Tim: This year, Melodifestivalen had two metal entrants. There was Dynazty with Land of Broken Dreams, which was to all intents and purposes a schlager song dressed up with heavy instruments. Very much worth a listen, but for a review you can pretty much head back to last year’s review of Nicke Borg, because it fulfils a fairly similar role – a song that’ll appeal to mainstream people and will be described by the fans as ‘selling out’, and as far as I’m concerned is very enjoyable.
Then there’s this.
Tom: Sure, keep the drummer in a metal cage. Just in case he’s a bit too visible.
Tim: Well, this is about the singers. We don’t want the instrument players getting aspirations above their stations now, do we?
Tom: Ah, the Drummer’s Lament.
Tim: This song was in the first heat, and (possibly due to the low quality of that week) got further in the competition than Dynazty did, which I think is a shame as I enjoyed that track a lot. This, I’m not sure about. The unintelligible screaming, I hate. I can’t wait for it to finish every time it starts and I wish I could get rid of the bloke in the baseball cap entirely.
Tom: Ah, but that’s how you do “Proper Metal Vocals”, isn’t it? Growl unintelligible vocals from your diaphragm.
Tim: It is, yes – but the other singing, though? I think it’s great. You can hear the key change coming a mile off, for starters, and that’s often an indication of great pop, which the decent stuff actually is – change the backing and it could be sung by any Charlotte Perrelli or Linda Bengtzing who cares to jump up on stage, really.
Tom: Which means it sits in an uncomfortable position – not a schlager song, not really a metal song. I’m surprised it got as far as it did – it’s not Lordi, after all.
Tim: Well, if you did replace it with a female singer and kept the screamy bit, you’d end up with something not unlike the closing part of the Casablanca/Malena Ernman collaboration from two years ago, which actually ended up being pretty brilliant, so that might explain it.
Tom: Casablanca’s lead singer isn’t metal-screaming there, though; it’s not that death-growl. That death-growl’s an acquired taste: for every person who goes ‘yes, proper metal in Eurovision!’ there’ll be two who go ‘ooh what’s wrong with his voice?’