Jump to content

How do you listen to and organize your music collection?


navybsn

Recommended Posts

I would assume all of us have a pretty substantial music collections at this point in our lives. Personally, I have roughly 4 TB of music on my server, 250 vinyl, and about 500 cds (some overlap with the server). When I sit down to listen to music every day, I usually focus on recent acquisitions, listen to stuff posted here or in my bandcamp feed to see what I might want to pick up, or just scroll through my collection and randomly choose stuff that strikes me at the moment. Of course, that leads to huge chunks of my collection being neglected for long periods of time, some rightfully so because I probably never should have bought them, others I find myself saying "I can't believe I haven't listened to this recently". I guess that should be expected however with a collection of this size. It's definitely unruly at this point and I really need to get in and do some much needed maintenance and organization on the server that might make it easier to navigate (fix genre tags, make playlist folders to separate the great/good/so-so, clean out duplicates, etc). So my question is, how do you guys choose what you listen to day to day? Focus on new stuff only? Have certain days of the week where you focus on those classics or solid older albums in your collection? Some other sort of system? Completely random like me?

Secondary question for those with large digital collections. What program/app do you use to organize it? I run a Linux server and utilize Logitech Media Server. Perfectly serviceable for sending music throughout the house and controllable through my phone, but absolutely terrible for collection organization (editing tags, fixing issues like duplicates, getting missing album art) and generally requires a lot of manual maintenance. I've used Linux for so long, I'm used to the extra work but as work-life demands continue to increase at an exponential rate, I'm looking to find something that requires less effort.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good thread.  I recently began to grow my physical (vinyl and CD collection - although CDs have been a mainstay for some years now) and also changed my listening habits.  To give some context, I spent several years dedicating my day to catching new stuff to the point of being obsessive about it and inevitably reached the point of burnout.

Also, during lockdown, I rediscovered how I could enjoy listening to music again.  I essentially dedicated a listening space in my office at home, away from screens and other distractions where I can just put music on and really focus on it - just like I did when I was a teenager back in the 90s.  This led to me understanding the value of music in my life and saw me able to focus my attention on what I was truly enjoying as opposed to hoping to find something I might enjoy each day whilst working or driving somewhere.  Having that space that means something to me makes me very particular about what I listen to in it.

There's no rules as such though.  I kind of just take each day as it comes and see where it takes me.  Some days I still consume vast quantities of albums, others I just don't listen to anything at all and the silence of my office is just as welcoming as when it is filled with music on other days.  Although I am not searching for new releases I am not averse to listening to them if they cross my path (new Wiegedood is a great example of this as I sit awaiting the vinyl to arrive). When I hear something I want to explore again I will add it to Trello and log all the shit I dismiss in there also so I can sort of avoid wasting my life on revisiting unnecessarily again in the future.

I use a couple of streaming services for my digital collection and have recently began culling a lot of stuff in there.  I hold a spreadsheet of everything I have, whether digital (owned or just streaming) or physical it goes in the sheet.  Sort of come round to the way of thinking that if I really like something on stream then I buy a physical copy but doubt I will ever lose the duplicates in the digital library.

EDIT - forgot to add that I have a 3 listens rule to anything I want to explore before I decide whether to invest it in or not.  Unless it is utter bollocks of course then it gets dismissed immediately - like yesterday when I got wind of The Bread Scientists and got so angry at how shit it was that I barely made it through one full sitting of the 25 min record.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I use Musicbee for my digital collection and I honestly couldn't be happier with the program. Their user interface is excellent. Very user friendly and has seemingly endless customization options. Adding album artwork is super easy, the program can literally find an album cover from the internet on the program itself so copy/saving images from google is never necessary. And I've never once had music just disappear on me.

In terms of organizing my library, I go crazy overboard with playlists. Unlike Itunes, when you add songs to a playlist in Musicbee it groups songs together by album, or at least you have the option to group them that way if you want. I have every song by every artist in my collection labeled by subgenre (black, death, thrash, heavy, etc.) so I've got separate playlists for each subgenre from each country. "Finnish black metal", "Norwegian Black", "Swedish Death", or just playlists by subgenre, "Atmo-black", "War metal", "New OSDM", "Blackened Speed", etc. And within each playlist I have each album grouped together by year, then alphabetically. I also have playlists for my favorite albums from each year going back to 2000, and I always have a separate playlist for new releases from the current year and a general "new music" playlist.

