Which band offers the best guitar solo

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Echoing the comment a few posts up about what I've called on my blog as obligasolos. Obligatory soloing because we're vkei and we sell more chekis if we have our lead guitarist solo for 15 seconds each song. D has been doing this for the past 5 years and it honestly annoys me to no end.

[sai 868]

Ugh this ^ Most VK bands feel obligatory to put in 15-second solos in every single song and it just really annoys me because most of the time the solo doesn't even fit the song properly but it's just thrown in because we are VK and we need our guitarist to wank it out.

[Haruto 60]

My musical knowledge is very limited, I don't really have the experience to say what a 'good' solo is, but in my personal opinion I like D.I.D.'s and Nocturnal Bloodlust's guitar work a lot. I also agree on most bands already mentioned.

As for Versailles, I don't dare to say they're not skilled (holy shit, they are!) but their soli are really not my cup of tea. Like they come out a bit ... 'showy'?

Also ^, the last two posts: this.

[DogManX 179]

Who cares if these solos are "obligatory"? If they are nicely put, that's all that should matter. If I listen to something, I at least don't waste daytime bragging and complaining about it, and then still listen to it at the end of the day.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Your allegory / adage thing didn't make much sense. When a solo becomes obligatory it pretty much means it doesn't quite fit into the song, usually wedged between the 2nd and 3rd chorus. If you're lucky, there will be  a bridge that at least provides some musical continuity, but most of the time that is a farfetched ideal.

 

The gripe comes from said soloing not flowing well with the rest of the song. I love guitar wankery, especially if it is super flowery and has a ton of flourishes / shredding arpeggios, but they have to at least sound like they belong in the context they appear in. Solos don't even need to be complicated, either. I'd much rather a musically simple solo that's a nice rendition of the song's main theme than 4 seconds of shredding because because because of all the wonderful things hide does.

[DogManX 179]

No it doesn't. If bands have a certain formula on inserting soli regularly, the focus of critizism should not be on the formula, but of the management of the soli itself. You can't dismiss musical products by referring to the fact that those products are mass ware. It might be a poor and redundant attempt to do music, but the quality is only affected if your personal expectations are not hit, which you nicely demonstrated in your comment.

[Augie1995 325]

My musical knowledge is very limited, I don't really have the experience to say what a 'good' solo is, but in my personal opinion I like D.I.D.'s and Nocturnal Bloodlust's guitar work a lot. I also agree on most bands already mentioned.

As for Versailles, I don't dare to say they're not skilled (holy shit, they are!) but their soli are really not my cup of tea. Like they come out a bit ... 'showy'?

Also ^, the last two posts: this.

They're an aristocratic band...they were. Everything that was Versailles was showy hahaha.

 

Obligatory solos aren't necessarily bad, they just don't do much but put me off. Let me bring DELUHI into this rather than all the regular Vkei bands that could be mentioned. At times, you have some amazing guitar solos that just amplify the emotions of the song or flow well and you just can't really picture anything else there (e.g The Farthest, Ivory and Irony, Recall), and then you have a song that just adds in a random solo to "show off" the guitarist (Orion Once Again). 

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not hating on any of those songs or any song that has an obligatory solo, but songs like Orion Once Again are pretty awesome until you get to the part where Leda gets his turn to shine more than he already was and the solo just feels like it was just put there to remind listeners that he can shred and he knows how to sweep and all that. 

 

It's a typical thing for The GazettE to have a solo and you can tell it was just smacked on there during the writing process because the 2nd chorus ends, the guitar solo plays (hopefully it was led by the bass and drums a little bit before that) and then the 3rd chorus comes in. Those are the ones that bug me. FADELESS was a turn for the better on that, the guitar solo came in as the chorus was ending, then it went in a completely different tone, then it proceeded into the pre-chorus rather than just straight to the chorus

[sai 868]

I don't mind if there's a solo in the songs that I listen too, as long as the solo fits the song and there is at least some form of continuity. As Augie already stated, guitarists randomly coming in to show how good they can shred can really put a song down. Then again, the shredding solo in another of DELUHI's songs (Suna no Izumi), was really well put together and matched the rest of the song almost perfectly.

 

Also as far as I can deduce from Peace Heavy mk II's posts he's definitely NOT criticising the fact that bands DO so many solos, but the fact that they feel like they need to put it in in order seem cool, which often leads to the situation that the guitar solo sounds detached from the rest of the song (correct me if I'm wrong though, Nick).

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

I don't mind if there's a solo in the songs that I listen too, as long as the solo fits the song and there is at least some form of continuity. As Augie already stated, guitarists randomly coming in to show how good they can shred can really put a song down. Then again, the shredding solo in another of DELUHI's songs (Suna no Izumi), was really well put together and matched the rest of the song almost perfectly.

 

Also as far as I can deduce from Peace Heavy mk II's posts he's definitely NOT criticising the fact that bands DO so many solos, but the fact that they feel like they need to put it in in order seem cool, which often leads to the situation that the guitar solo sounds detached from the rest of the song (correct me if I'm wrong though, Nick).

Nope, that's exactly it.

[bonsaijodelfisch 328]

a classic. solo starts at about 2:40

oh gated fuzzy sweetness, shows how big a part an interesting sound plays to a solo...

 

[DogManX 179]

Ok got that. I'd just point out to sai that it would be unhealthy to connect a mere assertion of a bands reason to do solos with a resulting lack of quality. That's what I meant with not critizising the formula, but what actually comes out of it. And if it's bad, I'd not refer to the assertion that they had coolness pressure and it simply didn't work out this time, but rather "analyse" for myself what precicely musically didn't match with my expectations and be done with it. But that's only my beer to that.

[rebelstrik 111]

Agree that Versailles and Jupiter now provides good solos.

 

I also like some of the stuff from Sound Horizon, for example, song Meiou from Moira album (starting at 5:01) :

[TakaGacktHyde 19]

my fave are:

 

Versailles - ascendead master and the revenant choir
D - 7th rose, Birth, tightrope, and Namonaki Mori no Yumegatari

Matenrou Opera - mou hitori no hanayome and Kassai to Gekijou no Gloria
the GazettE - distress and coma and the invisible wall
Nightmare - gianizm 10 and mimic
Alice Nine. - cross game shadowplay

 

these are my go to songs for them ^^

[JukaForever 758]

Haven't seen them mentioned yet (used search bar) but LuLu and Pan-d-ra has nice guitar work

[TheStoic 176]

VII-Sense has great Solos!  Their Silent Assassin single wow'ed me the first time I saw it [at 1:35]:

 

 

The solo from Reila by The GazettE, while not overtly technical, has a lot of emotion and fits the track flawlessly.  I always loved that song because of the solo, and it hits the nostalgia bone to this day.

 

Also, the solo in Raddock's Reforming single is so smooth, I am amazed every time I hear it [at 2:45].

 

 

Another not overtly technical, but emotional and memorable solo for me is Dir en grey's acoustic solo from the Kisou version of Undecided.  It was one of the first solo's I took the time to learn on guitar, and I still play it all the time to this day.