Can someone explain what's going on in this song?

Chords, scales, harmony, melody, etc.
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Can someone explain the chord/scale/whatever going on in this song? I don't really know much about music theory.

Sounds like it starts with one guitar chord/root note, then it drops half an octave for the verses. The singing stays in one octave, while the guitar chords go up to another octave. I've examined the guitar chords in MIDI, so I have an idea of what's going on there.

I just wanna know how you could apply music theory this song, so I can understand theory better. It seems like a lot of metal songs start out with one root note for the opening/chorus, then drop half an octave for the verse.

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This is a very common song structure. The song is made of an intro alike the choruses, some verses, and maybe even a bridge if you analyse it fully.
The verses are on a simple E chord, but the choruses are dingling around B. I'd say E is the root for this song. The E-B interval is a perfect fifth, very common, you cannot go wrong from there. Also observe the verses are made of just one chord while in the chorus the progression changes chords every bar. This creates tension & release, ups & downs.
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This song's harmonic structure is really built on a cadence (look that word up, it means "to close" or to resolve) in the following E minor-esque way:

C B Em (or actually E power chord)

Going down a halfstep to the dominant chord (look that one up too) from C to B and then resolving to the tonic (look that one up too) is pretty traditional! In fact, it is downright "normal."

In fact, it reminds me of the pop tunes I heard in Finland and Sweden when I lived in Scandinavia. It seems like all the pop songs were in minor and used very traditional minor key progressions and were kind of over-the-top dramatic. Even the metal tunes had this sort of gothic, epic minor key quality... like a latter day tango but with distortion. :)

Hey, maybe you should study tango chord progressions? :D

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