Hello there! This blog is mainly about the newest music that's been grabbing my attention lately. I suppose in a couple of years, it'll be interesting to take a look back and see how my music tastes have evolved.
I mainly enjoy three very different genres of music: classical, progressive rock, and metal. Strangely enough, I discovered them (or perhaps heavily delved into the genre) in that listed order.
Classical was easy. When I was four and still living in Shanghai, my parents scolded me for fooling around at dinner. Turns out, I was pretending to play violin with one chopstick held horizontally to my chin, and the other dragging back and forth perpendicular to it. I finally started learning violin in fourth grade through a program in elementary school, and I've been playing ever since. That was 12 years ago!
Through my participation in various orchestras, I came to appreciate the nuances of some of classical music's greatest composers, especially the later romantic and early 20th century masters like Bartok, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Mahler, Profokiev, and Stravinsky.
I clearly remember the single event that made me a diehard progressive rock fan back in the early days of high school. My local library held an impressive collection of music cds for loan. On the recommendation of a friend, I checked out Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here."
That afternoon while doing homework, I pressed the play button on my cd player. Needless to say, I was mesmerized from the first minute of that album to the last. I ended up staring out the window for the entire 44 minute duration of that album with my jaw dropped to the floor. Unfortunately the attempt to do homework that day was a complete failure. I played that album non-stop for a week, and on my next trip to the library, I instantly checked out Dark Side of the Moon. The rest is history.
The discovery of metal was somewhat of an odd thing. My bus driver loved hard rock and that's all we listed to on the bus. He used to gush on and on about how Stairway to Heaven was the greatest song ever. Personally, I found Led Zeppelin to be quite boring, and never listened to much hard rock outside of commercial radio. Those days, the rage was all about Korn, Incubus, and Godsmack. Godsmack never interested me, I liked Incubus, and Korn was okay. I still prefered Pink Floyd over all of them.
If it wasn't for file sharing, I would never have found the amazing genre of metal.
After hearing about Opeth from their crazy fanboys (and girls), I downloaded the song "Harvest" on a whim. That became the second time in my life in which I was completely awed by music. Within the course of 4 months, I had collected the complete Opeth discography, including buying Deliverence for $18 at Virgin when it came out (what a rip off!) and ordering Damnation from The End and getting it one day earlier than the official release date!
One often hears the quote "Where there's a will, there's a way." I never thought much of that quote until the great lengths I had to go to see my first metal/Opeth concert ever. It was the weekend before finals when I should have been studying. I went home to "see my parents" but really ended up retrieving my car, driving 60 miles to Worcester alone, surviving the mosh-crazy crowd during Shadows Fall and Nevermore, and finally seeing Opeth headline the New England Metalfest squeezed 5 rows from the stage. They were so phenomenal that I waited outside the venue afterwards for an hour in snow/rain/slush to get a chance to talk to Mikael and Peter after the show.
Opeth may have been my first metal obsession, but they are certainly not my last! From there onwards, I delved heavily into black metal, melodic death metal, and progressive/power metal. In many ways, I was lucky in how I discovered black metal. I'm happy to say the first black metal album I ever bought was In the Nightside Eclipse on July 4th. That album brought chills down my spine, despite the fact that it was over 100 degrees that day. I also realize that if I hadn't started off with Burzum's "Hvist Lyset Tar Oss" album, I probably would not be a fan of minimalist black metal at all. The first track off that album is incredible; I played that track 6 times before even moving on to the second song.
Along the road, I've come across other incredible black metal artists like Weakling, Windir, Drudkh, Enslaved, Arcturus, Abigor, and Summoning. I never quite got into Darkthrone though...
My latest craze is doom. I must thank Alex for sending me a copy of Shape of Despair's "Angels of Distress." That alone dragged me further into the genre with gems like Esoteric, Thorr's Hammer, Disembowelment, Mourning Beloveth, Pantheist, etc.
That's about it for my first post. Hopefully I will be writing many thoughts on new discoveries in the future. Thanks for reading! :-)
Finally it's here! I've been waiting for this album to arrive in my dirty rotten hands for 2 months. After finding the digi-slipsleeve sold out nearly everywhere, I finally tracked it down on a Swedish metal mail-order site. Luckily, for those who are not able to grab the digi version, Adipocere Records will be pressing a normal double cd version in early 2006.
