Double bass drums are good for one thing — drowning out untalented guitarists. When a band has good musicians, you want to enjoy the music. The double bass is just so overwhelming and makes it hard to focus on any nuance.
Double bass drums are good for one thing — drowning out untalented guitarists. When a band has good musicians, you want to enjoy the music. The double bass is just so overwhelming and makes it hard to focus on any nuance.
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Children of Bodom
Finally, a truly unpopular opinion. Take my upvote, schmuck.
That’s a) correct and b) wrong.
Double bass can get annoying very fast but if used tastefully it elevates an already good song.
Also I don’t think you can accuse death metal guitarists of all instrumentalists of being sub-par or untalented.
I hope this isn’t unpopular.
A musicians job is to add what’s right for the music. Complexity doesn’t always equal better. This is largely why Ringo is still renowned as one of the best drummers of all time. He played the drums to exactly what the songs needed and didn’t over complicate anything unnecessarily.
https://youtu.be/9oQsKRyihEA?si=R9R6o7A5vVsQ7fxk
Have an upvote for a truly unpopular opinion.
I don’t like how it’s just there without any reason. A lot of times it feels force in so the band can claim to be “metal”.
It really depends how it’s mixed for me.
I also think it’s a preference thing what you want to be more forward in the mix.
I’ll also assume that you have this opinion while using a decent quality pair of headphones or speakers, if you have the cheapest thing on the market everything will sound mushed together as soon as there’s a few layers in the music.
If your audio device is not cheap/bad then I agree this is an unpopular opinion.
If your drums are drowning out your vocals, you have a bad sound mixer. Don’t blame that on the double bass. But you do have an unpopular there!
I find Between the Buried and Me incorporates it well, similar others like Veil of Maya and Animals as Leaders where the instruments are centerpiece, whereas a lot of bands just use it for a break in the music and it’s kinda jarring. They don’t design it as part of the instrumental and just throw it in because it sounds cool, in those cases I agree with you. Even with albums like Alaska, you can tell BTBAM were creating songs with the instrumental first in mind even though it’s much heavier than their newer stuff.
Great take for this sub, but on the other hand, I got two words:
Danny Carey
I’ll take a skilled single pedal drummer over the best dual pedal drummer 10/10 times.
Then why doesn’t Dethklok use them for Toki Wartooth? As Skwisgaar said, “I think he is slowly unlearning to play the guitar.”
wowee. That’s just about the worst music opinion I’ve read to date.
Lovely, you posted an extremely unpopular opinion for any metal fan 😉
Have my upvote!
Train of Thought disagrees with this.
Heavy metal uses drum rhythms which work very well with double bass.
So it’s more the mixing with the other instruments than the double bass itself.
I think there are some great uses of double bass drum, but I will agree that often it does get overused and overmixed, especially in more amateur scenes. It’s fricking bizarre listening to a track and the only clear sound is the constant clicking of a bass drum, meanwhile the guitar is absolute mud with chainsaw distortion and picking, the vocalist is doing mediocre pig squeals and the bass is tuned lower than the threshold of human hearing. A lot of live engineers are really guilty (again, talking amateur metal scene here – bands big enough to tour with their own tech don’t have this issue as much) of having too much kick drum in the mix and everything sounds muddy because the drummer is constantly playing it.
Opinion sucks
James Hetfield is a shitty guitarist, according to OP
Objectively false opinion
That’s just bad mixing? So if I can’t hear the bass guitar because the guitar is too loud, therefor guitar makes metal music shit? Dumb opinions don’t equal unpopular
Fear factory just doesn’t work without the double bass tho
If used right it’s great. It’s just not always used right. Why some drummers are famous for their drumming and some you’ve never heard of
Solid 32nd or 64th note double bass parts do cause me ear fatigue pretty quickly. But played by good drummers, double bass is a beautiful thing.
It’s like anything else, with great power comes great responsibility. 😉
Kid named Ne Obliviscaris
I tried listening to this death metal band called blood incantation. The double bass was giving me a headache because it was constant.
Depends on the band.
Lamb of god without double bass drum would be worse
Damn, genuinely dogshit opinion, upvote OP
I feel the same about blast beats
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. This is essentially an almost universal truth concerning any part of a music arrangement. Sometimes a guitar solo absolutely fucks….sometimes it’s a circlejerk. Sometimes a drum fill is perfectly placed, sometimes it feels like they forgot to write the other music. Sometimes a bass…. Sometimes keyboards work. Sometimes they don’t.
“Vultures of North” by Orbit Culture, the double bass is overwhelmingly powerful….and that’s a good thing.
There’s a genre of music for you called hard rock.
This is wildly unpopular, take my upvote.
