What Are You Listening To?

[AlSymerz]

Vermin Fate - Total Nuclear Assault

[GoatmasterGeneral]

5 hours ago, Thatguy said:

GOJIRA - The Way of All Flesh

NP - MÖRKÖ - Ulvova Tyhjyys

Do you seriously appreciate that Gojira nonsense? Bah. Books are better anyway.

Got my hopes up when I saw death/doom Finland, but turns out this Mörkö is tedious. What's with the whispering?

 

Oniricous – La Caverna de Fuego, Spain 2016

 

[Thatguy]

32 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Do you seriously appreciate that Gojira nonsense?

I have never understood why you hate Gojira so much. But there is much in life I don't understand.

 

33 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Bah. Books are better anyway.

Dick. 

 

34 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Mörkö is tedious. What's with the whispering?

There's nothing wrong with a bit of whispering. I never thought Mörkö would be your thing although some of their albums sound crappy enough to perhaps appeal to you.

[Thatguy]

NP - ODETOSUN - Gods forgotten Orbit

[MacabreEternal]

Dopelord - Children of the Haze (2017)

 

[agamerwholovesmetal]

Recognize no authority (1986) - detente

South of heaven (1988) - slayer

[GoatmasterGeneral]

8 hours ago, Thatguy said:

I have never understood why you hate Gojira so much. But there is much in life I don't understand.

Dick. 

There's nothing wrong with a bit of whispering. I never thought Mörkö would be your thing although some of their albums sound crappy enough to perhaps appeal to you.

Because they suck. Too accessible, too proggy, too slick, no bullet belts, not nearly evil or crappy enough, everything that's wrong with mainstream metal.

I beg your pardon.

Well crappy is the goal now innit?

Dearth - To Crown All Befoulment, Oakland CA 2020

 

 

[Thatguy]

🤷‍♂️

[Nasty_Cabbage]

10 hours ago, Thatguy said:

I have never understood why you hate Gojira so much. But there is much in life I don't understand.

There's nothing wrong with a bit of whispering. I never thought Mörkö would be your thing although some of their albums sound crappy enough to perhaps appeal to you.

I don't mind Gojira. The sound they use just became far too prevalent far too quickly. Like a lot of things, that stuff is best in small doses.

Whispers fall flat more often than not, for me. Actually, prior to my pituitary gland settling down into a more even temperament I used to rail and rave about whole albums being ruined by spoken passages. It's a cliche like the waifish whispery narrator carrying the exposition of a sci-fi or fantasy film (Think David Lynch's Dune). It's really hard to get right and not sound comical. The one major exception I grant on this is Mayhem's Grand Declaration of War album which I've always felt was really underrated. It just doesn't quite work without the spoken passages in a weird but forceful Scandinavian accent. If anything ruins that album it's the electronica track, but the less said about that the better.

NP: LVME - Of Sinful Nature.

▶︎ Of Sinful Nature | LVME (bandcamp.com)

This is outright Deathspell Omega worship plain as day. I like good Deathspell to varying degrees, and don't really have the patience for bad Deathspell (my God that last album was some low effort junk). If Deathspell were to release this today I'd file it under the 'good' category, so I guess that's something. It's tough to judge worship albums like this when they're capable, just know what you're getting.

[Thatguy]

TARDIGRADA - VI

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Yatra - All Is Lost

▶︎ All Is Lost | Yatra | Grimoire Records (bandcamp.com)

Well I guess it says "stoner doom" in the description. It's not bad, but I find myself wishing they didn't go back to the well of bluesy doom so much. There's a lot of promise with some of this stuff, but they use the mid-paced blues as a crutch.

[Necrolord]

20 hours ago, JamesT said:

Enforced - "War Remains"

Havok - "V"

Just a fantastic album.  The closing track, "Don't Do It", is one of my favorite thrash songs ever recorded. 

Angelus Apatrida - "Aftermath"

 

 

Enforced - "War Remains" is pretty good straight forward thrash. Nothing too original but it goes hard. Sounds a little raw and not overly produced which works for that approach. 

 

Havok - "V" is pretty solid for the opposite reason - immaculately produced and sounds modern and tight. "Cosmetic Surgery" is a great song. I just wish the album had more faster songs. 

