Deus_ex_machina wrote:
I have to admit you lost me at Van Der Graaf, I had to look them up, unfortunetly I don't listen to much Progressive Rock.
VDGG is progressive rock with a twist. Peter Hammill´s voice is different not so much in its sort but he uses it very expressively, singing just being one way of delivering lyrics. You like it or you don´t. If you understand and like for example, how he delivers the final line of ´Primo on the parapet´ (from a clear note to an abhorrent banshee scream), you´re halfway. But, as far as there is accounting for taste, you can have a good taste for music and still not find anything in there. Solo he is even more diverse, throwing in singer/songerwriter-ish songs.
His lyrics are not that of nihilism but of dissecting the human condition. A favorite is the person that looks back on his life, finding that he lived a farce, having deceived others and himself and finding it is too late to do anything about it. Or the control freak finding you can´t control your life and still refuses to let go. But mass hysteria, alienation, stagnation of humanity, undesirability of eternal life and love songs to make you jump of a cliff, it´s all in the package.
Bruce Dickinson loves his voice, Johnny Rotten says it was one of the inspiration that led him to punk music, Voivod are big fans, you could say he´s a musicians´ musician.
Hammill is a very private person but sometimes he reluctantly acknowledges that a lot of his work is at least semi-autobiographical.
For nihilism you indeed needs to go somewhere else. Being in my teens in the 80´s, Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Test Dept, Scraping Foetus off the Wheel etc etc could be found in my music collection. Besides that I was literally raised on The Who. At some point I had a couple of punk and new wave friends and we also shared a taste for punk, all kinds of metal, symphonic rock, progressive rock, classical music, you name it. As long as it wasn´t that idiot chart stuff.
Could you give me some titles of good live albums of goth (etc) rock bands?
_________________
"though the fire in our lungs is celestial
our delivery falls flat."
Incoherence - Peter Hammill