Jump to content

What Are You Listening To?


khaos

Recommended Posts

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

But having said all that, I'd be lying if I said I haven't noticed a pattern over the last few decades that the more popular consensus albums are more often than not going to receive a verdict of "no thanks" from me. Polished and accessible aren't positive attributes to a filth hound like me. But still I always try to go in with an open mind when/if I check these "consensus" albums out because you never know, there can be exceptions. Occasionally even the dimwitted masses manage to get one right.

Well, I don't think the masses dimwitted or not are listening to most of the albums most of us talk about on this forum. You have very specific boxes you want checked. I don't process music in that way. We have very different criteria when it comes to evaluating music. But as they say, there's no accounting for taste.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, markm said:

Well, I don't think the masses dimwitted or not are listening to most of the albums most of us talk about on this forum. You have very specific boxes you want checked. I don't process music in that way. We have very different criteria when it comes to evaluating music. But as they say, there's no accounting for taste.  

True, I do have very specific boxes I want checked, but still I feel like I do try to remain open to stuff from outside my comfort zone to come and impress me. Unfortunately, the vast majority of it fails to impress me. Yet I do have some amazing and cherished albums in my collection that aren't my typical extreme metal. I wasn't neccessarily looking for most of them, in many cases they just dropped into my lap out of left field. So I guess I'd say I have extremely specific and pedantic requirements for what I want my black and death metal and hardcore to sound like, but beyond those staple genres I'm a bit more open to stuff as long as it's not excessively weird or dissonant, or too boring. Of course well over 90% of what I'm checking out is gonna be black and death metal to begin with, (or crust which I kinda lump in with death metal) but still that much smaller number of albums I acquire here and there from other genres are very very dear to me. I absolutely appreciate a little musical variety, I just don't need too much of it. A little goes a long way for me. Not unlike the way you say you can appreciate some filthy goat metal, but you don't need to much of it in your auditory diet.

As far as the "masses" are concerned I feel like we've been over this at least a hundred times my friend. You know damn well I don't mean the Top 40 normie masses, obviously, or not even the Metallica, Slipknot, Lamb of god, Deathpunch crowd. Because those "masses" are irrelevant to me, I ignore that segment of the population when I'm talking about music. In this context by "masses" I mean the metal albums/bands that "break out" of the deep underground and achieve some level of notoriety which is limited to basically just within the metal world. That handful of albums that you guys all say you see each year on multiple critics' end of year lists. The bands with enough "buzz" that most reasonably serious metalheads (like most members of this forum or your Vortex buddies) will more than likely at least recognize their names and might have even heard a few minutes of the music.

For example a few years ago it was that Blood Incantation Hidden History record that everyone was high on. Another year it was Powertrip on everyone's list. What are the metal masses gushing over this year? I'm not even really sure tbh, because I don't go looking for this stuff. But what I've seen mentioned the most this year just right here on the forum is stuff like: Ashenspire, Artificial Brain, Immolation, Cult of Luna, Sigh, Blind Guardian, Blackbraid, Cave In, Daeva, Undeath, Chat Pile, Ripped to Shreds, Worm....? Higher profile usually major label stuff that I largely avoid, that for whatever reason a bunch of critics and metalheads have all decided is good so they get talked about a fair bit and then you'll see the same names on multiple lists. I'm sure even you have heard of most if not all of those dozen bands I just typed. Unlike most of the albums you'll see on my list for instance, where most of the names will mean next to nothing to guys like you, (guys who aren't goat specific) unless you might just happen to remember me posting some of them earlier in the year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Overkill - Horroscope (1991)

Seprevation - Consumed (2014)

Savage Grace - Mas)ter of Disguise (1985)

Voivod - The Wake (2018)

Virago - Premier Jour (2000)

Virago is a French rock band that unfortunately disappeared a good twenty years ago. Their music was a bit like Jesus Lizard, which was one of Virago's influences. This is their second album, First Day in English.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

True, I do have very specific boxes I want checked, but still I feel like I do try to remain open to stuff from outside my comfort zone to come and impress me. Unfortunately, the vast majority of it fails to impress me. Yet I do have some amazing and cherished albums in my collection that aren't my typical extreme metal. I

As far as the "masses" are concerned I feel like we've been over this at least a hundred times my friend.  That handful of albums that you guys all say you see each year on multiple critics' end of year lists. The bands with enough "buzz" that most reasonably serious metalheads (like most members of this forum or your Vortex buddies) will more than likely at least recognize their names and might have even heard a few minutes of the music.

