What Are You Listening To?

[AlSymerz]

Hydra Vein - Rather Death Than False Of Faith

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

AGAINST EMPIRE / ISKRA - Bring The War Home

 

[MacabreEternal]

Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones (2010)

 

[RexKeltoi]

 

[AlSymerz]

Megadeth - Countdown To Extinction Live

[Thatguy]

AN ISOLATED MIND - I'm Losing Myself. This was pretty good - eclectic, and even had clarinet that wasn't cheesy or out of place, but the last long ambient track was too long even for Thatguy's refined taste.

HEMELBESTORMER - Collide & Merge. Instrumental with a bit of vocal nonsense. Some was very good, well built, interesting riffs and harmonies, but too much was, well there's the song, where's the vocals.

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Lifvsleda - Evangelii Harold

▶︎ Evangelii Härold | Lifvsleda (bandcamp.com)

Black metal that doesn't fully commit to the lo-fi sound, but does leave enough of it that it's still noticeable. I like the overall tone and the way they keep every instrument in relatively equal ratios. Only thing I could think that could help this is greater rhythmic variations. They basically land on one note or chord and let it flood in as a solid wall of sound without really utilizing rests. I've always thought that a little Darkthrone goes a long way, but this is a sound that is absolutely starving for the kind of simplistic demonstrative riffing early Darkthrone used. Still over all the album's good.

[RexKeltoi]

 

[AlSymerz]

Red Lamb - Red Lamb

[MacabreEternal]

Urne - Serpent & Spirit (2021)

 

[AlSymerz]

Evil Invaders - Feed Me Violence

[Arioch]

Voight Kampf - More Human Than Human (2012)

French Thrash Metal, inspired by Bladerunner movie.

 

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

POTRAIT - The Host

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

8 hours ago, Arioch said:

Voight Kampf - More Human Than Human (2012)

French Thrash Metal, inspired by Bladerunner movie.

 

Nice. How'd you feel about the Villeneuve sequel? I thought thematically it was pretty worthy, and I'm also a sucker for his visual style. The only really major complaint was the Pale Fire references. If you've read the book you realize just how surface level the link between the two works are.. Apparently Gosling has said that the book "unlocked" the character for him which is something I find really puzzling. They're two completely separate things that really only happen to have one shallow connection. You could argue that both come from the Prometheus myth, and of course there's also the Shakespear connection, but drawing such broad conclusive parallels between Nabokov's and Philip K. Dicks work kind of shunts them both away from each other and the metaphor just doesn't stand up to any sort of scrutiny.

[MacabreEternal]

Analepsy - Quiesence (2022)

 

[AlSymerz]

The Devin Townsend Band - Accelerated Evolution

[MacabreEternal]

Meshuggah - ObZen (2008)

 

[FatherAlabaster]

Nur Run - Among Those Waves

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Phantom - Handed to Execution

▶︎ Handed to Execution | Phantom | Adirondack Black Mass (bandcamp.com)

Sodom styled thrash with no clean vocals (as of two songs in). I dig.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Dark Quarterer - s/t

▶︎ Dark Quarterer | DARK QUARTERER | Shadow Kingdom Records (bandcamp.com)

 

A classic. I see this album floating around on my media shelves which, as penance for the sin of daring to obtain physical media, are in a near constant state of rearrangement and flux. I always forget just what a monumental slab of awesomeness this one is. It gets a little overlooked occasionally probably owing to the points where there's some pretty obvious recording tricks used to bolster the vocals even when they don't really need it. It's sort of like Fates Warning's Awaken the Guardian album. Why in God's name a person would double-track John Arch though is beyond me. It's at least a more understandable move here since Mr. Nepi sometimes slightly flats his vocal range, which is functional but far from that of some of metals other greats. The double tracking and overweight in the mix when this happens arguably doesn't do much in-song, making it a sideways move from a production standpoint. The album itself is an excellent listen on merit of the sheer quality of material.

[FatherAlabaster]

Billy Cobham - Total Eclipse

Eleventh House ft Larry Coryell - Level One

[FatherAlabaster]

51 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Why in God's name a person would double-track John Arch though is beyond me

Gotta be straight, Arch's vocals turned me off to them for a very long time and I still don't dig his stuff. Maybe one day it'll click but he just sounds pitchy and kind of bad to me. I am a Ray Alder fan.

[AlSymerz]

Orange Goblin - A Eulogy For The Damned

[FatherAlabaster]

The Sound - From The Lion's Mouth

[Nasty_Cabbage]

31 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Gotta be straight, Arch's vocals turned me off to them for a very long time and I still don't dig his stuff. Maybe one day it'll click but he just sounds pitchy and kind of bad to me. I am a Ray Alder fan.

To each their own. It didn't take me much time to really embrace Arch as one of the best in the business. Those first few Fate's Warning albums are nearly unsalvageable to my ears from a production standpoint, and they do John Arch particularly dirty because he has such an inflective style of singing, and the echoing double tracking completely flattens him out unless you really dig through the layers of those albums. If you do try to isolate what he's doing on those songs I find that he's one of the few performers who works not only with a highly controlled diaphragm, but also demonstrates an understanding of the songs to the point where he finds the space for interpretation within the melodies themselves. He's bringing and adding as much to the songs as Matheos in a lot of places.

Still though, I can see where you're coming from. Some of those early Metalblade albums from when Slagel had the drive to really nose out unheard talent have extremely rough and flawed mixes. I'd say that's still probably the way to go if you're hard up for studio money. A good vocalist recorded poorly is always better than a poor vocalist captured well.