My story of a
metalhead started when I discovered the Finnish metal band Nightwish. I simply
fell in love with their music, which made me more curious about other metal
bands. That's how I
discovered metal.
There was,
however, one particular sub-genre which captivated my attention the most:
symphonic metal. It had everything I loved - heavy riffs, orchestra, and catchy
melodies (although sometimes too catchy to my liking as I love complex
compositions, which symphonic metal bands' songs don't always have). I still
love these elements in music, but the more symphonic metal bands I knew, the
more I actually realized that most of these bands are pretty much the same in
some aspects, and as I grew up and discovered more bands and sub-genres, the mutual
similarity of some bands started to get boring (maybe I could even say it
started to be annoying).
But don't get
me wrong - I haven't given up on the symphonic metal, I have only become a bit
picky (well, maybe more than just a bit). Of course, there are also great
symphonic metal bands which are really original and unique, but most of these
bands are not strictly symphonic metal - they use elements of other genres or
subgenres and they do not restrict themselves to the metal genre only. What
makes them stand out is that they're not afraid to do some experiments. There
are, however, a lot of absolutely stereotypical symphonic metal bands that
sound really the same and that's what I want to dedicate this article to. So
let's see what bothers me about this metal subgenre the most...
1. Lyrical
themes
If you want to play in your own symphonic metal band, you have to find
some good lyrical themes for your music, otherwise you can't simply catch
people's attention, which in other words means: no fans for you, loser! A good
choice of lyrical themes for a symphonic metal band's music is usually a
combination of any dark themes like sorrow, anger or hate, pain, death, loss,
loneliness or sins (possibly all the seven deadly sins) and, of course, also
darkness itself. It simply has to be dark. Get it? DARK!
And if you want a little change sometimes, you can also choose from less
dark themes, like for example: love, innocence and maaaayyyybe (but just maybe)
nature and wilderness. But don't change themes of your music too often. If you
do feel the pressure still because you want your songs to be a bit varied,
combine the less dark themes with the darker ones like this for example: A song
about love can be combined with death, loss, loneliness, sorrow and pain, so
the story line of the song could be "I lost my beloved one, because he
died and now I feel lonely, sad and psychically hurt". Emotions are
desperately needed. And don't forget to make it sound really poetic.
