Great song collection! I just wanted to second the recommendation of Machinae Supremacy as a band. I originally discovered them through the 2012 platforming game Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams, which they did half the soundtrack for (the metal tracks). It includes what remains my favorite video game tune of all time. It's short but sweet:

It's not their only game-related work either. Check out, for example, their excellent metal rendition of The Legend of Zelda's Gerudo Valley song:

I have now added these two songs to playlists of mine. Thanks for the discoveries!

Interestingly, you're now the second person in as many days to recommend me something by Type O Negative. 

Alright, tonight I just feel like sharing some more Baby Metal songs tonight 'cause they're my favorite band right now. They're an idol metal group and just a lot of fun. They pretty much started the current girl metal scene in Japan (or at least they certainly popularized it) and continue to epitomize it more than anyone else. In addition to the two songs of theirs I already shared back on page 1, check these out, tariff-free!

Catch Me If You Can is a classic of theirs and a good intro tune. It's about playing hide and seek with a demon, which perfectly captures their whole hook of combining the cuteness and sweetness of Japanese idol music with metal edge. The result is silly, absurd, and distinctly Japanese-feeling yet oddly awesome in a way that's pretty universal. Like I said, just plain fun!

his is another of their classics. It has extra Japaneseness for distinction.

Karate is exactly what the song title says and you will like it.

Here's a Mortal Kombat-style video of theirs that makes me smile. <-- See?

And finally, here's their newest video. It just dropped six days ago and it includes a collaboration with Poppy. As you can see therein, they've gotten a lot taller over the years, but have remained true to the group's founding spirit and fully kept both their cuteness and their awesome.

...Alright, now just for some other stuff that I happen to feel like. Here's more punk from Slaughterhouse.

Another fave jam of mine from Nemophila (who you may remember from my first post on this thread):

And now, here is dwarf metal. Fresh off the God-awful Snow White remake, these dwarfs want to...

Up next, here is pirate metal from Alestorm.

And finally, a game jam that I feel in the mood for.

Not my most soulful collection ever, just fun stuff tonight for the most part.

Disregard. Accidental duplicate post.

You're into Babymetal?? Hell yeah sista! 🙌 Catch Me if You Can live at the "1997" show always gets me pumped when I excercise esp. 

Also been revisiting this overlooked gem. Kinda reminds me of Linkin Park with a modern twist:

Epica Always gets the goosebumps going. I'm more into their older stuff generally speaking, I can always listen to the "We Will Take You With Us" with the live orchestra, but they still have a few great newer tunes, this one in particular: 

This guy has some great hard rock/metal covers that run the gamut - everything from Killing in the Name of to Cotton Eye Joe to Party Rock Anthem. But this might be my favorite. It's great b/c I always loved the tune of Toto's original song but felt it would fare a lot better if it was a bit harder: 

Clutch has been my favorite rock (non metal at least) band of the last few years. They're more stoner rock, but I'd guess you'd call much of their stuff hard rock. They sort of have the early Sabbath vibe, so if you like Paranoid you'd probably like a lot of their stuff: 

These guys are pretty wild, creative, and often goofy. I enjoy the fact that they have that catchy, in-depth, folky sound but also don't take themselves too seriously and like to experiment.

(This gets bonus points for a hilariously randomly placed Super Mario pipe sound effect XD)

That's a small blip of stuff I've been into for the 2020s. A lot of Babymetal, Clutch, and some Trollfest but plenty of other random tunes. Some folk metal. I enjoy a lot of dark synth and synth wave but that's not exactly "hard", that is more background music for writing.

That Lovebites: Thunder Vengeance song is rad too, that solo and drum fill at 3:30 is so awesome and always gets me goin. 

Baby Metal's the flat-out coolest band in the world today, IMO. I'll be seeing them in concert June.

Anyway, thanks for sharing those songs! Dreamscape and Trollfest were both new discoveries for me. You're right, Dreamscape reminds me a lot of like a tech-skeptical Linkin Park variation and that's right up my alley. And the Trollfest tunes just made me smile. And yeah, I like it when musicians integrate video game sound effects into their work too.

@Jaicee - don't know if you're familiar with the Metal Archives - http://www.metal-archives.com ? It's a database of over 187,000 bands / artists. They have a similar artists tab for each band that users get to vote on, so if you're ever looking for bands to check out, it could be useful for you if you've never checked it out before.

That said, they can be quite strict on what they do and don't consider metal, so bands / artists that you think should be on there might not be (e.g. Babymetal are not on there, 99% of nu metal / alt metal bands aren't on there). Their forums tend to have a fair bit of discussion about what should and shouldn't be included.

