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The Metal Thread |OT2| All Riffs, No Gifs

Brian_FETO said:
The archives are good for gauging what material to check out if you're looking into a band for the first time, it just sucks when sometimes an album's rating gets dropped because of one dude (who may not even like the genre to begin with) ranking it like 2% worst album of all time when everyone else is 80% or above. If you aren't paying attention to how the average is broken down you can overlook good stuff.
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I like the variety. It's the only site that has multiple negative reviews for Metallica. Specifically, the more 4 percents for The Black Album the better.

Ixion said:
I use RateYourMusic since there's a ton of user ratings and their Charts section includes every genre known to man. So it's easy to find the best albums in any sub-genre you're interested in.
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Meh. RYM doesn't know shit about Metal given the low ratings for classics (plus that site is full of indie twats who down vote Metal albums because it scares their little pretentious asses), though I can't argue with many of the selections I suppose. At least Blackwater Park is in the top ten.

EDIT: LOL at Tool being in the top ten. Also, RATM.....Fucking Lawl.
 
A girl I met this weekend when I went to see BTBAM recommended Haken, and holy shit they're amazing, been listening to them since Saturday night.

Anybody else know Haken, is a fan?
 
Gray Matter said:
A girl I met this weekend when I went to see BTBAM recommended Haken, and holy shit they're amazing, been listening to them since Saturday night.

Anybody else know Haken, is a fan?
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I've listened to The Mountain a couple times, haven't branched out yet.

Only really been listening to atmospheric black metal lately because it's great work music, so that album was knocked out of the rotation. I've been listening to podcasts instead of music when doing non-work stuff.
 
Warming up to Sorceress, though I do think Mike uses his 'high pitched' voice a bit too much here. He's got a wonderful voice but I'm not sure he should be doing the high pitched thing as much as he does. He needs to do vocals more akin to the song "Burden"
 
fredrancour said:
I've listened to The Mountain a couple times, haven't branched out yet.

Only really been listening to atmospheric black metal lately because it's great work music, so that album was knocked out of the rotation. I've been listening to podcasts instead of music when doing non-work stuff.
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Was listening to both LPs during work today, the mountain is better than affinity, but both are very good.
 
RDreamer said:
Warming up to Sorceress, though I do think Mike uses his 'high pitched' voice a bit too much here. He's got a wonderful voice but I'm not sure he should be doing the high pitched thing as much as he does. He needs to do vocals more akin to the song "Burden"
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I like it immediately more than I did Pale Communion.
 
Gray Matter said:
A girl I met this weekend when I went to see BTBAM recommended Haken, and holy shit they're amazing, been listening to them since Saturday night.

Anybody else know Haken, is a fan?
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Listened to Mountain, but not fully concentrated (more like as background music). Seemed quite good, but haven't revisited the band since.

e_i said:
Dark Tranquility will be releasing their new single on Friday.
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Oh, I hope they can follow up the great last album.
 
Royal_Flush said:
Listened to Mountain, but not fully concentrated (more like as background music). Seemed quite good, but haven't revisited the band since.
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I've only been listening for a few days now, but I can already tell, if you're a fan of prog Rock/metal, this is a band you shouldn't be sleeping on.

Instant fan over here.
 
Andrew Korenchkin said:
Meh. RYM doesn't know shit about Metal given the low ratings for classics (plus that site is full of indie twats who down vote Metal albums because it scares their little pretentious asses), though I can't argue with many of the selections I suppose.
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The ratings are low in general there compared to other sites. A 3.7/5 is a fantastic rating there for example. Whereas other sites would have the same album at a 4.4/5. You just have to get used to it.

Also, there are 17 metal albums in the top 100 this year, including Vektor at #4. I'd say that's fair enough.

Andrew Korenchkin said:
LOL at Tool being in the top ten. Also, RATM.....Fucking Lawl.
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Lateralus and RATM are both amazing Alternative Metal albums. I don't see anything wrong with them being so high.
 
HarryHengst said:
What are good sites to check reviews? I actually dont really have a clue these days and mostly just stick to bands i know or things i find by clicking around on Spotify.
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If you find things already by exploring, what need do you have for reviews? The only opinion that matters is your own. If anything you could just follow a new release list and just sample everything.

