What are some cliches in guitar dominated music that you can't stand?

[Slunk Dragon]

-The bass drops that require multi-million dollar studio monitors to listen to it properly. Sorry, but all I hear is the thunderous flatulence, NEXT.
-Shitty arpeggio-a-plenty solos that completely lack context in the song
-"Ibanezes are the only shred guitars"
-EVERY GUITAR EVER IS BLACK

 

[Gram negative]

In metal:
-Wussy lyrics complaining bout some chick that hurt your little demon-turd of a heart
-BOOM bass triggers. Its played out.
-Everyone suddenly dialing in the exact same tones on their AXE FX and Line 6. There are a million different bands that sound the same, these days.
-Terrible production
-Everyone looking the same. Tight Jeans-swoopy hair, lotsa tats
-Autotune.

Other genres:
-Autotune. Every mainstream band seems to use it these days. Not like rappers do, but used sort of like it was meant to be used. But I just cant stand the processed sound. And if you cant sing it in the studio, youre sure as fuck not gonna sing it live.
-The recycled riffs in terrible mainstream rock...Seether, Shinedown, Disturbed..etc. I cant even tell those bands apart.
-Overuse of techno shit. I mean, I was listening to that stuff in the 90's guys. Im sorry it took the america 15 years to catch up and get on the techno bandwagon, but its a dead horse. Just play your guitar.

 

[Louis Cypher]

The amount of flake the like of Nuno or Andy Timmon's has got online coz they have apparently "Sold Out for the money train" by "going mainstream" and playing with Rihanna (Nuno) & Pink (Timmons) and now Doug Aldrich for signing up with Lady Gaga.... Coz to be a great guitarist you can't play outside of your little genre box, can never go "Mainstream", and god forbid you think of yourself as a musician rather than just a guitarist....

Also sweep picking fcuks me off.... mainly coz I can't do it but also coz its replaced tapping as the flash fcuking trick for wanna be guitar wankers to show off with...

Outside of Metal - and related to ^
The lame way that RnB/Rap (thats Rap in the loosest sense of the term coz its so watered down now its pathetic) is now just runnign with crappy DJ's and Producers who are recycling early 90's euro dance beats with the same old same old shitty lyrics over the top, I am looking at you David Guetta in particular...... RnB truly is dead to me.... I'll stick to my classic New Jack albums and early Timberland productions

 

[GatherTheArsenal]

-The bass drops that require multi-million dollar studio monitors to listen to it properly. Sorry, but all I hear is the thunderous flatulence, NEXT.

This had me in a facepalm laughing for a minute hahahaha!!

I pretty much agree with most that's been said but here's my top 10, now there's a lot that pisses me off, and you might agree with some:

1) I'm at work. Smoke break. Start chatting with a girl who works in the mall:

Her: Oh no way you play guitar? What kind of music?
*PAUSE*
Me: uhhh... mostly death metal, melo-death, progressive metal, some ambient stuff too..
Her: OOOHH kewwwwll!! Like Metallica?? i love Metallica! You should go to the local open mic and jam out maaaan!
*PAUSE*
Me: FUUUUUUUU!!!!

2) Pinch harmonics on the 3rd fret. Fuck off already. No, that doesn't make your shit riff sound cool... or pinch harmonics overload a la Zakk Wylde and KSE. I get it. I'm over it.

3) Purist guitarists who go "why did you buy a 7-string? What?? You bought an 8-string... Uhm, don't you have to be a master on a six-string first?"... to which my reply is loud and clear, "says who?"

4) The idea that you HAVE to take a lesson in musical theory to be a considered a good or great guitarist. No, i don't have to. I feel weird saying it, but i can probably play circles around a lot of people. 10 years playing, not a second spent with an instructor. It's very doable.

5) When rhythm guitar is just an after-thought in songs, with little thought, groove, or creativity put into it. Not just deathcore either.

6) Asking my local guitar tech to please intonate my guitar and set it up to Standard D and then getting this reply, are you suuuuure?? Actually no i'm not, now that i think about it can you tune it to Drop-fucking-A please??

7) Seeing band after band after band after band... do the running man jumping thing in unison at the start of a song, or the crabcore breakdown "errr mah gawd this part is so heavy my knees can't take it" gimmick in their music videos. They need a kick in the crotch... it's metal, grow some fucking hair and do some of these or figure something else out. Hopefully something better, other than looking like you're warming up for a jog or shitting a donair out. Respectively.

8) Any song that starts in a breakdown gets an immediate NEXT!! from me. Build up a song first, then break it down (if you must).

