What Are You Listening To?

[Serpentboi1992]

[Kristiko]

Korn - Untouchables (album)

[Serpentboi1992]

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Daemonum Amplexus - Demonic Embrace, USBM

 

Cinereous Rain - II, Ecuador/Germany

 

[Thatguy]

15 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Amun - Spectra and Obsession, modern "experimental" black metal from Ohio

There's a lot of music here and I'll need time to have a listen and form an opinion. I see they use the word 'experimental' on their Bandcamp page. I have thought for some time that experimental is a meaningless term when applied to music. And it's not just metal by any means - jazz, electronic, modern 'classical' etc etc will all add experimental to their descriptions. To my mind, experiment is what you do in your home studio or in the rehearsal room. If it is finished enough to release in any form for anyone but you/your band to hear then where is the experiment? The experiment was done when you tried something, didn't like it and changed it. 

Thayguy has spoken.

Hmm, Amun goes on as I write. I don't like the cheesy clean vocals nor the bland power riffing. Also the harmonically trite sythn work. They should have experimented more before releasing this.

[JamesT]

Machine Head - "Unto the Locust"

Machine Head - "Bloodstone and Diamonds"

Machine Head - "Catharsis"

Machine Head - "Of Kingdom and Crown"

Really enjoyed the dive into the catalog.  I was pleasantly surprised.  

Blessed Hellride - "Hellfire Club"

Loving this newest release from these guys.  All 3 albums are great, though.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

2 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

There's a lot of music here and I'll need time to have a listen and form an opinion. I see they use the word 'experimental' on their Bandcamp page. I have thought for some time that experimental is a meaningless term when applied to music. And it's not just metal by any means - jazz, electronic, modern 'classical' etc etc will all add experimental to their descriptions. To my mind, experiment is what you do in your home studio or in the rehearsal room. If it is finished enough to release in any form for anyone but you/your band to hear then where is the experiment? The experiment was done when you tried something, didn't like it and changed it. 

Thayguy has spoken.

Hmm, Amun goes on as I write. I don't like the cheesy clean vocals nor the bland power riffing. Also the harmonically trite sythn work. They should have experimented more before releasing this.

You are of course correct that the term "experimental" means next to nothing when describing an album, which is why I put it in quotes, as I saw the word was used on the video description as well as on their M-A page. Didn't look at their Bandcamp page as I had no intention of buying this. I believe the word "experimental" is commonly used these days to mean simply coloring outside the lines more often than anything else. Bands that dare stray from the template, but don't go so far as to earn the other useless labels "prog" or "avant-garde." And ironically I'm one of them gatekeeper dudes so I'm almost always looking for bands that can color within the lines and not stray from the black metal template.

I don't think I listened to the whole 108 minutes last night since I posted that about 2:30am and I'm pretty sure I fell asleep some time before it finished. Kid woke me up around 6 or 7 saying he needed cough medicine and then I was up for a couple of hours after that (I don't find it easy to go back to sleep once I've been rudely awakened) before I managed to doze off again, but I never went back to the Amun. So I've put it on again now and yes there are far too many cleans for my liking. Sounds all posty and lame to me now, tedious even, not at all how I remember it so I'm really not sure what I was thinking at 2:30 in the morning. I've got no excuse Doc, I fucked up. Or "stuffed" up as you Aussies like to say.

How about this one? I came across this one last night in my travels as well, another sort of posty affair but without the 'orrible cleans. Give it to me straight Doc, don't hold back.

Stygian Love - Ghost Light, post metal from Belgium.

 

[JamesT]

On 6/9/2023 at 8:10 AM, Arioch said:

Motörhead - Overnight Sensation (1996)

 

Love this one!  My third-favorite Motorhead album.  Never disappoints.

[Serpentboi1992]

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Just now, JamesT said:

Love this one!  My third-favorite Motorhead album.  Never disappoints.

