7/10
http://townportal.bandcamp.com/
Showing posts with label Dan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dan. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Vacuum Horror - Town Portal
Vacuum Horror starts off on a slow note with the lazy, brilliantly sloppy riffs of "Rosini", punctuated with steely chords that loan some light to a song that otherwise sounds like the apathetic guitar rambling of two funk guitarists and a bassist. The album immediately mixes things up and awkwardly jumps into the airy, indie pop verses and thrash refrains of "Steaming Scrolls". "Segway" continues along with the light, laid back melodies until the next change-up, "Salut". Regrettably, this takes the album to a stall while "Salut" starts to re-use sounds and ideas from the introductory song. This does nothing to innovate within the album other than incorporating material from the previous three songs. After the Funk breakdown at the end of "Salut" finally cuts out, the album takes its last breath with its fifth song, "Drastic Insight", a classic rock / funk hybrid based on down tuned hard rock riffs and a jazzy interlude that suits the song surprisingly well. As soon as this song stops however, the album dies with "Phantom Time", which is essentially a continuation of the song "Salut" from earlier in the album. While "Salut" was an alright song in and of itself, it went a step further than most repetitive (and really any) album in that it reused song and riff pieces, and not just musical style (which almost any album with a clear focus is guilty of).
Monday, September 19, 2011
Valhalla
Valhalla only has one song up on their facebook page so far, but I'm sure there will be more to come. Anyway, Valhalla is the sort of thing I get excited about. Just as a listener, Valhalla does something right and they're artistic vision lines up quite well with my tastes as it seems. As an amateur music critic, I have this nagging feeling that what they're doing with they're music has been done in more creative, "better" ways by other bands. I don't have a great deal of experience with thrash however, so the most I can say is that the prog focused, oriental sound works for me and there is no lack of talent on any of the instruments. Check them out and maybe Matt can give a more informed review on the band once they put out enough material to establish Valhalla as a definite musical style.
http://www.facebook.com/valhallauk?sk=app_178091127385
http://www.facebook.com/valhallauk?sk=app_178091127385
Sunday, September 18, 2011
The FU'zz
Okay, let's get one thing out of the way at the outset of the review, The FU'zz's name is, in fact, supposed to read like "F U". This bad pun seems to foretell a good amount about the band. The FU'zz is a "light spirited garage rock band". They make sure that we're all clear on this by deliberately misspelling song titles in a "fun and quirky" way. A good chunk of you probably have a more or less accurate pre-judgement about the band already. Yes, there is definitely a sound to The FU'zz's music that calls to mind that high school rock band that everyone praised just because they were barely capable of playing their instruments. The thing is, The FU'zz isn't like that band because they suck (thank god), but because its clear they're having fun with the music. At no point throughout the 14 song album that they have on Bandcamp have I ever thought that the recording artists were so caught up in producing a perfect product that they forgot to enjoy what they're doing.
Starting on the negatives, I think the single biggest issue that The FU'zz has is oftentimes very crowded recordings for a garage rock band. When I think of lo-fi alt / garage rock bands, the first thing that comes to mind is a very stripped down, stark sound. I'll use what it arguably the best example of this, The White Stripes. If you pull up a White Stripes song, if you aren't familiar with any of their songs yet, you should notice that the music has a very unique atmosphere to it. It's a little hard to describe, somehow, The White Stripes can manage to fill in a lot of "empty space" in the recording that most other bands fill with more instrumentation, just by the way they write their songs. This liberal use of silence and figurative empty space as an instrument in and of itself is, in my opinion, the essence of truly great garage rock. Dirty, poorly recorded classic rock cuts and anxious vocals that express emotion not through melody, but through tone. Its for this reason that Jack White can get away with his oftentimes wildly off key vocals and still be called a great. But this is a review for The FU'zz, not The White Stripes.
The other big problem with The FU'zz is that their overarching sound can become a bit inaccessible and eclectic at times. At moments songs can turn into simultaneously pop, funk, punk, metal, and surf rock inspired oddities where one wonders who but the music connoisseur with the most eclectic tastes could get the full value out of the song (see Fried 4 Eternity and Trippin Onna Shoelace). This brings us to The FU'zz's finer points in a roundabout way. Somehow, The FU'zz can make this bizarre, quirky sound work. I don't presently know of any bands that make the contrasting sounds bounce off of one another in such an effective way, my closest approximation would be Primus, but to suggest that Primus is even playing the same sport as The FU'zz would be insane. On the more straightforward, purposeful songs (Soggy, Forever Bugs, etc.) The FU'zz pulls off some really cool, dark, crunchy riffs and funky basslines, but I feel like these songs are a bit less interesting, if a bit more focused, then their oddball counterparts. On the flip side, these "junk drawer" songs feature plenty of good riffs and fills as well, but the nature of these songs leads to the song elements getting spread thin among the plethora of influences.
So I feel like I've accurately described The FU'zz's defining sound. Unusual, experimental dark, noisy, and lo fi. I don't feel like they could possibly be called a massive, groundbreaking success as a consequence of the crowded and overwhelming recording, but as trite as the statement is both within my reviews and among others, The FU'zz is a fun, rewarding listen that reminds me of the (probably false) maxim of my local high school bands, that they do it for the music, not the attention or the money. The only difference is that I wholeheartedly believe the statement rings true in The FU'zz's case.
Starting on the negatives, I think the single biggest issue that The FU'zz has is oftentimes very crowded recordings for a garage rock band. When I think of lo-fi alt / garage rock bands, the first thing that comes to mind is a very stripped down, stark sound. I'll use what it arguably the best example of this, The White Stripes. If you pull up a White Stripes song, if you aren't familiar with any of their songs yet, you should notice that the music has a very unique atmosphere to it. It's a little hard to describe, somehow, The White Stripes can manage to fill in a lot of "empty space" in the recording that most other bands fill with more instrumentation, just by the way they write their songs. This liberal use of silence and figurative empty space as an instrument in and of itself is, in my opinion, the essence of truly great garage rock. Dirty, poorly recorded classic rock cuts and anxious vocals that express emotion not through melody, but through tone. Its for this reason that Jack White can get away with his oftentimes wildly off key vocals and still be called a great. But this is a review for The FU'zz, not The White Stripes.
The other big problem with The FU'zz is that their overarching sound can become a bit inaccessible and eclectic at times. At moments songs can turn into simultaneously pop, funk, punk, metal, and surf rock inspired oddities where one wonders who but the music connoisseur with the most eclectic tastes could get the full value out of the song (see Fried 4 Eternity and Trippin Onna Shoelace). This brings us to The FU'zz's finer points in a roundabout way. Somehow, The FU'zz can make this bizarre, quirky sound work. I don't presently know of any bands that make the contrasting sounds bounce off of one another in such an effective way, my closest approximation would be Primus, but to suggest that Primus is even playing the same sport as The FU'zz would be insane. On the more straightforward, purposeful songs (Soggy, Forever Bugs, etc.) The FU'zz pulls off some really cool, dark, crunchy riffs and funky basslines, but I feel like these songs are a bit less interesting, if a bit more focused, then their oddball counterparts. On the flip side, these "junk drawer" songs feature plenty of good riffs and fills as well, but the nature of these songs leads to the song elements getting spread thin among the plethora of influences.
So I feel like I've accurately described The FU'zz's defining sound. Unusual, experimental dark, noisy, and lo fi. I don't feel like they could possibly be called a massive, groundbreaking success as a consequence of the crowded and overwhelming recording, but as trite as the statement is both within my reviews and among others, The FU'zz is a fun, rewarding listen that reminds me of the (probably false) maxim of my local high school bands, that they do it for the music, not the attention or the money. The only difference is that I wholeheartedly believe the statement rings true in The FU'zz's case.
8/10
http://thefuzzstl.bandcamp.com/
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Things Move in my Closet
I think the part I hate about reviewing bands the most is needing to write seriously negative reviews. Sitting at my computer for four hours for a single review because I can't tell whether I like what I'm hearing or not is second, but this review is dealing entirely with the former. Rather than drawing the agony out over five or six big paragraphs, I'm going to keep this short.
There are two songs up on TMIMC's site. Nicotine, and Wages of Sin. To be blunt, Nicotine is painful to listen to in a similar way that dragging your nails across a chalkboard might be painful. The lead singer is off key and nasally. The guitar work is your generic green-day pop punk crap. The drums aren't much better, especially bad is the part when the drummer beats on his cymbals repeatedly for a hard rock character, which works fine--if you know what your doing--but Things Move in my Closet doesn't. The sound is cliche, stagnant, and a touch cheesy and achieves none of what the band was going for with it. The "bassline" is composed of three repeated notes, this gets old fast. Wages of Sin isn't much better, fortunately, this is a metalcore song, so its difficult to go off key on the heavy vocals; they're just some of the least refined sounding high pitched screams I've ever heard, thats not a good thing. The only reprieve from the abysmal vocals comes during the choruses where they manage to get a strong, gritty sound in the clean vocals, but the way they're applied squanders the opportunity. In no way whatsoever do the choruses line up with the rest of the song. The song goes from half baked, banal metalcore to irritating, out-of-place snippets that sound like they were taken from a mediocre nickelback tribute band. The only redeeming point between the two songs is that the guitar solos seem to step up from a figurative 3/10 on the rest of the song, to a solid 8/10. The problem is, the solos come too late, and they just aren't worth grinding your teeth through the rest of the song.
All of this, on top of poor production standards, leave the listener with one logical choice, that is, to close the tab, and move on to other, more creative, skillful bands that are actually fun to listen to. The band, on their site, stated that they formed in May and began quickly writing songs, and I would suggest that this is their problem, and would highly encourage the band members to go back and spend some more time carefully planning and writing their songs, because what they've posted to reverbnation sounds as hastily put together as the band indicated that they are.
There are two songs up on TMIMC's site. Nicotine, and Wages of Sin. To be blunt, Nicotine is painful to listen to in a similar way that dragging your nails across a chalkboard might be painful. The lead singer is off key and nasally. The guitar work is your generic green-day pop punk crap. The drums aren't much better, especially bad is the part when the drummer beats on his cymbals repeatedly for a hard rock character, which works fine--if you know what your doing--but Things Move in my Closet doesn't. The sound is cliche, stagnant, and a touch cheesy and achieves none of what the band was going for with it. The "bassline" is composed of three repeated notes, this gets old fast. Wages of Sin isn't much better, fortunately, this is a metalcore song, so its difficult to go off key on the heavy vocals; they're just some of the least refined sounding high pitched screams I've ever heard, thats not a good thing. The only reprieve from the abysmal vocals comes during the choruses where they manage to get a strong, gritty sound in the clean vocals, but the way they're applied squanders the opportunity. In no way whatsoever do the choruses line up with the rest of the song. The song goes from half baked, banal metalcore to irritating, out-of-place snippets that sound like they were taken from a mediocre nickelback tribute band. The only redeeming point between the two songs is that the guitar solos seem to step up from a figurative 3/10 on the rest of the song, to a solid 8/10. The problem is, the solos come too late, and they just aren't worth grinding your teeth through the rest of the song.
All of this, on top of poor production standards, leave the listener with one logical choice, that is, to close the tab, and move on to other, more creative, skillful bands that are actually fun to listen to. The band, on their site, stated that they formed in May and began quickly writing songs, and I would suggest that this is their problem, and would highly encourage the band members to go back and spend some more time carefully planning and writing their songs, because what they've posted to reverbnation sounds as hastily put together as the band indicated that they are.
3/10
http://www.reverbnation.com/thingsmoveinmycloset
Bound in Blue
I think it should be pretty obvious by this point that I don't like deathcore. Particularly in the underground scene where, in addition to the lack of originality attributed towards the genre, production values take a nose dive for the worse, often relying on digital EQ to boost the bass to make things sound heavier. I sort of ignored Bound in Blue for a bit because I get... "cored out", for lack of a better term. I can get sarcastic and overly judgemental when I listen to too many core bands in a short period of time. The sounds all run together, the concepts get stale, I just develop a distaste for needing to listen to a genre I dislike and attempt to write reviews that are fair to the band. Bound in Blue defies this trend, more so than any core band I've heard before. I'll admit that I'm not a core expert, I had a stint with deathcore about two years ago, and I stopped. I know names, but I don't bother looking up signed deathcore bands up because they just don't appeal to me. Regardless, Bound in Blue is an excellent group and they do core in a way I've never heard it done before.
Bound in Blue's general sound is incontrovertibly a "-core" sound. There's obvious punk influences, there are breakdowns, there's some sweep picking, and other such material most conventional metal-heads will dismiss as trite nonsense. The thing is, Bound in Blue can use all of these elements, without needing to worry about incorporating elements of other genres, and still produce fresh, interesting material where I can't point to another band and ask "why should I listen to your music and not their music?" So why should you listen to Bound in Blue? Bound in Blue's music was quite apparently written to be music, not three minute recordings of a bunch of guys who've only played their instruments for six months trying to sound brutal. The open note chugging serves to provide a foundation for riffs and cuts on lead guitar, rather than the song's focus. Would I prefer if they delegated this task to the bass, and the bass only? Yes. But every once in a while, the rhythm guitar finds its place in the music, especially in the songs "Irreantum" and "Home Away from Home", but it works as a rhythm guitar elsewhere, just not as prominently as in those two songs. The band's use of breakdowns is confined to song outros as a means to slow the song down before killing the power. I view them less as breakdowns, than as a tool to stop instruments one at a time, so that the whole song isn't awkwardly cutting off like the song "Symmetry of Zero" by Decapitated. The four song set, as a whole, just generally has this air of control without leaving the songs vapid and devoid of feeling. In some ways Bound of Blue has a stripped down, subdued sound that doesn't get needlessly loud and crowded for the sake of producing a constant, total assault on the listener's ears.
