The SCHOBS Scale

Today our worship pastor preached a fantastic sermon on worship and music and such. Once the link is up I highly recommend listening if you missed it. Anyway, it got me thinking about music; evaluating the lyrical content for truth. Also on the musical style, which, he was sure to emphasize, doesn't matter in worship music. Uh...I'm going to skip a few steps here and say that this led to me coming up with a scale for quickly, fairly completely describe the general style of a song, album, or artist. With my brilliant talent for coming up with acronyms, I call it the SCHOBS scale, and it looks like this:

I tried to find attributes that add up to provide a general, complete picture of musical style. I also tried to ensure that they were independent, i.e. none are correlated or interrelated.

Size: How "big" or bombastic does a song feel? Is it sparse and intimate or booming and epic? Symphonic elements, choirs (particularly chanting in other languages), lots of instruments, and reverb effects increase this score.
Complexity: In a nutshell, how intellectually challenging/stimulating/progressive a song is. Does it stay well within the mainstream songwriting conventions of its genre, or does it buck trends or have an intricate, well-thought-out structure?
Heaviness: In essence, how rough, heavy, or distorted a song is. In rock music, soft acoustic or piano rock falls on one of the end of the spectrum, extreme death metal/grindcore on the other. I'm not sure if this transfers to all non-rock genres.
Organicity: How "natural" or earthy does the song sound? Simplistic mixing techniques, acoustic/folk instrumentation, and unaltered singing increase this score, electronic effects, keyboards, or altered vocals decrease it.
Beauty: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Mainstream songs usually have plenty of this, but they don't have a monopoly on it.
Speed: Also self-explanatory. Is it a crawling ballad or a furious speed metal song with double-bass sixteenth notes?

Just to emphasize, none of these attributes are "good" or "bad", they are only descriptive. There are songs I highly enjoy that fall all over the map in all of them. I've realized most of my reviews simply describe the musical content of the songs; I think this scale will help save me some repetitive descriptive words and focus on why I really enjoy the music I listen to.

Two Tragedy Poets

Elvenking is an Italian folk-metal band that never takes itself too seriously. They combine epic metal action with all manner of delightful folk-inspired melodies and instrumentation. Compared to the better-known Korpiklaani, they're less metallic and their youthful-sounding vocalist Damnagoras (they all go by mononyms) couldn't be more differerant than the gruff Jonne Järvelä. But anyway, Elvenking is a gilded, magically-locked treasure barrel full of fun and I haven't been able to stop listening to their 2008 album Two Tragedy Poets...And a Caravan of Weird Figures lately.

It seems to be a "thing" among folk metal bands to do an acoustic album to let their folk influences shine. Finntroll and Eluveitie have also made "unplugged" albums, but neither is nearly as memorable as Two Tragedy Poets. Despite being acoustic, this album manages to be fiery, lively, and generally a good time, proving that Elvenking has nothing to hide behind its metallic sound.

"The Caravan of Weird Figures" is the first of two shorter, more ambient tracks that I wish had been full-length. With its swirling drums and rousing shouts, I can picture it being the vehicle that transports you to the wonderful world of folklore, spellcraft, and really cool-looking trees that Elvenking lives in. Then "Another Awful Hobs Tale" comes on and it's folk rock at its finest. True, there is an electric guitar, but unlike in their other albums (and certainly their last one, The Scythe) the focus is elsewhere. Everything has the raw, garage-band feel--the drums rock out without relying on excessive bass pedaling, and the violin and acoustic guitars carry the melody. Meanwhile the lyrics are all about the search for a four-leaf clover. Delightful.

"From Blood to Stone" is another strong folk-rock tune. Somewhat quieter, it showcases Damnas' vocal range and still packs in a rousing chorus. Despite its lack of distortion, it rocks plenty hard, making it an example of what I would call "acoustic metal". "Ask a Silly Question" pushes even the acoustic guitars to the background and is a delightful blend of string and woodwind sounds. The lyrics, about playing Pass the Pigs and being a smart aleck, are some of my favorites.

Then "She Lives at Dawn" is an amazing, ambient piano break from the livelier songs. Would possibly be the standout track of the album if it were full-length. The band follows this up with two covers, the first one of...well, themselves: the title track of their 2006 album The Winter Wake. It definitely benefits from the acoustic treatment, as well as better production and a cool spoken-word intro. The electric guitar solo is, of course, replaced by a violin solo. Next Elvenking covers "Heaven is a Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle, former singer of The Go-Gos. As cross-genre covers go, it ranks somewhere in awesomeness between a melodic death metal cover of "Everything Counts" and the symphonic metal cover of "Don't Stop Believin'". The Allmusic review mentions this cover gives the song the Bon Jovi treatment, and now I can't stop hearing similarities between it and "Livin' on a Prayer".

"My Own Spider's Web" and "The Blackest of My Hearts" are both slower songs with even more focus on folk instrumentation. "My Own Spider's Web" is just beautiful, and "The Blackest of My Hearts" is built around a pounding drum loop with plenty of strings layered on top. Meanwhile between them is "Not My Own Final Song", a song about rocking out at your own funeral and possibly the most energetic on the album. Capping the album off are "The Wanderer", another acoustic cover of The Winter Wake, and the upbeat "Miss Conception".

Two Tragedy Poets manages to be an absolutely beautiful treat for the ears while remaining a lot of fun to listen to and never taking itself too seriously. The livelier, rocking songs and slower soundscapes provide a nice contrast that make this album the perfect break from Elvenking's more metallic body of work, if not a standalone reason to check them out. Everyone: do yourself a favor and look into it. If you need more proof, test-drive "From Blood to Stone", "Ask a Silly Question" or "My Own Spider's Web".