This can't be their third best album because before you even click play on this one we see that Lemmy was uncharacteristically clean-shaven for the cover photo shoot, and points are gonna need to be deducted for that. 

This is one of those middle period Motörhead albums that like almost all of their albums sounds pretty damn good to me when I put it on, (can't think of too many "bad" Motörhead albums except for the final one when you could hear Lemmy's age catching up to him) but I don't listen to this one often enough to be able to remember how these songs go just from reading the titles on the track list. Except for Don't Believe a Word, and that one drove me crazy for quite awhile because I kept expecting them to play the classic Thin Lizzy tune of the same name. Same as Eat the Rich off Rock 'n' Roll, it took me years not to expect to hear the old 1983 Krokus song when I saw Eat the RIch on the tracklist, even though Motörhead's Eat the Rich is a much better song.

They had settled into being pretty formulaic by this point in 1996, had the whole write, record, release, touring cycle down to a science and it almost felt they were going through the motions and phoning it in with the songwriting at times by this point, so there were not a lot of big surprises on these late 90's and 2000's Motörhead albums. Not that there's anything really wrong with most of these albums, a bunch of them are really quite good (Inferno comes to mind) I just have so many other earlier ones I hold in much higher regard.

Still, I get a real kick out of seeing anyone my daughter's age or younger who's so totally into these old 80's bands like Motörhead that I grew up with. Or not 'grew up with' exacty because I was already 20 when I discovered the band via No Sleep Til Hammersmith, but I'm sure you know what I mean JT.

[AlSymerz]

Last time I did a Motorhead ranking, which was about 8 years I ranked Overnight Sensation as third last

I do remember doing that ranking, listening to each album, thinking about each album and then ranking them accordingly, that was back when I was younger and gave a shit about things! I don't think it's a bad album but with 21 other releases around it I don't think it will ever sit top in the top 10 with me.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Seems I just posted a Motörhead top 10 ranking three months ago on March 15th. I would say my top 6 amost never changes, even though I might put the same 6 in a slighly different order sometimes. After having just listened to Overnight Sensation all the way through an hour ago while typing my previous post, I'll say I could see my way clear to having it maybe in the 9th or 10th position, but no higher than that due to the strength of their other abums. I think trying to rank their bottom 10 in a specific order would be quite frustrating as some of their later albums sound very simialr to each other. I'm just pretty sure that Bad Magic and On Parole woud probably be my bottom two.

 

Top 10 Motörhead records:

1. Iron Fist - never ever falls out of the top spot.

2. Ace of Spades - almost aways my #2.

3. Orgasmatron - I know what my Claw is for

4. 1916 - this one and Orgasmatron can be known to swap positions sometimes

5. Bomber - even this one can crack my top 4 every now and then

6. Another Perfect Day - quite underrated, this outier is a great album

7. Overkill - quite overrated as I've seen so many people rank it #1 or #2 which I think is silly given its stiff competition, but it's still a damn good record.

8. Inferno - late career surprise, didn't think they still had it in them by 2004

9. Rock & Roll - I used to not like this one as much some years back, but it's really grown on me again.

10. Kiss of Death - rounding out my top ten with one of their more memorable later albums, this one and Motörizer would be my 10 and 11 in either order. Bastards can even work its way into 10th occsasionally. We are Motörhead is also very good.

 

[RelentlessOblivion]

Motörhead are an interesting one for me, I dig them for sure, but pretty much only listen to the same 4 albums in Bomber, Overkill, Ace of Spades, and Iron Fist

[Thatguy]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

You are of course correct that the term "experimental" means next to nothing when describing an album, which is why I put it in quotes

I knew what you meant. I have been waiting for an opportunity to let loose that particular rant and it seemed like the right time.

 

2 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Stygian Love - Ghost Light, post metal from Belgium.

Bland. I like shoe-gazey post whatever, as you know, but this is trite. Or tripe. 

Mate, two misses in a row.

