This is a continuation of @steevc’s recent post labelled with the same words, and because I mentioned to
@detlev recently that I would use his #metalweekend tag in something soon.
What is a Long Song? The definition could be anything and today I am going to use a category of ‘greater than 10 minutes’.
Some of these huge 20+ minute ones can take so long to get going that a standard radio-friendly pop song would end before they come out of the 'weird bit', at the start.
Long songs, (and I don’t mean classical pieces) are often written by the old (and new) progressive bands, but that’s not always the case.
You could say progressive music was left in the 1970s, but that is not the case at all. It's taken a back seat and is generally not heard by the general public.
I can’t speak for those 70’s years as I was just a young kid, and they passed me by at the time as Slade, Gary Glitter (arghhhh!!), David Bowie and T-Rex were more important to me.
That's not to say I was not aware of Pink Floyd, ELO, Roxy Music, and Uriah Heep. They were just for ‘those weird kids’.
Then I grew up and became one of those ‘weird older kids’ and at 17 or so discovered Genesis, which changed my perspective on music.
I love Sound Awake mostly, and Deadman is the longest song on the album at just over 12 minutes.
It still has not properly clicked but I hear something new every time I play it through.
This is nothing new to me and I often struggle to get into these super-long songs as well as any other kind of music.
Karnivool are touring their native Australia next year, but it stops there. I would go and see them if they dare come to the UK.
I struggle to remember what songs I have posted by bands in the past. There seems to be little point in repeating what I have already once said.
Many an Opeth song I have posted but not this one.. I think. This one is a crowd-pleaser and one of the easier songs to ingest from the Swedish death-metal grunting band.
You can expect heavy riffs, and I mean heavy but with a lovely harmony interjected.
Oh.. and its almost 11 minutes long. A good candidate for my post methinks!
I was hoping to get three songs from this century and almost did it.
Ænima is from 1996, so almost there, and coming in at 13 minutes this is the longest song of the three.
I have said it before, but I find Tool an immensely tough nut to crack, and Ænima is the only album by them that I have made some headway with.
Saying this, the band is a little like marmite. You like them or you don’t.
There is plenty of other older material from the 70's I could have included, it was a lot more commonplace then to have these ridiculously long songs.
Here's the last one from my idol, Steven Wilson of over 20 minutes, and one I have tried to like but I can't hear anything special.
Raider II takes up a decent part of the ‘Grace for Drowning' album. However I try, it just doesn't sink in.
Too long, or not interesting enough?
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