However I cannot agree with Eyal’s conclusion, that “Metal is primarily an “everything louder than everything else” style of music”. It’s overly simplistic and I promise I will get back to the subject in a future post.

“For the first time ever, Iron Maiden will be travelling to the historic region of Transylvania to play a concert! The show will take place at the Polus Center Mall in Cluj Napoca.

Cluj Napoca (commonly known as Cluj) is the fourth largest city in Romania and one of the most important academic, cultural, industrial and business centres in the country. Situated in the northwest, Cluj is roughly 270miles from Romania’s capital city Bucharest and has good air, road and rail links with the other major Romanian cities and neighbouring Europe.

As Maiden fans all  know, Transylvania holds a special place in Maiden’s history; a track by that name appeared on the very first Iron Maiden album back in 1980. Thirty years on, and with Maiden about to embark on a major  World Tour in support of their 15th studio album: THE FINAL FRONTIER (due for release later this Summer), it seems only right the anniversary be marked by the band (and of course Eddie!), FINALLY getting to visit this most atmospheric and infamous of locations!”

Today is still a sorrowful day, even if it just got slightly better.

“Mr. Dio sang about devils, defiance and the glory of rock ‘n’ roll with a strong, mean voice, punctuating his points with gale-force vibrato, a style derived in part from singers like Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan. When Ozzy Osborne was fired from Black Sabbath in 1979, Mr. Dio replaced him, and by 1983 he released the album “Holy Diver” with his own band, Dio.”

More thoughts on this maybe later.

Believe the lie

The lie that you’re told

Doing fine

Just do as you’re told

Is this rock’n'roll or a form of state control?

After a two weeks hiatus I will hopefully find the time to provide something for the next Monday’s issue of Metalreviews. This time I will have the pleasure of writing about the documentary Anvil! The Story of Anvil, one of the best rockumentaries ever made. Forget This Is Spinal Tap or the incongruous Some Kind of Monster. “Anvil!…” is authentic, funny, cynical, melodramatic, excellent in filming and editing, has an explosive soundtrack and is above all inspiring.

Some metal bands develop great loyalty among their followers and achieve durable franchises.  That gives them a lower discount rate and they are more inclined to save up material for the future.  Plus they are marketing an overall sound — rather than clever particular innovations — and if the first forty (five?) minutes don’t convince you nothing will.  Rap songs probably have a higher individual variance.

I haven’t really asked myself why most of the Metal albums run at around 45 minutes – I’d say 50, but 45 is a good approximation – but neverthelss it is an interesting question. The assertion about Metal fans’ loyalty and the durability of the bands franchise is absolutely correct. Metal fans and Metal culture works this way, when being in a band you will want to think long term and build something durable, the quest for short term fame is almost always doomed to fail. And one of the main reasons is that it takes far more than one try to put out a high quality album and consequently to grow a solid fan base. When you do lengthy songs full of worthless intermezzos that’s nothing more than garbage in garbage out. Metal music is something extremely difficult to play, it requires a lot of effort and personal investment, your brand and sound is mostly build in the uderground local scenes and it takes a lot of time to reach the top, plus the fans are extremely demanding and have very good training at their subject. But once you have them, you have them for life. So when you can come up with 50 minutes of quality Metal music you’re more than good, you’re among the best. But it is indeed true that once you reach that phase you can allow your quality curve to somehow flatten, the fans will still be out there and you have less pressure to always come up with something new. At that point perfecting your art by slow margins – like improving production or marketing – is more efficient than being original which is intrinsically extremely costly. Countless well known Metal bands do this – Machine Head, Blind Guardian, Immortal, Sodom, Megadeth, Slayer, Kreator, Marduk, Children of Bodom, Behemoth, Napalm Death, My Dying Bride and so on – but there are also those who are not afraid to take the big leap of innovation precisely because they have achived the high quality status : Opeth, Satyricon, Carcass, Tiamat, Celtic Frost or Death.

Pilgrim man – What are you searching for?
Believe the tales when everything else fails
Pilgrim man – Deep in your heart you know
Your faith is already bought and sold