What Are You Listening To?

[JonoBlade]

12 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Last Queen album I recognize any songs from is Jazz, Nov 1978 when I was a senior in high school. So that's the last true Queen album for me. Didn't even know they had an album Innuendo, I had to look that up.

£30 is $38 USD ($56 AUD) and I honestly don't understand why so many people are willing to pay so much more for vinyl when CD's don't get skips and pops and are so easy to rip allowing you to take your music on the go. I remember buying vinyl in the late 80's to around 1990 and the US releases were generally about $10 while the imports were more, from $12 to about $15 or occasionally even a little more. Naturally much of what I wanted was imports, even many American bands' albums were imports for us which pissed me off at the time.

I meant to pick up on a similar Queen comment from ages ago. I'd argue that the first, true and best phase of Queen was '73 to '75 when they released 4 albums. From A Day at the Races onwards there was a slide towards more crowd pleasing tunes. By 1980 and The Game they were doing Dragon Attack and Don't Try Suicide. And using keyboards. A Kind of Magic is pretty awesome (like a few bona fide heavy metal tracks + only one or two clunkers). But they were a spent force. Innuendo does have some good songs...well it is bookended by good tracks. When you're writing songs about your cat pissing on the sofa, there's not that much further to fall.

You mentioned hating Killer Queen. Yeah, ok, but it is a great piano driven song with no synthesisers which gets my vote. Overplayed sure. Nothing is as overplayed as Bohemian Rhapsody but it still gets me every time. A Night at the Opera is a perfect album, which is annoying because it's so bloody popular. Like rating TBA as best Metallica album.

I assume people buy new vinyl either because they have bad eyesight and need the full 12" to see the artwork or are profoundly stupid. 

This is another thing bands should speak out about (along with Spotify being shit). I.e. be honest about what is the best and most efficient way for you as a fan to compensate them. My guess is that digital is far more profitable. I am now used to $10 for a download from bandcamp which is probably more pure profit that selling a $20/$25 + postage vinyl record which had a six month lead time, is made from dead dinosaurs and plantation trees established over old growth forests (sleeve + mailer). It makes my skin crawl that downloads are often more expensive than CDs. The world is geared to being as wasteful as possible.

Mind you, there's far worse things to spend your money on. It is potentially a collectible time capsule. 

[Arioch]

Tankard - Chemical Invasion (1987)

I'm sorry (just in case) if you think I've been listening to a lot of old records lately, but it just so happens that I know them well and manage to love them again and again despite the years.

As we say in France: "C'est dans les vieux pots qu'on fait la meilleure soupe" (which translates as: it's in old pots that you make the best soup), implying that the best is to be found in old records.

IMHO.

 

[AlSymerz]

38 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Yeah I get all that man. But not liking black metal has become somewhat of a cliché, there are tons of metalheads out there who say they like almost any sub-genre to some extent except for black metal. And maybe hardcore. So I'm used to people not liking the same stuff I like, I've totally come to expect that most people I run into aren't going to be into black metal at all, even if they listen to mostly metal. And that's cool because we've all got things we don't like, that's normal, so what? So whether you're joking or serious or rubbishing me it really makes no difference, because I fully expect everyone to be negative toward back metal, it doesn't bother me or even phase me, because that's the norm. I'm actually really surprised when I run into anyone who digs black metal or knows any bands at all beyond the most obvious and superficial first 5 Norwegian 2nd wavers or maybe some flavor of the month bands that I would hate.  

 

There is certain genres that lend themselves to those sorts of comments, for me it's BM, for you it's PM, but most of us here can all find common ground is rubbishing metalcore!

40 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I've never before heard rubbishing used as a verb, but I like that, think I might use that. I've used just plain "rubbish" with my friends on the text thread a couple of times and they just about fell over laughing because no one says that here, although everyone knows what it means.

It's been around since Adam played fullback for Jerusalem, but it's mainly used now days because every other fucking thing offends someone.

 

[Arioch]

Testament - The Legacy (1987)

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

The Legacy is a near perfect album. I don't blame Testament at all for never quite being able to make it's equal. There were certainly worthy albums that followed, but that one just feels like an insanely unlikely confluence of circumstance and good fortune produced something unrepeatable and awesome. 

NP:▶︎ Arcane Mountain Cult (2022) | Aldaaron (bandcamp.com)

Works for me. It's a little more Sacramentum than it is Dissection, but lucky for me I like both.

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

  

I've never before heard rubbishing used as a verb

[Arioch]

4 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

The Legacy is a near perfect album. I don't blame Testament at all for never quite being able to make it's equal. There were certainly worthy albums that followed, but that one just feels like an insanely unlikely confluence of circumstance and good fortune produced something unrepeatable and awesome. 

