Music Thoughts

I've discovered something about music.

 

The key to creating music that is good for headbanging is not having down-tuned guitars. Its have music that is meant to be headbanged to… :P

 

For instance, a lot of nightwish actually, doesn't make use of downtuned guitars, but, should I want to, I can easily headbang to it. But, then thing is, when I listen to lighter bands… say some Pop Punk or something, I don't really feel like headbanging. But I'm listening to my live version of "She is my Sin" and I'm hearing a song that can very easily be headbanged to… despite Emppu's distinct lack of low-end distortion. Awesome guitarwork, but it's more of a light "fuzz" sound versus the lower end sound that a lot of bands use.

 

Actually… its really intruiging how you can mess with sounds and still have headbang worthy music. For instance, I listened to what little Lamb of God I have yesterday (I'm still trying to decide if they're a band I should actually listen to, for some reason they give me a rather icky feeling), but, despite their lowend guitarwork, they are not a headbanging band. They're a moshing band (how do I know that even though I've never moshed? Go figure. That's the feeling I had though… having listened to music that is supposed to be "mosh music").

 

And to wrap this up, I have to end with saying that Children of Bodom's album Follow the Reaper is some of the most brilliant guitar and keyboard music I have heard in a long time. But Alexi Laiho really is a horrible vocalist. He's… just bad. This is funny, because I mean… he's a growler, and he uses a style of vocals that very few people like, yet, I know he's a bad vocalist. I mean, listen to In Flames or Amon Amarth and listen to their vocalists… they're better. Maybe Alexi is an amazing performer live, and I bet he is, but his vocals aren't something that would catch you.

 

Oh darn… that bring me to another point. I find it really funny how different types of music emphasis different parts of the music. A lot of pop music emphasizes the vocals of a particular artist (no matter how good those vocals may be *cough*), while metal-type music will focus on other stuff… like the guitars. I mean, take Children of Bodom, they have, like I said, a bad vocalist, but they make this up by having a very strong group of instrumentalists. Alexi Laiho is considered one of the premiere guitarists in the world, possibly the best alive, depending on your definition of "best". They're keyboardist is awesome, too. People listen to their music for the instrumentation, not the vocals or even the lyrics (which are also rather bad).

 

Anyways… I'll stop now.