9) Musicians who go, "Oh you're an Arab? You must be really good at playing the Egyptian Scale!" ... now granted, with years of listening to Arab music, that yes i might have a better sense around this scale, but man what a piss off it is to hear that soooo many times I get it, i'm a brown dude playing a guitar.

10) Above all, when i tell someone who plays a 6-string that i play a 7-string and they go, "man, that's weird. There's like... an extra string that i wouldn't know what to do with."


Really dude?

 

[facepalm66]

1)I hate when playing rythm, let's say, on an 8 string, people JUST HAVE TO COMPLAIN about you not using most of the strings (quote: why do you even bother buying an 8 string guitar if you are only using the top 3 strings?). Facepalm
2) it's a mandatory to put a breakdown in the middle, which sucks in the first place
3) all the screamo shit like asking alexandria, which is Pop that only includes distorted guitars and sync'ed headbanging.
4) the metalcore / deathcore hair styles. GAWD STAWHP
5) If writing lyrics, and hence there are few more not as commonly used words - meshuggah ripoff
6) same goes with the 8's - meshuggah ripoff
7) gay - like clean singing in the middle part of the song, which, I assume, should be the 'lyrical' part? Makes me vomit.
8) stating that deathcore / metalcore now is apparently the most br00tz shit out there.
9) Ripping off of metallica, calling sellouts etc.. Come on, grow up.
10)Rip dimebag / rip burton flooding..

 

[Louis Cypher]

Element of Fanboy in this but still I am sick of it...

I hate that EVERYONE in metal is on the trendy band wagon known as "I am a massive Meshuggah fan...Meshuggah are a huge influence on us....

Fuck Off. Fuck Off right now. Where were you when Destroy Erase Improve came out?

 

[skisgaar]

Element of Fanboy in this but still I am sick of it...

I hate that EVERYONE in metal is on the trendy band wagon known as "I am a massive Meshuggah fan...Meshuggah are a huge influence on us....

Fuck Off. Fuck Off right now. Where were you when Destroy Erase Improve came out?

This. I'm not big a fan of Meshuggah (at all), but even I can see that these dildo's that call themselves muscians are lying when they say Meshuggah are a big influence on them.

Where's the influence of weird time signatures? Of different song structures that don't follow a verse chorus pattern? The dark, calculating, evil atmospher that Meshuggah create in their music? Where are any of these things apparent in your music? No, you're just another terrible "Djent" metalcore chug band who big themselves up over facebook.

 

[JosephAOI]

This. I'm not big a fan of Meshuggah (at all), but even I can see that these dildo's that call themselves muscians are lying when they say Meshuggah are a big influence on them.

Where's the influence of weird time signatures? Of different song structures that don't follow a verse chorus pattern? The dark, calculating, evil atmospher that Meshuggah create in their music? Where are any of these things apparent in your music? No, you're just another terrible "Djent" metalcore chug band who big themselves up over facebook.

Uhhh... Just throwing this out there but 90% of Meshuggah is in 4/4

Also, lots of people can be influenced by lots of bands but only show small bits of that influence or show it in a weird way. For example, maybe someone influenced by Meshuggah will have all the crazy poly-rhythms over 4 or maybe just like to throw in a little jazz fusion into metal, or maybe the way the static vocals are over the song. There's any number of ways any certain band can influence another.

One of mine:

Someone already said it but 'THAT' metalcore riff that keeps getting rewritten over and over again. JUST LET IT DIE.

 

[Demiurge]

Fuck Off. Fuck Off right now. Where were you when Destroy Erase Improve came out?

I presume they never heard it. As far as I can tell most who claim to be "influenced by Meshuggah" only made it a few tracks deep into Catch 33 and called it a day. "So I just string together a random sequence of low boomy notes, high quacky notes, and chugs- and how many noise gates do I run this through?"

 

[m3l-mrq3z]

Someone already said it but 'THAT' metalcore riff that keeps getting rewritten over and over again. JUST LET IT DIE.

Miguel Marquez-Metal medley (19 metal genres) - YouTube

 

[JosephAOI]

I presume they never heard it. As far as I can tell most who claim to be "influenced by Meshuggah" only made it a few tracks deep into Catch 33 and called it a day. "So I just string together a random sequence of low boomy notes, high quacky notes, and chugs- and how many noise gates do I run this through?"

Hey, Catch 33 is perfection.

Also, tbh there isn't much I like off DEI. Some tracks are sick but I can't listen to it for very long. It's way too thrashy for my tastes.

