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SatanicPotato
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 5:46 am 
 

http://www.metalunderground.com/news/de ... wsid=93367

i thought i would post this because it proves how far metal has come, i dont know much about this school but from what i read they mostly study classical music, no matter of your thoughts of the song(personally i love it) its still very nice for metal to be getting so much recognition no matter the band

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lord_ghengis
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 7:31 am 
 

As long as they don't try to sell NeO as a quality form of songwriting its ok. They obviously know their music theory so its not a huge shock, but they can't write a song worth a shit, they've got sub Opeth transition skill.
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XcKyle93
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 10:55 am 
 

lord_ghengis wrote:
As long as they don't try to sell NeO as a quality form of songwriting its ok. They obviously know their music theory so its not a huge shock, but they can't write a song worth a shit, they've got sub Opeth transition skill.


I don't really like them either, but come on. Have you ever even tried to dissect a "NeO" or Opeth song? I have not, but I bet that you haven't either. I think we'd both find that they know a thing or two about writing a song though.
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hakarl
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 11:08 am 
 

It's actually quite inconsequential what the songwriters' level of knowledge of music and songwriting is, if they're chronically incapable of using said knowledge to create anything worthwhile. I haven't listened to Ne Obliviscaris, so don't take this as a comment on their songwriting. Simply, one shouldn't have to 'dissect' a song in order to understand what the hell the musicians were thinking when compiling it; they should primarily tap on that knowledge to create something enjoyable.
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Emanon
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 1:16 pm 
 

Not sure it's the song of theirs I'd have picked, but cool.
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TheLiberation
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 5:49 pm 
 

I agree it's not right if you need to "dissect" a song to appreciate it, but I'm pretty sure Opeth is not one of these bands - they know quite a lot about good transitions, even if they're surprising at times.

On topic, I don't know the band besides hearing about it quite a lot, but sounds cool. I'm pleasantly surprised as I admit my opinion about "classical music circles" is... not very good, as from my experience they're mostly completely close-minded and view everything that's not classical as the musical equivalent of barbarians. (Though a) of course that's not everyone, b) it might also be different in other countries, not sure about this)
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XcKyle93
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 5:56 pm 
 

I'm not saying that you need to dissect a song to appreciate it, I'm just saying that I find it pretty ignorant to say that a band can't write a song worth shit, and pass that off as a fact just because you may not like what they're doing. If you didn't like the album, you're probably less apt to give it a closer listen, therefore it's much easier to say "argh, the songs are long and technical; they don't know how to write songs!" Apparently they can write a song well enough for a professor at a prestigious music school to choose their song for some sort of analysis. Granted, that still doesn't automatically make the song good per se, but then again his opinion carries a lot more weight due to his position.

Also, my roommate is in my university's orchestra, and I know some of his friends/orchestra mates, and none of them are particularly close-minded. However, I also have a few friends who play jazz & are in jazz circles, and I've found them to be significantly more pretentious. There are a handful of jazz albums that I enjoy, but I do not like to be told that I should listen to jazz just because "it has a whole variety of emotions that metal is incapable of expressing," to paraphrase what a friend said to me.
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lord_ghengis
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 6:56 pm 
 

I was more being specific in regards to actual structuring, I mentioned off the at they they know all their timbres and metres and all that junk, but their transitions between their different sections are ridiculously poor. That has nothing to do ith my opinions of their quality, and more to do with my thoughts on whether they are "worthy" of deeper study...

Although, as someone else said, high level music study is kinda retarded.
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~Guest 82538
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 7:50 pm 
 

XcKyle93 wrote:
I'm not saying that you need to dissect a song to appreciate it, I'm just saying that I find it pretty ignorant to say that a band can't write a song worth shit, and pass that off as a fact just because you may not like what they're doing. If you didn't like the album, you're probably less apt to give it a closer listen, therefore it's much easier to say "argh, the songs are long and technical; they don't know how to write songs!" Apparently they can write a song well enough for a professor at a prestigious music school to choose their song for some sort of analysis. Granted, that still doesn't automatically make the song good per se, but then again his opinion carries a lot more weight due to his position.

