Hail to the METAL!
By dream431ca 39 Comments
Hey Folks! It's 11:25 PM, here in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and I'm bored, so, I'm going to write something about my favorite music genre, Metal.
First a little Biography about me and music:
I was exposed to rock music at a very early age. At around 4 or so I was dancing to many 80's rock bands that I forgot the name of and are too lazy too look up. I remember jumping on my parents bed listing to awesome 80's rock. I also started piano lessons at a very early age. My uncle was (and still is) a piano teacher and he writes books about music for college and university. Because of my piano lessons I got interested in classical music. I was a very big fan of Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Holst. I don't listen to that any more, but I have great respect for these composers as they have changed music as we know it. I played trumpet at Junior High and High School, and got to go on a couple tours, which was nice.
Anyway, When I was about 13 or 14, I started listing to the bands Silverchair, Green Day and Offspring. I also got introduced to Our Lady Peace. I liked these bands a lot when I was younger. Now, I don't listen to them anymore. They haven't got bad, but my tastes in music have changed a little. I also think that the earlier albums these bands produced are better than their recent ones as they were free to experiment with their music. Now they are part of major labels and the labels want to make money, so they tell the band what kind of song the band should write that should become popular. I am not a fan of this behavior. As soon as the band starts to make music for mostly money, the music becomes stale.
Now I will tell you about the bands I absolutely hate. If any of you like these bands, don't take this personally, this is only my opinion after all. The four bands that just completely annoy the shit out of me are:
- Nickelback
- Theory of a Dead Man
- Default
- Creed
Why do I hate these four bands so much? Because they all sound so similar it's disgusting. Their music is uninspiring, uninteresting, completely boring and most of their songs sound so similar I have a hard time distinguishing between them. This is what you get when labels want to make money. The head person of the label company will look at what band is popular and have a band that they control, sound pretty close to the band in question. For example: Nickelback and Theory of a Dead Man sound almost the same, it's hard for me sometimes to tell the two bands apart. It doesn't help that both of these bands write incredibly boring and run of the mill songs. I could go on and on about how pissed I get when I hear these bands, but I think that's enough.
Around 1999-2002 I started to listen to AC/DC and Motley Crew alot, 2 bands that I still love to this day. Metallica was also one of my favorite bands at the time and I loved their S&M album, which Metallica and an Orchestra played together. I was in heaven at that point. I thought to myself "Why don't I see more of this Metal + Orchestra stuff?" I thought that this was just once in a while event. I'm glad I was wrong.
Around 2006, my Brother bought a CD from a band I heard of from a few friends of mine but never really tried listing too. The band is Nightwish, a Finnish Metal power/symphonic band. I can tell you that after hearing their album called "Once" I was completely shocked. "Once" still is the best album I have heard in my life and the song "Ghost Love Score" from that album still remains one of my favorite songs of all time. I became a fan of Nightwish overnight. My avatar is the latest album from Nightwish called "Dark Passion Play", an excellent, somewhat dark album with amazing songs and orchestral work.
Nightwish had gotten me into Metal, and soon I discovered, many, many more European metal bands. It kind of surprised me a bit that Europe was metal crazy. I never knew metal had so many different sub-genres and most of them were awesome. I was also surprised that European metal sounded different from North American metal. European metal was more about fantastic choruses and complex melodies and uplifting lyrics. Most of the metal bands I hear from North America are more of a black metal type, although I'm sure there are some that I missed that sound like European metal.
Right now, the bands that I listen to the most are, Nightwish, Gamma Ray, Hammerfall and Dream Evil. Nightwish, like I said before are a power/symphonic metal band. Gamma Ray are a power metal band with uplifting lyrics, so is Hammerfall and Dream Evil is more of a heavy metal band that is crazy awesome. Below is a list of all the metal bands I currently own. I invite you to take a listen to some of these if you like metal or are just interested in hearing something different:
- After Forever
- Angra
- Avantasia
- Ayreon
- Delain
- Dragonland
- Dream Evil
- Dream Theater
- Edguy
- Epica
- Firewind
- Gamma Ray
- Hammerfall
- Helloween
- Kamelot
- Korpiklaani
- Nightwish
- Primal Fear
- Serenity
- Symphony X
- Wuthering Heights
Good night and thanks for reading!
Peace