What Are You Listening To?

[Nasty_Cabbage]

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

HM-2 heavy Swedish style death metal ala Vomitory, but played a whole lot slower and chuggier. And they're actually from Finland which you can hear in the melodic and melancholy solos. I do hear a wee little pinch of Autopsy in here, but I hear plenty more Insomnium as well. This is in no way 'olden timey' my friend, and you would never in a million years be able to fool any real long time death metal fans over 40 into thinking this album was made 30 years ago. I do like this though, even as commercial sounding and devoid of filth as it is, it's still heavy and I might even be tempted to buy it. But this is not OSDM, it's very catchy and has been polished and buffed up to a high glossy sheen with all kinds of very modern sounding production cliches. Clearly modern 21st century death metal on Apostasy, a German label with all kinds of other modern and melodic death metal bands, and they aparently have the money for costly high quality professionally produced music videos.

 

Fooled? No certainly not, but just speaking in terms of the way they use the crisp guitar tones to buoy the whole thing, often shying away from the super low end 'I just ate my guitar and now I don't feel so good' indigestion rumblings, struck me as very distinctly Euro a la Slumber of Sullen Eyes era Demigod. Not meant to fool anyone, but rather to enable a wider scope of transition styles seamlessly in both the Euro and U.S. disciplines of dm songwriting, and in my opinion doing so successfully. You are correct about the slick production, though I don't consider that to be such a big deal. Sort of the way a filmmaker might choose to utilize black and white for their movie, despite it being obviously more modern. It's one of a million choices that make or break the texture and feel of the album. To me it certainly does represent an 'old school' approach even though the guitars are clearly defined beyond what most of the old vanguard would have been able to achieve. A guy could get bogged down forever fretting over the 'perfect' old school sound and miss the forest for the trees. It's a deliberate choice where prior the choice was made out of necessity.

[Hungarino]

Sarcófago - Hate

Its channels like this that make me wish I spent more time on Youtube and less on Bandcamp and Tidal

Death Metal Supply - YouTube

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

2 hours ago, AlSymerz said:

For me it is, but I don't expect you to like either side, partly because you've already formed an opinion of current Maiden but also because it's not 3 minute rinse and repeat songs.

Wait, Robin Williams has been invoked? Jeez guys, I go to take a nap and the conversation goes off the rails. I always liked Mr. Williams more serious roles than some of his later comedies. World's Greatest Dad is one of those movies that I simply do not get tired of. I have to watch who's around when I play it, though. It's a movie that absolutely eviscerates our desire to lionize the dead and a lot of people I know have reacted badly to it.

NP: Invultation - Feral Legion

▶︎ Feral Legion | INVULTATION | Sentient Ruin Laboratories (bandcamp.com)

 Nice organic sounding death metal beatdown. I suggest all check their neck at the door. Occupational hazards and whatnot.

[Hungarino]

The Rite - The Astral Gloom

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Fooled? No certainly not, but just speaking in terms of the way they use the crisp guitar tones to buoy the whole thing, often shying away from the super low end 'I just ate my guitar and now I don't feel so good' indigestion rumblings, struck me as very distinctly Euro a la Slumber of Sullen Eyes era Demigod. Not meant to fool anyone, but rather to enable a wider scope of transition styles seamlessly in both the Euro and U.S. disciplines of dm songwriting, and in my opinion doing so successfully. You are correct about the slick production, though I don't consider that to be such a big deal. Sort of the way a filmmaker might choose to utilize black and white for their movie, despite it being obviously more modern. It's one of a million choices that make or break the texture and feel of the album. To me it certainly does represent an 'old school' approach even though the guitars are clearly defined beyond what most of the old vanguard would have been able to achieve. A guy could get bogged down forever fretting over the 'perfect' old school sound and miss the forest for the trees. It's a deliberate choice where prior the choice was made out of necessity.