 But what I've seen mentioned the most this year just right here on the forum is stuff like: Ashenspire, Artificial Brain, Immolation, Cult of Luna, Sigh, Blind Guardian, Blackbraid, Cave In, Daeva, Undeath, Chat Pile, Ripped to Shreds, Worm....? Higher profile usually major label stuff that I largely avoid, that for whatever reason a bunch of critics and metalheads have all decided is good so they get talked about a fair bit and then you'll see the same names on multiple lists. I'm sure even you have heard of most if not all of those dozen bands I just typed. Unlike most of the albums you'll see on my list for instance, where most of the names will mean next to nothing to guys like you, (guys who aren't goat specific) unless you might just happen to remember me posting some of them earlier in the year.

Well, yes we have had these circular conversations many times. Now,  your point seems to be that consensus albums are irrelevant because, by and large, they are not good to you. Ok, so at one level we are each the decider of our own musical universe.

So,  let me just stipulate, as with any argument, you have to agree on terms. And I think we have different understandings of basic vocabulary. What you call "good", I would call personal genre preferences or tastes which is different than being a critically good album.

I just mean, many music fans might agree that Pink Floyd DSOTM and Wish You Were Here or Sabbath's Master of Reality or RTL or Left Hand Path or Peace Sells or A Blaze in the Northern Sky or Number of the Beast or Human or.....are objectively good albums but any of those might not be an album you or I  personally enjoy for any number of reasons. But most metal fans would agree that those are significant "good" albums that have stood the test of time. Sure, you can argue that those and other albums that get placed on list after list are fairly arbitrary but nonetheless, they have held up overall. 

In fact, when you shared your death metal classic list of albums several years ago with me, most of the albums can be found on any number of classic DM lists. Those are, in fact, predominantly consensus albums. The difference is that they are consensus albums in a genre with stylistic tropes you happen to like!  

You often, come in and say, (paraphrase), well all of you mainstreamers just pile on these big platform commercial albums and claim they're great albums. But I think they suck. So if they're not good to me, then they're not any good because my opinion is all that matters at the end of the day. 

In these circular debates we have, you basically write off many consensus metal albums as not being "good" because stylistically they don't fit into your criteria for being underground, raw, filthy albums. 

While there are certainly truly mainstream albums (I.e. Slipknot-which I haven't heard and could be great I suppose) that are a joke,  I was simply making the point that there are usually a handful of albums IMO in any given year that get a buzz that are actually worth the hype as being good albums.

Now within that framework, I know that are many albums in genres that I'm not  going to care for. Filters are essential for me to sort out the thousand points of light rather than taking blind stabs in the dark. 

We both know, having lived through all of the metal eras, that heavy music has evolved into a myriad of sub genres and is much more diverse than it was in the late 70's and 80's when we were coming up. So today, you get metal media outlets that gush over albums from in a wide range of styles that any one of us may or may not care for. That has nothing to do with the quality....it's just preference. 

Generally, I don't like most of today's power metal and tech death or what you might call modern death metal. So, I'm not fond of the new Blind Guardian or Hath albums. That doesn't mean they're not good, they just don't appeal to me. But, I can recognize that the Ashenspire or Wormrot are well written and played with creativity and great imagination. I'm just not interested in listening to them right now. This, of course, is why, you can have many different AOTY lists with no cross over. 

I think what you do is look for as many albums as you can in a given year that adhere to certain criteria. If the boxes are checked, than you purchase. You like them. Great. You use adjectives like riffy, filthy, raw.  Those are what I'd call production choices or stylistic descriptions. They don't say anything about the quality of the album anymore than if I describe a Fu Manchu  stoner album as being psychadelic with a big fuzzy guitar tone. They may tick boxes and still not be a "good" album, but I happen to like the album because I like Fu Manchu but I can still recognize In Search Of....isn't a great album, but I happen to like it. 

