What Are You Listening To?

[navybsn]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I see you're having a metal day today. 

Ruim - Black Royal Spiritism, bm France/Portugal, hadn't heard this one yet. I've had a pretty high success rate with stuff from Portugal, and there's lots of cool black metal from France so I'm going in. Which reminds me what happened to Arioch? I was getting used to him coming in every morning (my time) like clockwork posting whatever he's listening to for the day. It is August, maybe he's on vacation.

 

It's Blasphemer from Mayhem's new project. Doesn't really sound like the Mayhem albums he played on but you can definitely tell it's him. 

This evening's playlist:

Mayhem - Ordo Ad Chao

Isolert - World in Ruins

VA - True Kings of Norway comp

Cult of Eibon - Black Flame Dominion

Tomb Mold - Manor of Infinite Form

Teitanblood - The Baneful Choir

Horna - Kuoleman Kirjo

Pakkt - To Brocken Heights

Demoncy - Enthroned is the Night

Oath of Cruelty - Summary Execution at Dawn

Nordligblast - Light That is called Darkness 

[AlSymerz]

Werewolves - My Enemies Look And Sound Like Me.

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Dusk Chapel - Astrophysics and Abnormal Activities

▶︎ Astrophysics and Abnormal Activities | Dusk Chapel (bandcamp.com)

I like this. I was on the fence at first, but it did grow on me. I'm kind of surprised a band from Russia was able to wrangle production this slick out of whatever studio they used. I'm too used to viewing Russia as the shrouded land from which unthinkable death metal grotesqueries and icy obscure black metal monoliths emerge. This is neither. There's something to be said for wanting quality studio production to allow your work to stand on it's own merit. There's also no doubt these guys bring some cool hooks to the party. 6.5-8.8/10 adjusted for personal preference.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

14 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Dusk Chapel - Astrophysics and Abnormal Activities

I like this. I was on the fence at first, but it did grow on me. I'm kind of surprised a band from Russia was able to wrangle production this slick out of whatever studio they used. I'm too used to viewing Russia as the shrouded land from which unthinkable death metal grotesqueries and icy obscure black metal monoliths emerge. This is neither. There's something to be said for wanting quality studio production to allow your work to stand on it's own merit. There's also no doubt these guys bring some cool hooks to the party. 6.5-8.8/10 adjusted for personal preference.

6.5-8.8/10 that's quite a range. 8.8 being something you love and find to be list-worthy, or at least in the conversation. 6.5 being something you might listen to once, not buy, and then never come back to it again. It's prog but it's not all weird and obnoxiously prog so I'd probably put it around 6.5 - 7 give or take. Well played, competent and professional sounding record, inoffensive, nothing at all wrong with it, but my head's not banging. Now excuse me while I go in search of some filth. 

 

 

Disgorge - Espousal Bleeding demo, dm Sweden 1994. One of those 2 demos in the 90's then disappeared off the face of the earth bands.

 

Coercion - Forever Dead, dm Sweden 1997. This band got out 3 demos '93 - '94 then 2 albums '97 & '98. Last gasp EP in 2003 then they broke up in '05 and were never heard from again. Good shit though, definitely a must hear for fans of 90's Swedeath.

 

[FatherAlabaster]

Akercocke - Renaissance In Extremis   ...I despise numerical ratings but I give this an easy 9/10. Speaking as a fan of albums. 

 

[AlSymerz]

Instead of numberising the album you should have a discussion about how to pronounce the band's name.

 

[FatherAlabaster]

3 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

Instead of numberising the album you should have a discussion about how to pronounce the band's name.

 

We already did that, get with the times.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

6.5-8.8/10 that's quite a range. 8.8 being something you love and find to be list-worthy, or at least in the conversation. 6.5 being something you might listen to once, not buy, and then never come back to it again. It's prog but it's not all weird and obnoxiously prog so I'd probably put it around 6.5 - 7 give or take. Well played, competent and professional sounding record, inoffensive, nothing at all wrong with it, but my head's not banging. Now excuse me while I go in search of some filth. 