Instrumental prowess is the one area where I feel I can rightfully fault Bound in Blue. For whatever reason, something about their music really appeals to me as a listener. But because I'm supposed to be critical with the music that I'm reviewing (otherwise the review section of each post on the site is completely pointless), I can't just ignore a band's faults. The problem isn't that there is one note chugging or sweep picking, because thats an artistic choice on the behalf of the musician. The problem is how well Bound in Blue can play their instruments. The guitars and bass are mostly good. It never sounds like the lead guitarist is struggling to move his fingers to the right frets or that the rhythm guitarist is having a hard time maintaining a pattern. The bass guitar is a touch harder to critique, but again, the bass guitar never slips out from under the rest of the instruments when the bassist screws up and plays an off note or plucks a string too late or too early. The observable problems in the music are with the vocals and drums. The vocals, exhibiting the more egregious faults of the two, are just a bit boring and uninteresting. It seems like the vocalist just can't harness his voice's full potential and that the most that he can access is a tame, controlled, body-less shout. There's little emotion in his tone and even less energy. The drums are a little less noticeable. At some times, the drums complement the rest of what's going on in the song nicely, at other times, the drums can be a touch out of step. Not quite enough to make the songs seriously awkward and mechanical, but it takes away from the fluidity and level of coherence between the instruments. But looking at these flaws, they're pretty insignificant and small. My concern is more for Bound in Blue's future development, and their ability to branch out beyond the songs they've posted on facebook when they get signed to Arkaik Records (it would be tremendously helpful if you guys would go to Arkaik Records facebook page, like them, and tag Bound in Blue in a post recommending that Arkaik should sign them). The fact that Bound in Blue uses one note chugging and the occasional sweep concerns me because if they were comfortable with more than that, I'd expect them to bulk up their songs with more complex bass lines and guitar work. This doesn't do anything to the band now, but eventually, they're going to need to progress from what they're doing now if they have any aspirations of success as musicians.
The recording quality on the four song set Bound in Blue has up doesn't warrant too much attention. It is a little murky and fuzzy at times, and the noise floor doesn't sound perfect. Other than that, there's very little to complain about now, and they will hopefully be moving on to work with a professional record label very soon. where the little flaws in recording quality should be sealed up to produce a sound thats more or less "faultless". That isn't to say its going to sound immaculate, but in my experience, most modern, professionally produced albums don't warrant any criticisms about sound quality, only varying levels of praise. There are exceptions of course, but this is what I've found to be true the majority of the time.
So if you are a hardcore or metalcore fan, you should almost definitely be greatly satisfied with Bound in Blue. For everyone else tired of the -core scene, this won't radically change your opinion of the genres, but in and of itself, I think Bound in Blue's "EP" on facebook is a great little hardcore opus that everyone should listen to given its price tag of "free" to listen to the songs streaming from facebook. Definitely a band that I will be keeping an eye on, especially if they get signed to Arkaik, which you can help to happen if you just follow the instructions posted below.
Bound in Blue's general sound is incontrovertibly a "-core" sound. There's obvious punk influences, there are breakdowns, there's some sweep picking, and other such material most conventional metal-heads will dismiss as trite nonsense. The thing is, Bound in Blue can use all of these elements, without needing to worry about incorporating elements of other genres, and still produce fresh, interesting material where I can't point to another band and ask "why should I listen to your music and not their music?" So why should you listen to Bound in Blue? Bound in Blue's music was quite apparently written to be music, not three minute recordings of a bunch of guys who've only played their instruments for six months trying to sound brutal. The open note chugging serves to provide a foundation for riffs and cuts on lead guitar, rather than the song's focus. Would I prefer if they delegated this task to the bass, and the bass only? Yes. But every once in a while, the rhythm guitar finds its place in the music, especially in the songs "Irreantum" and "Home Away from Home", but it works as a rhythm guitar elsewhere, just not as prominently as in those two songs. The band's use of breakdowns is confined to song outros as a means to slow the song down before killing the power. I view them less as breakdowns, than as a tool to stop instruments one at a time, so that the whole song isn't awkwardly cutting off like the song "Symmetry of Zero" by Decapitated. The four song set, as a whole, just generally has this air of control without leaving the songs vapid and devoid of feeling. In some ways Bound of Blue has a stripped down, subdued sound that doesn't get needlessly loud and crowded for the sake of producing a constant, total assault on the listener's ears.
Instrumental prowess is the one area where I feel I can rightfully fault Bound in Blue. For whatever reason, something about their music really appeals to me as a listener. But because I'm supposed to be critical with the music that I'm reviewing (otherwise the review section of each post on the site is completely pointless), I can't just ignore a band's faults. The problem isn't that there is one note chugging or sweep picking, because thats an artistic choice on the behalf of the musician. The problem is how well Bound in Blue can play their instruments. The guitars and bass are mostly good. It never sounds like the lead guitarist is struggling to move his fingers to the right frets or that the rhythm guitarist is having a hard time maintaining a pattern. The bass guitar is a touch harder to critique, but again, the bass guitar never slips out from under the rest of the instruments when the bassist screws up and plays an off note or plucks a string too late or too early. The observable problems in the music are with the vocals and drums. The vocals, exhibiting the more egregious faults of the two, are just a bit boring and uninteresting. It seems like the vocalist just can't harness his voice's full potential and that the most that he can access is a tame, controlled, body-less shout. There's little emotion in his tone and even less energy. The drums are a little less noticeable. At some times, the drums complement the rest of what's going on in the song nicely, at other times, the drums can be a touch out of step. Not quite enough to make the songs seriously awkward and mechanical, but it takes away from the fluidity and level of coherence between the instruments. But looking at these flaws, they're pretty insignificant and small. My concern is more for Bound in Blue's future development, and their ability to branch out beyond the songs they've posted on facebook when they get signed to Arkaik Records (it would be tremendously helpful if you guys would go to Arkaik Records facebook page, like them, and tag Bound in Blue in a post recommending that Arkaik should sign them). The fact that Bound in Blue uses one note chugging and the occasional sweep concerns me because if they were comfortable with more than that, I'd expect them to bulk up their songs with more complex bass lines and guitar work. This doesn't do anything to the band now, but eventually, they're going to need to progress from what they're doing now if they have any aspirations of success as musicians.
The recording quality on the four song set Bound in Blue has up doesn't warrant too much attention. It is a little murky and fuzzy at times, and the noise floor doesn't sound perfect. Other than that, there's very little to complain about now, and they will hopefully be moving on to work with a professional record label very soon. where the little flaws in recording quality should be sealed up to produce a sound thats more or less "faultless". That isn't to say its going to sound immaculate, but in my experience, most modern, professionally produced albums don't warrant any criticisms about sound quality, only varying levels of praise. There are exceptions of course, but this is what I've found to be true the majority of the time.
So if you are a hardcore or metalcore fan, you should almost definitely be greatly satisfied with Bound in Blue. For everyone else tired of the -core scene, this won't radically change your opinion of the genres, but in and of itself, I think Bound in Blue's "EP" on facebook is a great little hardcore opus that everyone should listen to given its price tag of "free" to listen to the songs streaming from facebook. Definitely a band that I will be keeping an eye on, especially if they get signed to Arkaik, which you can help to happen if you just follow the instructions posted below.
9/10
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bound-In-Blue/150385568351825?sk=app_178091127385
Like this facebook page, like Arkaik Records, and then tag Bound in Blue in a post on Arkaik asking them to sign Bound in Blue.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Alustrium
So the whole "new site" thing isn't going over as well as I'd like. The wix interface makes me want to rip my hair out. I've been going on family vacations, and lately, school has gotten in the way. I figure I'm due to take care of some reviews for Matt. I pulled up the thread and had to pick through what must have been two dozen replies from Matt that he reviewed a band. Luckily, he hasn't taken Alustrium yet, because the rest of the bands he hasn't taken yet are punk. I don't "do" punk, so that would've been ugly.
Alustrium does a style of death metal that I usually enjoy, a kind of folk inspired "tech death". Nile so far is my favorite example of this, particularly "Those Whom the Gods Detest", which, IMO, really capitalizes on the style by working it into more straightforward riffs in contrast to "Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren Ka" or even "Black Seeds of Vengeance", and takes a step away from the somewhat stilted ""Ithyphallic" in terms of rhythm structure. I included the "usually" caveat in the beginning for a reason though, and Alustrium is a bit of an exception to the rule in this case. Riffs don't work together, transitions can be choppy, the explosive force that made "Those Whom the Gods Detest" a success for me just isn't there. The song just awkwardly flows from verse to chorus, bridge to pre chorus, bridge intro to bridge body, etc. At times I wonder if Alustrium is a metalcore band that jumped off the bandwagon just a couple of seconds too late. The more I listen to the first two tracks, and the more I listen to the other tracks not on the Last.fm page, the more confident I feel in this assumption. For as many chunky, moderately paced rhythm sections and high speed, creative, middle eastern sounding lead guitar passages as there are to Alustriums style, there is a boring sweep pick or one of those banal riffs that everyone uses that I don't know the term for.
So the crux of metal, as everyone should know, is the guitar, and to a lesser degree, the bass, depending on how high the recording artist throws it up in the mix. When a band flubs either, or both, of those parts of the package, the music suffers. Alustrium sinks low enough on the song structure and latter two instruments that I don't think anyone could really judge them as objectively great among a sea of far more proficient artists. The drums however, are spot on for the style. Fitting a tech death aesthetic rather than the tired old metalcore style (except during a short section of one specific bridge), the drums are so fast at some points, so accurate, and so poorly recorded, that I can't tell for sure if they're programmed or "organic". Drums like this are what really allow a tech death album to pop, granted, the song "pops" in the first place. Unfortunately the opportunity to make a really fantastic, dynamic, coherent sounding album was squandered a bit here, but hey, it doesn't detract from the sound in any way. Finally, the vocals are set back a bit too far in the mix, but what does come across loud and clear is a very solid "average". There is no real gurgle or growl, just an overall matte texture. On top of this, I just don't feel like the vocals have any real emotion, nothing about them inspires any sense of emotion beyond a simple "this guys sounds pissed".
This is usually where I roughly critique the recording quality on an album, which, for smaller bands working with often times inferior equipment and less experienced audio engineers, there are often a handful of errors in the recording that sound especially obvious and damaging, and the assessment stops there. Alustrium, as it sounds, had access to nicer equipment than a number of the other unsigned bands I've heard have, and its clear they were going for a refined, polished sound. Did they succeed? Yes and no. I want to say there aren't any glaring problems in the recording, but there are. The problems that exist are just a bit unusual and different. Rather than having the drums running together, they're very sharp and separate, but they sound very shallow and clicky; cymbals and hi hats sound metallic and comparatively very on point timbre wise, but they decay so fast that its almost as if someone recorded a cymbal for a trigger, cropped a large portion of the resonance / ringing out of the recording, and then used that for cymbal and hi hat effects. Just as a whole, the drums are too far down in the mix and sound unclear and obscured. Guitar has crunch to it, and it doesn't sound thin and feathery, but it sounds veiled and doesn't have any impact or power behind it. The bass, obviously, can be pulled up in the mix, and in general, I'm not a fan of the tone, but the bass, and the vocals, largely check out okay where recording quality is concerned. My problem is that I'm just not a fan of the mix, which leaves drums too far back, taking away from the benefits that they offer, and the vocals can get smeared over by the guitar and bass at times, which makes everything sound bad.
Compared directly alongside veterans in similar fields of metal, Alustrium doesn't hold up for me. Looking at them with a folk inspired tech death band like Nile, they're just too corrupted by their core influences to sound like a serious death metal act. Compared to a core band, the sound is just a touch too centered on more "legitimate" metal styles to fit the core bill. Even just looking at the songs in and of themselves from a musical standpoint, the only coherent flowing piece is the drum work and the lukewarm vocals. The dynamics just aren't there, and if they were to work on the dynamics and possibly mix this differently, the sound could be so much more powerful and forceful, and Alustrium would become a legitimate name in this esoteric subgenre of death metal.
Alustrium does a style of death metal that I usually enjoy, a kind of folk inspired "tech death". Nile so far is my favorite example of this, particularly "Those Whom the Gods Detest", which, IMO, really capitalizes on the style by working it into more straightforward riffs in contrast to "Amongst the Catacombs of Nephren Ka" or even "Black Seeds of Vengeance", and takes a step away from the somewhat stilted ""Ithyphallic" in terms of rhythm structure. I included the "usually" caveat in the beginning for a reason though, and Alustrium is a bit of an exception to the rule in this case. Riffs don't work together, transitions can be choppy, the explosive force that made "Those Whom the Gods Detest" a success for me just isn't there. The song just awkwardly flows from verse to chorus, bridge to pre chorus, bridge intro to bridge body, etc. At times I wonder if Alustrium is a metalcore band that jumped off the bandwagon just a couple of seconds too late. The more I listen to the first two tracks, and the more I listen to the other tracks not on the Last.fm page, the more confident I feel in this assumption. For as many chunky, moderately paced rhythm sections and high speed, creative, middle eastern sounding lead guitar passages as there are to Alustriums style, there is a boring sweep pick or one of those banal riffs that everyone uses that I don't know the term for.
So the crux of metal, as everyone should know, is the guitar, and to a lesser degree, the bass, depending on how high the recording artist throws it up in the mix. When a band flubs either, or both, of those parts of the package, the music suffers. Alustrium sinks low enough on the song structure and latter two instruments that I don't think anyone could really judge them as objectively great among a sea of far more proficient artists. The drums however, are spot on for the style. Fitting a tech death aesthetic rather than the tired old metalcore style (except during a short section of one specific bridge), the drums are so fast at some points, so accurate, and so poorly recorded, that I can't tell for sure if they're programmed or "organic". Drums like this are what really allow a tech death album to pop, granted, the song "pops" in the first place. Unfortunately the opportunity to make a really fantastic, dynamic, coherent sounding album was squandered a bit here, but hey, it doesn't detract from the sound in any way. Finally, the vocals are set back a bit too far in the mix, but what does come across loud and clear is a very solid "average". There is no real gurgle or growl, just an overall matte texture. On top of this, I just don't feel like the vocals have any real emotion, nothing about them inspires any sense of emotion beyond a simple "this guys sounds pissed".