That's borderline on saying that no one besides the "masters of musical knowledge" is able to pass judgement on music...

Anyone with a couple of good ears and a working brain can pass judgement on music, but of course you need to have some musical degree to dissect it in numbers. However, you don't need a degree in order to understand it or even be able to notice if it's technically good or not. I don't like Ne Obliviscaris because of several reasons, but I can tell you that I've listened to The Portal Of I several times in search of their endgame. I came thoroughly disappointed at the other end so I gave up on them, and yes they can write a song and have the perfect musical knowledge to make it work. And yet many times it doesn't! Like lord_ghengis said, they have noticeable flaws, and that's perfectly natural. It's good publicity for them, and I'm sure that the guy studying their song will think of it as the mother of everything technical because he probably knows nothing about metal. Now do I agree with this song being made what it's being made there? Not really. I think there is stuff much more study worthy than anything out of that band's roster.

Like I said, this passes more as good publicity than anything else really.

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CF_Mono
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 8:30 pm 
 

What a dumb idea. This is one of those bands that uses the same riffs, transitions, and bs cliche metal motifs as every other "melodic" metal band does, and while they are very good with their instruments technically speaking, there really isn't anything from that song that you're going to learn, that studying classical music wont teach you a thousand times better. Even a Cannibal Corpse song would teach you better than this, and that would still be a horrible idea. You will become as good as those guys from putting more hours in with the metronome, that is all.
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Kveldulfr
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 8:33 pm 
 

If the music is likeable or not, that depends of the listener but music theory is more objective.

To be honest, I've learned a couple of tracks of these guys, as well I do know deeply the Opeth repertoire and basically I conclude 3 things:

-Most of songs are comprised by few common chord/harmony progressions, usually found in 70s prog rock. A song like Forget Not and As Icicles Fall use the same 4 chords thru the entire song, where the lead instruments are the ones who are constantly changing with an abundance of lead/soloing.

-The only really innovative guy in terms of harmonizing and soloing is the violinist. The guitar solos are very textbook stuff. The bass is extremely infl,uenced by Jaco, Gary Willis and Sean Malone. The drummer is fast, that's about him and the riffs are usually very bland, they cant be complex to give room the leads to so their thing, which is seriously overdone, especially in Icicles, where the rhythmic section plays the same thing for nearly 8 minutes.

-just like many other extreme metal bands, the abundance of soloing usually tries to mask some terrible transitions. Just like Opeth, to come from acoustic stuff to heavier moments is hard to them to do; like the flamenco influenced interlude of Tapestry ends to enter the rest of the stuff, both sections are totally unrelated, giving the copy-paste feeling Opeth has as signature. Still, NeO manages better the transitions, but still there are some very illogical key changes here and there.

I guess is cool for them this publicity, but metal has a lot of better stuff to study IMO.
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SatanicPotato
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PostPosted: Thu Jul 04, 2013 11:41 pm 
 

for me that specific song is different than the rest, it stands out for me, me anyways can hear a few seconds of fear factory influence in the song, it does not sound as classically influenced to me and they bring in more influences and genres into that song than any other on the album, much more flamenco influence which really separates that song from the rest of the album imo, i am not going to pretend to be able to read music or anything i wish i could but for me its much more interesting than the rest of the album and sounds better

i only have a basic knowledge of music and none whatsoever on music theory

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Element_man
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 12:19 am 
 

Kind of cool. I'm a music school guy, got my degree in jazz piano. It's always pretty rad to see teachers and educators that are interested in heavy metal, I remember being the accompianist in a first-year bassist class when they were learning the various modes and scales. The bass instructor played riffs by bands like Black Sabbath and King Diamond and Fates Warning as examples in order to give the students context for how some of these weird scales could be used. Moments like that in school were always fun.

