What Are You Listening To?

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Beherit - Dawn of Satan's Millenium, Compilation  of early demos circa 1991, released in 2023. Not completely unenjoyable but nothing I'd have any desire to go back to regularly.

 

43 minutes ago, Necrolord said:

Totally fair man. I appreciate your explanation of what you find appealling in it. Rough around the edges can sound great when a band is tight with good execution. Lack of fancy mixing allows a band's natural dynamics to shine through, similar to a live setting. 

But generally 'filthy production' to me is usually just extra static and mud in the mix. When a guy is playing a cool riff I'd rather hear it clearly and powerfully and have the growly guitar tone chew my ear off. I wanna hear every note played as opposed to having to try and figure out what's going on. To me, whether a band has balls or not has more to do with the riffs and songs they play (composition) and less with production. But I can see how raw production gives a band that rough/unpolished vibe.

 
I'm glad we agree on the pointless intros. Thanks for sharing those albums. Not enough time to listen to everything fully so I'm gonna try each one for the first 5 minutes and we'll see how many pass the 5-minute test! I hope I find something I enjoy thoroughly.

Yeah, there's a fine line between filthy raw production and stuff that just sounds like shit and muddy as hell. When I hear those albums that have that layer of static over the whole thing that pisses me off, why even bother to release that crap? Clearly thy're missig the point or just trying to cover something up.  I guess we all have a sweet spot for production and it can be hard to explain in words, but I guess most of us know it when we hear it. To me that Vargsang album sounds powerful, and the riffs are what really make it for me, I'm still humming them from last night. Most of what I go for can be described as "riffy" so know that going in. If you decide to tackle that Ordinance album, don't do the first 5 minutes, the first two tracks are kinda boring, do the back half of the album because from track 3 on it's great, or at least like the final three tracks, that's where the magic happens.

[RelentlessOblivion]

I feel compelled to say Bethlehem post Dictius te Nactane is unlistenable garbage, but that and the debut Dark Metal work for me.

 

NP: Moon Incarnate - Hymns to the Moon (2024) [Germany]

This, at times, sounds like it could be a My Dying Bride album. That’s not a bad thing, certainly it’s not as derivative as many other MDB clones, this is for the most part, just fine, i’d probably listen to it again. The issue is it ends up sounding too much like MDB, I get the feeling that if I were to play this immediately, after one of their records I’d think it was the same band. There’s also some weird flourishes in places that I found very distracting, took me right out of the music

[Nasty_Cabbage]

34 minutes ago, Necrolord said:

 

My bad @Nasty_Cabbage, I was thinking of Bethlehem when I wrote that, not Beherit! Bethlehem is dog shit. Tabernacle is a funny word. 

 

Bethlehem's an acquired taste, for sure. Took me a while to come around to them, but I got there eventually.

[FatherAlabaster]

Bethlehem is like two or three different bands depending on what albums you're talking about. I'm a really big fan of Dark Metal when I'm in a specific angry mood. There's a simmering glum quality to it that I don't really pick up on with anything else. Thin guitars and all. Then there's the DSBM stuff with the extreme vocals, then there's the Rammsteiny NDH stuff. I could understand not liking any of it, and I suppose even a fan of one style could easily be turned off by another, but at their best they're pretty unique and sometimes they hit the spot.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

13 minutes ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

Bethlehem's an acquired taste, for sure. Took me a while to come around to them, but I got there eventually.

Was on a forum about 15 years ago with this dude who touted Bethlehem incessantly. So I listened to part of their infamous second album one time (couldn't make it through the whole thing) and I never went back. Life is too short to waste time forcing yourself to like shit that you hate.

 

Ordinance - Relinquishment, 2014, never had to force myself to like this masterpiece.

 

Inquisition - Black Mass for a Mass Grave, 2020

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

2 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Was on a forum about 15 years ago with this dude who touted Bethlehem incessantly. So I listened to part of their infamous second album one time (couldn't make it through the whole thing) and I never went back. Life is too short to waste time forcing yourself to like shit that you hate.

In general I agree. There are cases though, where curiosity gets the best of me and I end up finding out I was really trying to get at an album or artist from the wrong mindset or just happened to have some negative associations with them that I'd allowed to cloud my listening. It doesn't happen super often, but it does happen. I just wish whoever's managing that tiny little office in my brain would email me a memo or something when they decide to change their position like that.

NP: Drowned - Idola Specus

▶︎ Idola Specus | Drowned (bandcamp.com)

Archive keyword roulette again today. This one's a little odd. Coming out of Berlin with a string of shorter demos and singles, they supposedly formed in '92, but didn't record a full length until this album came out in 2014. The members seem like some of the same people from the demos, but they're abbreviated is such a way that I don't know who's an original member and who isn't. It would certainly be difficult to have the same exact people together for an album over twenty years later, but who knows. Stranger things have happened.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Fair enough, they certainly aren’t everyone’s cup of coffee that’s for sure.

