Metal Monday: Next Big Movement?

posted in: Rock

Music trends have been happening forever, for better or worse. At its best, trendiness has provided us with styles like bebop; at its worst, it brought us disco (no offense, disco fans). Even metal has seen a litany of musical trends come and go. Origins of death metal, new millennium metalcore, dragon-slaying power metal, nu metal, new wave of thrash metal ” they’ve all had their time in the metal spotlight. But what’s in the spotlight now…and what’s going to replace it? Today djent might still be king, with bands like Periphery, Veil of Maya, and Tesseract carrying the torch. But what’s next?

If I had to put my money on something, I’d bet on stoner metal. You know, that niche of music that floats between old school heavy metal, doom metal, and psychedelic ’70s rock. I know it seems like an arbitrary guess, but hear me out. First, Southern Lord Recordings and Al Cisneros of Sleep paired up to get “THE ULTIMATE VERSION” of Dopesmoker (aka Jerusalem) reissued. Southern Lord also reissued High On Fire‘s The Art Of Self Defense.

Second, Relapse Records’ July release of the latest Baroness album, Yellow & Green, garnered much hype and positive press almost all across the metal world. It wasn’t just critics who were excited for the album, though ” the record sold nearly 20,000 copies in its first three weeks and peaked at #30 on the Billboard 200, a whopping 87 spots higher than the band’s last release. Not a lot of stoner-leaning bands have touched on this sort of commercial success, and it’s surely a good sign for the genre.

Third, while classic stoner metal bands like High On Fire and Electric Wizard are still going strong, there are a plethora of new bands priming the stoner metal scene for its chance in the spotlight. When it comes to talent and quality of bands, stoner metal has that in spades. In the last couple of years, bands like High on Fire and Baroness proved that stoner metal can stretch beyond the scene to new audiences ” now there just needs to be the catalyst to set it all in motion. I’ve covered some really solid stoner-leaning metal bands over the last few months, such as Black Sheep Wall and Royal Thunder ” maybe they’ll be the ones to break loose.

What do you think? Is stoner metal about to break into the spotlight, or is there another style of metal poised to take the lead?