake lol.
Painted in exile, the faceless, inanimate existence, the zenith passage, thank you scientist, artifical brain, obscura?!, BEYOND CREATION?? You just havent paid attention lmao
Absolutely agreed. Not as heavy as some of the stuff you’re talking about I think, but check out Nothing More if you haven’t heard them. I think the bass is pretty dope.
Noise Rock has all the best bass for heavy music. KEN Mode from Canada are a particularly good example, their bass parts are a huge part of their songs - the guitar generally is forced into the higher register for texturing and the bass actually drives the rhythmic riffing. If you want to find good heavy bass in contemporary music, it's all happening in Noise Rock and bands influenced by Noise Rock.
I myself am a bass player and I write music. It's all about space, you cannot do cool stuff when the guitars or drums are doing cool stuff. Something has to calm down in order for others to shine. Of course when I have the spot I do my best but solos,... aren't the primary role of the bass.
That's why Prog-Metal bands like "The Omnific" exist. 2 Bassist, 1 Drummer, no one else. Their music is like Animals as Leaders (which ironically is the polar opposite of The Omnific instrument wise) but a bit less odd time signatures
lots of hardcore music def has some bass emphasis. the parts may still be simplified but audibly it’s a completely different world than most metalcore. varials in particular has sick bass work
My sonic experimentation with bass has yielded some gnarly stuff. My favorite pedal combos at the moment; Digitech Bass Synth Wah -> Distortion -> Phaser -> TC electronic flashback 2 on the crystal setting. I didn't realize there was a demand, because everytime I tried to get experimental in any music setting, my band mates always tell me to play along with the song :P I think this video helped me realize that I've never found my musical fulfillment because I've always been playing along to someone elses song. That, or I just havnt been playing enough Drum/Bass powerviolence.
As soon as you whipped out the TMB 100 I thought "This is gonna be good". That exact model was the very first instrument I got a few years ago, and ever since I've been trying to figure out ways to make the most of such a kickass tool. As I grew out of the beginner stage and was still hungry for more, I remember being kinda disappointed with the general lack of utilization bass got once I really started paying attention to mixes of tunes that inspired me to start playing in the first place. Either the bass was so fucking quiet that you had to look up a channel that made remixes/remasters on RU-vid to actually hear the damn thing, or the composition was such a snoozefest that I'd learn the song and no time and think "That's it? But everything else in the song was so much more interesting-". Since then I've started writing my own stuff with the goal of making the song fit the bass rather than making the bass fit the song. It's been kinda difficult since there's not much that I've found that deliberately teaches this approach, but honestly it's made the learning process that much more fun and interesting. I've had to learn quite a bit about EQ, how mixes work, and a bunch of other technical stuff to make it all work out in the end, but we're getting there little by little (: TLDR: Kickass stoppie at the beginning, I like your funny words magic man, and you're the second person on YT that I've seen use the same bass I have which is pretty cool shit brah 👊 RELEASE THE BASS
This is exactly what I was thinking too! The bass is such a mighty instrument. I'm actually trying to record some kind of tape in which the bass takes the central role but I'm still experimenting.
Ever heard of the bass butler? That high end and mids can be distorted and low end can be left with strictly low frequencies. And it sounds extremely explosive. And oh yeah. Change your bass strings every month at least. I made that mistake for years. And learn much more than just a pick style of picking. I've always held my index finger in between my thumb and middle finger when I started guitar at 12. But I also Slap. The slap mixed with that texture of the high and mid frequencies on one channel and the bass on another sounds a so a spicy mmm. Producers/Mixing engineers in the past used to always pry and have it set to the way they wanted it. You can hold the underlay of a traditional bass and rock rhythm sounding distortion at the same time. And do not be afraid of anything. Make it funky to. There are endless possibilities. I have a crybaby wah pedal too that helps kinda boost the distorted rhythm guitar sound when my guitarist goes to solo or when we duet. If you have a break down slap and strum. Or slap and pull each string into a chord as hard, on time and fluently as you can. Btw the Bass Butler is a preamp by orange that separates those frequencies in a pedal that can be plugged into separate amps or one with a combined channel that still puts out a very similar tone to one amp.
To your point, there is a huge lack of resources for even common metal bass guitar techniques online. It’s almost always guitar instead. So we just kinda follow the guitar a lot because it’s sorta expected I guess. I think it’s good to pull from our roots with the classics and expand on it, I’m always pulling from outside the genre I’m playing in for inspiration. I try to play like Lemmy when I’m not playing metal and I try to play like Peter Hook when I’m playing black metal!
Latent homosexuality aside good point I got a schecter Damien elite 8 string and its pretty much turned down to drop bass tuning but I I like using effects on bass too like chorus and distortion
What a weird and wonderful video. Subbed 💕 I play in a 4 piece. Guitar, vox, drums, bass. I follow the guitar maybe 50% I like to do my own thing to elevate the song
How much metal have you personally consumed Judy? All of this stuff you're talking about exists already. Yeah there are still bands doing boring bass but it's definitely not all of them. Not every song or band needs the bass to be interesting though, some just need the bass to be bass.
Not to mention he neglects that Cliff Burton did also “play along with the guitars” from time to time. He also used counter melodies and unique bass fills. I think these are great examples of bass being used correctly. Not every metal song has a drum solo, but the drums are there. As long as the bass is done in a respectable way that isn't just the same plodding notes that anyone could play, then it's fine.
