6 ms·
Physics in Metal Music
- kawika85 11y agoWhat about Lateralus from Tool ?
- dexterdog 11y agoNot so much physics, but just math. Still, it's a phenomenal song.
- livatlantis 11y agoI don't know Tool at all, actually. Listening to Lateralus now though, thanks for the heads-up!
- noir_lord 11y agoTool are brilliant, https://scholarhero.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/the-mathematics-of-music-tools-lateralus/ https://scholarhero.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/the-mathematics... has an overview :)
- livatlantis 11y agoAuthor here. I wasn't sure if it was bad etiquette to submit my own article to HN but decided in the end that it might actually interest the community. For fans of metal and sci-fi, I should mention that Dutch musician Arjen Anthony Lucassen does much more than just write science-inspired metal operas for Ayreon. He also has another project called Star One[0], where each song is based on an iconic sci-fi movie, book or series (Blake's 7, Doctor Who, Dune, Alien, Star Trek, A Clockwork Orange...). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STAR_1
- mhd 11y agoAlthough I wouldn't be sure how covers of both Hawkwind's "Orgone Accumulator" and Donovan's "Intergalactic Laxative" would come out on the science tally...
- wnevets 11y ago01011001 a great metal opera album from Ayreon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/01011001 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/01011001
- livatlantis 11y ago01 is actually how I discovered Ayreon. I'm now going back and listening to older albums. Was surprised at the number of incredible guests! (Bob Catley, James LaBrie, Bruce Dickinson, Floor Jansen, Jordan Rudess, Hansi Kürsch...).
- kazinator 11y agoHey man. "Event Horizon" is like the #2 track in my phone's "frequently played" list, edged out for #1 spot by Annihilator's "Sonic Homicide"! Those Stratovarius guys should consult some native English speaker before finalizing lyrics. "A star dies collapsing in its core" can be corrected to "into its core"---and then the number of syllables actually scans better; we don't have to stretch the "-ing" over an extra beat. The song is not really about "it involves someone approaching a black hole in a spaceship with an onboard computer that has a vaguely Russian accent". The speaker in the song imagines that. The beginning is: Standing outside in darkness My breath is steaming The skies open wide I hear the silent screaming Deep in the dark, somewhere in space Spinning around, leaving no trace We can regard this as the speaker's imagination being stirred with thoughts of distant black holes, as he stands clear sky on a winter's night. The main element there is that of suicide: nothing matters: I can see the point of no return And when the light is slowly turning to red Life gives away, there's no concern On this cold night under the stars, the speaker voice is fantasizing about dying by steering a ship into a black hole, ignoring the evacuation alarms that are going off.
- livatlantis 11y agoIt didn't even occur to me to try to read the song in any but the most literal sense. Your explanation is very compelling! The only thing that detracts from it is the relative cheerfulness of the song (especially the keyboard/guitar duet that starts at about the 2m30s mark) -- although who knows, it could very well represent euphoria associated with the prospect of imminent liberation? Thank you for this! Glad you like Strato; I love the way Event Horizon shifts to Elysium, a song I listened to three times a week for 4 months on repeat on my 20-minute bus commute back when I was in uni.
- lukifer 11y agoThanks for sharing, all sorts of good finds in this thread. :) Allegaeon is perhaps my favorite metal band, and their songs frequently revolve around physics, biology, sci-fi, and futurism: The God Particle: http://youtu.be/hthQvqbyyZg http://youtu.be/hthQvqbyyZg Accelerated Evolution: http://youtu.be/z2JKv7hGz1Y http://youtu.be/z2JKv7hGz1Y Dyson Sphere: http://youtu.be/tk1aLKTmgXU http://youtu.be/tk1aLKTmgXU
- ionised 11y agoHaha, I haven't listened to Star One in quite a while! I really liked the one album I heard though, Space Metal. I think I originally gave them a listendue to their having Russel Allen (of Symphony X) as vocalist. I was not disappointed. I'll have to check out that second album!
- cjsthompson 11y agoMetal has most of the time essentially reactionary themes. It is often obsessed with the past/mythology, "manliness", social darwinism and so on. Although there was Glam inspired Metal which wasn't obssessed with "manliness" and Thrash Metal had socialist themes — though they do exist — it is hard to find Metal bands with sci-fi/space themes and/or where technology isn't seen in some dystopian context. I'd recommend Darchon 'The Stygian Black Beyond'.
- nehushtan 11y agohttp://tmbw.net/wiki/Cut_The_Strings http://tmbw.net/wiki/Cut_The_Strings
- amelius 11y agoSomewhat related: The physics of mosh pits [1] [1] http://kottke.org/14/11/the-physics-of-mosh-pits http://kottke.org/14/11/the-physics-of-mosh-pits
- bleuarff 11y agoIf you're interested in physics in metal, I suggest you listen to Negligent Collateral Collapse, and particularly their first album, Reprocess Segment Database Extender. Great fun, although not suitable for everyone's ears.
- n4r9 11y agoThe "neo-classical" death metal band Haggard have a concept album called Eppur Si Muove which is about the life and works of Galileo. It doesn't go into much scientific detail, and is more about the apparent conflict with Church doctrine, but seems to be along the right kind of lines.
- N0S4A2 11y agoI'm not sure if you care for death metal, but Allegaeon released Elements of the Infinite last year which contains several songs about cosmology and mathematics. One, in particular, is entitled "Dyson Sphere"[1]. While we're on the subject of Dyson Spheres, Alkaloid released a four part song earlier this year on their debut, again entitled "Dyson Sphere". My interpretation is that it's about a sphere created in order to serve as an incubator for an entire species. All of the parts are available on their Bandcamp page[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVGcwoqgbyE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVGcwoqgbyE [2] https://alkaloid-band.bandcamp.com/album/the-malkuth-grimoire https://alkaloid-band.bandcamp.com/album/the-malkuth-grimoir...