 

[acrcmb]

Those bands that just try to play as fast as they can for the whole length of the song with the vocalist growling the same cliche' stuff about black hearts and darkness, Pisses me off because when i say I like metal that's what people think of and there's so much more to it than that I think a simple riff can do more to create mood in a song than someone shredding and drummers aswell drums should have some kind of rhythm to them I don't care how fast you can hit them over and over.
Also agree about the unfitting solos thing it's like watching a movie that starts playing another movie halfway through.

 

[Spaceman_Spiff]

I presume they never heard it. As far as I can tell most who claim to be "influenced by Meshuggah" only made it a few tracks deep into Catch 33 and called it a day. "So I just string together a random sequence of low boomy notes, high quacky notes, and chugs- and how many noise gates do I run this through?"

*cough cough Vildhjarta cough cough... [FlameShield ACTIVATE!]

I hate that Periphery has (inadvertently) created an entire pantheon of shit bands imitating them.

I hate every single fucking song that has the "djent formula" i.e. Open single low string repetition in some "odd" meter with a little dissonance peppered around syncopated mini riffs with 2 second ascending runs at the end.

I hate that people idealize musicians so much and end up copying not only how they play music but what types of guitars they buy, music they listen to etc.

I hate that so much repetition and staleness in the metal community has made me a cynical douchebag hell bent on killing everyone's fun.

Luckily SSO is mostly comprised of decent people who are smart enough to think for themselves. (save for the occasional Misha fanboy)

 

[hairychris]

Its called a bass drop

Or Sub drop.

Extra annoyance when it's triggered during a live show by a shit metalcore band.

But yeah, I've even caught Origin and Anaal Nathrakh doing it on their last albums.

PLEASE FUCKING STOP NOW.

 

[m3l-mrq3z]

Luckily SSO is mostly comprised of decent people who are smart enough to think for themselves. (save for the occasional Misha fanboy)

Hmm judging by the amount of entries in the Periphery megathread, I would say there is more than one ocassional Misha fanboy.

 

[Demiurge]

Hey, Catch 33 is perfection.

Also, tbh there isn't much I like off DEI. Some tracks are sick but I can't listen to it for very long. It's way too thrashy for my tastes.

I like it, too, but at no point was I like, "OMG, I have to do this and exactly this... and when a bunch of people do this we'll call it PROGRESSIVE!"

 

[facepalm66]

To be influenced by someone, I don't think you (a person) have to like everything the band has made. So this added to other things I don't like.
Let's say i've once heard a song, called 'black soul choir' by 16 horsepower.They play BLUEGRASS.
The point is, I don't really like all the songs that they have made, but I really dig the atmosphere in that song, lyrical content etc. And it made me think about some things, it led me to creating my own ideas, cought by the song. This is influence, not that, let's say, I'm influenced by meshuggah, I have to add polymethers in songs or use 8 strings, and overall - become a trend-ish djent scene kid..
This is just absurd.
And for some reason, I don't like periphery. at all. Not a single song, nor they're tone and especially not vocals.
Hope I don't classify to the 'NOOB HATER POSER' scene.

And for the destroy - erase - improve album..
It's a different approach, not everyone enjoys thrashy death metal, I assume. But still, I get back to what I've said in the first lines..
Maybe I only enjoy they're last album? Respect peoples' taste! (except for metalcorish death djent core scenery - it deserves to be hated )

 

[Metal_Webb]

Or Sub drop.

Extra annoyance when it's triggered during a live show by a shit metalcore band.

Went and saw Tesseract and Periphery in July 2011 in Sydney. They had some random local band opening for them. Their whole set was BOOOOOMMMMMWOOSHHSHHHHHHHHHH (Sub Drop btw). Made me want to punch babbies.


/OT.
My hangups are anyone who blatantly copies the opening riff from Blinded By Fear. (Looking at you metalcore bands )

 

[Jazzamatazz]

Actually I have to put this up here to counter the 8 and 7 string guys.

-Extended range guitarists who give me shit for sticking to six strings, I don't give you shit for playing extended range, I prefer the standard guitars.
-People asking me why I haven't switched to the Axe Fx or Line 6 POD. I'm not a fan, no problem with people who do, I just don't want one.


That being said i've got no problem with people using extended range guitars or digital amplifiers, it's their thing and they like it, it's just not my bag.


Edit - P.S. I agree with you guys, metalcore/deathcore sub drop is annoying as frack

 

[jehu12141987]

Does having three guitarists count as a cliche now? If so, tack that onto my list.