Rock Kapak?

This was brought to my attention by a close friend recently - almost all Malay slow rock songs have the same rhythm, except the ones written by M. Nasir. That is, if you hear the percussions (usually drums and cymbals) of those songs closely, they have the same beat - thump, dup...thump dup dup..thump, dup...thump dup dup..., and that makes the songs boring and sound similar to each other.

I love that kind of songs - they bring sentimentality without being too sugary - and so I begged to differ.

He still stood by his opinion and so we did a small survey; we listened to a few of what you'll call rock kapak songs in my car. First we listened to Hattan's Memburu Rindu. Strike one for him. Next was Hattan's Mahligai Syahdu, strike two. Maybe it's just Hattan. Spider could not be included in the sample as their songs are not that kapak. So I looked for my Koleksi Lagu-lagu Rock 90-an, but alas, it was missing.

To be fair, I continued the survey today and listened to Wings, Gersang, May and Search (I am an avid fan of rock kapak). And yes, i have to agree, they do have the same rhythm. But that's just one aspect of the song. You still have the melody, and you still have the lyrics. After all, what's a waltz if not for the dum-chak-chak beat?