Wish you would've gotten something off the way forward but this song and album are also great. Can't go wrong with this kind of catchy instrumental prog and Aaron marshall is one of the best in the game.
Sure shot, off the same album is one of my favorites by them, but Libra had a great guest solo by Plini. This album as a whole I found really entertaining because it felt like I could hear it on the radio. I'd never heard anything purely instrumental like that before. I also felt that there was a strong vocal style melody aspect to this that I attributed to their previous album incorporating a vocalist.
Thanks for the bonus!!! This got my "technical rock vote" for the theme. I guess I'm a suckered for that joyful playfulness. Gives me the vibes of a tight jazz-band communicating in joyous excitement and heat of the moment. I get your take Bryan. It's either due to different preferences or it might just be that this stuff might grow on you too 😊
I might need to let this style grow on me. Maybe I just need to be in the right mood for it as well, much like some of the harsher stuff we've checked out.
Hello, from Colombia! I started watching you relatively recent, but let me tell you, I love your videos even though I don't enjoy most of the bands you react to XD. I would like to suggest you to check out Axis of Advance, one of my favorite bands. They aren't really known that much outside of the Canadian scene, but their stuff is very easy to find. Overall they're really complex and melodious, specially for a Bestial Black Metal band, and I think their song Curtaling Factors of Interference showcases their best. All the power to you!
Happy you did Intervals! Always a good choice! I would highly recommend, if you do another reaction of Intervals, Signal Hill, Lunartic or String Theory - which I believe are more mature in their songwriting imo.
I think I share your difficulty in fully immersing myself in this band, and the earlier Dream Theatre is the same for me as well. They’re all clearly amazing musicians. However, I feel like a large part of the enjoyment their devotees derive is a vicarious appreciation of the joy the musicians clearly feel in their ability to produce this music. I imagine it feels like flying, and I wonder if the speed and pitch that seems so common in the math rock genre isn’t a reflection of that. Myself, I don’t experience the same sense of communion with this kind of music as I do from songs that communicate on other frequencies or modes of communication (lyrics are big for me, but other kinds of narrative too). If I’ve compared some other metal bands to Wagner (Epica), I’d compare these guys to Mozart. To me, it feels like emotional shallowness, though I’m entirely prepared to lay that perception at my own doorstep rather than theirs.
Great comment and I think I'm with you on the allegory with classical. Although Mozart to me is sometimes deeper emotion-wise - have you heard his requiem? But then Wagner and symphonic metal often gets to pompous and over romantic to me. I'm more of a melancholy guy when it comes to beauty in music.
@@progperljungman8218 Absolutely, Mozart's Requiem stands apart from alot of his other music exactly as you suggest. I don't think my all too reductive descriptions cover the real breadth of what Mozart or Wagner created, but I think it's useful shorthand. I'm also a guy who likes the sweet and sad more often than not.
Mozart? Emotionally shallow? Surely you're kidding. Above you and ProgPer discuss The Requiem, and while that is a superb piece it was also his composition that most looked forward to romanticism, and I fear that too many equate romanticism and its various musical gestures with emotion. There is no lack of emotion in Mozart or the classical era, it's merely not found in the big, expressive gestures of romanticism. Something like "Contessa, perdona" or "Porgi amor" from The Marriage of Figaro is profoundly emotional, or the slow movements from the 23rd Piano Concerto, Clarinet Concerto, Clarinet Quintet, Sinfonia Concertante, The Gran Partita, the String Quintet in GM, the Fantasia in Dm and Cm, Agadio in Bm, the Masonic Funeral Music... and those are just the sad ones. I don't know of any piece of music more joyous (which is also an emotion) than the finale of the Jupiter symphony. Thing is, Mozart was arguably the greatest melodist who ever lived, and he wrote a lot of music for different purposes, including some music intended for light entertainment and as teaching pieces for students. Unfortunately, his most well known pieces tend to be his light entertainment and teaching pieces (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Piano Sonata #16, eg.) and such pieces give a very wrong impression of Mozart's breadth and depth. The Requiem is perhaps his only mature, substantial work that's also gained mass popularity. The majority of his masterpieces are, at least in terms of public recognition, hidden gems. But I don't think anyone could spend seriously time listening to his symphonies, concertos, operas, choral music, chamber music, etc. and come away thinking Mozart is emotionally shallow... unless you are just equating emotion with romanticism.