It is definitely tedious subdividing my entire collection into a myriad of different playlists (I probably have over 100 of them) but it ultimately makes navigating my collection and choosing what to listen to SO much easier. I also feel it keeps me from having to make some kind of spreadsheet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, MacabreEternal said:

Also, during lockdown, I rediscovered how I could enjoy listening to music again.  I essentially dedicated a listening space in my office at home, away from screens and other distractions where I can just put music on and really focus on it - just like I did when I was a teenager back in the 90s.  This led to me understanding the value of music in my life and saw me able to focus my attention on what I was truly enjoying as opposed to hoping to find something I might enjoy each day whilst working or driving somewhere.  Having that space that means something to me makes me very particular about what I listen to in it.

This is an important point. As I get older and my collection has grown far beyond my wildest teenage dreams, I have found that I have drifted away from this sentiment. Part of the reason I want to get it all under control so I can get back to the pure enjoyment. Certainly I will never get back to that teenager listening to Piece of Mind for the first time euphoria, but there is definitely still a lot of satisfaction in rediscovering/reconnecting with albums. I have dedicated space with good quality gear, it's just time that limits how often I get to engage. Thus the desire to be as efficient as possible. Most of my listening tends to be "background" music at work, doing household chores, driving etc. Actual "critical listening" is maybe 10% of the overall.

1 hour ago, MacabreEternal said:

I spent several years dedicating my day to catching new stuff to the point of being obsessive about it and inevitably reached the point of burnout.

Been there for a while too. Stepped of the new release carnival ride a bit over the last few years and although I do miss the rush of finding something new to share with people, I don't miss dedicating the amount of time and effort it requires or the lack of enjoyment I get from sifting through buckets full to find the couple of good releases. That has also reduced my spending, or wasted money, on things that really had no staying power. Freed up funds for more travel to live shows which I greatly enjoy, for investing in physical media for those albums I hold dear, and improving my home audio setup which increases my satisfaction when I do get to dedicate time to listening.

1 hour ago, MacabreEternal said:

There's no rules as such though.  I kind of just take each day as it comes and see where it takes me.  Some days I still consume vast quantities of albums, others I just don't listen to anything at all and the silence of my office is just as welcoming as when it is filled with music on other days.  Although I am not searching for new releases I am not averse to listening to them if they cross my path (new Wiegedood is a great example of this as I sit awaiting the vinyl to arrive). When I hear something I want to explore again I will add it to Trello and log all the shit I dismiss in there also so I can sort of avoid wasting my life on revisiting unnecessarily again in the future.

Sounds very much like how I roll. What is Trello and how do you use it for music listening/tracking? Looks like a productivity suite for business.

1 hour ago, MacabreEternal said:

I hold a spreadsheet of everything I have, whether digital (owned or just streaming) or physical it goes in the sheet

Would you be willing to share your template? Sounds like a project that would help me get better organized.

15 minutes ago, zackflag said:

I use Musicbee for my digital collection and I honestly couldn't be happier with the program. Their user interface is excellent. Very user friendly and has seemingly endless customization options. Adding album artwork is super easy, the program can literally find an album cover from the internet on the program itself so copy/saving images from google is never necessary. And I've never once had music just disappear on me.

In terms of organizing my library, I go crazy overboard with playlists. Unlike Itunes, when you add songs to a playlist in Musicbee it groups songs together by album, or at least you have the option to group them that way if you want. I have every song by every artist in my collection labeled by subgenre (black, death, thrash, heavy, etc.) so I've got separate playlists for each subgenre from each country. "Finnish black metal", "Norwegian Black", "Swedish Death", or just playlists by subgenre, "Atmo-black", "War metal", "New OSDM", "Blackened Speed", etc. And within each playlist I have each album grouped together by year, then alphabetically. I also have playlists for my favorite albums from each year going back to 2000, and I always have a separate playlist for new releases from the current year and a general "new music" playlist.

