Dear Upcoming Rock Bands,
Stop trying to make yourselves sound as complex and as complicated as you really are. Stop trying to display your skills in moments when you don’t need to. Stop trying to add so much noise that the piece of music holds no true personality. There is a growing influx of bands trying too darn hard to sound loud, yet ambitiously skillful as humanely possible. It is time for every American rock band to sit down and start taking notes from the one modern-day band that in recent years has consistently delivered despite using a very basic formula: Rammstein.
Rammstein is by no means the most complex band out there. They are by no means the loudest band. They are also by no means a band that displays the most talent in their music. And they are not even close of having the best lyrics. However, they are the one light in the dark tunnel that is the current state of rock/metal. They have been active for nearly 20 years without a single line-up change, without a single “disappointing” album, without any traces of potential “selling out.” This band has created the perfect formula of creating consistently good music and its time more bands take notice.
They achieve this by knowing their limits, and the limits of our ears. Just because you can play at 80 notes a second doesn’t mean you should ever do it. Rammstein’s guitar riffs are usually loud but slow enough so that it grooves into a beat, into a likable rhythm. And in case it ever becomes tedious, change up the tempo a couple times before retreating to the original addicting rhythm. Rammstein is like a new-age AC/DC, same sound, doesn’t stray far from it, but darn it its heavy enough for us to forgive them. The drums never go insane during a song; they maintain the tempo and heartbeat without ever straying far. The guitars are loud but never squeal, never scream unnecessarily, and never spew useless notes.
The keyword I am trying to derive myself towards is: simplicity. Rammstein is simple, pure and simple. They use a simple rhythm, simple drumline, simple lyrics, and a simple simplistic approach to their heavy music. And, it works. It’s heavy enough to allow you to headbang but never too irritating to make you cringe in the middle of the moshing. They are intense, but display tolerable intensity, the kind that forces you to pump your fists in the air with pure joy.
When you have modern-day bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Dragonforce (ESPECIALLY them), Trivium, System of a Down (whom had one incredible album but never veered better than that), Bullet for my Valentine, and many other examples complicating their sound by trying to do so much at the same time in terms of volume, speed, and intensity, it really brings down the genre of rock several levels. All of you bands today need to sit back, calm down, and take a better, smaller approach. You have the potential to provide consistently special music....you guys just clutter and cluster yourselves in the music-making to a point in which you stop sounding like music and sound more like........grungy noise. Stop trying so hard. Please.
Be more like Rammstein.
Simplistically Epic.
Sincerely,
Music Fan
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