JonoBlade

I've been using HD 650 for years. Been through several cables because I kept stepping on it and tripping. Not at all portable and they're open back. but sound good. I think I got them originally because they're considered neutral and suited for mixing. Anything more expensive than that would be diminishing returns for me. I paid up for custom iems and don't regret that at all, but still a fraction of what some must spend.

That's why I like the new stuff most I think. They have three ace vocalists; they all write songs. It's like Queen but without the embarrassing disco phase. I have only seen them twice; the last with Gojira in Auckland. That was a good night. But I lament having missed the Masties in the early days at a basement bar in London on the Remission tour. Any band is better in a dive bar. I haven't been to a "big" gig in years - not since that Auckland show in fact. Will check oot some of your recos, except Blind Guardian. I am not ready to strap on the gag ball just yet. How is it? I've watched a few of the music videos which weren't the best promo tool, but I'd be willing to give it ago. More likely to make it through than Senjitsu. ...holy shit, it is on bandcamp: The Mandrake Project | Bruce Dickinson (bandcamp.com) I will cue up next when this Mastodon finishes. It just passed a track which sounded exactly like Call of Ktulu.

One last one for Bandcamp Friday. New Tales Between Reality and Madness by Void Of Sleep I think I have some nice variety in the collection today, rounded out by this Italian purveyors of a cosmic amalgam of stoned out, progressive sludge rock.

Some more: New Human (Reissue) by Death This has been in my wishlist for ages but not sure if I actually listened to this mix before. The bass is a lot more prominent and better than the original CD...which I assume I still have in the garage. Fun fact, Human was the first CD I ever bought, back in 1992 with some of the money I was supposed to spend on textbooks for Uni. New Dusk | Subside by Inverloch I've had Distance Collapsed for years and never realised there was an earlier release. Still not been able to stump up $18 for the old diSEMBOWELMENT album, so this is better value at $6.

Bandcamp Friday! Get some in ya. New In the Land of Ghosts by Olde Throne Found in my wishlist. It was in NZD so I presume a kiwi band, even though writing about Scottish ghosts or something. Sounds decent. New Inward to Gethsemane by Vastum Got a few albums by these guys. This must have been from an AOTY list. New Leviathan by Mastodon Why not? This is one of those bands I go through phases on. I don't have all of their albums and not that bothered by the supposed masterpiece Crack the Skye. I had a renaissance with The Hunter, and big fan of Hushed & Grim, but the older material never particularly resonated. A rare band that, for me, gets better the more they sell out. It doesn't make any goddamned sense. By the way....an observation for @JamesT, the only other person here that would care. Halford's vocals on that new Priest track sound incredible for a 74 year old or whatever he is. The modern Richie-generated generic Priest riff machine still does nothing for me, but vocally it is spot on.

New Inter Arma: ▶︎ New Heaven | Inter Arma (bandcamp.com) Sounds nice and cavernous. Cramming ready for gig on 8 March.... Death Atlas | Cattle Decapitation (bandcamp.com) I think I prefer this one to Terrasite. Some local boys, who also have a gig coming up on 16 March... The Cull | Verminthrone (bandcamp.com) Won't be changing the world, but a good cheap night out. New MBD: A Mortal Binding | My Dying Bride (bandcamp.com) Fairly reliable. Sounds more stripped back than the last album.

Giving E.A.R a go. Quite like it. Like a snake charmer on acid. Was happier when the distorted guitars kicked in. Probably a bit djenty (is that what the kids call it?) but perfectly digestible. It looks to be 3 hours long though.

Watched a video of how to do it and it looks fairly straightforward. But not sure if I'm motivated enough to source a magnet and pull everything apart. What I really need is a "guitar whisperer" that would do a session for a day to optimise complete chain. Teach a man to fish.

+1 for Bare Knuckles . I use Warpigs in one guitar (Jaydee iommi custom) and Aftermaths in the other (regular SG special from the 90s). I had EMGs in the SG for many years but I just liked the look of the Aftermaths. I wonder if I should go ceramic for the Warpig. I never thought about this stuff too much. You stumble across a sound you like and stick with it. I've recently been using an original Marshall Guv'nor pedal for a bit of boost. It sounds a bit HM-2ish but not so in your face. I got that pedal about a year ago and never got a useful sound out of it. I tried again a few weeks ago and loved it.

