Your Music Evolution

For most of my adolescent life I remember being hip to the Michael Jackson fad. I had Thriller on tape, I bought Moonwalker, I played the hell out of the Moonwalker arcade game. There was a lot of music out there in the 80's but the pop rock he did when Bad came out really struck a proverbial chord with me. It was catchy, and he had a great singing voice, and hell, we all know it, he had badass dance moves. I still listen to Bad when I need an MJ fix.

I remember the first two CDs I spent money on were Alice In Chains' self titled album and Soundgarden's A-Sides. Though I pretty much got tired of Soundgarden after I played out Pretty Noose and Burden in my Hand...

1997. Alice in Chains was my introduction to hard rock. I listened mostly to my local rock station, but they were a band that I really invested myself in. I liked their melodies, I liked their style, and enough that I figured I'd buy one of their albums.

1998, I heard The Prodigy's album Fat of the Land, as well as The Matrix Soundtrack and the Blade Soundtrack. Up until that point I had really dismissed a lot of techno music as the dance type, with super-happy female vocalists and cheesy effects. For lack of a better term, this blew me away. I was really sucked into the world of electronica. I delved into trance, breakbeat, trip-hop, and all kinds of different genres thanks mostly to MP3.com.
This was also the year I realized that game music was good, dammit, based mostly on my experiences with Diablo, Final Fantasy 7, and Super Mario RPG. I began actively seeking out songs on Napster running the gamut from Static-X to Diablo.

Fast forward: grunge, alternative, standard rock, and...
2001, I listened to Sevendust's album Animosity, and Soilwork's Natural Born Chaos album. They couldn't really be farther apart in style, but they both represented a real departure from what I was used to. I liked melodic singers with a hard rock base, bands like Finger Eleven, Stabbing Westward, Linkin Park, and others. When I stumbled upon these two albums, though, it let me step outside the box for a minute and ask myself how important my strict rules for melody really were. The truth was, I enjoyed the occasional screaming or growled lyrics, because it allowed me to contrast against the beautiful harmony. That year I also visited a certain forum that happened to be associated with a certain GFA3 project that was just coming online. Exposure, exposure, exposure. I ate it all up. Video game music beame my life for months, when I would often download something without any idea what it was just to find out if it was maybe any good. Lastly, I heard Juno Reactor's album, Bible of Dreams. As if the video game music wasn't enough, here I was being treated to a wonderful mishmash of cultural and electronic elements that really sent me spiralling. I got exposed to a lot of interpretational and experimental styles as a function of this, probably my favorite year in music, but at this point I was still under the impression that certain things were off limits.

Fast forward to 2003, when I bought my first Iced Earth CD (Burnt Offerings) from a used CD store. I had heard many good things from GFF members, and I figured I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. I found that I really liked it. Despite the wailing vocals and the melodramatic presentation of the album, I was digging it. I opened myself up to other avenues that I had only known by reputation before.

Early 2004, I gave Opeth a real chance. I had downloaded some of their material before, and wasn't very impressed with the death vocals. This time I listened to them for real, and found that if I was going to make concessions, and listened to the band not just for the melody, but for the combined effort of rhythm and melody (this goes towards the claim I've made before about death vocals being more of a rhythm instrument than a melody instrument) then I could enjoy myself a whole lot more.

Death and (mostly because of the rhythm component), hardcore music, began to work its way into my regular playlist. 2005 saw me buying albums from everyone from As I Lay Dying and Unearth to Into Eternity (Now one of my favorite bands), Juno Reactor, Dredg, The Mars Volta, The Haunted, and everything in-between.

My most recent attempts have included dipping my toes into classic & soft jazz, emo, as well as ambient and environmental music. I don't feel like I ever really tossed anything aside, so I'd say my musical evolution has been, in a general sense, outward rather than linear.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Gratch

Bauhaus/"The Sky's Gone Out": Oddly enough, the only reason I bought this album is because a review for the original Diablo in PC Gamer said the game music sounded very similar to Bauhaus.

My interest is piqued. =o

Do you think any of these bands sound like the Diablo soundtrack? I like the instrumental stuff in the game, but if they overlay it with the doom-like vocals (see Type O Negative) it's kind of a turn-off for me.

There's nowhere I can't reach.