Tired of long intros

It seems like everyone now has to have a one minute plus intro into their first song. I don’t mind an intro if it can be a separate track, like Abyss from Stryper’s THWTD album. A recent example is from an album that I absolutely love - Trytan’s “Blood of Kings”. The first track has a minute long intro that is frustrating to have to listen to over and over. Stryper were also offenders with the 1+ minute intro to Take It To The Cross. I get that the artists want to have a cool intro that builds into their song. But for heaven sake, make it a separate track, so that repeated listens to the album don’t always have to include it.

Can't you just fast-forward through the offending intro? Some of us enjoy them.

I went into Garageband on my Mac and edited the intro off the Stryper song. It's maybe 10 seconds now. Interestingly I don't like the song much anyway. I was never going to listen through the intro to get to it. I listen to it more now.

On a separate note I combined the last two tracks on Narnia's last album because they were clearly meant to be one, having a flawless transition between them. It makes for an epic 9 minute track to end the album.

Overly long intros to songs get me annoyed as well.
I hate it when a friend says "check out this song" and sends me a youtube link of a 5:30 minute song where the first minute is some instrumental build-up.  I've taken to skipping to about 2 minutes into every youtube video of a band I've never heard so I can tell if it's even a style I can tolerate.

I am tired of long intros too.  On You Tube or MP3, I skip them.   
And if I send a You Tube video to someone or post it, I often tell people they can skip to "x" minute & second to bypass it.

BaleMaster wrote:Can't you just fast-forward through the offending intro? Some of us enjoy them.

It’s a lot more work for me to have to fast forward it every single time I listen to it, than it is for them to have a separate track that I can just skip, or not even copy onto my device. That way, folks like you who enjoy those intros can still have them, while people like me who hate them don’t have to suffer through them every time.

A lot of intros are just filler.  I hate those too.

I like intros as long as they are actual music and fit the mood.  Case in point, the beginning of Testament's "Eerie Inhabitants", the beginning of "Battery", and Megadeth's "Set the World Afire" (called "Into the Lungs of Hell").  Those are excellent pieces of music, and I wish more metal bands these days did stuff like that.

My bassist and I wrote 2 song intros for our upcoming album.  At the beginning of the album, about 2 minutes, and before the last song, about 45 seconds.  They are actual written music though, with riffs and arrangement, not just ambience from a keyboard or whatever.  They are also separate tracks and skippable if someone for some reason wants to.

"Jugulator" is an album that I would love to have a new version of with the intros removed/shortened (and also the weaker tracks removed).

Musically, I like epic intros as long as they go somewhere (many Neal Morse).  I do agree that they usually should be separate tracks, not part of one long one.  This is my complaint with Neal Morse in general: most of his prog epic songs could be broken into multiple tracks without diminishing the musical power of the song.  It also helps us who don't have time to listen to a 30-minute song in one sitting.

Memorable intros perfectly building up for the opener and the album in general: Believer Extraction and Deliverance Weapons. Also Abyss was already mentioned.

I don't care overly long intros, either.

Raegoul wrote:Memorable intros perfectly building up for the opener and the album in general: Believer Extraction and Deliverance Weapons. Also Abyss was already mentioned.

+10,000

Cool avatar, bro!

Temple of Blood wrote:

"Jugulator" is an album that I would love to have a new version of with the intros removed/shortened (and also the weaker tracks removed).

I would be ecstatic just to have a good remix/remaster of Jugulator. Love the album, but the production is kind of "thin". Especially when compared to a lot of other releases from '97. Something about the drum sound in particular has always bothered me for some reason. Like it could have sounded "fuller".

Every song on Oil’s Refine album has a stupid intro. And they have nothing to do with the subject of the songs. Just random sound bytes.

I don't remember being bothered by intros, I'm a power metal guy after all and most bands make it a point of honor to have an under 2 minute intro at the beginning   And most of the time it's a separate track.

To be honest it took years getting into Detritus "If But For One" because So Far Away took so long to build up and then D.I.G.M. started so slowly. It seemed to take the life out of the album right away and really messed with the flow of it all. It made my initial listens to the album quite confused. Add in the acoustic track Feel, the long intro to Blindly Rejected, the long outro to the title track and the sailor song and it made it hard for me to wrap my mind around the album.

If it’s a separate track I have no problem with it. I like instrumental intros, but I’d still rather they be separate from any song.

Andreas89 wrote:I don't remember being bothered by intros, I'm a power metal guy after all and most bands make it a point of honor to have an under 2 minute intro at the beginning   And most of the time it's a separate track.

Yep. I agree there. I often really enjoyed those myself. One of my favorites was Deliberately Limited Prelude Period in Z from Helloween's Better Than Raw. What a fantastic intro!

I think a lot of it depends on what is in the intro. Some are just dragged out simple repetitions that make you want to fast forward.

That being said, for a while now I've thought it would be cool if there was a way you could put something like book marks into a song. A way that you could fast forward to certain parts. So as an example you would have something like: intro, first verse, chorus, solo, etc. Some movie formats allow this.

I always loved how Delivernace addressed the intro in their "What A Joke" album:

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
LONGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
INTROSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Don't know why this double posted

Maybe it was meant as a precursor to the lengthy introduction of the following explanation of long intros

As envoy of the council of long intros (whom all happen to have to long beards, long robes and long conical hats to match, all ornate with crescent moons and stars no less, and most assuredly, whom look down on you over the rims of their half moon spectacles)  I bring forth their affronted feelings as posted on this thread*  The council of long intros would kindly remind you if it was not for them your mind would soon fall prey to the trappings of today's rather instant technological advances* 

They wish you well and bless you with the gift of patience and enjoying the present*

Long intros irritate me....especially when they start out with a newscaster’s voice spewing current or past events.

I love those intros. Trytan, Barren Cross, Megadeth... they're masters of the purposeful intro.

BaleMaster wrote:I love those intros.  Trytan, Barren Cross, Megadeth... they're masters of the purposeful intro.

Ha ha, lol, I get it....Barren Cross intro didn’t bother me...but Trytan’s intros on the new album bother me. That said, I think Blood of Kings is absolutely killer! I can’t get enough of that album. I just wish there wasn’t long news caster intros on a couple of the songs. Separating the tracks would’ve been better.

Ammocas wrote:

BaleMaster wrote:I love those intros.  Trytan, Barren Cross, Megadeth... they're masters of the purposeful intro.

Ha ha, lol, I get it....Barren Cross intro didn’t bother me...but Trytan’s intros on the new album bother me. That said, I think Blood of Kings is absolutely killer! I can’t get enough of that album. I just wish there wasn’t long news caster intros on a couple of the songs. Separating the tracks would’ve been better.

The extremely long songs were a huge deterrent for me.  I probably won't listen to it again.