Recent Music Taste

So ever since a friend of mine, Richard, gave me a cd by a band named Divine Heresy I’ve really been loving my extreme metal. As a music lover, I listen to a very wide range of music, everything from classical and operatic pieces through to heavy metal and even some dance at times, and I love it all.

But until now I’ve never really listened to the extreme metal. I don’t know why, I’ve just never really been into it, I’ve heard it and even enjoyed it at times, but never listened to it a lot. So what is extreme metal?

Extreme metal is standard metal on speed. These guys take normal metal riffs, and play them at triple speed, so where Lamb Of God’s fastest tracks are around 210 – 220bpm, these guys are playing songs at 280bpm and sometimes even faster. And of course it’s seldom in standard time signature [Nile have a song in 16/7. I don’t even know how you can play that at 267bpm] and usually the guitar pieces are super complex.

In my opinion extreme metal is cool, but it only exhibits two aspects of good music: Namely speed and technicality. There is however a host of other skills that make music great, these things include:

Speed [mentioned above]
Technicality and Complexity [mentioned above]
Musicality [melody]
Emotional Connection
Listening Ease [very subjective]

As well as many more things I’ve not mentioned here. In my opinion no single band can exhibit all of these aspects, which is why I love listening to so many different styles of music.

For example, Dream Theater is one of my favorite bands. They have the technicality and complexity, the melody lines as well as some of the speed but not the emotional connection.

Music is an interesting medium, which we use to express emotion, and I suppose the various attributes of music are an expression of those emotions in different forms. I suppose that’s why I love so many different forms of music, because they express different emotions that I am feeling.

Here are some of the bands I listen to:
Metal
Lamb Of God
Killswitch Engage
As I Lay Dying
Shadows Fall
Underoath
Trivium
Threat Signal
In Flames
Dimmu Borgir
Arch Enemy
Chimaira

Extreme Metal
Divine Heresy
Nile
As Blood Runs Black
Zao

Progressive Rock
Dream Theater
Porcupine Tree
Oceansize
Joe Satriani
John Petrucci
Yngwie Malmsteen

Rock
Foo Fighters
Arctic Monkeys
System of a Down
Breaking Benjamin
Coldplay

Blues
Eric Clapton
BB King
John Mayer

Jazz
Kirk Whalum
Jonathan Butler
Miles Davis
Jamie Cullum

Classical
Mozart
Chopin
Bach
Beethoven



My mom says that she can tell what mood I’m in depending on what I’m listening to, but I guess that’s the point of music isn’t it? It’s an outlet, and one I’m proud of. So what do you use music for? Is it just to get psyched, or is it a noise in your life? All I can say is it’s an extremely powerful tool that can bring joy to anyone who chooses to use it.