It is definitely tedious subdividing my entire collection into a myriad of different playlists (I probably have over 100 of them) but it ultimately makes navigating my collection and choosing what to listen to SO much easier. I also feel it keeps me from having to make some kind of spreadsheet.

Nice. I've heard of Musicbee. What platform do you run it on? Windows/MAC/Linux etc. I love Linux for a number of reasons, but most of the music software leaves a lot to be desired.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I had my CD collection out (it was never too big) I had it loosely organized by genre, with my favorite bands given pride of place. I haven't had a lot of opportunities for that in the past 20 years though, I've gone mostly digital. The "master library" as such is on my desktop recording computer, and most of my old stuff is split up into genre folders based on how I was thinking about stuff when I first started organizing it. 5 or 6 years ago, the last time I built a new machine, I put those files in a storage partition and started a new folder which is just alphabetical. It's really unwieldy, but I usually know where to find stuff, and the process of digging through my old archive brings other memories along with it. If I were going to integrate it all (which I'm not) I'd probably reconsider the genre folders or maybe even forgo them entirely. Would be nice to have it all organized by release date and country or scene. I have a lot of my newer stuff duplicated on my laptop, favorites and new acquisitions on my phone (256 gb is plenty for that), and then everything except for the most recent stuff is also backed up on an external drive.

The problem with every organizational scheme is that I always get a bit numb to looking at it with enough repetition, and I wind up actually not seeing things because I've seen them so much. They don't register. Ironically I find myself losing track of things because I know exactly where they are and so I don't bother actually looking. I like the ability on my phone to search by folder or album rather than artist because it'll surface things I would usually skim past. Having a few different ways of looking at it is superior to any one by itself.

As far as choosing what to listen to, I usually know what I want. I'm a binge listener. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a particular style and I'll go through a bunch of albums in the same vein; more often it's a particular album I have stuck in my head, and then I'll find myself listening to stuff that's connected in some way afterwards. Sometimes it's situational - what sounds good in the car, what works for the family, etc. And sometimes it's a tranche of new releases or other discoveries that I can't let go of. Hope I can get back to that. Listening time has been in short supply lately.

 

BTW on my phone I'm currently using Poweramp, which is ok, and on my computers I'm a Windows and Winamp user for the most part.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

30 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Nice. I've heard of Musicbee. What platform do you run it on? Windows/MAC/Linux etc. I love Linux for a number of reasons, but most of the music software leaves a lot to be desired.

I got Windows 11. Seems to do the trick. Never had any issues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

34 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Sounds very much like how I roll. What is Trello and how do you use it for music listening/tracking? Looks like a productivity suite for business.

Would you be willing to share your template? Sounds like a project that would help me get better organized.

Trello is more a business thing really.  I picked it up as an easy way to manage actions in projects and informally on 1-1's with my team when I had management responsibility (I thankfully lost the responsibility but kept Trello).  I have a board for stuff I am checking out, one for shit I have shot away as not being good and another for the pardoned stuff I need to get on my spreadsheet (which I will email you).  I don't listen to anything in Trello as there's no functionality for that but it helps keep me organised with music.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used to be very anal about organising my collection, but these days the CD are in several sets of drawers I made and probably in alphabetical order, the vinyl is stacked below that in a cupboard and the cassettes are in boxes in the store room. Any digital music is just on a portable hard drive which I have a text file of the file tree.

I guess I don't really organise at all when it comes down to it.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, navybsn said:

This is an important point. As I get older and my collection has grown far beyond my wildest teenage dreams, I have found that I have drifted away from this sentiment. Part of the reason I want to get it all under control so I can get back to the pure enjoyment. 

Been there for a while too. Stepped of the new release carnival ride a bit over the last few years and although I do miss the rush of finding something new to share with people, I don't miss dedicating the amount of time and effort it requires or the lack of enjoyment I get from sifting through buckets full to find the couple of good releases. That has also reduced my spending, or wasted money, on things that really had no staying power. 

 

All of this!

