Why Nerds Love to Head Bang: A Primer on Prog Metal

When people think of "metalheads" (i.e. those who enjoy listening to metal music), they might think of a big, scary looking dude with lots of tattoos and piercings and such. While these sorts of metal fans certainly do exist, it may surprise you to know that many metal fans are, in fact, nerds. There are…

My Top 10 Guilty Pleasure AOR Songs

AOR stands for "Album Oriented Rock", and is basically a subset of rock music known for melodic song structures with high vocals, lots of synth, power chords, and bright catchy choruses. For that reason, it is often referred to by "AOR Melodic Rock". Mainstream AOR bands include Journey, Boston, Styx, Survivor, etc., but over the…

11 Songs to Get You Through a Breakup

Breakups aren't particularly enjoyable for either party involved. Whether you've just gotten dumped or had to let someone go, the thought of a change in relationship status is seldom an easy pill to swallow. While people cope with breakups in different ways, I'll argue that the best way to deal with things (at least in…

5 Songs that Prove Warrant is More Than "Cherry Pie"

Warrant is an American glam metal band that experienced a fair amount of success in the late '80s and early '90s, before going into relative obscurity once glam metal started to decline in popularity. They actually had many songs that did well in the charts, but far and away their best known song is "Cherry…

My Top 10 Hard Rock "Build-Up" Songs

The "build-up" is one of my favorite types of songs. What is a "build-up" song? Well, I define it to be a song that has some sort of mellow or slow opening that gradually increases in either tempo or volume until it hits a climax (preferably with an epic guitar solo) and then goes back…