What is a Heavy Metal Opera, anyway?

selta

Power User
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(Beware, long post ahead!)

Often on here, I'll reference my "Heavy Metal Opera" project, Ara'Kus (aka Flaming Sword Productions). What I haven't done, and have been meaning to do, is go over what this really is. I think it's pretty cool, and something I'm proud of. Right now, we're in a lull while we write up our new album / show / story, so I thought it'd be a good time to sit back and write about it here a bit more.
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(yours truly, ripping it up on my 6 string Bongo)

Musically, we are "just" a metal band. When I came into this band ~6 years ago, everything musically was already in place. I just had to pick up and go. Everything is written out well in advance of anyone picking up their instrument - think of it more like how classical pieces would be composed. Everything is a puzzle piece, and they all fit together, picking up and dropping harmonies, leads, rhythms, changes and so on. But, we were entering a new phase of the production - walking away from the typical band venues, and renting theatres to put on our full production.

That production include:
1) Medieval Combat Re-enactment (with very real swords and armor, not stage props)
2) Fire dancing (hurray burny things)
3) Classically trained musicians (cello, violinist, vocalists)
4) Full set, designed and built by us
5) Actors, some formally trained, others just have an interest in theatre
and more.

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(I did say burny bits, didn't I?)

We took our album, which was always a "concept" album (telling a story end to end), and flushed out the entire production from there. We stumbled, and had a lot of learning and growing pains. We're now at the point where we do 2 shows a week, for 3 or 4 weeks out of a month once or twice a year (normally - as I said, in a lull to write all the new stuff - debuting in early 2017). Each show has anywhere from 550 to 825 people in attendance.
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(lead guitarist & composer, JJ)

Aeterno Elementum, our first album/production, is an age old tale; a well-intentioned spiritual leader is deceived by a demon, causing a cataclysmic sequence of events, eventually ending the whole of mankind. The spiritual leader (for simplicity sake only, will be refereed to as a priest) does this over time by assembling 4 Generals via trickery, magik/alchemy, torture, and subversion. These Generals amass armies, which overtime are used to destory, well, everything.

The Axe-Fx II that I use has been nothing but absolutely perfect for this gig. In the next few months, I'm hoping to get the rest of the band on board Fractal products - right now they use Line6 stuff. Being able to change everything with a simple tap of a button, and also not having to have any kind of amplification on or off stage (we used to have cabs in iso cabs with mics... that was difficult!) just makes things so nice and easy for us. I can't wait to get both guitarists on either AX8s (most likely due to price) or Axe-Fx II's. Hopefully we can do that in time for the new production.

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(lead violinist + lead soprano - her violin also runs through FAS products!)

We basically have nothing on stage - two side fill monitors, primarily so the actors and other theatre types can hear what is happening to time their stuff. I bounce between IEMs and a tiny 2x10 cab on stage, as the side fills just don't have the low end to let me hear myself well enough.

Here is the song that we cruise through right at the end of Act I., from "my" perspective.


(you can hear how quiet it is on stage, as you can hear the "clank" against the fingerboard [fretless] - most of the audio is bounce back from FOH or from the sidefills)

That is it in a nutshell. I know I've had a few people ask me about it here, though I quite honestly forget who all have asked. This production keeps me fairly busy, and when it's not in full swing, I have my other hard rock / prog rock band that plays 2 - 3 times a month as well, called Convergence (that band has 3 members using Fractal gear!)
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(stabby bits and anti-stabby bits)

Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this glimpse into part of what I do with my music career and gear. Feel free to check out our website:
http://heavymetalopera.com

You can download our album (for free), check out the lore of the first album (a lot of the story is up there - a full book is being written, along with some short comic type stuff), and also check out some more photos and videos.

Thanks to those that stuck through the whole post :)
 
This show looks incredible! You guys have done a great job with the sets and costumes. I'm looking forward to checking out the album. Thanks for sharing!
 
This show looks incredible! You guys have done a great job with the sets and costumes. I'm looking forward to checking out the album. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks! Feel free to post your thoughts on the album too. It was recorded ages ago, though we've re-done a couple of the tracks recently that weren't salvageable. Honestly, the entire album should be re-recorded, but we don't have the time and funds to do that. Moving onto the new stuff :)
 
Looks like a whole, whole lot of fun. Keep me posted!

