A
Anonymous
Guest
Hi guys, I am not sure if this fits the Commentary part of the forum, we'll see.
Three years ago, under the name of Holy Shadow, I accused Tobias Sammet (singer/songwriter of Edguy and Avantasia) of not being very original when it comes to his choice of titles and even lyrics. He used many things that were used before. Okay, nothing is original in metal. Everything has been done before, and everyone uses something that has been done before. But using so many things like Edguy and Avantasia did is hard to believe. I wonder if someone could find another band with the same amount of unoriginal ideas.
I have to admit that Edguy changed their titles quite a bit over the last, let's say, 2 or 3 albums. Lavatory Love Machine, Trinidad en Rocket Ride are definitely original titles. But around 2002 times were different.
I posted my "finding's" on the Edguy forum, and the nice thing is that Tobias reacted himself (wouldn't it be cool if Bruce would post here one day, agreeing or disagreeing with some lyric interpretations?).
I will post the link of the old topic here: [a href=\'http://taraxacum.net/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1064&start=0\' target=\'_blank\']http://taraxacum.net/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1064&start=0[/a]
But I will also post the stuff in this topic.:
-----------------
[span style=\'font-size:14pt;line-height:100%\']Edguy lyrics:[/span]
Ok, people, I know I will get a lot of angry reactions on this post, but I would like to know your opinion on this topic. Please be not prejudiced and if you like just read what I would like to say:
This is not to slag off Tobias Sammat or Edguy / Avantasia, but only to express my opinion on the titles of songs and albums of Edguy and Avantasia.
First of all I want to say I am a pretty big Edguy fan and I also love the Avantasia album. Very cool melodies, cool songs with real catchy choruses and good guitarsolos. I have every single album of them and I will continue to buy their upcoming stuff because I think the music and the vocals are of a very high level.
Recently I started to see a lot of "well known elements" in the songtitles and even albumtitles. I guess I didn't see it that clear earlier but some weeks ago I started simply playing all Edguy albums and I made some cool compilation-tapes with (what I think to be) their best songs.
Now many bands are not original in choosing titles or lyrics, because most is already done, I agree.
But when you read the titles of Edguy songs, many songtitles from the past come to mind and especially the ones from Iron Maiden and Bruce Dickinson. This is also the case with lyrics.
I would just like to mention very obvious examples of songtitles/albumtitles/lyrics.:
1. "Final Gate" from Edguy's demo "Children Of Steel". There is a song "Final Gates (1988)" from another German metal band Running Wild.
2. "Hallowed" from Edguy's debut album. The title is a bit shorter but the lyrics say enough: "Hallowed Be My Name". Pretty obvious that this comes from Iron Maiden's "Hallowed Be Thy Name", 1982.
You could say that Edguy did use the line "Hallowed Be Thy Name" from the Lord's Prayer, and simply changed "Thy" for "My", but this is very unlikely.
3. "Kingdom Of Madness", Edguys second full length album. Magnum (a famous English band who recently reunited, by the way) has the same name for their debut album from 1978:"Kingdom of Madness".
4. "Fairytale" from Edguy's third album "Vain Glory Opera". Gamma Ray,
another German band also has a song called "Fairytale" which was from an album called "Land Of The Free", 3 years earlier released than "Vain Glory Opera".
5. "The Unbeliever" from Edguy's fourth album "Theater Of Salvation". Maiden fans might recognize the album closer of "The X-Factor" of Iron Maiden, indeed: "The Unbeliever". which was released 4 years earlier than "Theater of Salvation".
6. "Sign Of The Cross" from the very succesful project Avantasia. Immediately comes to mind the epic track of Iron Maiden's album opener of "The X-Factor".: "Sign Of The Cross". It was released 6 years earlier than Avantasia.
7. "The Tower" also from Avantasia. Bruce Dickinson's "Chemical Wedding" contains a track with the same title:"The Tower". This was released 3 years earlier than Avantasia.
