Requiem

I've re-edited and included it. I freakin' love that album! I'm glad we're putting it in. Also, hurry up and do your list. Don't over think it!

I've been listening to 'The Original Sin' quite a bit. I'm actually pretty glad that they didn't release it properly at the time because when I consider what they would go on to actually put out with both 'V Empire' and the real 'Dusk and Her Embrace', it's a vastly inferior recording. I noticed too that many of the lyrics have been re-written and refined between versions, all of them for the better. I think the shedding of the 'Principle' band members with the exception of Nick Barker (and the re-introduction of good old Robin Graves) was a good thing because if you listen to the performances on 'The Original Sin', they're a touch rough. The musicianship on the real version is far superior. As for the intro for 'A Gothic Romance', I was thinking about your words as I cruised the gothic streets of Melbourne at night while listening to it. I definitely prefer the actual version. The version on 'The Original Sin' is cool and everything, but doesn't quite have the windswept romanticism of the string sound of the true version. As a release 'The Original Sin' is definitely a great curiosity and it's a lot of fun, but it's a shadow of the version they would go on to release.

The older I get and the further I go down this metal path the more I'm convinced that the three albums you mentioned are some of the best music I've ever heard. I recently purchased 'Dusk and Her Embrace - The Original Sin' which is the original version of that album that was recorded back in 1995 and shelved, and I've been listening to it. It's really interesting and cool, but ultimately the songs feel like demo versions of what would later appear on 'Dusk'. But what it has really brought home to me is just how good these songs are. Even in their inferior state on this release, they have the magic. When I put the 'real' Dusk album on it's truly awe inspiring.

Excellent! You've inspired me to go back to my original post in this thread and actually review them properly - check it out. I did it before I read your three entries here but I also addressed the mid-era rock material. I think I like it a little more than you though. I can't wait to see the rest of your list. Sending it out in instalments hahaha, it's like click bait.

I updated this thread because I wanted to explain my choices better. Plus I remembered that I'd forgotten Saturnus which I feel really does fit the gothic metal framework that I'm working in just as much they do a doom one.

Do it - I'll be very interested to see what you think.

Hey Breezbo. Let's drink beers and listen to Death.

Good luck with kindergarten. I always thought it was cool how we use a German word like kindergarten. It makes me feel so Teutonic. My youngest (birthday girl) goes to kinder next year but it will be the same one my eldest went to, so it's familiar ground. Our main problem is anxiety when the countess drops our eldest off in the classroom at school She's fine the minute we leave, but it's really hard and unpleasant for all when she gets upset. Other than that she is loving school and doing really well. She needs to chill though.

Thanks Deathy! She's a big 4 year old now.

I just think a band like Septicflesh that has such subtlety and cleverness in the lyrics and themes - which I've gone into in some depth at these forums - deserves a more artistic/subtle cover than alien freak man with foetus in the head. I really respect Seth's artistic style and even vision (in most cases), but he pushes the repulsive thing just a little too far these days. I feel the same way about his work on Moonspell's 'Extinct'. Every one of the Septicflesh re-releases that have had Seth's artwork applied to them look fantastic, as do 'Communion', 'The Great Mass' and 'Titan'. They use that style but with taste and elegance. Now we have this ridiculous foetus in the head picture. I really hope the lyrics shed some light on it and that it means something wonderfully symbolic, like worlds within us waiting to be born. But as a picture in isolation I don't find it terribly compelling.

I was just listening to a new Polish project called Erebos and their 'The Light in my Darkness' album which is really good instrumental atmospheric black metal.

Hell yeah!!

I've heard random Naglfar material over the decades and it never really did much for me, but I had never heard 'Vittra'. I'm listening to it now and I really like it. I think I might have to invest in it and make it my own. Vinterland hasn't really turned me on much but again I've only heard snippets so more research is required. Edit: Just went back to 'Welcome My Last Chapter' and remembered that it doesn't really do it for me. The performance is really sloppy - distractingly so. Also, regarding Carcass I'm going to come out and say that I think my favourite of their's is 'Surgical Steel'. Monocles all over the forum just dropped, I know, but I really like every song on that album, I love the production, I love the riffs and I'm obviously not much of a grindcore fan so I find 'Symphonies of Sickness' et al a wee bit quirky and chaotic to my ears. 'Surgical Steel' is such an easy listen. It's great. I respect all the Carcass releases as a whole, and I really like the band. But if I'm being honest with myself, I reach for 'Surgical Steel' a hell of a lot more than the older works.