Blast beats are boring as fuck. But other than that, double pedals are the way to go.
It’s the main reason I’m not into metal songs. Amen.
[ Removed by Reddit ]
Yes, it is one of many things that make metal records sound bad even if they are written and performed well.
The older I get, the better my stereos are, and the less patience I have for shit I used to listen to that really just sounds bad if you are actually listening.
August Burns Red alone debunks your argument. Take your upvote.
Here Comes The Kraken left the chat
I actually partially agree with this but I think they’re best when used in moderation. The issue I think is 2 things, the mix quality and frequency of use. One thing that puts me off from a lot of deathcore for instance is the over use of blast beats. There are some great metalcore bands where double bass is used well, for instance balmora, boundaries, sanction, etc. I am also a big fan of the band death and I think they use double bass very tastefully. However this is certainly an unpopular opinion and one thing that makes me pretty picky about metal as well. I tend to like good groove and rhythm more towards the “core” parts of “metalcore” for instance.
If a drummer uses double bass it’s to cover up bad guitarists? What?
Take the upvote from me
I kind of agree, but my qualm’s more that a lot of bands are over reliant on double bass. I love metal, but there are so many damn songs where there’s double bass thundering along at the exact same tempo almost all the way through. It removes a lot of the texture for me, becoming a constant, repetitive drilling, rather than accentuating notes or creating a groove. It’s a fine thing when used tactfully, but plenty of bands don’t.
Double bass is amazing
Op, or anyone who doesnt like it, can you give specific examples/songs? Cuz I dont know I’ve ever heard double kick that i don’t like
It completely depends on context. If you are listening to heavily blast beat-oriented extreme metal then yes, there is an argument to be made that it is obnoxious. But there is lots of more intricate metal that the subdivisions make the kicks more interesting to listen to. If you don’t already have it a good set of headphones makes listening to lots of metal much more enjoyable: lots of popular earbuds and speakers are far more bass-forward and turn lots of metal into audio mush.
Edit: a popular example of a double kick drum-band would be Meshuggah. Tomas Haake is a legitimate genius, and his use of double kick is a big part of that.
Meshuggah in shambles rn.
I feel like Danny Carey from Tool does them right. Build up to them and use them as a punctuation rather than having a large portion of the song get drowned in them.
God this is such a horrible take that I’m still torn on upvoting or downvoting.
Double bass drums suck, yes. Because it’s difficult to get both drums tuned uniformly. So double kick pedal on a single drum is best.
This is the most I’ve hated an opinion on here, I think you win.
As a bassist, you’re wrong and should be punished for your war crimes.
Take my upvote.
Absolute dogshit opinion. Hats off to you, good person
One of my favourite metal sounds is the double bass mirroring the rhythm of the guitar
Got my upvote. Well deserved too.
1000%
Ok Lars, you’re still a dogshit drummer.
Name a band you think has this problem
Uhhh death metal and thrash would sound lame as hell with zero double kick.
This is more of a dumb opinion than just unpopular. What band is just doing double bass over the vocals?
I upvoted the fuck outta this. Monster.
Shit opinion with no examples is shit.
I FUUUUUUUUUCKING loathe them and how common they are now, every opening act I’ve seen is just some jackass spamming them like someone’s going to take them from them
Laughs in Tomas Haake
While I don’t agree with OP, I can’t lie.
My favorite band, Every Time I Die, used to have a single pedal drummer for a long time. And I absolutely love those albums. The single pedal really shapes the way the songs’ feel in a way that breaks from their contemporaries. When that drummer left, they started getting double bass drummers. Those songs are great, but the feel simply changed. I always missed the old sound, as much as I love the new one.
Single Pedal (“Pigs is Pigs”)
Double Pedal (“Idiot”)
I prefer double bass when I least expect it. Herb Alexander is one of my favorites when it comes to double bass drum fills. I guess it’s not quite metal, though.
Finally an unpopular opinion. I hate your opinion, but.. Kudos
I hope someone double-kicks you in the ass. Take my upvote.
I know this isn’t metal but I remember not loving the later Blink 182 albums starting with Take Off Your Pants because Travis Barker was obsessed with annoying galloping double bass drum.
Probably the worst opinion I’ve heard on here
It does have a tendency to be overused.
I kind of agree with this. The problem is how they’re not used very creatively, and so much focus gets put on them that a lot of drummers ignore doing interesting stuff with their hands.
I agree. I’m of the opinion that less is more. Which is in direct conflict with what most people think metal music should be. But genuinely, metal with a bit of restraint is the best metal.
Why does the sub not let people put examples in the post so have some point of reference?
Dave Lombardo disagrees. Unpopular!