It's probably true that a number of the albums that have become classics in the 00's have elements that allow them to transcend genre. These are albums that I might describe as being memorable, with tracks that I can differentiate from each other, that have their own character and separate themselves from other albums or bands within their same genre. Albums that have replay value. Albums whose track feature variety and may have an album arc from front to back. And, these kinds of albums due to those characteristics probably are more accessible.

And, yet many of the albums from your black and death lists also have many of those things-memorable tracks, unique character, differentiation and that oh so squishy X factor-good song writing. They have held the test of time. Some works of art simply have an undefinable sum of their parts that you can't put your finger on-they are simply  exquisite.  

Beyond that, I'd simply point out that there are tons of metal fans that are open to both sides of the coin-the popular metal albums of a given year and more underground offerings. 

And, in my anecdotal experience, many of the more underground picks that make the grade in a given year-Undeath, Cerebral Rot, Undergang, Lamp of Murmuur, Profane Order, Of Feather and bone, Tomb Mold before they broke out of the cave, Nocroblood, etc., etc.- have a much greater chance for being keepers for me due to consensus. 

And when I say consensus, I also include on these forums vs. a random outlier pick on your list or any other "goat list" especially when it's one of 50-100 albums of 300-500 purchased by a single individual that I have a biased skepticism towards. And my bias is that is too many albums for any one individual to objectively analyze and the priority in my view is quantity based on genre tropes vs quality. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, markm said:

...a lot of stuff

 

Most of which I agree with. It all boils down to emotion - how you feel in general and how you feel on the day. Yep, I like intellectually analysing music and I write some stuff that is very theoretically clever (I think), but my wife at best calls it interesting.

I spent yesterday afternoon constructing a playlist for a car trip we will be off on today of non-metal music that makes me feel happy, or sad,  or wistful or nostalgic and her too I hope. This music is good because I like it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, markm said:

Well, yes we have had these circular conversations many times. Now,  your point seems to be that consensus albums are irrelevant because, by and large, they are not good to you. Ok, so at one level we are each the decider of our own musical universe.

So,  let me just stipulate, as with any argument, you have to agree on terms. And I think we have different understandings of basic vocabulary. What you call "good", I would call personal genre preferences or tastes which is different than being a critically good album.

I just mean, many music fans might agree that Pink Floyd DSOTM and Wish You Were Here or Sabbath's Master of Reality or RTL or Left Hand Path or Peace Sells or A Blaze in the Northern Sky or Number of the Beast or Human or.....are objectively good albums but any of those might not be an album you or I  personally enjoy for any number of reasons. But most metal fans would agree that those are significant "good" albums that have stood the test of time. Sure, you can argue that those and other albums that get placed on list after list are fairly arbitrary but nonetheless, they have held up overall. 

In fact, when you shared your death metal classic list of albums several years ago with me, most of the albums can be found on any number of classic DM lists. Those are, in fact, predominantly consensus albums. The difference is that they are consensus albums in a genre with stylistic tropes you happen to like!  

You often, come in and say, (paraphrase), well all of you mainstreamers just pile on these big platform commercial albums and claim they're great albums. But I think they suck. So if they're not good to me, then they're not any good because my opinion is all that matters at the end of the day. 

In these circular debates we have, you basically write off many consensus metal albums as not being "good" because stylistically they don't fit into your criteria for being underground, raw, filthy albums. 

While there are certainly truly mainstream albums (I.e. Slipknot-which I haven't heard and could be great I suppose) that are a joke,  I was simply making the point that there are usually a handful of albums IMO in any given year that get a buzz that are actually worth the hype as being good albums.

Now within that framework, I know that are many albums in genres that I'm not  going to care for. Filters are essential for me to sort out the thousand points of light rather than taking blind stabs in the dark. 

We both know, having lived through all of the metal eras, that heavy music has evolved into a myriad of sub genres and is much more diverse than it was in the late 70's and 80's when we were coming up. So today, you get metal media outlets that gush over albums from in a wide range of styles that any one of us may or may not care for. That has nothing to do with the quality....it's just preference. 

Generally, I don't like most of today's power metal and tech death or what you might call modern death metal. So, I'm not fond of the new Blind Guardian or Hath albums. That doesn't mean they're not good, they just don't appeal to me. But, I can recognize that the Ashenspire or Wormrot are well written and played with creativity and great imagination. I'm just not interested in listening to them right now. This, of course, is why, you can have many different AOTY lists with no cross over. 