8. Speaking about Dickinson's "The Chemical Wedding", this album must have been liked a lot by Tobias Sammet, because in the track "The Devil and The Savant" from Edguy's latest album "Mandrake", he also
took this line: "....The Chemical Wedding Day" in the chorus, and also in the song the words "...The Alchemist.." are in the chorus. Mandrake was released 3 years later than "The Chemical Wedding".
9. "Jerusalem" from Mandrake. Again Bruce Dickinson made a song (Again from "The Chemical Wedding, 1998) with this title. Good, Sammet might not have taken this title from Bruce, but you would hardly believe
this, if you know what I have already said about the previous and will say about the upcoming titles (there's more to come).
10. "Fallen Angels", Looks a lot like "Fallen Angel", one of the two
songs to which Adrian Smith contributed on "Brave New World", released one year before Edguy's release "Mandrake" on which this song appears.
11. "Tears Of A Mandrake" looks like "Tears Of The Dragon" from Dickinson's album "Balls to Picasso", released 7 years before
"Mandrake", on which this song appears.
12. "Save Us Now", again from "Mandrake". Helloween has an (excellent, I think) song with the title "Save Us" from "Keepers Of The Seven Keys- part II", an album that Sammet likes a lot. The words "Save Us
Now" are even literally in the Helloween song, which is released 13 years before "Mandrake"
13. "All The Clowns". Hello, Bruce Dickinson! This looks like a combination of "All the Young Dudes" (originally a David Bowie song) from Dickinson's first solo album "Tattooed Millionaire", from 1990
and "Shoot All The Clowns" from the earlier mentioned "Balls To Picasso".
A less obvious example but very easy to associate with one other song:
"Nailed To The Wheel" from "Mandrake" (God, again). Anyone knows Halford, or Fight? There is a track on Fight's debut album "War Of Words", called "Nailed To The Gun." which is from 1992, I believe.
There are about 3 or 4 more of these doubtful titles, but maybe you all would like to check out these titles yourselves. Also watch out for future releases.
In the end I only have to say that it would be cool if Tobias Sammet would be a bit more creative with choosing songtitles in the future. I am not saying he has to, I am only pointing out that he hasn't been that much in
the past.
I don't know why Tobias did all this, because he seems to be a very creative person to me, but maybe he likes to give us some "Voices Of The Past"?
I hope this post won't be deleted by the forum-moderator and it would be cool if Tobias would like to respond himself to this topic.
Thanks for reading
Holy Shadow
cheers!
----------
HarmonSavage_Administrator! Joined: 02 May 2001Posts: 472Location: Atlanta, GA! Posted: 07 Mar 2002 15:54 Post subject:
"Hey, I forwarded your complaints to Tobias and even I was surprised how fast he responded to me. Here's what he mailed me back on the topic: Hello friends (especially Holy Shadows), hope everything is fine and you are still heavy I've been told about this topic and since I don't have anything to hide (and "a little time" left ) I'm gonna come out of the closet on this one: First of all: I don't give a shit as long as we have a good idea. We don't like ripping off, but I don't see any reason to change a good idea when it is truely your idea, only because someone has talked in the same language! As long as you have something to say it's okay. If you read the lyrics, you'll realize that there is a meaning behind. It's the same with music: You might find the same chords in every third song of almost every band, is that innovative? If you wanna see what Maiden are influenced by just listen to Magnum or Deep Purple or if you wanna see where Bruce Dickinson's show comes from watch Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. If you wanna listen what Helloween's typical double guitar licks are influenced by listen to Thin Lizzy. What I wanna say is that it is not a shame, because there is just a couple of thoughts, chords, chord combinations or a couple of moves and finally just a couple of words available for millions