This is usually where I roughly critique the recording quality on an album, which, for smaller bands working with often times inferior equipment and less experienced audio engineers, there are often a handful of errors in the recording that sound especially obvious and damaging, and the assessment stops there. Alustrium, as it sounds, had access to nicer equipment than a number of the other unsigned bands I've heard have, and its clear they were going for a refined, polished sound. Did they succeed? Yes and no. I want to say there aren't any glaring problems in the recording, but there are. The problems that exist are just a bit unusual and different. Rather than having the drums running together, they're very sharp and separate, but they sound very shallow and clicky; cymbals and hi hats sound metallic and comparatively very on point timbre wise, but they decay so fast that its almost as if someone recorded a cymbal for a trigger, cropped a large portion of the resonance / ringing out of the recording, and then used that for cymbal and hi hat effects. Just as a whole, the drums are too far down in the mix and sound unclear and obscured. Guitar has crunch to it, and it doesn't sound thin and feathery, but it sounds veiled and doesn't have any impact or power behind it. The bass, obviously, can be pulled up in the mix, and in general, I'm not a fan of the tone, but the bass, and the vocals, largely check out okay where recording quality is concerned. My problem is that I'm just not a fan of the mix, which leaves drums too far back, taking away from the benefits that they offer, and the vocals can get smeared over by the guitar and bass at times, which makes everything sound bad.
Compared directly alongside veterans in similar fields of metal, Alustrium doesn't hold up for me. Looking at them with a folk inspired tech death band like Nile, they're just too corrupted by their core influences to sound like a serious death metal act. Compared to a core band, the sound is just a touch too centered on more "legitimate" metal styles to fit the core bill. Even just looking at the songs in and of themselves from a musical standpoint, the only coherent flowing piece is the drum work and the lukewarm vocals. The dynamics just aren't there, and if they were to work on the dynamics and possibly mix this differently, the sound could be so much more powerful and forceful, and Alustrium would become a legitimate name in this esoteric subgenre of death metal.
6/10
http://www.reverbnation.com/alustrium
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Mortiferous
Its about ten o' clock, and until ten minutes ago, I was idly browsing my facebook newsfeed for anything interesting to pop up. A post from one of my friends popped up, and one of Mortiferous's band members commented something about "peeing his pants" and "Miles Davis". For whatever reason, I clicked on the kid's profile, and right in his info page, his bands logo popped appeared in his employers. The logo leaves little to the imagination, this is an unsigned, brutal death band of some sort. If some of you would just go check out the bloody band, maybe you'd see why. These guys need some support, and whether you read the "review" for them or not, I'd really like to see bands we review getting more fans on facebook. This is one of the various reasons I quote for doing this project, that is, to help garner support for underground bands who have put the effort into their music, to see that the site apparently makes such an insignificant impact is disheartening to me. Regardless, I'm going to push on with a review as always. Let's just work to make these guys top 104 likes, alright?
One thing I really like to see a band doing is posting influences to their respective sites. Every once in a while, and obscure one will turn up that itunes hasn't recommended / I haven't found through one of the various metal forums around the internet. Aside from that, it gives you a good idea of what to anticipate listening to the band. A lot of bands will cite an influence, and obviously aren't "influenced" by the artist, but are copying ideas from the artist. I was trawling youtube late at night sometime in december and I found a series of interviews with Vincent from The Acacia Strain. The interview is not worth tracking down to post here, but on of the band's members really spoke to me with a quote that described how an "influence" is a band that inspires you to get out and make music, not a band who you take concepts and ideas from. For those of you not familiar with said band, The Acacia Strain has made a point of being the "anti-core" mathcore band. Back on topic, Mortiferous seems to be "influenced" by their influences in the sense of being inspired to go out and make music, more so than the sense of taking material from other people. I'm positive that plenty of leeching is going on here; more of Mortiferous's material is taken from Demolition Hammer and Terrorizer than any of the other cited influences, primarily focusing on a blend of grind and thrash, but old school death elements are present as well. On the converse side of things, whatever is leeched is being applied proportionately with other "leeched" elements to a typical old school swedish dm/ thrashgrind format. The staple cymbal/double bass driven drums are here in full capacity, with and almost unbroken stream of cymbals and blazing fast double bass. Most important in the sound on the five song demo set, for me, is the bass guitar. Its not always audible, but when it is, it is on par with Atheist's bass guitar from "Piece of Time". The latter album being up there in my mental list of "death metal albums with good basswork", largely because its so audible most of the time, but also because of its intricacy and tone.
My personal favorite songs from the five were "Consume the Exhumed", a track with a name suspiciously similar to a Carcass song, and "Icepick Lobotomy", whose name frighteningly enough was a legitimate thing at one point in time. The first of the two songs features a prolonged, grooving bass solo that sounds like a more linear Les Claypool bass line, which in my book, counts as a moderately high accolade. The second song of the pair features some of the more flashy, "technical" riffs of the demo, which bear some similarities to sweep picking, which has its time and place, but isn't a true display of technical prowess, so take that statement with a grain of salt.
Now for the part of the review subject to the most blanket statements and bizarre, esoteric adjectives, recording quality. Although you get more "texture" in Mortiferous's recordings than many other home or budget recording studios may allow, it doesn't sound to carry the full weight of the guitar, and consequently, sounds a touch clinical. This has nothing to do with the music itself in this instance, and if your using a lower end audio system, you may very well have better results than I am having where "musicality" and any other audiophile or recording snob term are concerned. The bass sounds fuzzy and a bit "windy", but otherwise maintains a classic, brutal tone that sounds to be achieved through the combination of a dynamic and condenser mic. Finally, the bass drum exhibits some echo, the toms / snares can be a bit recessed and quick, lacking some depth, and the cymbals exhibit traits similar to those invoked by low bitrate compression from a 320 to a 160.
Overall, Mortiferous is a strong effort for a melting pot of genres that I just refer to as "old school metal". Its a concept that gets done often enough, each entry into the category original in its own, often inconspicuous way, but whenever a band can pull it off as effectively as Mortiferous, its consistently worth giving a listen, and its always a tragedy when such a band ends up dying off in the underground scene because metalcore is currently the "in thing".
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mortiferous/230221870342149
Friday, July 8, 2011
Days of Tomorrow
For anyone who cares about the various shades of boring that have generally comprised my summer, I've pretty much had absolutely nothing that I really do for "fun" this summer other than music and hanging out with some friends. Given that my patience with learning an instrument is about nil, I just listen to a lot of music. Presumable, my ears begin to hurt after enough consecutive days of listening to music for 6+ hour marathons. This is one of those days. Incidentally my one friend cancelled on me because he needs to go to his sister's soccer game after I "called in sick" to the thread. Back to UG. I'm awaiting a response from The Archaist in response to a question I had about their recordings. I'll do a double post today depending on the response I get from them.
Earlier I had mentioned that I am dealing with some ear fatigue / pain at the moment. Logically, I'm going with something a bit softer and easier on the ears for this review in the hopes that the pain will clear up before I start trying to review a metal band. Days of Tomorrow doesn't totally shake the metal schtick, playing on elements of heavy metal and hard rock with their particular style of alt rock, while still maintaining an easy to listen to, soft on the ears, sound.
As I said above, Days of Tomorrow is alt rock with strong heavy metal and hard rock influences. The only problem with this descriptor is the number of bands who can be labeled as such, Wolfmother, The Arctic Monkeys, and even Nickelback (I'm gonna take some flak for mentioning that name in this context). I'm going to bounce off of something another reviewer said with Braden Harris's (another amateur reviewer lurking around the UG threads) comment about Days of Tomorrow sounding like Kings of Leon. I agree, the songs "Hey Dude!" and "Ode to Humanity" are the two "worst offenders" if your the type who believes any semblance to another band shows a lack of creativity. The other three songs kick some of these influences to up the hard rock and metal influences. Its the final two songs, however, "Delirium" and "A World to Find" that really speak to the metalhead in me. "Delirium" sounds like The White Stripes foray into industrial metal, throughout the charmingly lo-fi and unstable vocals to the short, choppy, funky cuts on the guitar to the effectively simplistic drums rhythms. My only issue with the song is that the bridge uses too many arpeggios for its own good. "A World to Find", quite probably to the chagrin of most of our readers, more specifically speaks to the "Linkin Park Metalhead" (if there ever was such a thing) in me. What sets Days of Tomorrow apart from as commercialized and annoying a band as Linkin Park is that they play into the Linkin Park that you hear on "A place for my Head" with less whiny vocals and more technical guitar work. Add in verses that bear the same alt rock sound as "Ode to Humanity" and "Carpe Diem", to the short and sweet, downtuned choruses with they're expansive, "long" vocals and you've got "A World to Find".
The first two songs on the album are laid back, casual songs that embody the other reviewer's description for Days of Tomorrow. Nonetheless, my remarks on the song "Delirium's" similarities to The White Stripes hold true for these song too. Unfortunately, none of the licks touch The White Stripes mark for fun or creativity in this regard, then again, its not exactly fair to pit any band except The White Stripes against The White Stripes, let alone criticize them for not matching up. I think The White Stripes is the only band that produces albums that Matt and I can both listen to and call "perfect". I've been dodging the topic of "Ode to Humanity" for some time now. Shocker, it's the low point on the album with the weakest vocals, the second weakest job on recording, and the least lively and thoughtful riffs. Its been loaded up with airy Modest Mouse like noodling on the guitar (not technically noodling, I know, but you get the idea) and processed in the same way as said band. There's nothing bad about it, but it isn't as inspired and gripping as any of the other songs are.
I'll take a detour here and put in a brief word regarding Days of Tomorrow on a more skill based, rather than creativity based, level. As a whole, the band seems to be fairly talented with their instruments without any glaring flaws. The vocalist seems to trade off some vocal control and some aspects to his tone overall to get a benefit in their absence, that is, a sort of charm, and a sort of emotion. Whether this is genuine emotion or not is up for debate, but nothing about his tone comes across as "gimmicky" like a lot of stupid scenster bands. The drums seem to be largely devoid of showiness or flashiness, they sit in the background, and they keep pace, they're matte. The drummer compensates for the lack of flashy fills by using more technically complex beats, but the effect isn't quite enough. The guitarist sounds a lot like this too, consistently playing more advanced riffs and hooks than your run of the mill alt rock band, at the expense of coming too close to the flashiest points in the five song set too often. This reduces the contrast between the highs and lows of the song, leaving an overall impression of "alright". Surprisingly, this leaves the only instrument left, the bass, to be the pinnacle of musical ability in this four piece alt rock outfit. Days of Tomorrow's bassist provides a steady, strong platform for the rest of the band, and in many ways is what permits them to shine on songs like "Delirium" and "Carpe Diem" which, incidentally, is where they shine the most.
Now If you'll pardon the fact that I reviewed each individual song, a process which I've been told just wastes my time in the interest of putting unnecessary minutia down for people to read, I can get around to the sound quality part of the review. Now I don't know what exactly to make of what happened to the sound quality, because I upgraded to a nicer sound card some time ago shortly after I heard Days of Tomorrow for the first time. My memory of the sound was that it sounded as if someone had applied a dynamic range compression filter. Essentially what this does, is it minimizes the maximum change in volume that a sound file can generate, this is usually applied using an A/V receiver so you don't wake anyone up with large volume fluctuations. This is also useful for people who fall asleep in front of the tv, large volume fluctuations can impact your quality of sleep. This however, is not a good thing on musical recordings, where this filter can make things sound really unnatural. Whereas originally, the singer's voice may have gradually ascended up to 60 dB then waned back down to 55 on a single syllable, a bad DRC filter would make it sound like a constant 55 which utterly rapes the dynamics. Thus, Dynamic Range Compression. On the recordings previously, this sounded to be the case, and this was a major cause of concern for me. It appears that this problem has now been resolved. The other issue I had was a generally poor job on the mastering, which seems to have been resolved. These two problems alone left a bad enough impression on me that I was considering docking the score a point or two. no longer an issue. What is still an issue is that in the song "Delirium" there are intense bass notes which seem to have been artificially boosted or just poorly recorded. Either way, my headphones are sensitive to that sort of thing, and when I hit the "bass boost" in itunes, the bass sounds like its rattling or "cracking". This issue is more than a bit egregious, so I would advise to the band to look into fixing this? Otherwise, the sound generally sounds like a lo-fi, garage band type sound.
In short, thank god that this band turned up in the UG thread. Days of Tomorrow's thoroughly enjoyable blend of alt and hard rock with some various other heavy metal influences is definitely a good option for the metalhead seeking out something softer and more forgiving. Some hitches with the band's ability on their various instruments dam up Days of Tomorrow's efficacy a bit, and just overall, the music could use some more polish to set it aside from any other alt rock back. Regardless, Days of Tomorrow does not fit the bill for "average".
Earlier I had mentioned that I am dealing with some ear fatigue / pain at the moment. Logically, I'm going with something a bit softer and easier on the ears for this review in the hopes that the pain will clear up before I start trying to review a metal band. Days of Tomorrow doesn't totally shake the metal schtick, playing on elements of heavy metal and hard rock with their particular style of alt rock, while still maintaining an easy to listen to, soft on the ears, sound.
As I said above, Days of Tomorrow is alt rock with strong heavy metal and hard rock influences. The only problem with this descriptor is the number of bands who can be labeled as such, Wolfmother, The Arctic Monkeys, and even Nickelback (I'm gonna take some flak for mentioning that name in this context). I'm going to bounce off of something another reviewer said with Braden Harris's (another amateur reviewer lurking around the UG threads) comment about Days of Tomorrow sounding like Kings of Leon. I agree, the songs "Hey Dude!" and "Ode to Humanity" are the two "worst offenders" if your the type who believes any semblance to another band shows a lack of creativity. The other three songs kick some of these influences to up the hard rock and metal influences. Its the final two songs, however, "Delirium" and "A World to Find" that really speak to the metalhead in me. "Delirium" sounds like The White Stripes foray into industrial metal, throughout the charmingly lo-fi and unstable vocals to the short, choppy, funky cuts on the guitar to the effectively simplistic drums rhythms. My only issue with the song is that the bridge uses too many arpeggios for its own good. "A World to Find", quite probably to the chagrin of most of our readers, more specifically speaks to the "Linkin Park Metalhead" (if there ever was such a thing) in me. What sets Days of Tomorrow apart from as commercialized and annoying a band as Linkin Park is that they play into the Linkin Park that you hear on "A place for my Head" with less whiny vocals and more technical guitar work. Add in verses that bear the same alt rock sound as "Ode to Humanity" and "Carpe Diem", to the short and sweet, downtuned choruses with they're expansive, "long" vocals and you've got "A World to Find".
