navybsn

Mizmor - Cairn
Afsky - Ofte jeg drømmer mig død

Funeral Mist - Deiform

Those of us veterans of the trade have a long story of our trip through the metalsphere to 2021. I'd love to hear any of the posters journey, I know you have one....Everybody's got a story, don't they? Here's mine in a nutshell....
I’ve been discussing, debating and generally bullshitting with all of the metal-fi transplants for years and I’d like to say here it’s been my great pleasure coming to these forums, commiserating with the friendly, intelligent group here on the metal forum. Thank you for the work cultivating this forum! 
Like the GG, I find the present era a playground for fans of heavy music  but, I obviously come from a different perspective. What I love is the diversity of metal.
I don’t really care about genres, it’s just soundwaves hitting my ears. In fact, I'll grab oddball albums that I probably wouldn't listen to in their entirety very often just to add some texture to my playlists. Shit, now that I think of it, I think I'll grab that Helloween album I was crapping on earlier in the year for some goofy fun. Or some eccentric prog. Shoot, I'll throw on some over the top symphonic horror like Epica-fuck it-that girl can sing her ass off. 
In the beginning....
 My story is really of a guy who got hooked into rock and metal in my high school years in  the 80’s surrounded by modern rock kids and had few peers that loved metal and then drifted away in the 90’s when thrash and hair metal ran their course and alt metal became redundant. Years later, sick of hearing Creed and Limp Bizkit on the radio, I realized I still liked to rawk and returned to the pursuit of new music in the digital age in the early 2000’s.  
I remember getting on Stonerrock.com back in 2002 or thereabouts and finding Chad Bowar who was the editor for About.com’s heavy metal page. Every month they’d post their best albums of the month.
Back then it was a lot of stoner metal (Fu and Magnet-I'll never forget those binges we had together), doom and post metal and new discoveries every month. Albums like Leviathan, Dopethrone, Ghost Reveries, The Illusion of Motion, Oceanic, Surrounded by Thieves and Through Silver and Blood led me to open the Pandora's box of extreme metal. 
Sure, a lot of it was mainstream as it comes, at least in extreme metal. There was Opeth and Enslaved and prog through the lens of death and black metal, post metal (and post everything else, really), power metal, gothic,  beauty and the beast symphonic tripe, metal adjacent, the explosion of female fronted wicca stoner doom, At-Dark-Amon Amarth-Tranquility-of the gates melo-overdone-deth, meloblack, atmo-never-eding-black, atmospheric/folk/Pegan/viking  everything, math metal, metallic hardcore, entombedcore, OSDM, hard doom, blackened sludge (can I get a hell's yeah Lord Mantis), second wave Nordic black, brutal technical death (meaning shit like Nile but not techdeth if you please), Sunn0))) inspired hordes of drone, avante-weird-fuckery,  DSO and the dissonance clones……a never ending sea of Mary Poppins wonderland for the damned. 
But time waits for no one and the devil will have your soul....
Jump forward to 2012, my collection outstripped my Ipod’s capacity and I decided to look into audio solutions. So,  I began putting a little stereo and dedicated headphone set-up. I joined Head-Fi’s metal forum where I got schooled in fidelity, metal, dynamic range and compression. 
One of the poster's, Alex was passionate about demanding quality audio recording in metal with dynamic range and he founded Metal-Fi.
Cards on the table....
So there lies my biases, a wide range of styles that include plenty of mainstream bands along with extreme metal and experimental, genre-shaping-shifting artists as well as adjacent metal. Full stop, I like music that’s well recorded and sounds good. 
