Beautiful Brutality

  

If you like hard music and have not listened to Zao before your missing something special.  This band has been around for a good long while now which is pretty amazing considering they've had more line-up changes than just about any band I can think of.  Zao makes some of the best hard music ever.  I've heard them described as Screamo, extreme metal, and metal but whatever you call them they are fantastic.  Bands like Bullet for my Valentine, Underoath, and As I Lay Dying all owe some of their success to Zao.  They broke the mold for what a successful band in the modern music market could sound like.  

Of all the bands I listen to Zao is easily the band that has the biggest impact on my state of mind.  When I have had a rotten day and release some aggression this is the band I turn to.  Their music is so aggressive that it just saps it all out of me.  What I like best about it that even though it is extremely heavy music with mostly shouted/screamed vocals it is still musically fantastic.  These guys craft some absolutely gorgeous songs.  If you want to give them a try their greatest hits album Legendary is a great place to start.  My personal favorite CD they have done is  The Splinter Shards the Birth of Separation.  The intro to that CD is among the best intros ever.  It kicks off with the song Times of Separation which is my favorite song from them.  I also really enjoy Liberate ex Inferis (Save Yourself from Hell), The Funeral of God, and The Fear is What Keeps us Here.    To top is all off their artwork is always fantastic.  All in all this is a band you need to check out if you haven't yet.

Pinch Harmonic Pandimonium

I've been listening to Black Label Society's Mafia album lately.  I love this album, but every person who I talk to thats into metal seems to hate it.  It can only be the pinch harmonics.  For those of you how may not know pinch harmonics (if I remember correctly) are when you strike your thumbnail on the guitar string at the exact same time that you strum it.  The result is a high pitched squeal.  To say that Zak Wylde loves them would be an understatement.  His guitar work with Ozzie and his solo stuff is filled with them.  

Zak Wylde is the founding member of BLS but is probably better known as Ozzie Osbourne's main guitarist since Randy Rhodes died and an unlockable character in Guitar Hero: World Tour.  If you haven't heard any BLS discs this is a great place to start.  Wylde's vocals are reminiscent of Ozzie in that they tend to be a little bit on the high side of the spectrum.  We're not talking Michael Sweet high but they are up there.   What I like about them is that even though they are much higher than lots of grunting, shouting vocals that you get a lot of nowadays they are still very aggressive.  

While the vocals are good the music is what really makes this band.  BLS plays great straight up metal.  The band knows how to find a great groove and ride it.  I can definitely see why Wylde and Dimebag Darrell from Pantera/Damage Plan were such good friends, they both love the groove.  Zaks rhythms are generally not as down and dirty as Dime's were but they are still fantastic.  In addition Zak Wylde is not afraid to solo.  So many bands have done away with solos out of inability to adequately play them or out of a desire to follow trends (I'm looking at you St. Anger).  I highly recommend you check this band out.  Some of the highlights on this disc are Fire it Up, Suicide Messiah, In this River (a tribute to Dimebag), Death March, and Dr. Octavia.

Stryper: The One That Started It All

My name is Travix and I'm a music addict.  I love music all styles all kinds.  I just love it.  I play music in my classroom, I go to sleep to music, I shower to music.  I love music.  I'm not particularly musical.  I play the guitar a little bit but not enough to call myself proficient.  Although I am a decent guitar hero player.  My love is more a listening type of thing.  

It probably started when I was a kid my mom encouraged us to listen to music.  It was mostly Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) with the occasional oldies station mixed in.   My earliest music memory is of the Oak Ridge Boys.  I used to lay on my mom's bed and listen to dubbed copies of their music that were made by putting our record next to a simple tape recorder.  I also used to listen to Sandi Patti.  At the time I probably liked it, but now it is a Scarlet Letter I'm forced to wear.   

My journey to new and better music started around 3rd grade (1986ish).  Two Seminal events occured that jump-started a lifetime love of music.   The first was that some friends of our family who lived in Florida began sending us recordings of the radio station Way fm.  I think it was in or near Ft. Myers.  Way fm played what was considered Christian Rock and the song that really got me was by Carmen.  It was called Get Outta My Life.  Looking back it was incredibly tame but by my standards it was like a bomb had gone off and changed my world.    The second thing was that my mom realized I enjoyed music I heard on Way FM and wanted to encourage it.  Since there were no stations like that near Cedar Springs, MI were I grew up she took other steps.

My mom was very strict on some things and very cool on others.  She didn't care what the music sounded like as long as the message was a good one.  To that end she made a rule that we could only listen to Christian music.  Around 4th or 5th grade, with those to things in mind she went to the library and borrowed the cassette that truly changed my life.  My mom brought home Stryper's In God We Trust cassette.  From the very first song I was hooked.  A music lover and more importantly a metal head were born.  If Carmen felt like a bomb blast this felt like the world had turned inside out.  I loved the crunch of the guitars, Michael Sweet's voice and the style of the band.  I learned to draw their logo and doodled it everywhere.  I had Pictures of the band in my folders and spent anytime I could listening to, thinking about, or talking about Stryper.  I was a nut.  I couldn't get enough of metal.  The hunger for more is what started me doing everything I could to find more bands like Stryper.  It broadened my horizens and started the soundtrack of my childhood and for that I'm eternally thankful.

Many people make fun of Stryper but given the time and place of there music they were tremendous.  They still hold up today.  I'm listening to their one of their greatest hits cd's right now and it still makes me feel great.