I think what you do is look for as many albums as you can in a given year that adhere to certain criteria. If the boxes are checked, than you purchase. You like them. Great. You use adjectives like riffy, filthy, raw.  Those are what I'd call production choices or stylistic descriptions. They don't say anything about the quality of the album anymore than if I describe a Fu Manchu  stoner album as being psychadelic with a big fuzzy guitar tone. They may tick boxes and still not be a "good" album, but I happen to like the album because I like Fu Manchu but I can still recognize In Search Of....isn't a great album, but I happen to like it. 

It's probably true that a number of the albums that have become classics in the 00's have elements that allow them to transcend genre. These are albums that I might describe as being memorable, with tracks that I can differentiate from each other, that have their own character and separate themselves from other albums or bands within their same genre. Albums that have replay value. Albums whose track feature variety and may have an album arc from front to back. And, these kinds of albums due to those characteristics probably are more accessible.

And, yet many of the albums from your black and death lists also have many of those things-memorable tracks, unique character, differentiation and that oh so squishy X factor-good song writing. They have held the test of time. Some works of art simply have an undefinable sum of their parts that you can't put your finger on-they are simply  exquisite.  

Beyond that, I'd simply point out that there are tons of metal fans that are open to both sides of the coin-the popular metal albums of a given year and more underground offerings. 

And, in my anecdotal experience, many of the more underground picks that make the grade in a given year-Undeath, Cerebral Rot, Undergang, Lamp of Murmuur, Profane Order, Of Feather and bone, Tomb Mold before they broke out of the cave, Nocroblood, etc., etc.- have a much greater chance for being keepers for me due to consensus. 

And when I say consensus, I also include on these forums vs. a random outlier pick on your list or any other "goat list" especially when it's one of 50-100 albums of 300-500 purchased by a single individual that I have a biased skepticism towards. And my bias is that is too many albums for any one individual to objectively analyze and the priority in my view is quantity based on genre tropes vs quality. 

 

 

This is why I have started referring to my list as "best things I bought/heard this year". I dropped out of the new release rat race. Even though I still buy a vomit inducing amount of music every year, it's half what I did even 3 years ago. I don't regret any of the choices, but when I think back I know that I really didn't spend the sort of time with any of them to fully support any as superior in any other way than "I liked this more than that" nor was I truly spending quality time with anything because I was constantly on the hunt. I made a conscious decision to take a more moderate approach while also pushing myself outside of those meat/potatoes box tickers I had become comfortable buying without a second thought. Has brought back a good bit of personal enjoyment I think I lost for a bit.

There have been years where GG and I have had 95% overlap and those like this year where it was zero or near. Doesn't change anything. I know he's the authority on all things goat, so if that's what I'm after, imma hit his list up first. Or Surge's, or Hungdog whenever he drops by. I always find great shit, but they never change my opinion on what was the best I heard that year, just confirm that I missed something damn good I might've enjoyed had I discovered it earlier. I think I have a good handle on the tastes here of the regulars to gauge what will perk my interest and a decent idea about specific major platforms or writers. Usually though, I just do a quick review of the most interesting and then move on with my life. This time of year is sensory overload and I tend to detach a little after 2-3 months of heavy listening/evaluation. Need to normalize a bit.

How we define best is a very personal thing. Some may look at technical details, others just the emotional reaction to particular music, and others still look at the consensus of major platforms or forums and assumes that they know best and go along with it. No answer is wrong, just maybe not the one we would give ourselves. The whole thing is very personal and that's ultimately the problem with judging what's "best". Hell even guys I've known my whole life growing up exposed to the same music, shows, and experiences vary dramatically from year to year on what we agree on. Without an objective standard, there's no possibility that could even happen. So the best we can do is to reevaluate those that we disagree with our trusted advisors on to see what we missed or scan the lists of those who usually have good tastes in our opinion for something interesting. That's all the EOTY exercise is for me anymore.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, markm said:

Well, yes we have had these circular conversations many times. Now, your point seems to be that consensus albums are irrelevant because, by and large, they are not good to you. Ok, so at one level we are each the decider of our own musical universe.