So I've been told that Game of Thrones is ending after Season 7. I initially abandoned the show around the middle of Season 4, so I thought I'd pick it up again fresh with Season 5 and just struggle my way to the end. I like the show well enough. It's pretty amazing to be honest. But I just struggle to get excited about it enough to watch an episode after this many. Even only four episodes into Season 5 I forget I'm supposed to be watching it. Each season is, what, 9 hours long, and I've watched 4 of them. That's 36 hours of continual narrative(s). Still, it's fun and I'll keep going.

Wintersun - 'The Forest Seasons' on youtube. It sounds pretty good. It's just been so long between drinks that I don't even know if I want to buy this album or not. I have the first two sitting up there in my collection, but I don't even know if I'm a Wintersun fan or not. Am I even listening to music? Or is this just a bunch of computer files? Is it possible to be a Wintersun fan? Who are all these people contributing to the crowdfunding campaign? What will Wintersun HQ be like? What planet did Jari come from? So many questions...

That is provocative of Dani. Love the 'cutting edge artwork' comment. Can't believe you and I started this Cradle of Filth thread to talk about a band we actually like and all we're doing is throwing shade at them hahaha. Well, at Newby-Robson at least.

I'm here now. It's like Downton Abbey compared with Trailer Park Requiem...

Yeah, it got to the point where the band had intros and musical interludes that were written and performed by a guy who isn't even in the band. They were just meaningless noises. *insert random orchestral piece here*. It's like he had them pre-written and Dani calls up: "Yo Nooby, I need three orchestral pieces for the new album. No, don't worry about context or style, just email them through and I'll throw them on the album at tracks 1, 6 and the outro. Nah man, continuity doesn't matter, they're just stocking fillers. Yeah, Allender has run out of riff ideas again so we need to bulk the album out with computer keyboards. Nah, the kids don't mind, they just like the image. Alright, catch up soon. Bye."

This afternoon we're going over to my brother-in-law's 11 million dollar mansion for a combination celebration of my father-in-law's birthday, my youngest daughter's birthday and father's day which is tomorrow. They've only just moved into this place so I haven't had a look around yet. 11 mil. The wine had better be nice, that's all I'm saying...

We went out again the other night and had this a second time. It wasn't as good as the first time.

For me, the first three Satyricon albums are all better than anything released by Immortal and Gorgoroth; however, Satyricon's lows are also worse than Immortal and Gorgoroth's lows. 'Dark Medieval Times', 'The Shadowthrone' and 'Nemesis Divina' are aurally, aesthetically and emotively monumental. Enslaved are a funny one. I simply adore their first three albums, but found 'Blodhemn' to be a bit lost and empty. Almost clumsy. 'Below the Lights' was ok, but they started to move away from what really interests me, and while I enjoy the odd track of their nowadays material, I can't say I'm a fan. The last album I bought was 'Ruun' and it gets exactly zero plays these days. Actually that could be a great candidate for my daily commute disk list. I love checking out albums I haven't heard in years whilst sitting in traffic.

I don't know. Albums like 'Plague Angel' and 'Rom 5:12' are pretty cool, but I also find them a little - not boring exactly - but not quite as engaging as some of their other works. People praise Mortuus to the heavens and I understand why, because he's pretty authentic, but I find the overly serious approach the band seems to be taking as a bit limited. I also actually find some of the guitar melodies to be fairly underwhelming on both of those albums and I'm not sure Morgan is fully inspired. Same with 'Wormwood' a little bit. It's like Morgan suddenly decided to be more extreme and hard than the next band for some reason and got a bit monochromatic at the same time. I can't say I listen to those albums much at all these days. I own most of the Marduk albums and my favourite album of theirs is 'World Funeral' and I'll explain why. Firstly, I love Legion's voice, unlike apparently everyone else. His growls and howls just do it for me. Also, the variety of songs on this album keeps everything really fresh. There's life amidst the death. But there's also a darkness running through this that appeals to me sort of in the same way that 'Reinkaos' by Dissection does. The albums are very different of course, but I find something that speaks to me in both of those albums that a lot of other people dismiss. On 'World Funeral' tracks like 'Bleached Bones' and the other slow songs just nail it for me. I'm like, "Fuck yes, this is it!" The melodies and production are just Requiem made. I also really love 'Panzer Division Marduk'. That's a fun little record and no mistake. Their new one is really good too, 'Frontschwein'. I'd take any of these albums over 'Plague Angel' and 'Rom 5:12'.