You and I are coming from very different backgrounds and perspectives. In addition to all things prog and tech, I also don't listen to hardly any US death metal of the classic 90's Florida variety except for the first few Obit slabs and the first few Death discs. I'm 95% Eurodeath up until the last several years when suddenly all of these young American dm bands have been popping up which have clearly taken more inflence from the European side of dm history, and that suits me just fine. Bands like Deicide and Cannibal and their disciples don't interest me so I don't give any of that stuff much thought. But I mean obviously being Finnish you'd expect these dudes to sound more northern European than Florida, and they do. 

But modern as fuck. I don't know what you think of as the "old school" dm sound, I guess everyone has a somewhat different idea of what this term means that's been informed by whichever collection of bands they listen to. But to use your example of Slumber of Sullen Eyes (good example, I love that album) this Dead Talks to me sounds light years away from that. They have virtually nothing in common as I hear it, because one is a genuine early 90's diy flying by the seat of your pants shoestring budget analog death metal band and the other is a modern, slick, digitally compressed major label 2020's band. You can say the slick producution is not such a big deal, but when comparing different eras of death metal as far as I can tell the production is by far the biggest difference. 

It seems as though many of the black metal bands I listen to have figured out how to make their records sound all fucked up and fuzzy and and 'necro' and dated to where there are times you're not quite sure if some of these records could possibly have been recorded 25-30 years ago. While the vast majority of the younger death metal and thrash metal bands have not figured out how to achieve this. Which is why modern death and thrash so often just sounds "wrong" to us older fans. Even if we can't always put our finger on exactly what the discrepency is, we know that it just doesn't sound authentic. And that's the case with Dead Talks. There are some newer dm bands who've managed to sound a little bit closer to old school death, but DT ain't one of them. So I feel like when you say this is 'old timey' you're trying to tell me you think it's been shot in black & white to look just like the old stuff, while I can see with my own two eyes that it's totally in full Technicolor with Dolby sound to boot. It's like these people who think the late model Chargers, Camaros and Mustangs really look like the older ones from back in the day. No! No they don't! Not even close.  

 

NP: Vomitheist - Nekrofvneral, Switzerland

 

[FatherAlabaster]

2 hours ago, Thatguy said:

THE BLACK HARVEST - Mortuary Dogma. Enjoyable but a bit, well, static.

Fuckin hell. "Black Harvest" has been my band name for almost 20 years and only the German "Black Harvest" had it before me. Posers. Go out and get your own. Argh.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

21 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Fuckin hell. "Black Harvest" has been my band name for almost 20 years and only the German "Black Harvest" had it before me. Posers. Go out and get your own. Argh.

You're on M-A and everything. Picture looks like it was from 1942 so obviously your band came first. Didn't realize you had so many albums out. (Not half as many as Jon-O Blade though!) You should sue those cocksuckers.

 

THE BLACK HARVEST - Mortuary Dogma, Chile. Ok I was way off, they're not post-metal at all, progressive death/doom with some bad clean vocals.  I'm sure the original NY Black Harvest wipes the floor with these pretenders.

 

Black Harvest - Abject, 2014 USA

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

16 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

You and I are coming from very different backgrounds and perspectives. In addition to all things prog and tech, I also don't listen to hardly any US death metal of the classic 90's Florida variety except for the first few Obit slabs and the first few Death discs. I'm 95% Eurodeath up until the last several years when suddenly all of these young American dm bands have been popping up which have clearly taken more inflence from the European side of dm history, and that suits me just fine. Bands like Deicide and Cannibal and their disciples don't interest me so I don't give any of that stuff much thought. But I mean obviously being Finnish you'd expect these dudes to sound more northern European than Florida, and they do. 

But modern as fuck. I don't know what you think of as the "old school" dm sound, I guess everyone has a somewhat different idea of what this term means that's been informed by whichever collection of bands they listen to. But to use your example of Slumber of Sullen Eyes (good example, I love that album) this Dead Talks to me sounds light years away from that. They have virtually nothing in common as I hear it, because one is a genuine early 90's diy flying by the seat of your pants shoestring budget analog death metal band and the other is a modern, slick, digitally compressed major label 2020's band. You can say the slick producution is not such a big deal, but when comparing different eras of death metal as far as I can tell the production is by far the biggest difference. 