 

NP:

Vader - Solitude in Madness

Destruction - Cracked Brain

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Lord Dying - Clandestine Transcendence 

▶︎ Clandestine Transcendence | Lord Dying (bandcamp.com)

Ummm... Beg pardon Mr. Dying sir, but what the hell is this? The vocal cadence and tone is a dead ringer for Randall Blythe, there's pop-rock hooks all over the place, drumming that reminds me of those dark days on the radio punk plateau when people were pretending that Alkaline Trio and The Distillers weren't just a slightly upbeat form of pop with all traces of punk outside of imagery scrubbed clean. There's experimental vocal effects that flirt with goth rock, and in parts it's even out of key unfortunately. The more tracks I hear the more I reject this. It's like what happened to Mastodon with that Crack The Skye nonsense. No. Nope. I hate this. I hate this so much, and at every corner I feel like they're one truly violent burst away from giving me actual decent metal. I'm disappointed every time. I will not be digging into their back catalogue. The reviews I read were wrong; there's not a damn thing "sludge" about this. What a waste. 

Oh god, the organ just kicked in, and of course it's like every infantile 'I saw the broadway musical of Phantom of the Opera one time and now I think I like opera' horse shit. I should have seen that coming. Stay away. This is awful.

[JamesT]

3 hours ago, Necrolord said:

 

Enforced - "War Remains" is pretty good straight forward thrash. Nothing too original but it goes hard. Sounds a little raw and not overly produced which works for that approach. 

 

Havok - "V" is pretty solid for the opposite reason - immaculately produced and sounds modern and tight. "Cosmetic Surgery" is a great song. I just wish the album had more faster songs. 

 

NP:

Vader - Solitude in Madness

Destruction - Cracked Brain

 

Yes, I love Enforced!  Just crushing thrash all the way through - no frills.  And I know what you mean about the Havok album.  I love it, but I also wouldn't have minded more faster tracks.  I like the mid-paced stuff well enough, though.

Evile - "The Unknown"

Testament - "Titans of Creation"

Marc Hudson - "Starbound Stories"

[Innominate]

Pungent Stench - For God Your Soul… For Me Your Flesh

[Arioch]

Sindrome - Ressurection The Complete Collection (2016)

This is a compilation of two demos + live tracks from an 80s/90s US Thrash band who unfortunately never released an album. I say "unfortunately" because, listening to these tracks together, one senses a huge potential that never went any further.

In Thrash especially, I like singers with unique voices. I'm thinking in particular of Vio-Lence, Wrath, OverKill, Nuclear Assault. You either love them or hate them, but in general, there's no middle ground. That's what I like about it.

And here, with his theatrical voice, heavily accented at the end of phrases, Troy Dixler adds a huge touch of personality to music that already has personality.

Always a magical moment when listening to these recordings.

 

[Arioch]

Coroner - R.I.P. (1987)

1987 fucking... I was 18! And back then, I used to buy LPs just because I liked or was intrigued by the cover.

I think the day I bought that first Coroner, I'd also picked up Epicus Doomicus Metallicus by Candlemass and Graceful Inheritance by Heir Apparent.

I loved Coroner and Candlemass (in very different musical styles), not at all Heir Apparent.

 

[Arioch]

The Chronicles of Father Robin - The Songs & Tales of Airoea – Book III (2024)

3rd and final part of this Nordic Rock Prog' project. Between two salvos of Metal, it's good to be back.

https://fatherrobin.bandcamp.com/album/the-songs-tales-of-airoea-book-iii

[navybsn]

4 hours ago, Arioch said:

I used to buy LPs just because I liked or was intrigued by the cover.

Same. Still do it often. I miss the days when you had no idea about a band but could judge whether or not you should spend the precious few bucks you had based on the cover art. I mean it is better that you can preview basically everything these days before you buy, but I'm still nostalgic for the good old days of wandering through your local record store looking for the right thing to buy. 

Bluegrass day

Mandolin Orange (now WatchHouse) - Live at GBH

 

[Arioch]

13 minutes ago, navybsn said:

Same. Still do it often. I miss the days when you had no idea about a band but could judge whether or not you should spend the precious few bucks you had based on the cover art. I mean it is better that you can preview basically everything these days before you buy, but I'm still nostalgic for the good old days of wandering through your local record store looking for the right thing to buy. 