That's all I'm really saying Mark. I need to be the decider for me. I can't ever take anyone else's word for anything because I am a control freak to the utmost degree. But I wouldn't presume to decide what's good for anyone else. Therefore, consensus albums are irrelevant to me, but they are clearly not irrelevant to you. And that's fine. I know I bust your chops about this a lot but I do understand that a lot of people do care about what others think of stuff, and that knowledge helps them form their own opinions. This goes against everything I believe in. I would rather listen to an album for myself and form my own opinions before I've heard any info at all regarding what the consensus opinion might be. After I've heard and digested an album a little bit then I might be interested in hearing others' opinions and seeing how they compare to my own. 

So, let me just stipulate, as with any argument, you have to agree on terms. And I think we have different understandings of basic vocabulary. What you call "good", I would call personal genre preferences or tastes which is different than being a critically good album.

I don't even really understand the concept of critically or objectively good albums. Or I guess I should say I understand the theory, but I completely and absolutely reject it. Like beauty, I believe "good" is completely in the mind/ears/eyes of the beholder. When it comes to music "good" can mean widely varying things to different people because we all have our own personal set of criteria for evaluating music that is unique to each of us. What's true for you might not be true for me and visa-versa because of our very different set of criteria for evaluating music. I disagree with your assertion that what I call "good" is simply my genre preference, because even if we stay within my preferred genres there are many good and many not as good as well as many really bad albums. So as I said to Jon earlier, for me to like something and consider it "good" I need it to both adhere to my preferred genre specifications and also to be good. Either one of those things without the other does me no good. Obviously what I call "good" is rarely going to match up to what gets critically acclaimed because the critics and I are using an entirely different set of criteria to evaluate the same music.

I just mean, many music fans might agree that Pink Floyd DSOTM and Wish You Were Here or Sabbath's Master of Reality or RTL or Left Hand Path or Peace Sells or A Blaze in the Northern Sky or Number of the Beast or Human or.....are objectively good albums but any of those might not be an album you or I  personally enjoy for any number of reasons. But most metal fans would agree that those are significant "good" albums that have stood the test of time. Sure, you can argue that those and other albums that get placed on list after list are fairly arbitrary but nonetheless, they have held up overall. 

Again, I'll have to refer you back to what I said in my previous post. Basically all of these widely heralded and agreed upon "consensus" albums are going to be "good" to somebody, they have after all been created by professional musicians and we know they've all sold millions of copies. The more relevant question (to me) is do they sound good to me. Because that's all that matters to me at the end fo the day. All these classic and very iconic album titles you've named here are clearly considered "good" by a very large number of people. I myself have owned every single one of those 9 albums. But does that mean that these particular albums are any better to me than some other albums I own which are less widely acclaimed but sound much better to me? Or for example if let's say Master of Puppets is more critically acclaimed than Ride the Lightning, but I personally prefer RtL hands down every day of the week. Should I be forced to accept that MoP is the "better" album because that's the consensus opinion? No I do not. But you certainly can, that's entirely up to you. 

In fact, when you shared your death metal classic list of albums several years ago with me, most of the albums can be found on any number of classic DM lists. Those are, in fact, predominantly consensus albums. The difference is that they are consensus albums in a genre with stylistic tropes you happen to like!  

Well obviously I'm going to agree that consensus albums are good when I happen to like them myself. Not quite sure what point you're trying to make here. Surely you do understand that there were just so many less extreme metal bands back then 30 years ago when the sub-genre was still in its infancy. You're always gonna see a lot more agreement among different people about metal albums from 30 or 40 years ago because there were only so many death metal bands in existence back in 1992. So we're all basically listening to all the exact same records from that era. There are only going to be so many hidden gems that flew under the radar to be found from 1992. Unlike today when many hundreds of death metal albums are released each year, no one could possibly listen to them all. So everyone's best of lists of the modern era albums are going to be drastically different with little to no overlap, while the classic 90's lists will have a lot of overlap. But if you'll remember, I left off a bunch of "general consensus" albums when I made that "classic early 90's death metal albums" list for you all those years ago, because I don't personally care for them. Morbid Angel, Deicide, Suffocation, Cannibal Corpse, Gorguts, Monstosity... these bands would appear on many people's classic death metal albums lists, probably more often than not, but I would never have them on mine because I don't like these bands. If I were to tell you that Morbid Angel sucks the big one, you'd understand that's just my opinion, right? And you wouldn't let someone else's opinion preclude or prohibit you from listening to these bands if you found that you happened to enjoy their music, right?