Same. My wife won't touch pop music with a barge pole. She was brought up listening to baroque (her family thought Mozart was too modern and a sell out). on the one hand and Pat Metheny elevator music jazz on the other. With a side helping of Genesis. She actively hates my favourite vocalists: Halford, Mercury, Steele and Scott (with especial loathing of Dickinson, although I agree he's overrated anyhow); but tolerates the grunting and shrieking stuff with only minor dissatisfaction just because it's not even pretending to be singing in the first place.

My opinion evolved from Kerry's comment: "I saw Mark a few years back singing covers of MINOR THREAT and cameo in THE WEDDING BAND with members of METALLICA. It was different from what he does in DEATH ANGEL, and he sounded great. He's super versatile. He took steps to make this different than DEATH ANGEL. I don't touch on probably 50 percent of what he can do on the album." I interpreted "took steps" as "make it sound like Tom" or at the very least Kerry chose him because he already sounded like Tom in the covers. The irony is that the only Death Angel album I ever heard is Act III. I spin the LP every now and then. On that he does not sound like Tom Araya. I thought I'd better check a recent DA album on YouTube for context and the few seconds I sampled sounded to me pretty similar vocally to the KK track anyway. It certainly sounds more Arayan than I remembered from the 30 year old album I knew. So, my original point about it being a slap to Mark to ask him to sound like Tom is clearly wrong. It turns out he sounds like that anyway. But I still think he was chosen because he sounds like Tom so Kerry can keep it as close to the Slayer vocal delivery as possible. I doubt he'd want to explicitly admit that though. He talks about the riffs being Slayer riffs and being unapologetic, but it's a step beyond that to choose a vocal clone. Ironically, he said he'd rather have Rob Halford singing if Rob would do it. Whether it would have worked or not, at least that combination would have been something different. That's my take. I guess I just don't like cover bands much, which is why I'm not interested in seeing Priest live either.

Musically, sure. They're Slayery riffs. But to tell Mark to sound like Tom ( the front man Kerry resents for ending the band) is a bit of a smack in the mouth to a guy who's been in the game 30+ years.

Probably true. I couldn't help myself and listened to the KK ( not that KK) new promo yesterday morning. It was inoffensive but nothing to grab onto. The choice for Death Angel guy to merely do a Tom Araya impression was odd. Loomis is too virtuoso to work with Kerry. Even Hanneman wasn't a groundbreaking technical player by any measure...but those evil riffs. That was groundbreaking.

I'd put MDB way ahead on consistency alone. The best song on Anathema Eternity is Hope, which was written by David Gilmour. That was a low point in their career. They've done some solid albums since, but just too far outside my remit now. Serenades at the time of release was equal to any MDB but it hasn't aged all that well. Paradise Lost have had a consistent renaissance which began with The Plague Within. It's really solid. However, I listened to the rerecording of Icon and, as you would expect, can't fathom the need for it. For a fan, new or old, you'd just want to pick up an original on eBay. The economics must be fairly marginal for rerecording a classic. You're better off tacking some modern interpretations as bonus tracks on a new album. Just use the studio time efficiently to blast out some standards from the set.

It's my favourite one too, although I'm not that familiar with the discography. Certainly a great vocalist, backed by phenomenal guitar work. Loomis should really start something new along the lines of Nevermore as chief songwriter because he was wasted in Arch Enemy.

