New Blackmore's Night Video

While Blackmore's Night isn't metal, I post about them here because A) Richie Blackmore is metal and B) I discovered this band on the Metal from Finland forum as they were recommended to me by, if memory serves, a dude calling himself The Seer. I was really happy with this new find; I love their music. Wherever you are Seer, thanks for introducing me to these guys!

This is the new video from Blackmore's Night, "Highland." Their latest CD, Autumn Sky, was released in Europe in September and will be availabe in North America in January. On an interesting little side note, Candice Night, who is 39, recorded the CD while pregnant. Go Candice!

More details about the album are here.

And here is the video. Enjoy!

Podcast Episode #2: Metal Rant- Misconceptions about Guitar Shredders

You can download the podcast episode here.

One of the biggest things that really pisses me off in the world of metal is how people criticize metal guitar shredders! Guys like Yngwie Malmsteen, Jason Becker, Paul Gilbert, and Rusty Cooley all get equally blasted for not having any “feeling” or “soul”, or that they play “mindless scales quickly” in their guitar playing. To these people who criticize them, unfortunately, they only think inside the box and don’t ever consider why these guitarists want to play in a different style! They aren’t always going to play the blues scale or the pentatonic scale just because so many other guitarists do! I don’t understand at all! I don’t really care if people think this way because opinions are like assholes and everyone has one, but the way people harp on about it is what drives me nuts!

Being a guitar player myself, I know that playing a solo by Yngwie Malmsteen is much more difficult than playing a solo with the blues or pentatonic scale due to the tremendous amount of speed that he plays his solos and also the melodic approach he puts towards his guitar playing! In this Youtube video here, you can see just how much skill and accuracy it takes to play “Far Beyond the Sun”:



It is difficult as hell and anyone who actually plays guitar knows this!

As much as I like shred guitar playing, I also do like a lot of blues driven solos as well. I am not that narrow-minded, so don’t think that I only like guitarists who play at 800 MPH! A good example of a great guitarist who complements both a bluesy and a shred approach is Ritchie Blackmore. In this Youtube video, you can see how he shows his skills as a guitarist:



Ritchie Blackmore is easily one of the greatest guitar players of all time. In fact, he is one of my all time favorite players as well! My own guitar playing is heavily influenced by him and he is indeed one of my idols and biggest inspirations! So the mix of both blues and shred really complement each other well with his style of playing!

One of the biggest misconceptions about shred guitarists is that “they have no feeling” cliché that everyone seems to misunderstand. When you play the same scales that the shred guitarists use on an acoustic instrument like a violin, viola, or a piano, it sounds like a classical masterpiece. A lot of people like to hear these scales performed on those instruments, so why is playing it on electric guitar any different? I don’t get it! It’s the same scales, same style for the most part (with of course added effects that the acoustic instruments were limited to), so why do people always say these great guitarists have “no feeling”?

I know I may be a little uptight here on this rant, but lately it has started to piss me off! The other day I was in a guitar store playing a guitar from the rack and I was playing a little lick from Sonata Arctica. If anyone is familiar with them, they are pretty fast so I was playing a pretty fast guitar part. Anyways, as I was playing this, some guy came up to me and told me that I needed to start “playing slower” and “to start expressing myself more”! I was really pissed off at this because first of all, I can play whatever the hell I want to play! He had no right to say that to me. If he likes to play blues scales all day, am I going to go up to him and start criticizing him on his playing? NO! That would be selfish of me to do that! Also, whenever I go to a Youtube video that features a guitar shredder, you have almost half of the comments on the videos saying this: “He has no feeling, look up Jimi Hendrix” or “Mindless shredder who has no expression”. Don’t believe me? Go to those videos and see those comments for yourself! I don’t get why people would waste their time looking up guitar players they don’t like! It really makes no sense to me!

To conclude this little rant of mine, I just want to say that just because these guitarists play a different STYLE than what the average guitarist plays does not mean that they have no artistic integrity or that they are “mindless scale playing guitarists”! These guys have a lot of talent. In my personal opinion, I think playing this style of guitar is the hardest to master! I like blues scales too, but I don’t say that they “play too slow” or that they “need to play more notes”. That would be very hypocritical of me! I respect all good guitar playing no matter what the style is! I know everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but when some guy tells you in a guitar store that I have “no feeling”, I am bound to get a little pissed off! So my advice is to keep an open mind and understand that everyone plays different styles at different speeds and that all of these genres and styles should be well respected!

Underrated Metal Bands #7: Rainbow

Okay, some of you might be thinking, "How is this band underrated?", because a lot of people have heard of this band before. Well for one, Ronnie James Dio (R.I.P) needs no introduction at all, being one of metal's greatest singers of all time and also being one of my personal favorites as well. After all, he is the man that influenced Marco Hietala! Too bad he did not last too long with these guys before he was in Black Sabbath and his more famous solo project. His predecessors as vocalist (Graham Bonnet, Joe Lynn Turner, and Doogie White) could not even hold a candle to Dio, but they all have their own talents nonetheless. And of course the guitar legend Ritchie Blackmore, who was most notably known in the legendary rock band Deep Purple, who left them to form this band, and also his folk female-fronted rock project, Blackmore's Night. His influence on metal is beyond words as he really set the tone for future shredders like Yngwie Malmsteen, Timo Tolkki (ex-Stratovarius), Jari Maenpaa (ex-Ensiferum, Wintersun), and many more. Rainbow consists of one of the most underrated drummers of all time in Cozy Powell, a solid bass player in Jimmy Bain(who also played for Dio in the years to come), and numerous keyboard players over the years as well (Tony Carey being the most influential of them all).

Some of you may also be thinking, "No way, these guys are hard rock, not metal!". If you do not think they are metal, look here! Well in my personal opinion, Rainbow was one of the big major pioneers of heavy metal in the mid-70s and into today as well. Listen to the song "Stargazer" which is the featured video below, and you will see what I mean. Their style was a hybrid of progressive rock like Deep Purple, hard rock like Led Zeppelin, and metal like Black Sabbath at that time. They can fall into the rock category too, but they have that edge that seperates them from many other bands in that era. Rainbow's sound was very revolutionary, fresh, and melodic for their time and contributed to the start of the "New Wave of British Heavy Metal" in the following years with legends like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon, Def Leppard, Motorhead, and so on. One of my favorite finnish metal bands,Tarot, also credits Rainbow as being an inspiration for their band as well.

The reason I posted this is because I feel that Rainbow, though still moderately well known, has become shoved aside over the years and doesn't get the credit they deserve. This is one of Britain's greatest rock/metal acts along with Iron Maiden and Sabbath and is also perhaps one of the most underrated legendary classic bands of rock and metal. My personal recommendation is the album Rising. It features heavy metal masterpieces like "Stargazer", "A Light In The Black", and "Tarot Woman". For their time, they were a breakthrough band and gave Dio his claim to fame and rise to being a legend. But today, they are vaguely mentioned, which is a shame because they really did some amazing work in the 70's. Recommended for anyone into 70's hard rock/heavy metal, or just good music in general. Rock on! \m/



Links:

Rainbow's last.fm page