Yes, it is! Nowadays, I don't buy anything without listening to it, and there's such an abundance of things to listen to that I find it hard to stick with an album for weeks on end.

I miss those days too. I used to buy two records and listen to them non-stop for months on end. I remember doing that with those 4 albums:

- Metallica Master of Puppets / Ozzy Osbourne The Ultimate Sin
- Testament The Legacy / Overkill Taking Over

What a joy to alternate one album with the other. I couldn't get enough of them. In fact, these are albums I can still listen to today without getting bored.

These days, I'd be hard-pressed to name a recent album that I can listen to on Monday, Tuesday, every day of the week, and do it all over again the following week. Even the albums well up in my top 10 of 2023.

And it's not because I only buy my albums in FLAC anymore. I have tons of CDs gathering dust somewhere, because I don't listen to them at all anymore.

Talking about it made me want to, so :

Ozzy Osbourne - The Ultimate Sin (1986)

 

[FatherAlabaster]

I try to pay attention to how much I can actually enjoy and digest properly. I talk a lot about burnout and that happens pretty easily for me, but the other path I can go down if I'm not careful is the endless stream of content - listening to everything, forming quick takes, but not really absorbing anything. I find I can alternate between maybe two or three new albums over the course of a month or two, as far as really paying attention and taking in what they have to offer. Any more than that and I start losing what I care about in the experience. So basically my listening habit is like it was when I was a teenager and could only afford a couple albums at a time, except I have to try to purposely keep it that way.

I also find that being online at all while I'm listening is really disruptive to the experience, it turns music into background noise. That's hard to manage sometimes.

NP - Blut Aus Nord - Disharmonium: Nahab

[Arioch]

I agree.

I'd love to get that attention back, like when I was a teenager. Set myself a maximum of two or three albums a month and focus only on them. But I can't.

I often wonder if it's just me, or if these albums aren't as good as they seem.

But yes, it's very frustrating.

And that's why you often see old stuff in what I listen to and present on these pages. Sometimes I listen to the same records regularly and publish them here.

This way, I'm sure I'm on familiar ground and won't get bored.

Some might call it nostalgia. Yes, of course, but I think it's also a question of solid values.

Edit :

In fact, I think I'm drawn to albums that appeal to me right from the first listen. You know, the kind of album that you feel is something new, fresh, almost innovative.

In short: the Holy Grail of album releases.

But it's been a long time since I've encountered that.

In my memories, I think of Necrophagist's Epitaph and Vektor's Outer Isolation. I haven't even listened to Akhlys' Melinöe that much.

I'm chatty today. Maybe too much. Sorry about that.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, Arioch said:

I'm chatty today. Maybe too much. Sorry about that.

Don't apologize, that's what we're here for mec.

 

 

Brutal Evisceration - Mutilation Before Death, Germany 2022, reco from a friend.

 

[navybsn]

1 hour ago, Arioch said:

I haven't even listened to Akhlys' Melinöe that much

Was a bit of a let down. Most of Naas' latest output has failed to grab me save for this which is excellent. My AOTY in 2020 iirc:

Aoratos - Gods Without Name

 

1 hour ago, FatherAlabaster said:

I try to pay attention to how much I can actually enjoy and digest properly. I talk a lot about burnout and that happens pretty easily for me, but the other path I can go down if I'm not careful is the endless stream of content - listening to everything, forming quick takes, but not really absorbing anything. I find I can alternate between maybe two or three new albums over the course of a month or two, as far as really paying attention and taking in what they have to offer. Any more than that and I start losing what I care about in the experience. So basically my listening habit is like it was when I was a teenager and could only afford a couple albums at a time, except I have to try to purposely keep it that way.

I also find that being online at all while I'm listening is really disruptive to the experience, it turns music into background noise. That's hard to manage sometimes.

I've been trying to do this since about 2019 along with incorporating other genres I like with varying success. Music is so cheap and easily available so I usually have trouble controlling myself once I get started.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Dead - For Lovers of the New Bizarre, German goregrind 2011

 

Dead Infection - Corpses of the Universe, Polish goregrind 2008