Originally posted by rahvin
my pleasure.
so, i like katatonia because, imo:
- they have good songwriting: albeit sounding similar in structure, the songs on tonight's decision and the discouraged ones are quite daring in approach, and they do sound even to profane ears as though they are trying different approaches to their personal style.
[sentenced's songs are all based on your standard gothic metal structure/lines... much like tiamat's latest singles and every other goth influenced band latest
everything 
]
So you are saying nothing good can be acomplished by doing typical song structures and that you must do original song structures all the time? Yes yes yes i know you are not saying that. The goth genre might suffer from equal song structures but i think that nowdays the songstructure card is being played too often. You can have simple song structures and still make an amazingly complex work. Look at Death's TSOP, is basically the same song structure on ALL the cd, shure variations here and there but is often very very similar, yet each song sounds different from each other.
To your taste song structure might turn you off from goth bands but you need to be more clear about it because if you are going to flame all repetitive song structure you might as well flame classical music and jazz too ( song structures repeat, ALOT. ) There is nothing wrong with simple song structures, you should say that you dont like the particular way sentenced threads they usual song structures.
- they have very good guitarwork: aside from the fact that i think the guitars are really good, i have to point out also the fact that they have a very peculiar guitar sound and their tunes sound nice even though - i guess - they're not easy.
[sentenced's guitars sound quite dull and same-ish to me, and the melodies very trite, not to mention pre-made for easy listening]
Is not that peculiar nor that good in katatonia, it consist of basically disonant sounding chords but without appling any theory rules ( alternative music concept ) on low end tunning ( metal concept ). It doesnt takes much skill, or talent, or originality to come up with that. If katatonia has nice guitarwork it would be because of the emocional impact they have and that is really not a thing about guitars, is more about songwriting skills. One thing i do agree on are the memorable melodies on katatonia.
However, recent Sentenced has very good guitar work, but they dont have good songwriting, quite the opposite of katatonia. Sentenced uses a lot of powerchords but in their acoustic parts they riffs are nice sounding ( my favorite being the intro riff on no one there ). Sentenced however has very very nice guitar leads ( leads, not melodies ) wich is a big plus and completes songs nicely. And no i dont appreciate negative comments about powerchord based songs because nearly all heavy metal consisted of nothing but powerchords and shredding solo's and all of us have at least 1 guitar hero we like, and chances are a lot of them come from a heavy metal school.
Another thing i have to mention is the vocals on sentenced. They play the same game goth bands play because ( unlike katatonia, for better or worse is your opinion ) they dont base the song on guitars and have the voice melodies complementing, the vocal melodies take the lead and while is your personal taste about the vocals, Laihiala has much better technique and diversity than Renske. Renske is more unidimentional in his vocal work and it shows, yet he fits katatonia just perfectly because katatonia doesnt focus their work on the singer, unlike Sentenced and most goth bands who require and extremely technical and talented front singer that can lead the band and the entire songs.
As for you not liking sentenced melodies i find both bands melodies equally great.
- they have decent, unassuming lyrics: intimistic and not exactly brilliant, but still honest in their simplicity.
[sentenced's lyrics are suicide crap made to shock the middle man and capture your basic goth girl's attention]
Ill pass here, ive grown to dislike focusing on lyrics nowdays, unless they are magnificent poets ( like sundin and stanne ) or incredible intelligent ( like Schuldiner ) i dont care so ill pass.
- they are quite honest in what they do: they don't go for mass appeal or easy publicity, while at the same time playing a heavily rock-influenced gloomy metal focusing their attention on content instead of appearance.
[sentenced have been jumping on the bandwagon since down, and they look/sound like plastic from miles away, both studio and live, at the same time trying to please fans of harder sounds and winking at him's listeners]
Sentenced does has more elements that lean towards the popularity indeed, but is not plain plastic to me. Power metal bands ( some, not all ) are plastic, sentenced can be plastic in SOME songs but on some others they can do sentimental things no one can mark as plastic.
as for last fair deal gone down, i admit i never elaborated that much on the reason why it doesn't satisfy me. at first glance i'd tell you i simply find most melodies a bit repetitive, not very varied or full of inspiration. it might be that it's way too sophisticated for the likes of an ignorant like me, but still as much as i don't like dream theater's many intricacies, i'm not particularly fond of many tunes on the latest katatonia.
rahvin.
Again while im not a particular fan of dream theater and as a general rule dislike them ( except for the external work of petrucci ( the g3 ) ) i do like bands like Cynic or Gordian Knot and i dont think you should be turned off by something that is "too sophisticated" immediatly, then again you probably did gave it a go so no probs t here.