My BC collection became so unwieldy that I gave up trying to download. So I basically am chained to their library system which only allows sorting alphabetically or date of purchase. I am hopeless if I want to search by genre. Amazon Music Unlimited is pretty much the same way. I was downloading FLACs of stuff I really had to have downloaded but that became too much and I can't be bothered with hard-drives and all of that.

Definitely trying to ween myself off the new release rodeo. I am much less actively searching but I do have a steady stream of new releases in my wishlist. I am muuuch more critical now though about what I keep/purchase/recommend. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bandcamp has just been purchased by Epic Games. They say they're going to leave it the same as a standalone marketplace and music community that supports artists but maybe add some more functionality to it down the road which could be exciting. I don't ever make a purchase without downloading it so I'm not worried about losing anything.

I've gotta say I find it hard to believe Navy has accumulated 4TB of music. Not calling him a liar or anything but I mean even if those are all FLAC's that's still a lot of god damned music. I feel like I have accumulated a pretty decent sized digital collection which is more than I can reasonably listen to but my music folder is only 348 GB, less than 10% of what Navy has. I will go through from time to time and delete shit that I don't imagine myself listening to again and suspect I probably won't even miss just to keep it from getting out of control and being filled with needless crap. 

I want to cosign what Zack said about MusicBee, it is by far the best desktop music player I've ever used and it's light years ahead of iTunes in functionality. I love being able to tag or add artwork to all the tracks from an album together at the same time instead of having to tag each track individually. Don't think I have anywhere near 100 playlists like he does but it's very easy to make smart playlists on the fly like all black metal from a certain range of years or whatever. Love being able to sort my music by any variable, artist, genre, year, date added...comes in handy for list making and such. And of course it's skinnable with lots of different dark backgrounds which are much easier on the eyes than the iTunes white.

As far as deciding what I feel like listening to at any given moment, there doesn't seem to be hardly any rhyme or reason to it. I definitely wouldn't ever schedule anything in advance like thrash metal Thursdays or vintage metal Sundays or anything. Sometimes I might know I feel like black or death or punk or vintge metal and just sort by genre scroll around and wait til something grabs me. Sometimes there will be a record that I've been quite enamoured with lately and I'll start sessions with that until something else comes to mind. If I'm really stumped I might put the thing on shuffle and just keep clicking next track until something sounds good then I'll turn off shuffle and start that album from track 1.  I generally tend to have a bias toward the newer stuff from the current year so I'll often sort by date added and pick something from my most recent acquisitions. But I do also take a lot of suggestions from all the various stuff that gets posted here which is one of the best things about being on a forum of metalheads.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Bandcamp has just been purchased by Epic Games. They say they're going to leave it the same as a standalone marketplace and music community that supports artists but maybe add some more functionality to it down the road which could be exciting. I don't ever make a purchase without downloading it so I'm not worried about losing anything.

I read that this morning. It's an interesting purchase, I don't know how much I believe them when they say they will leave it alone but it will be interesting to see what plans they do have. I'd imagine if they start screwing over either bands or users another alternative will pop up.

11 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 I will go through from time to time and delete shit that I don't imagine myself listening to again and suspect I probably won't even miss just to keep it from getting out of control and being filled with needless crap.

I really ought to delete some of those Motley Crue and Def Leppard records from my collection, any one up for a licorice pizza?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My collection is entirely digital at this point, and I’m probably going to lose that too at the end of the month when the cancellation for my Spotify goes through. I doubt one user makes all that much difference to them, but I’m not going to keep paying a company who refuse to take meaningful action against people who use said platform to knowingly spread misinformation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Bandcamp has just been purchased by Epic Games. They say they're going to leave it the same as a standalone marketplace and music community that supports artists but maybe add some more functionality to it down the road which could be exciting. I don't ever make a purchase without downloading it so I'm not worried about losing anything.

I've gotta say I find it hard to believe Navy has accumulated 4TB of music. Not calling him a liar or anything but I mean even if those are all FLAC's that's still a lot of god damned music. I feel like I have accumulated a pretty decent sized digital collection which is more than I can reasonably listen to but my music folder is only 348 GB, less than 10% of what Navy has. I will go through from time to time and delete shit that I don't imagine myself listening to again and suspect I probably won't even miss just to keep it from getting out of control and being filled with needless crap. 

