Melodic Death or Black!?

By Design said:
classify all you like, i personally find kalmah worthy of their own classification, kalmah. the same could be said for any real band. (its always harder to walk your own path) genres really dont exist, there just imaginary links created to group music into proper subcatorgies for a consumer.

But if you have to classify Kalmah for someone who haven't heard of them...you can't just say "they're Kalmah-music!". I mean, it's very melodic, power-stylish riffs it has growling vocals and fast solos, so it's most propably melodic death/power...just like Nightrage, witch is melodic death/thrash. It is sometimes difficult to try and put a band in some category (Kalmah and Nightrage aren't that difficult, but bands like CoB are), but it's necessary, since there are millions of metal bands around and you can't make a new category for each of them.
 
Kirurgisti said:
But if you have to classify Kalmah for someone who haven't heard of them...you can't just say "they're Kalmah-music!"

first off they need to start by listening to the actual music

yah but when i hand someone a cd and say "this is Kalmah" isnt that the same thing as "kalmah-music'?

genres mentioned in this thread alone:

black metal, death melodic, melodic death, melodic black metal, harsh power metal, death/thrash/black, meta, hardcore, melo-death,extreme power metal,extreme melodic metal, power metal, extreme metal, melodic speed death metal and swamp metal.
 
By Design said:
black metal, death melodic, melodic death, melodic black metal, harsh power metal, death/thrash/black, meta, hardcore, melo-death,extreme power metal,extreme melodic metal, power metal, extreme metal, melodic speed death metal and swamp metal.

But if you look at them, you can see that almost all of them include "melodic", "power" or "death". It's explained above why it isn't black metal. It really isn't that difficult :)
 
One thing to seperate Black metal from Melodic death is the Blast drumming. The Tap tap tap tap tap bass and snare is key Black Metal. And the symphonic aspect of the keyboards. and also the screetching vocals. Kalmah is 85% melodic death and 15% black metal. But thats why they are unique.
 
...
the one thing is the composition.
im not sure if theres any 'composition' in black metal.
kalmah is 0% black.
 
damnit, get a tab on your guitar pro (say.. evil in you) and remove all the instruments and leave the lead guitar (antti kokko), and now play the thing.
compare it with the black metal shit. and u'll see the difference.
 
i think black metal is more about theme of the band and not really about how they sound.
 
The Bringer said:
The drumming may be the only aspect any where close to black metal and it's still aways off.

since when has blasts been a big part of black metal :ill:

blasts are more apparent in 'pure' or 'old school' death metal then in alot of black metal i would have thought. besides, plenty of bands now use blasts for example Dragonforce, and you would never go callign them black, or death metal. i dont think the drumming has much to do with Kalmah's unique sound
 
iron_thunder said:
exactly! you can't really just lump all metal into one category according to the lyrics.... uhh, well except for maybe Christian metal, because that's how it's defined!

But hey, people can call Kalmah a britney spears knock-off for all i care; the point is that their music is great! :err:

kalmah and graveworm are the most original metal bands ever. Ive never heard a band that sounded like kalmah. They have a sound like no other. Its that smack you right in the face sound. i love it.