Meant to put 6.5-8.5. The 1-10 thing was always a little ridiculous to me. I understand why it's used since it does help machete through some of the semantic thicket and get where you need to be, but it's also by it's nature very reductive and not all that informative. Maybe if I limited the preferential range to 1.5 so you'd have like a 4-5.5 for something middling and an album like that one would be 6-7.5 Who knows?

NP: Garmskrik - Великанская Зима

▶︎ Великанская Зима (2018) | Garmskrik (bandcamp.com)

I'm kinda bouncing around Soundage Prod.'s roster right now. Most of it's solid. Haven't come across any complete oddballs yet.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Haven't heard this one before. I do own Goat of Mendes because I have a buddy Ricc who's a big 'Cocke lover and he made me listen to them. These guys are obviously very good musicians, like really really good, I get why they're so well loved. There are passages here where I think wow these dudes are absolutely killing it. A band so tight it's like a well oiled machine that can do whatever it wants which is quite impressive. But then they slow it down and hit me with the clean vox and that takes my head right out of it. Some low key dissonant passages that don't work very well for me either, but there's a lot more good than bad here though, for sure. I'm not a huge fan of some of the lead guitar work (do they both play lead or just one of them?) which sounds a bit jazzy/proggy/tweedly-deedly at times which I know is probably a big plus and adds a lot to the music for most people but not for me. Still I'm getting enough out of this to stay with it and keep listening even though I'll probably never listen to this again. Won't try to come up with a silly number but if I did it would definitely be less than a 9, probably have to be less than 8 as well but not less than 7. The foundation is solid, the finishing touches and proggy lead guitar flourishes and not all but some of the clean vox (some of them are actualy ok like the ones on track 7) are the only things keeping this from being Goat-tastic. I don't even mind the brass. Like a lot of things out of my comfort zone it's getting better to me as it goes along and I become immersed in it. Somehow there's only 8 minutes left to go on a 55 minute album, went by pretty quick.

 

Akercocke - Renaissance In Extremis, UK 2017

 

[FatherAlabaster]

8 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Haven't heard this one before. I do own Goat of Mendes because I have a buddy Ricc who's a big 'Cocke lover and he made me listen to them. These guys are obviously very good musicians, like really really good, I get why they're so well loved. There are passages here where I think wow these dudes are absolutely killing it. A band so tight it's like a well oiled machine that can do whatever it wants which is quite impressive. But then they slow it down and hit me with the clean vox and that takes my head right out of it. Some low key dissonant passages that don't work very well for me either, but there's a lot more good than bad here though, for sure. I'm not a huge fan of some of the lead guitar work (do they both play lead or just one of them?) which sounds a bit jazzy/proggy/tweedly-deedly at times which I know is probably a big plus and adds a lot to the music for most people but not for me. Still I'm getting enough out of this to stay with it and keep listening even though I'll probably never listen to this again. Won't try to come up with a silly number but if I did it would definitely be less than a 9, probably have to be less than 8 as well but not less than 7. The foundation is solid, the finishing touches and proggy lead guitar flourishes and not all but some of the clean vox (some of them are actualy ok like the ones on track 7) are the only things keeping this from being Goat-tastic. I don't even mind the brass. Like a lot of things out of my comfort zone it's getting better to me as it goes along and I become immersed in it. Somehow there's only 8 minutes left to go on a 55 minute album, went by pretty quick.

 

Akercocke - Renaissance In Extremis, UK 2017

 

Nice 'cocke. I think Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone is their masterpiece, but Choronzon is chocke full of great stuff as well, and the upside for you is less awkward clean vocals.

