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.
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.
Dragonforce is hated? Never heard this, but even as a life long metal head I at shy away from any online metal community because most of them are full of the worst people.
Not sure this is the cause in these cases, but it's all too common in design by committee. Keeping the creative direction and vision in a single person is so damn important.
Next time you listen to it, imagine the situation that is being presented. The singer said that all the words are literally what the guy at the department store was saying without knowing who Mark Knopfler (the singer) was. Add in the video (in a time when computer graphics were very primitive) and it's really one of those great stories.
One of my favorite Wikipedia entries comes from this song. This entire passage just cracks me up.
"Spirit in the Sky" makes several religious references to Jesus, and Greenbaum himself is Jewish. In a 2006 interview with The New York Times, Greenbaum told a reporter he was inspired to write the song after watching Porter Wagoner singing a gospel song on TV. Greenbaum said: "I thought, 'Yeah, I could do that,' knowing nothing about gospel music, so I sat down and wrote my own gospel song. It came easy. I wrote the words in 15 minutes." Greenbaum had previously been a member of psychedelic jug band Dr. West's Medicine Show and Junk Band.
I'm pretty sure it's for the same reason that people love them, i.e. they're cheesy and self-indulgent - which, I mean, are pretty much prerequisites of the power metal genre.
That and the whole "they recorded their parts slower and sped them up" thing, but they pull it off well enough live and as long as they're not lying about it I don't think it really matters
Drum and bass artists use computers to make fast drums and just play back recordings at concerts. They can't even play drums! Or bass!! Their fans are so dumb for liking fake music... /s
As someone who has been listening to most electronic music since the mid 90s, you have NO idea how many times the “they’re not talented, they just push buttons” argument has been spewn at me
That and the whole "they recorded their parts slower and sped them up" thing
Your comment reads like this is a fact about them and something they've owned up to. It isn't true and they've consistently said as much. They record at the speed the song plays at.
Good to hear. That was a rumor that spread around quite a bit when I was a teenager, the last time they were relevant for discussion, and I never checked it because it didn't really matter to me if they did or not, I still liked the music. Next time they're relevant for discussion I won't spread it again
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.
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.
That song is a goddamn banger, and I told my friend that when he's murderlizing as his mage, that's what I picture in my head; spells blasting left and right and the driving riff of that song just blaring. Absolute madman.
Right? May as well all be the same band. It's not even like the styling is distinctive, you don't see the logo and think of that band, it just blends in with all the rest.
I mean, I did not want to claim that it is the only one on there, but that was rather because of No Altars and Wolf King. Those are fonts I've seen before.
With your examples, well, I didn't have to read them 5 times, but it didn't go that great either. And I did not realize those were numbers at the end of "Unit 731" until your comment just now.
I should add, though, that I'm not a metalhead. I'm sure, if one has heard these band names before, it becomes much easier.
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