Classical music influence on heavy metal

Wow, I remember Mekong Delta's "dances of death" with the "night on a bare mountain" cover. Insane stuff. But Mussorgsky is more on the contemporary music side...
 
Ether for Breakfast: Ditto on Emperor. Though I was going to suggest "Prometheus - The Discipline Of Fire & Demise".
Very classical stuructures and movements throughout the album. At times it's more classical music played by metal instruments rather than a band playing metal music with classical parts (if that makes sense).
 
You should mention Believer and their "Sanity Obscure" (on Roadrunner) album for beeing one
of the first metal bands that included classical instruments and vocals in a Thrash Metal song. And that was in 1990.
Their album "Dimension" recorded in 1993 is completely based an on classical arrangements and instruments mixed with Thrash Metal.
 
I have to go to work, so sorry for no elaboration, but you might want to consider some of the earlier songs from In Flames and Soilwork (although in In Flames' case, it might be more Celtic than classical), and Nightwish is also VERY operatic. There's also this Evergrey song with a name I can't remember that is very classical.

Oh, and not so much metal, but if you slow down most of Andrew W.K.'s songs and use harpsichords instead of guitar, it'll sound EXACTLY like Bach. :p
 
Thanks for all the help so far guys, I've got 70% of the essay done now and I've got around 3hrs to complete it. I'm just using the book "Running with the devil" to describe the musical foundations of heavy metal, in specific the power chord and use of the 7 modes. I should have it done in the next hour or so...just a case of carefully padding it out.
 
Razorjack said:
I'm talking about Nile thoughm as an example of where metal is progressing compared to the stale state of classical.
dude classical music has progressed for centuries (and i'm not sure it still isn't)... you can't compare nile with that - lol or maybe you can, i'm not that knowledgeable, but what you said just sounded really weird

btw can you share your paper with us? :)
 
prowlergrig said:
dude classical music has progressed for centuries (and i'm not sure it still isn't)... you can't compare nile with that - lol or maybe you can, i'm not that knowledgeable, but what you said just sounded really weird

btw can you share your paper with us? :)

The question itself was on "Elite" music and it's relationship to "Popular" music. Elite being classical music, popular being everything else. The comment was....weird you're right, but I stand by the fact that besides the late Michael Kamen there have not been many classical composers taking the risks with their music like their predecessors.

Nile actually ended up being cut out as I couldn't write a coherant explaination of their music (I've had 2hrs sleep in 3 days).

I should be able to share the essay, although I will have to wait until it is marked (which will actually be around a month or so, my uni is slow) as if they google part of it and it comes up on the net they will automatically mark it as plagiarised!!