No comment on the band itself, but it bums me out to see people totally disregarding the higher study of music. If you're interested in the theory, the numbers aspect, the history and expanding your skills in a school-based environment, then go for it. Obviously theory skills and performance chops =/= songwriting skills, but those things certainly can't hurt. Plus, the music industry isn't just about being a great songwriter. Anyways.
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XcKyle93
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 10:01 am 
 

androdion wrote:
That's borderline on saying that no one besides the "masters of musical knowledge" is able to pass judgement on music...

No, it's not at all; read my last sentence again! You can't deny that someone who has studied music in a formal setting for years and the holds the respectable position of a professor at a prestigious university has an opinion that holds more weight than an average listener's. Once again, this doesn't mean that his opinion is any better than ours, or that we can't have opinions; it's just that people will be more apt to pay attention to what he has to say.

Also, androdion, the rest of what you say is very reasonable, and I do agree to some degree. It's just that particular statement that bothered me.

Element_man wrote:
No comment on the band itself, but it bums me out to see people totally disregarding the higher study of music.

Yeah, it really makes no sense to me. From personal experience, I know that some (usually students actually) in both classical and jazz circles can be at bit pretentious and snub rock/metal, but that doesn't mean that we should be the same way! I guess it's much cooler to say, "yeah, screw those up-tight music professors!" I only know basic music theory that I've learned in music classes in high school as well as through a class I've taken at my university, but it's certainly helpful. Of course, everything boils down to just using your ears, but music theory more easily allows you to recognize and recall certain chords, patterns, progressions, etc.

Also, back on topic. It was actually a friend who has nothing to do with playing/studying music (English/Psych major) that first showed me NeO's album when it came out. He actually is much more into indie/hipster rock, and only listens to a handful of metal bands like Opeth, Mastodon, Bloodbath, and Agalloch. Yeah, Bloodbath is kind of the odd one out there. Anyways, I also found it pretty boring and was not particularly interested in listening to it more than twice. However, I do not disagree with the professor's choice of album; something like this (to me) is inherently more interesting for analysis than most of the metal I listen to, which is comparatively simple.
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~Guest 82538
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 11:09 am 
 

XcKyle93 wrote:
androdion wrote:
That's borderline on saying that no one besides the "masters of musical knowledge" is able to pass judgement on music...

No, it's not at all; read my last sentence again! You can't deny that someone who has studied music in a formal setting for years and the holds the respectable position of a professor at a prestigious university has an opinion that holds more weight than an average listener's. Once again, this doesn't mean that his opinion is any better than ours, or that we can't have opinions; it's just that people will be more apt to pay attention to what he has to say.

Sure thing, but your wording (or my understanding of it) made it seem like you were saying another thing.

There's one factor you're not accounting here, and that's the musical context of the song. Music theorists have studied and learned the different variants of music throughout the ages, and have always placed them under a categorization ladder that made it easier to apprehend/learn/teach. Now comes a metal song, and pardon my judgement, but I don't think most scholars (or any at all) give a fuck about its theoretic basis. So if suddenly a well educated musical theorist starts dissecting a metal song he will approach it from an outsider's perspective, in a way that he will be perfectly able to dissect its musical components, but he won't have the basis (read: context) as to where to place it, what they're trying to achieve and all that makes up for the proper study of a musical variety. So even though he/she is way more able than any of us simple folks to dissect it he still won't "get it properly", because let's face it, a big part of the endgame of any musical genre depends on its context. Using downtuned grooves can be acceptable if you're Bolt Thrower but not if you're Korn, and yes I know it's an extreme example but bear with it for a second.

It's good publicity for the band and probably the metal scene as well, but will still be a bit of a gimmick because no one will make an effort to put down to paper the musical theory of metal as a genre. But if you happen to put one song in the scholar circles then you can come off as "progressive". That may not even be the case here, but I think you get my point again.

XcKyle93 wrote:
He actually is much more into indie/hipster rock, and only listens to a handful of metal bands like Opeth, Mastodon, Bloodbath, and Agalloch. Yeah, Bloodbath is kind of the odd one out there.

