The socalled devils music.

[KjeXXXer]

Hey, abit of a long shot but:
Does anyone in here listen to some proper god damn metal music?



Thought not.
What is the first thought that entered you head whilst reading this post?
I'm interested what the members here think of it (if you even care), because I often compare Cohens music with that of my favorite bands. Because there are bands who can offer the same substance in their music as that of Cohen.

[Teratogen]

Look at my face. What do you think?

[John Etherington]

Hi Kje etc.

To qualify your statement, could you please tell us who these bands are, and give us a sample of their lyrics?!

[KjeXXXer]

Look at my face. What do you think?

I think you enjoy your black metal black as friggin black.

To qualify my earlier statement, John (call me Axel btw), I will post some lyrics that I find excellent. Before I do, I'd just like to say that my earlier statement was somewhat opinionated, I live and breathe this music, so my view might differ abit from yours.

In The Mist She Was Standing by Opeth, lyrics by Mikael Åkerfeldt.

Seven milestones...
Under a watching autumn eye
Contorted trees are spreading forth
The message of the wind

With frozen hands I rode with the stars

With anger the wind blew
Giving wings to my stallion
Clouds gathered across the moon
Blazing the white light

Passing the lake I know so well
I am near, yet so far away

Arrival...
I saw her shadow (standing) in the darkness
Awaiting me like the night
Awaits the day
Standing silent smiling at my presence
A black candle holds the only light

Darkness encloses
And the candle seem to expire
In her cold, cold hand
And as a forlorn soul
It will fade away

Touching her flesh in this night
My blood froze forever
Embraced before the dawn
A kiss brought total eclipse

And she spoke
Once and forever
I am so cold
In mist enrobed the twilight
She was standing...

I feel it should be added that Opeth, while at times being very brutal and malevolent, the heavy parts more often than not give way for accoustic guitar interludes with lush, haunting melodies and soft, warm vocals. Opeth's music abounds with progressive influences from bands like Yes and Camel. To Bid You Farewell is four parts mellow, soft guitarrock and one part heavy riffing. Opeth are from Stockholm, Sweden.

To Bid You Farewell

I am awaiting the sunrise
Gazing modestly through the coldest morning
Once it came you lied
Embracing us over autumn's proud treetops

I stand motionless
In a parade of falling rain
Your voice I cannot hear
As I am falling again

Devotion eludes
And in sadness I lumber
In my own ashes I am standing without a soul
She wept and whispered: "I know..."

We walked into the night
Am I to bid you farewell?

Why can't you see that I try
When every tear I shed
Is for you?

Meshuggah are also from Stockholm. They are known for being insanely technical for the hell of it. They also have cool lyrics, about everything from fear to electricity. For those not in the know, their moniker means "insane" or the equivilent in Jiddish.

Spasm
[Lyrics: Tomas Haake]

Stroboscopic contortion-assault. Light bulb language
translated into fits
Codes of tendon-flickers I can't grasp. Focus lost as
I writhe and twitch
Random beats of blinding shockwaves. Erratic suns
that twist my eyes
Flashes pounding at my thoughts as the intrinsic pains
multiply

Muscle and tissue twined with every violent lash
Battered by an unrelenting shine
Immobilized by the increasing pains,
the procreating agonies of system breakdown

Lightwave frequency body-oscillation. Undeciphered
motions pass through my flesh
Bodily reverberation induced. A corporeal system lost
in its waves
Bleached into their existence by tremulous epileptic
strokes
Blasts of irregular pulsar-radiation - Triggering the
process of mind and body control

Lost to their control
A sentence - in flashes told
Enticed by their calls; - Insane, divine

Torn, undone, dissolved
By incandescent gods condemned
Burned. Their mark on my soul
To my inverted shadow confined

Twisted, spun. Vertebras and spinal column unaligned
Joints shattered and torn apart. Spasm-rendered
distortion
Organic spiral. Stretched and torn into a new
creation
A worldless thing, a thingless word. Lightborn
malformation

Nile are from Greenville, SC, but their Brutal Death Metal is all about middle eastern influences, often using the Baglama Saz and other middle eastern instruments to colour their music. Their lyrics usually concern different aspects of the culture in Ancient Egypt, and are often acompanied by an essay explaining the background of the song. This song is about Ramses II The Great, also known as User-Maat-Re Sete-Pene-Re, and his struggle to outdo his father, Seti The Great.

