Hateful Chains

A Rant about Music

Today I have stuff to do and don't really have too much time to write this, so forgive me if it comes out a bit ranty. For I will rant.

I'm currently building a costume on a doll. It's for a contemporary music piece I will be performing with a colleague at What ever Works!-Contemporary Music Festival in April. To work I usually need some babble or music, and for that purpose I was searching for something new. I searched for a band in Bandcamp that I've heard much praise about and took a listen. 

It was nicely produced, modern sounds especially in drums, cool modern picture as an album cover. Vocals are nice too and as a vocal coach I can't really help having critical ears there. The vocals actually sound a bit Grunge-like to me, although there's that dark tone that suits Goth Music so well naturally present in the singers voice. 

Everything is balanced. Everything is done well, just like modern standards would require. Apparently it's produced by the band itself, so way to go! At least I can't no record label. And the feedback the album has received is positive, judging from what the band put on their page. Even the words "genius writing" are mentioned. 

There's just this slight teeny weeny feeling of too much cleanliness. It's the current trend in metal, I hear said, and hear myself in the music as well. Everything is clean. In fact everything must be so clean in most today's metal genres, that the living parts have been cut away and replaced with samples or straightened with autotune, and then the whole package is compressed to the roof. And I hate what it does to the music. Maybe it's just me, and me liking the sound of Eighties Goth and generally the more analog sound of past ages. Maybe it's false nostalgia. It's a whole another debate, though...

Anyway, the more I hear, the more I'm glad that there's not too much of this over cleanliness in this band. The natural tone of the singer can still be heard and I like that. And I can hear the slight variations in tempo and dynamics a bit somewhere, which in my opinion just makes the music living, played by actual people. The aesthetics in producing must be due to the genre, I conclude, and if you like the more Doom/Metal side of the wide Goth genre, then this stuff is worth listening to. 

What bugs me the most, and is the reason I can't really listen to this and genuinely enjoy it, is the arranging. It's the fact that most of the time everyone is playing the same thing, and on top of that, the vocals do exactly the same. I mean, the bass, the guitar and the synths are all playing the same melody and then the singer sings that same melody. To me as a singer, a song writer who writes the songs mostly based on the vocal melody and melodies around it, and yes: as a contemporary classical music composer, that is the one thing I try to avoid. It is in fact one of the basic things they teach you in music theory: Everyone does not need to play the same thing all the time. That kind of writing is not genius. 

Now, I'm not completely guiltless of this phenomenon. I'll tell you a story: before Hateful Chains ever existed I used to play synths in a Christian Metal band. As you can imagine, this placed a lot of boundaries to what you could sing about and where you could play, and that's one of the many reasons it never really took off. So, once we were playing at a Christian teen happening, and the guy who organised the event mixed the show. After it he gave us some feedback that really stuck to me: All of you don't have to play the same thing all the time. It makes the music muddy, hard to hear in a live situation. 

And what was the reason for this? In my opinion it was because the songs were based on guitar riffs and chord progressions first. And vocals or song melodies second. It's actually hard to come up with a good melody and lyrics on top of that, when the song is already stuffed with guitar parts. It is hard for me, and that's why I appreciate the true geniuses who are able to do that. What usually happens, though, is that the singer ends up singing the chord progression or even the bass line. In the worst case, it's everyone playing the same thing all the time. 

Now, in the case of this particular band I'm happy to say that there were also nice synth ideas and guitar melodies that were more independent from the whole. There were also some cool moments of tension. And the guitar sounds are nice, especially the beginning of the last track. I also like the way it continues throughout the whole song. The overall blending of Metal and Goth sounds is attractive and cool too. And what's most goth about it might just be the lyrics, the usage of religious imagery and the twists and double meanings there in.  If this band continues, and I hope of course that they will, they'll surely develop into something beautiful. 

And did you guess it? 

Yes, it was Her Despair and their EP Mournography (2018)

Now, off the internet cave and into the cave of handicraft. Maybe I'll do a post about it later.

Sweet dreams, Hypnosis