Flamenco Metal

[soundave]

So, I'm delving into flamenco, and I'm really enjoying it. I began to wonder if any metalheads decided to merge metal and flamenco, and what I found is this San Francisco band called Flametal (a bit of a lame name, iyam...especially in Frisco ). But here's one of their tunes, "Anda Jaleo", which uses the traditional flamenco tune, and the bulerias rhythm.

[youtube]q73TGFZfmnA&feature=related[/youtube]


I'm surprised I'm not finding any more bands like this. I know that Rodrigo y Gabriela were a metal band first... The dissonance, speed, strong syncopated rhythms, and overall virtuosity involved in flamenco seem to make it perfect to "metallize". It would end up being a branch of folk metal, I guess.

Edit: btw, for those of you unfortunate enough not to have heard Rodrigo y Gabriela...enjoy!

 

[wankerness]

That flametal thing is actually kind of cool, though I think they mostly were just going FLAMENCO SECTION - METAL SECTION - FLAMENCO SECTION etc with the exception of the guitar solo which actually was a pretty good merge.

 

[soundave]

Right. I'm pretty interested to hear the rest of their stuff. They have an album on eMusic I might DL. In one of the live clips on youtube, they have a dancer (providing rhythm with her stomps, etc.), and wonder if she's a permanent fixture or not.

 

[Blind Guardian]

The Atheist album Elements also has some flamenco influences which i dig. It´s an interesting approach to use in metal. I wonder why not more people have done it.

 

[soundave]

The Atheist album Elements also has some flamenco influences which i dig. It´s an interesting approach to use in metal. I wonder why not more people have done it.

Oh yeah! I forgot about that. It always struck me as more like latin jazz, but I suppose that's nitpicking. Atheist was pretty awesome and ahead of their time.

 

[Don Corleone]

can the latin bits in atheist be counted as flamenco? just a question

 

[Blind Guardian]

I´ll have to admit that i´m not sure about that. But at least it´s within that direction.

 

[wankerness]

Flamenco is a specific kind of guitar playing found mainly in spanish (as in Spain) music while latin stuff is almost always more brazilian or cuban in nature. I have never listened to that atheist cd but just saying if it is simply "latin" bits it probably isn't flamenco.

 

[soundave]

That's why I was saying, "Latin Jazz". It's samba, as far as I know. It doesn't make use of the specific flamenco forms, which are pretty complex.

The solea por bulerias, for example, uses 12 beat form that works sort of like this (bold = accent). Starts on beat 12, and at the end, finishes with beat 10. So it looks like this, sort of:

(12) 1 2 (3) 4 5 (6) 7 (8) 9 (10) 11

And it's played at about 240 bpm.

So far, that's a bit of what I've learned. Never mind the crazy right hand strumming and tapping! Don't hear anything quite like that in th Atheist, though I do in Flametal.

 

[Kudzu]

I live in spain and there was a flamenco metal band around sometime ago. Surprisingly it sounded very good, although I don't remember the name. I'll post the info if I happen to remember it while on drugs.

Anyway, if you record anything let us know.

 

[King_Crimson]

Wow, that sounds very interesting. You have to listen the song Zambra by Hacride, it's in the album Amoeba, It has nice flamenco tunes (actually is a cover of a band called ojos de brujo).

 

[naboo]

Marc Rizzo is the shit. His first album is awesome, though I've yet to hear the new one.

 

[Deadlift]

Prett cool. Probably because it's well played and well executed. But after just 2 mins or something i got really tired of this stuff so i guess it's not my kind of music. The second vid was a little better actually.

 

[dwoakee]

On the debut CD Black Light Syndrome by Bozzio/Levin/Stevens there's one song called "Duende" that sounds flamencoish to me. (You can listen to the first 30 secs [ame="http://www.amazon.de/Black-Light-Syndrome-Bozzio-Stevens/dp/B000003ZBI/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1196982510&sr=8-1"]here[/ame]). Though BLS is definitely not metal, more like Prog Rock, it is a great album and especially that flamencoish song is great.

 

[chrisdoig24k]

Yes, I'm going to do it again. Ne Obliviscaris' old lead guitarist was trained in Flamenco guitar, and he puts in a flamenco section in one of their songs. And it's awesome!

 

[beast from the east]

Yes, I'm going to do it again. Ne Obliviscaris' old lead guitarist was trained in Flamenco guitar, and he puts in a flamenco section in one of their songs. And it's awesome!

You're right! And keep bringing up NeO...they are awesome and need to be recognized I can't stop listening to Tapestry...holy shite, what an amazing song!!! The vocals (especially the clean vocals over top the growls near the beginning of the song) are incredible.

I was quite pleasantly surprised by the Flametal vid...I could definitely get into this style! And the Rodrigo y Gabriela vid...whoa, just whoa!!! That was amazing. I need to delve into Flamenco a bit more. Great stuff.

 

[chrisdoig24k]

Glad you like it! I will pimp that band until one of us dies...

 

[biggsy]

what flamenco stuff have you been listening to dave? im really into the fusion/nuevamenco sort of stuff with plenty of synth drums etc. jesse cook, ottmar liebert etc.

 

[rrjii2000]

Give Dave Martone a listen

 

[biggsy]

noted.