If you want post whatever with balls, then try BRIQUEVILLE - II. I listened to this on my run this morning and rather enjoyed it.

SONN'ENDER - Suspended in Oneiric Twilight. Oneiric means relating to dreams or dreaming. I had to look it up .

[Kristiko]

Drowning Pool - Tear Away

[AlSymerz]

37 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Seems I just posted a Motörhead top 10 ranking three months ago on March 15th. I would say my top 6 amost never changes, even though I might put the same 6 in a slighly different order sometimes. After having just listened to Overnight Sensation all the way through an hour ago while typing my previous post, I'll say I could see my way clear to having it maybe in the 9th or 10th position, but no higher than that due to the strength of their other abums. I think trying to rank their bottom 10 in a specific order would be quite frustrating as some of their later albums sound very simialr to each other. I'm just pretty sure that Bad Magic and On Parole woud probably be my bottom two.

 

Top 10 Motörhead records:

1. Iron Fist - never ever falls out of the top spot.

2. Ace of Spades - almost aways my #2.

3. Orgasmatron - I know what my Claw is for

4. 1916 - this one and Orgasmatron can be known to swap positions sometimes

5. Bomber - even this one can crack my top 4 every now and then

6. Another Perfect Day - quite underrated, this outier is a great album

7. Overkill - quite overrated as I've seen so many people rank it #1 or #2 which I think is silly given its stiff competition, but it's still a damn good record.

8. Inferno - late career surprise, didn't think they still had it in them by 2004

9. Rock & Roll - I used to not like this one as much some years back, but it's really grown on me again.

10. Kiss of Death - rounding out my top ten with one of their more memorable later albums, this one and Motörizer would be my 10 and 11 in either order. Bastards can even work its way into 10th occsasionally. We are Motörhead is also very good.

 

Yeah it's always the bottom half of the discography that is difficult with Motorhead. On Parole and Bad Magic were not great albums despite having some good songs on them. Given that On Parole was not officially released by the band I've never actually ranked it in any poll. But Bad Magic I thought was and okay album (except for the Stones cover), brought down by Lemmy's health and age. There are a few live shows where Lemmy was feeling good where some of those songs don't sound too bad.

For me the top 5 is usually AOS, 1916, MOD, RNR, Orgasmatron, with the last three changing order

 

[markm]

I've owned Overnight Sensation for a long ass time and it's a good record in my book.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

23 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

Bland. I like shoe-gazey post whatever, as you know, but this is trite. Or tripe. 

Mate, two misses in a row.

If you want post whatever with balls, then try BRIQUEVILLE - II. I listened to this on my run this morning and rather enjoyed it.

There is no 'post whatever' with balls, because if it had balls they wouldn't have put the "post" label on it now would they?

[GoatmasterGeneral]

1 hour ago, Thatguy said:

If you want post whatever with balls, then try BRIQUEVILLE - II. I listened to this on my run this morning and rather enjoyed it.

This was terrible, I made it about 7 minutes.

 

[Thatguy]

2 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

This was terrible, I made it about 7 minutes.

About 1000% better than Stygian Love. 

Better sound. Better played. Avoided egregious harmonic cliches. No whiney voice. Of course it's fine that you think it's terrible. But you didn't really like Stygian Love did you? Even the band name sucks  - are they trying to say that they are br00tal yet sensitive. Fuckin' wankers.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

▶︎ SAT360: Corpus Necromanthum - He ... Who Suffers Knowledge (2023) | Satanath Records (bandcamp.com)

 

A few tracks in and I'm finding myself craving some of the higher end guitars where they let everything kind of separate and use a few more interesting harmonies. Still, it's pretty good and the death that's in there muddles well enough with the black to make it riffy enough to hold my attention. A few points feel like they're right on the edge of falling into Incantation territory. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

15 minutes ago, Thatguy said:

About 1000% better than Stygian Love. Better sound. Better played. Avoided egregious harmonic cliches. No whiney voice. Of course it's fine that you think it's terrible. But you didn't really like Stygian Love did you? Even the band name sucks  - are they trying to say that they are br00tal yet sensitive. Fuckin' wankers.