On a more General note I wonder how you'd find yourself liking some of this stuff that you say you don't mind but would never listen to again, if you actually listened to it more frequently. I know you're looking for different things than (say) me. I don't usually love stuff like this last Akercocke the first time through; I hear a couple things that grab me and I can tell there's something there for me to come back to. After hearing the promo tracks and the full album once, I wasn't sure if it was going to take. Lo and behold, a couple more listens pulled me in further and now it's a favorite.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Nice 'cocke. I think Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone is their masterpiece, but Choronzon is chocke full of great stuff as well, and the upside for you is less awkward clean vocals.

On a more General note I wonder how you'd find yourself liking some of this stuff that you say you don't mind but would never listen to again, if you actually listened to it more frequently. I know you're looking for different things than (say) me. I don't usually love stuff like this last Akercocke the first time through; I hear a couple things that grab me and I can tell there's something there for me to come back to. After hearing the promo tracks and the full album once, I wasn't sure if it was going to take. Lo and behold, a couple more listens pulled me in further and now it's a favorite.

The (reasonably) short answer is that I have so much other stuff that's more in my usual lane, call it evil goat filth or whatever, that I'm dying to listen to. Music is a lot like sex in that you think if you could only have just a little bit more of it you'd be completely satisfied and satiated. But what actally happens in both cases is the more of it you get the more you want. If there were 48 hours in each day and I had the time to do nothing but listen to music for 47 of them I still wouldn't feel like I had enough time to get to all the music I wanted to get to each day. It's never enough. You'll roll your eyes, but the way I see it every hour spent listening to prog or something that I might not really mind is one hour less I'll have to listen to evil filth of the more straightforward simplistic variety which is the music I love the most.

What some of you guys find static and boring and derivative and been there done that I find comforting. I know you've said more than a few times as a musician that you hate that bands get forced into having to follow the template and stick to the rules of whatever sub-genre they're a part of, often to the point where they feel boxed in and limited by fan expectations. But to me as a fan a great album is a great album even if (or maybe especially if) it's in a very simillar style and feel to a lot of other albums I listen to all the time in that genre. I'm one of those idiots that drive you nuts who wants death metal to sound like what I think of as death metal and black metal to sound like what I think of as black metal.

I will try to explore stuff outside my comfort zone every now and then because I never know when something might unexpectedly click with me. Stranger things have happened. But I don't need or usually want bands to push the envelope and be unpredictable and give me more. I'm looking for new riffs and consistently great execution within the boundaries of the  styles I prefer, not progressiveness or originality. Every now and then  a fairly original band that I think is completely awesome will come along and that's great, another band to listen to. But I don't require that from bands to do something different or original and it's not something I seek out. Just want bands to kick ass, raise the blood pressure and make the head bang and I'm a happy goat. 

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Static Abyss - Aborted From Reality

▶︎ Aborted From Reality | Static Abyss | Peaceville (bandcamp.com)

You know, I never thought to have a whole band with just the doomier parts of Autopsy. Now that I've heard it though, I need more.

[Thatguy]

2 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Haven't heard this one before.etc

Conclusion. Bugger, I rather like it.

CLARET ASH - Worldtorn: Anemois The good bits are good -  and that is most of it - but the acoustic track is just an excuse for someone to show he can play the piano. I've heard plenty of piano.

NP - MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA - Inner Mounting Flame. I haven't listened to this album for a few years. It's interesting to me to remember the hype and even criticism of Billy Cobham's drumming back in the day - he was an unprecedented overpowering rock noisemaker. Nope. He is a very adept but tidy jazz drummer well adapted to the rockier forms of this music.

3 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

We already did that, get with the times.

But we could go again. where's your sense of fun.

[Innominate]

Thin Lizzy - Live and Dangerous

[Hungarino]

21 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Tetragrammacide - Primal Incinerators of Moral Matrix, Indian war metal 2017

 

Impalement - The Impalement, black/death Switzerland 2020

 

Both of these happen to be personal favorites!

These two promo tracks from new  Invultation are monsters, expectations for Feral Legion are now quite high.

