I’m developing some pretty odd taste in music…
I REALLY like metal, but REALLY dislike the screamy-yelly bits, which I acknowledge is kind of contradictory.
I think I just don’t like vocals, period, metal or otherwise. Anyway…
The symphonic stuff especially, like Blind Guardian (Wheel of Time, Orchestral is probably my all time favorite song!), Nightwish, and Therion, are fuckin amazing; but even within that subset the vocals are kinda overbearing for my taste - a lot of them have operatics, which I also file under the “eh, I’d rather not” category. Fortunately they have some instrumental versions of their songs, AND I LOVE THEM!
…but I keep plugging them into services like Pandora, Spotify, and Youtube Music, and I get either 1) “Oh you like any type of metal? Here’s a playlist of 16 hours of dudes ejecting the entire contents of their lungs into a microphone! BWAAAAAAAAAA—” or, 2) "Oh, you like symphonic metal? Here’s the same 10 songs over, and over, and over again!
No amount of thumbs up/down-ing on the results appears to have any impact on the algorithm. Youtube music even gives this snarky little popup when I thumbs a song down “Okay, we’ll adjust your playlists” and then later plays THAT SAME FUCKING SONG again - not even a different version, but the same URL, which is still actively marked with a thumbs down.
Side question: is there a streaming service that isn’t shit for finding new metal? That actually takes into account the different types of metal?
Anywho, looking for recommendations for songs/albums. Bonus points if it has symphonic elements, but any sub-genre is golden, so long as the specimen in question has no vocals, or just -soft- vocals that don’t yank the spotlight away from the instrumentals.
Alright, class is wrapping up, I can start knocking these out. Gonna log my progress here, with a rating out of 10 and any comments (all 100% subjective to my personal taste - not looking to bash anyone here!):
Cloudkicker* - 7 - only complaint is some parts get overly repetitive
Animals as leaders* - 8 - ^same
Mestis - 8
Conquering Dystopia - 9 - Ooh, really like this one!
Polyphia - 7 - Great for ambience
Dysrhythmia - 6 - ^same, but liked Polyphia just a touch more
Scale The Summit - 9
Chon - 5 - Heavy on the higher pitches, and kinda repetitive - I’d have to be in a specific mood for this one.
Tigran Hamasyan* - 5 - Didn’t really care for this specific song, but thumbing through his others and am digging it.
Protest The Hero - 9 - Great energy, great variation!
The Ocean* - 9
Periphery - 8
Tesseract - 9
Porcupine Tree* - 7
Calligulas Horse* - 8
Leprous - 6 - Really liked the instrumentals; REALLY disliked the singer’s voice, lol
Tesseract - 7 - Vocals not terrible, but still really prefer the instrumental version.
Sleep Token* - 7
Cynic* - 7
Haken* - 8 - bro wtf did I just listen to rofl. Bonus point for weird shit!
Katatonia piano covers vol 1, 2 - 5 - Not the metally music I was looking for, but this is going on my studying playlist.
In Flames piano covers - 5 - Same^
Dark Tranquility Piano Covers - 5 - Same^
Between The Buried And Me - Colors - 6 - This one’s hit and miss for me. The hits hit hard though!
Clayman - 8 - Not a fan of the vocals, but there are instrumental versions of this that kick ass!
Whoracle - 8
Colony - 7
Mr Bungle’s California - 6 - Simultaneously not really my cup of tea, and also catchy as fuck.
Baroness Red, Blue, and Yellow; Green
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I came to give recommendations and you listed most of the ones I know and more. Thanks for the list!
Check out the Liquid Tension Experiment too.
Damn, that’s a great list. Most of what I’d recommend is in there, here’s a few more:
- Anup Sastry - everything’s instrumental except the most recent album, which has vocals, with an instrumental version too
- Blotted Science - other Ron Jarzombek stuff tends to be instrumental as well, like Spastic Ink
- Master Boot Record - everything’s instrumental, he coerces old hardware into making cool music
- Pomegranate Tiger - all instrumental
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I guess Scale The Summit, but fuuuuck Chris Letchford.
Oh no, I love Scale the Summit. What did he do?
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Awesome list. My current listens, that I don’t think I’ve seen listed yet. Some might not be metal enough for everyone, but I love metal and the above bands and I also listen to these artists:
Mostly Instrumental
Long Distance Calling (more Post-Rock than Metal)
Apocalyptica (Cello Quartet that started by covering Metallica, newer albums have originals and guest vocals)
Clean Vocals
Instrumental Versions of Tracks are Available
@foggy@lemmy.world, @BitSound@lemmy.world, @Orbituary@lemmy.world, @joshLaserbeam@sh.itjust.works, @ttmrichter@lemmy.world, @cokane_88@lemmy.world, @watson387@sopuli.xyz, @raptir@lemdro.id, @yeetsinfection@lemmy.world, @kttnpunk@lemmy.world, @Fecundpossum@lemmy.world, @Nouveau_Burnswick@lemmy.world, @manapropos@lemmy.basedcount.com, @MrJameGumb@lemmy.world, @Fump@lemmy.world, and at this rate probably a few more just in the time it’ll take to type this.
