advice
Workplace advice for any issue, problem, or concern; from changing careers to co-working advice and decorating needs.
A Drummer’s Take
Guitars get the posters. Singers get the interviews. Drums get the room. That is the part of Gen X metal that still does not photograph well and still decides whether a record feels like a band or like a file. The era this series has been walking through was a golden stretch for players who treated the kit as a lead instrument without turning the song into a clinic. Dave Lombardo. Mike Portnoy. Danny Carey. Add the people standing next to them. Lars Ulrich on the records that taught radio to accept a metal snare. Vinnie Paul on the records that taught the backbeat to clench. Matt Cameron on the records that made weird time feel natural. Sean Kinney on the records that made the beat sound tired on purpose. The common thread is physical information. You can hear the stick. You can hear the decision.
By Overdrive Records2 months ago in Journal
What Gen X Inherited
Every generation likes to believe it invented volume. Gen X did not. We inherited a working set of tools from the 70s and then spent twenty years arguing about which tools were still legal. Black Sabbath gave us the riff as law. Judas Priest gave us the silhouette and the twin guitar engine. Zeppelin, Purple, Humble Pie, UFO, Thin Lizzy, and AC/DC gave us the rest of the vocabulary. Song length. Groove. Showmanship. The idea that a guitar could be both a rhythm instrument and a lead character. By the time we were old enough to buy our own records, the language was already there. We just changed the accent.
By Overdrive Records2 months ago in Journal
Mudvayne’s L.D. 50 Era
By the year 2000 heavy radio had a lane and most bands were happy to stay in it. Drop the tuning. Hurt in the verse. Open up in the chorus. Paint the video gray. Mudvayne pulled into that lane and then cut across the grass. L.D. 50 did not sound like Staind. It did not sound like early Slipknot cosplay either, even if the masks invited the comparison. It sounded like a metal band that had listened to Tool, Meshuggah rumors, death metal records, and hip hop cadence and decided the parts could live in one song if the players were good enough.
By Overdrive Records2 months ago in Journal
Hair Metal Did Not Die Clean
The official story says hair metal collapsed when Nirvana hit the porch. That story is tidy and mostly useful for people who need a villain and a hero in the same paragraph. The music itself did not get the memo. The clothes went away. The videos got mocked. The radio format changed its name. The hooks stayed. If you want proof, do not start with the joke bands. Start with the writers. Def Leppard. Aldo Nova. The people who treated a chorus like a structure instead of a hair appointment.
By Overdrive Records2 months ago in Journal
Pantera from Cowboys from Hell to Far Beyond Driven
There is a clean line in American heavy music and it runs through Texas. On one side you have the last years of hair metal, all chorus pedals and video budgets and songs built to wink at the camera. On the other side you have Pantera. Not the early glam version that collectors argue about. The version that starts in 1990 with Cowboys from Hell and slams the door shut in 1994 with Far Beyond Driven . That four year stretch is one of the most important production and songwriting turns of the Gen X era. It did not politely replace hair metal. It made hair metal sound like it was late to its own funeral.
By Overdrive Records2 months ago in Journal
Soundgarden Was Never Just Grunge
The word grunge did Soundgarden a favor and a disservice at the same time. It put them on magazine covers. It also filed them next to bands that did not share their engine. Nirvana wrote like a wrecking ball with a melody. Pearl Jam wrote like a stadium that had just learned to feel. Alice in Chains wrote like a minor key family secret. Soundgarden wrote like Black Sabbath had gone to art school and then joined a punk band that still practiced scales. That is not a side note. That is the whole plot. While Seattle became a brand, they kept the heavy riff in working condition.
By Overdrive Records2 months ago in Journal
