I started listening to Hard Rock and Heavy Metal when I was 8 years old or so (that’s as far back as I remember, which was right before the 1st Rock in Rio, in 1985). Why so young? My brother is 11 years older than me, and he was listening to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Rush, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin (the good old stuff, right?), so that’s the kind of music I grew up with.

At the time I already heard people saying all sorts of things about that type of music: "That’s music for crazy people", "That’s a lot of noise", "Are they even singing real lyrics?", "Can they actually play any instrument?". While there are many bands who are really noisy, many musicians who can barely tune their instruments, many singers who can’t really sing, many lyrics that are utter crap, there are unbelievably talented people out there too.

Once in a while I get into arguments with people about this. I don’t care about people who don’t understand anything about music, though; I rather get into conversations with open-minded people who do like good music. What do I consider good music? Music with good melodies, rich arrangements, good vocals, good lyrics, etc. There are songs I listen to where I do not like the vocals, but I do like everything else. There are other cases where I don’t really like the instrumental parts, but I do like the lyrics. In other cases, I may not understand the words, but the singers are so good that gets my attention.

So I decided write up this post on Hard Rock/Heavy Metal music that I think shows a lot of musicianship.

In the last 20 years or so, there have been several bands putting out live albums with an orchestra added to the mix, like Metallica and Scorpions, just to name a few. While I think the one Scorpions did sound great, I didn’t like Metallica’s that much. It just seemed like the orchestra was brute-forced into the music, and it felt unnatural, probably because the music had not been written like that to being with.

But them, here’s a band that way back in 69 wrote an entire piece for band and orchestra: Deep Purple! And this is one of the bands that paved the way for other Heavy Metal bands.

Now, I’ve just said that I didn’t like Metallica’s thingy with orchestra because it sounded forced, since the music wasn’t written with an orchestra to begin with. Then, I find out this Scorched Earth Orchestra. Now, this is Metallica’s music played only by an orchestra. It sounds great! The melodies, the intensity, the dynamics, it’s all there. In a way, this recording reminds me of my all-time favorite movie soundtrack "Conan The Barbarian", by Basil Poledouris.

Here’s a band that loves classical music and movie soundtracks. This rendition of the Star Wars’ The Imperial March is no short of Amazing in my book! Both band and orchestra blends in just perfectly.

And here’s Epica again. Not only can they re-arrange classical songs to work flawlessly with an orchestra, but they can also write their own music with an orchestra in mind from the get go. Got that? All of their music is written like this from the ground up. If they were to take out the orchestra, their music would sound like Death Metal. If they were to take out the band, the music would sound like Classical Music. You keep them together and you get something very rich, sophisticated, intense, melodic. Plus, their albums are always about a concept (Mayan culture, quantum physics, etc.).

Angra has always incorporated some of their Brazilian roots into their music. This song in specific is one of my favorite ones by them, as it starts with an acoustic flamenco guitar, it merges into some sort of Brazilian thing, and then the heavy guitars kick in, but still keeping Brazilian percussion and other things going.

Ritchie Blackmore’s Gates of Babylon is one of my top favorite songs of all times. I’ve also always enjoyed Flamenco music. Then here comes this guys who call themselves Flametal, and make a Flamenco version of Gates of Babylon. Win!

This is one of those bands I mentioned where I like the instrumental but am not too keen on the vocals (and the whole body paint stuff). But, listen to how the orchestra plays out with the band here. It’s perfect!!

Uhoh, This content has sprouted legs and trotted off.

Then, there’s Arjen Lucassen, who writes all of his music and assembles a band with great musicians to make his musical creations a reality. He writes this concept album under the band name Gentle Storm. The album contains two versions: the Gentle (calm version) and the Storm (heavy version). It’s not just a matter of replacing one instrument with another, it’s a lot more work than that, trying to find what exactly works well in each version.

Thomas released an entire album a few years ago called Nylon Maiden: it’s his interpretation of Iron Maiden songs arranged and played on the acoustic classical guitar.

Opeth was introduced to me as "Death Metal meets Pink Floyd". In fact, that’s what they were: a Death Metal band with a singer who can pull both the growls as well as the clean "David Gilmour" vocals. Their music had a lot real heavy stuff and then all of a sudden an entire calm passage would creep up. Very interesting to hear. They’ve dropped the Death Metal vocals in their last albums and gone into a more progressive style, though.

Anyway, a couple of years ago they’ve released two albums simultaneously: one had their normal tunes (heavy!), and the other was mostly calm, like what you hear on the song below. Their chord progressions, the keyboards, the clean vocals, the arrangements… goodness!

Deep Purple was mentioned further above. The band’s Concerto was Jon Lord’s (their keyboardist) baby. When Jon passed, Ritchie Blackmore’s (legendary Deep Purple’s guitarist), wrote and released this tribute to his old songwriting buddy. No words are needed in such a short masterpiece.

Do I need to say anything about this one?!

I’ve had great conversations with intelligent people about songs and bands on this list. For everybody else, if after being presented such a list the person insists in saying that this type of music is for rebellious teenagers, talentless musicians, etc., then I just take a deep breath and tell the person to go $#*ˆ%@(#ˆ#(@$!!! ;)