It seems as though many of the black metal bands I listen to have figured out how to make their records sound all fucked up and fuzzy and and 'necro' and dated to where there are times you're not quite sure if some of these records could possibly have been recorded 25-30 years ago. While the vast majority of the younger death metal and thrash metal bands have not figured out how to achieve this. Which is why modern death and thrash so often just sounds "wrong" to us older fans. Even if we can't always put our finger on exactly what the discrepency is, we know that it just doesn't sound authentic. And that's the case with Dead Talks. There are some newer dm bands who've managed to sound a little bit closer to old school death, but DT ain't one of them. So I feel like when you say this is 'old timey' you're trying to tell me you think it's been shot in black & white to look just like the old stuff, while I can see with my own two eyes that it's totally in full Technicolor with Dolby sound to boot. It's like these people who think the late model Chargers, Camaros and Mustangs really look like the older ones from back in the day. No! No they don't! Not even close.  

 

NP: Vomitheist - Nekrofvneral, Switzerland

 

I suppose. I'll have to admit I would defer to your judgement entirely when it comes to vehicles. God knows I've been very poor about taking care of my vehicles through the years. Differing perspectives on approach to death metal, though, I think we're a lot closer in opinion than either of us would surmise, or, at the very least, we might agree on a lot more than we disagree on. Just know I'm not trying to dictate to you what is or is not osdm. That would require a leap of conjecture that even I, for all of my affectation toward the more pretentious side of things, wouldn't presume to make.

A topic you touched on in that last paragraph would be the availability of newer recording techniques to ever younger listeners, and whether or not this availability should be taken into account when stacking newer entries for classic death metal canonization. No, of course it doesn't sound like the stalwarts of old (the 'old timey' thing was just kind of an offhanded remark anyway.), but I reject wholesale the premise that the ease of access to these techniques ultimately works against the material. There can be lazy production, to be sure, and any number of other bias' I might knowingly or unknowingly carry into the album with me.

I've noticed that I've been taking far too many bands to task over production lately, and even though production is an unavoidable aspect of any album, I find it makes for a much more enjoyable listen to first assume the sound values created by the younger band are the values the band wants. It helps eliminate any sort of analysis outside of a musical one until I hit the second or third listen.

Again, I'm not going to assume any sort of declarative license on the matter when it's ultimately what my ears can parse through, my mood when I first hear something, or whether or not I'm under any type of time constraint. Over compression has been an issue in the metal world for a long time now, and I agree that it widens the perceived disparity between newer and older bands. So with early spins of the material I'm trying to make a concerted effort to hear the song in the composer's brain first before going back and rectifying this sort of musical snapshot with the actual material on hand. Death metal and specifically tech death being genres I'm almost hopelessly smitten with, and have been for a while, will inevitably be granted the benefit of the doubt more often than others. It's simply my own bias; good, bad, or neutral.

[CumBloodSucker]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

It seems as though many of the black metal bands I listen to have figured out how to make their records sound all fucked up and fuzzy and and 'necro' and dated to where there are times you're not quite sure if some of these records could possibly have been recorded 25-30 years ago. While the vast majority of the younger death metal and thrash metal bands have not figured out how to achieve this. Which is why modern death and thrash so often just sounds "wrong" to us older fans. E

I wasn't there in the 90's but today it seems if you find a good sounding band I usually follow the record studio where the album was produced. Cadaveric incubator for example is currently labeled under Hells headbanger's records and I found Black jesus from the roster which sounds pretty good to me.

Black jesus - Everything black everything dead

In finnish black metal scene if something comes up from Werewolf, Kvlt or Northern heritage studios, I'm pretty sure already it is going to be something good. I hardly use any YT or Bandcamp.

 

[Thatguy]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

THE BLACK HARVEST - Mortuary Dogma, Chile.

They didn't check M-A or they thought the 'The' would make all the difference...or they just didn't care.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

25 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

I suppose. I'll have to admit I would defer to your judgement entirely when it comes to vehicles. God knows I've been very poor about taking care of my vehicles through the years. Differing perspectives on approach to death metal, though, I think we're a lot closer in opinion than either of us would surmise, or, at the very least, we might agree on a lot more than we disagree on. Just know I'm not trying to dictate to you what is or is not osdm. That would require a leap of conjecture that even I, for all of my affectation toward the more pretentious side of things, wouldn't presume to make.