User-Maat-Re
[Lyrics by Karl Sanders]

O Seti, Great One, My Father.
I Hath Finished for Thee Thy Temple at Abydos.
And Made Known the Lineage of the Blessed.
Those Who Came Before.
I Hath Exalted Mine Ancestors.
I Hath Honoured with the Blood and Sweat of Many.
The Legacy of Thy Conquests.

T Hath Glorified Thy Temple of Set in Avaris.
In Karnak, Hath I Raised the Great Hall.
In Thebes, Sublime Monuments, Grand Pylons, Obelisks
And Colossal Statues Are Inscribed With My Name.
By Divine Right I Hath Usurped the Monuments of My Predecessors.

I Hath Created Imposing Rock Hewn Temples.
Monumental Colossi in Mine Own Image.
Like as unto the Images of Amun, Re, Ptah.
I Hath Caused to Rise a Formidable Legacy Carved in Stone.
In the Mountain of Meha.
Intended to Endure a Million Years.

In the Violence of Sekhem.
I am Become Montu,
God of War in the Two Lands.
I Hath Suppressed the Rebellious.
I Hath Driven Back Chaos and Disorder.
The Conquered Chiefs of All Foreign Lands are Beneath My Sandals.
I Hath Emblazoned My Countless Victories in Immortality.
Carved in Rocks as Living Images of the Ritual Massacre of Mine Enemies.

I am User-Maat-Re Setepene-re,
Sovereign of Sovereigns,
Beloved of Amun,
Chosen of Re,
I Hath Made Manifest the Grandeur of My Empire.
To be Worthy of Thy Legacy.
O Seti, Great One.

User-Maat-Re, Thou Hast Done Nothing.
User-Maat-Re, Thou Hast Done Nothing.

I have more, but that'd be to much for one post.
If anyone wants a listen, I can suply mp3's. I'd recommend To Bid You Farewell, it's beautiful.

[Teratogen]

Ah, I see that you are rather privvy to the latter day metal. Something for which I care little about. My brand of metal hails mostly from the '80s and early/mid '90s. Though I do get a mighty kick out of Dragonforce. I own a CD of theirs. I've always had a soft spot (a large one at that) for '80s metal. There is nothing quite like it in this world. But with the advent of grunge and the rise of industrial in the mid-'90s that scene faded quickly. I believe the last great band to fit the genre of metal/hard rock/alternative was Marilyn Manson with their first album, Portrait of an American Family in 1994. I've been a fan of his ever since and consider Manson to be my favorite band/artist, but I think that pretty much after their first release did that brand of metal begin to fade. It's like when Charles Manson killed the hippie movement of the '60s, well, Marilyn Manson killed the metal scene of the '80s and early '90s.

[KjeXXXer]

Interesting stuff, thanks fo replying! Apart from Metallica, who are my favorite band, and more obscure stuff like Death and Celtic Frost, I don't really care for the 80's scene.
The nineties aren't that interesting either, with the exception of Opeth, Meshuggah, SOAD, and still: Metallica.
I find that the mainstreem metal scene is pretty shoddy and samey. It's when you dig a little deeper you find god music, as examplified by said bands. Another example I just discovered is Alcest from the french underground, who really writes beautiful stuff. They have a new record out in August that I have every intention of getting.