The first two songs on the album are laid back, casual songs that embody the other reviewer's description for Days of Tomorrow. Nonetheless, my remarks on the song "Delirium's" similarities to The White Stripes hold true for these song too. Unfortunately, none of the licks touch The White Stripes mark for fun or creativity in this regard, then again, its not exactly fair to pit any band except The White Stripes against The White Stripes, let alone criticize them for not matching up. I think The White Stripes is the only band that produces albums that Matt and I can both listen to and call "perfect". I've been dodging the topic of "Ode to Humanity" for some time now. Shocker, it's the low point on the album with the weakest vocals, the second weakest job on recording, and the least lively and thoughtful riffs. Its been loaded up with airy Modest Mouse like noodling on the guitar (not technically noodling, I know, but you get the idea) and processed in the same way as said band. There's nothing bad about it, but it isn't as inspired and gripping as any of the other songs are.
I'll take a detour here and put in a brief word regarding Days of Tomorrow on a more skill based, rather than creativity based, level. As a whole, the band seems to be fairly talented with their instruments without any glaring flaws. The vocalist seems to trade off some vocal control and some aspects to his tone overall to get a benefit in their absence, that is, a sort of charm, and a sort of emotion. Whether this is genuine emotion or not is up for debate, but nothing about his tone comes across as "gimmicky" like a lot of stupid scenster bands. The drums seem to be largely devoid of showiness or flashiness, they sit in the background, and they keep pace, they're matte. The drummer compensates for the lack of flashy fills by using more technically complex beats, but the effect isn't quite enough. The guitarist sounds a lot like this too, consistently playing more advanced riffs and hooks than your run of the mill alt rock band, at the expense of coming too close to the flashiest points in the five song set too often. This reduces the contrast between the highs and lows of the song, leaving an overall impression of "alright". Surprisingly, this leaves the only instrument left, the bass, to be the pinnacle of musical ability in this four piece alt rock outfit. Days of Tomorrow's bassist provides a steady, strong platform for the rest of the band, and in many ways is what permits them to shine on songs like "Delirium" and "Carpe Diem" which, incidentally, is where they shine the most.
Now If you'll pardon the fact that I reviewed each individual song, a process which I've been told just wastes my time in the interest of putting unnecessary minutia down for people to read, I can get around to the sound quality part of the review. Now I don't know what exactly to make of what happened to the sound quality, because I upgraded to a nicer sound card some time ago shortly after I heard Days of Tomorrow for the first time. My memory of the sound was that it sounded as if someone had applied a dynamic range compression filter. Essentially what this does, is it minimizes the maximum change in volume that a sound file can generate, this is usually applied using an A/V receiver so you don't wake anyone up with large volume fluctuations. This is also useful for people who fall asleep in front of the tv, large volume fluctuations can impact your quality of sleep. This however, is not a good thing on musical recordings, where this filter can make things sound really unnatural. Whereas originally, the singer's voice may have gradually ascended up to 60 dB then waned back down to 55 on a single syllable, a bad DRC filter would make it sound like a constant 55 which utterly rapes the dynamics. Thus, Dynamic Range Compression. On the recordings previously, this sounded to be the case, and this was a major cause of concern for me. It appears that this problem has now been resolved. The other issue I had was a generally poor job on the mastering, which seems to have been resolved. These two problems alone left a bad enough impression on me that I was considering docking the score a point or two. no longer an issue. What is still an issue is that in the song "Delirium" there are intense bass notes which seem to have been artificially boosted or just poorly recorded. Either way, my headphones are sensitive to that sort of thing, and when I hit the "bass boost" in itunes, the bass sounds like its rattling or "cracking". This issue is more than a bit egregious, so I would advise to the band to look into fixing this? Otherwise, the sound generally sounds like a lo-fi, garage band type sound.
In short, thank god that this band turned up in the UG thread. Days of Tomorrow's thoroughly enjoyable blend of alt and hard rock with some various other heavy metal influences is definitely a good option for the metalhead seeking out something softer and more forgiving. Some hitches with the band's ability on their various instruments dam up Days of Tomorrow's efficacy a bit, and just overall, the music could use some more polish to set it aside from any other alt rock back. Regardless, Days of Tomorrow does not fit the bill for "average".
8.25/10
http://www.reverbnation.com/daysoftomorrow
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Withering October
I don't really have anything remotely interesting to put down as an introductory paragraph on this one, so let's get down to the matter of the music.
Withering October is one of those bands that I want to love, but I just can't. In a lot of ways they bear a semblance to the last band I reviewed, Sons of Torment, in they're failures. They're a completely different genre, but the concept of doing everything right, yet so wrong stays the same. I would venture as far as to say that Wither October's timbrel, atmospheric, and emotional facets transcend that of the former band in quantity, but fall behind in quality. Sons of Torment was bland and dry, but what little flare they did have in their music, they handled well. Withering October's melodic style, branching from folk inspired metal a la Finntroll or Alestorm, to more ambient, reflective pieces that are somewhat of an oddity to me right now, whose best approximation would probably be Lacuna Coil, suffers from a strong sense of false depth. Withering October's overly simplistic slow passages, with what I understand to be "beat melodies", invite in aspects of mainstream music that metal, to its core, is supposed to oppose and eliminate. This is particularly evident in the pads and synths that Withering October employs so gratuitously. Even worse are the tacky, overdone moments when an ambient passage turns into some guitar chords. There's nothing wrong with the concept, but it gets old and tiresome, and is rarely pulled off well. From time to time the sound will come together with riffs that sound like they were taken from an Alestorm "b-side" in both tone and structure, with the lukewarm female vocals and various pads in the background to form something that feels coherent and fairly rich, "Deep down in the Dark" is a good example. From time to time, Withering October will even break out with some full out metal, with the male lead singer unloading some growls along with a few slower power chords and occasionally an Alestorm like riff as outlines above.
Reviewing the music on an instrument by instrument basis, there isn't terribly much to be found with Withering October. The clean male vocals are largely lower, spoken vocals that remind me of Pink Floyd, and sung vocals that sound a touch nasally and erratic. The growls noticeably break up to a tone of the sung vocals, a trait indigenous to newer or untrained metal vocalists in my experience. The female vocals are prevailingly good, with appropriate breath control and tone. For me personally though, the smoky, "smoother" tone is a bit of deal breaker. It just doesn't sound really articulate and doesn't convey as much emotion as an airier, slightly sharper tone would. the drums and guitar both fit the bill for ambient music, slow, generally not that interesting. From a quality-obsessed perspective, Withering October's recording quality seems to be on par with their music's quality, that is to say, "meh". The kick drums are loud enough to intrude on the rest of the music, and the overall quality is staticy and tinny sounding throughout the mid and upper ranges.
To wrap things up, Withering October is a comparatively weak entry, and should look into exploring different aspects of their music more in depth, upping the experimentalism, to strengthen their sound to be something worth listening to. Re-recording with nicer equipment definitely wouldn't hurt, and a larger focus on the female vocals would overcome the shortcomings of the male vocalist. For the interests of the people who just skip the bulk of the text, I will add a score as always to this review.
Withering October is one of those bands that I want to love, but I just can't. In a lot of ways they bear a semblance to the last band I reviewed, Sons of Torment, in they're failures. They're a completely different genre, but the concept of doing everything right, yet so wrong stays the same. I would venture as far as to say that Wither October's timbrel, atmospheric, and emotional facets transcend that of the former band in quantity, but fall behind in quality. Sons of Torment was bland and dry, but what little flare they did have in their music, they handled well. Withering October's melodic style, branching from folk inspired metal a la Finntroll or Alestorm, to more ambient, reflective pieces that are somewhat of an oddity to me right now, whose best approximation would probably be Lacuna Coil, suffers from a strong sense of false depth. Withering October's overly simplistic slow passages, with what I understand to be "beat melodies", invite in aspects of mainstream music that metal, to its core, is supposed to oppose and eliminate. This is particularly evident in the pads and synths that Withering October employs so gratuitously. Even worse are the tacky, overdone moments when an ambient passage turns into some guitar chords. There's nothing wrong with the concept, but it gets old and tiresome, and is rarely pulled off well. From time to time the sound will come together with riffs that sound like they were taken from an Alestorm "b-side" in both tone and structure, with the lukewarm female vocals and various pads in the background to form something that feels coherent and fairly rich, "Deep down in the Dark" is a good example. From time to time, Withering October will even break out with some full out metal, with the male lead singer unloading some growls along with a few slower power chords and occasionally an Alestorm like riff as outlines above.
Reviewing the music on an instrument by instrument basis, there isn't terribly much to be found with Withering October. The clean male vocals are largely lower, spoken vocals that remind me of Pink Floyd, and sung vocals that sound a touch nasally and erratic. The growls noticeably break up to a tone of the sung vocals, a trait indigenous to newer or untrained metal vocalists in my experience. The female vocals are prevailingly good, with appropriate breath control and tone. For me personally though, the smoky, "smoother" tone is a bit of deal breaker. It just doesn't sound really articulate and doesn't convey as much emotion as an airier, slightly sharper tone would. the drums and guitar both fit the bill for ambient music, slow, generally not that interesting. From a quality-obsessed perspective, Withering October's recording quality seems to be on par with their music's quality, that is to say, "meh". The kick drums are loud enough to intrude on the rest of the music, and the overall quality is staticy and tinny sounding throughout the mid and upper ranges.
To wrap things up, Withering October is a comparatively weak entry, and should look into exploring different aspects of their music more in depth, upping the experimentalism, to strengthen their sound to be something worth listening to. Re-recording with nicer equipment definitely wouldn't hurt, and a larger focus on the female vocals would overcome the shortcomings of the male vocalist. For the interests of the people who just skip the bulk of the text, I will add a score as always to this review.
5/10
http://www.ubetoo.com/all/8373/new/1
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Ratings System
So I just wanted to post this as a blog post so its in everyone's face, and not hidden away in some tab that doesn't get updates for sixth months at a time. I've realized that our rating's system isn't exactly self explanatory, or at least mine isn't. I'll just post a number an what it correlates to -
1. Utterly awful. A 1/10 score denotes that it is physically irritating to listen to the music. If I assign a 1/10 I haven't listened all the way through because I was impatient and the noise was pissing me off.
2. Terrible. A 2/10 identifies music nearly completely devoid of value. Frequently this value just equates to a decent recording job and a cool line or two on an album. It won't elicit a serious display of anger / annoyance, but it'll get close.
3. Bad. A 3/10 is given when the music is about as enjoyable as white noise. The music starts to take on identifiable good traits other than the recording. Usually at least one instrument is at least close to average.
4. Lack-luster. A 4/10 is a continuation on the trend seen above. Better instruments, a 4/10 marks where an album is finally good enough that its worth pirating. A 4/10 DM record for a death metal fan should be worth about a 5.5/10 DM record for a thrash fan.
5. Mediocre. A 5/10 is significant of an album where the bad aspects are equal to the good aspects. Typically speaking a 5/10 will be worth picking up for a fan of a specific genre because the fan's appreciation for the genre is enough to tip the overall value of the album to be more good than bad. This doesn't make it a good cd, but it becomes worth your time to listen to, when the bad outweighs the good, obviously, its not worth the time it takes to listen to the cd, to listen to it.
6. Below Average. Self explanatory, a 6/10 is just a bit below "average".
7. Average. A 7/10 marks the boundary between an album thats just "meh" to a good album. I say average because typically speaking, "average" equates to an album that isn't really special, and has nothing that makes it shine, but nothing that makes it particularly bad.
8. Real Average. 8/10s represent a band or album that is genuinely entertaining to listen to, or a band / album that has something that makes them/it "special".
9. Very Good. 9/10s signify an album that is very good and not worth passing up on. We have a lot up here because we also tend to review things we have in our itunes, and therefore, like.
10. "Perfect". 10s identify an album that I consider to be without flaws. That doesn't mean that its a classic, just that there isn't anything that I feel the band should get knocked for.
So there's how I rate albums so people can understand why my ratings are typically on the higher side.
1. Utterly awful. A 1/10 score denotes that it is physically irritating to listen to the music. If I assign a 1/10 I haven't listened all the way through because I was impatient and the noise was pissing me off.
2. Terrible. A 2/10 identifies music nearly completely devoid of value. Frequently this value just equates to a decent recording job and a cool line or two on an album. It won't elicit a serious display of anger / annoyance, but it'll get close.
3. Bad. A 3/10 is given when the music is about as enjoyable as white noise. The music starts to take on identifiable good traits other than the recording. Usually at least one instrument is at least close to average.
4. Lack-luster. A 4/10 is a continuation on the trend seen above. Better instruments, a 4/10 marks where an album is finally good enough that its worth pirating. A 4/10 DM record for a death metal fan should be worth about a 5.5/10 DM record for a thrash fan.
5. Mediocre. A 5/10 is significant of an album where the bad aspects are equal to the good aspects. Typically speaking a 5/10 will be worth picking up for a fan of a specific genre because the fan's appreciation for the genre is enough to tip the overall value of the album to be more good than bad. This doesn't make it a good cd, but it becomes worth your time to listen to, when the bad outweighs the good, obviously, its not worth the time it takes to listen to the cd, to listen to it.
6. Below Average. Self explanatory, a 6/10 is just a bit below "average".
7. Average. A 7/10 marks the boundary between an album thats just "meh" to a good album. I say average because typically speaking, "average" equates to an album that isn't really special, and has nothing that makes it shine, but nothing that makes it particularly bad.
8. Real Average. 8/10s represent a band or album that is genuinely entertaining to listen to, or a band / album that has something that makes them/it "special".
