A Subjective History of Groove Metal

Groove metal was never a thing.

I mean it in the sense that it was never a movement to properly speak of. There were never waves or reinventions of the genre although it had a timid revival in the early 00’s spearheaded by Lamb of God. Groove metal was kind of an in-between several bands that didn't fit a preexisting genre landed on. There are defining characteristic the majority of them adopted, but many of them don't sound all that alike. I guess you could call it a niche genre or the largest microgenre of all-time. It’s not like death metal or anything.

But groove metal is historically important enough. Whether it democratized metal or was the end result of a democratization of metal is unclear, but a lot of people who don't enjoy metal all that much almost exclusively listen to Pantera, Lamb of God and groove metal adjacent bands. Even still today, groove metal bands are often major names in metal festival and move important crowds. They are few, they are proud, I don’t enjoy them all that much, but I had my era just like everybody else. So, I’m not better than anybody.

So here is my subjective, quite personal history of groove metal.

Once again it's not exactly clear where and how it started

As it is the case with several metal genres, groove metal was not invented by someone.

Dimebag Darrell didn't wake up one day and went like : "I want to make bouncy, chuggy metal with an empowering message." No, it's the combination of many thing that evolved into something else over time. Here's a hot take I haven't seen anywhere yet (but that probably exists): I believe groove metal is a distant relative to crossover thrash and beatdown hardcore. Early iterations of the genre sound way too similar for it not to be the case. As YouTuber Coolea explains in his history of hardcore: it all started with Bad Brains.

Seriously, check out his video. Coolea’s work puts mine to shame.

Bad Brains were a hardcore punk band, but they were also quite different from anyone else in the scene being Jamaican and whatnot. See, they had an important lineup change in 1987 losing creative fulcrums H.R and Earl Hudson and their sound shifted towards more of a funk metal aesthetic. Did they invent funk metal too? Quite possible, but it’s not a genre important or historically interesting enough for me to investigate. At least not before I covered a lot of other stuff. But some of their songs had a familar edge to it.

Being more positive than your typical hardcore punk and influences by the grooviness of reggae, Bad Brains were influential in creating New York Hardcore, which is known to be groovier and more positive than its DC counterpart and these are two qualifiers that would end up fitting many groove metal bands too. It’s in the name after all. As I previously said, Bad Brains did not wake up one morning and invent groove metal, but I believe the idea to slow down, be groovier and generally more positive is theirs.

Is this a good moment to tell you one of the first groove metal band came from New York and started around the same years, playing crossover thrash? Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to Prong! They were one of the earliest examples of groove/protogroove metal (also funk influenced), but not THE earliest. Nah, the first clear cut example of actual groove-metal-as-an-idea rather comes from New Orleans' thrash outfit Exhorder on their album Slaughter in the Vatican. Why them? It's a good question.

The book Hellraisers: A Complete Visual History of Heavy Metal Mayhem offers a satisfying explanation. It claims that Exhorder was influenced by New Orleans' blues (and funk! oh ho!) heritage and incorporated it to their music. I mean, it makes sense. These are two genres whether the rhythm section is super important and serves to dictate a unique and infection tempo. How am I so sure of what I'm advancing? I'm not a 100%, but there are other links with the cannon of groove metal that I'm about to reveal.

Pantera, Machine Head and the Glory Years of Groove Metal

Around the same time, Pantera became the most important groove metal band ever and one of the biggest ands in the world, period. It went fast, didn’ it?

The year in 1991, Nirvana's Nevermind and Metallica's black album were a thing and alternative culture suddenly became the coolest thing. I was eight years old and it was a weird time to be alive. Even my favorite band ever and paragon of audio brutality Slayer became famous back then. Groove metal got sucked into this cultural vortex and very few people got rich out of it. I mean very few metal people. I'm sure plenty of disgusting suits from major labels made a fortune out of groove metal bands.

I believe two factors have contributed in Pantera crystalizing the groove metal sound: 1) Dimebag Darrell’s bluegrass inspired guitar style and 2) Phil Anselmo's links to the New Orleans scene. You think it's a coincidence if Exhorder released Slaughter in the Vatican and Pantera did Cowboys from Hell a couple months apart? I don't think so. The difference between them being Pantera having this super creative and charismatic guitarist who had a sound no one had previously heard.