The word opera to me is not easily defined because I believe it has more to do with allowing an artist to expand out into wider territory. To me it is dramatic musical art with some scope - the question of whether the two albums of Tommy and Quadraphenia are necessary, or whether a 7 minute piece of music can equally be operatic to me is answered by whether I consider something to have the exuberantly artistic "operatic mood". Classic opera was never something I got into. But Rock opera's like the above, and the employment of my favorite vocalist at the time, Ian Gillan, to play a part along those lines, got me interested in the contrasts of music that were coming out. I heard bumble gum stuff, the the early Beatles, and for me something was missing. Basically Ian Gillan, (and arguably his predecessor Arthur Brown) woke me up to the idea of a vocalist exploring some heavy emotion. First hearing Deep Purple Sweet Child In Time was a moment that impacted me in a good way.

Then I heard Black Sabbath's first album. While neither of these to me would be heavy metal opera in its more narrow sense, I began to have a sense of the possibility of the heaviness and emotion and broken performance boundaries to come.

For my experience the birth of heavy metal opera was a blending of Black Sabbath and Queen (probably the Budgie influence is important), that seemed to happen during the second album of Judas Priest, "Sad Wings Of Destiny". Some of Halford's screams, as recorded in the studio, raised the bar as to what a vocalist might do in a metal band.

I didn't dislike prog rock in the slightest. IMHO this was in a time when bands like Genesis, Yes, Rush, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Queen, Renaissance, etc., etc. were being allowed to explore things the $ people would begin to squash in terms of real financed music. But the early envelope pushers tore a wide hole into a not-quite-entrenched consumer programming matrix.

But anger and the sense of rude awakening were nowhere as evident as with the first work/s of Black Sabbath and King Crimson - Court of the Crimson King in particular had been an effective rebuttal against the subtle matrices we imagine are being delicately puppeteered, while Pink Floyd more softly, somberly and deftly piloted the landscape of the rude enlightenment/awakening into consciousness.

I get the sense all this exploratory musical art was an opening that Sad Wings Of Destiny found its way into, and IMHO, because of influence upon Rob and crew by the operatic band Queen, you got extreme ranges of emotion and philosophy that no one else at those early stages had passed through. The tone was not entirely serious and not entirely angry but cathartic and entertaining, and yet managed to deeply express seriousness and anger for an audience (at least myself and the dudes at the record store who watched with baited breath as I became the first customer to buy Sad Wings). Around this time Led Zep increased their operatic scope, and of course Rush 2112 and Rush Cygnus X1/Hemispheres is operatic. In fact I would even say Farewell To Kings has that quality. Of course arguably prog, hard rock and metal are easy to distinguish? Well, I don't care so much about labels. I do care about overall artistic quality.

A large number of later thrash & metal sub genre bands, both that did and didn't incorporate the stylistic trappings of high vocals and carefully written and extensive musical changes.would in my sense be thought of as operatic because of the breadth of the subject matter.

Full length opera pieces by bands like Queensryche are not the essential mark, although magnitude of the story is definitely a part of the concept to me. Its more of a feeling of anything-goes soaring and searing emotional entertainment that manages to also embody the metal mood.

The costumes on your web site are awesome, and your audience in that vid seems to be really enjoying themselves.
 
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Opera has a lot of meanings to different folks. We use it more loosely because our lead soprano is classically trained (in both vocals and violin - went to Juliard when she was like 7 years old), as well as other Opera elements with the format of the show.

To me, what you are talking about jesussaddle is more the "concept" albums - albums that beginning to end tell a story. Some have Operatic elements, but not all. It's an interesting intersection of things though, and the lines are very blurry. With our stage show involved, things get even more blurry. Anytime people ask us about our show, we have a bit of difficulty describing it using "normal" terms that are easy to grasp for laymen. Especially the word Opera, which for a lot of people carries a certain weight and image that almost conflicts with the term "heavy metal".

