Hi all, this is my first post, and I apologize that it's so LONG... if you want to get to the main point, skip to the paragraph that starts with @@@@@@

I grew up with the benefit of having two siblings who were about 10 years older than me and were in to tons of interesting and eclectic music. As a teenager, they got me into hardcore punk- I was totally obsessed with Minor Threat, Black Flag, Bad Brains, and Dead Kennedys. Learning about them also got me into Descendents, Misfits, Angry Samoans, Agent Orange, Circle Jerks, Devo, Fugazi, Pixies, Halo of Flies, Suicide Commandos, and many other great bands.

I also had the benefit (which my siblings didn't) of having the internet as a teenager... the amount of information you could get about music is staggering...

Allmusic.com was a huge resource for me- it was great being able to pull up a band's discography at a moment's notice. More importantly, the site listed (in their opinion) each band's influences, followers, etc. It's amazing how you can get into one band, which would then set off a whole chain-reaction of discovery of other bands.

There is one album purchase in particular that set off a hell of a chain reaction... I was looking through the budget bin at my local record store about 8 years ago and came across Cop Shoot Cop's "Consumer Revolt." That CD definitely stuck out, because I remember my brother had mentioned them (who can forget a name like that!) and, he had an album of theirs that I believe the band had packaged themselves... and had splattered with pig's blood...

So I bought it for $2, liked it quite a bit (don't really listen to it that much any more, it's kind of a depressing listen). So I read up about them on Allmusic, which happened to mention Big Black. Their description of Big Black sounded pretty interesting, so I bought "Rich Man's Eight Track Tape."

That pretty much opened up an entire new world of music for me. For one thing, that album, and all the other Big Black albums, totally rocked. So then I read up about and bought albums by Shellac. And Rapeman. I learned about all of the albums Steve Albini was involved with. And I learned about all of the great Touch & Go bands. Don Caballero (my favorite band of all time), Slint, Polvo, Jesus Lizard, Didjits. And those bands sparked so many offshoots of information for me. Got into Chavez, Oxes, Breadwinner, Archers of Loaf, Evergreen, The F'ing Champs, Rodan, Dianogah, Hella, the list goes on and on.

@@@@@@ So, I love going on Allmusic.com (no, I don't work for them!) reading about bands I like, and how they influenced/are influenced by, or sound similar to, other bands. It's a great resource.

I'm curious to hear from other people who have used it (or any music info site), and how it shaped their musical tastes.

The whole point of this thread is (yes, there is a point!), are there certain bands/albums you read about, that "on paper," seemed like bands you would absolutely love, but you ended up being disappointed? Or, bands that your friends have described as, "oh they sound like ____ plus ____," which sounds like a great combo, but they end up sucking? Or, you read about a band, and you love all of their influences, but don't like the band?

I do want to make clear that I'm not blaming anyone for the way they describe a band- it's something that's really hard to do. The whole point of this post is that I'm honestly just curious if people have gotten their hopes set extremely high for a band, only to be disappointed. I'm a total music geek, and I just think this is interesting.

So here's my list, in no particular order:

Drive Like Jehu - "challenging, intricate guitar rock rooted in hardcore and performed with blistering intensity, especially the frenzied vocals... odd time signatures, orchestrated builds and releases, elliptical melodies, and other twists and turns that built on the innovations of the Dischord label..."

Sounds pretty friggin' sweet, huh? I know a lot of people on GG adore this band, but they just don't do it for me. I mean, I don't dislike them, but the only time I ever listen to them is to figure out, "what am I missing?" It doesn't move me. I don't really like the vocals. I'm also not a huge fan of the guitar tone.

Voivod - "Nothingface is highly recommended to just about any aficionado of twisted, original heavy metal or prog rock."

I also remember reading some stuff that compared this album to Master of Puppets. That is a bold comparison! Nothingface has its moments, using some interesting riffs and chords, but there are also a lot of times where it feels like, "hey, we have to throw in another tempo change!!!" Sometimes the vocals are just terrible. (But their cover of "21st Century Schizoid Man," which is on Phobos, is AMAZING.)

Gang of Four - "...some of the most exhilarating and lasting music of the early English post-punk era..." "...vaguely funky rhythmic twitch, its pungent, pointillistic guitar stoccados, and its spoken/shouted vocals..."

Also heard them described as "punk + funk," which sounds really cool. Gang of Four is decent, but I don't love them. They'll come up with a cool riff... and then play it for FOUR MINUTES ("Ether"). Disappointing.

