Metal vs. Metal

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If you enjoy music as much as I do, you notice the differences from band to band, from genre to genre, and from era to era. Metal has changed over time as much as the people who listen to it. The guitar riffs get heavier and the screaming gets louder, but what else has changed since the birth of metal to make the "new metal" of 2011? There are many different aspects to metal as a music genre, instruments, vocals, and lyrics are the main parts to music in general, but metal has a special way of using each of these parts to make the sounds that only metal has.



Prince of Darkness



The band that really began metal has been debated over the years, as a listener and metal genre enthusiast, I've also debated this. A fact of the matter is that metal began in the late 1960’s to the early 1970's and the most well known metal band to release a self titled album in the era, Black Sabbath has been called the band that started it all. Ozzy Osbourne, Black Sabbath's lead singer, has been called the Prince of Darkness and is known to be the Father of metal music by many "metal heads". From Ozzy, came the inspiration of "Satan music" and "Christian metal", one could say metal has the best of both worlds. Today, metal sounds quite different from the controversial lyrics and rough voice of Black Sabbath and the other 70’s and 80’s metal bands. New bands, such as Slipknot, Five Finger Death Punch, Himsa, and Avenged Sevenfold now plague the scene.

What makes new metal sound so different compared to old metal, also known as classic metal? Lyrics are what make up the majority of songs. Lyrics hold the power in metal to those who listen to them and can understand them. While listening to Black Sabbath's self titled song off of their self titled album from the approximate beginning of metal in the 70's, one hears what sounds like a story being played out in the music, a struggle of a man faced with being the "chosen one" (Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath).  Stories were a popular way for many metal artists to really work themselves. The idea of a story in the lyrics of metal is still prominent, but it's more of a personal story than a made up or historical one. Looking at the lyrics of a newer metal band called In Flames , "But we're here today, Alive" is about the everyday challenges and living in the moment instead of an epic battle with the devil or some giant beast from history (Deliver Us by In Flames).

Joey Jordison of Slipknot

Randy Rhoads Flying V

While listening to the lyrics, one cannot help but notice the instrumental differences in the two songs, but just for the sake of comparison, let us compare two different songs from the same times. Listening to Judas Priest's "Rapid Fire", one can hear that the guitar, specifically, sticks out along with the drums (Rapid Fire by Judas Priest). The beat to this song, like many metal songs, is fast. The majority of the song is compiled of simple instrumental techniques, but it carries the gallop of the guitar, which is a trick that guitarist use that make the guitar sound somewhat like a horse galloping, along with the elaborate guitar solos of early metal. Lots of early metal songs have solos that are fast paced like the ones in this song. Bands such as, Iron Maiden, Motorhead and Megadeth have been known to carry solos that are fast paced and use the same high drop tuning, usually drop D, as Judas Priest. As a guitarist, I have used these drop tunings while playing songs from these bands and notice how different the tuning is from the metal of today. The Agonist, which not only demonstrates that females are more likely to be found in new metal compared to the old metal, but also demonstrates the instrumental differences and vocal differences. The Agonist is a wonderful example of the instrumental differences in new metal. One can hear that the music is still fast paced and the guitar and drums are still the most prominent instruments in the music, but the guitar sounds much "heavier" than that of the old metal. This heavy sound is what gives Heavy Metal its name. The guitar in this song,” Business Suits and Combat Boots”, is in a lower drop tuning, probably drop C or B, than that of the guitar heard in “Rapid Fire”(Buisness Suits and Combat Boots by The Agonist). Much of today's metal has this low drop tuning and the songs can get lower. The development of guitars with more strings allows the guitarists to tune the guitars lower. It's more common, today, for a metal band to have a guitar with seven or more strings, for example: Suicide Silence's guitarist is known for playing with a seven string called the SC-607 made by ESP, which is a popular guitar company(Unanswered by Suicide Silence -time:0:34 there is a nice shot of the ESP). Aside from the general guitar work, sweeping, which is the extremely fast sound heard in the beginning of Outworld's Riders, performed by Rusty Cooley(Riders by Outworld -listen to guitar not vocals, the sweeping is awesome-).

