Thursday, May 17, 2012

Metal Breakup Songs?

QUICK NOTE: The subject matter of this post is not meant to be taken as any sort of clue into what is going on in my personal life.  In fact it is quite the opposite.  My wife and I have our first wedding anniversary coming up in June, and I could not be happier.  This post was inspired by a song that has been stuck in my head for some time.

Metal frequently depicts the darker side of the human experience.  It is stereotypically about the negative parts in life.  Anger, sadness, and all the other nasty stuff that happens to us all.  So of course there are a few breakup songs in the heavy metal canon, despite the emotional nature of the event.


WOODS OF YPRES: "SHARDS OF LOVE (HURT FOREVER)"
This is the song that influenced this post.  I have no idea why, but this song really gets to me.  The song is about the narrator (possibly even the singer, I am not sure how personal this song is) finding his significant other in the process of packing all of her things and moving out.  An argument ensues with the narrator pleading with her to stay.  It's heart-wrenching really.  The song culminates with the woman telling him "No, I have to go.  It's too late, I'm going away and there's nothing in the world you could say to make me stay."  The music is extremely somber with some very impressive horn lines.  Unfortunately, singer David Gold recently passed away.


MEGADETH: "1,000 TIMES GOODBYE"
Megadeth wrote a breakup song?  Yes they did.  The song deals with the pain of moving on and finding peace in the breakup.  But it is kind of funny in a way because the song incorporates some samples or recordings of a woman explaining the reasons for the breakup, which run the gamut from "I don't feel the same way about" to "I met someone else" to "I still want to be friends" and culminating with the hilarious "I love you like you're my brother".  Someone has been friendzoned.


BLEEDING THROUGH: "LOVE IN SLOW MOTION"
This is a bit of a guilty pleasure album for me.  Bleeding Through is a metalcore band with some black and death metal influences.  This track is also for the most part about the lead character finding peace in moving on with his life.  Obviously a lot of the typical emo tropes are present in this song, complete with faux-deep lyrics about pain and suffering.  Nevertheless, for some reason, I really like this song.  Sue me.


SONATA ARCTICA: "TALLULAH"
I first heard this one at a time when I was dealing with a breakup of sorts.  It starts out with the closing moments of the breakup.  The last embrace, when there is one, is often very painful and that pain is exhibited here.  The song continues and finds the narrator seeing his former lover with a new flame and all of the pain that comes with that.


DAYLIGHT DIES: "ALL WE HAD"
In a song with very few words, Daylight Dies still manages to pen an absolutely devastating song.  As I said, there are not a lot of lyrics here but the pain of a lost relationship is clearly evident here.

So there's a few songs.  Obviously there are more, but I feel pretty good naming off five.  It all makes me very happy to be in the stable relationship I currently have.

6 comments:

  1. When I saw the title of this post come up in my reading list, my first thought was "I wonder if he'll have a Woods of Ypres song in this post".

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  2. I take it they make a habit of this?

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  3. It's a good thing you put that note on there, because that was my immediate thought when I read the title.

    Back in high school, there was a period that I was really, really into Stabbing Westward. It seems very meaningful to a heartbroken teenager. But then in college I heard them doing an acoustic set, explaining all the stories behind the songs, and it turned out to be kind of silly.

    I still like SW from time to time, at least WBBP and the more aggressive parts of Darkest Days. On the latter there's a song that starts out with a really chilling scream. Not bad.

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  4. I enjoyed Stabbing Westwrd a good deal as well, particularly Ungod. That was kind of in my industrial phase.

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    1. They released a self-titled album after Darkest Days, and if I remember correctly it dropped the industrial aspects altogether. It sucked. Even my young college self saw through that.

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  5. Yes, broken hearts and lost loves are kind of a common theme in their music.

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