Feral Legion | Invultation (bandcamp.com)

 

 

[Dead1]

Demolition Hammer - Epidemic of Violence - two things let this one down.  First run time of 40 minutes is too long and secondly the vocals grate after a while.  I actually think it would have been better with death metal vocals instead of thrash ones (in which case run time is fine).

 

Overkill- I Hear Black - thought I would give this one a second changce but on better speakers.  No change - there is some good stuff here but far too many pointless fillers.  And the falsetto on Undying is fucking irritating.

 

Riot City - Electric Elite - probably one of the best NWOTHM albums out there.

Sodom- Obsessed By Cruelty 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Issolei - Devouring Current, Pt. 2 - Treacherous ascent.

Devouring Current pt.2: Treacherous Ascent | Issolei | TERRATUR POSSESSIONS (bandcamp.com)

Now here's a weird one. Some of this borders on math metal (boy that term feels outdated). I play kind of fast and loose with the rules as to what's black metal and what's not, but even I can't give this one a pass. There's definitely a little black metal in there somewhere, but it's clearly not the focus which is strange since their full length a year later definitely falls on the slower black metal side of things. Nothing mathy about it.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

50 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Some of this borders on math metal (boy that term feels outdated)

No genre name has ever repulsed me harder than mathcore or math metal. Don't know I've ever heard any, or at least not more than for the few seconds it'd take to click it off. That album cover art is pretty cool though, too bad I'll never hear the music inside. Once you said math metal they're dead to me. And I always liked math. Just don't want any in my metal.

 

OBITUARY - Dying of Everything

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

Speaking as a tech junkie I can all but guarantee you would loathe it. That's not a reflection on you. That's just how it is.

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: The Circle - Of Awakening

▶︎ Of Awakening | The Circle | AOP Records (bandcamp.com)

Dudes got a nice growl and a nice singing voice, but something about it doesn't fit. Feels a little awkward like they ended up planning the songs around the clean vocals whether it gelled or not.

[FatherAlabaster]

9 hours ago, Thatguy said:

But we could go again. where's your sense of fun.

Maybe the accent needs to be on the second syllable: uh-KER-kah-kuh. So many options. You and the Orca are right, this is way better than giving albums numerical ratings. 7.5/10 for sure.

[agamerwholovesmetal]

listening to loudwires top 50 thrash albums 

44. Hellish crossfire (1985) - iron angel

Loudwire was doing so well with this list before this entry. We can argue all day which albums up to this point should have been higher or if they should have been put aside to let others shine but every single one still could have an argument as to belong on here. This album does not. it’s a speed metal album not thrash sure it’s more aggressive than most speed metal albums but so is helloween’s walls of jericho but you don't hear anyone say that's thrash do you and this isn’t the only time they would make this mistake. Outside of this the record is still fantastic. It's everything you would want from a German metal album. It's fast paced, intense, and heavier than most of the speed metal coming from the US and UK at the time.

 

43. Nightmare logic (2017) - power trip

Loudwire have given so much praise to this album since it dropped in 2017 even going as far as to call it the best metal album that year and for good reason this album is great and despite how relatively new the album is I absolutely agree with it’s placing on this list. It is the standard that every thrash album since it’s release should be held to.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

8 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Maybe the accent needs to be on the second syllable: uh-KER-kah-kuh. So many options. You and the Orca are right, this is way better than giving albums numerical ratings. 7.5/10 for sure.

Just call them 'Cock. One syllable, no ambiguity whatsoever. Everyone loves saying cock.

 

[FatherAlabaster]

16 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Just call them 'Cock. One syllable, no ambiguity whatsoever. Everyone loves saying cock.

Less fun. Not enough room for creativity. Might as well be a sports fan.

[navybsn]

Ackercocke - Renaissance in Extremist

Ackercocke - Words That Go Unspoken

Malokarpatan - Nordkarpatenland