I was wondering why does the bands have to split some songs into Intro and Main Song?

Personally i don't like this way, cuz i always play my music with shuffle, so either i listen the intro but not the main song, or vice versa, and that ruins the experience.

So, do you like this idea of Intro + Song, or you prefer, like me, a non split song?

P.S. The same applies to the Outros.

usually intros are different from the main theme of the next song so they're separated. same goes for outros. they blend in nicely when you listen to the entire album, so i don't see why would you want one song instead of one. listening to music in shuffle ruins the whole experience tbh.

Written by Damnated on 30.03.2008 at 22:54

usually intros are different from the main theme of the next song so they're separated. same goes for outros. they blend in nicely when you listen to the entire album, so i don't see why would you want one song instead of one. listening to music in shuffle ruins the whole experience tbh.

i agree, listening to your music on random does ruin the experience. the songs on an album are chosen by the artist in a certain order. useually. also what about copncept albums? u cant listen to them on random that'd be pointless. i personally loveit when a whole album is linked and the tracks merge into one another, like Meads of Asphodels's welcm to planet geneocide.

Written by necrovamp on 30.03.2008 at 23:06

Written by Damnated on 30.03.2008 at 22:54

usually intros are different from the main theme of the next song so they're separated. same goes for outros. they blend in nicely when you listen to the entire album, so i don't see why would you want one song instead of one. listening to music in shuffle ruins the whole experience tbh.

i agree, listening to your music on random does ruin the experience. the songs on an album are chosen by the artist in a certain order. useually. also what about copncept albums? u cant listen to them on random that'd be pointless. i personally loveit when a whole album is linked and the tracks merge into one another, like Meads of Asphodels's welcm to planet geneocide.

Totally agreed with you two.
+11

People that shuffle their albums (okay not compilations of course) should be shot :-)

Like you say artists have chosen the songs to be in that order specifically.

I dont mind the separate intro, Im not going to repeat what everyone above me has already stated, but if you have your album on shuffle, just hit the 'next' button if you dont want to deal with messy intro positioning.

I don't like

I don't like hearing albums in order, cuz for me it gets boring knowing which song will come next, it's better not to know, that's why i shuffle and i don´t like split songs.

@Marcel: not if i shoot you first

@Damnated: most of the intros aren't that different from the main theme, that's why they are intros and not a song.

i really dont have problem with it...take Fear Of The Dark for instance

There are a lot of progressive metal bands that have intros that lead into another song that is on another track and when I have a random on it pisses me off because I get into it and then it goes somewhere else...

Sometimes it's cool, sometimes is not.
For example take some tool Songs, like Mantra-Schism, Parabol-Parabola, Lost Keys (Blame Hoffman) - Rossetta Stoned.
Or even Disposition - Reflection - Triad. Spite you caould hear the songs togheter as oen, it's better to listen to then split, cause well, they would be extremely long, and because,. at least in this songs, you can tell teh difference between parts.

But if teh split is liek teh entwine intro for teh album DiEversity and "Bittersweet", is simply stupid. What's teh use of a aplit 4 second intro?

I kinda like, but bands tend to do it with the wrong songs. For instance, take Holy Diver. Who really wants to listen to that intro? Nobody, right. They should have cut that into to or loose the intro alltogether.

I can't really think of any songs that have an intro and a main song, but I will post when I think of some. I don't know if Postmortem and Raining Blood counts? Postmortem isn't really an intro, but it is almost as if it's one song cut in half.

I'm in a metal band, and one of the songs I recently made i decided to make a solit song. Sometimes a song can only go for a minute before it starts to get boring, and it would be king of useless to have a one minute song, so what i did is came up with another riff that is very similar, but still sounds completely different, but since they were so similar, I just combined them with a one minute death metal intro, then a trandition into a more melodeath part.

Intros have to be done right. Quite a few bands have intro tracks just so their album looks all fancy/progressive and what-not, when in reality they should just skip the intro and go straight into the song. Either that, or just connect the two and have one big song.


On a related note, best intro ever: Oden's Ride Over Nordland - Bathory

Fucking epic.

I do like split song, because they devide the style of the song, a slow intro, fast main and slow fade outro, but I can see why you don't like it, it can be confusing if you use shuffle but I still think it is good.
There are also intro and outro to album which you did not mantion, this can be confusing too, but still, the artist must have a reason for doing this, it's not like we are buying the album by the number of songs or their length...