But I guess I never understood the point of music reviews these days, not with the ease of accessing so much music or why anyone cares about a review. Click around, listen to a song for a few minutes that isn't a big investment of time, and you know if you like it or not. I mean you mentioned earlier about not liking Iron Maiden, so what great review of some classic iron Maiden album is going to change your opinion of it?

Just my two cents about it all. Just keep exploring and enjoy whatever your ears tell your brain is good music.
 
RDreamer said:
Warming up to Sorceress, though I do think Mike uses his 'high pitched' voice a bit too much here. He's got a wonderful voice but I'm not sure he should be doing the high pitched thing as much as he does. He needs to do vocals more akin to the song "Burden"
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It feels like he oversings now. He got technically better at his clean vocals, and he lets it out more. I don't really like it. There were times he sang at a high volume in the older days (The Leper Affinity) but his vocals used to have this softer, more haunting vibe to them.
 
ShaneB said:
If you find things already by exploring, what need do you have for reviews? The only opinion that matters is your own. If anything you could just follow a new release list and just sample everything.

But I guess I never understood the point of music reviews these days, not with the ease of accessing so much music or why anyone cares about a review. Click around, listen to a song for a few minutes that isn't a big investment of time, and you know if you like it or not. I mean you mentioned earlier about not liking Iron Maiden, so what great review of some classic iron Maiden album is going to change your opinion of it?

Just my two cents about it all. Just keep exploring and enjoy whatever your ears tell your brain is good music.
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Of all artforms I think music reviews have to be the most useless. I can tell someone why I think something is amazing or sucks but there's nothing really measurable about it.

As I said I like using Metal-Archives review averages to find out which albums are considered "the good ones" first, then later dig into others and form my own opinions from there

I fucking hate most "metal bloggers" more often than not it's just idiots trying to get attention for themselves to fuel their self-importance. They don't actually have anything interesting to say so they just use as many stupid metaphors and adjectives as they can force into a sentence. "This album is a blasphemous microcosm, a somber beckoning from the depths of space in Lovecraftian fashion, with labyrinthian song structure that redefines the void of nondiscriminance". Shut up nerd
 
Andrew Korenchkin said:
Metal Archives.
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I've read a few of the reviews featured there, and most of them haven't been that good in portraying what to expect from the albums.

I rarily read reviews, but those that have stood out for me have been No Clean Singing and Metal Trenches. Of course it depends on who's writing them at those sites as well. Generally, I dislike reviews that have needless comparisons, as they're often entirely subjective, and may give a wrong impression about the album.
 
The best pre-release coverage you can do for yourself is a good advanced track release. Sell the person on the album and blow their minds. Good examples from recent years: Dying Fetus' Subjected To A Beating and Cattle Decapitation's Living, Breathing Piece Of Defecating Meat

Both bands are ones I enjoyed but didn't really care about their discographies beforehand, and both songs blindsided me by their quality. Neither are the best song on the album but it's a good enough indicator of whether you should be hyped or not. That Fetus album in particular is nuts, way better than it has any right to be, and I have no expectations for them to come anywhere close with their next one. Will probably double down on the tech instead of the slam.... Cattle's followup is good but didn't hook me like Monolith

Reviews on the other hand....what really can be gained? "The riffs sound better than ever!" "There's a long track this time!" "The drums maintain the rhythm." Music is such a subjective thing that stretches across the most pristine melodies and the harshest noise that you can really only take them as recommendations. With the same amount of clicks you could just as easily look it up for yourself on YouTube though
 
Not to mention, that in the past many Black Metal albums were compared to something like Darkthrone, Dimmu Borgir or Marduk, whether they actually sounded like them or not. If the band played lo-fi BM they were compared to Darkthrone, Dimmu Borgir was mentioned if they had synth, and Marduk came up when they had blast beats. Nowadays the reviewers' favorite comparison seems to be Watain for anything that features melodies.
 
I think my main complaint with many music reviews (both positive and negative) is that they are often responses to a consensus that people disagree with. I don't really care if you think the album is "underrated" or "overrated". I want to know why you personally like or don't like it and what about it does or doesn't do it for you.
 
The new Neurosis album is really good. It's like a cross between The Eye of Every Storm and Given to the Rising with a little bit of Times of Grace. There is no weak track on the album imo.
 