Rodney James Dio (R.I.P July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010)

Another way, and possibly the most drastic way, old metal and new metal are different is through the vocal styles. If you have followed the songs listed and listened to them, you can hear the vocal differences. VH1 named Ozzy Osbourne the greatest metal vocalist of all time, but third on the list of ten is Ronnie James Dio who, in my opinion, has the most unique vocal style for old metal. Dio's song Holy Diver, which is still a popular song, features Dio's unique vocals(Holy Diver by Dio -R.I.P-). One can hear that it is more of a singing type of style than the screams and growls of today. Metal of this era often carried more of this singing style which was smoother, although still coarse sounding, than that of todays. Much of today's metal vocalists prefer to growl or scream rather than sing, even the female vocalists, as heard in the Agonist's “Business Suits and Combat Boots”. It's common for the vocals to go as low as the instruments, although some types of metal vocalists like to scream, screech, or squeal as well as growl and sing. Cradle of Filth has the deep growl mixed in with screams in many of their songs. In their song, Nymphetamine, they mix a gentle female voice with the growl of their lead vocalist and the screaming vocals of their second vocalist(Nymphetamine by Cradle of Filth). Job for a Cowboy has the typical new metal sound with a lot of growling and some pig squeals thrown in some places of their song, particularly speaking of "Embedded" (Embedded by Jod for a Cowboy - about 18 seconds in is a pig squeal-).  A lot of bands also combine all vocal stylings in one album at least, but not all bands do this.

In my own personal opinion, I feel that old metal and new metal are almost completely different, if it weren't for the aggression in almost all of metal music, I would not be able to classify the music as metal. The differences between the old and new are obvious if one listens to the music, but if not, maybe this essay has sparked an interest at least to experience the power found in many metal songs. Whether it is Metallica or Bring Me the Horizon, the differences are clear, new metal and old metal have different lyrics, instrumental tuning and style, and vocal styles.

Works Cited

Black Sabbath. “Black Sabbath”. Black Sabbath. CD.Trident Studios, London: Rodger Bain. Vertigo. November 1969. Released: 13 February 1970.

In Flames. “Deliver Us”. Sounds of a Playground Fading. CD. IF Studios, Gothenburg, Sweden: Roberto Laghi, Anders Fridén. Century Media, Razzia. October 11, 2010–January 25. Released: June 15, 2011 (2011-06-15).

Judas Priest. “Rapid Fire”. British Steel. CD. Startling Studios, Ascot, England: Tom Allom. Columbia. January–February 1980. Released: 14 April 1980.

The Agonist. “Business Suits and Combat Boots”. Once Only Imagined.  CD. West West Side: Chris Donaldson, Alan Douches.  Released: 2007.

Outworld. “Riders”.  Outworld.  CD. Spyder Studios, Texas: Outworld. Replica Records. 2006. Released November 2006.

Cradle of Filth. “Nymphetemine”. Resident Evil: Apocalypse Soundtrack.  CD.

Job for a Cowboy. “Embedded”.  Genesis.  CD. Phoenix, Arizona: Blue Light Audio Media, Cory Spotts. Released: May 15, 2007.

"VH1 | Topic | Top 10 Best Metal Vocalist Of All Time." Top 20, TV Shows, Celebrity News, Music Videos, Photos, TV Schedule | VH1. Web. 27 Oct. 2011. <http://community.vh1.com/Discussion-Thread/Top-10-Best-Metal-Vocalist-Of-All-Time/087F6FFFF01EF8675000901605D34>.

Toxoplasmosis: The Zombie Maker

We have all seen the traditional brainless zombies on the movie screen, but what if that could actually happen? There is a parasite that causes many of these symptoms that we have seen in zombie movies, but only in rare cases, so far. We know that parasites and diseases all have the ability to mutate and become more powerful, the common cold and the flu does it all the time. This little parasite can be found in food, pets, rodents, even your next door neighbor. Toxoplasmosis is caused by a parasite that comfortably dwells deep inside of you friendly feline and finds its way into your gullet and that's when you start to feel a change.