I couldn't agree more. The New Order, Practice what you Preach, Souls of Black and those that followed didn't achieve that degree of perfection and 'good timing'.

Testament - Souls of Black (1990)

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

3 minutes ago, Arioch said:

 

Testament - Souls of Black (1990)

Ah. I always forget about Souls of Black for some reason. Good stuff indeed.

[Arioch]

Tourniquet - Pathogenic Occular Dissonance (1993)

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

5 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

I meant to pick up on a similar Queen comment from ages ago. I'd argue that the first, true and best phase of Queen was '73 to '75 when they released 4 albums. From A Day at the Races onwards there was a slide towards more crowd pleasing tunes. By 1980 and The Game they were doing Dragon Attack and Don't Try Suicide. And using keyboards. A Kind of Magic is pretty awesome (like a few bona fide heavy metal tracks + only one or two clunkers). But they were a spent force. Innuendo does have some good songs...well it is bookended by good tracks. When you're writing songs about your cat pissing on the sofa, there's not that much further to fall.

You mentioned hating Killer Queen. Yeah, ok, but it is a great piano driven song with no synthesisers which gets my vote. Overplayed sure. Nothing is as overplayed as Bohemian Rhapsody but it still gets me every time. A Night at the Opera is a perfect album, which is annoying because it's so bloody popular. Like rating TBA as best Metallica album.

I assume people buy new vinyl either because they have bad eyesight and need the full 12" to see the artwork or are profoundly stupid. 

This is another thing bands should speak out about (along with Spotify being shit). I.e. be honest about what is the best and most efficient way for you as a fan to compensate them. My guess is that digital is far more profitable. I am now used to $10 for a download from bandcamp which is probably more pure profit that selling a $20/$25 + postage vinyl record which had a six month lead time, is made from dead dinosaurs and plantation trees established over old growth forests (sleeve + mailer). It makes my skin crawl that downloads are often more expensive than CDs. The world is geared to being as wasteful as possible.

Mind you, there's far worse things to spend your money on. It is potentially a collectible time capsule. 

Well Jon, I think we've already established that you and I have always been seeking very different things from our music. There were things I listened to in the 70's when I was a kid desperately searching for anything hard and heavy that I only listened to because it was the 70's and my listening options were so extremely limited. Many things I wouldn't have even looked twice at if heavy metal had existed yet by then. Believe me it was slim pickings for nasty heavy dirty shit you could bang your head to back then. Had Sabbath, but you can't just listen to one band all the time. 

So I owned the first 4 Queen albums in the mid 70's because on each one I'd heard there were maybe a couple of heavy songs or songs with a heavy bridge or something. Like that part towards the end of Bohemian Rhapsody where he challenges us to stone him and spit in his eye and they rock out for about 30 seconds. That's what life was like for me back then as a broke teenager agonizing over spending my limited funds on albums that I hoped might have one or if I was lucky two or three fast heavy tracks on them along with the obligatory 6 or 8 worthless ballads, slow songs and filler tracks. I couldn't listen to many of those 70's albums straight through front to back, I made a lot of mix tapes with just the fast heavy songs from all these different bands and discarded all the rest of the filler.

With Queen, even though they'd shown they had the potential to veer into hard rock territory from time to time, you can't say there's anything really heavy, nasty, gritty or filthy about their music. Quite the opposite in fact, a large portion of it's quite fruity (Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon, Best Friend, Seaside Rendezvous, Killer Queen, Somebody to Love, Crazy Litte Thing...) so needless to say I got bored with them pretty quick, and after the disappointing Night at the Opera I never paid them much attention or bought any more of their stuff. There were a small handful of radio rockers of theirs I enjoyed after '75 though, you know the ones, but I don't know which specific albums they're from. You say you consider Opera to be a 'perfect' album, but for me it boils down to I'm In Love With My Car, Sweet Lady, The Prophet Song and that 30 seconds at the end of Bohemian. I have absolutely no use whatsoever for any of the rest of it. The best Queen album that I can listen to and enjoy most of it without having to skip over too many tracks is Sheer Heart Attack with its 4 outstanding rockers. Still have to at least skip Killer Queen, Lily of the Valley and Leroy Brown though. Rooty tooty fresh and fruity. 

Now you on the other hand were only just born the year Night at the Opera was released, which means you must have had to go back at some point in the late 80's or 90's after heavy metal and thrash metal and maybe even extreme metal had already come into your life to seek out those old 70's Queen records. To each his own as always, but I just don't get that man.