Holy shit, all.
This thread has been up for like an hour, and I’ve got probably several days worth of back-to-back songs to check out - a whoooole bunch of which is stuff I haven’t seen before.
I did NOT expect this kind of response. Y’all are my hero.
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These comments are going to take a lot of time to unpack, but dude I feel like a kid on christmas morning!
Check out The Dear Hunter. Not metal at all but they fit into a lot of this in ways that’ll surprise you.
Will do! Not familiar with Dear Hunter (yet!) but “not metal” is far from a deal breaker - when I don’t have metal on, I’m usually listening to shit like this which I’ve taken to just calling “cinematic” cuz it sounds like something from a movie, but no idea what genre it would actually fall under; or some Lindsey Stirling if I’m shooting for something a little lighter.
But yeah, your list has been a 100% hit so far; I pulled up The Dear Hunter before I started typing this post, and the one song I’ve heard so far actually lines up perfectly with another music rabbit hole I’ve been poking around in lately with things like the Kongos. Would never have sought out that kind of music on my own, but a surgeon recently had our nurse play it in surgery a few days ago, and it was great lol (I’m a surgical tech, which is the rock-bottom-of-the-barrel in the OR, so we generally just listen to whatever the nurses or doctors want… which, at my hospital usually means country -_-).
My taste in music seems to be copy-paste of yours so far lol, so I’m down to try anything you care to throw at me, metal or not!
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Wanted to check in since you’ve put so much work into your responses (you are straight up my hero!) - I’m a week out from wrapping up a class that’s kicking my ass, then I’ll actually get some free time again! I haven’t played many of these quite yet cuz I don’t want to just use my crappy car speakers on the way to or from work or have to listen to it in the background when I’m focusing mostly on something else.
The posts in this thread - especially yours - are going to get my full attention.
So, probably another week of radio silence, then I’ll be blowing up your inbox. :P
Started picking away at these - so far Conquering Dystopia is my favorite!
Also I’m an idiot and can’t remember which ones I clicked on prior to school turning up to 11 (accelerated Anatomy & Physiology II… that class was fucking insane, but now it’s dooooone!!! That was the last of my prereqs: nursing school up next!) so I’m just starting from the top. Gonna sort through these one post at a time, and add the links / a personal score to the OP.
Can’t overstate how much I appreciate all the links you’ve given!
Try Russian Circles or Pelican.
Sounds like you’d probably enjoy some prog metal or maybe just prog rock in general? Those bands don’t typically have a lot of screamy vocals. I use Amazon Music. It seems to do a pretty decent job of suggesting new bands based on my playlists
There’s a lot of djent - a subgenre of progressive metal - that has no vocals. Check out…
- Arch Echo
- Scale the Summit
- I Built the Sky
- Intervals
I wonder if you would like Jeff Loomis’ solo work? Sadly hasn’t released anything in the last 10 years. His most popular song is Miles of Machines but my personal favorite is Jato Unit.
The only instrumental acts I can think of that haven’t been mentioned are Paul Ortiz (Chimp Spanner), David Maxim Micic, Wide Eyes, and The Helix Nebula.
You could also try Walking Across Jupiter, Oh Hiroshima, and If These Trees Could Talk, but I can’t remember if they have (guest) vocals or not.
While they do have vocals you could also try Wheel, their album Resident Human is really good.
Good luck in your search!
Caligula’s horse
Also, not really my jam, but there’s a bunch of folk metal and like Viking metal that has clean vocals and symphonic elements
Oh and Dream Theater obviously
Maybe look into electric moon, the sword, mogwai, sleep, witchcraft,? I kinda lean towards softer, melodic doom metal but those are just some suggestions off the top of my head
Windhand would be a good addition to your list
The Sword are great.
The Contortionist might be up your alley. Language is more metal, Clairvoyant less so.
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I believe the band pelican, is all music no lyrics.
1 song from solution .45 (lethean tears) is also without screaming etc
Theres a decent site… metal-archives, that has a ton of band info, including band members, similar bands etc
Check out Redneck Stomp by Obituary. Most of their songs have vocals, but this one doesn’t.
I like to call Leah “The Enya of Metal”. If you want almost pure instrumental metal there’s Amogh Symphony (or Wang Wen if you want something metal-adjacent that’s mostly instrumental).
Instrumetal. I like this playlist on Spotify: https://spotify.link/DHO1sVLGUCb
