diggin for more beautiful music from bands like Opeth

[DemonOfTheFall]

well, i have ALL of Opeth's albums, and love them to death man. Opeth rules, the riffage, the epiccity of the tracks, the grumbling bass, growling vocals, and the clean beautiful vocals for that matter! the acoustics, and above all the cocepts of all these coming together to form that perfect harmony.

i've been listening to Opeth since about May this year, they are definitely 'the band of this year' for me; however, i had to digg to find Opeth, and digging for these goldmines are my hobbies. i come from a place so far away (deserts of California) from where Opeth's music has most influence, people around here are like "what's an Opeth?" i search and scour everything to find that 'next phaze' of music in my life. as of now, Opeth has a huge fix on me, but my digging continues. i like to find these *new to me* bands that just blow me away as Opeth has. it all started a while back with bands like In Flames, then Iced Earth, Nevermore, and somewhere along the line Opeth (my favorite of all that i listed, but In Flames must be acredited to opening my mind to anything descreetly like this).

i'm a musician (guitarist), and this is my senior in high school; if all goes well i'll end up going to Musician's Institute in Hollywood. i'm currently trying to perfect my craft, and trying to draw as much MUSICAL influence as possible before i go. harmony, difficulty, and alike musical concepts are what i'm focused on; and any bands that have such diverse styles of play (such as Opeth) are what i'm looking for.

so i'm just askin if anybody knows about those unique and special bands that blow your mind (wow! i never heard anything like that before!).

thanx if u bothered to read this post, i appreciate it, anybody else here planning to be a proffessional musician (whatever u consider that)?

 

[Morningrise]

Hey man, welcome, I love to see introductions such as these (most are boring... ) First I have a question for you; is the music school in Hollywood you are talking about the Guitar Institute of Technology? I am just curious as I wish to get into that school as well...
Anyways on to your question...

Agalloch- A band that is quite a bit slower, and more melancholic. But similar to Opeth in song arrangements. They have like a slow almost Cure-like Black metal sound (correct me if I am wrong fellow Opethian's.) Check them out at www.theendrecords.com

Hollenthon- I found out about these guys a few months ago and actually introduced a few members to the group, many have loved them so far. They are very symphonic, with a kind of melodic death metal sound to them as well. They have an epic sound, but not too similar to Opeth just chekc them out they RULE!!

Throes of Dawn- This is a band I got into through the Opeth board. They are an amazing black metal band, one of the best out there I believe! Acoustics, atmosphere, epic, beauty, it is the Black metal version of Opeth!!! Gotta love em.

Some also really like the bands "...In the Woods" and "Katatonia" I do not care for either of these bands too much, but both have kind of a sound similar to Opeth. I think the members of the board can tell you about these groups. I hope I helped and I look forward to meeting you on the board!

 

[DemonOfTheFall]

yes in fact, i did speak of the Guitar Institute of Technology (G.I.T.) located in Hollywood, in brief and included with the other musical institutes it's referred to as "Musician's Institute"; and awesome, maybe someday we'll meet

anyway, wow, thanx, i'll look into those bands soon. and i've heard of Katatonia, i even have some of their songs. i like some of them, but others i don't...

so you play guitar too eh? how long? what draws your inspiration?

anyway, as u can see i'm new to these boards, and new to any community for that matter. i keep seeing the words "dark", "black", and "death" [metal] get tossed around like salad; what exactly disguinshes all these genres from eachother? i have my own system of labeling, a little more simplistic than this i think. the most unique and diverse bands such as Opeth and In Flames simply have their own definition, a reference to describe other bands if you will... "oh that bands sounds between Opeth and...." etc.

but i'm still curious as to what you guys label all these genre's as, 'death metal' to me only seems appropriate to bands that *sing* about *death* in sadistic way (Slayer for example); but i know others would be quick to correct me. Opeth is kinda like Iron Maiden's lyrics with a *death metal* inspiration in the vocals; though i don't consider Opeth a *death metal* band for the fact their lyrics aren't about sadistic concepts of death.

 

[Morningrise]

To answer your first question, I started out playing bass guitar about 5 years ago, then about 2 years ago I started playing Guitar (it made it easier to transfer the knowledge from one to the other.) I am able to learn extremely fast, so I move at a much faster rate than a lot of other people, which is a very nice quality. Inspiration comes from many things, depending on where I am what I am doing. Sometimes inspiration comes from just viewing other musicians and looking at someone saying "I am going to do that" Sometimes it comes from the inside, my feelings, it affects a lot; if I am pissed I will obviously play with anger, etc. I write a lot of music and the only person on this board who has heard it is "TyrantOfFlames" just because of accesibility. Many have described it as undescribable, but takes inspiration from more technical styles of music. I seem to include a major folk influence in my music, also jazz, and classical gets blended in with more technical styles of metal. Maybe TyrantOfFlames could help me describe.

Anyways sorry for getting off topic..

