Post 1990 British Indie Rock/Rock/Metal

i got nothing against the country or its music as a rule, but British rock from the 90s onwards is mostly a sad joke and these guys are the punchline

― some dude,

Weird it just now occurred to me that there's really not an ongoing underground rock culture in the UK in the same way there is in the US.... it's like when you think 90s music board dorks from UK think of Blur & Oasis and we think about like Unwound or Jesus Lizard

― hello :) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, August 3, 2013 3:32 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's because a lot of the underground-styled/sounding bands in the UK take all their cues from their US counterparts.....but if you already have the latter, what use is the former, watered down?

― Master of Treacle, Saturday, August 3, 2013 4:14 AM (15 hours ago)

I'm just saying there was no comparable scene in the uk to us circuit

― hello :) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

So, was UK indie rock as shit as claimed? No comparable uk scene?
What were the bands that can compare to The Jesus Lizard, Afghan Whigs? Nevermind (geddit?) the truly great bands like Nirvana.

Who are the good indie rock or rock bands or even metal bands from the UK around now?

and in before LJ posts about The Heads
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heads_%28British_band%29

Fudge Tunnel and Silverfish come immediately to mind.

great bands

Early eps/albums by Therapy? and The Wildhearts too

Manic Street Preachers too at least up to Everything Must Go

Are you looking for heavy stuff? Like, do Radiohead and Youthmovies count?

xpost OK, that probably answers it.

Oh, duh, Caina.

Cathedral?

No, not just heavy stuff. I included metal because I knew someone would ask why cant they include metal.

Future of the Left/McLusky rule

― hello :) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, August 3, 2013 4:43 PM

just no indie pop/britpop I guess.

A Storm In Heaven Verve totally count though.

Like, do Radiohead and Youthmovies count?

yes.

I don't know that much about UK rock (or even as much about US indie rock as many posters do) but my sense was that M@tt's point was that there wasn't really as much of a 'scene' with indie labels, zines (in the old days), networks of venues, campus radio stations, etc that was supporting indie guitar rock in the UK as there is in the US. (I imagine that there may [have] be[en] more of this for electronic music?) I don't think he was saying there were no good UK bands.

I didn't think he was either, some dude was though!

but both are points worth discussion I thought.

btw there was plenty of indie labels and zines (Plus the weeklies actually covered plenty of good stuff even if there was no radio except Peel/friday rock show/evening session)

I always did feel however that the UK tended to prefer making indie pop and when there was a lull it looked to the USA for the rock. That was just my personal feeling during the 90s and may not be true of anyone else. It didn't mean we didn't have any good bands however.

Im waiting on the shoegazers turning up ITT

I'm wearing this tshirt right now actually
http://www.metalinsider.net/site/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/godflesh_1277059014.jpg

Part Chimp seemed to me the best UK live band for a good few years. Fantastic and largely over-looked.

on the same note as Part Chimp I always found Hey Colossus underrated.

it's like when you think 90s music board dorks from UK think of Blur & Oasis and we think about like Unwound or Jesus Lizard

lol wtf

ok again mbv, lush, pale saints, slowdive, cocteau twins, your arsenal-period morrissey, catherine wheel, curve, stereolab. not ned's atomic dustbin.

xpost is it wrong to think of superchunk?

It's never wrong to think of Superchunk along with Unwound/Jesus Lizard

Most of that stuff doesn't really rock in the way that e.g. Fugazi rocks.
xpost

-early gringo stuff, bob tilton. well, p much everything gringo puts out is good
-all the riffyer noisier shoegaze bands telescopes, ride
-current diy scene. nitkowski, silent front, shield your eyes, that fucking tank some of my favs

telescopes? please no

Off the top of my head, my favourite non-britpop '90s UK indie record is probably Prolapse's The Italian Flag.

I definitely got the impression there was a big DIY scene over here at that time, even though I didn't know much about it, labels like Fierce Panda, Chemikal Underground. Oh wait, I forgot about Mogwai!

actually the uk took over as far as the 90s with me till recently with the likes of lfo 808 state aphex twin squarepusher boards of Canada chemical brothers prodigy coldplay radiohead meat beat manifesto and others.

For this thread Bush are American. Cuz nobody knew them here until til Gwen Stefani married the singer.

Gay Dad
Toploader
Reef
Kasabian
Baby Bird
Electric Wizzard
Busted

Electric Wizzard

That would be quite a cover band

hahahaha
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/british-rock-bands.html

British Alternative Rock Bands

This style of rock music emerged in the 1980s and some of the best bands of the 90s also took root from this era. Alternative rock music had and even today has many variations from the punk rock style of music. It is a step further than punk rock and was made international by record dealers when they realized the importance of rock music. Today, there are many alternative rock bands which emerged from the British but are influenced by the US in their music. Mentioned below are the names of such alternative bands from Britain.

