I am creating this blog is because I want to help others find information about bands that they love, or are interested in getting to know. I'm going to do this in two ways:
1.) track down any and all information available about the band itself to the best of my ability, including the bands biography, discography, and profiles on each individual member of the band.
2.) listen to said discography and give a review of the albums using my background in music as basis for my opinion. I will then give the album a rating out of five which I will discuss more later when I have thought through the exact way I want this ranking system to work.
Now you may be asking why I am bothering to do this at all, given that there are many other review sites on the internet, so here is a bit of back story as to why I am doing this.
A couple of years ago I decided that I wanted to branch out my playlist a little bit. Almost all music, with a few exceptions, that I had been listening to at that point was in English, and more or less from North America, the U.K., and Scandinavia. I wanted to start listening to music that was not in English, essentially to try something I had never really given much of a chance before. I decided, rather stupidly, to start with the music scene in Japan, since the few bands that I listened to that weren't in English were either Japanese or German. I already knew that Japan had a very notable music scene and since I had a background in basic Japanese I thought it would be the most natural transition into this unknown music world. Boy was I wrong.
The first thing that struck me about the Japanese music scene wasn't the music itself, though they do have some very interesting differences from other music scenes, it was the voracity of the fans. As I tried to find information about these new bands that I was coming across I had to sift through loads of flame wars from one 'fandom', as they call themselves, to another, and a ton of verbal garbage and rumors in order to get relatively little information.
It was time consuming and painful for two reasons. One, because most of the so called 'fans' wouldn't know the basics of music if Mozart walked up and dropped a piano on their head, and two, everything, and I mean everything, that they were concerned about was appearances. With very few exceptions. This is basically what you would have to go through to get to information that was worth anything.
Fan 1: "So and so from blank is an amazing vocalist because he is so hot. So and so from blank is sooooooo fugly."
Fan 2: "STFU! I love so and so from blank! He is so amazing and sexy! You are the ugly one!!"
Fan 1: "You stfu, you're just an elitist who doesn't know anything about music! So and so is ugly! DO NOT WANT!"
Fan 2: "Is not look at this picture from this album back in their indie days! I masturbate to this photo!"
Fan 1: "Yeah I would so totally do him in this photo, but it doesn't stop him from being ugly since he shaved his head. Now he is a terrible musician."
I shit you not, this is basically a conversation between so called fans about bands they love, bands they no longer love and the reasons why. Basically being 'ugly' makes you unable to be a good musician, if you are hot you are the "best musician ever!" It's terrible, it's sickening and it has nothing to do with anything musically relevant. The ones who claim their bands are awesome give zero evidence as to why, and the ones who say a band is awful make these decisions based on how doable the members of said band are. And this isn't just for the Japan scene, but also the Korean, Thai and Chinese music scenes as well.
I know that music is subjective and good music is in the eye of the beholder, but this B.S. is what I wanted to spare everyone from having to deal with.
You are probably wondering where I get off saying that I am going to review bands, and what right I have to say that. So here is a little background on me, where I come from and what my views on music are.
I have been involved with music since I was very young. I started singing in a children's choir when I was about six and was in several choirs all throughout my childhood. I was in my first musical at the age of 8 and I have been in several throughout my life. I joined my schools concert band when I was 11 and started playing bass guitar, and learning more about musical theory. At 13 I stared playing clarinet, at 14 the saxophone, at 16 I started learning a bit of piano.
I wrote my first song at age 12, and attempted to start a band when I was 14. It didn't work out as lame junior high garage bands tend to do. I played in several jazz bands throughout junior high and high school. In high school I was apart of the years musical, it was the last musical I ever did. After high school I continued looking into musical theory and worked on singing on my own. When I started university that went on the back burner for a while but eventually I started taking singing lessons for classical voice, which I did for about 3 years. In that time I mostly sang opera and classical song pieces from the 1600 - 1700's.
Eventually I decided that I wanted to learn unclean vocals, I began to learn how to do fry screams and death growls. This has led me to where I am now, the vocalist of a local melodic death metal band in my home city.
No I am not some virtuoso, and no when I do these reviews I am not claiming to be able to do something better. I am just giving my honest opinion of how the band did with the music they had written. I may give some critiques and what I would like/ hope they would do in the future, but for the most part I am going to tell you what I like, what I dislike and why. Then I will give it a rating out of 5, and tell you whether I think it is worth buying or not.
Music has been apart of my life since I was small, basically since the time that I have been able to have memories. It's important to me, it's apart of my life. So it right pisses me off when people shit all over that. Music is something special, listening to the right song can make a shitty day awesome, and an awesome day an ADHD day (= more awesome). Everyone deserves to have good music in their lives. And I want information about that music to be available to them when they want to look for it.
This entry is a lot longer that I thought it would be.
My next up date will be a post for the rating system while I work on my very first band bio and review. Look forward to it.
Cheers,
Lira
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