In terms of categorizing styles of music it all depends on your knowledge of the music and its artists. There are so many genres in metal at the moment its hard to categorize any one band into one. But in terms of just straight black metal bands like Darkthrone, Emperor, and Immortal fit the category. Black metal is in most cases extreme, fast, evil, dark, and focuses more of dark subjects within our society such as satanism. Black metal also has keyboards, and is very beautiful in my opinion. With bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Nokturnal Mortum, and Old Man's Child symphonic elements come greatly into play. This comes from a sort of Classical influence. That is a good start for seperating Black metal, I suggest just learning about the style of music on your own and learning about it.
As for Death metal... That is almost too hard of a subject to go into. Your have Brutal Death metal (Cannibal Corpse, Anal Blast, and any other gory disgusting band names) Melodic Death metal (In Flames, Dark Tranquility) Death metal can just about slip its way into any sort of metal I think so its hard to categorize and describe this music. But check out Morbid Angel, kings of Death metal and a great band!!

I hope that I have helped a bit, I will look for some web sites to help you with this kind of stuff and let you know later on!

One last thing, what kind of music did you listen to before you got into the more extreme things??

 

[DemonOfTheFall]

dude, man, u rule, i've hardly ever met a person with such ideals and qualities alike from mine. i too have an innate sense of quick learning (not to brag) but seriously. at the age of six i began piano lessons, and i played piano for a good eight years, unfortunately, it wasn't till my later years when i began to really take music seriously. you ask where i started with music? well here we go:

first u have to understand where i come from: a town with population 20,000 called Selma (in California, twenty minutes south of Fresno). my childhood years would be that of the 90's, the popular and mainstream was dominated by rap, pop, and hip-hop (and still kinda is). i hated it, particularly rap. and btw, i come from a mix racial descent i'm a mut of: French, Spaniard, and Mexican-Indian; most people just say i look like a short Spaniard (short white guy... but not Anglican) i just call myself Chicano, Latino, and Mexican. anyway, my childhood was strictly religious, heavy Christian faith (my dad was like a minister of some sort), and to listen to rock music from the 'heavier' side was considered to be Satanatic and sinful, so i took it as that and was like "argh! i won't listen to the devil!" my musical influences at that point was classical (Beethoven, Mozart, Chopain, etc), street jams (breakdancing music), some pop (michael jackson), and old mowtown stuff...

well after the family crisis, my family stopped goin to so much church, my parents were pretty depressed, as was i, and my older brother (4 years older than me) brought home the first *metal* anything into the house. it was Metallica's Load album, at the time it was the craziest thing i had ever heard, and to be honest didn't care for it, it was *annoying* to my ears. anyway, sometime in jr. high, when i was about 13, he brought home Metallica's Ride the Lightning album. i didn't care for the riffage to much but when i heard the solo in Creeping Death, i was like 'wow, i wish i could do that..." the solo was so infatuating, i'd listen to it over and over again, just imagined the fingers moving over the guitar with ease. once again, at the time, i didn't care for Hetfields vocals or really anything else... i felt opposed to the kind of music it was...

i had always wanted to play guitar, even before i listened to any rock music, i was really interested in flamenco and classical music. but when i started listening to metallica, that all changed. my dad had this old guitar up in the attic, it had three strings connected to three tuning pegs. took it to a shop, got new tuning pegs, new strings, and the dude tuned it for 20 bucks (now that i know how to do all those things .... man did i get jipped!). anyway, i grabbed a Mel Bay Lesson One book and got started. my earliest inspirations came from my piano sheet music and i started playin it on my guitar, mostly movie thems though, like Star Wars, Mission Impossible, and some other stuff. i remember the first things i figured out by ear was a Doom song (the game) and the whistling from "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly".

anyway, i really started getting more and more interested into metallica's music, i bought their tab books, about six months after i was messin with that cursed beat-up acoustic, my dad figured i'd stick with guitar and went ahead and bought me my electric (Lyon by Washburn, black, 22-frets, 2 humbuckers). about a month or two after getting my electric, i started to learn my first solos: intro solo to Fade to Black. it was so fucking cheap, god i sucked! but i figured that if i had an electric, it'd be stupid to learn anything else, and solo's seemed the logical path for me. anyway, i've been practicing ever since, my grades in my first years in high school.... in fact ALL of high school, were SHOT UP compared to my previous acedemic record. i had a 17% in english my freshman year, and fortunately brought it up to a D for a final grade (thank u extra-credit!). anyway, point is, as soon as i got home, the first thing i did was play my guitar. i stayed so couped up in my room i'd hold going to the restroom for hours. i pretty much practiced all day, guitar was just.... so addictive.

