A Penny for Your Songs (3) - Just a Speck in the Spectrum

Week 3

Hey guys, how's it going? Did you have a good week? While everyone is out on vacation I've been left alone with my cat Greg here, in the heat of the Roman summer, but we're having an absolute blast nonetheless. Nothing like a week or two of absolute laziness to recover strength for the year to come.

Before I start dealing with today's songs, I'd like to thank the guys from @curie real quick for the upvote of the post from last week. I'm not sure who I have to thank for the curation specifically, but I sure appreciated the gesture, it encouraged me to write a bit more and make a real effort.

No matter what I'll decide to post during the week, though, on Saturdays I'll keep going with A Penny for Your Songs, a corner where I can talk about music that is or has been important to me, either because it is related to an emotion, an idea, an experience or simply for its value as music.

Now to the matter at hand. Today I'd like to go back to my metal-head days. Not that I ever stopped listening to Metal & its sub-genres altogether; in fact, one of the two songs that I'm going to share with you is something I've discovered very recently and that I've been obsessing over. Let's just say that, in general, lately I'm more appreciative of calmer, relaxed sounds. After all, I'm convinced that getting older also means finding some answers for ourselves and leaving behind some of that existential anger and pain that are typical of our adolescence (although I'm the first to admit that probably I'll never be entirely over adolescence, but I guess that's a good topic for next week's post).

Insignificant, Am I?

The first song I'm going to post is a very sad piece by a band called Nevermore. By the time I first started getting into metal, Nevermore were already a big thing, although they never really hit the mainstream status. With their unique, aggressive combination of heavy and thrash sounds, and their amazing technical skills (Jeff Loomis is one of the best shredders I know and a hell of a guitar player), they were able to make me fall in love with their music almost immediately. They recorded some truly great albums, but only one of them would stay with me for almost 20 years: Dead Heart in a Dead World, from 2000.

It is by no means a happy album. DHIADW is a collection of angry songs towards society and politics and existential emptiness and negativity, plus the most daunting, obscure cover of The Sound of Silence that anyone has ever made (I'm sure most people will hate it, but I find that it somehow suits the lyrics perfectly, although in a very different way compared to the original). Needless to say, when I first listened to this album, a few years after its release, it incarnated a lot of my feelings ; I was 16 and struggling with the big questions of life, and I didn't like the world around me. Time might have given some answers, I might have found some peace, but that doesn't mean that I don't recognize the value and the place for those emotions, which sometimes might come back even later in life.

Even though my favorite song from this album (and by Nevermore) is The Heart Collector, I'm going to share a piece called Insignificant. It's about life and mortality, about what we leave behind when we go away. About our meaning as humans and ultimately, our ephemerality.

The lyrics, as it often was the case, were written by Warrel Dane, singer of the band. He passed away last year. Although his death hurt as hell, his voice is still here with me, in my ears and in my heart. Everytime I listen to this song I can't help but smile a bit, and think "you were wrong, man". He might have felt his life was insignificant, he might have thought that we leave no trace, but it wasn't and we do, at least some of us. He's still someone to me, he still is to a lot of people. I can't help but feel a bit hopeful, when I think of it that way. And that's why I'm posting this song.

Center of the Earth

The second and last song I'm going to post is COTE (short for Center of the Earth, as you might have gathered) by an Australian band called Karnivool. It's the opener of their first album, Themata, from 2005.

I'm not going to go deep into the meaning of the song this time. It's up to interpretation, and I'd like you to be the judges on that. I've found out about Karnivool quite recently and I have to say, I absolutely love their energy. But this song...I don't know, a lot of people I know will select either Deadman, or Change as their favorite. And they're right, they're both awesome. But the absolute power of this song is something that has no equals to me. Over the last week I've listened to it every day and I can't seem to stop.

At the apex of the noticeable climax, when he goes "so drop me down, let me feel it either way" I just want to rip my shirt off and scream like a crazy person. Maybe I am.

So what did you think? Do you have any songs you want to share? Don't be shy, I'd love to know more about what makes you people tick!

See ya next week!