quote:
Um, when I said intelligent, I just meant trying to be creative i.e. not writing the same songs over and over with different lyrics. All genres of music have oodles of bands that do just that, and I'm sad to say that I've only heard metal bands that appear to do the same thing.
So, who is good? In your terms, because I don't know anything about metal besides the fact that I know I don't like some of the stuff I've heard because it seemed to me to be yelling without much music behind it.
Aaah, understood. They're listed in order of what I think you'd most want to look into on down to what I'm only marginal about reccomending:
I think in this case I can fall back on my standard Vintersorg/Otyg reccomendation. Those two bands share a lot of the same members, but they have a very different feel between them. Otyg is metalish folk music while Vintersorg is folkish metal music. You'd just have to hear them to know what I mean. Vintersorg doesn't scream all the time. He kind of switches back and forth between gutteral and bombastic. He stays bombastic in Otyg without getting gutteral at all, though.
I think you might also enjoy Tiamat's "Wildhoney" album, but I only reccomend this one because I haven't heard their others. It has a variety of sound on it from heavy to etherial. I think the vocalist once said that this was their "we were a death metal band that wanted to sound like pink floyd" stage.
Therion is operatic style metal and is more to my liking than the other operatic metal I've heard (which admittedly isn't a whole lot aside from Nightwish). I particularly enjoy the album "Deggial," which has several cool tracks including an absolutely killer cover of "O Fortuna." I'm thinking of getting "Secrets of the Runes" next time I have some spare cash about.
Candlemass is pretty good stuff too, kind of old fashioned sounding metal. I reccomend "Tales of Creation" particularly, since it has all the good things about older metal without any of the castrato vocals (but also no growling vocals. You can actually understand what he's saying). It's got a very epic feel to it overall, which is always a plus for me.
You might also find My Dying Bride to be an interesting experience, as they have a lot of material that mixes some really killer guitars with beautiful violin playing. This actually is some pretty mournful sounding stuff, so if that's not your bag you might not like it very much.
I don't know if polka is your bag or not, but Finntroll's first two albums are best described as "Polka Metal," and they're probably my overall favorite of the undefined time period. Thier first two albums have their own "theme melody" that shows up in several songs, that gets played in different moods and different tempos depending on the song. The third album isn't really metal at all, but it's actually their best and most inventive one. It's called "Visor Om Slutet," and it sounds nothing like the other two. It has no overriding theme, and it's mostly ambient sounding instrumental stuff. It's still distinctly Fintroll-esque, though. No mistaking the style for anyone else.
Moonsorrow shares a keyboardist with Finntroll, but their music have very different flavors. I just tend to really enjoy the mead-hall atmosphere they evoke. It's more viking-warrior-esque music in contrast to the very trollish feeling of Finntroll.
Arcturus is hard for me to really describe, and they really took some drastic changes over the course of their albums. Really, I like everything I've heard from them but it's hard to pin down any one common theme that I can say I really like in it besides they just have a certain something.
Borknagar are kind of interesting. They're pretty varied from album to album, but I think that's mostly because they don't keep a steady lineup from one release to the next. I kind of have a soft spot for Olden Domain, but I'd suggest Quintessance to start with.
I'm also particularly fond of, but not sure at all whether you'd enjoy:
Death
Evoken
Novembers Doom
Amorphis (but only the earlier stuff)
Morgion
Shape of Despair
Mithotyn
Galadriel
Cephalic Carnage (but mainly just the "Halls of Amenti" release)
Disembowelment (only one album... a real shame)
Umbra Nihil
Dolorian
Also, about half of this stuff isn't in English. That may or may not be a big deal for you. I just don't really mind not understanding lyrics as long as they sound right with the music, but I know that approach isn't everyone's thing.