♪
Airhead
♪
Breathless
♪
Uriah Heep
♪
Angelica
♪
Cable
♪
David Bowie
♪
East Village
♪
Cream
♪
Quintessence
♪
King Adora
♪
Yachts
♪
Young Guns
♪
Chemical Brothers
♪
Shrug
♪
Mumford & Sons
♪
The Silencers
♪
Arrows
♪
Momento Mori UK

I Wish It Could Be Black Mass Everyday

off the top of my head: gallon drink, COUNTRY TEASERS (if UK stuff is ok), SKULLFLOWER, BEVIS FROND, terminal cheesecake, fudge tunnel, THEE HEADCOATS, E-WIZ.

and i remember at least half liking the freak-noisy uk psychedelic bands on shimmy disc - walkingseeds, jellyfish kiss (though they were more late-80s-into-very-early-90s). also more aggressive post-shoegaze stuff like th' faith healers & prolapse.

recommendations along these lines please.

wizards of twiddly, world of twist, leatherface, the framk and walters

a few ilxors will certainly stan for terminal cheesecake and skullflower

oh yes the 1st Leatherface album was a real classic. Not sure Mark e is around this weekend so I'll nominate Compulsion for him (to my knowledge him & I are the only Compulsion fans on here).

Cardiacs

Rothko ;)

I thought Carcass & Napalm Death would be mentioned by now

how ironic, some gimp just posted a bush song on the facebook shoegaze group. to general derision i'm glad to report.

Hah, Levitation too

oooh good call

btw if anyone wants a laugh.. http://www.thetoptens.com/best-british-indie-bands/

God
Aufgehoben
Mass
Ganger
Telstar Ponies
Long Fin Killie

were good noisy bands of one sort or another

gallon drunk! well mentioned. you the night and music is a stonecold classic.

yeah, in the long still night too

lol, "munch room"

there's a lot of punk out there, it's just way more far removed from indie revivalism than metal.

haha munch room

contenderizer it would explain a lot why the dreaded 'indie hipster' got into metal over the past decade.

i'm an heavy/harsh indie rocker from way back, and i trace my current (glancing) interest in metal to the gap between dopethrone and dopesmoker, so i figure i embody that straw man as well as anyone.

then again, the two streams have never been all that far apart. most of my college friends dug voivod, metallica and slayer alongside sonic youth, scratch acid and butthole surfers. that fed into the likes of soundgarden, kyuss and the jesus lizard in the 90s, though i jumped ship on "alt metal" at a certain point. stoner rock (qotsa, fu manchu, nebula, high on fire, e-wiz) got lots of attention from the indie/generalist rock press circa y2k, along with art-doom from khanate and sunnO))). earth as a through-line.

squirrel and g man twenty four hour party people plastic face carn't smile (white out) is a fantastic album but that was 1987

don't think you can blame any other britpop band for shaun ryder's demise unless you mean powder, nudge nudge sniff sniff

The eventual metal thing is unsurprising but I still think there's a lot of people who won't go any louder or heavier than say, Helmet, Jesus Lizard, or Unsane. Like the noise rock genre as a whole is the furthest they'll allow themselves to go.

oh no nick it's just the only mondays album I really rate, but its not post 1990. he was always on a one way path to self-destruction.

but it has to be said black grape's audience didn't differ that much from oasis'

Funny thing is that in actual heavy terms Unsane is kinda heavier than black metal

Also I just don't enjoy black metal but find the old "you can't handle it" thing kinda cute because Flying Luttenbachers or Lightning Bolt in their prime was so much rear and crazy than dudes tremelo picking over triggered drums

I listened to translyvsnian hunger and the thing that struck me was how thin it was and the drums kind reminded me of sped up skiffle johnny cash drums and the chords were kinda intruiging at times but it's very conventional music in many ways

It's probably like shoegaze, you're sort of responding (or not) to a certain sound and vibe

Not sure Mark e is around this weekend so I'll nominate Compulsion for him (to my knowledge him & I are the only Compulsion fans on here).

well, as soon as i saw this thread i did the cntrl-f thing for compulsion.

despite the lack of love round these parts for them, i still listen to their albums on a pretty regular basis.