9. Very Good. 9/10s signify an album that is very good and not worth passing up on. We have a lot up here because we also tend to review things we have in our itunes, and therefore, like.
10. "Perfect". 10s identify an album that I consider to be without flaws. That doesn't mean that its a classic, just that there isn't anything that I feel the band should get knocked for.
So there's how I rate albums so people can understand why my ratings are typically on the higher side.
Sons of Torment
Sons of Torment submitted their work at the "risk of being pwn3d", and I'm not inclined to really pwn these guys, they certainly aren't musical geniuses, but I can get past they're general blandness for a few listens. I'd expect someone who enjoyed this particular musical style more than myself might very well enjoy Sons of Torment as a legitimate underground entry.
I'll digress from standard format here and put a word in for recording quality, it sucks, go to control panel, hardware, sound, click your default audio device, and select "properties". Go to levels, go to balance, and crank the right channel up. I find that about 5% volume in the left channel and 7.5% volume in the right channel is pretty good. The right channel in the mix for these few songs is notably quieter than the left. They're labeled as demos though, and in my experience, every song I've ever heard labeled demo tends to either have bizarre volume fluctuations, (the demos on Bloodbath's Nightmares Made Flesh do this) or have bad balance (these songs). On the plus side of things, I like the way the drums sound, the kick drum is a bit unnatural, but the overall drum sound is lo-fi in a manner so as to give the sound "character".
The general niche that Sons of Torment fills is a groovy thrash band with some hardcore punk elements. The riffs are plenty fast, and Sons of Torment doesn't lack in dynamics or old-school style, but for some reason these guys just aren't doing much for me. I suppose in a lot of ways Sons of Torment's material sounds a touch clinical, to use a metaphor that might not make any sense, Sons of Torment might be compared to an unseasoned steak. The chef cooked it perfectly, following every culinary rule that applied to the letter, but its a bland, boring hunk of meat nonetheless. To use an esoteric metaphor that shouldn't make any sense, Sons of Torment could be likened to a sort of "black box music" where it works perfectly inside of the "black box" of music where principle alone is enough to succeed, but outside the black box, the results are different. Sons of Torment deliver the rapid fire, pummeling riffs you would expect from a thrash band with slower, grooving riffs that you'd hope to see from a groove metal band and the agonized shouts and yells you'd hear in a hardcore punk / thrash fusion. The rapid fire, "pummeling" riffs carry no weight though, passively drifting among the rest of the wall of sound like a violin in a classical concert. From time to time the guitars get their moment though, and the Megadeth like solos are rewarding to hear. The groove / doom metal cuts have plenty of funk / groove influence to them, but they sound soft and too round under the fizzy recording. The vocals have a good style to them to accompany the rest of the band, but they oft crack or descend towards a tone typical of an amateur vocalist. The drums however, hit all the bases, save for the artificial bass drum sound, the drums have good timing and great velocity, and don't abuse any one rhythm or part of the kit. As for the bass guitar, I hate assessing bass guitar because I frequently either register it as a down tuned 8 string, or I just don't hear it. If what I presume is the bass guitar, actually is, then the bass guitar has a couple solid lines but overall sounds a bit undefined and far down in the mix to really have an effect.
Aside from a markedly more exciting, musical sound on behalf of the latter band, I'd say that Sons of Torment sounds a fair amount like Revolution Mother. I'd also go on to note however, that for some reason Revolution Mother comes across as kind of obnoxious to me, which I'm not prepared to say about Sons of Torment at this point in time. Maybe if they were to adopt stylistic elements like the annoying "paintbrush graffiti" fonts and started deliberately misspelling song titles or album names, I could say that the band (or at least its members) might annoy the hell out of me (Yes, I am aware I screw up both grammar and typography on the site on a regular basis, I don't think its gotten to the point where its unnecessarily annoying even by the internet's standards though). My favorite song on the demo would have to be Descending Fear for it's guitar solo which I believe to be the best on the demo, and for its wide scope where song elements go.
To conclude, Sons of Torment would definitely not be a good introduction to this whole "groove/thrash/punk" thing, unless you're really into the concept of a band sticking to its genre's core ideals and nothing else, with no more creative effort on their behalf (See! There's a run-on, that's grammatically incorrect!). Furthermore, Sons of Torment is definitely going to need to cleanup their recordings a bit if they're interested in going anywhere with this project. Overall I couldn't suggest that Sons of Torment is any more than "average" and possibly a bit below that mark given that your run of the mill punk/thrash band will typically deliver at least a little ingenuity, and a stronger atmosphere / sense of energy.
Just as a suggestion, I'd advise keeping some difference between to two channels, mono kind of blows over headphones. Also try and reduce the intense stereo separation by making a copy of both the left and right channels (after the whole intense left side dominance has been mitigated), turning the volume down to about 20%, applying like 2 ms of phase to each of these quieter channels, and then making the right side reduced volume copy come out the left side and vice versa. If you guys already knew how to incorporate a crossfeed directly into your recording, more power to you, I suppose you just haven't spent some time to correct the recording. If you didn't, and for everyone reading this review who doesn't know about crossfeed, crossfeed sends part of the right channel signal to the left side and applies phase to mimic how we hear things in real life. Look it up on youtube, a good demo should show you a drastic difference.
I'll digress from standard format here and put a word in for recording quality, it sucks, go to control panel, hardware, sound, click your default audio device, and select "properties". Go to levels, go to balance, and crank the right channel up. I find that about 5% volume in the left channel and 7.5% volume in the right channel is pretty good. The right channel in the mix for these few songs is notably quieter than the left. They're labeled as demos though, and in my experience, every song I've ever heard labeled demo tends to either have bizarre volume fluctuations, (the demos on Bloodbath's Nightmares Made Flesh do this) or have bad balance (these songs). On the plus side of things, I like the way the drums sound, the kick drum is a bit unnatural, but the overall drum sound is lo-fi in a manner so as to give the sound "character".
The general niche that Sons of Torment fills is a groovy thrash band with some hardcore punk elements. The riffs are plenty fast, and Sons of Torment doesn't lack in dynamics or old-school style, but for some reason these guys just aren't doing much for me. I suppose in a lot of ways Sons of Torment's material sounds a touch clinical, to use a metaphor that might not make any sense, Sons of Torment might be compared to an unseasoned steak. The chef cooked it perfectly, following every culinary rule that applied to the letter, but its a bland, boring hunk of meat nonetheless. To use an esoteric metaphor that shouldn't make any sense, Sons of Torment could be likened to a sort of "black box music" where it works perfectly inside of the "black box" of music where principle alone is enough to succeed, but outside the black box, the results are different. Sons of Torment deliver the rapid fire, pummeling riffs you would expect from a thrash band with slower, grooving riffs that you'd hope to see from a groove metal band and the agonized shouts and yells you'd hear in a hardcore punk / thrash fusion. The rapid fire, "pummeling" riffs carry no weight though, passively drifting among the rest of the wall of sound like a violin in a classical concert. From time to time the guitars get their moment though, and the Megadeth like solos are rewarding to hear. The groove / doom metal cuts have plenty of funk / groove influence to them, but they sound soft and too round under the fizzy recording. The vocals have a good style to them to accompany the rest of the band, but they oft crack or descend towards a tone typical of an amateur vocalist. The drums however, hit all the bases, save for the artificial bass drum sound, the drums have good timing and great velocity, and don't abuse any one rhythm or part of the kit. As for the bass guitar, I hate assessing bass guitar because I frequently either register it as a down tuned 8 string, or I just don't hear it. If what I presume is the bass guitar, actually is, then the bass guitar has a couple solid lines but overall sounds a bit undefined and far down in the mix to really have an effect.
Aside from a markedly more exciting, musical sound on behalf of the latter band, I'd say that Sons of Torment sounds a fair amount like Revolution Mother. I'd also go on to note however, that for some reason Revolution Mother comes across as kind of obnoxious to me, which I'm not prepared to say about Sons of Torment at this point in time. Maybe if they were to adopt stylistic elements like the annoying "paintbrush graffiti" fonts and started deliberately misspelling song titles or album names, I could say that the band (or at least its members) might annoy the hell out of me (Yes, I am aware I screw up both grammar and typography on the site on a regular basis, I don't think its gotten to the point where its unnecessarily annoying even by the internet's standards though). My favorite song on the demo would have to be Descending Fear for it's guitar solo which I believe to be the best on the demo, and for its wide scope where song elements go.
To conclude, Sons of Torment would definitely not be a good introduction to this whole "groove/thrash/punk" thing, unless you're really into the concept of a band sticking to its genre's core ideals and nothing else, with no more creative effort on their behalf (See! There's a run-on, that's grammatically incorrect!). Furthermore, Sons of Torment is definitely going to need to cleanup their recordings a bit if they're interested in going anywhere with this project. Overall I couldn't suggest that Sons of Torment is any more than "average" and possibly a bit below that mark given that your run of the mill punk/thrash band will typically deliver at least a little ingenuity, and a stronger atmosphere / sense of energy.
5.5/10
http://www.reverbnation.com/sonsoftorment
Just as a suggestion, I'd advise keeping some difference between to two channels, mono kind of blows over headphones. Also try and reduce the intense stereo separation by making a copy of both the left and right channels (after the whole intense left side dominance has been mitigated), turning the volume down to about 20%, applying like 2 ms of phase to each of these quieter channels, and then making the right side reduced volume copy come out the left side and vice versa. If you guys already knew how to incorporate a crossfeed directly into your recording, more power to you, I suppose you just haven't spent some time to correct the recording. If you didn't, and for everyone reading this review who doesn't know about crossfeed, crossfeed sends part of the right channel signal to the left side and applies phase to mimic how we hear things in real life. Look it up on youtube, a good demo should show you a drastic difference.
I, The Destroyer
Written at some ungodly hour of the morning between 5 and 6:
So I'm picking this review back up from where I left off at 5:30 ish in the morning for me. I do suppose that the above description is a touch obnoxious and sarcastic, but IMO, its not an entirely bad representation of the low point of the album. With all due respect to the band, Scour hits a ton of deathcore cliches that really need to be downplayed, most notably, the sporadic chugs alternating with vocals and drums. It's a way to circumnavigate the "wall of sound" effect that, at times, can be useful, and at other times, is just bothersome and unpleasant (see AnalCunt / AxCx). The thing is, this technique is in fact, cliche to an extent that I confused this song with some of The Acacia Strain's work and some of Chelsea Grins work. The difference between this and say, Elysium or any Chelsea Grin breakdown turned out to be a matter of where the vocals went, CG opted to put vocals on top of double / quadruple chugs, I, The Destroyer went in between. The most interesting aspect of this whole fiasco to me however, was the I, The Destroyer's band members claimed to have never heard either Thy Art is Murder or Chelsea Grin, nonetheless, they were similar enough that 2 months without listening to either band was enough to skew my memory to the point where I, The Destroyer sounded like plagiarism. This whole incident consequently strongly showcases how stale and worn out of a genre deathcore has become. Now here's the shocking turning point in the plot, the evil twin, or divine intervention, or whatever else have you in your magical bag of plot twists, I, The Destroyer recovers from a sloppy, cliched start and produces deathcore of an above average quality. I still prefer With Abandon's work, they seem to keep the breakdowns to a minimum without throwing away the whole concept of "deathcore" but I, The Destroyer isn't far behind.
As I've already stated, I, The Destroyer, starts out bad, but if you make it a full two minutes in, they start dishing out respectable riffs and lines. Rather than dropping into an "uber br00tal breakdown" right after the sloppy intro, they cut into a good chainsaw riff, and one of the more original "breakdowns" I've heard, it still cuts the time awfully abruptly, but it features honest guitar work. a couple of choppy transitions and breakdowns later, you're clear of Armageddon and your left with rapid fire thrash riffs combined with a more "digital" tone and sweep picking. Here's where I'm likely going to disagree with much of the "traditional" metal community, and I'm going to say that the "breakdowns" from here on out are, although too prevalent, used in such a manner that they aren't there just to "add shocking twists and turns", but used as bridges and in choruses. In "The Deceiver" I find that the emphasis on the phrase "I am the Deceiver" can feel a bit campy, but I like the concept (not lyrically, but musically). While we talk about "The Deceiver", I want to remark on the last major transition in this song, it snaps from (what feels like) 40 bpm to a good 180 on the chainsaw riff (pulling these numbers out of the air) pretty much spontaneously, cool stuff. After the song "No Surrender, No Retreat", which I'll address in the next paragraph, the EP finishes off strong with "The Unseen", a "glitchy" sounding number revolving around a hybrid of core, prog, and groove metal elements. Anyone whose really payed attention to my past few posts knows that I've been in a groove metal kind of mood for some time now, and this song, although it does revolve around a "core" framework, one that a lot of metalheads might dismiss as talentless, unoriginal garbage off hand, actually has a lot of potential. My one gripe is that the ending sounds like its building up to something with one of the bass drops (we'll talk about these later) that I, The Destroyer uses on the rest of the album. this little hiccup threw off the flow of the song, which otherwise would have been the most consistent, composed death core piece I've ever heard.
The recording quality is a major bottleneck for I, The Destroyer's potential as a musical outfit. This is most obvious on what is arguably the most "core" song on the album, which also features the most breakdowns, and therefore, bass drops. The bass on this five song set it massively distorted, it sounds intensely muddy and muffled. This results in what sounds like the equivalent of a powerful, deep fart. I'd hate to use a metaphor with such an apparently snarky and sarcastic tone after the confusion around this morning's literary gem of a post, but thats the most accurate way to describe it. I'd give little fault to the musicians, but this sound is typical of a poor job on the EQ, so if any bass boosts are turned on, I'd turn them off and try again to get a good, clear sound. Now to finish what I started above in individually addressing each song, the song "No Surrender, No Retreat" is painfully slow in the beginning, working its way up to a crawl and then finally a typical pace before it takes a metaphorical stumble like a puppeteer dropping the sticks for a marionette. There is not dramatic point where the sound catches on anything, so much as it momentarily disintegrates at 1:24 and then picks back up before it hits a breakdown, and then finally the painfully slow chorus.
