FatherAlabaster

Setentia - Darkness Transcend

Slidhr - White Hart!

22 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Everything they did from the first album through Ghost Reveries is worth your time. My Arms and Orchid both have some real gems. The Baying of the Hounds, Face of Melinda, The Moor... just so many great tunes.

Seconded w/ gusto

43 minutes ago, markm said:

Morningside

MorningRISE dammit mark

I love this album. It was where I discovered them and it was pivotal to the way I thought about songwriting as a budding musician. I'm hopelessly biased in favor of it. If you're a fan of Blackwater Park you should definitely listen to Still Life and My Arms, Your Hearse. MAYH is a conscious shift in style away from the first two albums, Still Life is similar but more fully realized and polished.

Wardruna - Kvitravn

Selbst - Despondency Chord Progressions

Selbst - Vortex Of Anguish And Death

Hell yeah man, thank you for the support.

Vestígio - Vestígios   ...thanks to SurgicalBrute for the rec. Cool interplay between the guitars, melodic approach reminds me a bit of Selbst.

Cool writeup at NCS for another couple of promo tracks. "Instrumental" isn't entirely right, but the vocals on these are for texture and melody. This is from near the end of the album. 

https://www.nocleansinging.com/2024/04/12/an-ncs-premiere-construct-of-lethe-excerpts-from-a-kindness-dealt-in-venom/

22 minutes ago, navybsn said:

I believe that is what really turned me off to IPAs. Like Surge, I won't turn down a perfectly good beer if someone is handing it to me, but they're never my first choice. Down here, breweries either try to see just how bitter they can make a beer as some kind of badge of honor or how many weird ass fruit combos can be added. It's akin to the hot wings trend, let's make these perfectly good chicken wings inedible as some test of manhood by adding 43 ghost peppers and top it with a scotch bonnet. People claim to enjoy them, but I can't see how.

And it's all fine and good. Plenty of beer out there to like for everyone. Just annoying that every brewery has to have 60-75% of the menu dedicated to the same variation of style. In stores, seems that's all they carry anymore and most just suck (the ones you mentioned, Voodoo Ranger, Space Dust, 420, the list goes on). Many started out good, but over the years got bought out by conglomerates or over expanded and the quality dropped. Stone was sold several years ago and had never been the same.

Everyone has their own preferences. I personally don't like German beer. Lukewarm on IPAs and Pilsners. Will never seek one out, but will never turn down a freebie.

How does it feel to be part of the basic-bitch casual crowd that can't handle the throat-eradicating, tongue-petrifying bitterness real men crave?

I think part of the reason they're everywhere is that they're easy to do an ok job on quickly, and the hop flavor and bitterness can cover up a lot of little flaws and inconsistencies that would ruin a more nuanced beer. But that doesn't make for a great experience. They are not all like that. 

If you're ever up this way, like for Messe Des Morts, lemme know. Too much good beer up here for you not to try some.

4 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

Funny you say that because my understanding of hazy ipa's are that they're typically not very bitter. That was supposedly the reason for their popularity... they caught on with the more casual market who wanted to be seen drinking trendy beers, but didn't like the bitter taste of the west coast style.

Bittering depends on the beer. "Hoppy" doesn't necessarily mean "bitter". The hazy New England pale ales keep the later flavor and aroma hop additions much more forward. That's what I loved about them when I couldn't smell things properly, there was enough there for me to latch onto. I don't love hop bitterness for its own sake (don't mind it but don't seek it out) and I really don't like that back-of-the-throat chalky quality that comes with using overly hard water. Talking about trends, there was a trend in overbearing bitterness for a while before the new school hazy style caught on, and I'm glad that one died back. I'm looking for balance and fresh hop flavor/aroma when I drink IPAs.