of bands, musicians and songs. If you don't move like Ian Anderson you might doubtlessly remind people of someone else. If you watch Roger Daltrey throwing his cable microphone into the air you might see, where David Coverdale's moves come from. You are never the only one and hardly the first one, maybe the first to get famous with it, which doesn't mean that you really have been the first one at all. What counts is the magic you put into it: WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT GOOD AND DO IT HONEST AND DO IT WITH PASSION! The bands you mentioned did that, they became successful and they deserve it, no matter if they were the first ones or not, they were the first ones you know about, that's alright and they had that magic and that was the key to their success. By the way: Mostly way before the bands that you mentioned - bands like Magnum, Bob Catley, Vangelis, Emerson-Lake-Palmer, Chris DeBurgh, Alphaville, Accept, Aerosmith, Therapy, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath, Ice-T, Elvis Presley, Enya, Peter Gabriel, Ace Frehley, Uriah Heep, Dio, Poison, Styx, Beegees, Meat Loaf, TNT, Nazareth, The Who and probably hundreds of other bands that neither you nor me may know or remember had exactly the mentioned titles or at least were close to it. You seem to be an Iron Maiden-fan (which is not bad of course), if you'd be one of the other mentioned band's fan you would be 'sure' that the ideas come from them, they did those titles way back in the 70s and 80s, but probably even they haven't invented the words as titles To "Chemical Wedding": If you read about the topic "alchemy" you will immediately bump into that expression as one of the most famous expression withing the topic, because "CW" was (in brief words) a (spiritual) chemical reaction and furthermore the title of a very famous script of 1459 written by Christian Rosencreutz. Wish you all the very best and stay clean, Tobias :
-----
Posted: 08 Mar 2002 09:33 Post subject:
Thanks for your explanation, Tobias. My conclusions were indeed based on the titles that I know, not on the titles that I don't know, so there could be way more bands who use titles that others have used before. I don't only listen to Iron Maiden (which is indeed my favorite!). A list of bands that I like: Absu After Forever Amorphis Anathema Ancient Anvil A.S.A.P. Atom Seed At The Gates Bad Religion Bathory Black Sabbath Blaze Blind Guardian Body Count Brainstorm Candlemass Cathedral Children Of Bodom Cooper, Alice Crown Of Thorns Daredevils Deep Purple Demons And Wizards Deviser Dickinson, Bruce Dimmu Borgir Dio Dire Straits Domine Drakkar Edguy Emperor Enthral Entombend Fight Gamma Ray Gates Of Ishtar Gathering, The Gillan Godspeed Gorefest Grip Inc Gzr Halford Hammer, Jan Harvey, PJ. Haunted, The Heavens Gate Helloween Hollenthon Iced Earth Immortal In Flames Iron Maiden Iron Savior Jacob’s Dream Judas Priest Kamelot Killers Labirynth Liar of Golgotha Lock Up Loudness Manticora Metal Church Metallica Midnight Oil Mithotyn Morgoth Motorhead My Dying Bride Napalm Death Nightwish Nile Nocturnal Rites Omen Pink Floyd Pretty Maids Primal Fear Prong Psycho Motel Queensryche Rainbow Riot Rock, Rob Running Wild Rush Samson Satyricon Saxon Sear Bliss Sepultura Siebenburgen Six Feet Under Slayer Soilwork Solitute Aeturnus Sonata Arctica Status-Quo Steel Prophet Theatre of Tragedy Therapy? Therion Trail of Tears Tristania Vanity Virgin Steele Within Temptation White Spirit ...and some others that I recently got into.
I know it's hard to be original, and indeed all those bands you named (and I named) do things that other bands did before. I found it interesting to see that Edguy/Avantasia use(d) some titles that were done before, and I wonder if there is a band with did the same.
I didn't mean to offend Tobias or Edguy or Avantasia, I didn't mean the choices for the titles was a bad thing to do, because in the end the music, the power and the majesty rule over all.
Thanks for the explanation about CW, by the way. That was interesting. Respect to you Tobias, it's cool to hear words from the band themselves.