Morrigan Stark said:
You might have heard about that Slain! video game, made by metal fans, and the soundtrack composed by ex-Celtic Frost member Curt Victor Bryant. A gaffer here (who I think was an ex-dev who worked on the game?) generously gave me a Steam key the other day. The game launched with problems and apparently wasn't very good, but the devs worked hard to fix all the issues and relaunched it as "Slain: Back from Hell", and now the game is pretty solid, as you can see from the Steam reviews being more positive recently.

I posted my review here if anyone's interested (spoiler: I liked the game and recommend it :P):

http://steamcommunity.com/id/morriganstark/recommended/369070/

Here are some screenshots I took while playing:



This game is essentially a metal cover art come to life. So that's pretty dope.
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Slain is the most metal video game I've ever played. Now that it's dropped on PS4, thought I'd spark this up again here.

Play control is crisp, there isn't anything janky going on.

The gore is like Splatterhouse turned up a few notches, and of course more graphic with more pixels for blood and gibs.

It's kind of like a modern Rastan but with a lot of moves and abilities to destroy enemies, mostly rooted in black metal aesthetics but sometimes going into Rings of Saturn album cover territory.

For $15, everyone who would play a side scroller like this should buy. Don't forget to press square to headbang after killing a boss.
 
New Insomnium comes out tomorrow, I'm both excited and worried. One 40 minute track is not easy to pull off, even if they've shown that they can write longer songs since the first album.
 
Ridiculously bummed I missed out on good tickets to Devin Townsend/BTBAM/Fallujah in Chicago. Fucking hate living in Wisconsin. Tours completely skip this state and it causes the Illinois concerts to balloon up quickly and I really hate going to Chicago anyway.
 
Wolfgunblood Garopa said:
Slain is the most metal video game I've ever played. Now that it's dropped on PS4, thought I'd spark this up again here.

Play control is crisp, there isn't anything janky going on.

The gore is like Splatterhouse turned up a few notches, and of course more graphic with more pixels for blood and gibs.

It's kind of like a modern Rastan but with a lot of moves and abilities to destroy enemies, mostly rooted in black metal aesthetics but sometimes going into Rings of Saturn album cover territory.

For $15, everyone who would play a side scroller like this should buy. Don't forget to press square to headbang after killing a boss.
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Old school side scrolled with over the top music and violence...sold!
 
Wolfgunblood Garopa said:
Slain is the most metal video game I've ever played. Now that it's dropped on PS4, thought I'd spark this up again here.

Play control is crisp, there isn't anything janky going on.

The gore is like Splatterhouse turned up a few notches, and of course more graphic with more pixels for blood and gibs.

It's kind of like a modern Rastan but with a lot of moves and abilities to destroy enemies, mostly rooted in black metal aesthetics but sometimes going into Rings of Saturn album cover territory.

For $15, everyone who would play a side scroller like this should buy. Don't forget to press square to headbang after killing a boss.
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I dunno, Devil May Cry 4 and MGR are pretty up there.
 
lordxar said:
Old school side scrolled with over the top music and violence...sold!
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It's a serious challenge at times, too. I just hit the wall at the Plague Master. It's brutal but the checkpoints are in good spots where you don't have to wait too long to get back to that spot, and there's no load times. This removes a lot of the frustration but retains the challenge and the feeling that you can just try different shit and not worry about dying.
29562468172_60c94567e0_o.gif


Regiruler said:
I dunno, Devil May Cry 4 and MGR are pretty up there.
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I can see it, but Slain is like a viking metal fever dream. It's on another level
 
Random nitpick, but the fact that Slain actually has headbanging animations makes me not want to play it

The art is beautiful but to me nothing is worse than something actually saying "yeah dude this is METAL!!! \m/"

Let the product speak for itself and resonate with people without breaking the fourth wall to pander
 
Regiruler said:
I dunno, Devil May Cry 4 and MGR are pretty up there.
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HAHAHAHA plz

At least name-drop Guilty Gear or something...

Wolfgunblood Garopa said:
It's a serious challenge at times, too. I just hit the wall at the Plague Master. It's brutal but the checkpoints are in good spots where you don't have to wait too long to get back to that spot, and there's no load times. This removes a lot of the frustration but retains the challenge and the feeling that you can just try different shit and not worry about dying.
29562468172_60c94567e0_o.gif
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Yeah, I liked the instant retries, takes away a lot of the frustration.

