'Beauty and the beast' - Stanford #1: Intellectually engaging activity

Stanford students are widely known to possess a sense of intellectual vitality. Tell us about an idea or an experience you have had that you find intellectually engaging.

Beauty and the beast vocals: an ironically Disney-inspired term in heavy metal that denotes beautiful female lead vocals contrasted with aggressive male vocals. I praise the lead female singers' beautiful and powerful operatic voices and the male singers' raw throaty grunts. Although uncharacteristic of an Asian male living in Hawaii, I absolutely love to listen to symphonic operatic metal. Most people like to casually hear music as white noise while doing chores or studying. As a composer, I like to actively listen to songs by mentally picturing a song's chord structures, the blend of the timbres of the voices, the rhythmic bass line's complement of the main melody, and the incorporation of different instruments. Hardly a day goes by when I pop in my earbuds and melt in the wonder of the masters of symphonic operatic metal (SOM): Epica, Imperia, and After Forever. I love to dissect SOM songs especially because of the cunning orchestral elements. These music analysis exercises serve to strengthen my music compositional abilities. Floor Jansen's belts out powerfully high notes while Sander Gommans harshly growls in unison. Mark Jansen cuts through Simone Simons' creamy voice with his intense grunts. This love of powerfully contrasting sounds is evident in pieces I orchestrate where a melodic line is shared by, for example, an oboe and a tenor sax. My love of a strong rhythmic guitar is demonstrated by my use of harsh low brass chugs. Some of SOM's stranger chord progressions influence the directions of my own--I rarely hear a pop song with a unique "i-ii-IIb-I" chord progression. Actively listening to SOM pushes me to attain that threshold of quality, innovativeness, and brilliance found in no other genre. SOM encourages me to become a better composer.

Do you think the SOM abbreviation looks messy? And does my essay flow well? Any specific critique would be wonderful; thanks for your time! :)

"melt in the wonder of the masters of symphonic operatic metal (SOM)"

Is that too unclear? I only have 19 characters left until I reach my limit, so all I can do now is omit or restate. Any ideas?

As a reader who does not know much about music (beyond jazz, some classical and some pop/hip hop) and not playing an instrument, I would have liked to learn more about SOM i.e. how does it sound vs. mass music (pick some reference that most people are familiar with.)

Not sure these sentences are really necessary. How do they explain SOM?
Beauty and the beast vocals: an ironically Disney-inspired term in heavy metal that denotes beautiful female lead vocals contrasted with aggressive male vocals. I praise the lead female singers' beautiful and powerful operatic voices and the male singers' raw throaty grunts.

Could delete that and include more detail on what you find intellectually engaging (vs. just describing, "Floor Jansen's belts out powerfully high notes while Sander Gommans harshly growls in unison. Mark Jansen cuts through Simone Simons' creamy voice with his intense grunts.")