It's slim pickings for the West Coast style up here and harder to find it fresh. We get Stone and Sierra Nevada, that's about it. I used to enjoy them but they can't compete with the local stuff for my dollar. They're just not as good. I also think Sierra has fallen off in general, I don't know if it's just their east coast brewery or my tastes changed or what, but they used to be my favorite all around brewery and now they're just kind of meh. I do look forward to their Celebration Ale in the winter, that's about as close as I get to a west coast IPA anymore.

15 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

"I prefer beers I can't see through. So if it's too warm for a good stout, I want a black ale, scotch ale, or I will settle for a nice amber or honey brown."  - Navy Goat Butcherer

Yes this. I remember when I was in the pubs of Australia and all their beers were piss colored. I didn't know wtf to order, had to ask Carlissimo which piss he was drinking. My go-to here at home has become the Yuengling black & tan, $15 for a 12-pack, an eastern PA beer available everywhere and anywhere around here. And if they don't have it on tap they'll have their lager which is almost as ubiquitous as Budweiser around these parts, just with a wee bit more flavor. Because I don't always want a heavy syrupy stout with my dinner or in the warmer months. I'll grab a 6 pack of Smitty's red ale now and then as well. I ordered one at the Irish Cottage one time several years ago with my shepherds pie and I really liked it. And yeah fuck a bunch of bitter IPA's, I honestly find it hard to believe people like that shit so much.

 

 

Both of these are swill in my book. They're better than Bud but that's not saying much. I can understand not liking IPAs, especially if you've never had a really good one as fresh as possible, or maybe if you're someone (like my wife) who finds hop bitterness disgusting. Even under good conditions the flavors can take a while to click. But unless you've tried the real deal, you don't know what you're missing.

I was burned out on the hazy ones until I lost my sense of smell to Covid the first time around. Hazy, hoppy IPAs were the only thing that cut through the noise and tasted "normal" to me. Lucky me, northern VT is the land of plenty.

I live in the home of hazy IPAs. There is an absolute glut of them represented at the supermarket, and slim pickings of everything else aside from multinational conglomerate pisswater (funny enough, the gas station has a better and more varied selection). Most of them are alright but tiresome, and the sheer quantity of them means that it's difficult to find them fresh, because the store is incentivized to keep its overstock on the shelves long after the beer is past its prime. Too many bandwagon-jumpers.

On the other hand, when they're done right they're amazing. Fiddlehead, The Alchemist, Hill Farmstead, and Schilling (Resilience) make great examples. I would hate to see those beers go away. Hill Farmstead and Schilling also make excellent lagers in an assortment of regional European styles. Both are real destination breweries. The only comparable place in MA was Tree House, another brewery somewhat unfairly defined by its flagship hazy IPA, that also makes an array of different styles and nails every one. 

We do get some good Canadian beers down here as well as stuff from Maine and NY state that fills in the gaps. The things I don't see around too much are English and Belgian styles, and big-alcohol barrel-aged beers. But it's basically Beervana. No complaints. Y'all should visit.

I dunno, maybe she's just doing it to be... nice? Maybe?

Outgoing shipping costs have sucked for years. I used to mail CDs and shirts and so forth for my bands, but I stopped shipping overseas because I couldn't charge a fair price unless I took a bath on it. 

I haven't noticed declining quantities of foreign beer, but the market here is (rightly) focused on local products, so I wouldn't have. 

Welcome to the forum. 

1 hour ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Good lord. Why? Just why? I understand they've a long history of religious/cultural warfare from both in and outside their borders (primarily because I find it funny when some idiot with too much money and not enough brains decides they're going to travel through the territory of the Sunni hill tribes trying to buy an ancient jeweled dagger ostensibly from the source, and comes up missing), you have to perform some major league mental acrobatics to put into any quantifiable terms how the bpm figures into anything that makes any sense at all. Do they have a national tempo I'm unaware of? I'd love to hear the logic behind this. 