 

NP: Ulver - Bergtat

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Beltez - Exiled, Punished...Rejected, Germany 2017

 

Inferit - Diverge in the Absence of Light, Germany 2020

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

1 hour ago, Nasty_Cabbage said:

In general I agree. There are cases though, where curiosity gets the best of me and I end up finding out I was really trying to get at an album or artist from the wrong mindset or just happened to have some negative associations with them that I'd allowed to cloud my listening. It doesn't happen super often, but it does happen. I just wish whoever's managing that tiny little office in my brain would email me a memo or something when they decide to change their position like that.

NP: Drowned - Idola Specus

▶︎ Idola Specus | Drowned (bandcamp.com)

Archive keyword roulette again today. This one's a little odd. Coming out of Berlin with a string of shorter demos and singles, they supposedly formed in '92, but didn't record a full length until this album came out in 2014. The members seem like some of the same people from the demos, but they're abbreviated is such a way that I don't know who's an original member and who isn't. It would certainly be difficult to have the same exact people together for an album over twenty years later, but who knows. Stranger things have happened.

That doesn’t tend to happen to me often, with bands, especially these days, though I can say, the opposite happens quite frequently, Benz are used to spin all the time become artists I’d sooner not listen to at all. However, there’s been a number of times where the right band has helped me click with a genre. Sludge immediately springs to mind, for years, I couldn’t tolerate anything which came with that tag. Then I stumbled across Crowbar and things started to make more sense. 

[AlSymerz]

Exorcizphobia - Something is Wrong

[Arioch]

Bathory - Octagon (1995)

The snare drum sound quickly becomes unbearable.

 

[Nasty_Cabbage]

NP: Cercenatory - GoreSphere

▶︎ GoreSphere | CERCENATORY | Comatose Music (bandcamp.com)

Good stuff.

[Arioch]

Bathory - Nordland I (2002)

 

[FatherAlabaster]

Gentle Giant - The Power And The Glory

Al Di Meola - Elegant Gypsy

[markm]

Listening to that other "rust" non metal album-Neil Young/Live Rust

Favorite track-Cortez the Killer, if not a metal influence, certainly for grunge. 

 

[AlSymerz]

Alestorm - Voyage Of The Dead Marauder

 

[Kristiko]

Pantera - Far Beyond Driven (album)

[RexKeltoi]

 

 

[AlSymerz]

Pitch Black Forecast - As The World Burns

[MarkhantonioYeatts]

ZOMBI - Direct Inject

 

[AlSymerz]

The Almighty Punchdrunk - Music For Them Asses

[JamesT]

Metallica - "72 Seasons"

Jag Panzer - "The Hallowed"

Polution - "Overheated"

Overdrivers - "She's on Her Period"

The Wild! - "GxDxWxB"

[navybsn]

 Currently Solitude Aeturnus. Not much of a fan, but fest day 2. Highlights so far: Candlemass with the Nightfall set, Eternal Champion with Ravening Iron start to finish, Occult Burial and their early Bathory worship, Lamp of Murmur. Up next is fuckin Queensryche playing the EP and The Warning. I am way past my limit of Lonestar for the day....

Tomorrow gets better with Demolition Hammer and Sodom.

[markm]

Trying to keep up a bit more this year, going through some of the usual blogs to see what's what. I do tend to go for the anointed ones or at least albums with some 'net momentum rather than random searching through the wilderness. Streaming  a tiny fraction the continual steamroll of releases looking for gold is pretty hit and miss with me, but this week finding some promise:

Dodsrit -Nocturnal Will-Big fan of these guys-simple but effective melodic black metal, doom influence and crust punk-Today, the entire album was available to stream-I tend to be over enthusiastic about stuff I like, so it would be a mistake for me to beat my chest with AOTY claims before more time spent. I'd need to go back and really compare but have a sense this album sacrifices a wee tad of crust aggression for melodic black with flirtations with post metal, but when these guys hit their stride, it's jaw dropping. This feels pretty great.

Spectral Voice/Sparagmos-somehow missed their debut-but this strokes my soft spot for doom death or death doom as the case may be with gnarly atmosphere and I absolutely am a atmos guy...maybe one dimensional, not sure yet

 Early Moods/A Sinner's Past-traditional old school doom basically, done reasonably well, less enthusiastic about this one as I listen to much more hard doom today than Pentagram, and modern clean doom is oft to mamsy pamsy for me, but  doom in various presentations is absolutely one of my favorite genres and this deserves another listen or two. 

[RexKeltoi]

13 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Gentle Giant - The Power And The Glory

Al Di Meola - Elegant Gypsy

Missed Dimeola when he did the Elegant Gypsy tour, was really pissed