My favorite drummers (hard rock / metal)

I thought I should share my personal favorite drummers as well as biggest influences. I'm a drummer myself so this is based on personal influence. I'm not a fan of today's drummers. I don't know if it's all the pro-tools and so on, or if they really just are that secure. I hate machine-drummers! What's the point of having a drummer, instead of a simple drum machine that doesn't cost any members' fees, if he just sounds like a machine? That is beyond me! Way too many drummers today seem to focus on skill, perfection and speed, while competing with every other drummer in the world about who is the best. This to me has made drumming today really soulless, uninspired and plain boring. "Yeah, cool dude you can play like a machine" but it sounds fucking stiff, boring and soulless. One thing I can say is to all the Lars Ulrich haters and trolls: at least he's real.

I'm kinda into a lot of death metal at the moment, and it's the old school stuff. Mainly the Swedish scene at the moment and the Stockholm sound (never were a big fan of the ultra-melodic Gothenburg sound nor its bands). I don't think there's a guitar sound that I like more than the buzzsaw sound Dismember, Entombed / Nihilist, Carnage and Grave had. One thing I also like is the drumming! It's kick-ass, raw, and very alive! Not like a fucking machine! It's sounds like a human who is solid-as-rock yet has got very much heart in it. If I listen to for instance Vader today (a buddy of mine really likes them and is trying to hook me into them as well), I just can't stand 'em for more than a few tunes - the drumming sounds so fucking dead. It's just pure drum-wankery. I generally hate blast-beats because of modern drummers, but I do like blast-beats in Carcass, for instance. Why? It simply sounds good, dynamic.

So after preaching my bullshit here, and I don't say any drummers of today are bad. Obviously they have a lot of skill, but they forgot to put any heart into it. So here are some of my favorite drummers of all time:

Gene Hoglan - Before you start: I know he's the "atomic clock" and all, but back in the day when he bashed skins in Dark Angel, he sounded like a fucking tank in-battle on the drums, making Dave Lombardo on "Reign In Blood" sound like just another soldier rather than a general.

Fred Estby - A death metal legend, drummer and song-writer from the Swedish legends Dismember, my favorite death metal band. I'm glad this guy never played guitar in that band, because his drumming is so kick-ass it makes me headbang and air-drum like a maniac!

Nicke Andersson - Another Swedish legend, both in death metal and hard rock / rock 'n' roll music. To me he's the old Entombed drummer, to others he's the main man in the Hellacopters. He didn't kick ass on drums in that band, however, in Entombed he certainly did. Like Fred Estby, a very alive drummer. Entombed's first two albums show great extreme metal drumming.

Ken Owen - The drummer from U.K. legends Carcass. This guy was drumming grindcore and death metal in their beginnings and is in that way a pioneer. Too bad drummers after him didn't follow his feel when doing blast-beats. It's really sad that the guy can't play no more. Let's hope he gets better and some day will drum again.

Chuck Biscuits - Probably my very favorite drummer at the moment. The guy is mostly known for his time with Danzig, but also punk acts like D.O.A. He has one of the smallest drum kits in heavy metal music, particularly for that time. Yet he sounded bigger than any one else. Like an animal behind the kit, he is what drumming is about, at least to me.

Sons of Anarchy is back!

I'm a pretty big fan of Sons of Anarchy. I love motorcycles, the chopper style and not the sports bike kind. I love Rockstar Games' "The Lost and Damned" installment in the Grand Theft Auto-series. Nothing to say really other than it's a very suitable show for me. I totally loved season one and two, but with season three I unfortunately kinda felt the quality of the show decreased. This continued with season four, though I don't know which of s.3 and 4 I liked the least. I'm also not completely sure why I didn't like these seasons as much, but a friend and myself both agreed about these seasons not being as good. With season three I ultimately got pretty tired of the whole Abel thing, that they lost him over and over again, as well as only shit after shit happening to Samcro. In season four it definitely was that way too much shit just kept coming to them, over and over again.

So where am I going with all this? Well, I watched the season five premiere. A while back I saw some behind-the-scenes footage for season five, and they really made it sounding promising. I got some hope back that season five might be more like the first two seasons, which I'd definitely like to see now. So now, after watching the s.5 premiere, I was really surprised! I think it's gotta be the best episode since sometime in season two, for sure! It was such a great episode, that my hope really got pumped up for the rest of season five. Now the only thing that can tell how it all will end up, is time, and I definitely feel like I can spend more time finding out. I've read rumors, or fact, I don't know actually, that SoA is planned for a total of seven seasons. After s. 3 and 4 I kind of wanted it to just end with season five, but if this season shows to be like the first two, or hopefully even better, I'd really like to see the show continue for more seasons.