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livatlantis

It is indeed interesting. I'd say that it has to do with:

- complex structures (not necessarily always 4/4 or 3/4)

- variations in dynamic range (loud parts vs. quiet parts)

- storytelling / philosophical themes (the human condition, freedom, suffering, literature)

- intense "solos" (Mendelssohn insanely fast yet moving segments on the piano vs. Petrucci going crazy on the guitar)

- mastery of musical instruments (particularly true in progressive metal, but metal drummers, guitarists/bassists and keyboard players tend to play at a very high technical level)

- song length (like Seventh Wonder's "The Great Escape" at about 30 mins)

None of these individually are unique to either genre, but taken together, we can start seeing quite a bit of an overlap.

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A surprising, or maybe not so surprising, number of metal bands, and song writers have borrowed heavily from classical. No end of interviews with rock guitarists where they talk of listening to some violin piece and wanting to honour or duplicate in on the guitar. No end of albums with a rock cover of some classical piece, from The Agonist's a capella of Swan Lake through several Pachelbel's Canon in D, etc.

Not forgetting a good few borrowing from the folk canon, and I don't just mean late era Rainbow after Ritchie got his new girlfriend. :)

When I listen to Swedish death metal in particular, the tremolo picking and riffs, combined with the distortion (almost always a dimed Boss HM-2) almost sounds like a furious string section, somewhere around a cello-type sound. So many songs could just as well have been pieces of classical music.

Ha ha, Dream Theater and Complete Mendelssohn String Quartets (Pacifica Quartet) are probably the top played on my phone. The string quartet tributes to Iron Maiden and Dream Theater are pretty good.

My daughter is going to a rock strings camp next week where she will be playing Metallica, Zepplin, etc on cello.

>>My daughter is going to a rock strings camp next week where she will be playing Metallica, Zepplin, etc on cello.

Have she listened to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalyptica?

From a fellow fan (and musician) of both genres I'd say that this analysis is absolutely spot on.

The only real difference in a lot of cases is the choice of instrumentation.

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