Friday 5: What Five Drummers Must Must Must Be Top 100?
Happy Friday, MetalSucks reader! Welcome to MetalSucks Friday 5, our awesome series that appears every Friday (duh) on MetalSucks (duhh) and involves the quantity of five (duhhh).
Here’s how it works: A list of best/worst/weirdest/whatever five somethings is posted by one of your beloved MetalSucks contributors or by one of our buds (like you!). Then you, our cherished reader, checks it out, has a chuckle, then chimes in with a list of the same. No sweat, just whatever springs to mind, k? (Just like that movie about those losers working at a Chicago record store!) After all, it’s Friday — the day dedicated by the gods to mindless, fun time-wasting.
Here we go!
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THE FIVE
A huge fancy culture magazine has asked for your advice on their list of the 100 best drummers. What five tweaks do you strongly recommend?
THE LISTER
Anso DF, MetalSucks Senior Editor
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https://youtu.be/FzMOAATgA9s
Abe Cunningham | Deftones
Rolling Stone list rank: n/a
Recommended rank: #10
On Friday, we hailed a fancy list by Rolling Stone of the best 100 drummers in rock. It’s filled with players we love (eg. this dude at #10, this dude at #73, and this dude at #33) and megastuds from our crew (Dave Lombardo, Danny Carey, Tommy Lee). But it might suffer from a small surplus of drummers whose success springs from good luck not from good drumming. Like, their stupid style happened to work in one timely context — like a broken grandfather clock that twice a day displays the correct time — and their partners maximized it. A few of them outright suck live. Anyway, the list represents RS‘s vibe and it’s super fun. So if they phoned us for input for some reason, we’d vote for only five changes. What are yours?
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Ilan Rubin | Paramore, Nine Inch Nails
Rolling Stone rank: n/a
Recommended rank: #11
He’s a top-ten rank on a list of history’s best loved people who play drums, but The Who’s Keith Moon (#2) doesn’t really top a list measuring drum excellence, I’d tell the good people at Rolling Stone. No big whoop. They’d fume a bit and compare me to Marty Friedman re: Jimi Hendrix, maybe they’re right. Whatever. As long as we’re being counterintuitive, let’s advocate for a young megastud’s inclusion in a list aimed at people who hate the young: 27-year old colossus Ilan Rubin. Lovvve youuuuu
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https://youtu.be/5ZBekMHuCho
Gene Hoglan | Strapping Young Lad, Testament, Death
Rolling Stone rank: n/a
Recommended rank: #63
Speaking of counterintuitive, while the Rolling Stone editorial staff is still enraged about the Keith Moon thing (above), I’d slyly give them something to agree with: the first name in extreme metal beats, Gene Hoglan. Their reply that he doesn’t fit their audience is super valid and would be met with conciliatory nodding from me; after all, RS is already daring readers to blow past the capsule about Meshuggah’s dude (#93). But they’d all come around as soon as I mention Hoglan’s photographic memory. They love that shit. He’d fit the list perfectly at one notch higher than Tony Thompson.
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Alex Van Halen | Van Halen
Rolling Stone rank: #50
Recommended rank: #3
Just via the nature of their role and the mechanics of their instrument, drummers are most neatly quantified of any performer. Can they keep a beat, what’s their technical prowess, to what extent do they bolster their teammates — these are empirical questions. For these reasons, it’s not really a matter of opinion that AVH must join Bonham and Peart in the top three. It’s as simple as comparing times at the end of a race.
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Refused dude | Refused
Rolling Stone rank: n/a
Recommended rank: #12
Love Charlie Watts? Then be honest with him, RS. My dude from Refused gets his spot.
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Your turn! Have a great wknd!
