So am being a pyrat and playing around with Vuze (Azureus P2P version 3.0 which features a media viewer fronter end to watch various 'sponsored' video clips) when I encounter a video for Nightwish's "Bless The Child"...Bleh! Symphonic Metal? What makes this so interesting to European audiences? It's not scary strange like the Death Metal of Scandinavia for which this seems to be Pat Boonish response...Nor is it amusingly bombastic like the Trans Siberian Express doing Christmas tunes with heavy power chords and traditional classical symphonies. It's just so...bland, vanilla yogurt, fake vanilla flavorings at best.

The band seems so earnest, like this is the rockinest tune ever. Don't even get started by mentioning it's pathetic sibling band Within Temptation. Brrr. I may loath much of the music on the radio played in the Bay Area, but this stuff couldn't even make it on any of the local stations, bad as they are these days. For some reason this music reminds me of the really cheesy pseudo-rock-jazzy numbers played in movies and tv shows from the late 60's to the late 70's when the producers didn't want to pay for any real bands.

Its just that there seems to be a market, an actual enthusiastic audience for this pablum.

Maybe I blame the band Europe and its flatulent epic, "The Final Countdown" and the big Europop contest which seems to produce horrifically bland performance after performance. Of course, if American Idol had its way, silly equivalently drecky stuff like Symphonic Metal/Rock may yet come to pass. I guess the closest equivalent may be the stupid 'Who Let The Dogs Out' type of crappy Hip-Hop, or maybe its the puerile Poppy Country Muzak of the post-Shania Twain era.

Be sure to view/listen to the antidote tunes below if you dare to watch Nightwish & Within Temptation numbers.

Nightwish (shudder!) www.youtube.com/watch

Within Temptation (this video is sooooo pretentious, and I cannot for the life of me understand how the band didn't see how silly and self-important they seem...Boy do they so ever not rock) www.youtube.com/watch

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Antidote:

Made from fan submitted videos...This is a wonderfully poignant version of 'Running Up The Hill' www.youtube.com/watch

(Is this my personal version of symphonic metal, angsty subdued melodramatic music? Like the version of "Mad World" by Gary Jules in the movie 'Donnie Darko')