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Post by Siana Blackwood on Jul 18, 2014 6:09:47 GMT
Taake was pretty good. I wanted more from the banjo, though. As long as they were going to have it anyway, why not really stretch the instrument's potential? --- Death Walks With Me [album] by Noumena. Melodic death metal with a 'doom and gloom' feel to it. Also, male/female duets with two death metal singers, which is something I've wanted for years .
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Jul 19, 2014 12:13:44 GMT
Some more of that "haha you and your quaint little genre boxes" stuff that gets loosely defined as symphonic/progressive/extreme/black metal: Descension [album] by Twilight Ophera.It's a weird album. Intense black metal, some really dark doom, a few moments where it's almost rock, everything from soft clean vocals to black metal shrieks (sometimes within seconds of each other), light orchestral smashed up against technical death... Oh, and the guitar intro to track seven was almost power metal. This is nuts. I can't decide if these things fit together or if the album is a dog's breakfast*. Definitely not one of those albums where I feel like I've heard everything the band can do by the end of track three, that's for sure. * as in the expression "all over the place like a..."
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Jul 21, 2014 3:45:23 GMT
Noumena - not bad. Not bad at all. Pretty good. I like the vocals. We really do need to see more female metal vocals which aren't clean singing, let alone operatic singing. Actually, what I'd like to see is BATB singing with female growling and male clean singing. I know, right? I actually would have liked to see more of the banjo. Haven't gotten to Twilight Ophera yet. Speaking of female metal vocals, I'm currently listening to: Doomed Dark Years [Album] by Astartewhich is basically straight up black metal. Sounds a bit like Darkthrone, which I don't mind. Bleak, stark, and hypnotic, yet also melodic, which I like. Oh, and the black metal vocalist is female. I've listened to this, which is their earliest work, and their album, Sirens, before. Maybe it is just my terrible attention span, but I couldn't get through Sirens. I did like this album though. I also listened to Aura [Album] by Saor which is some fantastic atmospheric blackish doomish Scottish Celtic metal.
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Jul 23, 2014 5:13:17 GMT
Some more of that "haha you and your quaint little genre boxes" stuff that gets loosely defined as symphonic/progressive/extreme/black metal: Descension [album] by Twilight Ophera.It's a weird album. Intense black metal, some really dark doom, a few moments where it's almost rock, everything from soft clean vocals to black metal shrieks (sometimes within seconds of each other), light orchestral smashed up against technical death... Oh, and the guitar intro to track seven was almost power metal. This is nuts. I can't decide if these things fit together or if the album is a dog's breakfast*. Definitely not one of those albums where I feel like I've heard everything the band can do by the end of track three, that's for sure. * as in the expression "all over the place like a..." Dog's breakfast. There was no focal point. Going all over the place and being progressive is fine if it all supports a central theme or story, and at that it has to be woven together very well, and the pieces need to be chosen with care. This feels like everything was just thrown in a bin and haphazardly welded together. Apparently this was a collaborative effort of two bands: Twiligt Ophera and The Order of the Sanguine Diadem, but doesn't feel like art that successfully meshes two styles:it's just a mess, because it tries to do too much. Bands such as Cradle of Filth, The Ocean, Between The Buried And Me, and a number of others ranging from the blackdeathened to progressivedeathdoomened do this sort of thing much better. Currently listening to Tunnel of No Light [Album] by October Tide, which is really good doom. Another album of theirs, A Thin Shell, is excellent as well. I've listened to both a couple of times and ai haven't gotten bored yet.
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Jul 27, 2014 18:07:45 GMT
I have a severe first world problem. I don't know that I'd call myself an audiophile. I just listen to obscene amounts of metal. Now, Spotify is cramping my style. Warning, rant forthcoming, so I'll slap it in a spoiler tag. Go on down to the first link for the next episode of Agent in Metalland. Relatively recently, Spotify rolled out the new Albums feature, which made me VERY happy. I really like albums because when I want to listen to an entire album, I don't want to see ALL the songs. I just want to see a picture, the artist, and the title, because it's easier to remember that way. I can sort alphabetically, for general browsing, or by date added, so I can remember to listen to the new stuff I added that I want to check out.
Then I learned that there is a g*****n f*****g CEILING as to how many things I can bookmark. As many Spotify users will know, you can put songs in playlists; you can't put more than 10k songs in a playlist, but you can create as many playlists as you want, and thus your library can be as large as you want. Well, it turns out that Spotify seems to treat the Albums feature like a playlist. Unlike with playlists, though, you can't create a second Albums list, so once you bookmark about a thousand albums or so, you're out of luck.