Holy Shadow.
Three years ago, under the name of Holy Shadow, I accused Tobias Sammet (singer/songwriter of Edguy and Avantasia) of not being very original when it comes to his choice of titles and even lyrics. He used many things that were used before. Okay, nothing is original in metal. Everything has been done before, and everyone uses something that has been done before. But using so many things like Edguy and Avantasia did is hard to believe. I wonder if someone could find another band with the same amount of unoriginal ideas.
I have to admit that Edguy changed their titles quite a bit over the last, let's say, 2 or 3 albums. Lavatory Love Machine, Trinidad en Rocket Ride are definitely original titles. But around 2002 times were different.
I posted my "finding's" on the Edguy forum, and the nice thing is that Tobias reacted himself (wouldn't it be cool if Bruce would post here one day, agreeing or disagreeing with some lyric interpretations?).
I will post the link of the old topic here: [a href=\'http://taraxacum.net/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1064&start=0\' target=\'_blank\']http://taraxacum.net/boards/viewtopic.php?t=1064&start=0[/a]
But I will also post the stuff in this topic.:
-----------------
[span style=\'font-size:14pt;line-height:100%\']Edguy lyrics:[/span]
Ok, people, I know I will get a lot of angry reactions on this post, but I would like to know your opinion on this topic. Please be not prejudiced and if you like just read what I would like to say:
This is not to slag off Tobias Sammat or Edguy / Avantasia, but only to express my opinion on the titles of songs and albums of Edguy and Avantasia.
First of all I want to say I am a pretty big Edguy fan and I also love the Avantasia album. Very cool melodies, cool songs with real catchy choruses and good guitarsolos. I have every single album of them and I will continue to buy their upcoming stuff because I think the music and the vocals are of a very high level.
Recently I started to see a lot of "well known elements" in the songtitles and even albumtitles. I guess I didn't see it that clear earlier but some weeks ago I started simply playing all Edguy albums and I made some cool compilation-tapes with (what I think to be) their best songs.
Now many bands are not original in choosing titles or lyrics, because most is already done, I agree.
But when you read the titles of Edguy songs, many songtitles from the past come to mind and especially the ones from Iron Maiden and Bruce Dickinson. This is also the case with lyrics.
I would just like to mention very obvious examples of songtitles/albumtitles/lyrics.:
1. "Final Gate" from Edguy's demo "Children Of Steel". There is a song "Final Gates (1988)" from another German metal band Running Wild.
2. "Hallowed" from Edguy's debut album. The title is a bit shorter but the lyrics say enough: "Hallowed Be My Name". Pretty obvious that this comes from Iron Maiden's "Hallowed Be Thy Name", 1982.
You could say that Edguy did use the line "Hallowed Be Thy Name" from the Lord's Prayer, and simply changed "Thy" for "My", but this is very unlikely.
3. "Kingdom Of Madness", Edguys second full length album. Magnum (a famous English band who recently reunited, by the way) has the same name for their debut album from 1978:"Kingdom of Madness".
4. "Fairytale" from Edguy's third album "Vain Glory Opera". Gamma Ray,
another German band also has a song called "Fairytale" which was from an album called "Land Of The Free", 3 years earlier released than "Vain Glory Opera".
5. "The Unbeliever" from Edguy's fourth album "Theater Of Salvation". Maiden fans might recognize the album closer of "The X-Factor" of Iron Maiden, indeed: "The Unbeliever". which was released 4 years earlier than "Theater of Salvation".
6. "Sign Of The Cross" from the very succesful project Avantasia. Immediately comes to mind the epic track of Iron Maiden's album opener of "The X-Factor".: "Sign Of The Cross". It was released 6 years earlier than Avantasia.
7. "The Tower" also from Avantasia. Bruce Dickinson's "Chemical Wedding" contains a track with the same title:"The Tower". This was released 3 years earlier than Avantasia.
