In Defense of the Power Chord

I love a lot of musical genres, but so far as listening to music goes, I consider myself more of a metal head than anything else. Virtually every metal band in existence makes extensive use of the power chord (the root and the fifth) in their songs. Our friend the power chord, though, has a reputation as being overly simplistic and boring with the lay music connoisseur. It is the widely held belief that guitarists fall back on the power chord to provide substance for their music because they can't incorporate more complex chords into their playing. While this may be true in the context of more harmonically complex genres, such as jazz, the power chord in the context of heavy metal doesn't deserve this harsh treatment. As someone who considers himself at least moderately versed in music theory, I will try and present the power chord as a necessary aspect to metal music.

To begin, we must identify a couple things as inherently valuable in metal- one, speed is good; and two, the more distortion the better. The power chord is played on two adjacent strings; the root on the lower string, the fifth on the higher string. Staying on one string is obviously going to be more efficient in attaining maximum speed, given that the strumming hand isn't going to have to move as far to strike the string repeatedly. The closest alternative to one string is, of course, two, and so in that a power chord is easy to play quickly, it is a more viable option than a more complex chord. In addition- the more distortion I put on my amp, the more muddled anything more harmonically complex a power chord becomes. I can get away with playing a few triads in the upper register of the guitar when I've got the gain maxed out, but otherwise, to misquote the great Dane Cook, it sounds like a bag of asses. So, given that the power chord enables faster playing and more distortion without muddling, it is the obvious choice.

But don't let the mere necessity of the power chord lead you to the conclusion that metal is therefore an inherently inferior genre- the best bands are far from stupid. For one thing, why does a chord have to be played all at once? Many guitarists arpeggiate chords during solos, this guy provides a really good example from the intro to "Beyond the Dark Sun." The guys in Symphony X producing mind-bendingingly complex albums, and continually baffle me with their sometimes infuriatingly hard to follow time changes. Bands like Sonata Arctica and Nightwish have been incorporating full orchestras into their work as of late, and big, complex vocal arrangements are in vogue with a lot of power metal bands (Edguy, Blind Guardian, and Avantasia are all good examples). All of this, coupled with the extreme technical prowess of these and many other bands' instrumentalists, produces a genre that is, overall, very musically complex and undeserving of the simplicity which many write it off with.

There are always exceptions to this rule, especially in the increasingly depressing American metal scene, but most heavy metal bands are not composed of a bunch of idiots banging on their instruments. There is real thought that goes into the best stuff, and to label their work as undeserving or stupid is just criminal.