- N0S4A2 11y agoIn case you desire more of this kind of metal, I would suggest utilizing the search functionality on Metal Archives. It enables you to search based on lyrical content. Here are the search results for phsyics[1], cosmology[2], and space[3], for example. [1]http://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=physics&type=band_themes http://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=physics&ty... [2]http://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=cosmology&type=band_themes http://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=cosmology&... [3]http://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=space&type=band_themes http://www.metal-archives.com/search?searchString=space&type...
- livatlantis 11y agoI don't listen to death too much, but really enjoyed the last melodic death band I stumbled upon. These are great, thanks!
- larrik 11y agoNe Obliviscaris uses physics (or at least astronomy) in much of their music, especially on their album Citadel (which includes a pair of songs about black holes, like the article). Meanwhile, independent band Mechina is in the middle of releasing an 8-album epic sci-fi story about space travel. I rarely pay close attention to lyrics, though, so I may be off, and I may be ignoring lots of other bands that may have them (Soen seems to at least have math influence, judging from their track titles).
- N0S4A2 11y agoIf you like Mechina, I would recommend checking out Enshine. They just put out a new album entitled Singularity last month[1]. Again, it's more science fiction than what the author was referring to, but I have been enjoying it immensely. [1] https://enshine.bandcamp.com/album/singularity https://enshine.bandcamp.com/album/singularity
- Knight4 11y agoNe Obliviscaris are unbelievably good.
- philh 11y ago> In this context, you would not only reach your destination, you would be both annihilated and preserved (kinda like Schrödinger's feline friend). Is this a meaningful comparison? How I read the preceding bit, the way in which you're both annihilated and preserved is simply that you die but the information required to reconstruct you remains. That's not at all like the way in which Shrödinger's cat is both alive and dead, which doesn't really have anything to do with death.
- livatlantis 11y agoYou're right, it actually isn't! This has more to do with the information paradox and black hole complementarity and is not related to the collapse of the wave function. I've removed the sentence and put an edit notice.
- Roboprog 11y agoFWIW, "Rush" hit the black hole theme back in '77: "Cygnus X-1". Nerd rock doesn't get much air play :-)
- pdkl95 11y agoSpeaking of math and music... Phil Moriarty recently did a "Sixty Symbols" video[1] about a recent paper[2] that investigated the subtle timing fluctuations that distinguish well-played drums from the "correct" quantized-to-the-exact-beat rhythm produced by a drum machine. ... fluctuations of hi-hat amplitudes and interbeat intervals ... have clear long-range correlations and short-range anticorrelations separated by a characteristic time scale. As a follow-up, Prof. Moriarty is asking for recordings of drummers playing Rush's "Tom Sawyer"[3], so he can continue the analysis on a much broader set of data. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyLeBMdI_HU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyLeBMdI_HU [2] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0127902 http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.... [3] https://muircheart.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/the-rhythm-method-crowd-sourcing-drum-science/ https://muircheart.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/the-rhythm-metho... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGH6-BcKCME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGH6-BcKCME
- Floegipoky 11y agoRelevant: Between the Buried and Me's Parallax I & II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE8zQEShT7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE8zQEShT7w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUsiQqcG5bI&list=PLaY_oF0LS0Dyt-lji0DVRZs6mUQDo88Rm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUsiQqcG5bI&list=PLaY_oF0LS0...
- epsylon 11y agoOne of my favorite song from Swedish artist Vintersorg is Algol, which is about the eponymous star system. Algol, demon, capricious your brightness shifts from day to day - rises, abates, intesifies again, sometimes triumphant and sparkling, sometimes pale and faint. For a long time we've searched with wonder for the key to this mystery, the right element to your eager and changing, queer temperament. Now we've dispearsed the haze of the riddle: you've got a companion on your journey, like a slave, a faithful shadow he constantly follows you on the desolate path, he circles and sneaks quiet around you, closely. Never have we seen his guise, dark, parches, stiff and cold, but still we know he exists; like ashamed he hides behind you - free and merry you shine - until he once again crawls out of the darkness and covers you. And your glare becomes pallid and dull, and your mind cloudy. [Chorus] And similars there are - many Algols wanders in the space - maybe even more among us on earth. Sunlight spirits darkened by a shadow, young princes concealed by old slaves, doublesouls, divided creatures - a blissful son of the light indissolubely linked with a bitter dark demon. [Chorus] His lyrics talk a lot about science in general, astronomy, philosophy and nature. Also, fun trivia: Vintersorg, despite singing mostly black metal, is a primary school teacher.
- livatlantis 11y agoSomeone else recommended Vintersorg. It's now on my list of bands to check out, along with many others from this thread. But while we're on the topic of Swedish artists (who have unrelated day jobs†), I absolutely have to mention Seventh Wonder[0]. They based their 30-minute anthem "The Great Escape" on Aniara[1], an epic sci-fi poetic cycle authored by Harry Mattison. It's a significant piece of literature because, to quote his Wikipedia page[2]: "He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson 'for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos'." Someone actually uploaded a comparison of lines from the English translation of the poem to the lyrics of the song[3]. Maybe I'll write a more detailed article about this at some point, but it's a beautiful song that really lets you get into the story. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Wonder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Wonder [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniara_(opera) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniara_(opera) [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Martinson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Martinson [3]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MUd4hf0FH4gQQN_9kypNtGBeT-Ly0v94h08TYiAIUsc/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MUd4hf0FH4gQQN_9kypNtGBe... † Tommy Karevik is the singer in Seventh Wonder (and Kamelot) and also plays the part of the Prodigy in Ayreon's Theory of Everything. He is also a firefighter.