No it isn't. It's the "opethian connection" as I call it. It's cool to like death metal if it's made by your personal God who plays in the best band in the world. I know some people like that. Hell, I know a chick who could be perfectly described by that sentence! :lol:

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Opus
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 5:42 pm 
 

I baffles me that it's presumed that the more you study music, the less you understand. Is music the only field where this happens, or are there others? Is this a general contempt for knowledge?

Funny how some posters on this board (no, I can't name names since I haven't saved quotes) considers bands like Iced Earth, Arch Enemy etc. "entry level bands", and that people who like them do so because they haven't delved deeper into metal (a point I do, somewhat, agree with).
Now, people here are saying that if you delve in too deep, you somewhere cross a line where you stop getting it.

Well written music is always worth dissecting, doesn't matter if it's Stravinsky or AC/DC, but how are you going to dissect it if you don't have the tools for it? Saying "I know what I like" doesn't cut it. Neither does saying songs have "bad transitions" if you can't break it down theoretically and in the proper context. You might not like the transitions, but that's not the same as them being badly written.

I have had 8 years of "classical" music studies, so I guess that just makes me close-minded and unable to get it properly.


From this thread I learned that Matthew Hindson writes great music, so at least some good came out of it.
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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 6:26 pm 
 

I don't think music studies mean you can't 'get' it, but I do think it usually means that for rock and other contemporary forms of music. I dunno, maybe I'm just being a close-minded dick here, but my gut feeling is that rock, metal, punk, etc. are just too raw and rebellious to be scrutinized under an academic microscope, so to speak. To me that kind of music is more about feeling and the idea behind it than just a bunch of notes and songwriting techniques. It feels like the opposite of what they intended, to institutionalize them and study them in schoolbooks. The ethos behind it, as well as the raw energy and tone of the music, is just as important really. Androdion had it down right when he said this:

Quote:
I don't think most scholars (or any at all) give a fuck about its theoretic basis. So if suddenly a well educated musical theorist starts dissecting a metal song he will approach it from an outsider's perspective, in a way that he will be perfectly able to dissect its musical components, but he won't have the basis (read: context) as to where to place it, what they're trying to achieve and all that makes up for the proper study of a musical variety.


Metal does too many things antithetical to what scholars consider 'high art' in music for it to be properly analyzed. I do hope times are changing and people can better understand it though...and no, not in the 'Black Sabbath, Led Zep, Pink Floyd' way of a lot of rock music 'history' courses I gather. Maybe with time scholars will change and there will be more of an understanding of what metal is, but even then, eh, it's just not 'scholarly' music. :p

That Ne Obliviscaris song was on the borderline of what metal is anyway, only like the last few minutes really got any metal going. It's not too terrible I guess, and might provide some interesting fodder for discussion in a classical music class. But they picked something that wasn't exactly chin-deep in the metal pantheon anyway.
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Opus
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 7:36 pm 
 

Empyreal wrote:
my gut feeling is that rock, metal, punk, etc. are just too raw and rebellious to be scrutinized under an academic microscope, so to speak.

Why wouldn't you be able to study something just because it's raw and rebellious??? You can still look at what is there?!

Empyreal wrote:
To me that kind of music is more about feeling and the idea behind it than just a bunch of notes and songwriting techniques.

What forms of music doesn't have feelings and ideas behind it. You haven't got a single leg to stand on here. No matter if it's "The Ballad of Jimi Hendrix" or "Welcome to Hell", there's still notes and songwriting techniques involved. Do you seriously mean that there are fields you can't study just because you can't??
"Just a bunch of notes and songwriting techniques." Really!

Empyreal wrote:
It feels like the opposite of what they intended, to institutionalize them and study them in schoolbooks. The ethos behind it, as well as the raw energy and tone of the music,

What does it matter what the ethos behind it was? You can still study it.

Quote:
So if suddenly a well educated musical theorist starts dissecting a metal song he will approach it from an outsider's perspective,

No. Why would he? Studying a subject doesn't make you stupid.

Empyreal wrote:
Metal does too many things antithetical to what scholars consider 'high art' in music for it to be properly analyzed.

