Complexity heavier than distortion+growls+blastbeats

[Koi]

id call it boring

and slow

i dont think its particularly heavy, its just fifths and fifths dont have an especially heavy or dark sound, but i guess its heavy for opeth. but i think blastbeats are pretty heavy

so you think heavy needs to be dark?
I wasn't claiming anything, i was just curious.
Why do you think blastbeats are heavy, because it's fast?
What's fast, is it the amount of snaredrum hits?
Are dragonforce and powermetal bands in general therefore heavy?

This could go on and on forever, it leads to one thing and one thing only:
heavy is just a subjective complimenting term in metal music that cannot be interpretated.

 

[Vuashke]

because blastbeats mix the timbre of 3 different types of drums at once and play them very fast. like machine gun fire

ive never seen any blastbeats in power metal

 

[Koi]

well wouldn't you say the basic powermetal drumming sounds like avery fast machine gun fire? ... why is "fast" the same as "heavy"?

 

[Vuashke]

its a mix of what i said before

 

[dwoakee]

I quantify heaviness by how high my VBR encoder takes the sample rate.
Heaviest Opeth song: Godhead's Lament: 1102 kbps
Lightest Opeth song: Weakness: 504 kbps
Jethro Tull - Songs from the Wood: 973 kbps
VDGG - A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers: 906 kbps

Metal is heavier eod.

Using the bitrate is a good idea, but imo it measures both complexity and heaviness, because both increase the bit rate because both increase the amount of different frequencies in the song. Also, your example does not prove that metal is heavier, because Opeth is pretty complex metal. And Songs from the wood isn't even that far away from Godhead's Lament.

 

[Wander]

^That is pretty interesting tho, I think. What kind of rate would basic (monotonous) metal songs get?

 

[dwoakee]

Dunno. Try ripping the opening part of Master's Apprentice . Or Manowar's "The Demon's Whip".

 

[Xarthaz]

Come on guys, stop trying to act like smartasses and proclaim how heaviness is all subjective and the differences between musican genres are all relative. Make up your fucking mind about the subject and choose A or B instead of beating around the bush like an imbecile. The "Maybe", "depends" and "I dunno" options in polls are the most counterproductive features ever in surveys.

Of course there will be exceptions to the rule but in general every music genre has its "mainstream", its common characteristics which can be used for judging it. By defining heavyness as the perceived sense of darkness and hopelessness, I say that metal indeed is heavier than other genres.

Oh, and voted "Shit Thread" by the way.

 

[beast from the east]

Come on guys, stop trying to act like smartasses and proclaim how heaviness is all subjective and the differences between musican genres are all relative. Make up your fucking mind about the subject and choose A or B instead of beating around the bush like an imbecile. The "Maybe", "depends" and "I dunno" options in polls are the most counterproductive features ever in surveys.

Of course there will be exceptions to the rule but in general every music genre has its "mainstream", its common characteristics which can be used for judging it. By defining heavyness as the perceived sense of darkness and hopelessness, I say that metal indeed is heavier than other genres.

Oh, and voted "Shit Thread" by the way.

Heaviness is totally subjective - yes indeed, it is. Some people consider Godsmack heavy...:Smug:

 

[opeth8]

The last time I saw Metallica, JH asked the crowd if we wanted some heavy shit
then said it's time for some heavy shit
then played
'Sad But True'
so that must be heavy...right ??

Sure it's subjective, but I've always considered heavy, to be a cohesive mix of crushing guitars, bass & drums.

 

[Braighs]

Using the bitrate is a good idea, but imo it measures both complexity and heaviness, because both increase the bit rate because both increase the amount of different frequencies in the song. Also, your example does not prove that metal is heavier, because Opeth is pretty complex metal. And Songs from the wood isn't even that far away from Godhead's Lament.

I don't rip all my cd's at cd quality VBR (flac), but the highest 50 songs are all metal (the streak was interrupted by Outkast wtf). I have plenty of prog too but they are mostly in the 800-950 range while metal is consistently >900kbps.

However, with cd's I ripped as mid quality mp3's, prog took the highest bit rates.

My theory is that the encoder first looks for musical complexity and then encodes nuances like grimness and pain.