Great post and thoughts :)
 
Looks like an extremely entertaining show. Do you guys take the show on the road? Would definitely pay to see something like this!
 
Not yet. It's incredibly expensive to put on locally even. Transporting the set, and either flying the cast/crew or hiring local talent where possible... whew, I can't even imagine what it'd cost in total just to travel to the next state yet :).

It is very exciting to perform though, and we always have great crowds at our shows with very positive feedback. I can't wait to try the AX8 at the next run - just load in with a simple pedalboard and that's it, no rack even.
 
Opera has a lot of meanings to different folks. We use it more loosely because our lead soprano is classically trained (in both vocals and violin - went to Juliard when she was like 7 years old), as well as other Opera elements with the format of the show.

To me, what you are talking about jesussaddle is more the "concept" albums - albums that beginning to end tell a story. Some have Operatic elements, but not all. It's an interesting intersection of things though, and the lines are very blurry. With our stage show involved, things get even more blurry. Anytime people ask us about our show, we have a bit of difficulty describing it using "normal" terms that are easy to grasp for laymen. Especially the word Opera, which for a lot of people carries a certain weight and image that almost conflicts with the term "heavy metal".

Great post and thoughts :)

Congrats on finding your soprano. I would love to hear her voice and violin playing live. I'm in currently usually in L.A., so hopefully you'll be closer one day? If not I would consider taking an excursion to check you guys out.

Yes, what you say is very true. The reason I didn't mention "concept albums" is that some unmentionable friends have been so critical of that format. They insisted it was ridiculous to stick to a single concept. I thought about it. I think in the minds of the negatively critical as regards these sorts of things, a concept album is an example of something haughty and overdone. They also complain about tracks over 5 minutes, bands like Marillion and so on.

Almost anything can be "overdone" in the mind of a critic. But is the critic qualified to handle the metaphor? Or sedimentary or ignoramous?

Just the song Bohemian Rhapsody is itself Operatic if you ask me, and if it were 3 minutes it could still pull that off, its in the intent that comes across; i.e. the realization of what is communicated.

But you're right, traditionally the elements of opera should be there if I am going to use the term in public. Actually, what I'm talking about is more of an undefined, untitled something or other, that appeals to me in my soul. That something basically thinks enough of me as an audience member to tell me something deeper and more potent than more self centered topics and feelings.

That's basically it.

According to the definition in my trusty American Heritage dictionary, opera means a dramatic performance put to music. But when your music is telling an involved story, and vocalist is playing roles or conveying the emotion of different characters (as in, say Suppers Ready), I just plain enjoy it and don't worry what its called, but I defend it hardcore to any critics. There was a band once called Happy The Man. They were putting on big theatrical performances in my area. One day Peter Gabriel heard about them and checked out the show. (The performance, from what I have heard, was never recorded.). This was evidently before Happy The Man released Crafty Hands, at least that's what I recall. Anyway, rumor has it that the band were so intriguing and accomplished in what they were doing that Peter asked them to tour with him as his live band. Musicianship and intense broadly flung feeling can come together.

Obviously there is a possibility to tell a story and express feelings that goes so far it becomes like Andy Kaufman's life, it may go way past the understanding of anyone, until REM writes a song about it.

I think traditional opera was an example of some genre expansion. There are genre-expanders who I think deserve to be recognized. The album that Shawn Phillips came up with called Collaboration, was basically a forerunner to genres like punk; that title didn't exist. Some guys gave me the album as a present when I was hitchhiking. Lyrically, musically and as a concept album it is outstanding. But there are, I'm sure, guys who will point out that Shawn's guitar playing is not really all that technical or advanced. His vocals on that album are amazing. When the music stops, (for reason's that are clear in terms of the "concept" of the album) and he holds a note for 30 seconds or something, it all makes sense, at least to one who invests in the art.

So what I was getting at was perhaps not really only about the term "opera" but about music and performance that reward and perhaps require that little investment. The music may not sound great on first listen. It may take 10 listens for that matter.

The moral for me is that its never about what someone may say about you, if you are reaching out that far, its about how you feel doing it, and if you feel you are reaching an audience. You will!
 
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