@@jonathanhenderson9422 Totally with you (although not a tenth as aquainted with Mozart as you seem to be). Don't know, but I've been taught the term "classicism" for the era where e.g. Mozart was prominent and THEN the romanticism took off. Anyways, I prefer most of what I heard from Mozart before later "romanticism" that tends to be somewhat to "voluminous" for me....
@@progperljungman8218 Mozart was the composer that got me into classical. Back in my teens I saved up my money and bought the massive Phillips Complete Mozart Edition (it was $1k back then; it would probably be a collector's item now) and spent many years listening through his entire oeuvre, and I've been listening to many of his mature works ever since. You're very right that the classical era was Mozart's (and Haydn's), it was preceded by the baroque (Bach, Handel) and succeeded by romanticism. I love romanticism as well, and Beethoven and Wagner vie for my second favorite composer (Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann are all up there too), but Mozart will probably always be my #1. Of all the great classical composers I also find Mozart to be the most misunderstood. If you dislike romanticism's voluminousness, what do you think of Modernism/Post-Modernism? I tend to find they reigned in many of romanticism's excesses, though they lost some of the emotion in focusing on the employment of new forms. Still, several of my favorite composers are from the last century: Messiaen, Bartok, Ravel, Stravinsky, Schnittke, Scriabin, etc.
This was a fun track. Nothing amazing or super original, but definitely fun. I think if nothing else the outstanding musicianship kept it interesting. I largely agree with you though about it being more impressive rather than being a great song I'll be returning to. I certainly appreciate and enjoy great musicianship, but I also need for that musicianship to be paired with strong composition and songwriting, and that can come from a variety of angles: in the form of strong/memorable/catchy themes, great contrast and/or development, surprises, mood/atmosphere, emotional expression, etc. I think Dance Gavin Dance is still my biggest example of how you can pair complex, mathy musicianship with strong songwriting that's fun and catchy and (dare I say?) poppy. I also think a lot of the best jazz and fusion artists/bands do this really well, like Hiromi. I don't think I come down quite as hard as you on this band or math rock in general, but I can definitely sympathize with your complaints. Though I'm not super familiar with the genre, one favorite I have found is Elephant Gym. I remember loving their live session on Audiotree. I'm not going to claim the songwriting/composition is mind-blowingly stellar, but I do find they do a lot of things better: like having killer, funky bass riffs, groovier drums, and a more atmospheric/textured approach to guitar playing, as well as more contrast and development within the compositions.
Hmm as far as this subset of mathrock and instrumental prog mathrock adjacent stuff a lot of it is about making enjoyable listenable but complex stuff. Particularly for a band like polyphia they aren't really looking to be categorized as "prog" or meditated upon but just to make enjoyable music that's cool. I know you enjoyed plini quite a lot and he's pretty squarely in the same community as these guys but the track you pulled was off a concept album and he typically is more "progressive" in his harmony and song structure. Maybe just for your own listening away from the channe,l artists in this vein who are explicitly setting out for a narrative concept might be more appealing so stuff like: Sithu aye - set course for andromeda (the latter disc of the album is a single narrative over 5 or 6 songs) David maxim micic - Who bit the moon? Syncatto - a place to breathe Otherwise you may like stuff that's even zanier and more jazz inspired seeing how much you enjoyed invalids. So stuff like : Tera melos Giraffes giraffes As an aside I kind of just group all this stuff together but a math rock purists wouldn't group intervals, Chon post the first album, polyphia in the genre just because it's a fair bit more straightforward than what's typical mathrock.
Thanks for this. I'll dig into and see where it takes me. I think you're right that I'm just needing more conceptual/progressive stuff, because I did enjoy that Plini song.
You hit the nail on the head man, style over substance. Definitely agree the compositions could be a lot better than they are. Aside from the flashy playing the songs are often pretty basic song structure boiled down that way. I think you should check out the song 'Who Bit the Moon' by David Maxim Micic. It's the same length as a song such as Stream of Consciousness by Dream Theater, but also has that math rock feel like in an Intervals song. Great analysis as always.
Saw them open for Spiritbox and was floored. Glad they have gotten some reaction exposure.
Wish you would've gotten something off the way forward but this song and album are also great. Can't go wrong with this kind of catchy instrumental prog and Aaron marshall is one of the best in the game.
Thanks for doing 2 videos man! I've seen them live before and they were great.