This is a cool idea. Actually, I remember playing a show at the Barwon Club one time and our bass player drove there and back (with me and others in the car). He got a speeding ticket each way from a hidden speed camera. It would have been so annoying, but I was and remain secretly amused about this fact. Am I bad person?

I didn't see this message partly because I haven't been online and partly because you didn't tag me so I'd notice! I'm glad you raised the 'Midnight in the Labyrinth' debacle because I, of course, bought it when it came out and was prepared to listen to a double disk worth of epic orchestral grandeur. Instead I got a double disk of Casio keyboards/commodore 64 standard computer music. I believe I once wittily referred to Mark Newby-Robson as a human stool sample, and I think he's won that description here. Ok that's a little harsh - he probably makes woollen coats for orphans or something - but he just isn't great at creating computer music that sounds good. I actually put this release on again the other day as it had been ages since I heard it, and I didn't hate it quite so much as I used to, but it has such a cut-price bargain-basement sound that the whole thing is cheapened. I wonder what Dani thinks of it. If they were going to do a project like this, they should have used a proper orchestra. Of course, the cost of something like that is prohibitive, but they're better off not doing it if it's going to sound like a guy mouse-clicking his computer. It's the same keyboard/computer lifelessness that sullies the albums from about 'Thornography' to 'Darkly Darkly Venus Aversa'. Somewhere along the line people forgot what the point of a piano or violin is - to create beauty and authentic emotional experience. If you have a cheap rip-off of those things, like Booby-Jobson's computer - you end up with cheap rip-off emotion. I love the cheap keyboards of 'Daudi Baldrs' or the final track on Satyricon's 'The Shadowthrone', because they have atmosphere and make sense in context. If you're trying a huge orchestral symphony then the same tools won't work. Like I say, though, I've come to peace with the sound of it a little bit these days. I don't hate it, but it could have been so, so much better.

Ok now we're into Requiem territory. Novembre have long been one of my favourite bands. I have to say that these two albums you mention here are my two least favourite of theirs, especially 'The Blue', which I think has a production that makes the album really hard to listen to. It's strangely over produced and sounds a bit synthetic. The songs are very good though. Albums like 'Novembrine Waltz' (2001) and 'Classica' (1999), however, are amazing, with the former actually being one of my favourite albums of all time. I waxed lyrical about it in the 'Classic Gothic Metal Albums' thread (or whatever it's called) in the Gothic Metal forum. 'Novembrine Waltz' has a perfect production in that it's not overproduced like 'The Blue' and 'URSA' , and the songs breathe and flow a lot more than I feel that they do on 'Materia'. The hooks on 'Novembrine Waltz' make my lovelorn heart weep in memory of azure Mediterranean skies. Their first two albums 'Wish I Could Dream it Again' (which got the old 're-record' treatment, which, like every other time, didn't improve it) and 'Arte Novecento' are also really good, although a little primitive. Check out their cover of 'Stripped' on 'Arte Novecento'. For some reason I really love it. As for their comeback album 'URSA', it's pretty good but a little disappointing. The production is really fuzzy for some reason. Maybe fuzzy isn't the right word. It's just a touch too luscious or something and suffers from the same issues as 'The Blue'. Also the vocals are also soooo slippery and flat. I don't quite understand why Carmello is signing like that. He fancies himself a singer too, as I've seen live photos where he isn't playing the guitar... bit of a worry. There are some cool hooks on 'URSA' but overall it wasn't quite worth the wait. 'Novembrine Waltz' and 'Classica' simply rule. Everyone should check 'em out if they haven't already. Edit: I forgot to mention that I have a 'Novembre' beanie that I wear proudly and have for many years. I feel that this is something important that I need to communicate to give a better sense of my feelings for this band. An ipad?! That's probably the lamest thing I've heard a supposedly emotional band doing. "Gee I can't remember how I feel about all this, let me check what I wrote..." Also if you want to know how annoying "flaccidly chugging away with no purpose" can be, just ask my wife about my bedroom performance. Thank you very much.