Let me know how you do against Mother Beholder. That boss probably caused 50% of all my deaths lol.

Brian_FETO said:
Random nitpick, but the fact that Slain actually has headbanging animations makes me not want to play it

The art is beautiful but to me nothing is worse than something actually saying "yeah dude this is METAL!!! \m/"

Let the product speak for itself and resonate with people without breaking the fourth wall to pander
Click to expand...
68747470733a2f2f34312e6d656469612e74756d626c722e636f6d2f64613838643435333739373361626439356562336635393938636165373938302f74756d626c725f696e6c696e655f6e737a6c71345a324646317161777466695f3530302e6a7067
 
Brian_FETO said:
Random nitpick, but the fact that Slain actually has headbanging animations makes me not want to play it

The art is beautiful but to me nothing is worse than something actually saying "yeah dude this is METAL!!! m/"

Let the product speak for itself and resonate with people without breaking the fourth wall to pander
Click to expand...
Lammeeeee
That was the best part
 
Brian_FETO said:
Random nitpick, but the fact that Slain actually has headbanging animations makes me not want to play it

The art is beautiful but to me nothing is worse than something actually saying "yeah dude this is METAL!!! \m/"

Let the product speak for itself and resonate with people without breaking the fourth wall to pander
Click to expand...

If you press circle instead of square after killing a boss, Bathoryn hair gets shorter and he shoegazes.

Morrigan Stark said:
HAHAHAHA plz

Yeah, I liked the instant retries, takes away a lot of the frustration.

Let me know how you do against Mother Beholder. That boss probably caused 50% of all my deaths lol.
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Will do heh. Plague Master is probably one of the easier ones, isn't it. I slapped the wolf guy's shit at least, headbanged after, it felt good.
 
Brian_FETO said:
Random nitpick, but the fact that Slain actually has headbanging animations makes me not want to play it

The art is beautiful but to me nothing is worse than something actually saying "yeah dude this is METAL!!! m/"

Let the product speak for itself and resonate with people without breaking the fourth wall to pander
Click to expand...

Head banging is a ritual only we understand and the game reflects that. U mad.
 
Brian_FETO said:
Random nitpick, but the fact that Slain actually has headbanging animations makes me not want to play it

The art is beautiful but to me nothing is worse than something actually saying "yeah dude this is METAL!!! m/"

Let the product speak for itself and resonate with people without breaking the fourth wall to pander
Click to expand...

I couldn't agree more.

In addition, I also hate it when horror movies feature metal music. It just sounds so lame, and always ruins the atmosphere. Something like dark ambient works better there, as witnessed in Sinister. Aghast <3
 
Brian_FETO said:
I fucking hate most "metal bloggers" more often than not it's just idiots trying to get attention for themselves to fuel their self-importance. They don't actually have anything interesting to say so they just use as many stupid metaphors and adjectives as they can force into a sentence. "This album is a blasphemous microcosm, a somber beckoning from the depths of space in Lovecraftian fashion, with labyrinthian song structure that redefines the void of nondiscriminance". Shut up nerd
Click to expand...

Brian_FETO said:
Random nitpick, but the fact that Slain actually has headbanging animations makes me not want to play it

The art is beautiful but to me nothing is worse than something actually saying "yeah dude this is METAL!!! \m/"

Let the product speak for itself and resonate with people without breaking the fourth wall to pander
Click to expand...

Now tell us how you really feel.

Tankard said:
I'm waiting for my CD/ LP Booklet to arrive, i'm very anxious.
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Yeah, I've got the whole 2CD/artbook/shirt combo coming too. I like the album cover and I'm interested in reading the novel it's based on since it apparently won some awards when it was originally released in 2007. All in all, looking forward to tomorrow.
 
Melchiah said:
I couldn't agree more.

In addition, I also hate it when horror movies feature metal music. It just sounds so lame, and always ruins the atmosphere. Something like dark ambient works better there, as witnessed in Sinister. Aghast <3
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Phenomena is like that for me. It's neat that they had Flash Of The Blade but it's nothing compared to the god-tier Goblin soundtrack

Regarding "no fun allowed" responses: fight me in the pit bro
 
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