8. Speaking about Dickinson's "The Chemical Wedding", this album must have been liked a lot by Tobias Sammet, because in the track "The Devil and The Savant" from Edguy's latest album "Mandrake", he also
took this line: "....The Chemical Wedding Day" in the chorus, and also in the song the words "...The Alchemist.." are in the chorus. Mandrake was released 3 years later than "The Chemical Wedding".
9. "Jerusalem" from Mandrake. Again Bruce Dickinson made a song (Again from "The Chemical Wedding, 1998) with this title. Good, Sammet might not have taken this title from Bruce, but you would hardly believe
this, if you know what I have already said about the previous and will say about the upcoming titles (there's more to come).
10. "Fallen Angels", Looks a lot like "Fallen Angel", one of the two
songs to which Adrian Smith contributed on "Brave New World", released one year before Edguy's release "Mandrake" on which this song appears.
11. "Tears Of A Mandrake" looks like "Tears Of The Dragon" from Dickinson's album "Balls to Picasso", released 7 years before
"Mandrake", on which this song appears.
12. "Save Us Now", again from "Mandrake". Helloween has an (excellent, I think) song with the title "Save Us" from "Keepers Of The Seven Keys- part II", an album that Sammet likes a lot. The words "Save Us
Now" are even literally in the Helloween song, which is released 13 years before "Mandrake"
13. "All The Clowns". Hello, Bruce Dickinson! This looks like a combination of "All the Young Dudes" (originally a David Bowie song) from Dickinson's first solo album "Tattooed Millionaire", from 1990
and "Shoot All The Clowns" from the earlier mentioned "Balls To Picasso".
A less obvious example but very easy to associate with one other song:
"Nailed To The Wheel" from "Mandrake" (God, again). Anyone knows Halford, or Fight? There is a track on Fight's debut album "War Of Words", called "Nailed To The Gun." which is from 1992, I believe.
There are about 3 or 4 more of these doubtful titles, but maybe you all would like to check out these titles yourselves. Also watch out for future releases.
In the end I only have to say that it would be cool if Tobias Sammet would be a bit more creative with choosing songtitles in the future. I am not saying he has to, I am only pointing out that he hasn't been that much in
the past.
I don't know why Tobias did all this, because he seems to be a very creative person to me, but maybe he likes to give us some "Voices Of The Past"?
I hope this post won't be deleted by the forum-moderator and it would be cool if Tobias would like to respond himself to this topic.
Thanks for reading
Holy Shadow
cheers!
----------
HarmonSavage_Administrator! Joined: 02 May 2001Posts: 472Location: Atlanta, GA! Posted: 07 Mar 2002 15:54 Post subject:
"Hey, I forwarded your complaints to Tobias and even I was surprised how fast he responded to me. Here's what he mailed me back on the topic: Hello friends (especially Holy Shadows), hope everything is fine and you are still heavy I've been told about this topic and since I don't have anything to hide (and "a little time" left ) I'm gonna come out of the closet on this one: First of all: I don't give a shit as long as we have a good idea. We don't like ripping off, but I don't see any reason to change a good idea when it is truely your idea, only because someone has talked in the same language! As long as you have something to say it's okay. If you read the lyrics, you'll realize that there is a meaning behind. It's the same with music: You might find the same chords in every third song of almost every band, is that innovative? If you wanna see what Maiden are influenced by just listen to Magnum or Deep Purple or if you wanna see where Bruce Dickinson's show comes from watch Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. If you wanna listen what Helloween's typical double guitar licks are influenced by listen to Thin Lizzy. What I wanna say is that it is not a shame, because there is just a couple of thoughts, chords, chord combinations or a couple of moves and finally just a couple of words available