There's no thrash to properly speak of on that record, but you gotta admit. There a familiarity between the sounds that would disappear completely on A Vulgar Display of Power in 1992. Another important groove metal band that's always been a little self-loathing in that regard is Machine Head. Hailing from the California thrash metal scene (more precisely the band Vio-Lence), they became the second most important groove metal band of the era in my opinion. They also bridged the gap with the 00s'.

I call them self-loathing because Rob Flynn has always zig-zagged between being a crowd pleaser and living to the ideal of being a tortured musical genius a lot of metal musicians aspire to. That lead him to experiment with nü metal (which I thought was a lot less humiliating than made out to be), Trivium-like metalcore and even black metal elements. But early, Burn My Eyes Machine Head that featured groovy chugs and breakdowns is the most fondly remembered of all their iterations.

I had my Machine Head era too. I was very into them from maybe 1999 to 2005. But Rob's weird, man. He's got issues.

Sepultura experimented with groove metal on Chaos A.D, which made it one of their most canonical records. Biohazard surfed the line with crossover thrash (highlighting the similarities again), Agonstic Front and White Zombie also dabbled with the sound albeit indirectly. There were less important groove metal bands that I really liked like Geezer Butler's thunderous GZR that never really got off the ground unfortunately (it was way too fucking brutal) and Pissing Razors, which are still active today.

Otherwise that's more or less it for the golden era. It was the most popular style of metal for many years, but this success belonged to a few bands. Since this success didn’t concern metal for metal's sake, the genre at large kept evolving in parallel and eventually away from groove metal.

New Wave of American Heavy Metal and the Groove Metal Revival

Now, the cultural significance of groove metal was over by, let's say 1997? But metal had one last gasp of relevancy: nü metal.

Now, I'm not saying that contemporary groove metal bands were also nü metal. But the popularity of the genre brought forward some more talented musicians. Including a band that already existed under the name of Burn the Priest, which would spearhead that revival: Lamb of God. I'm not a big fan of this band and I'd like to tell you revolutionized the genre, but it's not quite what happened. They revived it and crystallized it as this energetic and accessible mosh music. I believe that's why younger people embraced them.

There was also Damageplan and Hellyeah (which was born out of the ashes of Damageplan). I guess uh… Five Finger Death Punch also fit the bill in their early years. They've taken more of a radio friendly hard rock road over the years and pissed everyone except Monster chugging, Ford F150 driving rednecks in the process. These guys know their audience, I guess. Otherwise that's pretty much it in terms of significant groove metal bands in the XXIst century. There are bands using elements, but it’s mostly a specialty genre.

I don’t know of any new groove metal bands except perhaps a local band I saw at Wacken Quebec finals (which I was a judge for) last spring called Red Raven Chaos, who were formed in 2017. I ranked them third out of five, but they were good. It's rowdy music. You should check them out. I'm sure there's a hundreds of them sprouting all over the globe, but none that matter. Before leaving you, here are five song to help you understand better how groove metal is supposed to sound like.

Exhorder - Desecrator : One of the earliest example of a groove metal song that was one without knowing it was one. It has that infectious mid-tempo riff and Kyle Thomas even sounds somewhat like Phil Anselmo. Notice how it has this beatdown "fuck you" attitude to it. I'm telling you, these genres are cousins.

Pantera - I’m Broken: What can I tell you? It's Pantera at their finest. They were masters of their trade by then and this entire record is fucking sick. Of course, they are human beings with questionable values, but some of their stuff is universal and eternal. I'm Broken is the quintessence of groove metal.

GZR - Drive Boy Shooting: Best groove metal song ever? It sure is the most violent and aggressive with the overblown bass and sardonic delivery by Fear Factory's Burton C. Bell. That riff is pure groove metal, but everything else is cranked out to 11 on this song.

Lamb of God - Redneck: One of the songs they usually close their shows with. It's powerful, it's in your face, it's groovy as fuck also. I don't feel any connections to these guys and what they represent, I was elsewhere in my life when they blew up. But I respect them. They're the second most important groove metal band of all-time.

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