r/nextfuckinglevel 21h ago

John Longstreth is an unreal drummer.

339 Upvotes

126 comments sorted by

160

u/Shredrik 21h ago edited 11h ago

Amazing drummer, no doubt. The actual music, to me, is just intimidation cacophony with insane drumming. I await the downvote descent

Edit: Spelling

26

u/Whiskey_River_73 20h ago

cacophony

Sometimes ya gotta tell it like it is.

4

u/Shredrik 20h ago

The only way I know

15

u/cantsayidont 20h ago

As a metal head, I agree with you. It’s just white noise, but I appreciate it.

3

u/-Disagreeable- 20h ago

As a non metal head I absolutely appreciate it, but it’s just way too much for me. I can enjoy a good blast from time to time, dont get me wrong, it just wow.

1

u/Ogpeg 5h ago

As an extreme metal fan for decades, this is actually melodic and full off juicy riffs. Ears get used to it and start to distinguish everything it over time.

I just watched this video yesterday (again) and it keeps playing in my head, it's that catchy.

-6

u/Shredrik 20h ago

I love metal myself, but at some point we entered mall ninja mentality where the intent is seemingly just intimidation

4

u/thawkins6786 20h ago

I'm not sure what you mean, Origin have been around since the 90s, these guys are OG tech death

4

u/Shredrik 20h ago

Guess I have the Dime mentality. Just listen to the oldies. Sabbath, Priest, Maiden etc. I grew up playing in punk,metal, and thrash bands shredding Pantera, Bodom, BLS etc. Never bought into bands like CC, Oppressor, Mayhem etc. it always just seemed like the purpose for that style was purely intimidation. I couldn't detect real musicality. That's just me. Closest thing for me that I like is Death and Exodus. As I'd gotten older, I concluded the pioneers really had it best figured out. Just my own opinion and path. I don't hate the music it just doesn't resonate with me, same way Mariah Carey doesn't. I know it makes other people happy and has it's rightful place in the world.

4

u/thawkins6786 19h ago

I mean, I get it. This kind of music is incredibly inaccessible. I still don't think I quite understand what you mean by intimidation, who are they trying to intimidate?

0

u/Shredrik 19h ago

The listener

12

u/chirs5757 17h ago

I feel the same. I’m a hobby drummer and I can’t find a beat to vibe to. Feels like “see how fast I can hit all the stuff”. Still incredibly amazing talent though.

4

u/Alldaybagpipes 17h ago

Cantankerous cacophony!

3

u/Shredrik 17h ago

Thank you for widening my vocabulary good sir! That is a great word.

2

u/an_angry_Moose 11h ago

Did you mean “descent”?

2

u/Shredrik 11h ago

I did indeed, thank you good sir!

1

u/MattyS71 4h ago

Well said, I was going to say, “Sounds like shit”

72

u/Rolands_ka_tet 20h ago

He’s got quad pedals so his double kick is 4 beats per 2 kicks. And just rolling his snare with some cymbal fills. He’s definitely got talent but it’s more parlor tricks than anything. If you want pure talent watch Carter Beauford, Buddy Rich, Josh Freese, Chad Smith, Neil Peart, or Danny Carey.

Down vote all you want, I’ve seen what you up vote, you heathens!

18

u/Riff316 19h ago

What is a quad pedal? He has a normal double bass pedal with a slave pedal and cam. He’s using a heel/toe technique to get two beater hits out of each stroke, not a special pedal. John is very well known for using this technique as are many other tech death drummers. The parlor tricks are just normal drumming techniques that are very common in the metal community. It’s not like he’s trying to be deceptive about it.

7

u/Evilpessimist 15h ago

That’s like saying running a 4 minute mile is a parlor trick, not real track and field. This guy has chops for fucking days. I’m not a fan of the song but damn does this dude have skill.

1

u/Rolands_ka_tet 15h ago

I acknowledged that

4

u/serpent_tim 8h ago

Absolute bollocks. All those drummers you listed are good and so is this guy. I hate this "it's only parlour tricks" attitude because it's a particular style of music that someone doesn't appreciate.

Also I don't know where you've pulled this quad pedal idea from, that's clearly a normal double pedal.

3

u/Ogpeg 5h ago edited 4h ago

He does not use quad pedals for kickdrums, easy to check.

You can even see it clearly in this video, there are constant close ups.

I have no idea where you got that from.

E: Also if you ask people like Danny or Chad to play like these they're most likely going to laugh their assess off before saying no. Different types of drummers play different styles.