Now to address I, The Destroyer's sound as a whole; aside from the poorly recorded breakdowns, as well as the sheer number of them that are there in the first place, I, The Destroyer effectively combines riffs that bands like Psycroptic and Brain Drill (Brain Drill especially, god I hate brain drill) might willingly claim ownership for, with the occasional white knuckled, groove metal influence, along with some of the usual breakdowns and sweep picking to create something listenable (even better than that in some cases). There were a handful of subtle aspects to I, The Destroyer that I was greatly appreciative of, notably, no pig squeals, no noticeable gang singing, and to be honest, my favorite part was judicial use of the kick drum during the breakdowns. It seems like most of the bands that play this style of music feel obligated to hit the kick drum a couple times slowly, pick it up to 3 or 4 sixteenths and then add a quarter or two, just to give the music a "jumpy" feel or to add "multiple tempos". Rather than have me keep rambling about bad things they didn't do, I'll point out a couple of subtle things I, The Destroyer did right, notably the addition of the occasional folk element, and the vocals, very solid, fast paced high screams with a good tone and better than par timing with the rest of the band.
As I'm writing this, I presently have thing I need to do briefly, so I'll wrap things up here, at a much more convenient place than last time for now until I can go back and fix the grammar and such. I will actually defer back to my prior post for the conclusion to this review. "Now nothing about the previous [statements go] to say that I, The Destroyer is going to rock the deathcore genre, the tenets of the genre are probably here to stay for the rest of its (hopefully short lived for many "real" metal-heads) existence." however, the music that they do produce has verifiable merit, and if the recording was cleaned up, and the basic focus limited more to what the band did in the song "The Unseen" less so than "Armegeddon", they'd be churning out Death Core with the potential to break up the monotony of bands like Suicide Silence and Chelsea and Carnifex and the likes.
I saw these guys in the thread at deathcore, figured nothing good could come of clicking on the link. I clicked the link, listened to scour and the intro to armageddon, pegged them for plagiarism, and moved on. After a brief exchange between a band member and myself, I listened to the songs I accused them of plagiarizing, my memory was incorrect. Now nothing about the previous statement goes to say that I, The Destroyer is going to rock the deathcore genre, the tenets of the genre are probably here to stay for the rest of its (hopefully short lived for many "real" metal-heads) existence.
I'm going to approach this on a song to song basis, so if you'll excuse the minutia, It's way too early in the morning for a review that isn't at least a bit tedious, why not go all the way?
"Scour" goes like this - "*single tom* *single tom* *double tom* *double tom* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *mid scream* *low mid scream* *low mid scream* *high mid scream* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *high growls* *chug chug* *growls* *bass drop* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *five sixteenths on the snare* *quarter on the snare* *yeugh!* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *pan left (chug chug chugchug)* *pan right (chug chug chugchug)* *pan left (chugchugchugchug chug chug chug)* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *pan left (chug chug chugchug)* *pan right (chug chug chugchug)* *pan left (chugchugchugchug chug chug chug)* *chug* *chug* *chug* *chug* *pan left (chug chug chugchug)* *pan right (chug chug chugchug)* *pan left (chugchugchugchug chug chug chug)* *chooooooooooooord*" Sorry if I missed something or mistranslated something, its too early to be transcribing music to what equates to rockband tracks.
So I'm picking this review back up from where I left off at 5:30 ish in the morning for me. I do suppose that the above description is a touch obnoxious and sarcastic, but IMO, its not an entirely bad representation of the low point of the album. With all due respect to the band, Scour hits a ton of deathcore cliches that really need to be downplayed, most notably, the sporadic chugs alternating with vocals and drums. It's a way to circumnavigate the "wall of sound" effect that, at times, can be useful, and at other times, is just bothersome and unpleasant (see AnalCunt / AxCx). The thing is, this technique is in fact, cliche to an extent that I confused this song with some of The Acacia Strain's work and some of Chelsea Grins work. The difference between this and say, Elysium or any Chelsea Grin breakdown turned out to be a matter of where the vocals went, CG opted to put vocals on top of double / quadruple chugs, I, The Destroyer went in between. The most interesting aspect of this whole fiasco to me however, was the I, The Destroyer's band members claimed to have never heard either Thy Art is Murder or Chelsea Grin, nonetheless, they were similar enough that 2 months without listening to either band was enough to skew my memory to the point where I, The Destroyer sounded like plagiarism. This whole incident consequently strongly showcases how stale and worn out of a genre deathcore has become. Now here's the shocking turning point in the plot, the evil twin, or divine intervention, or whatever else have you in your magical bag of plot twists, I, The Destroyer recovers from a sloppy, cliched start and produces deathcore of an above average quality. I still prefer With Abandon's work, they seem to keep the breakdowns to a minimum without throwing away the whole concept of "deathcore" but I, The Destroyer isn't far behind.
As I've already stated, I, The Destroyer, starts out bad, but if you make it a full two minutes in, they start dishing out respectable riffs and lines. Rather than dropping into an "uber br00tal breakdown" right after the sloppy intro, they cut into a good chainsaw riff, and one of the more original "breakdowns" I've heard, it still cuts the time awfully abruptly, but it features honest guitar work. a couple of choppy transitions and breakdowns later, you're clear of Armageddon and your left with rapid fire thrash riffs combined with a more "digital" tone and sweep picking. Here's where I'm likely going to disagree with much of the "traditional" metal community, and I'm going to say that the "breakdowns" from here on out are, although too prevalent, used in such a manner that they aren't there just to "add shocking twists and turns", but used as bridges and in choruses. In "The Deceiver" I find that the emphasis on the phrase "I am the Deceiver" can feel a bit campy, but I like the concept (not lyrically, but musically). While we talk about "The Deceiver", I want to remark on the last major transition in this song, it snaps from (what feels like) 40 bpm to a good 180 on the chainsaw riff (pulling these numbers out of the air) pretty much spontaneously, cool stuff. After the song "No Surrender, No Retreat", which I'll address in the next paragraph, the EP finishes off strong with "The Unseen", a "glitchy" sounding number revolving around a hybrid of core, prog, and groove metal elements. Anyone whose really payed attention to my past few posts knows that I've been in a groove metal kind of mood for some time now, and this song, although it does revolve around a "core" framework, one that a lot of metalheads might dismiss as talentless, unoriginal garbage off hand, actually has a lot of potential. My one gripe is that the ending sounds like its building up to something with one of the bass drops (we'll talk about these later) that I, The Destroyer uses on the rest of the album. this little hiccup threw off the flow of the song, which otherwise would have been the most consistent, composed death core piece I've ever heard.
The recording quality is a major bottleneck for I, The Destroyer's potential as a musical outfit. This is most obvious on what is arguably the most "core" song on the album, which also features the most breakdowns, and therefore, bass drops. The bass on this five song set it massively distorted, it sounds intensely muddy and muffled. This results in what sounds like the equivalent of a powerful, deep fart. I'd hate to use a metaphor with such an apparently snarky and sarcastic tone after the confusion around this morning's literary gem of a post, but thats the most accurate way to describe it. I'd give little fault to the musicians, but this sound is typical of a poor job on the EQ, so if any bass boosts are turned on, I'd turn them off and try again to get a good, clear sound. Now to finish what I started above in individually addressing each song, the song "No Surrender, No Retreat" is painfully slow in the beginning, working its way up to a crawl and then finally a typical pace before it takes a metaphorical stumble like a puppeteer dropping the sticks for a marionette. There is not dramatic point where the sound catches on anything, so much as it momentarily disintegrates at 1:24 and then picks back up before it hits a breakdown, and then finally the painfully slow chorus.
Now to address I, The Destroyer's sound as a whole; aside from the poorly recorded breakdowns, as well as the sheer number of them that are there in the first place, I, The Destroyer effectively combines riffs that bands like Psycroptic and Brain Drill (Brain Drill especially, god I hate brain drill) might willingly claim ownership for, with the occasional white knuckled, groove metal influence, along with some of the usual breakdowns and sweep picking to create something listenable (even better than that in some cases). There were a handful of subtle aspects to I, The Destroyer that I was greatly appreciative of, notably, no pig squeals, no noticeable gang singing, and to be honest, my favorite part was judicial use of the kick drum during the breakdowns. It seems like most of the bands that play this style of music feel obligated to hit the kick drum a couple times slowly, pick it up to 3 or 4 sixteenths and then add a quarter or two, just to give the music a "jumpy" feel or to add "multiple tempos". Rather than have me keep rambling about bad things they didn't do, I'll point out a couple of subtle things I, The Destroyer did right, notably the addition of the occasional folk element, and the vocals, very solid, fast paced high screams with a good tone and better than par timing with the rest of the band.
As I'm writing this, I presently have thing I need to do briefly, so I'll wrap things up here, at a much more convenient place than last time for now until I can go back and fix the grammar and such. I will actually defer back to my prior post for the conclusion to this review. "Now nothing about the previous [statements go] to say that I, The Destroyer is going to rock the deathcore genre, the tenets of the genre are probably here to stay for the rest of its (hopefully short lived for many "real" metal-heads) existence." however, the music that they do produce has verifiable merit, and if the recording was cleaned up, and the basic focus limited more to what the band did in the song "The Unseen" less so than "Armegeddon", they'd be churning out Death Core with the potential to break up the monotony of bands like Suicide Silence and Chelsea and Carnifex and the likes.
7.75/10
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1168842
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Drowning Out
So in all of the time I've spent on this project, there's something I've never learned, when an unsigned band labels themselves as "melodic/technical death metal", it really means "metalcore". Every time I see that label, I expect Scar Symmetry or Imperium or Mirrors of Obsidian (the latter two were unsigned bands, really, really, competent unsigned bands), every time I open the link, my instant reaction is "Oh Jesus, not more of this crap." The latter reaction applies to Drowning Out, with all of its implications and more.
So not only is Drowning Out fairly cliche metalcore material, but they're sloppy, thin, slow metalcore. It sounds like the guitarists are having more than a bit of trouble playing the riffs, which, although dreadfully slow, sound rushed like the guitarist was scrambling to hit the right fret. The vocals don't improve much on this base. I wouldn't go as far as to claim that they're "off key", complaining about a musician's vocals being off key is a pretty ignorant thing to say, considering that deliberately setting the vocals off key can be an artistic tool. The vocals just lack a consistent melody or rhythm, even in the chorus. Unless this guy was shooting to slightly tweak the tune from chorus to chorus, he's screwing it up.
The poor recording quality does nothing to help any of the above, frequently intensifying the illusion that playing their instruments correctly is a challenge for all of the band members. This is typically where I'd suggest some bands that sound like the band I'm reviewing, but I'm kind of clueless on this one, Drowning Out uses fairly typical principles of the -core genres, but never with enough grace to sound like any one band in particular.
Summary, this is a painful listen on par with most high school "screw around bands" that get together to scream about grilled cheese sandwiches and play a few open notes on a guitar. If I had to pick between this, and harsh noise, I'd go with this, so I couldn't warrant a minimum 0/10 score. Anything above a 0/10 represents some varying amount of listening value, of which the ep has none.
Listen Here: http://www.facebook.com/Drowningout?ref=ts
Silent Sin
Groove metal is by far, the easiest metal genre to really get into-when it's done right. I couldn't find the thread where bands post requests for reviews for about a month until Matt shot me a message over facebook informing me that he needed me to do some reviews. I opened the thread, looked over the choices, saw "groove metal" promptly opened up their myspace page, Silent Sin was a good choice.
In my experience, the first aspect of a band's sound I notice is sound quality, partially because I pay an unusual amount of attention to recording quality, and partially because a poorly recorded opening riff will almost always identify abysmal recording quality for the rest of the album. A shoddy opening riff will tell you nothing about what is to come on the rest of the album. Silent Sin's production values may be abysmal by mainstream standards, but they successfully hit the sweet spot between too "raw" (meaning the band is using a crap laptop mic that will record music with no semblance to the actual sound) and too glossy (a la "Demigod"). Silent Sin doesn't dick around with triggers, and there's plenty of static and distortion, but in the end, it's a very organic, pleasing sound.
Initial impressions aside, Silent Sin has a firm grasp of the core elements of the Groove Metal genre; they're chaotic, they've got funk / groove elements, most importantly, they sound straight up violent. I think the aggression is where groove metal appeals to me the most. Metal, for me, can turn into an obsession reminiscent of a crack addiction at times, I listen to metal because it's and aggressive umbrella genre that frequently relies heavily on technicality, e.g. its a full out aural onslaught. Unfortunately, most every metal band I've heard seems to lose its edge after more than a dozen listens on an album. I keep looking for more and more aggressive material to get the same experience out of listening to metal. I presume I'm not the only one who feels the need to keep ramping up the "dose" because Dying Fetus has started to sound tame after two dozen listens on their full discography or so. Silent Sin (as well as most other groove metal bands for that matter) currently seem to provide a sufficient "dosage" to get the whole wall of sound / aggression effect at this point for me. The riffs are fast, complex, and heavy; in Silent Sin's case, slightly awkward and jilted at times, somewhat muddy due to the recording quality at others, but for the most part, high in quality. The vocals gradually taper off in quality from really guttural, full growls in "Ruining the Living" to lukewarm barks by about "Fog Fields", then proceed to deviate to some proficient screams until "Blindead Eyes". The last two songs, "Played by Others" and "A.N.T.I." mark the low point of the album as a whole, with vocals that aren't very good to begin with directly clashing with the vapid riffs of "Played by Others" and the trying-too-hard-and-just-missing-the-mark riffs of "A.N.T.I."