You often, come in and say, (paraphrase), well all of you mainstreamers just pile on these big platform commercial albums and claim they're great albums. But I think they suck. So if they're not good to me, then they're not any good because my opinion is all that matters at the end of the day. 

But what you seem to be missing here Mark, is that there are several implied to me's in that sentence that I feel should go without saying. So that sentence should read: "If they're not good to me then they're not any good to me because my opinion is all that matters to me at the end of the day." I'm not basing my album purchases on what others may think of a given album, rather upon my assesment only. Make sense? When I declare something to be "garbage" or whatever derogatory term I might use, I'm not declaring it to be such for anyone else other than me. I get that other people like things that I don't like and visa-versa. When we give our opinions about music here on the forum I should think it's understood by all that these are just our own personal opinions, nothing more. When have you ever seen more than 2 or 3 of us all agree unanimously about an album? It could theoretically happen, but it doesn't happen very often.

In these circular debates we have, you basically write off many consensus metal albums as not being "good" because stylistically they don't fit into your criteria for being underground, raw, filthy albums. 

Yes. I "write off" things that I don't like. Don't we all? I'm sure you've written off many albums that I've declared to be "killer" or "badass" because they don't fit into your criteria for what's good, whatever that may be.

While there are certainly truly mainstream albums (i.e. Slipknot-which I haven't heard and could be great I suppose) that are a joke, I was simply making the point that there are usually a handful of albums IMO in any given year that get a buzz that are actually worth the hype as being good albums.

Worth the hype for you, and possibly for many other people as well, but not neccessarily for me or for anyone else. Something could be really good to you and an absolute joke to me or visa-versa. Seems like your angling back to the concept of objectively "good" albums which I have already dismissed. 

Now within that framework, I know that are many albums in genres that I'm not  going to care for. Filters are essential for me to sort out the thousand points of light rather than taking blind stabs in the dark. 

We both know, having lived through all of the metal eras, that heavy music has evolved into a myriad of sub genres and is much more diverse than it was in the late 70's and 80's when we were coming up. So today, you get metal media outlets that gush over albums from in a wide range of styles that any one of us may or may not care for. That has nothing to do with the quality....it's just preference. 

There is no objective quality, everything comes down to preference. Always. We all have stuff we know we won't like without even having to hear it. Stuff that we've decided is not even worthy of consideration. People just don't like when that standard is applied by others to something they happen to really like a lot. It's all fun and games as long as we're all ragging on the same shit that we can mostly all agree is garbage, like nu-metal, power metal or metalcore or what have you.

Generally, I don't like most of today's power metal and tech death or what you might call modern death metal. So, I'm not fond of the new Blind Guardian or Hath albums. That doesn't mean they're not good, they just don't appeal to me. But, I can recognize that the Ashenspire or Wormrot are well written and played with creativity and great imagination. I'm just not interested in listening to them right now. This, of course, is why, you can have many different AOTY lists with no cross over.

Does it bother you when people (like me) don't seem to recognize that something they absolutely hate may have value to someone else? If I really can't stand something, why must I verbally acknowledge that it may indeed have great value to someone else? Doesn't that simply go without saying? Even the worst pop music record or metalcore or power metal or nu-metal or groove metal or tech death or war metal or whatever it might be that any of us can't stand - will have value to somebody. I've already stipulated to the fact that almost everything will be considered "good" and be enjoyed by somebody somewhere, even if it has no value whatsoever to me. I just don't feel the need to provide that same disclaimer over and over for every single album I report that I can't stand.

I think what you do is look for as many albums as you can in a given year that adhere to certain criteria. If the boxes are checked, than you purchase. You like them. Great. You use adjectives like riffy, filthy, raw.  Those are what I'd call production choices or stylistic descriptions. They don't say anything about the quality of the album anymore than if I describe a Fu Manchu  stoner album as being psychadelic with a big fuzzy guitar tone. They may tick boxes and still not be a "good" album, but I happen to like the album because I like Fu Manchu but I can still recognize In Search Of....isn't a great album, but I happen to like it. 