for millions of bands, musicians and songs. If you don't move like Ian Anderson you might doubtlessly remind people of someone else. If you watch Roger Daltrey throwing his cable microphone into the air you might see, where David Coverdale's moves come from. You are never the only one and hardly the first one, maybe the first to get famous with it, which doesn't mean that you really have been the first one at all. What counts is the magic you put into it: WHATEVER YOU DO, DO IT GOOD AND DO IT HONEST AND DO IT WITH PASSION! The bands you mentioned did that, they became successful and they deserve it, no matter if they were the first ones or not, they were the first ones you know about, that's alright and they had that magic and that was the key to their success. By the way: Mostly way before the bands that you mentioned - bands like Magnum, Bob Catley, Vangelis, Emerson-Lake-Palmer, Chris DeBurgh, Alphaville, Accept, Aerosmith, Therapy, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath, Ice-T, Elvis Presley, Enya, Peter Gabriel, Ace Frehley, Uriah Heep, Dio, Poison, Styx, Beegees, Meat Loaf, TNT, Nazareth, The Who and probably hundreds of other bands that neither you nor me may know or remember had exactly the mentioned titles or at least were close to it. You seem to be an Iron Maiden-fan (which is not bad of course), if you'd be one of the other mentioned band's fan you would be 'sure' that the ideas come from them, they did those titles way back in the 70s and 80s, but probably even they haven't invented the words as titles To "Chemical Wedding": If you read about the topic "alchemy" you will immediately bump into that expression as one of the most famous expression withing the topic, because "CW" was (in brief words) a (spiritual) chemical reaction and furthermore the title of a very famous script of 1459 written by Christian Rosencreutz. Wish you all the very best and stay clean, Tobias :
-----
Posted: 08 Mar 2002 09:33 Post subject:
Thanks for your explanation, Tobias. My conclusions were indeed based on the titles that I know, not on the titles that I don't know, so there could be way more bands who use titles that others have used before. I don't only listen to Iron Maiden (which is indeed my favorite!). A list of bands that I like: Absu After Forever Amorphis Anathema Ancient Anvil A.S.A.P. Atom Seed At The Gates Bad Religion Bathory Black Sabbath Blaze Blind Guardian Body Count Brainstorm Candlemass Cathedral Children Of Bodom Cooper, Alice Crown Of Thorns Daredevils Deep Purple Demons And Wizards Deviser Dickinson, Bruce Dimmu Borgir Dio Dire Straits Domine Drakkar Edguy Emperor Enthral Entombend Fight Gamma Ray Gates Of Ishtar Gathering, The Gillan Godspeed Gorefest Grip Inc Gzr Halford Hammer, Jan Harvey, PJ. Haunted, The Heavens Gate Helloween Hollenthon Iced Earth Immortal In Flames Iron Maiden Iron Savior Jacob’s Dream Judas Priest Kamelot Killers Labirynth Liar of Golgotha Lock Up Loudness Manticora Metal Church Metallica Midnight Oil Mithotyn Morgoth Motorhead My Dying Bride Napalm Death Nightwish Nile Nocturnal Rites Omen Pink Floyd Pretty Maids Primal Fear Prong Psycho Motel Queensryche Rainbow Riot Rock, Rob Running Wild Rush Samson Satyricon Saxon Sear Bliss Sepultura Siebenburgen Six Feet Under Slayer Soilwork Solitute Aeturnus Sonata Arctica Status-Quo Steel Prophet Theatre of Tragedy Therapy? Therion Trail of Tears Tristania Vanity Virgin Steele Within Temptation White Spirit ...and some others that I recently got into.
I know it's hard to be original, and indeed all those bands you named (and I named) do things that other bands did before. I found it interesting to see that Edguy/Avantasia use(d) some titles that were done before, and I wonder if there is a band with did the same.
I didn't mean to offend Tobias or Edguy or Avantasia, I didn't mean the choices for the titles was a bad thing to do, because in the end the music, the power and the majesty rule over all.
Thanks for the explanation about CW, by the way. That was interesting. Respect to you Tobias, it's cool to hear words from the band themselves.
Holy Shadow.