Now, along the way to audio paradise, The Goat General formerly Whitenoise came in and shook things up with his insistence on listening to raw, underground music. He ushered in a new era at M-F and along came many of the ne'er do wells we have here now, all of whom found a voice and an audience-at least in me. I’m a big fan of all you guys. 
These guys have been great for my listening as I’ve enjoyed peppering my collection with more underground works. But as the more progressive and diverse listenership at Metal-Fi drifted elsewhere, I feel an obligation to stand my ground and advocate for well recorded good sounding music with dynamic range. 
The Absolute Sound....IMHO there doesn’t have to be a divide between raw and production values. Music can have an edge and be well recorded. And it’s happening with more extreme cavernous or at least intentionally raw or brutal---fill in the blank-sounding bands-looking at you Blood Incantation and Cerebral Rot-well done boys-DR: 12-thank you very much!
Truth-I like plenty of raw music these days, but wouldn’t want to make a steady diet of it anymore than I would with post progressive sludge. 
Naturally, as a guy who gravitates to more then more popular (ahem, vetted) releases, I have a few minor quibbles with the low-fi-we-like-raw-fisting crowd. First, it's great live. I’d go back to MDF in a heartbeat. The visceral thrill of brutal DM should be heard live. 
But....oh you know there has to be a but.....with all of the self-released material, I feel like many of these artists would benefit from collaboration-working with additional ears giving constructive criticism and input. Like, uh, dude that sucks.  
Dead used to post about the show circuit and studio system that he was involved with in OZ. And I think he has some legitimate points, being that back in the day bands would spend time cutting their teeth in clubs working to get recording contracts. They'd really have to hone their craft, then would be and forced to collaborate, compromise, edit and ultimately produce better material. 
Today, left to their own devices, we find some brilliant work but often we find artists doubling down on their excesses and would benefit from some serious proofing.
To be sure, some of those excesses are fantastic. There's something to be said about making strong artistic choices and sticking to your guns.  I get that. And they have charm. But I find some of it (certainly not all), repetitive, samey, lacking in varied musical ideas, devoid of distinctive, memorable songwriting -frankly some of it is just uninspiring. Yet there are gems to be found which is why I keep one eye open for the. It's prolly what keeps most of us in the game. Keep 'em coming! 
Today-I have to admit, after several  years of exposing myself to the land of the goat, my biases are actually moving away from slick modern production which is a completely different animal than production values and dynamic range. Two separate things-heavy/raw, visceral completely separate from SQ, fidelity, etc. 
I think some of the guys who listen to predominantly raw material, get skewed and begin thinking that-only raw or low-fi recording techniques can do justice to metal. And, it’s all good.  It’s simply a preference. 
But let’s face it, humans are tribal. We have an instinct to protect and defend what we perceive as ours against outsider threats. This is mine and that is yours.
Me, I don’t have any issues mixing peanut butter with chocolate. Or for that matter, eating cotton candy. 
After all, terms like poser and hipster are just words meant to trivialize other kinds of  kinds of culture you don't like. But they don't add much to the conversation. 
So coming full circle, I've grown to love a lot of rougher, dungeon-y, putrid sounding filth. Some people just want the most brutal, primitive sounding material that they can find. I’ll take a small percentage-it does have a place. My argument is to not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Now, where's my new copy of Deafheaven. 

