Hey everyone! We’re hanging out at Okzygen Studios again, ripping through another cover of the melodic death metal variety. This time we’re doing a bit of a deep dive into some lesser-known Finnish stuff, a little tune called Hades from a group by the name of Kalmah! I don’t know what it is, but those Nordic countries have a certain affinity for the crazy melodic extremely heavy shreddy stuff. Must have something to do with all the cold and lack of much else to do. I joke of course, but living in Canada during some of these winter months, that lack of things to do really does drive one to the brink of insanity if you don’t have some kind of hobby.
These guys were recommended to me long ago by someone who used to be a big part of the channel way back before the reboot (If you’re reading this, you know who you are!) because of their similarity to the music of Children Of Bodom. If you couldn’t tell, Bodom is one of my all time favourites, so playing this song for the first time and hearing the perpetual lead guitar paired off with harmony provided from a harpsichord definitely got the engines running, so to speak. There’s a lot of obvious classical influence mixed in among the flurry of blast beats and tremolo picking, all coming together to create a beautifully destructive sound.
Now for todays video, we’re ripping through the lead guitars on this song. I had planned to also do the rhythms, but wasn’t able to get them down tight enough for my liking before the time constraints began their crushing action. To be fair, the leads simply do not let up on this track and play some form of awesome melody pretty much non-stop, disregarding even the vocals when they pop up. The solo isn’t an exact note-for-note recreation, more so inspired by the original with a bunch of improvised shredding. Kinda lose my footing for a couple notes towards the end of the solo, but think it turned out pretty well for most parts being made up on the spot. Some day I might make a short video detailing some of the improvisation techniques, basic things like recognizing scales and related modes and how to modulate between them. Problem is I lack some of the language knowledge to properly describe some of these moves. Plus let’s be honest, sometimes I just need to admit that I’m just making the guitar do the wibbly wobbly noises and hoping for the best. Sometimes it’s just fun to giver, bud.
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