Melodic Madness

This post is going to be all about metal. But seeing as I have not done any metal before and I know there are not a lot of metal fans around here, I will start off slowly with it by doing more of the musical side of the awesomely diverse genre. By going with the easier side of things here it will probably be bands that even if you are a metal fan you might not know.

First up I am going to list Opeth. These guys are one of my favourite metal bands because of their musical talent and diversity. Opeth is generally known as being a very heavy dark sounding band, But! they have a lighter side with a very wonderful musical back ground. This is a band that is not in metal because they like to just through out heavy chugging riffs and growl into the mic. They are into it because of the opportunity it provides to use many different musical backgrounds in one piece. Mikael Akerfeldt the lead singer of Opeth is a very well renowned singer in europes music scene. He has leant his voice to many other albums for bands throughout the "Fantasy Metal" scene, including work for the legendary Arjen Lucassen with his album 01011001 under the band Ayreon. The two songs I am going to show you are from Opeths album Watershed which is their latest release.

The First song is Burden and my favourite from the album. This song is a really good example of how you can blend different musical styles into one song in metal. You will hear them using Jazz influences in parts, a very heavy Blues influence for the guitar solos and a little bit of classical guitar for the outro.




The second song is Porcelain Heart



The second band I am going to do is Rhapsody (of fire). (These guys are super awesome if you are driving through a really mystical looking forest). Their guitarist Lucca Turilli is quite well known throughout Europe as well as the lead singer Fabio Lione. Both of them were also featured on Arjen Lucassens album 01. This is a hard band to appreciate if you don't enjoy theater or opera even the slightest. One thing that does gives them a whole bunch of street cred is that they were able to get Christopher Lee (Saurumon - Lord of the Rings) to do the narrating for all of their albums. Sorry that paragraph was all over the place and really really bad. Here's a couple of songs.



This second on is really really long, but you should watch because it kind of feels like a lifetime achievement being able to say "I've watched the full copy of Rhapsody's Unholy Warcry. Plus it is a really epic song.