If there's one thing I want you to take away from this manifesto I'm writing: Everything that checks the filth box is not going to sound "good" to me. There are tons and tons of shitty albums in the filth category! Likewise everything "metal" that I can recognize on some level is "good" will not appeal to me if it doesn't check the right filth boxes. I am attempting to chose albums that sound good to me from the subset of albums that are appropriately filthy and raw. I discard anything that's too clean or too polished or too dissonant or too techy or too weird. But I also discard lots of raw filthy stuff that just doesn't do it for me. And believe it or not I pass on a lot more albums than I accept, even just within the subset of albumns that are raw and filthy. It's like if I say I have a thing for redheads, that doesn't mean I'll just take any old random redhead off the street, I still have a selection process I'll use to filter them. But I'll generally pass on the blondes even if I think they're pretty and can recognize that most other dudes would probably find them attractive. Because blondes just aren't my thing.

It's probably true that a number of the albums that have become classics in the 00's have elements that allow them to transcend genre. These are albums that I might describe as being memorable, with tracks that I can differentiate from each other, that have their own character and separate themselves from other albums or bands within their same genre. Albums that have replay value. Albums whose track feature variety and may have an album arc from front to back. And, these kinds of albums due to those characteristics probably are more accessible.

And, yet many of the albums from your black and death lists also have many of those things-memorable tracks, unique character, differentiation and that oh so squishy X factor-good song writing. They have held the test of time. Some works of art simply have an undefinable sum of their parts that you can't put your finger on-they are simply exquisite.  

Right, but we still all have our own personal tastes and we aren't all going to agree on which albums have the good songwriting or that squishy X-factor. For example look at me and Deadovic. On the surface we both seem to have very similar criteria for what we're looking for from our music and what we think is good, as well as what kinds of things we know we don't like. But yet we hate so much of each other's music. We agree on maybe 5% at best. It all comes down to preference and taste. The works of art that we think have that undefinable exquisiteness are going to be different for everyone. That's why we go to the trouble of making lists because we all like such radically different shit.  

Beyond that, I'd simply point out that there are tons of metal fans that are open to both sides of the coin-the popular metal albums of a given year and more underground offerings. 

Isn't that just so wonderful for them. Wouldn't it be so much easier for me to find new music if I was just open to everything?

And, in my anecdotal experience, many of the more underground picks that make the grade in a given year-Undeath, Cerebral Rot, Undergang, Lamp of Murmuur, Profane Order, Of Feather and Bone, Tomb Mold before they broke out of the cave, Nocroblood, etc., etc.- have a much greater chance for being keepers for me due to consensus. 

That's cool man, but unfortunately the whole general consensus thing just doesn't work for me. I do like all those bands you just mentioned, but I definitely wouldn't consider them to be the best of the best of the goatilicious offerings from their respective years. Not hardly. I need to select everything for myself on a case by case basis according to how it sounds to me and how it makes me feel. The FOMO is very strong in me. I trust no one else's taste or judgement. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night wondering what if the best album of the year or the best album of the entire decade (imho obviously) was out there somewhere and I missed out on it because it wasn't on anyone's goat metal consensus list. The handful of albums each year that mean the absolute most to me, like my top 3, or my top 5, are not usually going to appear on any of these general consensus lists. Not even the underground filth-centric ones (if there even were such a thing). No one can decide for me and I don't know what I'm gonna like until I hear it. This general consensus method obviously works just fine for you, so alll I can say is just go with it my brother. Keep doing what you've been doing.

And when I say consensus, I also include on these forums vs. a random outlier pick on your list or any other "goat list" especially when it's one of 50-100 albums of 300-500 purchased by a single individual that I have a biased skepticism towards. And my bias is that is too many albums for any one individual to objectively analyze and the priority in my view is quantity based on genre tropes vs quality. 

