While I was driving to the grocery store today to get some goods for me birthday, the cd zapped to the song “Let this river flow” by Soilwork. Then figured it’s got the 6 components I really like about any given metal song.

1. 00:00-01:19 minutes. What I call the ‘indictment’. A good metal song always starts with a story. A perception / thoughts on what’s happening, whatever that might be.
2. 01:20 minutes onwards. Clean vocals on top/ over. There’s nothing more boring than the same vocals over and over, whether that’s clean, grunting or screaming. The best metal songs provide a combination of all three.
3. 02:18-02:32 minutes. Down from your gut power. I love that because if you translate music to different body parts when you listen to it, it’s boring if you have to listen with your head or your heart consistently. If music is able to take a drastic turn that goes from the head to the toenails you’re doing something rite.
4. 03:04-03:48 minutes. A victorious stage. In this case it’s a bit similar to “Phoenix rising from the ashes”. It’s usually the part that strenghtens the listener. It’s this that ‘boils the blood’ I like so much.
5. 03:48 – 04:18 minutes. Fragility. For such a macho ungirly type of music, it’s sure better capable of being ‘fragile’ than anything else I know.
6. Awesome and interesting guitars. It’s everywhere in this song so it didn’t need a good solo to make magic happen.

It remains very complex music and it won’t be for everyone; not only by sound but also for it’s confrontational style.