Weekly Music 3
I’m back somehow for a third consecutive week of talking about some of my favourite music at the moment. I’ve been listening to a lot of the same stuff recently so I’m gonna try and focus on some different styles/artists next week, but some more familiar stuff this week, most of which is fairly heavy, corresponding with the music I’ve been writing this week
The first song of the week is Before I Forget by Slipknot:
There’s a lot of good things about this song. The drums, bass and guitars in the verses are very tight, but with some great tonal separation to help identify each of the parts. My favourite elements of the song however are in the pre-chorus and chorus. The pre-chorus incorporates some pinch-harmonics on the guitars, which have different harmonics in each speaker, and varying amounts of vibrato on them. This is a technique which Slipknot use a lot and really helps those harmonics to sound thick, rather than weaker than the riffs.
In the chorus, the full band stabs at the start of each line are ever so slightly held back, just emphasising them that bit more and keeping the chorus super-heavy, this is especially impactful when considering the complete stops that precede them. The bridge has some create elements too, the multi-tracked vocals have a great sound to them, and the slightly looser doubles in the vocals really help the chorus sound tight and punchy following it, as well as this being helped by the breathiness of the vocals.
The double kick drum usage in the final chorus is awesome too.
Another heavy song I really like is Raise Your Horns by Amon Amarth.
Probably my favourite aspect of Raise Your Horns is the very start of the song, an already big and powerful sounding riff is made to feel huge by a massive, dense reverb; something I haven’t often notice on heavy riffy guitars. The scooped tone allows this reverb to play out and be really audible in the mix too.
This is a great example of distorted vocals, especially when the backing vocals come in at the start of each line in the verse, again these are thickened by a shorter, but still dense and great sounding reverb. The bass is very bright and prominent, especially in this part of the song and really fills out the guitar sound.
The other really great part of this song in my opinion is in the chorus, where the vocal melody is doubled on guitar, it just gives it much more of a melodic, chorus-like feel and helps to bring out that melody which can sometimes be hard to really hear clearly on this type of heavy vocal.
The bridge has a great dark-gospel like feel in the vocals and becomes anthemic as the guitar returns with the chorus melody, and the drummer rides the low tom, introducing a crash as the vocals reappear before hearing the full power of the chorus, where the guitar melody is slightly varied, just keeping the listener fully engaged towards the end of the song.
The finishing chord is awesome too.
Coming Home by Alter Bridge is this weeks final song.
It opens with a great chordal guitar part, which is swiftly torn apart by the heavy chugging rhythm section playing in a 6/8 feel. Once the full band comes in, the combination of riffs and melodic lines in the guitars is really something to behold, and as usual an outstanding vocal performance from Myles Kennedy, a highlight of which is the lo-fi backing vocals which move from ear to hear when listening in stereo. The vocals have a great double on them too.
In the chorus, the guitar chords moving syllable by syllable with the vocals is very powerful and gives the song a feel slightly different to the rest of the album (all of which is outstanding by the way). The riffs building into the chorus with those lo-fi vocals before the big hits really give the song a feeling of arrival, matching the lyrics.
Finally, I’d Just like to mention I’m adding all the songs from this into a Spotify playlist, which you can see below.
Thanks for reading.