[boy this is long, sorry]

anyway, 3 years, and all-the-metallica-songs-ever-written later... i was just hangin out and my bro downloaded some In Flames, which he found by chance. he said he only remember seeing someone say "In Flames kicks ass" in a chat room and researched it. the first song was "Only for the Weak" and then "Colony".. anyway... i started listening to In Flames and was blown away, my brother was like "yea they're kool" but never capitalized on their music, i would later come to accumalate all their albums as well. i actually don't really remember where i saw the word *Opeth*. i just remember seeing it somewhere, so one day i logged on Kazaa and typed it in, figured out it was a real band and not just my imagination and 've been hooked ever since.

my transition to 'darker music' was somewhat... weird... when i first listened to In Flames, i was like "I HATE HIS VOICE!" and then i don't know.... i started to anticipate what he was gonna say next, and i found myself growling to the music.... ever since then it's just been great, i opened up to so much more music...

for the first time i've heard bands like: Iced Earth, Nevermore, Children of Bodom, Soiwork, and At The Gates

my list goes as is (if it wasn't for these bands i would not be as happy as i am with this music):
1. Metallica (opened the floodgates to me for ALL metal music)
2. In Flames (the death metal begins)
3. Opeth (what can i say, sometimes it makes me feel like breaking something, dancing, jumping, and crying)

boy, wow, sorry, didn't expect that to be so long. it's more like my musical history/story, though i did leave out a lot, but that's the jist of it.

what's ur story man? btw, my name's Daniel, what's urs?

 

[Morningrise]

Hey Daniel nice to meet you I am Ben. As for my story, I don't know if everyone on the board wants to see us conversing hehe So maybe we could talk somewhere else at some point? The E-mail I check most is Enigma1260@aol.com so go ahead and send me a message. I am on AIM regularly so maybe we can talk some time, but go ahead and send me a E-mail I would love to continue talking! Get AIM (AOL Instant Messanger) if you can!

 

[TyrantOfFlames]

Great stories...mine isn't nearly so interesting. Basically I started with alot of trendy stuff, (pop, rap, country, the works), and a lof of classical. Then I chanced to hear Led Zeppelin. I loved the hard rock sound, so i got all of their stuff on tape (before I ha a CD player). But that got old, and felt too...weak. I wanted something heavier. Thus entered Black Sabbath. New favorite band. Well I got the first six albums by them, memorized the songs, played them all on guitar, then I bought A Call to Irons: A Tribute to Iron Maiden, on a whim.

I can't begin to explain my love for that album; back then and still. It ranks almost up there with Opeth for me, (oddly enough, there is an opeth song on there). I then got a Metal Blade compilation, (containing alot of their extreme bands), shortly after the tribute album. So I pretty much got into Opeth, Amon Amarth, Mithotyn, and God Dethroned all at the same time. Bought CDs by them in mid '99. The rest is history, as they say. (It's strange that I didn't get any metallica until after I had discovered death metal).

 

[Sullen Jester]

Thales (Hearse' band) is Opeth-inspired, and very good indeed =P

I don't really know much Opeth-ish bands but here's some good ones to check out (Of varying genres):

Arkangel
Better Than Ezra
Fight
Fleshcrawl
Ghoulspoon
Hypnosia
Ill Nino
Marilyn Manson
Morbid Angel
One Minute Silence
Pitchshifter
Prong
Ragnarok
Sanctus
Segression
Skrape
Stabbing Westward
Testament
Thales
Tiamat
Tool


If you want a*BIG* list of "good' bands just tell me...
Later...

 

[_Transparent_]

KATATONIA - you must check this band out, theres also a katatonia forum here too.

check out songs like Brave, Day, Endtime, the future of speech, cold ways, deadhouse. i think you can d/l some of their songs at www.katatonia.com too.

i think they've been mentioned anyway but TOOL really change your life, truly brilliant music with unexpected lyrics that turn out brilliant. great live act too especially the videos playing in the background.

 

[Garm]

Seems like you all missed out on Anathema. And if you can find Forest of Shadows you'll be an aven happier man! Also look for some scandinavian gothic music like Vintersorg, Vargtron, Tristiania (as mentioned) and such....My recomendations

 

[Opet]

- Dark Tranquillity

Ah, Hearse beat me to it. CHECK THESE GUYS OUT! :hotjump:

 

[Russell]

Originally posted by Sullen Jester
Stabbing Westward

Have you heard their new album? Its supposed to be quite crap!

 

[Till Fjalls]

Originally posted by Garm
Seems like you all missed out on Anathema. And if you can find Forest of Shadows you'll be an aven happier man! Also look for some scandinavian gothic music like Vintersorg, Vargtron, Tristiania (as mentioned) and such....My recomendations

Dude! Any possibility of hooking me up with some Vargatron??? I'll trade or even pay cash for as little as a dubbed tape!

 

[S4R]

Man as a guitar player you have to listen to SYMPHONY X, Romeo is a guitar God

 

[Lina]

Originally posted by godisanathiest
STABBING WESTWARD

Have you heard their new album? Its supposed to be quite crap!

yes, the new album is much softer (WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN???), but the lyrics are still amazing. But this band is definitely out of place on this board.

 

[Mr. Black]

check out 'Edge of Sanity' as well, esp. Crimsom...its an epic even by opethian standards, a single track 40 minutes long...all of it great...you can d/l it of audiogalaxy if you don't mind a 35meg d/l

 

[HoserHellspawn]

Hoser seconds the "Edge of Sanity - Crimson" notion.

Dan Swano-y goodness.

 

[Russell]

Originally posted by Lina
yes, the new album is much softer (WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN???), but the lyrics are still amazing. But this band is definitely out of place on this board.

Quite probably. But darkest days was a good album Its a shame really, they were good!