Who is the best drummer of all time?

chewtoycock

He poisons himself and expects the world to die.
I'm not going to argue for him as the best by any means, but I always liked dino sommese because for starters he was the vocalist and drummer which sounds ridiculously hard even if you do both terribly, but he also kind of had a really weird style especially for a metal/punk drummer that felt jazz and hip hop influenced and was always a little off but perfect, I thought.
 

Mr-Wrinkle-Paws

My name's Henry. And you're here with me now
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This is a tough one, genuinely. If the criteria is who is the most technically talented drummer then you would be changing who the greatest is every couple of fucking years, the access to the internet has blown open the doors of musical talent over the last 20 years.
There's so many styles out there too, it's hard to compare across platforms.
For example my old man grew up a rush/Peart guy, I grew up a DT/Portnoy guy. Peart may be the more recognizable name and bigger legend because he came first, but Portnoy took the north american prog rock beat and evolved it past Peart ever did, he is the more technically advanced player. After Portnoy you got guys like Blake Richardson from BTBAM, Bran Dailor from Mastodon etc that took the torch and ran with it. Now you have drummers like Richie Martinez from arch echo, troy wright from Plini creating crazy shit.

You also have to compare drummers to their styles and eras.
Mainstream 70's rock - Bonham, Peart, Moon etc. Of the big band drummers from this era the Zappa drummers like Vinnie Colaiuta, Terry Bozzio, Chad Wackerman and Bill Bruford from Yes/KC were the most talented technically even though nobody knows these guys unless you're a fucking drummer or have an educated ear for music and everyone sucks off the big 3 of moon/peart/bonham even though they are technically inferior.

And there's so many monster players out there over the last few decades that will drum circles around your favorite band drummer but they just never stuck to a band that achieved success for whatever reason. Mike Mangini, Virgil Donati, Thomas Lang, Marco Minnemann as examples

It comes down to picking favorites and not bickering over whose better. My favorite drummer of all time is Mike Portnoy, at one time I was foolish and thought he was the best drummer ever and no drummer will ever be on his level. All 4 of the names above are technically superior players. If I were to name "the guy" of drumming history it's Vinnie Colaiuta for his incredible technicality, longevity, versatility. That dude truly is the drummers drummer. But if I were to get my old kit out of the storage and picked up the sticks again the drummer I want to play like is Gavin Harrison from Porcupine tree, incredible drumming.
I know... be more wordy faggot.
 
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