What the sh!t.
I just want to keep track of which albums and artists I like. (I mean, why isn't this a default? Spotify, you don't seriously expect people to remember thousands of artists on their own, do you, especially when you're supposedly supporting discovery of new stuff as well as the ability to listen to favorites?) I don't need playlists one bit. I rarely listen to individual songs, and if I do it's one at a time and I usually know which artist and album it is. So why should bookmarking an album count against a song count anyway?
I would understand if there was a database problem, or a user tier issue. I have been a paid subscriber all along, though, and back when I dumped everything into giant playlists and later created album playlists just to save everything, I had about 30k songs and growing, no problem, so user level and database aren't the issues. I could just go back to that approach, but bookmarking albums as playlists, poking through long wall-of-text lists of songs, and waiting forever for hundreds of text playlist titles to load is just extremely tedious. I like and prefer the visual layout of albums. Hopefully Spotify will make albums not count later, because imposing a limit on how large someone's collection can be solely based on how they choose to use the software one way and not the other is just ridiculous. It can't be that hard to do -- you can follow artists after all, and that doesn't count against you. That's what I'm going to do for now. I don't want to have to quit Spotify yet, because their selection meets my need to listen to obscure black metal, and I'm very happy with everything else. It's just this one seemingly little thing that is actually a big deal! Okay. Now back to the regularly scheduled programming. Elements of the Infinite [Album] by Allegaeon: I didn't know Allegaeon had released a new album recently, so when I came across this, I immediately opened Spotify. I've listened to their prior album, Formshifter, before, which is also very good. EotI is a far superior one, though, and I'd say listen to EotI first. It's slightly technical melodic death metal; in terms of melody it is more similar to In Flames than, say, Dark Trannquillity, and in terms of technicality, it's slightly reminiscent of Scar Symmetry. When I first listened to Formshifter, I felt like the first two songs were good, and then it began to drag. With this, though, I was listening throughout. (I wish I was better at reviewing music. I seem to fall back on a stale 'I didn't get bored, so it might be good' formula.) This'll probably be going on my car playlist. Titan [Album] by Septicflesh: Likewise, I didn't know Septicflesh had released a new album either. That seems to be a thing with me lately: incidentally, this is also melodic death metal, but of an entirely different flavor. I don't know how exactly to describe their sound; it's not entirely a rising thunderstorm like Dark Tranquillity, nor is it the grittier chainsaw of In Flames. The sound is of an army of solemn undead marching in stately ranks off to war: stately and scary, chaotic and clear, dark and deep. I've listened to a few Septicflesh albums before, such as Sumerian Daemons, The Great Mass, and Communion, all of which were great (though The Great Mass is slightly my favorite of the three.) Well, Titan didn't disappoint, and it certainly blew me away on first listen. I'm thinking this is a car playlist album too. Everblack [Album] by Mercenary: Spotify kept pestering me to listen to Mercenary. The Amazon reviews said they were like Dark Tranquillity, Scar Symmetry, and In Flames, with progressive and power metal twists. Since I love all those bands, I was intrigued, so I finally listened to Everblack last night. I'm actually not sure whether I like it or not. They use a power metal sound, with progressive metal twists, with some technical melodic death instrumentation and vocals layered on top. The sound kind of starts off more progressive melodic death with growled vocals, and then wanders into more of a clean-vocals power prog metal sort of deal. Maybe I just have a terrible attention span, or maybe I couldn't hear it for what it was because I was rather sleepy at the time and expecting something different, but my mind started wandering off after the title song (which I liked), which was the second song. Okay, so here's the thing: it was still very good, but I feel like people who like melodic death might find this a bit too clean and twinkly, people who like prog might find it a bit too regular, and people who like power metal might find this a bit too raw and aggressive. I would say...listen to this if you either like or are in a mood to listen to power metal, but you also like other genres.
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Aug 12, 2014 21:42:53 GMT
I somehow ended up on the Century Media website, reading the Dark Fortress page. I really need to explain this and provide links and stuff, but I'm listening at the same time and I think I just died and went to whatever the most awesome part of the heavy metal afterlife is Coherent thoughts are having trouble getting through the music. Um... first single off the upcoming Dark Fortress album Venereal Dawn. Read about it on the Century site and listen to it on Soundcloud. Release date for the album is supposed to be September 1st. Wonder if I can bear to set that as a writing reward or if I'll just dive in the instant it's available? Probably just dive in. Edit: I also found a Youtube version.