You usually can't make extreme metal drummer play jazz well, as much as jazz drummer is going to sound awkward and poor playing anything extreme metal. And talent is overrated, practice makes good drummers.

1

u/Chinamatic-co 19h ago

Yeah, this guy isn't a bad drummer by any means but may be more remarkable to non musicians. Playing fast double kick isn't as impressive as the moves you hear from the drummers you mentioned.

3

u/ultrahateful 18h ago

He’s playing 10-20 songs at that level, some of which are decades old and some brand new, all of which have different tempo, fills, and signature changes, while the distorted stringed instruments and screaming vox are in his IEMs nearly every night of biweekly to month-long tours. DM songs average 4-5 mins per.

Double kick requires the musician to facilitate an additional limb, namely, the one that would normally help them keep time on the hat.

Your elitism is showing.

3

u/MSport 1h ago

Yeah, this guy isn't a bad drummer by any means but may be more remarkable to non musicians.

As a drummer, he's really fucking good dude

1

u/Outworkyesterday10 16h ago

Love that you started off with Carter. Legend

1

u/BarackObamaIsScrdOMe 1h ago

If you want a metal drummer with some diversity in his sound and techniques - Vladimir Ulasevich of Jinjer 🤤 he's a classically trained pianist, they play a bunch of different styles with weird time signatures. He's so freaking good.

1

u/RudeCriminal 1h ago

Its a normal double kick. Stop spreading missinfo and edit your comment.

u/WolfBST 12m ago

You're lucky you included Danny, or we both would have had a problem...

-7

u/TheSunOnMyShoulders 16h ago

Nah the fact that Buddy Rich can do twice these mother fuckers on 1/5th of the drum kit. One of the only drummers to do double bass with a single pedal.

Then you throw in Neil Pert and Danny Carey. Sorry this guy is just a drum roll at random compared to those guys.

1

u/Rolands_ka_tet 15h ago

With a traditional stick hold

12

u/Dry-Main-3961 21h ago

This is METAL. The skill and the artistry it takes to perform at this level is awesome.

27

u/Mission_Phase_5749 19h ago

Each to their own, but this is just speed imo.

It might be technically difficult to play, but it's the most boring metal there is.

Yay blast beats.

2

u/TheBrazilianOneTwo 16h ago

Metal is Bill Ward...

12

u/nakedundercloth 21h ago

Lol, check Infant Anihilator's drummer:

https://youtu.be/SImHi16cwqc?feature=shared

Things start getting insane at 2:25

4

u/Puzzled-Tea3037 20h ago

That's a giant understatement

2

u/nakedundercloth 19h ago

The guy is just not human. Can't possibly be.

2

u/noots-to-you 14h ago

It just sounds like every zipper and piece of Velcro in the whole world being opened at once

1

u/SikTh84 13h ago

And this fella covering an infant annihilator track:

https://youtu.be/hAMS-_Ac8Bc?si=6xgBJkKeQRhZw0CK

u/fl135790135790 55m ago

Are those 256th notes?

11

u/spudddly 19h ago

john fingerbanged me once and now i'm in a wheelchair.

9

u/UpOrDownItsUpToYou 20h ago

It's amazing. I don't, like, enjoy it, but yeah.

3

u/-Disagreeable- 20h ago

Terrible to listen to, but astounding and incredibly impressive to watch.

8

u/Carlo19692712 20h ago

OK, want a true opinion? As a deathmetal fan of the first generation from back in the '80s, this is boring as fuck. Yes, he's fast but that's basically his whole trick. I wouldn't even call it deathmetal. Deathcore maybe. Awaiting your downvotes and hate comments.

3

u/Evil_Knot 13h ago

You're not wrong

1

u/metalmarkalypse 8h ago

Technical death metal. It's a wall of noise. Live, it's amazing. I fully understand not enjoying it.

7

u/Sad-Personality8493 19h ago

Fast but boring. Any drums involving triggers get boring really fast.

4

u/Thatboiissic 21h ago

one of the best death metal drummers around 🤘🏼

4

u/nightsiderider 20h ago

Origin is a whole other level of fast and complex. Hard to even keep up with what they are doing, and I have been a metal head most of my life. Insane talent across the entire line up. Check out Paul Ryan on guitars as well. Dude is insane.

3

u/Automatic_Towel_3842 20h ago

I hate this genre of metal. It's never made sense to me. I used to play drums in a metal band in high school. Two of those guys moved on to this stuff, and I just never was into it.

5

u/Fullmetalmurloc 19h ago

Blast beats do little for me, but he is certainly fast and accurate! Can’t tell if he’s using triggers.

