As other people have stated, their live shows sucked for a while because they were so trashed playing really complicated stuff and it sounded awful, that's why I really don't like them for the most part. Secondly, I love metal, but their stuff is way over produced imo. Really talented musicians when they want to be tho so I respect that.
I like metal. I don’t like discussing metal. I tell people I listen to everything, but what it literally means is I’m not offended by anything you play.
I have a friend who isn't into metal. All his friends are into metal though, but he isn't. So when we all talk about metal, he always brings up that one band he knows.
Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Black Sabbath, Testament, and some Pantera. People online shit all over them for whatever reasons. Megadeth and Pantera, I get. Lead singers are both assholes.
You're just... into heavy metal. And that's fine. And I'm surprised you can't discuss of those bands with fellow metalheads. In my experience, they're often liked and held in great reverence.
Because the average person's ego is made up mostly of things they identify against, which makes them too scared and too stupid to understand stuff that's creative and awesome.
One of my coworkers told me once that she gives vague answers like "I listen to everything" because she doesn't want to talk about music with people. She was like "no one knows the obscure Korean pop I'm listening to so I just don't want to go into it".
Which I kind of get. She put some thought into it and it was a tactical answer.
I just say "all kinds of stuff. Depends on my mood." Sometimes I like wacky metal, sometimes I'm over it. Same goes for outlaw country or hip hop or punk or whatever.
Yeah, same for me. I listen to a little bit of everything. Indie songwriter, post rock, Finnish folk, post metal, speed metal, Japanese pop, Japanese folk, the list goes on. So I usually just say "depends on my mood".
I'd love to hear about her obscure K-pop, or your strange south American alternative, or whatever really, I'm never gonna say no to at least learning about it and hearing it out, if I don't like it I'll just not listen to it again.
This is kinda the situation for me. I don't listen to any one particular kind of music and I don't want to get sucked into a conversation about whatever genre you have decided to pigeon hole yourself into and are clearly gearing up to vomit all over me.
This is similar to my strategy when I was little, like 4-6 years old, whenever anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. The truth was I didn't know, but if I said that, the asker would keep pestering me with stuff like "what about a policeman or a fireman or doctor" etc etc etc and I knew I didn't want to be any of those- so I would say "a chicken" and they would assume I was brain damaged and leave me alone.
I mean, even for a country song that was just kinda...I dunno. It feels like with some changes it could be good, but there's this weird part where the wording feels like it skips a beat because he couldn't get the beat to synchronize with the cadence of the words. I'll listen to a lot of country, but there's still gonna just be bad songs.
Around 1:03, he completely breaks cadence and the whole rhythm of the song breaks. I don't know how this could be considered good. Regardless of it being country or not.
Reminds me of listening to my non-buffering CD player on the bus ride to school.
I'd argue that nobody could call this music in the way that normal people understand what music is. It feels like an experiment in sound more than anything.
A common definition I just looked up on "Music" is:
vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony
There is none of those in what you've linked. No rhythm, no melody, and nothing harmonious.
So no, it doesn't fit the definition of Music; therefore, I probably wouldn't listen to it. I did sample other of the artists tracks like Wat Dong Moon Lek, Himalaya, Ahirya, and all of his pieces are like this. They aren't really music.
It's interesting to me how different people interpret what music means to them. To me I would call this music as it fits the definition of melody
A pleasing succession or arrangement of sounds.
Of course that is subjective to everyone. To me Carl Stone's tracks do have a beautiful melody. To others they feel chaotic, and to some they feel minimalist.
A melody (from Greek μελῳδία (melōidía) 'singing, chanting'),[1] also tune, voice or line, is a linear succession of musical tones that the listener perceives as a single entity.
The problem here is with the compositions absolute randomness of nature. It sounds exactly like what was being produced by computers, before some of the more advanced audio models came about. It doesn't sound like any kind of single entity, and it would be nearly impossible for anyone to distinguish it from random sounds.
In a cacophony of random elements, I couldn't hear this song. But I could hear most others without issue. It doesn't meet the sniff test.
The melodies existing in most European music written before the 20th century, and popular music throughout the 20th century, featured "fixed and easily discernible frequency patterns", recurring "events, often periodic, at all structural levels" and "recurrence of durations and patterns of durations".
All of which this lacks. It simply doesn't meet the definition of music. Though I bet it's a great source of inspiration for those experimenting with music themselves. Honestly, I had to load it up in YouTube to make sure the web-based music player wasn't glitching out or something; it was bad enough as "music" that I thought something was wrong with the computer.