Oh yessssss, if you're going down this route please check out Satyr - Picayune :) Great reaction as usual
YES
+1
Sure shot, off the same album is one of my favorites by them, but Libra had a great guest solo by Plini. This album as a whole I found really entertaining because it felt like I could hear it on the radio. I'd never heard anything purely instrumental like that before. I also felt that there was a strong vocal style melody aspect to this that I attributed to their previous album incorporating a vocalist.
Thanks for the bonus!!!
This got my "technical rock vote" for the theme. I guess I'm a suckered for that joyful playfulness. Gives me the vibes of a tight jazz-band communicating in joyous excitement and heat of the moment.
I get your take Bryan. It's either due to different preferences or it might just be that this stuff might grow on you too 😊
I might need to let this style grow on me. Maybe I just need to be in the right mood for it as well, much like some of the harsher stuff we've checked out.
I saw this Scrobbling this morning and got psyched!
I've been wondering if anyone kept tabs on my LastFM to get sneak peaks at upcoming reactions :)
Hello, from Colombia! I started watching you relatively recent, but let me tell you, I love your videos even though I don't enjoy most of the bands you react to XD. I would like to suggest you to check out Axis of Advance, one of my favorite bands. They aren't really known that much outside of the Canadian scene, but their stuff is very easy to find. Overall they're really complex and melodious, specially for a Bestial Black Metal band, and I think their song Curtaling Factors of Interference showcases their best. All the power to you!
Happy you did Intervals! Always a good choice! I would highly recommend, if you do another reaction of Intervals, Signal Hill, Lunartic or String Theory - which I believe are more mature in their songwriting imo.
Awesome! You can't go wrong with Intervals
ohhh, good band, fun video
I think I share your difficulty in fully immersing myself in this band, and the earlier Dream Theatre is the same for me as well. They’re all clearly amazing musicians. However, I feel like a large part of the enjoyment their devotees derive is a vicarious appreciation of the joy the musicians clearly feel in their ability to produce this music. I imagine it feels like flying, and I wonder if the speed and pitch that seems so common in the math rock genre isn’t a reflection of that. Myself, I don’t experience the same sense of communion with this kind of music as I do from songs that communicate on other frequencies or modes of communication (lyrics are big for me, but other kinds of narrative too). If I’ve compared some other metal bands to Wagner (Epica), I’d compare these guys to Mozart. To me, it feels like emotional shallowness, though I’m entirely prepared to lay that perception at my own doorstep rather than theirs.
Great comment and I think I'm with you on the allegory with classical. Although Mozart to me is sometimes deeper emotion-wise - have you heard his requiem? But then Wagner and symphonic metal often gets to pompous and over romantic to me. I'm more of a melancholy guy when it comes to beauty in music.
@@progperljungman8218 Absolutely, Mozart's Requiem stands apart from alot of his other music exactly as you suggest. I don't think my all too reductive descriptions cover the real breadth of what Mozart or Wagner created, but I think it's useful shorthand. I'm also a guy who likes the sweet and sad more often than not.
Mozart? Emotionally shallow? Surely you're kidding. Above you and ProgPer discuss The Requiem, and while that is a superb piece it was also his composition that most looked forward to romanticism, and I fear that too many equate romanticism and its various musical gestures with emotion. There is no lack of emotion in Mozart or the classical era, it's merely not found in the big, expressive gestures of romanticism. Something like "Contessa, perdona" or "Porgi amor" from The Marriage of Figaro is profoundly emotional, or the slow movements from the 23rd Piano Concerto, Clarinet Concerto, Clarinet Quintet, Sinfonia Concertante, The Gran Partita, the String Quintet in GM, the Fantasia in Dm and Cm, Agadio in Bm, the Masonic Funeral Music... and those are just the sad ones. I don't know of any piece of music more joyous (which is also an emotion) than the finale of the Jupiter symphony.
Thing is, Mozart was arguably the greatest melodist who ever lived, and he wrote a lot of music for different purposes, including some music intended for light entertainment and as teaching pieces for students. Unfortunately, his most well known pieces tend to be his light entertainment and teaching pieces (Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, Piano Sonata #16, eg.) and such pieces give a very wrong impression of Mozart's breadth and depth. The Requiem is perhaps his only mature, substantial work that's also gained mass popularity. The majority of his masterpieces are, at least in terms of public recognition, hidden gems. But I don't think anyone could spend seriously time listening to his symphonies, concertos, operas, choral music, chamber music, etc. and come away thinking Mozart is emotionally shallow... unless you are just equating emotion with romanticism.