A topic you touched on in that last paragraph would be the availability of newer recording techniques to ever younger listeners, and whether or not this availability should be taken into account when stacking newer entries for classic death metal canonization. No, of course it doesn't sound like the stalwarts of old (the 'old timey' thing was just kind of an offhanded remark anyway.), but I reject wholesale the premise that the ease of access to these techniques ultimately works against the material. There can be lazy production, to be sure, and any number of other bias' I might knowingly or unknowingly carry into the album with me.

I've noticed that I've been taking far too many bands to task over production lately, and even though production is an unavoidable aspect of any album, I find it makes for a much more enjoyable listen to first assume the sound values created by the younger band are the values the band wants. It helps eliminate any sort of analysis outside of a musical one until I hit the second or third listen.

Again, I'm not going to assume any sort of declarative license on the matter when it's ultimately what my ears can parse through, my mood when I first hear something, or whether or not I'm under any type of time constraint. Over compression has been an issue in the metal world for a long time now, and I agree that it widens the perceived disparity between newer and older bands. So with early spins of the material I'm trying to make a concerted effort to hear the song in the composer's brain first before going back and rectifying this sort of musical snapshot with the actual material on hand. Death metal and specifically tech death being genres I'm almost hopelessly smitten with, and have been for a while, will inevitably be granted the benefit of the doubt more often than others. It's simply my own bias; good, bad, or neutral.

No it's pretty clear we have plenty of overlap in general, and have agreed on lots of bands. When I said different perspectives earlier I just meant specifically regarding what we each think 'old school' death metal sounds like, being that we're 25 years apart and listen to a lot of different kinds of old school death metal. But since you said the 'old timey' thing was just a throwaway comment anyway (lord knows I make more than my share of those) it makes no sense to belabor the point.

But what I would like to make clear is that I'm not one of those old school guys you'll meet who hates all the young bands and their modern plastic production and says '87 - '93 of GTFO. While productionwise neither era is perfect, I do tend to prefer the more modern beefy dm producution (as long as they don't go too far with it and make it too squeaky clean) because most of that old 90's stuff was generally much thinner sounding, sometimes not very clear and a lot of times many of the lower frequencies were underrepresented. In other words the production was often shit back then. So I spend much more time these days listening to 2010's and later death metal than I do with the older 90's stuff because the newer stuff sounds heavier and clearer to me.

But my tastes lean toward ugly, filthy sounding dm, so it's important to me that they can capture the gnarly instrument sounds and not neuter it by makng it sound too pristine. I do find a certain amount of clarity is helpful in death metal so you can hear what they're playing, just not too much. It's a fine line they've gotta walk to get it just right. Black metal has more leeway to be a lot more fuzzy and still sound great like that, even the wall of noise stuff, because the riffage typically isn't as intricate and complex as death metal. It's not a hard rule but I find that if you stay away from the higher profle extreme metal labels there's generally less money for bands to ruin things with too much production. So I like my dm modern and beefy but stripped down as much as possible. I think bands and labels must be learning though because it seems like I encounter less and less really awful production jobs each year. 5 - 10 years ago it was a much more common occurance to find shit you otherwise would have liked but had to pass on because you just couldn't deal with the horribly shitty prodiction.

When I was criticizing Dead Talks' production earlier this evening I was really just trying to point out that they don't sound anything like dm from the early 90's to me. I wasn't making any judgements about their more modern production or saying one era is better than the other or that the band should be trying harder to sound more like early 90's, or anything like that. I was just saying that I can hear the difference. That the two things are not the same.

 

NP: Wilt - Into Nothingness, Germany

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Cassini - Huygens by Into Darkness

▶︎ "Cassini - Huygens" CD/Tape ORDER NOW! | INTO DARKNESS (Ita) | Unholy Domain Records (bandcamp.com)

Well now there's something. Only on the second track, but so far I am digging it. No doubt these guys know what they're about and we should see a full length soon I hope, because this is excellent stuff. Custom house blend of death and doom, and with rough hand drawn cover art that I find appealing.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Malediction - Reductio Ad Absurdum

▶︎ Reductio Ad Absurdum | Malediction (bandcamp.com)

I'm really close to just changing to something different if they bring in those awful off key clean vocals again. Other than that I'm down for everything else they have going on.