You are absolutely entitled to your skepticism my friend. I don't think I've ever posted a top 100 end of year list, pretty sure 50 was my biggest one ever and even that was only one time, 2017. But if you really think 40 or 50 metal albums from a given year is too many to wrap your head around then feel free to ignore my list and get your goaty picks from other lists you're less skeptical about. But it seems to me that a dude like you will also probably have amassed 40 or 50 albums that mean an awful lot to you by the end of each year (or at least 30+) it's just that yours won't all neccessarily be metal, certainly not all black and death metal. Your 40 or 50 are going to be spread across a lot more different genres both in and out of metal or even classical or jazz or witchy folk doom or whatever and they're probably going to be spread across more different years of release as well. And that's fine. But the idea that no one could possibly have found 50 albums they love by the end of the year is just nonsense to me. Of course we can! I think you just don't understand how anyone could be happy limiting themselves to such a small number of metal sub-genres as I do because that's not your way. You seem to feel it's important to diversify and grab a little bit of a lot of different things. Alright, more power to you sir. But the way I see it, I don't choose what I'm going to like each year, it basically chooses me. When I get that visceral response to an album then I know it's gonna be a keeper. I simply like what I like as we all do, but I never really know what it's going to be (even though I have a pretty good idea what it's not going to be) until I find it. Last decade or so the majority of my best finds have been black, death, black/death, black/thrash, death/thrash and hc/crust because that's what gives me that visceral response I seek, and I'm not going to apologize for that. But no one is trying to get you to do it any differently, you've gotta do you. 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, navybsn said:

This is why I have started referring to my list as "best things I bought/heard this year". I dropped out of the new release rat race. Even though I still buy a vomit inducing amount of music every year, it's half what I did even 3 years ago. I don't regret any of the choices, but when I think back I know that I really didn't spend the sort of time with any of them to fully support any as superior in any other way than "I liked this more than that" nor was I truly spending quality time with anything because I was constantly on the hunt. I made a conscious decision to take a more moderate approach while also pushing myself outside of those meat/potatoes box tickers I had become comfortable buying without a second thought. Has brought back a good bit of personal enjoyment I think I lost for a bit.

 

 

Yes, and I have definitely noticed you posting many more albums outside of the meat and potatoes that I associated you with when we first met at M-F. At one point, I remember thinking, for a goat dude, Navy is pretty damn diverse in his tastes!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

Goatwhore - Angels Hung From The Arches Of Heaven

 

Seeing them live tomorrow night again for the billionth time. Small club with a capacity around 100 which is always better for them imo. Big venues just don't jive well for some reason. Not really one of my favorite bands, but fuck it's a show and local to boot.

@markm, I've always had pretty diverse tastes thank to a classical music training in my youth. Bluegrass to black metal as I say. I've been further down the goat hole at times like when we first ran across each other in 15-16 or whenever, but less so these days. Maybe I've reached saturation or maybe nothing has come along to get me excited. These days I'm looking for stuff with more variety of sounds which is something I've always loved since I was a lad. Don't worry, I still ❤️ Satan the mostest, but not sure how much I want second wave Chilean stink filth on repeat every day. As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life. This ain't no monogamous relationship...I'm a playa.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

39 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

OK, I'm about ready to relinquish the arm wrestling contest and say uncle. I have a couple of final points. One is, I don't use consensus for everything. Any number of albums I get, come randomly to me, I see a review or a list of new releases or a recommendation or  I stalk some of the regulars here on my Bandcamp feed. But I do look at lists and reviews towards the end of the road to get an idea of albums I might want to check out due to the sheer volume of material released in a given year.

The other point that I don't think I have the energy or ability to precisely articulate has to do with with relative truth vs absolute truth. Opinions will vary. But there are objective standards when it comes to evaluating art that aren't completely random, arbitrary or a matter of individual whim. Of course, it all comes down to personal opinion ultimately. But personal opinion can be informed by education, knowledge, training, etc.

When Father Alabaster looks at art, as a professional artist, he will be able to see and understand things due to his training, and skill that I lack even though I will also have works of art that I like or dislike. His experience watching the Van Goh immersive exhibit, I would assume would be different than mine, even though I greatly enjoyed the exhibit in D.C. because of his experience. His ability to evaluate and pass judgement on a work of art will be different than mine. 

My wife and I saw King Lear with Hal Holbrook in L.A. My wife enjoyed it, but I studied it in a Shakespeare course in college and I performed in several Shakespeare plays. Lear is a tough play. It helps to have a good teacher point things out about the time, culture, and multiple layers of metaphor before seeing a performance to enhance your appreciation and enjoyment and to make an evaluation on the performance and production. 

Surely some level of objectivity can also be used when evaluating  music.  

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...