On this album, there are two definitive stand out songs worth mentioning, the first is the brilliant opener "Ruining the Living". This song is really a penultimate example of groove metal done right as I described in the first paragraph; it sounds like all hell breaking loose. It's the most well paced song on the album, moving just slow enough for the listener to absorb the full brunt of each note on the guitar and each double bass kick. The vocals also work the best here. The second stand out song is "Blindead Eyes" which is a bit of a deviation from the template set down by the rest of the album. Its more of an experimental, proggish song, playing on a heavy / slow contrast. Falsely deep? Perhaps a bit, but the effects and tones that this song uses in its slower pieces are enough to appeal to the ambient / alt rock fan in me. The transitions from soft to heavy need to smoothing out, but the transitions from heavy to soft are almost perfect. As for bands these guys sound like, I haven't really heard many groove metal bands, but the one that comes to mind when asked what these guys sound like is DevilDriver. The tempo and groove feel the same for either band, Silent Sin just doesn't inspire as much of a love/hate response from me. I got this review done in one shot, I took 5 shots at reviewing "The Fury of our Maker's Hand" giving it reviews ranging from a 5.5 to an 8.5.
Ignoring the dissapointing finish, Silent Sin produces chaotic, energetic groove metal in a charmingly lo-fi package. They don't innovate, by any stretch of the imagination, and there's nothing really special to set them apart from another Groove Metal band, but they aren't "average".
In my experience, the first aspect of a band's sound I notice is sound quality, partially because I pay an unusual amount of attention to recording quality, and partially because a poorly recorded opening riff will almost always identify abysmal recording quality for the rest of the album. A shoddy opening riff will tell you nothing about what is to come on the rest of the album. Silent Sin's production values may be abysmal by mainstream standards, but they successfully hit the sweet spot between too "raw" (meaning the band is using a crap laptop mic that will record music with no semblance to the actual sound) and too glossy (a la "Demigod"). Silent Sin doesn't dick around with triggers, and there's plenty of static and distortion, but in the end, it's a very organic, pleasing sound.
Initial impressions aside, Silent Sin has a firm grasp of the core elements of the Groove Metal genre; they're chaotic, they've got funk / groove elements, most importantly, they sound straight up violent. I think the aggression is where groove metal appeals to me the most. Metal, for me, can turn into an obsession reminiscent of a crack addiction at times, I listen to metal because it's and aggressive umbrella genre that frequently relies heavily on technicality, e.g. its a full out aural onslaught. Unfortunately, most every metal band I've heard seems to lose its edge after more than a dozen listens on an album. I keep looking for more and more aggressive material to get the same experience out of listening to metal. I presume I'm not the only one who feels the need to keep ramping up the "dose" because Dying Fetus has started to sound tame after two dozen listens on their full discography or so. Silent Sin (as well as most other groove metal bands for that matter) currently seem to provide a sufficient "dosage" to get the whole wall of sound / aggression effect at this point for me. The riffs are fast, complex, and heavy; in Silent Sin's case, slightly awkward and jilted at times, somewhat muddy due to the recording quality at others, but for the most part, high in quality. The vocals gradually taper off in quality from really guttural, full growls in "Ruining the Living" to lukewarm barks by about "Fog Fields", then proceed to deviate to some proficient screams until "Blindead Eyes". The last two songs, "Played by Others" and "A.N.T.I." mark the low point of the album as a whole, with vocals that aren't very good to begin with directly clashing with the vapid riffs of "Played by Others" and the trying-too-hard-and-just-missing-the-mark riffs of "A.N.T.I."
On this album, there are two definitive stand out songs worth mentioning, the first is the brilliant opener "Ruining the Living". This song is really a penultimate example of groove metal done right as I described in the first paragraph; it sounds like all hell breaking loose. It's the most well paced song on the album, moving just slow enough for the listener to absorb the full brunt of each note on the guitar and each double bass kick. The vocals also work the best here. The second stand out song is "Blindead Eyes" which is a bit of a deviation from the template set down by the rest of the album. Its more of an experimental, proggish song, playing on a heavy / slow contrast. Falsely deep? Perhaps a bit, but the effects and tones that this song uses in its slower pieces are enough to appeal to the ambient / alt rock fan in me. The transitions from soft to heavy need to smoothing out, but the transitions from heavy to soft are almost perfect. As for bands these guys sound like, I haven't really heard many groove metal bands, but the one that comes to mind when asked what these guys sound like is DevilDriver. The tempo and groove feel the same for either band, Silent Sin just doesn't inspire as much of a love/hate response from me. I got this review done in one shot, I took 5 shots at reviewing "The Fury of our Maker's Hand" giving it reviews ranging from a 5.5 to an 8.5.
Ignoring the dissapointing finish, Silent Sin produces chaotic, energetic groove metal in a charmingly lo-fi package. They don't innovate, by any stretch of the imagination, and there's nothing really special to set them apart from another Groove Metal band, but they aren't "average".
8/10
Listen Here: http://www.myspace.com/silentsinISR
Monday, May 30, 2011
Imperium
About one out of every six unsigned review I do I end up grabbing from somewhere outside our Ultimate guitar thread. Typically speaking, these are bands that I pick because they're a good listen. Other times I just pick something that I think would be easy to review (Trying to write a review for a cybergrind band is just plain hell. On one hand I just want to remark on how much I abhor that genre of music. On the other hand, I abhor people who do that even more). This is one of the former group, so feel free to navigate to the bottom of this review and click on the link (Just do it, reviews take me at least forty five minutes when the band I'm reviewing doesn't have much material and I'm typing fast).
Imperium is a prog band, I think the only other prog metal bands I've heard are Mirrors of Obsidian (Matt reviewed them, in short, go check them out. I've put more plays on that album than all but 20 other albums in my itunes.) and Dream Theater. I would venture as far as to say that Imperium plays something that would be more accurately described as techno-metal. Actually, for me, the synths degrade the sound a bit, they're neat for a while, but eventually the heavy use of synths, sounds like cheating on the prog side of things. The choruses in One and Eternal and the intro to Gateways are really the most criminal instances, letting the guitar yield almost entirely to the synths which really makes the song sound stripped down and overdone in those areas. On the plus side, I really dig the way they use the synths in conjunction with the guitar in the verses of One and Eternal, and if used more sparingly and in a less flashy manner, the synths could be a really invaluable element of Imperium's sound. My favorite song of the two (I tend to disregard covers because they aren't as good a measure of what the band does as original songs) is decisively One and Eternal.
This is sort of a truncated, simplified review for just a couple songs, so I will be ending here. If you have a hard time accepting anything but traditional metal instruments in your metal, Imperium probably isn't ideal for you. For everyone else, myself included however, Imperium's high production values and somewhat weird, synthy sound may be a worthwhile change of pace.
7.75/10
Meet The Storm
Once again, I'm trying to work on developing my writing to be more interesting and / or effective, this time with some pointers from Angry Metal Guy (link to his site in the post below this one).
I found Meet The Storm on the facebook page for Grind Esign (he's worked with graphic design for more bands than I can remember, the biggest names that I remember being Aborted, Cannibal Corpse (don't quote me on that one) and Metallica, he's got some really sick stuff up there, so feel free to check it out. In his words, they play "dirty rock and roll", I concur. I can't really say that I love them, or even that I like them, but that its worth giving them a listen anyway.
So I don't know how much attention anybody really pays to my "expertises" or tastes, and I'm assuming this is largely irrelevant to just about all our readers. I'm more into the extreme metal side of things, this dirty rock thing is unfamiliar territory for me, so I won't be really comparing Meet The Storm to any other bands. On top of my afflictions towards extreme metal, I'm somewhat ADD for music, Meet the Storm's music isn't jibing very well with this. It's not like the sound suffers from excessive buildup like "Evisceration Plague" by Cannibal Corpse does, its just that many of the beats and riffs wouldn't be memorable if it wasn't for their repetition, incidentally, something about repeating an easily forgettable piece because its forgettable sounds like twisted logic. Hindenburg is probably the worst offender of the lot, featuring one riff and beat that never seems to end.
By the time these passages end, I feel like I'm less interested in the quality of the material that I'm listening to, and more the fact that its different. Unfortunately this is sort of a cop-out for the frequently very entertaining choruses and interludes throughout the three song set; I end up tuning much of the music out as white noise. The sporadically choppy transitions do little to help make the experience any more coherent than white noise/decent riff/more white noise. Out of the three songs, I'm definitely impartial to "Sailing out to Fail" as being the most coherent, least repetitive of the lot.
While stylistically, there's nothing wrong with Meet the Storm as "dirty rock and roll" band other than the dreadfully punk sounding vocals, they fail to produce interesting listening material. I'm sure there are likely plenty of other "issues" to speak of, none of them would be as comparatively inhibitive as the repetition.
I found Meet The Storm on the facebook page for Grind Esign (he's worked with graphic design for more bands than I can remember, the biggest names that I remember being Aborted, Cannibal Corpse (don't quote me on that one) and Metallica, he's got some really sick stuff up there, so feel free to check it out. In his words, they play "dirty rock and roll", I concur. I can't really say that I love them, or even that I like them, but that its worth giving them a listen anyway.
So I don't know how much attention anybody really pays to my "expertises" or tastes, and I'm assuming this is largely irrelevant to just about all our readers. I'm more into the extreme metal side of things, this dirty rock thing is unfamiliar territory for me, so I won't be really comparing Meet The Storm to any other bands. On top of my afflictions towards extreme metal, I'm somewhat ADD for music, Meet the Storm's music isn't jibing very well with this. It's not like the sound suffers from excessive buildup like "Evisceration Plague" by Cannibal Corpse does, its just that many of the beats and riffs wouldn't be memorable if it wasn't for their repetition, incidentally, something about repeating an easily forgettable piece because its forgettable sounds like twisted logic. Hindenburg is probably the worst offender of the lot, featuring one riff and beat that never seems to end.
By the time these passages end, I feel like I'm less interested in the quality of the material that I'm listening to, and more the fact that its different. Unfortunately this is sort of a cop-out for the frequently very entertaining choruses and interludes throughout the three song set; I end up tuning much of the music out as white noise. The sporadically choppy transitions do little to help make the experience any more coherent than white noise/decent riff/more white noise. Out of the three songs, I'm definitely impartial to "Sailing out to Fail" as being the most coherent, least repetitive of the lot.
While stylistically, there's nothing wrong with Meet the Storm as "dirty rock and roll" band other than the dreadfully punk sounding vocals, they fail to produce interesting listening material. I'm sure there are likely plenty of other "issues" to speak of, none of them would be as comparatively inhibitive as the repetition.
5/10
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Versus the Collective
Versus the Collective is somewhat frustrating to review, there's no convenient "benchmark" to compare them with, and reviewing a band without any benchmark for comparison usually ends with a list of esoteric adjectives (e.g. "the music sounds cement, the music sounds purple, the music sounds dangly"). So please bear with me through this.
The most practical way I can describe Versus the Collective is by saying that they are effectively the lump sum of taking a so-so prog-core band, removing half of the the annoying, overused -core song elements (perhaps gang singing, pig squeals, sweep picking), replacing them with honest prog metal licks, and improving the other half of the "annoying, overused -core elements" (breakdowns, chugging, and alternating clean / heavy vocals or growls / shrieks) to a level where they are actually effective and enjoyable to listen to. Then you take this, and you dress it up with a punchy guitar and bass tone, and a distinctly "prog" timbre. I guess in a lot of ways the prog side of the sound is reminiscent of Necrophagist and the metalcore part of the sound seems to be derived more from The Dillinger Escape plan.
Expatiating on the latter half of these song elements, Versus the Collective's effective use of the elements has to do with their limited use of them. Rather than just tossing in a "breakdown" for the sake of making the song heavy, Versus the Collective apparently looked over their songs, and adds them in where the song actually needs a change of pace, not where the song needs heaviness. The "chugging" equates more to slower, more punctual riffs, then to picking one open note over and over. Clean / heavy wise, Versus the Collective just has a good vocalist.
So now that I've attempted to negate any negative connotations associated with the "prog-core" label, I can focus on what is, IMO, the high point on the album, the vocals. This vocalist is easily one of the better vocalists I've heard; he can go most of the way up into the "shrieking" range without tearing up your eardrums; he can deliver powerful lower growls with ease; and, he can cover most anything in between with "grace" as it applies to growls and screams. On the clean vocals he sounds a good deal like Scar Symmetry's vocalist, he has this emotional, ultra clean tone thats audibly pleasing on its own, not because of contrast to the rest of the song or the difficulty of going from screaming to clean vocals. Drums wise, the most notable aspect of Versus the Collective is less "complexity" than velocity and timing. At moments, the drums hit so fast, and with such timing that they sort of blend into the rest of the song.
So in case I under-hyped this band in the above paragraphs, I'll be a little more blunt (and a lot less scientific); Versus the Collective is really damn good.
The most practical way I can describe Versus the Collective is by saying that they are effectively the lump sum of taking a so-so prog-core band, removing half of the the annoying, overused -core song elements (perhaps gang singing, pig squeals, sweep picking), replacing them with honest prog metal licks, and improving the other half of the "annoying, overused -core elements" (breakdowns, chugging, and alternating clean / heavy vocals or growls / shrieks) to a level where they are actually effective and enjoyable to listen to. Then you take this, and you dress it up with a punchy guitar and bass tone, and a distinctly "prog" timbre. I guess in a lot of ways the prog side of the sound is reminiscent of Necrophagist and the metalcore part of the sound seems to be derived more from The Dillinger Escape plan.
Expatiating on the latter half of these song elements, Versus the Collective's effective use of the elements has to do with their limited use of them. Rather than just tossing in a "breakdown" for the sake of making the song heavy, Versus the Collective apparently looked over their songs, and adds them in where the song actually needs a change of pace, not where the song needs heaviness. The "chugging" equates more to slower, more punctual riffs, then to picking one open note over and over. Clean / heavy wise, Versus the Collective just has a good vocalist.
So now that I've attempted to negate any negative connotations associated with the "prog-core" label, I can focus on what is, IMO, the high point on the album, the vocals. This vocalist is easily one of the better vocalists I've heard; he can go most of the way up into the "shrieking" range without tearing up your eardrums; he can deliver powerful lower growls with ease; and, he can cover most anything in between with "grace" as it applies to growls and screams. On the clean vocals he sounds a good deal like Scar Symmetry's vocalist, he has this emotional, ultra clean tone thats audibly pleasing on its own, not because of contrast to the rest of the song or the difficulty of going from screaming to clean vocals. Drums wise, the most notable aspect of Versus the Collective is less "complexity" than velocity and timing. At moments, the drums hit so fast, and with such timing that they sort of blend into the rest of the song.