Listening to the videos posted while working... I have a glass of whisky in me, one coffee, two teas, a bit of weed.

Dionysus calls!

I've been going through a bunch of the songs, and I really enjoy them!

Is the theme songs that rock by women? Because I have a few - not quite on the vibe of the thread - and I'm stealing Nietzsche, but I tend to like music more on the Dionysian side, rather than the Apollonian, which metal generally falls more into - these songs probably involve a bit of both:

Courtney's screams are music to my ears. Hole, they're an LA band. I loved her when I was a teenager, very free, very liberated, and didn't give two F's. I can see what Cobain, Corgan, and Ed Norton saw in her.

Or how about a song by Courtney's primary inspiration and former bandmate? Minnesota's Babe's in Toyland:

But perhaps something a little more the vibe of this thread - Garbage + Distillers, American bands fronted by a Scot and an Aussie (from Melbourne, I've dated two Aussie women who fronted bands, both were from Melbourne... one's name was Kat - good bad memories with Kat that I can't talk about in this this thread, the other was Holly, she played her own rendition of John Lennon's Working Class Hero, with more F-bombs, that one was around Valentine's Day 2002 or 2003, sun-corona hot but burned out in just two weeks - she had some fantasies that even made me uncomfortable... I'm rambling about things I shouldn't... On Shirley, I've been a big fan of hers since my teen years, Garbage was like methadone after the end of the grunge era:

From my adopted country (Canada) - I liked her LONG before she ever met Tesla's scum-tissue. She does this DIY type music, her and her friend Hana - who live-streamed the creation of an album, writing it with those in stream - I watched much of that - not so much the vibe of this thread, but look up the Grimes The acid reign chronicles from 2015 or 16 featuring her and some of her friends (especially Hana). Been a fan of these two since they were obscure.

Something matching the heavy, but a little more arty. This video used to feature a number of clips from the Neon Genesis remake series, and some bits from the 1990s original, also moments of nudity. All of it censored except in a version she has privately shared (which I'm able to view, but I don't know if others can).

And I don't know why, but I figured I'd close out the post with a a couple of 1970s classics by NYC's Joan Jett and London's X-Ray Spex:

Hope these, or some of these, work for people.

Yeah they're so much fun to watch and listen to, the combo of catchy K-pop and shredding metal was so innovative when they took off in the early 2010s. Now that sort of thing is a bit more widespread but they're still my favorites of the genre over the past decade or so and still probably do it best. Overall probably like a top 20 band but as far as bands I want to see live they're amongst the top along with Megadeth, System of a Down, Sonata Arctica (Finnish power metal band I love), and Ramstein. I remember in 2019 I would rock out to Metal Galaxy almost daily while getting in a work out with Ring Fit Adventure. Good times..

Should be siiiick, have fun!

Trollfest's latest album Flamingo Overlord is so wild and random, the whole "flamingo metal" thing initially had me going lol wtf? But it turned out being one of my favorite albums of the 2020s. They have a diverse and unique lineup of stuff on it. I think they're just desperately trying to break through and get noticed in an industry that barely even gives metal a look, let alone obscure Norwegian folk metal, but it definitely works and comes through on that album.

It's perfect for Ring Fit Adventure! I relate to wanting to move around when I listen to them in general or frankly a lot of other jams that I do. More often than not, I prefer to approach music as a participatory experience.

Baby Metal's a newer discovery for me. Basically after rock dropped out of the top 10 in the charts in the 2000s, I lost touch with what all was going on in that space for a long time and have been catching up only in the last...seven years or so. I happened to stumble on Gimme Chocolate thanks to YouTube's algorithm a couple years back and from there just went down the recommendation rabbit hole and found a whooooooole bunch more from them and a number of other Japanese rock groups over time. It was a surreal experience. Like this whole genre of music that seemed to be on life support here in the U.S. (hip-hop having pretty much absorbed its natural audience) seemed to be comparatively thriving and innovating like crazy on the other side of the world! And I quickly realized how much I missed packed metal shows with mosh pits and all that being a thing. It's been too fucking long!!

Suzuka (a.k.a. Su-Metal) recently won Female Metal Singer of 2024 over at Metal Awards, incidentally. There's a reason for that.

As to Trollfest's "flamingo metal" hook...yeah I'd say it's a gimmick to get attention...and also that it worked 'cause Dance Like a Pink Flamingo was the first song out of the collection you posted that I scoped out. I can be a sucker for shiny objects like that. They make me curious. And it wasn't just fun, it was also really well-constructed and creative and I enjoyed that about it too!