Metal

Nelive 13

† Nelive's Metal

Metal spirit

For the Truth of Art

For the Cult of Eternity

For the Strength of Warrior

and For the Love of Nature

    A kind of artistic work that can deeply express various emotions from sadness, despair to anger, craziness and the epic of different cultures in the world especially Viking culture with the strong and vehement spirit of the artists, Metal itself discriminates from the rest. That's where you can find the true values of art. Art is for art itself, not for money!

    My expectation in metal is the spirit, the philosophy and reflection of some social issues. The lyrics are important and when I started with Metal, I usually took a look through the lyrics --- one way to evaluate the song or the album. I found out a new branch of Metal so-called Viking Metal and was soon fully inspired. The epic north European culture and Viking spirit totally convinced me. I listen most to Melodic Death Metal and Viking Metal after that.

    My purpose here is not to show you all the immense world of Metal but briefly talk about the abundant branches of Metal and their main themes. And i will focus on the branches that I myself have been favouring most.

    Metal is a very broad term to describe the kind of music that originated from heavy rock in the 60s and 70s of the previous century. In Metal, people normally divide into two groups: mainstream underground and the commercial ones. The bands in the latter put heavy weight on the commercial side of their music. Many of them are the so-called nu metal nowadays. Their music is made to survive in the market. The artistic work is catchy at first but would hardly be anything really special or of highly skilled techniques. The advanced and hard-to-play elements are eliminated, most of the sounds are created by the electronic instruments. The lyrics are usually about personal issues that one can easily meet in the daily life of young generation. Whilst in true Metal, the artists always try to do their best to contribute real and highly appreciated artistic works. The music part is done carefully. The artists always try new ideas to give the very best results. Guitar techniques like lead, riff are widely used. Various elements like flute, violin and even mandolin are also used to give very good effects. The vocal part plays an important role especially in Death/Black Metal. The vocalists have to put a lot of hard work in order to have such strong, harsh and threatening vocal. The range of Metal lyrics is very broad, from personal struggle, social issues to beautiful nature and even science. But generally, they are all very philosophic. The main themes are usually dark, sad, depressed and angry. Each of the element, from music, vocal to lyric, expresses the thinkings, feelings very well, expressively and deeply. It is not as accommodating as the commercial music when it requires the listeners to pay full attention and really feel it in order to understand it.

    Metal is very copious. It has many many branches with different styles of playing music and expressing feelings. Bands of one branch can also borrow elements from other branches to create extraordinary styles. The artists are really creative! The main branches/sub-branches of Metal can be cited here are:

The links refer to a very good, in my opinion, description of Metal Genres in general. Check it out and hope you will be convinced.

My Own Taste of Metal

I like Melodic Death Metal, Doom Metal, Symphonic Metal, Viking/Folk Metal. My favorite bands are: Novembre, Insomnium, Opeth, Borknagar, Summoning, Thy Serpent, Amon Amarth, Dark Tranquillity, Dark Lunacy, Mors Principium Est, Swallow The Sun, Agalloch, Katatonia, Saturnus, Savatage, Haggard, Therion, Ensiferum, Equilibrium, Moonsorrow, Månegarm.

©2012 Nelive