I want to cosign what Zack said about MusicBee, it is by far the best desktop music player I've ever used and it's light years ahead of iTunes in functionality. I love being able to tag or add artwork to all the tracks from an album together at the same time instead of having to tag each track individually. Don't think I have anywhere near 100 playlists like he does but it's very easy to make smart playlists on the fly like all black metal from a certain range of years or whatever. Love being able to sort my music by any variable, artist, genre, year, date added...comes in handy for list making and such. And of course it's skinnable with lots of different dark backgrounds which are much easier on the eyes than the iTunes white.

As far as deciding what I feel like listening to at any given moment, there doesn't seem to be hardly any rhyme or reason to it. I definitely wouldn't ever schedule anything in advance like thrash metal Thursdays or vintage metal Sundays or anything. Sometimes I might know I feel like black or death or punk or vintge metal and just sort by genre scroll around and wait til something grabs me. Sometimes there will be a record that I've been quite enamoured with lately and I'll start sessions with that until something else comes to mind. If I'm really stumped I might put the thing on shuffle and just keep clicking next track until something sounds good then I'll turn off shuffle and start that album from track 1.  I generally tend to have a bias toward the newer stuff from the current year so I'll often sort by date added and pick something from my most recent acquisitions. But I do also take a lot of suggestions from all the various stuff that gets posted here which is one of the best things about being on a forum of metalheads.

Yeah probably should have explained that better. 4TB is a lot, but 3 things have gotten it to that point. 1) Early adopter of digital going back to 04-05 and was very active on the torrent (aka pirate) sites before streaming was available to simply check things out. Even ripped from YouTube at one point. Everything purchased or ripped by me into the server is FLAC or equivalent lossless format. 2) Every time the boys come over to play, they bring 10-15 CDs each that get straight ripped to the server and I return the favor in kind. Admittedly, most don't really float my proverbial boat, but I feel obligated at this point since we have been carrying on this way for years and storage is cheap. Most I never listen to. 3) I have never deleted anything. Not once, even if I intended to at some point. From my phone which tops out at 512gb and has multiple streaming options, sure, but not the server. Likely a ton of duplicates in there since I've surely downloaded the same album multiple times usually because I couldn't remember I had it or simply found it in a better format/rip. Add all that in with a regular habit of buying a minimum of 10 records a month over a dozen genres since the early 90's and 4TB isn't as much of a stretch as you would think. My server is named the "Pit of Despair" for a reason. It's where all albums go to suffer eternal neglect.

But that also delineates the problem I have. No one outside of the Library of Congress has any need for a collection that size. No way you could ever listen to it all even dedicating every waking hour of the next 20 years. So before I embark on wrangling this Lovecraftian monster into submission, I need to find the right framework to put it in. Then I plan on sifting through the muck and start deleting, organizing, and repairing. Get the strategy nailed down before the tanks roll across the border if you will.

Funny you mention the certain days thing the way you did. I find Sunday to be the day I'm always spinning classic heavy metal. It's tolerable to everyone who happen to be home and I already know most of the good stuff so it's easy to build/add to the playlist. Sunday night is bluegrass and folk, because the missus says so. She indulges my hobby so I don't complain. Plus I tend to be in a mellow mood on Sunday night winding down before heading off to work on Monday. Outside of that, it's pretty much anything goes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I used MusicBee and really liked it, but had to switch to Foobar2000 because I couldn't find any way in MusicBee to add ReplayGain and DR measurements. F2K is pretty awful in deign though. Very hard to customize, but infinitely better than iTunes.

