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Yes, you read that right. Heavy Metal Country.

I had a band back in the 80's in Ontario that played heavy metal country. Getting gigs was a pain in the arse because our agent had a lot of trouble selling us. But once we started playing, we always got a great response.

A long stint of driving truck and managing at warehouses kept me out of the loop for quite a while, but I'm in the process of buying new equipment with an eye to taking another crack at it.

The instrument lineup, as before, is going to be semi-hollow-body arch-top guitar, baritone guitar and bass. I'll soon be ordering a Hagstrom Viking baritone guitar, which I hugely prefer over those phony-baloney 7-string fake baritone guitars, which lack the string-length and thickness of the string of a true baritone. Plus drums.

It looks like I'm going to have to go through the annoyance, once again, of having whammy bars made for both baritone guitar and bass. It's a matter of style and expression.

Why play heavy metal country? Because (in my not-so-humble opinion) modern country music sucks, big-time. It's nothing but soap-opera pop, token drumming, token playing, strings of cliches instead of real lyrics, everything I hate about a stagnant music form that's badly in need of an enema. Why heavy metal country? Because I'd give just about anything to show up at a big outdoor country gig and blow all that fake music and those fake, cheesy outfits right off the stage.

You know how some acts smash guitars on stage? My shtick, once again, will be stomping on those modern, cheaply-made, hard-shell cowboy hats, the type businessmen wear in Texas and Calgary. Splat! The modern Western attire looks like something out of Brokeback Mountain to me. It's too clean, too fake, too affected for my taste.

Anyway, that's really what heavy metal country is about: attitude. Gotta have attitude.

What could possibly be more fun?

I agree with your assessment of Country Music's current dire status, and commend you on your trailblazing mission to kick some asses and take no prisoners. Bravo! I want to hear your stuff, as soon as possible. I'm smiling, ear to ear, just thinking about that Country Festival scenario that you mentioned. My family is all about the Texas county, pre-nineties. No Trashville stuff. Either Texas or Bakersfield. With some metal, of course. Good luck.

This is some of the most ignorant crap I have heard yet on a forum. Country is country music when it is played it is played as it was when it was defined as country music. Definitions mean something, they are not floating decimal points, they are definitions fixed by set parameters and certain rules. When it is no longer played as defined by history it is no longer country music no matter what you call it. Calling something other than what it is and placing it in a fixed definition genre is just stupidity. It is like grafting wings on a pig and calling it a bird. Taking so called modern "country" (There is nothing country about it) and adding heavy metal guitars to it doesn't bring it back to being country. If you are playing traditional country, which has been left in the dust, then you need play it as it was, not as one believes it should be. Why? Because you are not playing it, you are simply renaming it something other than what it truly is.True country music and the rules that define it were established many years before most of the musicians claiming to play it were even born. Most of them have not even heard country music as it was defined when it was an original genre. They need to go to the Indian casinos or listen to AM radio. Those are the only places you will find true country music these days.

To change anything about traditional country music is to not be playing country music, but rather something else. So if you hate country, why tack that classification to something that is not? If it is something new, then call it something new, don't claim is is something It is not. Be creative. If you have a new form of music then give it a new name. Look at Bluegrass they are for the most part traditionalists. They set out to write and play Bluegrass in the tradition that it has always been played with using the very same instruments associated with Bluegrass from the establishment of Bluegrass as a genre. Show me an authentic Blue Grass band using heavy metal guitars that is accepted by those who actually do play Bluegrass. I wanted to sit in with a Bluegrass band and the snobs wouldn't let me use an electric guitar. (Although they miked or had pickups in their instruments so that they could be heard.)

I haven't heard true country music played anywhere but on AM radio these days. The crap they are calling country today is NOT country music. It tries to emulate rock & roll instrumentation to cheesy cutesy lyrics and pass that crap off as what it is not. And what it is not is country music. Country music died when the suits at Colgate decided that selling white strips to teenage girls was more important than killing an American art form. You can call music whatever you want to call it, but that does not necessarily make it so.

I have no idea where the stupidity originated that teaches musicians that they can call something it is not whatever they want to call it and make it so. To call Acid Rock folk music doesn't make it folk music. Destroying the definitions of genres doesn't help anything. No wonder people can't define what they play anymore by genre. Country music is Country music. When you take the country out of country music it is no longer country anything. And people complain about genre confusion? Gee, I wonder how that can be.

I'm working on a project now that we've defined as Southern Symphonic Metal.

Talbot

Talbot,. Southern Symphonic Metal sounds like a great project. I had hopes that someone would perform a progressive Acid Bach project some day. I believe you could pull that off.

The how and why Crest White strips destroyed traditional country music

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/24/movie ... nores.html

How about head banger parlor music? Anyone?

Where do I sign up?

Badstrat seems kinda... butthurt? Is that the right word for it?

Like it or not, music evolves.

Heavy Metal Country could be the next big breakthrough.

Good Luck, Red Neckford.

Metalized classical is not unusual - see bands like Savatage, TransSiberian Orchestra, etc.

'Heavy metal country' - examples, please. OP's profile has no audio samples.

No question that current 'country' music is just pop music, sometimes with a steel guitar and fiddle.

Yep. The Europeans are not hanging around smoky forums with drinks in their hands, lamenting that music is in the doldrums. They are cranking out some good stuff.

Since I like a bit of celtic in my southern symphonic metal - my current favorites are Kamelot, Nightwish and Subway to Sally.

A cursory look will reveal good stuff happening in Argentina as well.

Talbot

"Badstrat seems kinda... butthurt? Is that the right word for it?"

I get somewhat dismayed at how rapidly the reprobate mind exposes itself over the least little thing.

No. There isn't a genre called Acid folk, but there is still folk music. There isn't a genre called jazz rockabilly, although there is still some of us who play rockabilly. I am one. There isn't a genre called head banger parlor music, or death metal classical or many of other genre in some stupid combination added to the original genre by some idiot. You see, some musicians remain true to the original genre as best they can. There are a lot of purists out there that stick to the original genre. Generally a good many classifications of genre are made up by idiots that aren't actually even musicians but rather DJ's and the likes. But that still doesn't make it right.