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Monday, June 11, 2012

Introduction to a waste of time

I remember when I was first getting into metal back in the early-mid 80's and back then I generally enjoyed it when a band would tack on some sound effects or clip before a song. Normally it was some horror type thing-moan, heavy rain, chains that sort of nonsense. I don't know if it's agge, impatience or what, but when I listen to an album now and some band begins a song (particularly the album opener) with some sound effects or noise it just annoys me. I am not going to name names and it's not all bands of course, but more and more it seems like bands feel the need to go this. My message to these bands is before you add this in at the start of a song please ask yourselves if it really adds to the song that it leads into. Does your gunshot, storm, growling or whatever contribut anything to the song it leads into? If a band thinks "well, Rabid Dogs from Hades absolutely needs that nine seconds or growling to lead into the song" then I am fine with it. However if the band thinks "well a lot of bands I listened to growing up had sound effects so we'll slap some on there too" or they just want to extend their running time then I would say it's no really necessary. Yes, I know it's creation and they can do what they like to a certain extent, but think about your listener before you force them to sit through something meaningless.

3 comments:

  1. Depends what kind of metal we're talking about, Mark. For industrial metal - my favorite - an intro (especially "samples") really helps set the tone for the song. But for traditional metal, they might just needlessly drag out the song.

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  2. I agree with non in regards to samples. Overall industrial metal sounds better with samples. In regular circles though it is far too overused.

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  3. scott whitt6:30 PM

    Agree. What I hate more is when they do it several times and those little lead ins are listed as album tracks. SO the album you just bought with 14 racks really only has 11 and 4 minutes of ambient keyboards.

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