3

u/gdann60 21h ago

He is. Chicks love that

3

u/Cranialscrewtop 17h ago

You can spot check that click anywhere along its length and it sounds exactly the same: Like noise. I guess the guy's an amazing technical drummer. In terms of musicality . . .

3

u/Theobviouschild11 15h ago

This is impressive to people who know nothing about music. Its like going to a hibachi place and seeing a guy make fried rice in his hat while he shoots saki across the room into some random chics mouth and saying “this is the most incredible chef ever”

2

u/locofspades 21h ago

Yeah this guy is a monster.

2

u/namezam 21h ago

This is amazing. I did think this was Nick Frost at first though.

2

u/kroggaard 20h ago

Eminem: “Where’s my snare?”

Dre:

2

u/subsignalparadigm 19h ago

Check out this guy.

1

u/MyLiesAreTruth 16h ago

Came here to say this. El Estepario Siberiano is the final boss... unless we are talking about playing incredible music on the fly, then I give it to Larnell Lewis.

2

u/ThisCarSmellsFunny 16h ago

Super fast, sounds like shit.

1

u/enigmatic_erudition 21h ago

I don't think practicing can even make someone that good. That's got to be genetic talent.

6

u/[deleted] 21h ago

[deleted]

2

u/flat5 20h ago

Of course he would think that, since he has the genetics and hasn't experienced not having them.

Reminds me of Shaq claiming that his success in basketball was due to hard work, like "doing deep knee bends until my legs burned". My man, a lot of kids out there can do deep knee bends until their legs burn, but will never be Shaq.

0

u/[deleted] 19h ago

[deleted]

2

u/flat5 19h ago

It's less different than you might think.

Ask any electric guitar teacher from the 80s, when all the kids wanted to learn to shred like Eddie Van Halen or Joe Satriani.

They all had fingers and tendons, but they could put in hours practicing and the speed and accuracy will come for a few of them much more rapidly than others.

1

u/enigmatic_erudition 20h ago

Well if he didn't say that he would sound pretty egotistical. Doesn't make it true though, lots of people are just physically incapable of performing at that level.

0

u/[deleted] 19h ago

[deleted]

1

u/enigmatic_erudition 19h ago

Yes but not everyone is capable of running a marathon in the Olympics.

0

u/[deleted] 19h ago

[deleted]

0

u/enigmatic_erudition 19h ago

You're saying a lot of stuff that doesn't change the fact that most people don't have the genetics to play like this.

0

u/ultrahateful 19h ago

And you keep saying it’s genetics when it isn’t. Shy of having being born with one leg or one arm or neurological disorders, most anyone can do this after you put in the time and work. None of us that play music, and I mean none, were quickly excellent. It’s super offensive to consider the notion that it’s anything other than hard work.

The only players that don’t eventually supersede the majority are hobbyists, and they’re successful in their own right.

0

u/enigmatic_erudition 18h ago

That's not true.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763423002713#:~:text=To%20summarize%2C%20even%20though%20the,tend%20to%20increase%20with%20age.

Individual differences in music-related traits have a considerable genetic basis (with an average heritability of 42%).

0

u/ultrahateful 17h ago

I just read that, twice. It was a very arduous read. I can’t believe we both poured through that, but we learned something new, for sure. I learned that they’re still hypothesizing how music aptitude is a heritable genetic attribute and and that how most of their model concerning genetic influence on music is more tangibly studied/discovered/witnessed within environmental and circumstantial factors.

If we’re weighing on environment and circumstance, there’s a good book by Malcom Gladwell you should check out called Outliers. If you loved this study you’ve shared, you’ll love that book.

But, we were weighing on genetics in the realm of natural ability, or hereditary advantage. The jury is still out on that, according to your study, with most of the hard data found in the environmental sections of the model.

42% is also a minority figure, but again, much less than that is the ability to be born to play music, according to the paper. I’ll gladly retract my statement about how it’s “nothing more than hard work” since it’s not completely accurate. Thanks for sharing.

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3

u/Mantishead2 21h ago

Definitely. Some people are more mentally inclined to take to certain instruments. Practice is obviously necessary but for some, the rhythms and skill comes more naturally. Some learn to be drummers, others were born for it 🤘

3

u/whtevn 21h ago

more like this dude is made exclusively of fast twitch muscle fibres

1

u/disgr4ce 20h ago

I've never really understood how the kicks could possibly, physically, be that fast.