No I did not. I was not comparing the two, the one being terrible has no bearing on the quality of the other wankers.

But I fail to see how something that's terrible could be 1000 times better than anything else, even if the other thing is also terrible. Although I wouldn't say I found the Stygians to be terrible, it just wasn't my thing. I thought the Briquie Boys were actively terrible. I found that first song with the throbbing riff hard to get through, I really wanted to click out of it but I pushed through on your reco hoping maybe it'd get better. But then they lost me with the 2nd track when they showed their true postiness. But then again they are working in that post-hardcore modern sludge/noise whatever you call it space that unlike some guys like you and Mark I generally try to avoid.

"Better sound. Better played." These things aren't universally appreciated Doc. Most of what I listen to would be said by many to have poorer than average sound/production, and often (but not always) more basic levels of musicianship. Believe it or not I tend to look at bands who wield their superior musicianship as a weapon and insist on using clear production as negatives. I actively seek the raw fuzzy sound of diy black metal. And I have no idea what 'harmonic cliches' are supposed to be. I'm not a musician and I don't deconstruct things musically the way you do. An album either affects me in a way that I enjoy, or in a way that I don't enjoy, or sometimes I'm just ambivalent towards it.

[RelentlessOblivion]

Cemetary - An Evil Shade of Grey

[Thatguy]

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

"Better sound. Better played." These things aren't universally appreciated Doc. Most of what I listen to would be said by many to have poorer than average sound/production, and often (but not always) more basic levels of musicianship. Believe it or not I tend to look at bands who wield their superior musicianship as a weapon and insist on using clear production as negatives. I actively seek the raw fuzzy sound of diy black metal. And I have no idea what 'harmonic cliches' are supposed to be. I'm not a musician and I don't deconstruct things musically the way you do. An album either affects me in a way that I enjoy, or in a way that I don't enjoy, or sometimes I'm just ambivalent towards it.

Yep. I get all that. But the droopy wankers are objectively worse than the men of bricks in as much as I enjoyed the brick men and was rather nauseated by the sad boys. I know, that's just my opinion (man).

And something can be less terrible than another thing. It would be terrible to lose my left index finger, but that would be less terrible than to lose my dick. Or, to choose a musical example, the sad droopers are terrible, but their music is less terrible than anything by Ed Sheeran - and my daughter has made me listen to enough Ed the Eunuch, the ranger with no groove, to know how terrible he is.

[Nasty_Cabbage]

I think I have a bad habit of sticking my nose where it doesn't belong, but here goes anyway: I think the problem with "post"-whatever is that it's just a statement of influence. If I called something post-krautrock black metal, for instance, what am I really saying about the music. We might all have a certain sort of sound in mind, but the post part of it means almost nothing accept that it's taking some kind of element that was previously distinct to krautrock. It kind of acknowledges that krautrock is a thing and that it's changed the musical landscape enough to have leaked into other genres.

It's descriptive in a way, but it has the odd effect of diluting the impact of whatever genre it's leaking into, making it a kind of weird repellent to the hardened fans of the genre in question. I know food metaphors are a cliche, but imagine if this was a common methodology for naming drinks at a bar. Anybody who likes martinis knows well enough to avoid anything that has a fruit with a "tini" grafted onto the end. It might be descriptive in some way, but not a good one, since an appletini is about as far from a dirty martini as you can get. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I sort of wish I still went to bars so I could see if ordering a "post vermouth Irish car bomb" would be enough to get the bartender to call the cops for a wellness check. At the very least they might call me a cab.

NP: ▶︎ Det förtegna förflutna | Blodtår (bandcamp.com)

I definitely hear the Windir in this.