Where on earth have you gotten your ideas on what academics are doing from? This just seems completely ignorant.
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TheLiberation
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 7:57 pm 
 

You also quite literally "dissected" his post and skipped plenty of important parts.

The idea isn't that you can't study it or that studying too much makes you stupid, the common problem is lack of context and understanding of how rock and metal music actually works. They often do actually analyse it based on the same ideas as classical music, completely overlooking the fact that rock and metal has different intentions and is written with a different goal.

Academic analysis of metal only has any chances of making sense if the people involved actually have a good idea about metal, otherwise it's pointless.
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Empyreal
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 8:12 pm 
 

Maybe my post was poorly worded, because I think you missed a lot of what I was saying there. You CAN study rock or metal or whatever all you want; I just never saw a point in it unless you really understood the history of it and why it was important. That's the core of any good class for me. As for the whole 'collection of notes' thing, well that's because I'm not a music scholar basically - just learning about the compositions and structure of the music wouldn't really be interesting to me. I'm sure it would to some people, but that's beside the point. Basically the word 'context,' which Liberation used, is what I was getting at. I just don't think academic studying of metal/rock is worth it unless you talk about the rebelliousness, the changing times in which it was born, etc etc etc. The messages. Even then, I would rather just study it by myself and learn it as I go, by listening to it.

Not everyone is going to be like me on that, and if scholars want to deconstruct music and talk about it academically, well that's their privilege; let em go ahead and do it. That's a completely different musical world than my own, and you're right about one thing, I definitely don't have firsthand experience there. I was an English major, not a music guy. I studied what I said above - the culture and history and messages behind things. I just think there's more to it than academic discourse, is all.
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Opus
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 8:18 pm 
 

TheLiberation wrote:
They often do actually analyse it based on the same ideas as classical music, ...

Who are "they"?

TheLiberation wrote:
Academic analysis of metal only has any chances of making sense if the people involved actually have a good idea about metal, otherwise it's pointless.

How would you get a good idea of metal if you can't study it?

Also, what do you think academic analysis is?
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Opus
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 8:25 pm 
 

Empyreal wrote:
You CAN study rock or metal or whatever all you want; I just never saw a point in it unless you really understood the history of it and why it was important.

Isn't that the whole point of studying something?

Empyreal wrote:
I studied what I said above - the culture and history and messages behind things. I just think there's more to it than academic discourse, is all.

What makes you think studies in music is so vastly different than this?
You still have grammar, syntax and the actual building blocks of the language in connection to this. You can't just skip some parts.


BTW, I'm not as aggressive/angry as I may come across, just bewildered and mildly irked.
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PostPosted: Fri Jul 05, 2013 9:58 pm 
 

TheLiberation wrote:
The idea isn't that you can't study it or that studying too much makes you stupid, the common problem is lack of context and understanding of how rock and metal music actually works. They often do actually analyse it based on the same ideas as classical music, completely overlooking the fact that rock and metal has different intentions and is written with a different goal.

Academic analysis of metal only has any chances of making sense if the people involved actually have a good idea about metal, otherwise it's pointless.

Thank you, that was the message I was trying to convey.

And putting my words into context Opus, I don't imagine this situation being more than an isolated event in the sea of scholarly musical study. So forgive me for my inability to trust that more than one guy (or school for that matter) will go out on a quest to "learn metal". And you completely disregarded the simple fact that to study something and lay down the ground rules in academic terms means you have to take a look at the whole picture, and its constituting parts separately. Only this way you can truly perceive how and why a musical stream works. So, I guess that what I'm trying to say is that if scholars were to really study metal they'd have to listen and dissect all genres, its entire history and musical background, and on and on. And you know what they're doing here right? One song. That's hardly a representative sample, to use "technical" terms, isn't it?! ;)

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 06, 2013 1:00 am 
 

I do have to say this is an odd choice on part of the academic. It's not something you'd expect but it's also alright to see an academic appreciating the work and not some pseudo-intellectual metal apologist trying to make his taste in music valid by 'high society'.