So in case I under-hyped this band in the above paragraphs, I'll be a little more blunt (and a lot less scientific); Versus the Collective is really damn good.
9.5/10
http://www.facebook.com/versusthecollective
Friday, May 27, 2011
Infesting Swarm
This should mark the end of my hiatus from writing reviews for a while, and I'm glad to say that I'm picking things up again on a positive note with Infesting Swarm. To be honest, black metal isn't a genre I'm very familiar with, so, as always, I'd encourage our readers to just follow the link at the bottom of the review and check out the band. The review section of things is largely targeted to the band as feedback, and for us (at least me) to develop our writing abilities (my English teacher has remarked on how my writing is noticeably developing since Matt and I started this project), and as a way to get bands out there to anyone who is linked to / stumbles upon our blog.
Infesting Swarm's style is centered around what, to my ears, is a more linear, straightforwards sound than your typical black metal / blackened death metal band. What they lack in sheer technicality and tempo, they make up for with a much more listen-able, relaxed sound that doesn't have the "wall of sound" characteristic to it. Beyond the overarching characteristics of their sound that applies to all five of the songs they've posted so far, Infesting Swarm sounds to take something from a host of different genres. More ominous, slow, riffs that might be described as "blackened doom metal" like in nature, several moments somewhat akin to a fusion of Behemoths later work and Immolation, and classic rock / heavy metal inspired solos and ambient passages.
The only thing really holding Infesting Swarm back is a lukewarm job on the vocals and somewhat shoddy mixing. The vocals sound to be somewhat amateur-ish in nature about half of the time, particularly the lower growls which sound overly dry and a touch forced and frequently "crack". The higher growls however, maintain better consistency, better speed, better tone, and better definition and enunciation. The vocals general suffer from a seemingly poor job with the mixing of the songs, which leaves the vocals about 5 db too low in the mix (estimate). This relatively low volume prevents the vocals from sounding really authoritative or commanding, which might, IMO, make the songs sound much stronger.
Despite a somewhat disappointing mixing job, Infesting Swarms eery, ambient, but nonetheless heavy sound forms a really solid set of songs. I personally haven't heard any other bands that have this exact same sound, so Infesting Swarm should be a fairly interesting, fresh listen for most people. Neither the guitars nor the bass are played with particular expertise, but the drums however, are very strong compared to many of the other bands I've heard. While I certainly wouldn't call them prodigies, Infesting Swarm has set out a good start to produce some really fantastic music in the future.
Infesting Swarm's style is centered around what, to my ears, is a more linear, straightforwards sound than your typical black metal / blackened death metal band. What they lack in sheer technicality and tempo, they make up for with a much more listen-able, relaxed sound that doesn't have the "wall of sound" characteristic to it. Beyond the overarching characteristics of their sound that applies to all five of the songs they've posted so far, Infesting Swarm sounds to take something from a host of different genres. More ominous, slow, riffs that might be described as "blackened doom metal" like in nature, several moments somewhat akin to a fusion of Behemoths later work and Immolation, and classic rock / heavy metal inspired solos and ambient passages.
The only thing really holding Infesting Swarm back is a lukewarm job on the vocals and somewhat shoddy mixing. The vocals sound to be somewhat amateur-ish in nature about half of the time, particularly the lower growls which sound overly dry and a touch forced and frequently "crack". The higher growls however, maintain better consistency, better speed, better tone, and better definition and enunciation. The vocals general suffer from a seemingly poor job with the mixing of the songs, which leaves the vocals about 5 db too low in the mix (estimate). This relatively low volume prevents the vocals from sounding really authoritative or commanding, which might, IMO, make the songs sound much stronger.
Despite a somewhat disappointing mixing job, Infesting Swarms eery, ambient, but nonetheless heavy sound forms a really solid set of songs. I personally haven't heard any other bands that have this exact same sound, so Infesting Swarm should be a fairly interesting, fresh listen for most people. Neither the guitars nor the bass are played with particular expertise, but the drums however, are very strong compared to many of the other bands I've heard. While I certainly wouldn't call them prodigies, Infesting Swarm has set out a good start to produce some really fantastic music in the future.
9/10
Friday, March 25, 2011
Motions - N.Moss
This review is way overdue (sorry nathan). Anyway, Motions is an aptly named album which incorporates elements of ambient / acoustic rock, as well as classic rock into its somewhat abstract form of metal. Motions' dynamics and ingenuity make the full 50 minute album well worth your time.
Songs on this album are wholly based on dynamics, with quiet, ambient moments to break up the thrash, classic rock, and death metal driven that populates the rest of the "cd". Solos can sporadically sound like scales, a pet peeve of mine, and im sure of numerous other listeners, but they can also sound fresh and creative. Admittedly, there are a fair number of bland moments where Nathan drags out a riff for about twice as long as he should of, I'd say there's a good ten minutes of unnecessary riffing on the whole album. While this unnecessary riffing doesn't make it unpleasant to listen to, it reduces the effectiveness of his riffs. One of the better moments on the album, in my opinion, is the song damnation, particularly the intro, which is a quiet, moody riff on the guitar. It's a simple riff, but it opens up into a much larger, more powerful riff nicely (back to the dynamics bit). About three minutes in is another instance of him taking a great riff and driving it into the ground. The riff right here has a really cool rhythm, with a "plucky" nature about it, and the chords sound a little more like he's hitting each individual string, rather than creating a single sound. This song also breaches the limit of "too dynamic", sounding like your tuning through different radio stations (without the static). Its a neat experience, and I think its pretty cool to do what he did here, but this might have been a little too disorganized as it no longer feels like a single song. I would be more impressed, if he could find a way to make it sound like one massive song, rather than different movements in a piece by mozart or any other of a milieu of classical composers.
Swimming the Phlegethon features a really cool line on rhythm guitar that has a very traditional hard rock sound, (the whole song does, but particularly the rhythm guitar), but it drones until the fourth minute, when it changes up to a "bridge" that i dont know how to describe (so look it up, its really cool). From that point forwards, this song turns into a ramble across the metal sub genres, you've got stuff with the middle eastern sound Nile goes for, some death metal riffs akin to decapitated, and some breakdowns that are really quiet enjoyable, setting the stage for some of the better solos on the album.
To address the drums in retrospect, they sounded like a machine may have been doing them. The drum patterns were changed up like the guitar. The drums never transcended my expectations for N. Moss based on the work on the guitar, and mostly lagged behind at just "above average". Fills used the standard amenities but never relied on one in particular, overall, they were alright.
N. Moss's almost rambling experimental project with "Motions" features some really neat dynamics on the guitar, but thats where the excitement truly stops. He uses guitar elements from other genres, but he doesn't change much about it, he knows how to program the drums, but he doesn't innovate or take really big risks with it that make me want to go back and listen to any of the fills again. Overall a 9/10 on the way it was compiled, minus some points for not living up to the composition of his songs.
Songs on this album are wholly based on dynamics, with quiet, ambient moments to break up the thrash, classic rock, and death metal driven that populates the rest of the "cd". Solos can sporadically sound like scales, a pet peeve of mine, and im sure of numerous other listeners, but they can also sound fresh and creative. Admittedly, there are a fair number of bland moments where Nathan drags out a riff for about twice as long as he should of, I'd say there's a good ten minutes of unnecessary riffing on the whole album. While this unnecessary riffing doesn't make it unpleasant to listen to, it reduces the effectiveness of his riffs. One of the better moments on the album, in my opinion, is the song damnation, particularly the intro, which is a quiet, moody riff on the guitar. It's a simple riff, but it opens up into a much larger, more powerful riff nicely (back to the dynamics bit). About three minutes in is another instance of him taking a great riff and driving it into the ground. The riff right here has a really cool rhythm, with a "plucky" nature about it, and the chords sound a little more like he's hitting each individual string, rather than creating a single sound. This song also breaches the limit of "too dynamic", sounding like your tuning through different radio stations (without the static). Its a neat experience, and I think its pretty cool to do what he did here, but this might have been a little too disorganized as it no longer feels like a single song. I would be more impressed, if he could find a way to make it sound like one massive song, rather than different movements in a piece by mozart or any other of a milieu of classical composers.
Swimming the Phlegethon features a really cool line on rhythm guitar that has a very traditional hard rock sound, (the whole song does, but particularly the rhythm guitar), but it drones until the fourth minute, when it changes up to a "bridge" that i dont know how to describe (so look it up, its really cool). From that point forwards, this song turns into a ramble across the metal sub genres, you've got stuff with the middle eastern sound Nile goes for, some death metal riffs akin to decapitated, and some breakdowns that are really quiet enjoyable, setting the stage for some of the better solos on the album.
To address the drums in retrospect, they sounded like a machine may have been doing them. The drum patterns were changed up like the guitar. The drums never transcended my expectations for N. Moss based on the work on the guitar, and mostly lagged behind at just "above average". Fills used the standard amenities but never relied on one in particular, overall, they were alright.
N. Moss's almost rambling experimental project with "Motions" features some really neat dynamics on the guitar, but thats where the excitement truly stops. He uses guitar elements from other genres, but he doesn't change much about it, he knows how to program the drums, but he doesn't innovate or take really big risks with it that make me want to go back and listen to any of the fills again. Overall a 9/10 on the way it was compiled, minus some points for not living up to the composition of his songs.
8.5/10
http://nmoss.bandcamp.com/album/motions
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Trinatyde
Trinatyde is a type of groovy thrash metal (Why do all of my reviews start like this? Can someone pitch an idea other than introducing the band name, and the genre, please?). There's no innovation, but the riffs don't feel "recycled" from any other bands. Guitar riffs are, obviously for the genre, fairly groovy with a "hooking" quality, where there is an accented note, a couple rapid notes, possibly with some reduced emphasis, "hooking" back to the original accent. Vocals sound forced and highly wavering, bass is a somewhat reduced copy of the guitar riffs, and a solid job on the drums create a fairly stable, although not entirely enjoyable ep.
The guitar is a more groovy interpretation on the thrash genre, to the core, it sounds as if the speed and harshness of things are what drive the sound. Some riffs stray into punk rock territory, as the vocals become smoothed over into the same area, "Launch = Failure" is where this is really noticeable. Elsewhere, there are some neat slow riffs on the guitar (just listen to it, we have a link at the bottom in all of the reviews). Finally, there are two, really good breakdowns on this EP, more or less just a riff played on the lower notes and focusing more on the bass, this is particularly noticeable on the aforementioned song. Its in essence, a breakdown for the less core minded metal community, e.g. something you could feasibly headbang to. The bass, as stated above, is unremarkable, pretty much a similar riff to the guitar, but simplified a bit.
The vocals are supposed to be high pitched screams, but when the singer gets high up there, his voice gets quieter, and starts to sound nasally and occasionally cracks and "smooths over" back to his normal tone. The rest of the time, even when the screams are clear and audible, they still sound cliched and overly "angsty". This -core vibe isnt broken up in the least by the lyrics, which sound to be the same kind of melodramatic material i would expect from escape the fate, which is really a shame seeing what these guys can do with guitar.
The drums are somewhat chaotic at times, and somewhat bland at others, mostly keeping the beat, and sticking to genre expectations for any given metal subgenre. The breakdowns use a run of the mill drum fill down the toms to open, and focus on lots of double bass and repeatedly smacking the cymbals to carry out the rest. The beats in the song "black diamonds" are a good indicator of what to expect on the other three songs, somewhat basic patterns manipulated a bit to have some syncopation (term check?), some straight up basic, overused rhythms, and some bland fills. The flipside of the bland fills are the somewhat random uses of the cymbals to add "flare".
Trinatyde's EP shows some neat thrash / groove riffs which could be molded into something great with a better job on the vocals, growls, or clean singing in the lower range of the singers range might compliment things better. As for the drums, they're typical, with some quirks and some better moments. Overall, the EP gets an 8 for bass and guitar, and loses some points on the vocals.
The guitar is a more groovy interpretation on the thrash genre, to the core, it sounds as if the speed and harshness of things are what drive the sound. Some riffs stray into punk rock territory, as the vocals become smoothed over into the same area, "Launch = Failure" is where this is really noticeable. Elsewhere, there are some neat slow riffs on the guitar (just listen to it, we have a link at the bottom in all of the reviews). Finally, there are two, really good breakdowns on this EP, more or less just a riff played on the lower notes and focusing more on the bass, this is particularly noticeable on the aforementioned song. Its in essence, a breakdown for the less core minded metal community, e.g. something you could feasibly headbang to. The bass, as stated above, is unremarkable, pretty much a similar riff to the guitar, but simplified a bit.
The vocals are supposed to be high pitched screams, but when the singer gets high up there, his voice gets quieter, and starts to sound nasally and occasionally cracks and "smooths over" back to his normal tone. The rest of the time, even when the screams are clear and audible, they still sound cliched and overly "angsty". This -core vibe isnt broken up in the least by the lyrics, which sound to be the same kind of melodramatic material i would expect from escape the fate, which is really a shame seeing what these guys can do with guitar.
The drums are somewhat chaotic at times, and somewhat bland at others, mostly keeping the beat, and sticking to genre expectations for any given metal subgenre. The breakdowns use a run of the mill drum fill down the toms to open, and focus on lots of double bass and repeatedly smacking the cymbals to carry out the rest. The beats in the song "black diamonds" are a good indicator of what to expect on the other three songs, somewhat basic patterns manipulated a bit to have some syncopation (term check?), some straight up basic, overused rhythms, and some bland fills. The flipside of the bland fills are the somewhat random uses of the cymbals to add "flare".
Trinatyde's EP shows some neat thrash / groove riffs which could be molded into something great with a better job on the vocals, growls, or clean singing in the lower range of the singers range might compliment things better. As for the drums, they're typical, with some quirks and some better moments. Overall, the EP gets an 8 for bass and guitar, and loses some points on the vocals.
6/10
http://www.myspace.com/trinatyde
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