Mission of Burma - "Arty without being too pretentious, capable of writing gripping songs and playing with ferocious intensity..." "...set a standard for excellence that has rarely been equalled..."

I'm sorry, I just don't understand how these guys achieved their "legendary" status. It seems like everyone says they are THE most important punk/post-punk band to ever exist. I just don't dig their music. Maybe you had to be there at their shows. Too arty for me. "New Nails" is a great song, but everything else... I may get flamed for this, but to me they just don't "rock." I WANT to like them, but I can't.

Pailhead - ok, just a one-off project between Ian Mackaye and Ministry's Al Jourgensen. I was never a Ministry fan, or industrial music in general, but what I assumed would be a combination of hardcore punk and industrial sounded like it would be really cool. Doesn't sound like that at all. Ok, but boring.

Explosions in the Sky - "Combining influences from classic rock to metal to goth, the band creates instrumental soundscapes that can turn from all-out destruction to heartfelt, dreamy melodies in the blink of an eye." "What follows is like the climax of a tense, mind-blowing movie, driven by relentless guitars and a thundering Master of Puppets-era Metallica drum march."

They're ok. A little too hyped I guess. Some interesting stuff, but kinda boring. I love a lot of instrumental music, but not them. Just not my cup of tea I guess. I think it goes without saying, if you mention Master of Puppets, I'm going to be disappointed!!

Meshuggah - "Offering a complex form of metal that combined the sweeping adventurism of math rock, the oddball tempos of experimental jazz, and the stunning brutality of thrash metal..."

I've only listened to their latest album, Obzen, and I just wasn't impressed. I recently read about them in a guitar magazine, and they said something like, "people think we force these odd tempos and meters into our songs, but really they just flow naturally from how we write." I dunno, sounds forced to me. I would like to hear their earlier stuff though.


Again, I apologize for the long post, but would love to hear your thoughts.

(Oh, and I know I said my list was in no particular order... but Drive Like Jehu is definitely #1 on this list- I guess I just had my hopes set INSANELY high for them, and they just ended up being ok).

Heavy metal seems to work this way for me. It's like, I'll read about this cool band who's from an island off the coast of Bum**** Sweden who live in a cabin and record music that's "technical, folk-influenced, rough", and I download it and put it on, and SURPRISE! It's pretty much the same as all other metal I've heard before. Blast it, metal! You fooled me again!

I do like some metal, but I don't know enough about it (nor do I care enough to get acquainted with it enough) to pick up on all the supposed subtleties of style variation.

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Wow, you hate a few of my recurrant faves.

My musical taste runs in long spurts of one sort or another. Last spring I mostly listened to modern classical and bebop. These days I'm in an "electric music is impure" phase and listening to Old Timey.

The band that most sticks out in my head when I hear the title of the thread is Sebadoh. I used to like both Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. But this band just. . . kinda sucks.
The only other I can think of at this moment is Adrian Legg. I've always been a big fan of fingerstyle guitar played well, but his tone is simply awful.

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I'm a big fan of industrial in general, and I really don't find any of these groups exciting: Front Line Assembly, Combichrist, Angelspit, Terrorfakt, Nine Inch Nails (arguably not industrial, but...), Thrill Kill Kult, Electric Hellfire Club, tons more I'm not thinking of; basically a lot of stuff that's popular right now and quite a few older icons.

I really am not terribly big into Tusk (Pelican side project) after hearing a lot of good things about them. Mono bored me when I saw them. Practically every metalhead I know loves Chimera, and I never saw what was so great about them. Same with Lamb of God; I dug As the Palaces Burn, but I haven't listened to it in years, and nothing else they did really excited me. I love schizophrenic bands and hate Mindless Self Indulgence. I dislike Darkest Hour despite really liking most of what Devin Townsend has produced. I despise Dillinger Escape Plan. I'm a metalhead who cannot stand Slayer, and who thinks Metallica (all Metallica) is overrated. I do like some melodic death metal, but I hate In Flames and At the Gates. I've seen Psyopus at least twice and wasn't keen on them. I love death metal, and I prefer it when the lyrics aren't Cannibal-Corpse-esque, but I just can't get into Nile no matter how hard I try. I saw Children of Bodom on their first US tour and was bored.

There's more, but that's all that's coming to mind at the moment.

I didn't really dig Obzen that much, and I'm a huuuge Meshuggah fan. Check out the albums Nothing (if you like more mid-tempo stuff) and Destroy Erase Improve (if you're looking for something a little more extreme). I dig Nothing the most personally: find the songs Stengah and Closed Eye Visuals; they're everything I like about Meshuggah.