Toxoplasma Gondii

So, what is the cause of Toxoplasmosis? According to the CDC (The Center of Disease Control and Prevention) Toxoplasmosis is caused by a tiny protozoan called Toxoplasma gondii. Despite the anti-violent name, the protozoan silently creeps into the system of rats and alters there brain activity so that the rats no longer fear their common enemy, cats. Parasites In Humans (a website filled with this sort of information) says:

Studies show the capability for the parasite to make rats fearless near cats. This indicates the evolutionary need for Toxoplasma gondii to get inside felines. When a rat is eaten by a cat the parasite gets inside the primary host. There have been a few studies with humans, too. Some results indicate a strong correlation between schizophrenia and toxoplasmosis. According to some studies women with toxoplasmosis are more likely to cheat their husbands. Men with the parasite have shown to be more aggressive. Infected humans also have slower reaction times.

Schizophrenia is a pretty intense symptom to list with this parasite. With the knowledge of the reaction of the rats from the parasite, one can assume that the behavior caused by it in humans is also adapted for evolutionary survival. Affairs or having multiple sexual partners passes many diseases. STDs pass this way and if a woman with the parasite behaves this way, she may have been taken over by the parasite in order to pass it on to other males. As for males, extreme acts of aggression cause the shed of blood and the parasite is easily transmitted through blood to blood contact.

The Cycle of Infection

How do you know if you or anyone might have Toxoplasmosis? Symptoms are a key way to identify the infection of this little protozoon. Toxoplasmosis is mainly an asymptomatic infection, says the CDC, this means that the average human being has a strong enough immune system to prevent the infection from doing any extreme damage to the infected body and shows no symptoms. A simple list of symptoms can be found on the Toxoplasma gondii page of Parasites In Humans and this list says that symptoms include the following: confusion, fever, headache, nausea, poor coordination, and seizures. After reading the list, one may picture a figure that looks lost, stumbling across the road and moaning, which looks like a zombie in the minds of many, all it needs is the brain craving.

So, how exactly do we get a zombie from Toxoplasmosis? Parasites and diseases, as mentioned previously, have the ability to mutate in order to survive. Although Toxoplasmosis is not air borne, it, like many familiar infections, such as the swine flu, which started out as a similar infection to Toxoplasmosis that was not air borne, it mutated and became air borne. The infection caused by Toxoplasma gondii can also mutate into an air borne virus, which may cause other symptoms to develop.

In conclusion, Toxoplasmosis can cause a zombie-like infection if it happens to mutate into a more powerful air borne infection. It is already easily transmitted, I myself know a few people with the infection, luckily it is treatable, but colds adapt around treatments as well. Toxoplasmosis is a hidden enemy just waiting to burst out and come stumbling after us in an attempt to survive evolution and produce more infected beings. It’s already found in rats, cats, pigs, cows, and people as well as other warm blooded mammals. So if you see that friendly girl next door eyeing you over the fence, think again, she may have Toxoplasmosis: the new strain, and be waiting for her next victim.

Isn't she perfect!

Works Cited

Center of Disease Controland Prevention. "CDC - Toxoplasmosis." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2 Nov. 2010. Web. 17 Oct. 2011. <CDC's Toxoplasmosis/>.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "CDC - Toxoplasmosis - Epidemiology & Risk Factors." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2 Nov. 2010. Web. 17 Oct. 2011. <CDC "Toxoplasma Gondii">.

Parasites In Humans. "Toxoplasma Gondii." Parasites In Humans. 2010-2011. Web. 17 Oct. 2011. <Parasites in Humans "Toxoplasma Gondii">.

All photos except for "Brains" were taken from Google Images, Brains was created using Cool Text Generator

Crossing Over: My account of the Happenings of the Troy House

Suprises come in many forms, this one came in the form of a chat message on Facebook.com,I had to read the message twice, because I didn't quite believe it said what it said. My friend, David asked me if I wanted to go ghost hunting with him!
The conversation went a little like this:
David: Hi. Got any plans for Sunday night?
Me: Nope, why?
David: hmmm...I'm doing my hobby, ghost hunting.
Me: Sounds fun where at?
David: Troy, in a very old, yet odd house.
Me: Nothing Illegal, right?
David: Nope, this is in favor of a few Jeresy people that need to know what's going on, why the house is so weird feeling to just be in and the tales and stories that follow the long past of the place
Of course I was in, this is exactly the kind of thing I've wanted to do for a long time. Of course it's nearly impossible to make a living doing it, so it's only a hobby for most people, killer hobby, right.

