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What Are You Listening To?


khaos

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Good thinking Doc, more Swiss metal. I've just spent an hour or two getting reacquainted with Into the Pandemonium, an album that I bought back when it was new in 1987. But at the time I wasn't ready to accept all the weird shit on side 2, so I only ever played side 1. And side 1 is a fucking masterpiece, some of their best work, every second of it's genius. I'd always felt that side 1 was totally worth the price of the album all on its own so I never got mad about side 2 being weird. But tonight after 35 years I decided it was about time I took another look at this avant-garde side 2. And I'm glad I did, turns out there's some cool shit to be found back here. I realized that I only had the 4 straightforward metal tracks from side 1 of this album on my MusicBee, so I deleted them and bought the reissue with bonus tracks from Amazon.

There is really just one track on here that I don't see myself playing very often, which is One in Their Pride. And it's not even a song so much as them messing around in the studio. There's no guitars or singing on this one just some drum loops with samples of what sounds like "radio chatter" from a NASA space mission where at the end they just keep repeating "return safely to Earth" over and over. It's cool and all, I just don't think it will have a lot of replay value. But it's only 2:50 out of an hour long album. (unfortunately one of the bounus tracks is also a 6 minute version of it) But the rest of side 2 I'm digging after playing it 5+ times so I'm calling this a win. I saw Jon say the other day that Type O is the only band on the planet that he is willing to accept hour long albums from. I think for me that statement would be true if I substituted Tom G Warrior in place of Type O. The man can do no wrong.

 

Tardigrada - Vom Bruch bis zur Freiheit, atmo-black Switzerland 2021. Doc posted it and I do remember listening to this one but I looked and saw that I don't actually have it, I just have their 2016 album Emotionale Ödnis. So now I'll probably have to get this one too because it's very good.

 

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On 9/2/2022 at 9:21 AM, JonoBlade said:

Oh. Is that out?

Verdict? Like any latter day Megadeth I presume it recaptures some classic moments but is too long overall. 

By contrast, next bandcamp purchase today for me was an old one:

Deed of Flesh - Trading Pieces

30 minutes. Yummy.

I'm really digging it so far!  "Life in Hell", "Dogs of Chernobyl", and "We'll Be Back" are my early favorites, but I'll be listening to this beast plenty of times more in the coming days.  And I've never been one to mind an album being long.  The way I see it, I want more music for the money.  I'd rather not drop my hard-earned money on an album that's 9 or 10 tracks and only 38-42 minutes long.  Give me 12-14 tracks and 55+ minutes any day.  This one is 14 songs, and a little over an hour in length, which I think is fantastic.

 

I'd highly recommend it!

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Back after 2 weeks of rest and relaxation in northern Queensland.

 

Megadeth - The Sick, The Dying...And the Dead!

Good on first listen.  Probably their most intense album in a while.  Having death metal drummer Dirk Verebeuren on drums really seems to have allowed the band to crank it up a notch.  Needs more thorough listening to suss out Steve DiGiorgio's impact.

 

Only complaint is the usual one - production is a bit too polished.

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More from the 2015-16 vault:

Sylvaine/ Wistful-this actually is quite enjoyable as shoegaze or ambient folk metal possibly, not blacklgaze. The blackened vocals for lack of better words are so buried in the mix they sound like another atmospheric gazey touch more so than extreme vocals. Or So Ithought. So, I scientifically tested my hypotheses.

I played in the car with my wife on the way to have lunch with my daughter. If she gave me that-really Mark-look then it's metal, if she says nothing, then it's shoegaze. She said nothing. I finally looked over and said, what do you think of her voice. Kind of like a rock version of Enya, right? She shrugged whatever". Do you like it? It's OK. They call this Shoegaze. OK. That double blinded tested AFIC. 

Sig-Ar-Tyr-Sailing the Sea of Fate-this actually came out in '05ish but I bought in 2016 when Northern came out. I need to listen to Northern again. It's Bathory-Hammerheart era- worship that's basically instrumental with spoken word/whispered vocals which keeps it from being a better album. The guitar work is a mix of gorgeous windswept clean, acoustic work with definite classical guitar influences, blues leads and the occasional distorted build up. Musically, it sounds fantastic on a sonics level and it's well written but It really begs for blackened vocals and they finally come in small doses on the last two tracks. Beautiful guitar work, but the lack of metal vox keep it from really delivering the way Quorthon's music did.

The Ramones/S/T

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7 minutes ago, markm said:

 

Sig-Ar-Tyr-Sailing the Sea of Fate-this actually came out in '05ish but I bought in 2016 when Northern came out. I need to listen to Northern again. It's Bathory-Hammerheart era- worship that's basically instrumental with spoken word/whispered vocals which keeps it from being a better album. The guitar work is a mix of gorgeous windswept clean, acoustic work with definite classical guitar influences, blues leads and the occasional distorted build up. Musically, it sounds fantastic on a sonics level and it's well written but It really begs for blackened vocals and they finally come in small doses on the last two tracks. Beautiful guitar work, but the lack of metal vox keep it from really delivering the way Quorthon's music did.

It's interesting how many bands try to pull the whole Hammerheart/Twilight of the Gods vibe but fail.  They all get too pretty.

Bathory always had an abrasive ugliness in that period, even when Quorthon toned right down.

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5 minutes ago, Dead1 said:

It's interesting how many bands try to pull the whole Hammerheart/Twilight of the Gods vibe but fail.  They all get too pretty.

Bathory always had an abrasive ugliness in that period, even when Quorthon toned right down.

I totally agree. Like Hammerheart is beautiful in a lot of places-but it still packs an epic punch which makes it so triumphant and thrilling to listen to. Need to spin that one soon, too! I've always found it amusing that the fact that he can barely sing his way out of a paper bag-it really works. Somehow you wouldn't want a perfect sounding power metal vocalist-the screechy out of tune efforts that sound all wrong sound just right. 

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1 hour ago, markm said:

played in the car with my wife on the way to have lunch with my daughter. If she gave me that-really Mark-look then it's metal, if she says nothing, then it's shoegaze. She said nothing. I finally looked over and said, what do you think of her voice. Kind of like a rock version of Enya, right? She shrugged whatever". Do you like it? It's OK. They call this Shoegaze. OK. That double blinded tested AFIC. 

 

The wife test. Always worth it. I get the - really Mark - look too sometimes. I usually don't need the look. I can feel the vibe.

This morning...

LANAYAH - Forever in May. Eclectic.

Then an OWLathon.

OWL - Crystal Delerium

OWL - Nights in Distortion

OWL - Orion Fenix

OWL is one of the dudes from VALBORG and always puts me in mind of my favourite VALBORG album - Romantik.

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24 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Never in the history of the world has any Australian born male been named Eugene. 

Just saying.

Reminds me of a story I head about Nissan looking to sell a car in Australia in the 1960s.  They had a team of Aussies review a list of names for the car.  The list included Cedric.  Apparently they were told by their Australian team the name was a bit too "mummy's-boy" (ie effeminate and pansy).  The Japanese didn't understand this was regarded a bad thing and released the car as the Cedric. 

 

Not sure if it's true but it shows the Aussie attitude to naming.

 

Dio - Holy Diver

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