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Mourn not the dead
that in the cool earth lie...
But rather mourn the apathetic throng
the cowed and the meek
Who see the world's great anguish
and its wrong and dare not speak.
- Ralph Chaplin

"All good people are asleep and dreaming..."

I just have to say that I love Allmusic, too. I've learned so much good music from them, and I've used it as a reference for bands I've never heard of being mentioned here on the 'Geek. So GG + AMG together have really changed my life in a big, big way.

I'm also a fan of anything Albini touches, and most of the old punk bands you listed.

But on topic:

Neutral Milk Hotel's "Aeroplane..." - It's okay, but somewhere it loses momentum to me and I get bored. Too quiet. I can't hardly remember it.

Built to Spill - I liked seeing them live, but their music just doesn't click with me completely. Maybe a little too mopey for me. I dig the jams.

Gorilla Biscuits - Not terrible, but they seem to be ground zero for where good hardcore punk gave way to "meh" hardcore punk. I like my punk rock to be older than I am ('89).

Fu Manchu - One of their albums was pretty good. The other one bored me. A little too ****-rock sounding to me.

Radiohead - Too dramatic and pompous for me most of the time, sorry. When they rock out instrumentally (i.e., Paranoid Android) I can dig it.

Replacements - Too conventionally rock-ish to me, but the songwriting's good. I vastly prefer Husker Du.


These are the sort of bands that I'd buy singles from, as opposed to albums... if that makes any sense. I just don't dig 'em enough to commit a whole 40 minutes or more to their albums.

Oh, and on Burma: I find parts of "Vs." to be slightly boring, but you should check out the "Signals, Calls and Marches" EP--the songs are actually more like songs. I hate to sound lame, but I need hooks and good melodies to really make a song stick out to me (that doesn't mean the hooks and melodies can't be weird/dissonant/challenging). I don't want to sound like a "conventional music" lover... I just need something memorable.

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"Punk is whatever we make it to be." - D. Boon

Really? That's awesome! The first time that I listened to that record, it became my favourite! Although, I listened to it in the perfect situation: on vinyl, with good headphones, and while in bed. Every song was stuck in my head until like... uh... they're still stuck in my head!

King Crimson and Frank Zappa.

it seems that i should like these bands but i cannot get into either of them. i give them both another chance once every 8 months or so just because of how respected they are. i do like a couple humorous Zappa moments but other than that i can only handle him for like 45 seconds!

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Widespread Panic, String Cheese Incident, Umphrey's McGee -- I'm a jam band fan (at least I'm a big Dead and Phish and DMB fan) but not all jam bands are created equal. Case in point: try as I might I can't get into these bands.

My Morning Jacket -- they've got some killer tracks (Gideon still blows me away) but the bulk of their catalog is a mystery to me. I've wasted a ton of cash trying to find the magic spark the real MMJ zealots talk about and I can't find.

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When I first got into prog (yeah, I said it), I was discovering all kinds of bands that the version-of-me-from-a-few-years-ago would have castigated the me-of-a-few-years-later for enjoying. I came to these bands on a tangent, when I heard records by groups such as Drive Like Jehu--who I'm a little amused to see in someone else's "let down" list, considering I credit them with being the band that opened my mind to weird time signatures, unusual song structures, noise, and screaming.

Additionally, bands like Radiohead and Porcupine Tree pointed the way toward more outre music, and I decided to see how far down the rabbit hole I was willing to go.

Pink Floyd and Roxy Music had previously marked the acceptable edge of the prog rock terrain for me, but then I heard the work of groups such as King Crimson and Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and I felt a softening of the heart. Albums like Red and Nursery Cryme left me with that wide-eyed sense of wonder in a way that seemed increasingly hard to find through modern music.

However, I learned that there's a limit to how far into Prog Land I'm willing to travel. Strangely, a lot of the prog bands that I really dislike utilize a lot of the same tones and display similar characteristics to the prog bands that I do like, so I'm not sure exactly what it is that turns me off about them; that said, here is my Top Ten List of Disappointing Bands, starting with prog bands and ending with everything else...

10. Dream Theater - Dear sweet jesus, I cannot for the life of me understand what anyone sees in this preening, pea****ing nonsense. Certainly, they're fantastic musicians but doing well in culinary school doesn't mean you're gonna be the kind of cook who makes a palatable dish. Then again, maybe they're more of an acquired taste...

