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Metal band with no Low End

#21
It can work (some good examples above) but honestly I think most metal bands just can't find people to play bass for them because it's an even more thankless job than usual. Often bass gets ripped out of every metal mix anyway...so why not just have 3 guitars?
 
#29
Metal band with no Low End

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They have 3 guitars, I assume they downtune, I assume they play through sealed 4x12 cabs. And if they turn up the bass ... there is no room left for a bassist. A bass player would be redundant and uneeded.
 
#30
atheos said:
Compared to Puppets or Black Album or, well, anything other than St. Anger, does Justice sound good to you? Because in my opinion it sure doesn't.

And Maiden covers without bass... No words can ever describe the amount of wrongness in that. No. Just... No.
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+100000000000000. Iron Maiden without the Steve Harris' bass lines and Bruce Dickinson's vocals isn't worth listening to... Well, except the stuff from before Bruce joined. But that's only cause Steve was already in the band :p
 
#32
I say just let your friends experiment with their sound. If they want bass back, they'll add a member again.

When I was young, there were a few bands in my area. One of the bands wasn't able to find a bassist before their first show, so they called themselves Subtraction. It became their 'thing' so they just stuck with it. They sounded ok. Most of their songs were originals. It's not like they were covering Maiden without bass.

I believe they did try contacting a few more bassists. I went to jam with them once. Great bunch of guys & I would have enjoyed playing with them, but I was already tight with another band.
 
#36
thlayli said:
Metal guitar player step all over the bass' sonic area these days anyway. Bass isn't necessary in metal anymore, it's just a spot on the stage.
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It's true. People want to play guitar in their bedroom and sound as full as an entire classic band: guitar, bass and kick drum too. There is a big market for pickups, amps and guitars that can accomplish this. Bass isn't necessary for low frequencies anymore.

Still, bass is necessary to keep the band from looking like losers who couldn't find a bassist. It's especially necessary if the bass is inaudible, whether like "And Justice For All" or "Transylvanian Hunger" - if you can't hear or see the bass, it raises suspicions that you wanted bass and couldn't have it. If you can't hear the bass but can see it, then the band can convince the audience that they could have bass if they wanted to and that's just how it's supposed to sound.
 
#37
To me, no basd means no "oomph". Guitars sound thin to me on its own after a while, and while I can appreciate the nigh bassless black metal recordings and do enjoy them, I prefer the ones with defined bass. I'd rather hear an all bass band than all guitar. Hence my post about BassInvaders earlier. And the 8 string guitar thing doesn't cut it for me. They may be virtuosic players, but they don't sound like bass, even if they're in the bass range.
 
#39
Ric5 said:
Metal band with no Low End

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They have 3 guitars, I assume they downtune, I assume they play through sealed 4x12 cabs. And if they turn up the bass ... there is no room left for a bassist. A bass player would be redundant and uneeded.
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They don't down tune (E and Eb standard tuning), They don't use 410's and my understanding is they don't turn the bass up on their amps. These are mid 20's early 30's musicians not some punk ass 17 year old kid with absolutely no understanding of music.

kleinenenten said:
To me, no basd means no "oomph". Guitars sound thin to me on its own after a while, and while I can appreciate the nigh bassless black metal recordings and do enjoy them, I prefer the ones with defined bass. I'd rather hear an all bass band than all guitar. Hence my post about BassInvaders earlier. And the 8 string guitar thing doesn't cut it for me. They may be virtuosic players, but they don't sound like bass, even if they're in the bass range.
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My thoughts exactly. the one guitarist does play 8 string and he is pretty fantastic at the guitar. the other 2 play 6 strings.
 
#40
New guy here, been lurking for ages but just couldn't resist piping up on this one...

First off, the usual genre disclaimers apply here. Despite the opinions of those who dismiss the genre, the variety of styles within means what works for one may not work in another. Iron Maiden is not Pantera is not Meshuggah is not Sleep is not Baroness. Shred-fest bands may be able to get by with only down-tuned guitars because they're (generally) not worried about groove.

One great thing about music is the infinite variety of ways to skin that cat, even within a genre as seemingly constrictive as metal. I've seen bands with no drummer. I've also seen bands with five drummers (Rotting Hills). The great Al Cisneros plays in Om, and they've done some truly heavy stuff with no guitars (see also Death from Above 1979). Lots of great bands have no vocals. If every band needed drums, bass, guitars and vocals, the world would be a far less interesting place.

But one thing a bass does, and that a down-tuned guitar can't (no matter how many strings), is 'thump'. It's that element of a bass as a part-percussive, part-melodic instrument to bridge the rhythm to the riff (to steal a phrase from the above-mentioned Al Cisneros) that simply needs long, thick strings. You can groove without it, I guess, but it's a whole lot more work.
 

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