On a sidenote, I have a friend who's studying at the institution in question so I'll have to ask him if he's doing this. From what I know he's doing jazz and the compositional analysis is in the classical stream, but I'll still ask. But for sure, analysing Ne Obliviscaris sounds infinitely better than the analysis of some pop song's lyrics at a (different) institution that my friend has told me about.
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TheLiberation
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 06, 2013 7:53 am 
 

Opus wrote:
TheLiberation wrote:
They often do actually analyse it based on the same ideas as classical music, ...

Who are "they"?

"Academic circles" of any sort. Probably, thankfully, not all of them, but they've done an excellent job at showing lack of understanding about any rock and metal music at more than one or ten occasions.

Quote:
TheLiberation wrote:
Academic analysis of metal only has any chances of making sense if the people involved actually have a good idea about metal, otherwise it's pointless.

How would you get a good idea of metal if you can't study it?

Also, what do you think academic analysis is?

Starting with studying with zero background to build upon is exactly what I'm talking about and is bound to end with a disaster. It can be studied, as long as it's not considered in the exact same ways as classical music and whoever does the analysis knows how to actually handle it. Otherwise it's going to end up with the usual "this is primitive and has no melody" which is about as useful to anyone as paper forks.
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SatanicPotato
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 10:49 pm 
 

sorry for the random post but i am wondering does anyone think the harsh vocals are different on this song than the rest of the album? they dont sound as black metally to me and i prefer that(generally i do not like black metal vocals)

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Lord Tempestuous
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 11:04 pm 
 

XcKyle93 wrote:
There are a handful of jazz albums that I enjoy, but I do not like to be told that I should listen to jazz just because "it has a whole variety of emotions that metal is incapable of expressing," to paraphrase what a friend said to me.


Lol, and vice versa certainly, what jazz can capture the majesty of Into the Infinity of Thoughts or the stoic beauty of Det Som En Gang Var?
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Lord Tempestuous
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 11:13 pm 
 

As others have expressed, composition does not rely on theory and theory cannot amount to anything without good composition to back it up. Sad that in order to stay hip conservatories try to open themselves up and only find complete dreck, why can't they study early At the Gates, Sacramentum, Burzum or Immortal?

Just take this for example, there's better things going on in its first 10 seconds than NeO have probably ever mustered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIKIXMxqTEo
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Conservationism
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 08, 2013 11:19 pm 
 

I agree. I think they want something they can recognize as being musically extended from another genre. NeO is basically like Animals as Leaders for black metal fans.
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Filosofuck
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 3:21 pm 
 

There's nothing really wrong with this, but I still detect a hint of snobbery. They can study NeO all they want, but this same professor would probably scoff at Sodom or Hellhammer.

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ObservationSlave
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 6:01 pm 
 

SatanicPotato wrote:
sorry for the random post but i am wondering does anyone think the harsh vocals are different on this song than the rest of the album? they dont sound as black metally to me and i prefer that(generally i do not like black metal vocals)


They are less shrieky and more growly than some of the other songs. The black metal vocals are probably my least favorite aspect of the band, but then again almost everything about black metal turns me off.

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Conservationism
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 7:22 pm 
 

Filosofuck wrote:
They can study NeO all they want, but this same professor would probably scoff at Sodom or Hellhammer.


NeO, Animals as Leaders, Devin Townsend et al fit the rock template. They challenge nothing. Sodom, Bathory, Hellhammer, old Slayer, etc. are something entirely different and it's harder to accept. Still, some of these academics are willing.

