Sunday, April 30, 2017

Z is for Zombies Ate My Girlfriend

No judgments about whether the consumption of said girlfriend by
the un-dead is a good thing or bad thing, but this South African band was born in Capetown in 2012. They play high energy 'modern metal' with lyrical focus on social commentary and the human journey (and perhaps the inhuman journey as well). 

I don't know what 'modern metal' is, unless it is the context of ancient metal like Bach, but more accurately, Zombies Ate My Girlfriend's genres are melodic death metal and groove metalThey've also won awards and are considered one of South Africa's premier heavy metal bands.  

Gavin Marchbank (vocals), Adriano Rodrgues and Chris Hall (guitars), Marc Olwage (bass) and Ferdi Groenewald (drums) are the band members, and their debut full length release, Retrocide (2015) features this track: Jahan

I took quite a risk choosing heavy metal as my theme. I've come across very few metal head bloggers and although I am a member of a headbangers Facebook group, they are not very interactive and none of them visited me during the A to Z Challenge.

I very rarely meet people who enjoy heavy metal to the extent that I do, to the degree that they would happily name it as their favourite genre, and call themselves headbangers. Amongst my friends and family, I have no one with whom to share my music apart from my son who as I mentioned in a previous post still enjoys a bit of metalcore. My ex-wife often described heavy metal as music for people with mental problems, and my current partner has a similar view, although she is more tolerant of bands at the milder end of the spectrum.

My point is that most people like popular music, that is pop and rock. Heavy metal, particularly the more extreme genres are not 'popular' music, so I was never going to attract a huge amount of comments, followers or whatever, but that wasn't the point.

I love heavy metal music, and I hope if you've visited me and checked out some of the bands, then perhaps your perceptions of heavy metal have been altered somewhat. 

Anyway, it's been a hoot. Thanks for joining me.

6 comments:

  1. I'm afraid melodic death metal still sounds like an oxymoron to me. But i could probably listen to more of that than the hardcore type, so I promise to try to make it to the end of all 15 songs you have listed... but I cannot promise it will end with love.
    Thanks for being with me on the A to Z journey.This is the scond time i have taken part. I missed last year. But I have to say that this year's challenge has resulted in far less traffic and chat than last time. Partly, like you, that's because my theme did not engage a wide audience, but in general I have found that this year very few other bloggers have bothered to reciprocrate a drop-in, or bother to leave a message.
    Rude.
    And a shitload of people seem to have taken part merely to push their own barrows and flog their self-published books with no intention at all of reading what others have written.
    Thanks for your involvement, and for broadening my musical horizon.
    It's been fun.

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    1. It's better this year, but the truth is I don't know works. Whether its more blog traffic, followers, commentors on my blog, or my book sales...I tried all sorts of stuff. I don't why a video of ducks crossing a road goes viral. Mysteries of the universe. I just keep writing stuff that interests me. I do what I want. It's my blog. If no one reads it, so be it. Same with the books. I think your theme and posts were terrific. Well done and thanks for your reciprocation. Bye for now.

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  2. My immediate thought when I arrived here just now was The Zombies, but then She's Not There (1965) was hardly heavy metal, and they certainly didn't eat my girlfrend! I like heavy metal, but I'm not obsessed with it! To be honest classical music is my thing - I'm listening to Elgar as I write this. But I'm going to turn him off now and listen to the 15 songs which will make me love heavy metal even more! Thanks for a great month, and for visiting Amble Bay.



    It's farewell to Amble Bay!

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    1. You're awesome Keith. So glad we met through the A to Z. It was my pleasure to visit as often as I could. Good job. Bye for now.

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  3. Hahaha, 'music for people with mental problems'
    I enjoy some songs from this genre but I believe it is one of those genres people love to hate, I had a friend who took the time to listen carefully to screamo for example, he described to me in an hour long conversation the beauty of it. If you want to, it can be deciphered and just like other musicians these guys are just as talented with incredible musical and vocal ability for the most part.
    All I can say is at least it's not country. Country music is horrible.

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    1. That's very well put by your friend, and quite true, but it's a definitely a polarizing genre. Funny, no one had though to try a country metal fusion. That would be interesting. I don't mind a bit of country. Thanks for visiting Square Pegs younger person with the same surname as me and definitely related to me, and for taking the time to comment.

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