There's preserving culture, and then there's whatever this is. It looks like misguided essentialist nationalism to me. "Western influences" are "polluting" their artistic traditions. If you want logic, I think you'll be disappointed, but here are relevant quotes from one of the articles I read: 

"Musical, vocal and choreographic" works will be limited to a tempo of 80 to 116 beats per minute (BPM) to "conform to the Chechen mentality and sense of rhythm," said Dadayev, according to the Russian state-run news agency TASS.

"Borrowing musical culture from other peoples is inadmissible," Dadayev said, per a translation by The Guardian. "We must bring to the people and to the future of our children the cultural heritage of the Chechen people. This includes the entire spectrum of moral and ethical standards of life for Chechens."

14 minutes ago, Yannis said:

The 3rd and the Mortal- Tears Laid in Earth

 

Nice, "Sorrow" is my favorite of theirs, great album for winter mornings.

17 hours ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

 Oh man. See that gets me excited to listen to it properly. I'm not in a position where I can listen to anything with speakers, and my headphones are... reasonable. That's usually the thing that gets the first cut when it comes to non-essential expenditures, as I just don't find myself listening to lossless or non-computer standard compressed music as often as I should. Gotta make due. It's a shame since I own so much physical media. That's more out of a paranoia that something I like might end up getting sanitized in the not too distant future. Hear me out okay. I know it's paranoid, and it has nothing to do with a political position, but if you'd have told my younger self that they'd be altering reprints of Roald Dahl and James Bond novels from their originally published text I'd have called you a liar. It's about preservation above posturing.

If you can find a way to listen to it on good speakers in a decent room, it's worth it. A good 320 mp3 should be fine unless you've got golden ears. I don't think it'll change your life or anything but it's engaging and I can't think of anything else that's quite like it.

Local storage and physical copies are where it's at. No way I can rely on constant Internet connectivity and the enduring commitment of music and book publishers to artistic freedom, not to mention the ability of libraries and schools to keep carrying "objectionable" materials. Did you see that Chechnya just banned music outside the range of 80-116 BPM? 

NP: At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness    ...maybe their best music, inarguably their worst mix.

12 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Yup. Hurts my feelings to not be included with the in group. And you identified option #3 - if you can't shoehorn something into #1 or 2, then it's a conspiracy/Democrats/ immigrants/poor people that are to blame. Occam be damned.

Occam? Doesn't sound like he's from around here. And you tell me they let him through with a razor?

15 minutes ago, navybsn said:

The Looney tunes down here take everything as either 1) Jehovahfat is telling us all to repent and devote our lives to him (see the recent earthquake in NJ as said evidence), or 2) that it's the end of the world and the Rapture is imminent (see any predictable natural event outside the norm a la said eclipse). Both are interchangeable and or substitutable depending on who you're talking at. I think I've personally lived through 30+ Raptures and at least a dozen extinction events.

Just proof you aren't one of the chosen, like that bridge in Baltimore. 

Ivar Bjørnson and Einar Selvik - Hugsjá

7 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

As far as eclipses go I think it was a one star event!

Yelp Reviews Read By Real Farmers

Totality was fucking amazing. I'm sorry I looked away from it even to get a shot on my phone, which can't do it justice, but there ya go:

1 hour ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Man, people were all over this album when it came out; I mean really hyping this thing to the moon and back. I went through the whole thing once and came away enjoying it, but it didn't level me the way it had so many others. Might give it a second chance here soon.

If you're in a position to really appreciate all the detail and spatial definition in the mix, it hits hard. The riffs aren't telling the story, it's all about interlocking rhythms and textures. Certainly my favorite of theirs, not something I need to listen to a lot, but it's an experience when I do put it on. Most stuff I listen to for detail I prefer on headphones, but this one is speakers all the way.

9 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Guess the world didn't end with the total eclipse. Either that or I wasn't in the group being Raptured. Too bad, I hadn't planned for dinner tonight and didn't really want to do any chores tonight.

Guess I'll have to wait for the next predicted extinction event to procrastinate.

It ended and was reborn as Rahu was defeated and forced to vomit forth the sun, get your facts straight!