[Teratogen]

Well I was heavy into Metallica in junior high. I own all of their albums now, but as I got older I just felt that most of their music was a little too juvenile. I didn't relate to it anymore. And most people trash on albums like Load and Re-Load, but I thought they were great. Everyone will always tell you their favorite Metallica album is Master of Puppets, but mine has always been Ride the Lightning. And, believe it or not, right below that I think Garage, Inc. was their second best. I know they didn't write any of the songs on that double album, but they very well could have. Every song (especially the early covers on Disc 2) is played with so much drenching hard-rock swagger that you can tell they put a lot into playing other peoples' songs. I mean, they started out as a cover band, let's not forget.

The main problem I have with most of the metal that's out there today, mainstream or not, is that there is no happy medium for rhythm anymore. I hear no riffs. I hear no hooks. I grew up listening to oldies, branched out into modern music in the '90s, then explored classic rock very deeply in high school, and then came upon artists such as Cohen, Lou Reed, T. Rex, and several others that nobody really knows at the end of high school/beginning of college... and I'm only 23. But back to my argument: perhaps I'm just not listening to a wide variety of metal these days, but what I have listened to all I hear is swampy distorted guitars that sound like they've been tuned to Z, everybody's playing 5 or 6 string basses now, and I just can't stand the shrilling screams. It's either a shrilling scream or a gutbusting bellow that sounds like they're on permanent cough mode. I tried it a couple times and it made me cough a lot. My larynx can't handle it. But it's like I said, I see no happy medium between hard heavy riffs and at least some rhythm. Sure, some bands throw in some melody in there like System of a Down and then everyone thinks they're so great. But even when they get hard and heavy it's just as I described above: too swampy and tuned way too low to even be able to tell what notes are being played. But even if they tune so low you can at least try to create some kind of rhythm. The chord structures just throw me way off. But to me a band like Dragonforce gets it. Granted I think there are sometimes WAY too many solos, it's still WAY more listenable than this black metal/speed metal/death metal/Viking metal fix. Some of the guys that play this music just look like a bunch of backwoods rednecks. I'm surprised they haven't plugged in a banjo and tuned it down to C.

At least the metal that came out of the '80s had riffs, had rhythm, and had a sense of humor about itself. If it wasn't tongue-in-cheek it was sappy power ballad, and you can't really turn your back on those. Remember: every bad boy has his soft side. And I much prefer when someone is singing along to it instead of screaming or bellowing. It can be done... really! You remind me of my stepbrother. Somehow he started getting into metal and I thought, Great! But he won't even listen to the stuff I listen to. He thinks it's not hard enough. Hard enough doesn't mean shit. Rock and roll is what it's all about, and frankly, I don't hear much rock and roll in any of this neo-metal. I tell ya, it ain't what it used to be.

[KjeXXXer]

The whole tongue-in-cheek thing disagrees with me. I seek out this music as an outlet for destructive feelings and anger, not to have a laugh.
But I recommend to you:
System Of A Down - Mezmerize/Hypnotize
Mastodon - Remission; Leviathan; Blood Mountain

SOAD (at least on said records) have that tongue-in-cheek element to them, they're really ridiculous (don't mistake this for ridicule though). Mastodon take a type of thrash/hard rock and lead it out into the vast soundscapes of prog rock.

[Teratogen]

Well, like I said, not ALL of it is tongue-in-cheek. I mean, heavy metal has its uses other than that. I can't listen to anything KISS did in the '80s to get my frustrations out. For stuff like that I usually turn to Manson or Nine Inch Nails or something to get that out. One can't be angry too much in life anyhow. So claiming that the use of listening to metal (and it being your favorite type of music) would lead someone to believe that the listener is highly troubled if they are seemingly angry all the damn time. I can't use heavy metal as a justification to be angry either. Just like I'm not gonna listen to love songs all day long to make myself feel like I'm happy. Personally if I'm angry and want to listen to something in tune with my mood I'd be paying more attention to the lyrics anyhow. I dunno, for some it may be a sonic thing, to just hear the thrashing guitars and machine gun drums.