We set up the date, October 30-31st from 7pm until 4am. I would be so tired and I had class that Monday too, but at 1, so I had enough time to sleep.
I woke up Sunday morning around 10, did all my chores and homework and started a painting project before 5:30pm when he came to my grandmother's with his brand new 2011 truck, I personally liked the spacious vehicle, which would carry us to his house.
At his house, we gathered equipment and started plotting our course of action. After his house, we went to pick up two more people. With a truck loaded with five people and ghost equipment as well as plenty of warm clothing and snacks,we made our way to Troy, Pennsylvania. When we arrrived at the house, we already were seeing some strange things, there was a bright light in the front window. The house was dark and over grown on the outside, windows were broken out and there were boards over the windows and doors, most of them anyway. One window was open and this would be the entry point for anyone who ever wanted to get into the house, including the owners, whom did give us permission to enter and examine the house so long as we did not take anything. The neighbors, who share the driveway of the house, welcomed us and told us a little about the place and how the new owners were only using two rooms for when they come to PA from NJ to hunt. They said the owners do not like going upstairs and no one will go in the attic. They told us that police officers did an investigation for un-known reasons up in the attic and moments after reaching the attic, the officers came running down out of it in terror. What happened up there, no one knows.
We initially entered through the basement hoping it would be easier to get in and to get a look around down stairs, we looked for dates on jars and bottles. The house was supposedly built in the 1800's but the oldest dates we found were about 1940s. We also looked around for specific names, hoping to get identification for any one who may still be living there...
After getting up to the first floor of the house from the basement, we carefully walked through the house noting the overall look of it, which fit "creepy-old-house" to the T. The walls were chipped, cracked, paint was flaking off, paper was pealing, water damage, dry rote, etc. There was the room in which the entrance window was which looked like an old kitchen. There were old dryers and washers and a very old television set all piled in the middle of the room with some more recent looking items, such as a chair and some garbage. The floor was littered with news paper all the way out into some of the other rooms. We made our way into the main room that the hunters used to eat and gather. They had repaired and mended the room back into standing order and placed couches, hunting apparel, gun racks, chairs, couches, and there was a new grill in the room. Everything looked completely normal, we didn't see anything odd, just the cold compared to the basement, which should be colder and the attic which should be even colder.

We went into what we called the "man cave" where the men slept, here is where they have store their recently deceased friend's ashes in a Jaggarmeister bottle. There was a picture of him on the wall and a few deer heads as well as another gun rack, two couches and a small cot opened and full of blankets, this is where I would sit with one of the girls later and try to contact "Tim".
We went upstairs and into a room that had a bunch of beer cans in the corner and a single chair facing out the window in the middle of the room. The chair by it's self seemed to carry something around it. It was so out of place there in the middle of the room and it was a very old chair, I would guess it has been around as long as some of the news papers in the downs stairs from the 40's. I walked around the room and examined the walls, floors, ceiling, and the chair as well as every one else. Many of the walls in the house had crayon scribles on the walls, so we concluded that there were multiple children in the house at one time. When I touched the chair, I mentally noted how it felt: course, dusty, cold, dead feeling, I looked at the color, yellowish green with some unrecognizable pattern on it. Emotionally, I felt like there was some significance to the chair and I was not the only one who believed so. Then, I noticed scope caps tied to the door nob and told the others about it and why I thought it was there. I think the reason for the caps was to hear when something was moving the door, because it obviously was the hunters' caps. We later heard the caps rattling on the door in our audio, while no one was in the house, and there was no wind that night. So we believe that something did try to close the door. We moved into another room. This room had more kitchen items and a mix of both kitchen looking wall paper and what looked like wall paper of a little boys room. The oven drawer looked like it had been kicked pretty hard and we tried to figure out why, because it opened and closed easily even at the age it was.
We went into another room where a man has been seen often standing in the window that faces the neighbors' trailor. This is another bathroom that was a bedroom at one point. There was a foot print on the seat lid like someone used it to stand on and replace a buld or fit something, but there was no light fixtures near it and there was nothing else above it or around it besides the tub and the foot print did not look that old, compared to everything else, which was covered in an ample supply of dust. Another and final room of interest on this floor was the front room of the upstairs. This is were the light was seen. Yet there are not working lights in the house, no bulbs, no electric of any kind except that going into the "man cave" which runs from an extension cord from the trailor, and the cord was not there to use. In the attic we felt warm and reletively comfortable. We did a lot of serching up there, because none of the stuff there belonged to the new owners, we were hoping to find some stuff from the original owners, but only found things from the 1900s as early as 1945, I believe. We dicovered that in this time a family with children was living here, one was studying nautical information, the family ran a farm, there was a veteranarian on the premisis and they often bought animals. They had a little boy whos name began with a J and the last name of the family was Daniels. Many of the papers came from Elmira and Corning to the Troy house and they were in the process of renovating when they moved out. In the attic there was a little crawl space, David went back there and when he came out I asked what he found, he said "nothing, but it just feels creepy." I started to go back, but didn't get any farther than the doorway, I felt colder and a little uneasy, my heart rate picked up and I backed away. I experienced the same feeling at multiple times while I was in the house after that, like whatever was in there was watching us or me.

