Also, wonderful band to check out - Pelican
Great instrumental post-metal/sludge
I vouch. Just got one of their albums,
The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw, and it's amazing. Great ambient tracks mixed with some tracks that got nice and deep. It took a few listens to really get into it because I'm not much of a fan of post-anything, but this was definitely worth the patience.
Nightwish
You can never go wrong with this one. Frankly, I feel like they're a bit overlooked in the metal community when their talent is considered, but you could say the same about many bands. Plus, it's kind of nice to be the only guy at your school who's awesome enough to listen to Nightwish. But I suppose that would make that person a metal hipster, wouldn't it? Haha.
Iwrestledabearonce
Definitely not a fan. I had a phase where I was into some really bad metalcore (Asking Alexandria comes to mind) and this was one of the bands I tried listening to. Unfortunately acts like these have been praised lately where I live.
Devourment
No words. Well, except for this: these guys are ****ing heavy.
Bullet for my Valentine
For me, it really depends on the song. I like their more recent material better, but even at that there are songs by them I've heard recently and couldn't stand.
Megadeth
\\m/
Today Is The Day
Mino showed me these guys (by these guys I mean Steve Austin, haha) and I didn't really like it at all. I listened to a song here and there for a few days before I started to get a feel for them, at which time I got
Temple of the Morning Star. I really liked it and since then I've gotten
Supernova and
Sadness Will Prevail. The latter is probably in my top 5 albums list. Don't listen to these guys once and give up. It takes time to get to know the music. And then it's great.
Metalcore
Terrible. Like I said earlier, I went through a phase where I liked some of this stuff. But since then it all sounds the same: wannabe posers crying pop music themes.
System of a Down
As pang mentioned earlier, they're more nu-metal. But I should probably make note of them too because they're one of my top 5 bands for sure.
Gorguts
A few months ago Loudwire held a metal bassist competition (more of a poll than anything, but whatever). In the first round, Colin Marston of Gorguts was against Justin Chancellor of Tool. Being a humongous Tool fan and never hearing of Gorguts until this point in time, I showed the matchup to pang hoping for a small laugh (we were discussing previous Loudwire polls as well). To my surprise, pang actually knew who this guy was. Even more surprising, he said Marston was actually decent. I went right ahead and voted for Chancellor anyway because it isn't very consistent to back down on your favorite musical act. Chancellor won 90-something percent to a measly single digit percent by Marston. No surprise there, considering the Tool Army was much larger than the Gorguts following.
A few months later, pang, a mutual friend and I were discussing bands. Gorguts was mentioned and I remembered I hadn't checked out Marston, so I gave it a shot. Now they're one of my most respected death metal acts.
Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Van Halen, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath
Can't go wrong with the legends.
A few bands I can recommend:
Tool (usually called psychedelic prog but aren't much of anything)
Melvins (noise/doom/post/sludge/these/guys/do/lots/of/genres)
Pantera (hair metal for older stuff, mainstream metal for later)
Sabaton (power)
Stratovarius (power)
Dream Theatre (prog)
Rage Against The Machine (rap/metal)
5FDP (extremely mainstream, but are sometimes considered metal; worth mentioning)
Saint Vitus (doom; would be surprised if anyone knew them)
Eyehategod (sludge)
Acid Bath (sludge)
Isis (post/stoner)
Neurosis (doom/stoner)
Green Jellÿ (comedy?)
Puscifer (lots of variety, some experimental metal thrown in)
Peach (prog)