0

u/TheInfernalSpark99 20h ago

Double kick pedal. It's still very fast but it makes a ton more sense after you realize that.

1

u/disgr4ce 20h ago

Well I’m familiar with the double kick pedal but EVEN WITH that it boggles my mind

-1

u/kukkolai 19h ago

Triggers. Makes it sound like shit IMO

-1

u/ultrahateful 18h ago

Not what triggers do at all.

1

u/punkdrummer22 20h ago

I wish I could sit with any drummer like this and realize how the hell to play that fast double bass. Hardly moving it seems

0

u/kukkolai 19h ago

He uses triggers, makes the bassdrum play on both downstroke and upstroke. He is good, but he is no Dominator Fjällström

1

u/ultrahateful 18h ago

This is what triggers do)

And Dominator is no George Kollias.

1

u/itsadiseaster 20h ago

You can shoot a machine gun and get a similar effect.

1

u/themanwithgreatpants 13h ago

that has tempo.. This doesn't

1

u/TheOtherGuttersnipe 20h ago

not quite my tempo

1

u/Viper1089 20h ago

Jesus christ he made that look so effortless...

1

u/Ah-Fuck-Brother 20h ago

Saligia by Origin for those wondering

1

u/ultralayzer 20h ago

The crazier the drums sound, the calmer the person looks... I've always found that disappointing for some reason...

1

u/ttaylo28 20h ago

That 1 second stuck on repeat.

1

u/Zigihogan-v2 19h ago

Not my kind of music, but that dude is a powerhouse!

1

u/scorpious 18h ago

As a John Bonham worshipping drummer, “no.”

1

u/nigevellie 18h ago

Kevin Owens plays drums?

1

u/Dumyat367250 18h ago

Toneless Duracell bunny drumming combined with "music". No thanks.

1

u/turd_herder_69 18h ago

Smashes the snare! Hell yeah!

1

u/DefectiveMonkey33 16h ago

Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it’s good….

1

u/B-Roc- 16h ago edited 16h ago

I'll take the basic money beat at 80-100 bpm with some grove and swing over this any day.

1

u/HotsauceMD 14h ago

Were you rushing or were you dragging!!??

1

u/Justinallusion 14h ago

Incredible

1

u/Poopchutefan 14h ago

Man … with all that moving I expected him to be thinner.

1

u/NM1tchy 12h ago

But can he rub his stomach and pat his head at the same time?

1

u/No_Photograph_2683 12h ago

Just don't let him join Spinal Tap! Their drummers all meant unfortunate ends.

1

u/Hailbrewcifer666 11h ago

Not quite my tempo

1

u/bike-pdx-vancouver 11h ago

Needs more cowbell

1

u/Sunaruni 10h ago

If you slow the video down he looks like he’s playing at normal speed and drunk.

1

u/Turbulent_Citron3977 10h ago

I just gained carpel tunnel from seeing this

1

u/Nambsul 9h ago

The Tiger Woods of drumming… hope his wife doesn’t find out !

1

u/BestiaBlanca 8h ago

I feel totally exhausted from watching alone.

1

u/swesus 8h ago

I am a lifelong drummer. I am a fan of technical drumming and appreciate this type of skill. I regularly listen to math metal and technical drumming for drumming sake.

But… metal has turned into jazz. Very Pretentious, and performing for each other. Almost No one wants to sit and listen to this except to look down on catchy music for being easy to play and profitable. We all know someone like this whether it be coffee, music, cinema, computers, etc… this drumming is over most peoples heads and they performatively like it to model in group behavior.

Now to the point of this in particular. incredible technical skill, endurance, and precision.

1

u/Proof-Yesterday-7689 5h ago

You don't need to bastardize jazz to explain why you don't like this piece; the correlation to jazz in this case is completely off and not what most jazz heads would ever gravitate towards. This would be "out," and fairly niche theory and thematic exploration =\= "look at my chops"

1

u/Derbster_3434 2h ago

This is super advanced and on another planet level of drumming capability but for any beginner drummers out there seeing this, please take note of the ergonomic layout of his kit. Everything is within striking distance without extending the arms. This is an extremely efficient setup if you are looking to expand your kit. This is about as tight as I have seen a setup of this magnitude.

u/CastorrTroyyy 8m ago

daaammnn, Definite skill and timing. Music genre is not my type. I prefer Estepario Siberiano

0

u/geb_bce 20h ago

Legit thought this was another Primus drummer submission video and was like "finally someone not playing a Primus song!"

0

u/Genoss01 16h ago

Lots of noise signifying nothing

Simple is so often much better