Black Flag - Slip it In
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
Bad Religion - How Could Hell Be Any Worse
Descendents - Hypercaffium Spazzinate

Sargeist - Unbound

I agree. This stuff (minus electronics but there is an argument to be made) are harmful to a person's health and add to the overall burden of everyone through the healthcare system/increased health insurance premiums/etc. No problem with collecting a little bit more off these products.
It's not just electronics. Packaging on everything is getting to be over the top. My recycling bin is overflowing every week with cardboard, plastic, and paper from stuff we buy and/or junk mail. Horribly wasteful. My wife brought home a new cat yesterday and the associated stuff he needs seeing as we got rid of the stuff for our previous cat. Once I had put everything together, I had quite the pile of cardboard and plastic leftover. Most was completely unnecessary, but I do understand it makes the shipping more efficient.

I have been trying to go towards the @markm method for a number of years now. I find way too much on music I really don't care much about after a few spins. I do occasionally go back and spin the odd purchase because I see it on the server and think "wonder why I bought that". Then it goes back to the bottom of the abyss until some random time in the future. I'm much more picky about purchasing physical media, so I am trying to apply the same logic to digital purchases. Works most of the time. I've bought much less on bandcamp in the past 2 months than usual. Some of that is due to life getting in the way though. I've also figured out how to play my bc wishlist through my server and they don't "time out" like they do on the app, so I get to spend much more time with an album before I purchase which helps me make better decisions.
I do want to spend more time with what I already have as well as explore other genres that I enjoy. So my focus hasn't been exclusively on new metal of late.
1) Not really. I'm bad at keeping track of my lists. Just remembered that Sargeist album I had on my list a few years back when Surge posted a split with them yesterday. I need to organize them better so I can keep track. I also need to purge or archive some of the shit on my server so I'm going to the good stuff more often.
2) Absolutely, but it's more random "what am in the mood for today" instead of intentional.
3) Probably 40% of my server. Those are the ones I'm trying not to buy going forward.
4) Yeah random.

Worm - Foreverglade

Black Flag - Slip it In
Dead Kennedys - Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables
Bad Religion - How Could Hell Be Any Worse
Descendents - Hypercaffium Spazzinate

Powerful nor’easter pummels East Coast
 
They already have just over two feet on the ground down around the Braintree, Randolph, Brockton area. Still snowing out in Montauk, through Conn, Mass, all the way up through Maine & NB, Nova Scotia into Newfoundland. You probably still have another 2 hours til it's completely past you. Nantucket's fucked though, they're all but washed away.
It stopped snowing here a few hours ago, we got away with just about 5" and the power's still on so I'll take it. Got cold tonight though, 10° going down to 6° overnight so after I did all the dishes I went down the basement turned the water off and bled it so we won't burst any pipes.
 
Ohio man builds igloo featuring multiple rooms — and he’s not done yet
 

Saxon - Carpe Diem
Out 4 February 2022.
 
Still kicking arse after 40+ years!
 
 

Holy shit... yeah...I'd be all over that festival if i could. Candlemass absolutely crushes their live show, and pretty much that entire undercard kills. Going to need plenty of beer to dull the pain though, not a lot of downtime on there to rest your feet.

Sodom - Obsessed By Cruelty
 

Time for them to jump on that gravy train and actually move to Iceland so they can put their album back up. Wonder if Skaphe would have to take "Iceland" off their MA profile if the one Icelandic member quit... maybe they'd just be listed as "ex-Iceland" at that point, that's gotta still have some cachet.
NP:
Enslaved - Eld
Abigor - Totschläger
Amorphis - The Karelian Isthmus
Ah damn. That's a downer. I love early Dark Tranquillity, had a huge impact on me as a teenager... RIP.

Kreator - Coma Of Souls

MY EYES!!😵

Guess I've been doing it wrong all this time since I always download my Bandcamp stuff as well. I use the Bandcamp app to listen to stuff when I'm on the go, but always make sure to get the files and store them on the desktop

I download everything I buy from Bandcamp, but sometimes I like to listen my stuff on the go when I don't have the full collection on hand. Still, shouldn't be to much missing to make a real difference in the end.

Yeah I think that's their best currently.

Frummyrkrið - Dauðans Myrkri
Murg - Strävan
also trying to avoid the black metal recommendations rabbit hole thread, I don't have time for that. ha ha.

Today:
Virus - The Black Flux
Krallice - Crystalline Exhaustion
Voices - Breaking The Trauma Bond
Gentle Giant - Acquiring The Taste

That album rules. Enthroned in Catacombs is one of the best riffs I've heard in a long time.

One of my friends recommended this to me a while ago. The outfits and haircuts in the video gave me definite adventure rock vibes... Was not in the mood but I could see myself liking it at the right time. The guy's got a nice voice.

Sounds good, you've given me something to waste Saturday morning with, I'm going to check out their other stuff

Probably not up everyone's alley, but a project I dig a lot. The band dubs it "Adventure Rock" which I find a bit stupid silly. Sounds like 70's epic prog complete with Hammond organs and concept based albums. Their first 3 are all worthy with the best being Excerpts from a Future Past.
Hällas - Isle of Wisdom