Music Hell Josh Spero writing in the Indy asked various musicians and celebs what their idea of musical hell would be. "I know exactly what it would be. There's a band called DragonForce - put them in YouTube. It's just the most ludicrous thing you've ever witnessed in your life, the most extreme cheese metal. They have this battle of guitar solos. One guy is doing a 3,000 mile-an-hour guitar solo, then he takes a sip of beer and the other one swooshes his hair back and starts playing. Our producer showed it to us as what we shouldn't be doing. I don't think it's a parody - they're a really serious band, apparently. I think they think it's really cool, it's the ultimate metal look, the coolest thing ever. Metal is one of the genres of music as a band we're not into. We're very open to lots of different music, but it's one thing we always find hard to take seriously. The emphasis is on how fast you can play a riff or how hard you can hit the drums. It's become such a pastiche now. It hasn't evolved at all. You always have new offshoots, new developments, new artists trying to bring a new spin on it. With a lot of metal artists it's just about completely bringing back what's already been done." - Kai Fish, Mystery Jets. Right, so this is from a man whose band was formed by the lead singers dad, who is also in the band, and insisted that band learn classic rock techniques as he thought most modern music was crap and the music of his youth was much, much better. What did Kai say again ? "It's just about completely bringing back what's already been done," oooo kay, but that's just what your band do isn't it. Otherwise Mr Fish isn't far wrong, Dragonforce are incredibly cheesy, they have taken the power metal genre into a new vein of pure cheddar, but, they are rather good at it. There are quire a lot of us, young and old, who really appreciate a good, fast guitar solo, or two, or ten. So Dragonforce do rather take fretwanking to the extreme, and yes, they also include keyboard and drum solo's in their set, but it's all done with a grin and an acknowledgement of just how daft and fun it all is. If you are outside a scene, it's probably much harder to see developments within it. Mr Fish claims that metal is all about repetition of the old, but it isn't really, you might be able to say that about (the very good) Led Zeppelin clones Wolfmother, but the rest of the scene has moved on. Nu-Metal caused a schism within the metal community, much as the emerging punk inspired thrash movement did two decades before. Bands like System Of A Down, Korn, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park, Papa Roach and many others have moved the metal scene in new directions, taking inspiration from hip-hop and rap, or from punk and hardcore. The musical style of many current popular metal acts would be unrecognisable to a metal fan of twenty years ago, with hardcore stylings of gruff or dirty lyrics and few if any solo's the current rash of metalcore bands seem to owe more to the post punk hardcore movement than to any classic rock and metal roots. In the same article Alan Donohoe from Rakes said this..... "I would hate to be stuck in a lift with a band called the Murderdolls. They're a second project from Slipknot. They vomit and piss in their costumes every night, then put them back in their wardrobe for the next night. The crew have to flip a coin to see who's going to get it out. I've only heard Slipknot. I can only assume that the stuff by Murderdolls is going to be similar heavy metal stuff, with a complete lack of melody. It's so aggressive and negative - I don't get why anyone can be so negative. You can't really hear the lyrics - I sound like such an old granddad now. My mate was telling me that they were guys in their forties with families and stuff. They're managers by day, Satanists by night." The moral of this is, don't believe everything, or in this case anything, that your mates tell you.