Here's a good musicological analysis of why Satanic Rites is important and what "Triumph of Death" did for metal:

http://www.deathmetal.org/news/why-hell ... ever-made/

Then an open-minded academic or two:

Altars of Madness art exhibit
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SatanicPotato
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 9:26 pm 
 

ObservationSlave wrote:
SatanicPotato wrote:
sorry for the random post but i am wondering does anyone think the harsh vocals are different on this song than the rest of the album? they dont sound as black metally to me and i prefer that(generally i do not like black metal vocals)


They are less shrieky and more growly than some of the other songs. The black metal vocals are probably my least favorite aspect of the band, but then again almost everything about black metal turns me off.

thank you i think he is a great vocalist in terms of black metal, but black metal vocals usually do not do anything for me and for me on the entire album he sounds the best on this song just a style thing for me i guess i only really like DSBM's vocals, i mean the vocals do not detract from the music imo they sound good to me but the more growly vocals work for me better

something i find odd is that the Australian government gave a grant to a metal band and now this we seem pretty good in terms of metal, we seem a lot more supportive of it(our government anyways) than a lot of other countries

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TheLiberation
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 9:30 pm 
 

Conservationism wrote:
Filosofuck wrote:
They can study NeO all they want, but this same professor would probably scoff at Sodom or Hellhammer.


NeO, Animals as Leaders, Devin Townsend et al fit the rock template. They challenge nothing. Sodom, Bathory, Hellhammer, old Slayer, etc. are something entirely different and it's harder to accept.

What? Devin Townsend's entire discography is basically a living definition of "fuck the system" (in terms of songwriting, lyrics, genres, and a ton of other things), and Animals as Leaders and generally more ambitious djent bands tend to do quite a lot of rhythmic and melodic experiments which are hardly the norm.

Both of these groups definitely challenge a lot, but in completely different ways.
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Conservationism
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 10:09 pm 
 

TheLiberation wrote:
What? Devin Townsend's entire discography is basically a living definition of "fuck the system" (in terms of songwriting, lyrics, genres, and a ton of other things), and Animals as Leaders and generally more ambitious djent bands tend to do quite a lot of rhythmic and melodic experiments which are hardly the norm.


Everything these bands have done was done better in the 1970s. I don't want to be cruel, but there's nothing exceptional about Devin Townshend -- he sounds like a typical late hardcore experiment with slightly better chops -- and Animals as Leaders is a re-hash of 1970s jazz fusion, just with occasional power chord riffs.
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Scorntyrant
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 11:27 pm 
 

SatanicPotato wrote:

something i find odd is that the Australian government gave a grant to a metal band and now this we seem pretty good in terms of metal, we seem a lot more supportive of it(our government anyways) than a lot of other countries



It's like that old Regurgitator song - "I sucked a lot of cock to get where I am today". Anyway, it's barely metal at all - fruity progressive wank with a couple of genre signifiers tacked on almost as an afterthought.
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TheLiberation
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 09, 2013 11:41 pm 
 

Conservationism wrote:
TheLiberation wrote:
What? Devin Townsend's entire discography is basically a living definition of "fuck the system" (in terms of songwriting, lyrics, genres, and a ton of other things), and Animals as Leaders and generally more ambitious djent bands tend to do quite a lot of rhythmic and melodic experiments which are hardly the norm.


Everything these bands have done was done better in the 1970s. I don't want to be cruel, but there's nothing exceptional about Devin Townshend -- he sounds like a typical late hardcore experiment with slightly better chops -- and Animals as Leaders is a re-hash of 1970s jazz fusion, just with occasional power chord riffs.

o_O Going by this line of thinking, gothic rock was basically done better by Elvis (deep vocals and everything), they just added a bit darker themes.
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Conservationism
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 1:17 am 
 

TheLiberation wrote:
Going by this line of thinking, gothic rock was basically done better by Elvis (deep vocals and everything), they just added a bit darker themes.


Or that Elvis was better done by Beethoven. (It's important to keep a realistic scope, don't you think?)
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vengefulgoat
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 9:09 am 
 

As much as Opeth indeed have many problems with writing good music - it's still unfair to compare a band with sparks of huge talent, if not genius, with pseudoambitious tryhard fifth rate prog like Ne Obliviscaris.

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Conservationism
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 10, 2013 9:11 am 
 

Opeth has genius? Opeth are the fifth-raters who invaded death metal with their generic "prog" alternative rock and claimed it was genius. Claiming genius does not make it so ;)
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