Drowning in the Flood's key change is just something else.
When is the key change? I'm not very good with musical terminology...
That moment when they repeat the chorus and the vocals remain the the same key, and the music switches down a key...thus changing the harmony completely. Brilliant moment.
Are there other examples of this in prog rock/metal that I just never noticed before? Because it’s extremely effective at inducing goosebumps.
Okay, so I was really scratching my head over this since I never heard a really prominent key change in this track at all. I'm assuming you mean the final section of the song where they go
'Will we live to tell the tale?
Is it worth the price we paid?
Are we praying for the sun?
Or are we drowning in the flood?'
So I specifically went out of my way to analyse what is happening there and I don't think you could theoretically call this a key change at all, but it does work. Sorry for maybe coming off as an ass, but I wanted to check it out, so here goes:
What's happening is in the first repetition of the lines (sung the exact same way every time on G#-F#G#-F#-G#-A - G#), the chords underneath the vocals alternate between A major and F# minor, last word of every line hitting that 9th (G#) of the F# minor. Then when the backing vocals go 'Drowning in the Flood' after the first repetition the chords change to C# major, A major, C# major and F# minor (repeated twice). The vocal melody stays the same because it works fine, the G# now becomes a major 7th over A major chord and stays a ninth on the F# minor.
In chord symbols it would look like this:
A | F#m | A | F#m (x2 for first repetition)
C# | A | C# | F#m (x2 for second repetition of lyrics)
A | F#m | C# | C# (coda)
And this works, because the chords in the second repetition are a third apart from the chords in the first one. Technically, all of this could be analysed as being in F# minor, with the A being the relative major of that key and the C# the dominant chord.
But yeah, it's a cool switch there nonetheless
EDIT Addition: But yes, I can also understand why one could hear this as a key change, because you theoretically analyse the first half as being in A major, with chords alternating between the I and the vi chord, but the second part is so clearly in F# minor, so from a theoretical standpoint I think personally it would make more sense to view both parts as being in F#m, but hey. The chord switch works, who cares about the background and the why, right?
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