Love me some Randy Bachman and BTO.

This is what I was talking about in the beginning. People starting to choose because of the song and not the guitar work.

Children of Bodom win this for me because it is a song that I would want to learn to play on the guitar. Despite the vocals that I still do not care for, I do enjoy the guitar work. BTO was very fun to listen to but it didn't have that quality that made me want to pick up the guitar and play.

Bit of trivia - Alexi Laiho was originally trained on the violin, which inevitably inspired his technique on the guitar.
Someone playing the song on the violin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pT4k...watch_response


Bit of personal trivia - When I was really young I thought that there were 3 people in BTO; a person named Bachman, a person named Turner, and a person named Overdrive. It made sense with ELP and other bands like that.

The band my son just joined has the CoB type vocals. If you can get past that part the songs are usually very cool. He's only done one show with them and this is the only video which shows him with the band. He's the Asian looking kid on the right of the video.

When Randy started to put on some weight I thought they should have renamed the band Bachman Turner Overweight

Giving this to KISSING THE SHADOWS – Alexi Laiho/Children of Bodom

Sounds good. From what I could hear.

The thing about the vocals is that the growl or cookie monster vocals are starting to get used more and more and not really the rarity that it once was. Despite the popularity of its use in actual death metal bands, it got really popular through Phil Anselmo of Pantera. Not to say that Phil Anselmo sounded like that but after he damaged his vocal cords he had to yell/scream/grunt a lot more. Which at the time was "innovative" but most importantly fit the music of Pantera very well. Now it is just about any band with similar or more overbearing vocal styling.

With that being said vocals is just one instrument in the band. A lot of these bands do not compose music that is interesting in any way shape or form. Too many beat blasts and super fast power chords mixed in with different rhythms of the open E string, again wishing they were like Pantera, but fail miserably. The saving grace for a lot of these bands is the musicianship on the other instruments.

The guitar work in Children of Bodom can be formulaic especially with the first three albums. The bass is your regular metal bass keeping the rhythm but not going that extra Geezer Butler mile, but that's OK. The drummer is pretty darn good in my opinion. Then CoB changed their style and sounds more nu-metalish. Same thing can be said about In Flames.

Here is Deadnight Warrior by Children of Bodom. I listened to this song and I can honestly say that the vocals annoyed me but the guitar work and the drumming won me over. It was the third song I heard from them.

Good job. Put me down for Alexi Laiho as my son is named Alex. And I'm getting into this.

Meanwhile, here I sat, thinking "if they could find a singer that didn't gargle..." with whatever.

That said...you probably can Guess Who my vote goes to...

Blue Collar -- Randy Bachman/BTO, please!

Holy Crow, these kids today with their idea of singing!!??!! Doesn't ANYBODY want to be the next Wayne Fontana???

Seriously...congrats and best wishes to your son!!

I'm not sure why you pointed out the guitar solo location on the shorter song. Perhaps going forward, if you're going to mark the time of the guitar solo you should do it with both songs, to prevent biasing.

Of course, I'm against this in general, because it's implying that the rest of the song has nothing to listen to (nothing to offer guitar-wise), which may not be the case. So if you do it for one, you should do it for both.



I listened to both of these songs a couple of times, and neither of them really wowed me. The BTO had a nice jazzy feel, while the CoB had a nice frenzied feel.

Alexi Laiho - KISSING THE SHADOWS

That sounds similar to my complaints against Rush. It's too bad that after all these years that trio either didn't get a real vocalist, or just played instrumentals.

Of course, I'm not a big fan of the growling either. Much like Rush, I really wish bands like Cannibal Corpse and White Chapel did much less singing.

You know the guy I coached soccer with? His middle son is the singer in a band like White Chapel (youtube them and prepare to be dismayed with the "singing".) He's at the point where he doesn't care what the music sounds like, if they don't have the growling/singing, he just can't listen to them. I figure he'll grow out of that some day, and expand his horizons. Until then, it is fun to listen to him sing. I try to get him to sing things like "I'll take a big mac, and order of fries, and a large coke" with that voice - I'm easily entertained.

This match will close tomorrow.

Randy Bachman - BTO leads Alexi Laiho - Children of Bodom 11-6