You Verdict 2.0: Week 6

[trashcanman]

You remember Santana's "Supernatural" album? The one where where an awesome founding father of latino rock paired up with every flavor of the month and flash in the an he could find for one of the biggest albums of the decade? Picture that, but with the founding father of heavy metal teaming up with some of the biggest and best names in metal, punk, and alternative rock. Sold yet? Let me help you picture what you're about to hear.

This is one of the most influential musicians on planet Earth, directly or indirectly responsible for every riff or guitar tone you've ever heard that made you bang your head.


And this fellow here needs no introduction anywhere. Some give him partial credit for inventing alternative rock, but he merely helped perfect it and may lead the only American band in the mainstream worthy of calling themselves that.


Toni Iommi of Black Sabbath. Dave Grohl of Nirvana and Foo Fighters (for starters). Your argument is fucking invalid. The "Iommi" album features the Sabbath bandleader teaming up with everyone from Billy Idol to Billy Corgan along with metal frontmen like Phil Anselmo and Serj Tankian for one HELL of a solo album. Grohl not only rocks the mainstream rock charts, but actually did a similar concept, "Probot" where he recorded badass metal tracks (playing all instruments) and then brought in motherfuckers like Lemmy Kilmeister, Max Cavalera, and King Diamond to do their thing. So it only seems natural that the two should collaborate at some point, even if it was on an album that an unfortunately small number of people bought. This is "Goodbye Lament", which also featured on Brian May on rhythm guitar.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4F11uZBy3L8

[The Curmudgeon]

So at first I'm like, "soooo.. where's the guitar on this tra... ah, there it is."

Damn cool song. Sounds like late 90's Pumpkins at the start but that guitar is fucking bad-ass. Shame it had to come from Blair Witch II, though.

I've heard of the Probot album and came close to buying it a couple of times, but it was just too expensive. One day, though.

Gotta say, though, I would never put Grohl, or even Cobain, as the inventor of alternative rock. In my mind, only one guy wears that badge.

[trashcanman]

Yeah, but a lot of people think that Nirvana was the original, even though Cobain and Grohl themselves were very forthright about how big of an influence bands like Husker Du and The Pixies were on them. Personally, I think "alternative" is such a nebulous term that I wouldn't even attempt to point to a definitive source. One could argue anyone from The Kinks to The Who to The Stooges to Velvet Underground to The Clash and still only be touching the tip of the iceberg. Anyways, Iommi is in my mind 100% the originator of heavy metal. It's well-documented that he came up with that heavy sound after he lost the tips of his fingers in an industrial accident (if you look closely, you can see he used extensions) and he had to downtune his strings to make up for it, which coincided with the release of the classic horror anthology "Black Sabbath", where Geezer Butler got the idea of making scary rock music. The rest is history. Before Sabbath, the heaviest rock was stuff like The Who and The Beatles. Afterwords you got an entire world of heavy music that continues to grow, evolve, and spread to this day. Even without that massive amount of influence, Iommi is hands down the best riff-writer in music history and his extended live solos are some of the best I've ever experience in person. You don't get more underrated than this guy.