Besides, even if it is tongue-in-cheek it isn't just for the laughs. Look at Guns 'N Roses. Granted they only had one album (their first) in the late '80s, but you wouldn't want to be laughing at their music. It's a whole style thing anyway, this '80s metal music. Some may laugh at it now, mainly because it's so over-the-top and remembered as tongue-in-cheek, but back then the metalheads ruled the rock world with that music.

[KjeXXXer]

Listening to Manson or GnR doesn't really give me anything, it doesn't do anything for me. Nowadays I have to go to bands like Nile and Meshuggah if I'm upset, because they take me away from all of the stuff that might be on my mind.

In those cases, it's very much about the sonic release, filling you ear with real angry stuff. But it's also about the lyrics, IE Nile's Cast Down The Heretic, concerning the bloody dethroning of the Pharao Ahkneton (who tried to convert the Egyptian society to monothism, and was later cast down by the priests of Ra and the like), or Meshuggah's latest record Catch 33, which is all about panic and fear and being immersed in some great abstract darkness.

[Teratogen]

Do you not see how over-the-top that stuff is as well? Sure, the music of '80s metal was quite over-the-top, with everything in high reverb and 100 vocals layered over each other, but.... a metal band singing about ancient Egypt of all things? And describe to me what "abstract darkness" is. I fail to see the distinction. At least the subject matter of the metal to come out of the '80s was fairly simple, earthy emotions. Sure, Metallica dabbled in some of that Egyption stuff ("Creeping Death"), but if memory serves it was one song out of their entire library. Even bands like Anthrax and Iron Maiden touched on subjects involving Native Americans. While that's not as far out there as ancient Egypt it's still quite a bit of a stretch for metal bands. But hey, at least they had riffs, hooks, and rhythms. Most people would laugh at it, but when I go to a record store and I see a CD with a band called Nile that plays metal music about ancient Egypt I usually tend to laugh. And I've heard of Meshuggah before. I think I've seen a CD of theirs. It was around the time Slipknot began getting popular and they just seemed like a rip-off with everyone looking like the Spider-Man villain Venom. It's comical. There's no way I can take that seriously.

[KjeXXXer]

No, I don't see how any of it is over the top, neither the 80's stuff nor the more recent music. The multiple vocallayering was probably put in a song for a reason, either to evoke a certain feel, or just because it fit the song, and it's the same with the rest.
Why shouldn't Nile concern themselves with Ancient Egypt, or H.P. Lovecraft? Nile are all about telling a story, and both the archaic culture and the literary mythos are great sources for that purpose. Listeners hear the grandour of the music, and at the same time they learn a few things, and get interested in the themes and tales that are touched upon by the band.
And Nile have got plenty of riffs, hooks and rythms. The type of riffs is very different from say Maiden, they have a different purpose and a different orientation, but they're still riffs. And Nile arent all about the brutal attack, they have ambient tracks with accoustic guitars, horns, etc.

As for Meshuggah, they cannot in any way be compared to Slipknot, the music is too different, both in terms of complexity and intention, as well as quality. And Meshuggah have never sported any makeup or anything, they're thrash at heart, they're just four guys with really long hair (the singer shaves his head but you get the picture). No image at all.

The abstract darkness I mentioned.. There's no proper explaination for it, it's what the lyrics hint at throughout the album, it's all about losing yourself in insanity and not having any control at all, a descent from humanity.

[dar]

Kids. What are you gonna do? ha. My daughter Gina has been a music promoter since the kid was 13 and you two might like some of her bands. She's always broke but that's the way it goes. I love her. Here's some shameless promotion for one of her sites. If you're ever in Sacramento, and want to go to a show, just tell her "Your mom said put me on the list". O, and you can say hi on her space so she knows not all Cohen fans are "old people". hehe
http://www.myspace.com/supergiantproductions.

[KjeXXXer]

OK, I did that, only hope I had the right Gina.

[Manna]

When I read the title of this thread, I got very excited because I thought it was going to be about old-timey, which once went by the same name, the fiddle itself once having the moniker "Devil's Box."