Fox12 said:
I've been listening to a lot of metal music lately. Mostly the obvious stuff, like iron maiden, metallica, ozzy/black sabbath, Dio, and dragon force. Of course, these are some of the more famous metal bands, and I want to branch out. I don't really know about the different sub-genres of metal, or other great bands, so I figured I'd reach out to the cultured members of the escapist. What bands, or even genres, should I listen too?
So it seems you've already touched on a lot of the core basics, that's good (I'm especially fond of Iron Maiden and Sabbath
). Let's see... I guess I'll just toss a few of my favorites at you and see what sticks.
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First up, Symphony X. Symphony X is a prog-metal band out of New Jersey, fronted by Russell Allen (I'm basically down for anything involving Russell Allen
). Their albums tend to have their own self-contained themes, from ancient greek myths, to John Milton's "Paradise Lost", to a robot-apocalypse.
"Set the World on Fire" from their Paradise Lost album, depicting the fall of Lucifer and his angels from Heaven.
"Paradise Lost" the titular track from the album of the same name. Not quite as 'metal' but still one of my favorites. Depicting Adam and Eve getting kicked out of Paradise (lyrics in the actual video are wrong, but the ones in the youtube comments are right).
"Electric Messiah" from their Iconoclast album. The whole thing is the broad story of a robot apocalypse that winds up turning the surviving humans into an enslaved population of cyborgs and stuff.
"Prometheus" from the same album. You kind of get the AI's point of view in this one.
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Next up! Iron Savior, a power-metal band out of Germany. They aren't quite coherent enough to be prog, but their albums do share overall sci-fi themes, usually centering around the Iron Savior, an immortal robotic starship with the mind of a human trapped inside controlling it. Their stuff starts to get kind of samey and less good after their fourth album or so, but the earlier stuff is pretty consistently good
"Machine World" from their Battering Ram album. It centers around an AI left behind on a long-dead world, pondering just what exactly it means to exist.
"Tyranny of Steel" another great song from the Battering Ram album.
"Made of Metal" from the Dark Assault album.
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Last but definitely not least, we come to Ayreon. Ayreon is a prog-metal/prog-rock band out of the Netherlands. It's actually largely handled by one man. Arjen Luccassen writes the music, he plays like a dozen different instruments, then he invites singers and musicians from different bands he likes to collaborate with him on it. Jorn Lande, Floor Jensen, muscians from Nightwish, Symphony X and others have all helped.
"Dawn of a Million Souls" from their Flight of Migrator album. Russell Allen does the vocals on this one
D), and it follows the last human alive, a colonist on Mars, who is using an alien device to look back through human history. At one point, with his life-support failing, he basically goes 'fuck it' and removes all the safety limiters to throw his consciousness back to birth of the universe itself.
"Day Two: Isolation" from The Human Equation. The Human Equation is basically a rock-opera. Each vocalist is a distinct character, and it follows a man trapped in a coma, forced to confront anthropomorphized facets of his personality and his own troubled past to try and have a shot at waking up again.
"Liquid Eternity" from Ayreon's 01011001 album. Also a rock-opera. This song in particular focuses on a species of aliens who have attained immortality by sealing themselves inside of life-support machines. But now a few of them are starting to realize that they've slowly become detached and removed from their old emotions in the unknown time since. Losing the very will to live in some cases, but still forced to by their machines.
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So I think that's enough for now. A nice sampling of a few bands I'm really fond of ^^ Hope you enjoy.