Once heavy metal came along around 1980 I jettisoned most of that older 70's dinosaur rock, basically just kept Zeppelin, Sabbath, Aerosmith, Scorpions, Robin Trower and of course The Ramones. And that Mott album Drive On from '75 I always liked. And I also kept Skynyrd, Hatchet, Blackfoot and ZZ Top for driving around on summer days with the windows down. But then once thrash metal came along '83-'84-'85 I was basically done with the traditional metal and any other rock music I still had lying around within a year or so. It's always been all about the heaviness for me, most of that 70's stuff I listened to in the 70's was just a distraction to pass the time. Stuff I bought because rock music's all there was and all we had to pick from back then, it was the only game in town. But ultimately I found most of it unsatisfying and it just ended up serving as a placeholder until something that was actually hard & heavy could be located to replace it. I probably should have been born 10 or 15 years later in the 70's like you so I could have had the luxury of heavy metal in my teenage years. But I guess it doesn't really matter anymore.

 

Mott - Drive On, UK 1975

 

[MacabreEternal]

Thantifaxath - Hive Mind Narcosis (2023)

 

[Serpentboi1992]

[Thatguy]

11 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

That’s a new one on me, too, never heard another Aussie use. Rubbishing as a verb either.

It must be regional. It's common usage in NSW and apparently in Mexico too.

 

11 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I fully expect everyone to be negative toward back metal,

I like black metal, just not all the BM you put up.

 

13 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

how much she wants to see Taylor Swift when the tour happens

Apparently seeing TS can give you amnesia. That would be the best thing about seeing her, but would make it an even greater waste of money.

NP - AUSTRALIAN ART ORCHESTRA/YOUNG WÄGILAK GROUP - Crossing Roper Bar Volume 2

[AlSymerz]

27 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Apparently seeing TS can give you amnesia. That would be the best thing about seeing her, but would make it an even greater waste of money.

 

That's an official doctor's diagnosis. I certainly wouldn't risk myself to prove it wrong.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, Thatguy said:

I like black metal, just not all the BM you put up.

Yes I do believe that you like some black metal Doc. And I don't want to start a war with you or anything because I do genuinely like and respect you. But truth be known, I would assert that not all, but a sizeable portion of what you consider black metal is not in fact black metal, or at least it's not as far as I'm concerned. Not that there's anything wrong with that, we're all individuals with our own tastes. I also believe musical sub-genres to be something of a personal nature. And really that to me is one of the best things about black metal, that it's not just one specific thing or one specific sound. There's more musical diversity represented by the term "black metal" than almost any other sub-genre I can think of. Even if the parameters for what I look for in black metal are a bit more narrow in scope than what many others are willing to accept, that doesn't mean my way is the only way.

Having said all that, I should also think it's fairly clear that you were not among those I was referring to when I said I fully expect 'everyone' to have negative attitudes toward back metal. You've long ago demonstrated that you're not blanketly opposed to black metal on principle. Anyone that throws the horns for Archgoat is alright in my book. I'm just saying that I generally approach interactions with unknown people assuming they probably won't have an affinity for black metal (since over time that has proven to be far more likely than the converse) and then I allow myself to be pleasantly surprised on those rare occasions when it turns out I was wrong and I've encountered a fellow black metal freak.

[Dead1]

16 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

How much you can cram on an LP is down to how good the guy who cut the vinyl was. But the more you put on, the weaker the sound gets. 

 

Apparently the closer the grooves, the shitter the sound.  So a really long album would have grooves compressed together thus hurting the sound.

14 hours ago, Arioch said:

Tankard - Chemical Invasion (1987)

I'm sorry (just in case) if you think I've been listening to a lot of old records lately, but it just so happens that I know them well and manage to love them again and again despite the years.

As we say in France: "C'est dans les vieux pots qu'on fait la meilleure soupe" (which translates as: it's in old pots that you make the best soup), implying that the best is to be found in old records.

 

I am generally of the same opinion.  I try to get excited about modern stuff and some of it is good, but it is 20th century where I find metal nirvana.

 

Tygers of Pan-Tang - Wildcat

These guys knew how to write riffs!  And Jess Cox's almost punk like vocals make these guys stand out above a lot of NWOBHM.

[Innominate]

Inchiuvatu - Viogna

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

16 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Yes I do believe that you like some black metal Doc. And I don't want to start a war with you or anything because I do genuinely like and respect you. But truth be known, I would assert that not all, but a sizeable portion of what you consider black metal is not in fact black metal, or at least it's not as far as I'm concerned. Not that there's anything wrong with that, we're all individuals with our own tastes. I also believe musical sub-genres to be something of a personal nature. And really that to me is one of the best things about black metal, that it's not just one specific thing or one specific sound. There's more musical diversity represented by the term "black metal" than almost any other sub-genre I can think of. Even if the parameters for what I look for in black metal are a bit more narrow in scope than what many others are willing to accept, that doesn't mean my way is the only way.