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Aug 13, 2014 3:28:36 GMT
I read up to 'upcoming dark Fortress album Venereal Dawn' and then my brain came to a screeching halt and I couldn't process anything because of the squealing and hyperventilating. (I'm just glad no one heard me!) *listening* OMG. I CAN'T WAIT.
Anything I post now is going to be anticlimactic in comparison after that, but I feel like we're not supposed to post here without leaving something. I came across this band's first album a few months ago and I really liked it, so I was pretty stoked when I found out they'd released a new one. Spotify link: Contradiction [Album] by Schammasch Generally I'd have to put it in the melodic black metal bucket, but there is a fair bit of death metal/doom metal influence with some acoustic bits as well. This is an inadequate comparison at best, but it sounds like Triptykon's Melana Chasmata x Behemoth's Evangelion with more ambient bits. I'm not just posting for posting's sake either: this album is hypnotic and atmospheric and amazing. This is their first album, which is also excellent. It's got a different sound, more doomblack. My Youtube playlist: Sic Lvceat Lvx [Album] by Schammasch
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Aug 19, 2014 16:40:36 GMT
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Aug 19, 2014 17:36:52 GMT
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Aug 28, 2014 5:15:06 GMT
Haha. This article. BuzzFeed: 15 Things All Metalheads Will AppreciateAlso, this. What...what...WHAT? How old are they? Edit: Hmmm. Not bad. Japanese doom metal...in Spanish. (It's very soft and melodic for some time, and it only turns into metal about 11 minutes in.) Is there such a thing as melodic funeral doom?
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Aug 31, 2014 6:28:25 GMT
I'm supposed to be writing. This means that I'm actually sitting on Steve while trawling through Youtube and Spotify listening to random death/black metal. Where The Corpses Sink Forever [Album] by Carach Angren. It's melodic deathened black metal, and sounds like Cradle of Filth x Dark Fortress but more melodic. I've listened to Lammendam and Death Came Through A Phantom Ship before, both of which are excellent, but my current favorite is their latest album, Where The Corpses Sink Forever. Video for 'The Funerary Dirge of a Violinist': Also listened to Dead Words Speak [Album] by Doom:VS, which is some beautiful melodic doom metal. It sounds like Draconian except it's more straight up doom and not gothic...but that's because the guy behind it is the guitarist for Draconian. Their (his?) newest release, Earthless, is available on Bandcamp. (As I'm listening, this one is even better! Excellent. Random, I don't know what that thing on the cover of Earthless is, but it looks like a zombie tree and Shatterman wants one. I can totally imagine a city in the background, the center of civilization, but in the wild hinterlands, a whole army of these things marches in the night. Story?)
On a completely different note, Morean in the video for Ylem seriously reminds me of Shatterman. TWO DAYS UNTIL VENEREAL DAWN!!! (This is more or less accurate or inaccurate because those of you in the LUCKY time zones from the future you get it on your 9/1, but those of us who live in the past have to wait until our 9/2 WHY.)
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Post by Siana Blackwood on Sept 1, 2014 0:13:12 GMT
Listening to some sort of Kamelot-like instrumental power metal - Axes of the Universe [album] by Tiluland. It's sort of like the bonus disc of Silverthorn and it was okay to start off with, but it's getting steadily less fun the longer I think about the fact that other people are already listening to the new Dark Fortress album. Edit: Now on Spotify (at least in Future World): Veneral Dawn [album] by Dark Fortress!!!!! *hits play* *dies*
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Sept 1, 2014 2:35:34 GMT
ARRRCGHHHH,AOHAONETHU93249NARA :-| It's not up in my region yet.
Currently listening to Demons and Wizards [Album] by Demons and Wizards, which is power metal. Demons and Wizards is the band of Blind Guardian vocalist Hansi Kursch and Iced Earth guitarist Jon Schaffer. It's been on my playlist for a couple of years, but it's been a while. I brushed it off today (figuratively), and I still love it. If you like Blind Guardian you'll like this. I think my favorite song is still Winter of Souls. Of note, check out the Eric Clapton cover.
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Sept 2, 2014 1:25:11 GMT
IT'S HEEEEEERE! *listens to Venereal Dawn*
Currently listening to Epicus Doomicus Metallicus [Album] by Candlemass. Sorta Sabbath-ish just to describe the sound, but I keep coming back to this album because the name doesn't lie. It's epic, crushing doom metal.
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Post by Jᴀy V. Aꜱᴛᴇʀ 💀🐍 on Sept 3, 2014 3:38:28 GMT
Just finished Karg [Album] by Kings of Asgard. Melodic black Viking metal! :-D Excellent album. Also, new In Flames album coming out next week, and new Scar Symmetry album coming out in October!
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