Compulsion were Irish not British tho (unless there was more than one band called Compulsion)

wikipedia seems to back up my memory that they were a London-based group for nearly all their career

mbv is a british band even though kevin (who came from america) and colm are irish

I think we're going for British Isles here guys

A lot of indie rock people will respond better to a bunch of 'regular guys' playing noisy stuff (which is basically what the noise-rock was about) rather than deal with the stigma of the 'image' of black/death metal or whatever

'stigma'

I listened to translyvsnian hunger and the thing that struck me was how thin it was and the drums kind reminded me of sped up skiffle johnny cash drums and the chords were kinda intruiging at times but it's very conventional music in many ways

Well, yeah, that's a 20-year-old classic album from when dudes were still laying down foundations of the genre. And the thin sound was probably inevitable when they were not working with v high production budgets. Like early 80s hardcore (most of which holds interest for me) or something probably. The stuff we're talking about here is much less conventional (and less thin), for example: Search: Metal that Sounds Like Glenn Branca

"holds little interest for me" (although I love Bad Brains and later Black Flag; maybe I'm being unfair)

you are

I just find the idea that "moving on" from noise rock or that metal is inherently more progressive, musically interesting, or challenging, heavier or noisier to be pretty funny

Also black metal is more popular w indie ppl breviary of the gonzo look, not less

Because of

it can be sometimes and not in others tbf

like oh no i've heard whitehouse and on the corner and nurse with wound and wolf eyes but these guys picking minor chords really fast with pishpishpishpishpishpish 16th note cymbals made me piss my pants

can't speak for the algerian, but i wasn't talking about fans of one genre abandoning it for another (which doubtless happens, but i dunno to what degree).

i was only suggesting that the relationship of bad vibes harshness rock cru to "indie" and "metal" has changed somewhat over the last couple decades.

for me, the appeal of early svart norsk isn't the sonic extremity, it's the chintzy breakneck gothpunk fuzz. ear-shitting lofi production is as big a hurdle for some as unsane-style sonic brutality is for others.

but off-puttingness isn't high on the list of things i look for in music

no i get that, it just seems like black metal and metal has replaced hip hop as the ILM genre of "is it getting enough attention? too much attention? do enough people like it? do the wrong people like it? do the right people like it in the wrong way?" type handwringing :)

gonna listen to burzum one last time and see if it takes this time

lol of course this the the most i've enjoyed this compared to any other time i've tried, pass me mein kampf and some greasepaint

can't speak for the algerian, but i wasn't talking about fans of one genre abandoning it for another (which doubtless happens, but i dunno to what degree).

Nor me, I was talking about how fans of one genre were finding something similar in another genre in a way that wasnt happening 20 years ago.

Yeah, that's the thing. I get out of contemporary avant-garde black metal what I used to get out of no wave and post-hc/screamo and that I don't get from most music that is currently classified as 'indie' (although I admit to not following that stuff terribly closely anymore): something that really rocks and at the same time is doing something pretty original/interesting/complex. A lot of it is even really openly influenced by post-hc and no wave. Talking about Krallice and Jute Gyte (and other stuff from that thread) here, not early Darkthrone. I dunno, is anyone in indieworld doing the sorts of things that Jute Gyte does?

Am following this from a distance but I have to ask with all due affection algerian goalkeeper what the hell are you up to with your italics

sund4r did I ever play you Aluk Todolo?

wins whats up?

I'm not the only one who is using italics

Italics for band names is v non standard it's a little jarring altho it obv doesn't really matter I just needed to say something

Carry on :-)

i like aluk todolo

I'm a little on the fence about Aluk Todolo. I like some of it. Found the whole album a bit tiring.

(I like early Darkthrone btw. I just don't think it's what you should go to if you're looking for something that's really extreme or avant-garde.)

Hm, listening to Unsane now, I like this well enough but it still sounds like straight-up hard rock at its core, not that there's anything wrong with that. The drums actually made me think of AC/DC and some of the riffs remind me a bit of the White Stripes, maybe? I'm exaggerating a little; I mean, it does remind me of going to hardcore shows in high school. Good solid sound. I'd say Portal is heavier than this.

We're way off topic from British indie now but I think we established that no one knew what we were supposed to be discussing there?

oasis i think?

when has ilm ever stayed on-topic?

this thread reminded me of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DZrLryJCnI
Jesus & Mary Chain - "I Hate Rock 'n' Roll" (1995)

we were talking about ride

the ride album w/a picture of the ocean is really good

yes and the first three EPs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vmm7uCFImHg

I think the early Charlie Ondras Unsane stuff is a little different from their later output

three bands I forgot:
Northern Uproar
S*M*A*S*H
Fabulous

These Animal Men!