Seting up:David walked around in the house with the husband from nextdoor, Mike, and they set up cameras and audio upstairs where most of the activity had been reportedly seen or heard. While they were doing that, his mother, myself, and three others were down stairs in the "man cave" trying to contact Tim. David and Mike were making too much noise upstairs for us to hear much, but we played the audio back later and we had gotten an EVP. While his mother was talking to Tim, the audio picked up a voice that faintly said "Tim" drawn out in a whipser.They then went upstairs, while I remained in the "man cave" with one of the two younger girls (within their 20's). We sat quietly, I turned out my light and she kept hers on, because she was frieghtened. I took a few pictures and got a couple orbs in the doorway and a few more on a blocked up door in the room beside a shelf

 [Above: orbs in doorway. Below: orbs infront of door]

After a while of listening and waiting, we got really cold and wanted to break. David's mother came down to check on us and we told her we were about done. We walked to the stair way and heard a lot of comotion. They were getting a lot of activity up there as we were getting ready to break.
Later, as we were discussing the activity upstairs, they told us (me and the other girl)about what had happened. They caught an EVP as David's mother asked about someone remembering sitting in the bath tub and looking out the window, on the EVP, a female said "I do", then they told us about the glow sticks.
[Pictures coming soon]
In one room, they were asking questions and asking Tim to move the glowstick right or left and they watched as something made the glow stick move to the right or left, then something really weird happened and the glow stick appeared to double. David got pictures of this with his camera, looking back, they should have switched to video to capture the phenomenom.
In another room, they had placed a purple glowstick on the bath tub and were getting ready to leave, when the glow stick rose about 3 feet above the tub.

[Pictures coming soon]Right after that, we took our break.
Later David, his mom, Mike, and Heather would all go back and continue the investigation a little longer, before we ended for the night.

Prior to this, we set up audio in a near by cememtery that was said to hold a mass. grave sight from the black plague era that held the bodies of people who had the plague. When we entered the field to get to the cemetery, I began to feel uncomfortable. David's mom and Heather started seeing shadows that did not belong to anyone in the group, because at the time, we were all standing still and these shadows moved on there own. They caught the images on their cell phones. We made it to the cemetery fence and they crawled over. I stayed on the other side of the fence, because I did not feel comfortable crossing the fence. As I stood there, I felt like I was being watched. I looked to my left and saw something black in the distance in the tree. It was not there minutes before and I shined my flashlight over to it and it remained black and seemed to be absorbing all the light from my flashlight. I tried to take pictures of it, but my flash would not reach that far.
The others in the cemetery, were talking to the spirits,telling them about the audio and told them they could talk to us on it and leave us a message with it. As far as I know, we did not catch anything on the audio that could not be explained. I did catch a various amount of orbs in the cemetery with my camera, most were green, blue and white, one was red.

[Above: green and white orbs, Below: red orb]