Oh. I didn't realise Inter Arma were hipster. They wear socks and have ungroomed beards. The only other band I knew or cared about from Richmond was Gwar. I am aware that Lamb of God is from Richmond, but they're not hipster are they? Is "mainstream normie metal" synonymous with "hipster" now? If only Dead were here to tell us. Deafheaven developed the archetypal hipster image in metal which seemed somewhat justified because they looked like floppy haired indie kids playing black metal. Although, I associate the term "hipster" with style over substance. The first few Deafheaven albums I really like (being decidedly neither grim nor necro), until they fell off a cliff with the last one. Inter Arma are still bringing it, but I don't get the vibe they care about their image. Also, Jono don't do "toiling." I'm afraid the protestant work ethic passed me by.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor: I never thought about it being outside the metal world too much because the name is pretty metal. But it's a fair cop that musically it is beyond the edge of the metal spectrum. I picked these up for nostalgia's sake. At least a decade ago I really enjoyed "Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada" at the recommendation of my drummer...but then, he likes some weird shit. It is very ambient. The first track is somewhat conventional. The second track is a spoken word piece set to music and I find it quite cathartic. I do recommend this album for something different. I only heard the Fawlty Towers one today. I'd need to really dig in to make comment. You can call that an impulse buy. It could be that every other album than Zero Kanada is shit, I don't know yet. I suppose you'd call this stuff experimental and not at all what I'd normally go for (not exactly Hell Bent for Leather) but I could listen to it all day...as chill wind down music. For the record, I've never been to a hipster doom gig in the midlands. The only hipster doom gig that stands out is seeing Pallbearer in Auckland 6 years ago. And, I shit you not, I have not listened to that band once since that day. The second guitarist was a dick to the soundman and I wrote them off after that. No great loss. oooo. One album I got recently, that you might dig, is this one: Ψευδομένη | Ὁπλίτης (bandcamp.com) That was a recommendation from the buddy when we compared notes on my current favourite BM band: Weigedood. From the incomprehensible band name and description it is designed to be as inaccessible as possible. Gotta respect that.

Bandcamp Friday New This Godless Endeavor by Nevermore New Leprous Daylight by Fossilization New "Luciferian Towers" by Godspeed You! Black Emperor Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada by Godspeed You Black Emperor! A Journey told through Fire by Sworn Some old and new. I liked the Scorn one although it veered into tech death territory sometimes the dilution of which a capricious blackened veteran wouldn't like.

This makes me think some bands just shouldn't tour. Instead, play home turf gigs that they can really enjoy and stream them. I know it's a bit late in Type O's case because that technology barely existed back then, but you get the idea. Nothing beats a great live gig. But, so too the level of disappointment of a half-arsed gig. I reckon there is a real market for interactive online pay-per-view content. There are a lot of bands I'd be just as happy to spend fifteen bucks on to see at a bespoke live gig, say with a Q&A afterwards, than travel to see live. As the technology catches up, you could even have live gigs with musicians remote from each other.

I only saw the band once, on the LiKM tour and Kenny seemed to be the grown up holding the show together. Peter was a mess and it was worse in the Carnivore reunion I saw a few years later because Kenny wasn't there. Silvertomb is particularly good in my opinion. The new Eye Am stuff didn't seem quite as good. But hopeful that an album will pull it off. Not interested in singles and I don't get why they thought releasing piecemeal would be a good idea.

I never thought about it, but yes dog's bollocks must be good because they sure do love 'em. Not sure how Anesthesia falls apart later in the song. It's actually fairly economical compared to many type o tracks. The line "I don't feel anything" is a highlight of the album. Peter is credited with writing every type o song. Kenny never had a songwriting credit (to my recollection ) which I do wonder about, because his post o bands Seventh Void and Silvertomb were excellent. He's all we have now and still does good work and sings great.

NP: Goatess | Goatess (bandcamp.com) I wondered what these guys were up to, checked their facebook and they've only gone and broken up! It was never the same when the vocalist (who was in Saint Vitus for a bit) left after the second album, but the third album was still passable. This first one probably has my fav tracks on it, even if it is too long overall of course.

October Rust was Type O's commercial/mainstream peak. That record was specifically written with "getting chicks" in mind, after the success of Bloody Kisses (BK being the only one to go platinum and Roadrunner's most successful record at the time). In my view Type O were coasting at a similar level from World Coming Down through to the end. I wouldn't say LiKM is a mainstream album, nor at the height of their career. For a long time I considered Dead Again their best album, for all the reasons @GoatmasterGeneral mentioned. However, more recently I find Life is Killing Me to be the unsung hero of the catalog. The closing tracks Anaesthesia thru The Dream is Dead are just perfect. But that is the power of the green man. Any of those albums could be the best.... except October Rust; but even that one I might give another go some day. It's ironic that October Rust was the current album when I first heard Type O (my guess some time in 1997) and I liked it well enough then, but Bloody Kisses was the dog's bollocks ....I've just played it too many times for it to be my favourite anymore.

Century Media went from being most loathed to most choice label when they started releasing the back catalogue to BC. Surely Inside Out must be gg's favourite label?!

NP https://hoplites.bandcamp.com/album/--2 Bit of a contrast to Dev. A buddy put me onto this for scratching Weigedood itch. Nope, I don't know what it's called either.