I don't mind it all that much. But I do mind when songs have a crossfade that leads into the next song, and the songs are out of order. It gets annoying because it all sounds out of place.

I agree with OP, i usually listen to my music straight through albums but every once in a while ill throw it on random and a intro will come on, at that point (75% of the time) its a song i would of wanted to listen to teh next part, so i'm forced to scourge through my collection to find the 2nd part after the play list has jumped on to somewhere completely different. I don't think it would hurt the tracks themselves by combining teh intros since teh majority of teh time it leads so well its hardly noticeable there is track change other then if your only listening to 1 track at a time.

When talking about intro's and then main songs(or even outros) the first band that pops to my mind is of course Judas Priest
-The Hellion/Electric Eye - completely inseparable, you can't listen to one without the other
-Dawn Of Creation/Prophecy - completely inseparable, you can't listen to one without the other
-Heavy Duty/Defenders of the Faith - completely inseparable, you can't listen to one without the other
-Battle Hymn/One Shot at Glory - completely inseparable, you can't listen to one without the other

all of these are okay songs when listened to separately, but combined they are TEH PWNZORZ and i can't think of any logical reason why they didn't just include the intro's in the main songs. of course this doesn't apply to short songs who sound completely different than the next "full-length" songs, like Orchid and Children of the Grave by Black Sabbath or The Pierced Spirit and Dante's Inferno by Iced Earth

if we're talking about songs that link up there's of course lots of Iced Earth stuff:
-Angel's Holocaust/Stormrider
-Prophecy/Birth of the Wicked/The Coming Curse
-Scarred/Slave to the Dark/A Question of Heaven
-lots of songs on "Framing Armageddon"
-Gettysburg trilogy

i can see why they chose not to link up all these songs, in the end it would have made for one really long and drawn-out epic thing with many parts which don't sound much alike, like Nightwish's Beauty of the Beast or Manowar- Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in 8 Parts(this one is just waaaaay too damn long it's 28 minutes FFS, they should have split it, also cause the last song, The Glory of Achilles, is pretty kickass on it's own)

i actually used a music manipulating program to link up The Hellion and Electric Eye, guess i'll do the same with all the Priest songs i've mentioned above and yes listening to an album in shuffle mode is lame.. i never listen to full albums that way.

2 things.

1. i also like to play my music shoufle but: surely there are SOME albums that DESERVE to be listened the whole, without stop. that's because right there are SOME artists and bands that have a reason why they put song No5 in this place. but there are many that do not have a MAIN reason.

2. if you play your music shoufle, dont be silly, put the intros out. you play it shufle cause you want the songs. not the intros (except of some astonishing intros).

and an answer to the Question. intros which has to do with the music of the next song (or previous) is better to be "inside" the song. intros which has to do with the "atmosphere" of the allbumthen it should be separate...

I hate split songs unless there is a valid and convincing purpose behind it. ie: the song goes for and hour or something like that. But it really annoys me when bands split songs that are about 7 to 10 minutes long, that just seems lazy too me.

As for the intro, outro thing being discussed earlier, those respective sections are different and therefore count as individual songs meant to build the atmosphere for the album as a whole.

Split songs rely mostly on strong transitions. IMO if a split song transists coolly, then I think it did what it was meant to do. Personally, I enjoy such songs most of the time.
EXAMPLE: Judas Priest's Electric Eye.

No, it should be one long song (example, Nightwish's Lappi). There not a problem of I listen to the album, but on my mp3 player they get shuffled up so I don't get the whole song. It's dissapointing when I get the intro and then not the rest. I wanna hear more!

It depends on the song, and it depends if they fit together well. It doesn't matter where on the album they hapen to be. For me it is more to do with how well they match up.

In cases like Emperor's Alsvartr/Ye Entrancemperium i dislike it. when listening to the album via MP3 it often gaps the two, throwing off continuity... and on random (i don't random albums, i random playlists of entire genres) it just fucks it up.

I don care if the intro melody is diffrent than the first song as king diamond ( voodoo - house of god - puppet master ) so its better to be separated
but if the intro & the first song have the same melody then i prefer they become 1 song

I like intros.