In response to pianist's post, this is the kind of thing a lot of metalheads cream themselves over. If you play long enough, you can have better technique than anyone in G3, Nile, Nevermore, what have you. I have a friend who can play all of Joe Satriani's 'Strange Beautiful Music' and he's only been playing for four years. What does he like to play? Post-Black Metal in the vein of Wolves of the Throne Room. Not because it's harder to play, but because it's more fun to write. Not a 'solo' in sight.
There's a Diabolical Masquerade song that is basically an electric version of the last 2 minutes or so of the 2nd movement of Scheherazade. Not really orgasmic, and not really a solo, but it has something to do with Scheherazade, which I like.
And the solo in Arsis' 'A Diamond For Disease' is pretty nice. Everything cuts out except for the accompanying melody from the previous phrase as the lead guitar solo starts.
Other than that, I got nothing. A lot of the solos I like are written to sound like part of the song they're in, not a mini-song while the rest of the band plays in the background.
The OP specifically asked for non-cookie-cutter vocals. That means all metalcore/death metal/viking metal/most ridiculously dumb power metal (I'm looking specifically at Dragonforce)/black metal, etc., is out. Dream Theater is kinda iffy. Depends on how proggy you like your music. If your favorite Genesis song was "Land of Confusion", then Dream Theater is not gonna cut it. There's a ****load of stoner metal you'd probably like if you're into the classic rock stuff: Orange Goblin, Kyuss, Electric Wizard. And trying to find good metal bands with a female vocalist is hard. Nightwish is alright, but most other 'symphonic metal' (as it's fans like to call it) is not very good. A lot of prog-death bands like to have a female co-singer for operatic passages and stuff.
The only 'metal' band I can really recommend that is proggy at all and has a female vocalist is Aghora.
I'm not saying what you're doing is a bad idea, but have you heard of Gamasutra? They list all job openings in the development community as they come out. Maybe your blog could just pinpoint a few and discuss them or something.
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