9. Gong - As a fan of several classic prog bands with what I consider to generally be very good taste, a friend of mine recommended these guys very highly. I don't think I made it through half of an album before I killed it in disgust. Songs about gnomes have to be one of my biggest pet peeves of all time.

8. Post-Peter Gabriel Genesis - Ye gods, where does one start? They really ought to have changed their band's name when the personnel shifted that dramatically. Once Steve Hackett left, things got even worse, sullying the good name of Genesis once and for all in the minds of discriminating potential listeners everywhere. You couldn't pay me enough to attend one of those awful reunion shows.

7. Yes - No.

(I know it's a joke that's been told before, but it summarizes everything I feel toward that band. Although I admit that whatshisname is a pretty interesting guitarist, on occasion.)

6. Gentle Giant - It turns out I couldn't be less into that English pastoral folk-thing that these guys employ to great effect while writing songs that sound like descriptions of Boris Vallejo's artwork (if it were airbrushed onto the side of a big black van). Ugh.

Moving past prog...

5. Siouxsie and the Banshees - By no means are they awful or even a band I'd describe as "bad," but there something missing here. I love the sound of the group, especially on the early records with John McGeoch, but every single full album I've ever heard has left me feeling kinda "meh."

4. Catherine Wheel - I don't care what anyone says, this is NOT shoegaze. It's mainstream hard rock in a momentarily-trendy disguise.

3. Spiritualized - I've heard so much about what a great songwriter J. Spaceman is supposed to be, and how he utilizes brilliant instrumental arrangements featuring many great musicians, and so on and so forth. All I've ever liked by them was the first track on Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. And I don't remember what it's called.

2. Franz Ferdinand - My first great musical love, which continues to this day, was post-punk. Spiky, angular guitars coupled with droning basslines set to dance-able, jerky rhythms gets me every time. Well, almost every time. When I heard about FF back in the early 00s, I thought, "I've been preaching the post-punk gospel for a long-assed time now, and it's about time someone started mining that sonic goldmine again!"

I was SO let down by Franz's debut record that I refuse to give them another chance. The first two times I heard it, I had almost convinced myself that I liked it because at that time, there weren't a whole lot of new post-punk acts around. But that awful, super-compressed, dry-as-the-Gobi-desert production of songs with lyrics that are more embarrassing than most Simple Minds stuff resulted in a horrible let-down.

And the Number One Most Disappointing Band of All Time (to me):

1. Second Coming-period Stone Roses - What the hell happened? I know, I know--fame, drugs, legal troubles, inter-band squabbling, lack of inspiration, dearth of workable material... but none of that answers my question. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?!?!

If I was a scientist trying to prove the existence of the "sophomore slump" as unimpeachable fact, my entire thesis would consist of playing The Stone Roses back-to-back next to Second Coming in front of an impartial jury of my peers. Don't get me wrong: taken on its own merits, album deux is a perfectly fine collection of sub-par blues rock noodling set to rambling "song structures." Lest ye think I'm a total hater, I do believe there are glimpses of genius in amongst the crap (how could there not be? It's a Roses record), but not enough to justify the album's existence.

I'm sorry for rambling, everybody. It's a slow day at the office.

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ACultHero: so much in there I agree with.

tapitin: welcome to GG man. This is a cool thread. Nice work. Stick around, eh?

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Meshuggah: They have a lot of what I like; downtuned riffs, odd time sigs, growls and massive drums. However there's nothing about them that sticks in my head, other than how on paper they should be incredible.


Opeth: Awesome death growls, great musicianship but it all seems pretentious and boring to me. Mike is obviously having fun what he's doing, but I'm not having any, listening to it.

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im into electronica and ive been burned on that a few times. prob just because that type of music is so hard to describe in words.
and i dont know how many times ive heard "you like radiohead? well youll def like bjork, muse, dj shadow, etc etc" while ive found that all those bands are decent, i just cant ever really get into them

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Can't you? I agree that the "Communist Daughter" is kind of a throwaway, and "Oh Comely" is too long, but ****, the whole rest of the album is great. I can appreciate that everyone else loves this album, too. But the melody, the pathos, the delivery are almost perfect, like To Kill a Mockingbird or something. Yes, I'm going so far as to say Aeroplane has the sprawl and scope of a novel, or at least a novella.

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Mending a Fuse

/When your Lights have gone.

(PS Tigerrock, my totem will pin yours to the floor)

I love "Communist Daughter" hhahahah.

It's the kind of album that grows on you. It takes many listens to really appreciate the second half of it, past "Holland 1945". Just give it time.

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