But I'll just kindly agree to disagree - if you enjoy it, great. I just wouldn't even consider this music and would immediately ask for music to be put on.
Power Metal in general has a bad rep because of the over the top cheesyness. DF was popular within the genre because they were much faster and had more solos than most other bands in that genre at the time. A lot of people did find them boring after a while since a good amount of their songs sounded pretty similar. But they were considered a solid band, they can for sure play what they wrote.
They blew up during Guitar Hero 3. Now mainstream audiences are exposed to the cheesy lyrics and over the topness of power metal. Gatekeepers gate keeping and now you're a posers for liking them.
Their band members started living like rock stars in the 80s with their new found fame, showed up to a lot of shows drunk, didn't perform well. Now people doubt they can actually play their songs.
Fast forward a few years, and they got their professionalism back on track. They investing into better live setups to play even better live than before, things such as in ear setup, timecoded midi changes, etc. They're solid now and better than their pre-GH3 era, but a lot of damage already done to their name.
Herman Li actually streams on twitch. Turns out when he does that holding the guitar horizontal by the tremolo thing he slams it into his knee afterwards. I have no idea why and it sounds painful as hell.
I upvoted already but I just wanted to add that this is an awesome reply and I appreciate the information. I grew up in the guitar hero days so I heard a lot of both good and bad about dragonforce but I never bothered to follow up after the hype died down.
Ha, admittedly am one of the people who discovered them through GH3. One year, they were one of the bands on some metal festival like Ozzfest or Mayhem Festival and my buddies and I made it a point to see their set even though they were one of the earlier bands. They were... Not great. Glad to see they have improved. Haven't bothered thinking about them since.
Back when they first got really insanely famous due to Guitar Hero III, a lot of people thought their music was fake.
They were called studioforce by guitarists who felt threatened by their inability to play TTFAF, and those same haters justified their hate by pointing out that the band themselves frequently couldn't play it live.
This was due in part to the band still having a janky live setup at the time, in part due to their singer not sounding as good live (when they switched singers to Mark it made a big difference for their live shows IMO), and of course because Sam and to a lesser extent Herman would drink excessively before playing a lot of nights, leading to lots of recordings of their sloppy drunk shredding being uploaded to YouTube.
But mostly, I would argue, the hate came from people who dislike new things. They tried to invalidate the band's obvious technical prowess as a way to disregard their (at the time) relatively innovative sounds.
You see that a lot in the guitar community. Anything new or that doesn't fit a traditional, pre-existing mold is dismissed as inferior. Anything non-traditional and obviously skillful tends to draw hate from those same people.
Now that Dragonforce has been around for a good long while, the traditionalists have had time to adjust and Dragonforce has had their live act consistently together for well over a decade, the hate has largely died down.
It also helps, IMO, that Herman Li does regular livestreams so people can see that he's a relatively down to earth guy, especially for someone with a giant wall of guitars in his house and a collection of high end sports cars.
Back when they first got really insanely famous due to Guitar Hero III, a lot of people thought their music was fake.
I saw them live in the late 00's at an open air festival, and it sounded like I was playing the track myself on guitar hero. Wasn't super into them after seeing them live tbh, since it seemed fake from the live experience.
I never understood this. This is the same argument people used to hate on electronic music in the early 00's. But like... if it sounds good then who cares?
You see that a lot in the guitar community. Anything new or that doesn't fit a traditional, pre-existing mold is dismissed as inferior. Anything non-traditional and obviously skillful tends to draw hate from those same people.
I don't see what could be qualified as non traditional in their music. It was run of the mill speed/power metal that was pretty common since the early 90s, or even the 80s if you stretch the definition a bit. Even from a technical standpoint they were fucking good but nothing ground breaking.
I always felt that the hate against them came from the fact that they became mainstream popular thanks to guitar hero while they were not particularly notable among their peers in the metal scene.
That's the hate they got from within the metal community. I'm talking about the hate they got from the guitar community in general, which at the time was maybe 90% blues rock dads.
They were hated in the old days mostly because of one live concert that was a disaster on every level. And a lot of their songs sounded very similar to other of their songs.
These days the haters have moved on I'm think. Maybe. Or I just don't pay attention.
They were hated in the old days mostly because of one live concert that was a disaster on every level.
Which live concert? I saw them at an open air festival and it wasn't a disaster by any stretch, but they fumbled TTFAF and I haven't been into them nearly as much since.
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