Monday, March 01, 2010

Best Thing I Heard Today: Into Eternity doing "Suspension of Disbelief" (with a GUITAR LESSON!)

We celebrate Canadian victory with this awesome display of Saskatchewanian firepower:



Into Eternity blend virtuosic math-rock switchbackery with virtually every kind of metal you can name (except Doom; I don't think they're Doom). In addition, their vocals are multitracked into a fiendish barbershop quartet of radness*. I was impressed when, back in '05, Mercenary had their clean guy sing at the same time as their death guy; but Into Eternity have TWO distinct clean ranges (high and REALLY high), plus a high raspy death voice and a low growly death voice. Somehow, all four of these vocals are covered by three guys, so it's hard to know who's doing what, but I'll say that's designated frontman Stu Black squealing out "DROWNING ME!!!" during the choruses. That part makes me giggle. And maybe that's guitarist/founder Tim Roth doing the low growls; they sound EXTREME and everything, but also matter-of-fact, as though this guy joined the Muppet Band:


"You are all... WEIRDOS."

As an added Youtube bonus, here's Mr. Roth teaching us how to play his wonderful riffs. (Thankfully he's not singing--not that he's a bad singer, but you SO don't want to hear the idiotic words of this song.) I like how he's not tied to any one particular metal genre--note the part where Roth describes his riff as "kinda death- or black-metal-sounding or whatever." Despite this indifference to nomenclatural niceties, I find no online evidence that metal fans hate him for it, or that they think it makes him suck. And hey--nice of him to teach his trade secrets for free. Imagine if Liszt had had access to Youtube!



* I apologize if I've misled you into thinking that all four voices sound simultaneously. They don't. My bad. In this and several other ways, Into Eternity are nothing like a barbershop quartet.

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