I started learning to play the guitar in May 2003. I've never played any instrument before, so progress is slow, however I'm gradually picking things up.
In October 2003, my friend and I formed the short-term band Death Club Severed, and produced a cover of Marilyn Manson's Long Hard Road out of Hell. As well as recording the song, we also produced a full music video to go with it. The final piece was submitted as part of a Computer Graphics course at university. All the computer graphic scenes in the video were modelled and animated by ourselves, and rendered in a ray tracer that we wrote from scratch. Some of the models were also create by Graham Macfarlane of 3DMania.
You can download the video here: Death Club Severed - Long Hard Road out of Hell. (Right click and choose "Save As...") Feel free to share it!. File Size: 24Mb. Requires the DivX codec.
My Dying Bride is a British Doom Metal band. Masters of slow, heavy, soulful music, they mix crushingly heavy guitar riffs with violin parts dripping with sadness. Add to this an alteration between clean and growling vocals, and you have the unique and wonderful sound of My Dying Bride. As an added bonus, many of their songs are actually quite easy to play, so I suggest you go to the tabs page and try them out!
Like My Dying Bride, the Swedish Progressive Metal band Opeth provide a wonderful mix of heavy thrashing an intricate melodies. They use their two lead gutiar players to their full potential by playing both close harmonies and complex overlapping melodies. Their bringing of together atmospheric acoustic guitars rhythms and emotive, forceful solos provides you with a sense of depth, power and feeling that many others lack.
Again, both clean vocals and growling are found in their albums, providing contrast yet fitting together perfectly.
As with many dark metal bands, their songs can last for over 10 minutes each, however you will never find yourself wishing for one to end. It is notable that there is usually very little repetition in their songs, they rarely use a simple verse/chorus structure. This provides an unpredictable and varied soundscape for you to explore.
As you might expect, such complex songs are challenging for a beginner to play. Download the tabs and have a go, though! Pick out the easy parts.
Nine Inch Nails, fronted by Trent Reznor, are an Industrial outfit. Very different from the preceeding bands, NIN is famed for its harsh industrial sound, screaming vocals and downright creepy background sounds. If you're looking to headbang, scream and smash stuff, NIN may be the band for you.
They make heavy use of that most common of metal sounds.. the power chord. This makes their music ideal for someone who is learning to play the guitar. You can crank up the distortion, play along to the music, thrash out some power cords, yell and scream, and it will sound great!
I had a go at using the package "Fruity Loops" to make some drum sounds to play along to. You can download the mp3 or the flp file here:
Nine Inch Nails - Wish: Drums (mp3, 3.3Mb)
Nine Inch Nails - Wish: Drums (FruityLoops flp, 13Kb)
Please remember I'm NOT a drummer and barely know how to use FruityLoops. They don't sound great, but they're good enough for a beginner to practice to.