The funny thing about this thread is that I don't even really like symphonic metal. I sold most of my Nightwish CD's recently and I've now got maybe 4 or 5 albums at most that could qualify as being symphonic metal*. I don't even really like the genre! And I've been the only one rushing to defend it. Talk about a maligned genre.


*3 with Nighwish, 1 with After Forever and a few others from Arven and The Dark Element that I will insist are power metal.

It's not so much that I dislike bands like Nightwish or whatever, it's just I haven't given them much of a chance because the few songs I've heard weren't very interesting to me. That type of symphonic metal with my very limited knowledge tends to be more mediocre to me than plain bad in any case. There's a lot of worse metal out there than the popular symphonic stuff. But some symphonic metal can be great.

Just curious, what do people think of bands like Therion, Phlebotomized, and Xanthochroid? I have a friend who likes the three of them quite a bit, and I've liked the little bit I've heard from Phlebotomized and Xanthochroid. With Therion it's been a little while since I heard their more symphonic material, as far as I can remember I only really liked their less symphonic, more death/doom type stuff.

I think a bit of Therion can be allright now and then, but I can't really get into them for real. The Birth of Venus is a fun song.

God... For a period of about 4 months, when I was 16 or so-- and weirdly this was after my death metal phase-- I was suddenly and inexplicably into Therion, Within Temptation and After Forever (and also some cheesy folk metal). I partly blame the people I was around at that time, though; they all listened to awful music.

Really-- I want you all to take a moment and imagine being trapped in a van with five extremely smelly stringy-haired teenagers (all dressed in various Tim Burton related merch from Hot Topic) blasting Dragonforce for three hours so that they could go LARP in the woods behind someone's uncle's trailer. (And not even proper LARPing. They'd just hit each other with foam swords while occasionally quoting Inuyasha or whatever. Oh, and after that? After that they'd sit around a fire and discuss their otherkin-related feelings. One time, this girl's boyfriend was kicked out of their little fireside gathering in a hilariously melodramatic fashion after he tried to pass off some fantasy novel's plot as his own life story. Which they somehow didn't realize right away. They were all, "Oh.. my god... Everything makes sense now. We were Chosen. We were all brought together to do this..." They totally believed it 100% until one of them recognized it as a plot in some terrible book involving a prophecy or something.)

My musical tastes made absolutely no sense back then, though, so I feel I should be forgiven. (Occasionally I'll come across some ancient mix CD I made and it'll have, like, three versions of Natalie Merchant's "Ophelia" and Death in June and Throbbing Gristle followed by a bunch of tatu and Britney so I mean, it's all a mystery.)

Gross. Dragonforce.

I imagine this could describe a regular listening session for Batlord.

More or less, but t.A.T.u. lost their allure years ago when I found out they weren't lesbos.

Suspending disbelief is the most important skill for successful masturbatory phantasies.

Honestly (pls don't kill me, MB) Britney goes surprisingly well with Throbbing Gristle if you're a little bit drunk and keep accidentally playing several wildly different Youtube tabs/playlists at the same time till you've created an oddly pleasing cacophony of nonsense (featuring Britney's robotic bleating)

I always kind of figured they weren't, but when you're a repressed bisexual in the 8th grade (with two friends who were embroiled in their own secret lesbian love affair) you just have to cling on to that wild hope for as long as you can.

I think Nickelback would have the exact opposite effect. Chad Kroegers constipated crooning would ruin any good cacophony.