There are a lot of problems with metal composition from my point of view, and I rarely enjoy complete works by these composers. Oftentimes, I find individual themes compelling, but the works in their entirety suffer from lack of genuine development and contrast, which makes them quite boring to listen to after a few minutes. Too sectional and repetitive, especially on the motivic level. Take time to study the music, and you'll find that despite claims to the contrary by die hard fans who believe this to be the pinnacle of Western music development, this music is very similiar to much maligned pop music at its core, with generally limited harmony and counterpoint (if there's any counterpoint at all, that is), a great deal of motivic repetition, and sectional form. As for the solos that separate the genre from its less virtuosic cousins... they're loud and fast, yes, but as virtuosity goes in Western music, they don't really impress. Scales, arpeggios, and repeating figuration - the basis of shredding - are not very interesting to me. Admittedly, being an extremely proficient musician myself doesn't help, as it is much more difficult to impress me now than it was when I was less experienced. To those with only limited experience with instrumental performance, I'm sure what these guys do seems almost impossibly difficult.
And then there's the drumset hammering away... which deserves its own paragraph because it irritates me so much. Maybe I'm in a minority here, but I don't need the beat pounded into my skull by a drumset. I'm perfectly capable of figuring out where the beat is with simple, metrical rhythmic patterns and a total dearth of rubato. And I frankly find it downright irritating to listen to music where fortissimo is the softest dynamic level for minutes on end, and where simple terms like "crescendo" and "diminuendo" have no place at all. The pounding drumset is largely responsible for this, because the players seemingly have no concept whatsoever of balance and just pound the living **** out of their instruments, forcing everything to be constantly loud. That's OK in small doses. In fact, it works really, really well in small doses. But it's a technique which is completely and utterly abused in metal composition as far as I'm concerned, and it has no effect on me at all when it's treated not as a contrast, but as the staple.
Beyond these technical issues, I also find the genre is trapped in a very narrow emotional range. I've listened to a great deal of this music through suggestions made by users on GS over the years, and frankly, I find there is very little emotional variety in these works. Anger and/or depression in varying degrees sums up just about every piece I have heard in this genre. There's nothing wrong with exploring such emotions in music, but there IS something wrong with providing a steady diet of nothing but those emotions. And more to the point, there are many different ways to produce an emotion that are ignored by metal composers. Eliciting sadness or pain in the major mode, for example. I've never heard this in metal.
In essence, the genre doesn't impress me mostly because it is too stagnant musically and emotionally. But it's still far more interesting music than most Western popular music genres, and one of the few that has produced works I have been compelled to listen to more than once from beginning to end. As the genre matures, perhaps we'll see it approach the lofty goal it has of producing truly sophisticated music.
pianist
i always feel bad when i do this, because youve already been bombarded by dozens of others.i have a feeling that youll like this. if you ever want to listen to metal that focuses on more emotions than anger or depression, i suggest you check out the rest of the album. i feel refreshed and uplifted after i listen to the whole album.
one thing im never quite sure of when you make your posts is whether or not youve heard the good metal bands, or atleast the ones i consider to have gotten the right aesthetic (i know. i know. you start to get into very subjective terms in this sort of territory) of metal. this is what id say is the proper aesthetic of death metal. its overbearing. its loud. its repetitive compared to a refined genre like classical music. its ugly. but those are all the point of the music. id say that death metal isnt so much geared towards bulding to a few emotional exclamations like mahler, but rather subjecting the listener to a continual atmosphere. that song, it terms of what it reflects on the listener, isnt particularly energetic. but, again, thats the point. its supposed to be oppressive. i dont expect you to be some metalhead (or to even like the song, for that matter), but i think you should atleast be exposed to some themes of the genre that may not have been fully present in other examples.
i could go to more examples of extreme metal that are composed better than gorguts (and there are, if you ever want a listen), but i feel that the most important part is that many subgenres of metal have different goals than classical music and you may be looking for something that isnt there. also, i dont want to give you hours of music to listen to, just to respond to the post :P
i do hope you enjoyed gordian knot though.
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