...aaaand the clean vocals started up again. Tough luck Malediction. You've got a long way to go.

[MacabreEternal]

Gehenna - First Spell (1994)

 

[MacabreEternal]

Inquisition - Into the Infernal Regions of the Ancient Cult (1998)

 

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

KMART

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 hours ago, MarkhantonioYeatts said:

KMART In Store Christmas Music

The unrelenting southern heat getting to ya Marko? I know the cost of living's a little cheaper down there but I don't know how you live in that state between the heat & humidity, anual threat of hurricanes and Lindsey Graham I'd have figured a dude like you'd have packed your shit and left years ago. Not that I'd necessarily recommend New Jersey, but there have got to be better places.

 

ACES ÖF GRIND - Grindcore Tribute to Motörhead, 2017

 

 

[AlSymerz]

4 hours ago, MarkhantonioYeatts said:

KMART

 

FAAARRRKKKK!  Our Kmart's have always been a bit different to the US but thank fuck they never played that in store.

And now days we have Kmart Radio! Not only can you listen to it in store but you can listen to it online when you're not in store, just in case the pain of shopping in the store wasn't enough to make you want to kill yourself.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

46 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

FAAARRRKKKK!  Our Kmart's have always been a bit different to the US but thank fuck they never played that in store.

And now days we have Kmart Radio! Not only can you listen to it in store but you can listen to it online when you're not in store, just in case the pain of shopping in the store wasn't enough to make you want to kill yourself.

 

Kmart went out of business here, as of 2022 they had 9 locations left out of 2,486 stores, and only 3 of those are in the continental US. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the muzak had something to do with their failure. I can buy pretty much anything I want online while listening to black or death metal and they'll bring my shit to me in a day or two.

[Hungarino]

Serviceable and faithful OSDM of the Swedish variety by way of Nippon.

Frostvore • Drowned by Blood | Testimony Records (bandcamp.com)

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

MORRISSEY

DRAB MAJESTY - Unarian Dances

DRAB MAJESTY - Amoeba Green Room Session

 

[AlSymerz]

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Kmart went out of business here, as of 2022 they had 9 locations left out of 2,486 stores, and only 3 of those are in the continental US. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the muzak had something to do with their failure. I can buy pretty much anything I want online while listening to black or death metal and they'll bring my shit to me in a day or two.

Kmart here rebranded in about 2015 and they got rid of things like TV's, music and car care (not that they had much to begin with) and they moved back in to fashion(?) and household shit like cushions and smelly things. They did a massive deal with some factory in Bangladesh and are now producing clothes for as little as $2 a piece. It's cheap overseas labour, (supposedly totally legal and above board, no slave labour) and it's revitalised the entire brand into profitable business now. They don't do things that different to other stores but they are somehow still making a profit and sending the likes of Target out of business.

[Thatguy]

ORDALIE - Mass of Perdition. Good fun.

FEN - Monuments to Absence. Not post anything.

NP - PYRAMIDS - A Northern Meadow. The vocals won't appeal to everyone, but they work with these songs. 

2 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

somehow still making a profit

Sell cheap but buy cheaper. It's a tried and true formula. 

[AlSymerz]

12 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Sell cheap but buy cheaper. It's a tried and true formula. 

This is true and all the retail chain stores are doing it, but when was the last time you bought something at Kmart? 90% of the store is crap no one wants or needs, so who the fuck is buying it and sending their profits into the stratosphere? They can't be surviving on Eel's supporters and homeless people!

 

[Thatguy]

5 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

when was the last time you bought something at Kmart

Not ever in my memory.

 

6 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

so who the fuck is buying it and sending their profits into the stratosphere? They can't be surviving on Eel's supporters and homeless people!

Dunno. Eels supporters would shop at Kmart though. We are dumb enough to follow a team of losing losers so any old crap will do.