My vinyl collection has grown considerably during covid, I probably have around 2-300 vinyl, and 5-600 CD (which are in the basement). I sadly dont have any server set up for my music, but since I often listen to digital on the computer or on the phone it doesn't really matter. I had a Seagate server setup but that interface was trash so I never really used it (you couldn't copy files to it via USB, only wifi, which was very inconveniant).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Setting the server up is definitely the hardest part. Took a lot of tweaking to get it to work the way I needed it to. Once that was settled (about 6 months of trial and error), it's been pretty smooth. The biggest issue I have with it is being able to edit files. With the number of duplicates and corrupt files that are surely in the thing, it may be wise to pick through and find the good stuff I want to keep, transfer them to a separate drive, wipe the server, and rebuild. The library management system is definitely key to prevent having to do it all over in the future. I migrated away from iTunes years ago. I've evaluated MediaMonkey, Plex, Rhythmbox, and a few others in the past few days. None really appeal to me. I looked at Foobar years ago but couldn't get the hang of it. May need to look at it again. There are also commercial programs like Roon and Audirvana, but they are pricey. Definitely prefer to stay on the free side of things if I can.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I only listen to digital music as it's easy and it saves space. I download from bandcamp and Amazon music(about 69 albums in total)I'm very picky about what I get and only get an album after playing much of the album. 

I've got 400 CDs in the loft. They were put there because of lack of space and because the kids needed a bigger room and I didn't want them playing frisbee with my cds.

Also I've got about 200 of them on MP3 players. It's good listening to those when I do. 

The spreadsheet idea is very good idea as there are lots of good albums I've literally forgotten about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, blaaacdoommmmfan said:

I've got 400 CDs in the loft. They were put there because of lack of space and because the kids needed a bigger room and I didn't want them playing frisbee with my cds.

I know the feeling, my kids never went through the drawers I made for my music and they could bounce around them all the liked without the drawers opening, but I've got 12 bookshelves of books in my office because we needed room when the kids were growing up. Now kids are grown bookshelves still remain in my office, I think I got short changed :)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, KillaKukumba said:

I know the feeling, my kids never went through the drawers I made for my music and they could bounce around them all the liked without the drawers opening, but I've got 12 bookshelves of books in my office because we needed room when the kids were growing up. Now kids are grown bookshelves still remain in my office, I think I got short changed :)

 

Kids are great but there's some serious drawbacks with having them. My cousin's kid head butts him occasionally. Hopefully that's just a phase. 

Yeah that's bit rubbish unless you like a lack of space in your office or just like getting distracted with reading. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My girls went through a dancing with headphones phase, it lasted a couple of years, but because the house is on stumps (wooden floor) the dancing did cause a bounce. It's not dramatic but there was times were things fell off shelves, or lazily stacked things like magazines etc would fall. They never caused major damage but the day the 1800's bronze statue fell off it's stand they shit themselves. :)

My office was kind of built as storage so it's also got boxes of stuff in there, all my old cassettes and VHS tapes are in there as well as a spare fridge and freezer. The fact that I do less 'office work' than I used to probably means that referring to it as an office might even be incorrect now days :)

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, the work has begun. Settled on Foobar2000 for library management. It's not the easiest most visually appealing option, but it's free and doesn't require me to change my current operating system. I moved the server to a backup hard drive and have begun editing and discarding. Once it's all said and done, I'll move everything back to the server. Maybe not the cleanest way of doing it, but this was going to be messy no matter. Already cut it down considerably by eliminating duplicates and ditching all the YT rips. It's mind boggling the amount of crap I've collected over the years. I'm usually a pretty neat and tidy sort of guy in real life, but when it comes to music collecting, I guess I'm a bit of a hoarder.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

I don't organize them in albums, if that's what you're asking. I keep one folder with the band name and in it there are the songs I like. Only those I like. Those that I don't like - I delete them. That's why my folder with Satyricon has only 11 songs. All enumerated bc I like listening to them in a specific order.

The only band whose almost entire discography I like (minus 4-5 songs) is Thyrfing. Thus I have one folder named Thyrfing with 55 songs in it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/3/2022 at 1:38 AM, Valso said:

I don't organize them in albums, if that's what you're asking. I keep one folder with the band name and in it there are the songs I like. Only those I like. Those that I don't like - I delete them. That's why my folder with Satyricon has only 11 songs. All enumerated bc I like listening to them in a specific order.

The only band whose almost entire discography I like (minus 4-5 songs) is Thyrfing. Thus I have one folder named Thyrfing with 55 songs in it.