Having said all that, I should also think it's fairly clear that you were not among those I was referring to when I said I fully expect 'everyone' to have negative attitudes toward back metal. You've long ago demonstrated that you're not blanketly opposed to black metal on principle. Anyone that throws the horns for Archgoat is alright in my book. I'm just saying that I generally approach interactions with unknown people assuming they probably won't have an affinity for black metal (since over time that has proven to be far more likely than the converse) and then I allow myself to be pleasantly surprised on those rare occasions when it turns out I was wrong and I've encountered a fellow black metal freak.

 

Funny because I agree, there’s a lot of diversity in black metal, but I would say Doom is perhaps the most diverse sub genre.

 

Now because multi quote doesn’t work on my phone Dead by half agree, I think the period I most enjoy depends on the sub genre, thrash Nirvana is the mid late 80s for example, whereas four black metal I would say it’s the early 2000s. Doom never really picked since there are still excellent albums coming from that sub genre to this day, I am a doom, metal fan boy though so of course I’m going to say that.

 

NP: Cradle of Filth - The Principle of Evil Made Flesh
hmm I always forget they have albums that aren’t exactly. Cruelty…

[GoatmasterGeneral]

34 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

Apparently the closer the grooves, the shitter the sound.  So a really long album would have grooves compressed together thus hurting the sound.

Right. The trick is to figure out at what point does the degredation in sound quality (or clarity or fidelity) become enough of a problem that you need to stop and spread the album out over two separate discs. I get that there's a reason most vinyl albums used to stay roughly in the 30 to 48 minute range (15 to 24 minutes per side) because that allows you to maintain optimal fidelity. But since I've seen and owned single albums which run in excess of an hour, meaning that at least one side of the album will have to contain more than 30 minutes of music, that makes me wonder where is the line? If you can do 24 minutes a side with no problem then is 25 such a stretch? 26, 27, 28? I'd be interested to hear someone explain the real difference in sound quality from a 24 minute album side to a 26 or a 27 minute album side, and where the reasonable limit should be. 

 

 

9 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Funny because I agree, there’s a lot of diversity in black metal, but I would say Doom is perhaps the most diverse sub genre.

Now because multi quote doesn’t work on my phone Dead by half agree, I think the period I most enjoy depends on the sub genre, thrash Nirvana is the mid late 80s for example, whereas for black metal I would say it’s the early 2000s. Doom never really peaked since there are still excellent albums coming from that sub genre to this day, I am a doom, metal fan boy though so of course I’m going to say that.

I would not disagree that the term "doom metal" probably covers the most ground of any of the metal sub-genres.

There are still plenty of excellent black metal albums being created to this day as well, but I would never want to get into a pointless "My favorite sub-genre is better than your favorite sub-genre" debate with anyone.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: ▶︎ Quest For the Mighty Riff | VHS (bandcamp.com)

VHS - Quest for the Mighty Riff

The kid up past his bedtime in the early nineties is absolutely elated right now.

[Innominate]

Perversor - Psicomoro

[RelentlessOblivion]

2 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Right. The trick is to figure out at what point does the degredation in sound quality (or clarity or fidelity) become enough of a problem that you need to stop and spread the album out over two separate discs. I get that there's a reason most vinyl albums used to stay roughly in the 30 to 48 minute range (15 to 24 minutes per side) because that allows you to maintain optimal fidelity. But since I've seen and owned single albums which run in excess of an hour, meaning that at least one side of the album will have to contain more than 30 minutes of music, that makes me wonder where is the line? If you can do 24 minutes a side with no problem then is 25 such a stretch? 26, 27, 28? I'd be interested to hear someone explain the real difference in sound quality from a 24 minute album side to a 26 or a 27 minute album side, and where the reasonable limit should be. 

 

 

I would not disagree that the term "doom metal" probably covers the most ground of any of the metal sub-genres.

There are still plenty of excellent black metal albums being created to this day as well, but I would never want to get into a pointless "My favorite sub-genre is better than your favorite sub-genre" debate with anyone.

I wasn’t trying to start a debate, I just find it interesting how personal taste is reflected in our perceptions of certain genres. I’m less clued in to current day BM so can’t really comment.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Abmut - Temphioth Ignis Tremendæ, Chile

 

Pagan Occult Terror - Beyond Death, Sterling Illinois

 

Valosta Varjoon - Boarisch Grattlig, Germany

 

[Dead1]

Exciter - Heavy Metal Maniac

Sodom - Persecution Mania

Stormwitch - Walpurgis Night

[AlSymerz]

Lawnmower Deth - Oh Crikey It's

[Thatguy]

5 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I'd be interested to hear someone explain the real difference in sound quality from a 24 minute album side to a 26 or a 27 minute album side, and where the reasonable limit should be. 

Interesting academic discussion but in the end who gives a flying fuck. Vinyl should be dead and buried.