@@jonathanhenderson9422 Totally with you (although not a tenth as aquainted with Mozart as you seem to be). Don't know, but I've been taught the term "classicism" for the era where e.g. Mozart was prominent and THEN the romanticism took off.
Anyways, I prefer most of what I heard from Mozart before later "romanticism" that tends to be somewhat to "voluminous" for me....
@@progperljungman8218 Mozart was the composer that got me into classical. Back in my teens I saved up my money and bought the massive Phillips Complete Mozart Edition (it was $1k back then; it would probably be a collector's item now) and spent many years listening through his entire oeuvre, and I've been listening to many of his mature works ever since. You're very right that the classical era was Mozart's (and Haydn's), it was preceded by the baroque (Bach, Handel) and succeeded by romanticism. I love romanticism as well, and Beethoven and Wagner vie for my second favorite composer (Brahms, Schubert, and Schumann are all up there too), but Mozart will probably always be my #1. Of all the great classical composers I also find Mozart to be the most misunderstood.
If you dislike romanticism's voluminousness, what do you think of Modernism/Post-Modernism? I tend to find they reigned in many of romanticism's excesses, though they lost some of the emotion in focusing on the employment of new forms. Still, several of my favorite composers are from the last century: Messiaen, Bartok, Ravel, Stravinsky, Schnittke, Scriabin, etc.
I running out of instruments to give up and throw off a cliff... So far I can hold on to my Avant Guard Black Metal Spoon Playing Skills for now🙄
Gotta start doing metal covers on a the spoon before someone else comes along and steals your passion for that too! 🤣
This was a fun track. Nothing amazing or super original, but definitely fun. I think if nothing else the outstanding musicianship kept it interesting. I largely agree with you though about it being more impressive rather than being a great song I'll be returning to. I certainly appreciate and enjoy great musicianship, but I also need for that musicianship to be paired with strong composition and songwriting, and that can come from a variety of angles: in the form of strong/memorable/catchy themes, great contrast and/or development, surprises, mood/atmosphere, emotional expression, etc. I think Dance Gavin Dance is still my biggest example of how you can pair complex, mathy musicianship with strong songwriting that's fun and catchy and (dare I say?) poppy. I also think a lot of the best jazz and fusion artists/bands do this really well, like Hiromi. I don't think I come down quite as hard as you on this band or math rock in general, but I can definitely sympathize with your complaints.
Though I'm not super familiar with the genre, one favorite I have found is Elephant Gym. I remember loving their live session on Audiotree. I'm not going to claim the songwriting/composition is mind-blowingly stellar, but I do find they do a lot of things better: like having killer, funky bass riffs, groovier drums, and a more atmospheric/textured approach to guitar playing, as well as more contrast and development within the compositions.
I just saw them live. These songs pale in comparison to the live version. Man it was fantastic
Hmm as far as this subset of mathrock and instrumental prog mathrock adjacent stuff a lot of it is about making enjoyable listenable but complex stuff. Particularly for a band like polyphia they aren't really looking to be categorized as "prog" or meditated upon but just to make enjoyable music that's cool. I know you enjoyed plini quite a lot and he's pretty squarely in the same community as these guys but the track you pulled was off a concept album and he typically is more "progressive" in his harmony and song structure. Maybe just for your own listening away from the channe,l artists in this vein who are explicitly setting out for a narrative concept might be more appealing so stuff like:
Sithu aye - set course for andromeda (the latter disc of the album is a single narrative over 5 or 6 songs)
David maxim micic - Who bit the moon?
Syncatto - a place to breathe
Otherwise you may like stuff that's even zanier and more jazz inspired seeing how much you enjoyed invalids.
So stuff like :
Tera melos
Giraffes giraffes
As an aside I kind of just group all this stuff together but a math rock purists wouldn't group intervals, Chon post the first album, polyphia in the genre just because it's a fair bit more straightforward than what's typical mathrock.
Thanks for this. I'll dig into and see where it takes me. I think you're right that I'm just needing more conceptual/progressive stuff, because I did enjoy that Plini song.
You hit the nail on the head man, style over substance. Definitely agree the compositions could be a lot better than they are. Aside from the flashy playing the songs are often pretty basic song structure boiled down that way. I think you should check out the song 'Who Bit the Moon' by David Maxim Micic. It's the same length as a song such as Stream of Consciousness by Dream Theater, but also has that math rock feel like in an Intervals song. Great analysis as always.