Oh man, that system would give me so much anxiety. What if there's a song you initially don't like but then grow to enjoy?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Join Metal Forum

    joinus-home.jpg

  • Our picks

    • Whichever tier of thrash metal you consigned Sacred Reich back in the 80's/90's they still had their moments.  "Ignorance" & "Surf Nicaragura" did a great job of establishing the band, whereas "The American Way" just got a little to comfortable and accessible (the title track grates nowadays) for my ears.  A couple more records better left forgotten about and then nothing for twenty three years.  2019 alone has now seen three releases from Phil Rind and co.  A live EP, a split EP with Iron Reagan and now a full length.

      Notable addition to the ranks for the current throng of releases is former Machine Head sticksman, Dave McClean.  Love or hate Machine Head, McClean is a more than capable drummer and his presence here is felt from the off with the opening and title track kicking things off with some real gusto.  'Divide & Conquer' and 'Salvation' muddle along nicely, never quite reaching any quality that would make my balls tingle but comfortable enough.  The looming build to 'Manifest Reality' delivers a real punch when the song starts proper.  Frenzied riffs and drums with shots of lead work to hold the interest.


      There's a problem already though (I know, I am such a fucking mood hoover).  I don't like Phil's vocals.  I never had if I am being honest.  The aggression to them seems a little forced even when they are at their best on tracks like 'Manifest Reality'.  When he tries to sing it just feels weak though ('Salvation') and tracks lose real punch.  Give him a riffy number such as 'Killing Machine' and he is fine with the Reich engine (probably a poor choice of phrase) up in sixth gear.  For every thrashy riff there's a fair share of rock edged, local bar act rhythm aplenty too.

      Let's not poo-poo proceedings though, because overall I actually enjoy "Awakening".  It is stacked full of catchy riffs that are sticky on the old ears.  Whilst not as raw as perhaps the - brilliant - artwork suggests with its black and white, tattoo flash sheet style design it is enjoyable enough.  Yes, 'Death Valley' & 'Something to Believe' have no place here, saved only by Arnett and Radziwill's lead work but 'Revolution' is a fucking 80's thrash heyday throwback to the extent that if you turn the TV on during it you might catch a new episode of Cheers!

      3/5
      • Reputation Points

      • 10 replies
    • I
      • Reputation Points

      • 2 replies
    • https://www.metalforum.com/blogs/entry/52-vltimas-something-wicked-marches-in/
      • Reputation Points

      • 3 replies

    • https://www.metalforum.com/blogs/entry/48-candlemass-the-door-to-doom/
      • Reputation Points

      • 2 replies
    • Full length number 19 from overkill certainly makes a splash in the energy stakes, I mean there's some modern thrash bands that are a good two decades younger than Overkill who can only hope to achieve the levels of spunk that New Jersey's finest produce here.  That in itself is an achievement, for a band of Overkill's stature and reputation to be able to still sound relevant four decades into their career is no mean feat.  Even in the albums weaker moments it never gets redundant and the energy levels remain high.  There's a real sense of a band in a state of some renewed vigour, helped in no small part by the addition of Jason Bittner on drums.  The former Flotsam & Jetsam skinsman is nothing short of superb throughout "The Wings of War" and seems to have squeezed a little extra out of the rest of his peers.

      The album kicks of with a great build to opening track "Last Man Standing" and for the first 4 tracks of the album the Overkill crew stomp, bash and groove their way to a solid level of consistency.  The lead work is of particular note and Blitz sounds as sneery and scathing as ever.  The album is well produced and mixed too with all parts of the thrash machine audible as the five piece hammer away at your skull with the usual blend of chugging riffs and infectious anthems.  


      There are weak moments as mentioned but they are more a victim of how good the strong tracks are.  In it's own right "Distortion" is a solid enough - if not slightly varied a journey from the last offering - but it just doesn't stand up well against a "Bat Shit Crazy" or a "Head of a Pin".  As the album draws to a close you get the increasing impression that the last few tracks are rescued really by some great solos and stomping skin work which is a shame because trimming of a couple of tracks may have made this less obvious. 

      4/5
      • Reputation Points

      • 4 replies
×
×
  • Create New...