\m/(~_~)\m/ Bring the Metal! \m/(~_~)\m/

Can't stand nasally voices, personally. And that dude sings directly through his nose.

Also Troy is just better even if you don't care about nostril singing.

garion333 wrote:

I tend to prefer their more speed metal tracks, so I enjoy the intensity, but I'm not sure it's a good song. Something is still off between them and me.

You hear Scott Kelly and realize you'd rather be listening to Neurosis, obviously.

I think the song is OK but not much more than that. Which is probably exactly why it's getting released as the single on a B-sides collection rather than being kept for the next album.

New Anaal Nathrakh.

It sure is an AN song. They are still headed down the path of trying more interesting things with their clean vocals, but if you didn't like them before you sure aren't going to start now.

Nice, I can dig it. I kind of like the direction they've been going, which is weird since I tend to hate moves toward more clean vocals. I'm going to be all over this album when it comes out.

Oh hey, I've spent the last day watching hours of clips from Two Minutes to Late Night after the Rush bedroom cover popped up in my feed.

New Gojira. Owns super hard.

Yeah, that's sounds like an awesome melding of Sirius and Magma sounds.... Very much looking forward to another album from those despairing environmentalist softies

Just came to post that!

I even like the video! Very much looking forward to the new Gojira.

So much new stuff came out today. It's another Bandcamp Friday, where they don't take their usual fees, so it's a great day to make some purchases. A lot of the bands are donating some of what they make today to various helpful organizations.

New Krallice!! Some of the best American black metal being made right now: Mass Cathexis

Two Minutes to Late Night put out an album of some of the recent covers, only available today: Covers Vol 2

New Orbit Culture - Industrial-leaning heavy metal: Nija

The new Krallice has not popped up on Apple Music yet and I am not pleased.

Chelsea Wolfe formed a duo with her friend and former bandmate (from Wolfe's pre-solo band) Jess Gowrie, called Mrs. Piss. Anyone that's like me that loved Hiss Spun but didn't get as much out of Wolfe's folk album last year, the Mrs. Piss debut EP is the place to look for more of that Wolfe hazy doom-pop:

Also, Gowrie was the drummer on that 2M2LN Soundgarden cover.

In love with the new Gojira over here and hope this means the album's right around the corner!

Blind Guardian held their Wacken performance in front of a computer generated audience not long ago, and evidently premiered a new track Violent Shadows. It's sandwiched between performance of Welcome to Dying and Majesty, which are basically two of their live show classics/favorites.

This just makes me want to see them again, because as little energy as these guys have on stage compared to other metal acts, I've never felt so good to be in a crowd than I did being arm in arm with a bunch of strangers belting the lyrics to Nightfall or Fly or countless other tunes in unison.

Rock Band has better crowds.

I finished Fallout 3 recently and apparently I'm reluctant to dive back into another single player campaign before Apex Legends season 6 starts next Tuesday, so last night I found myself watching metal videos before bedtime.

Man, there are so many fun videos for Allegaeon songs! Their third album continues to be my favorite, but I need to give the later ones more listens. When I was test-driving cars after mine flooded in 2017, "Dyson Sphere" was one of my audio system test tracks because of its crazy, 3D sounding opening. Really dig that song and 1.618 from that album. So cool how they write about crazy science and sci-fi-ish concepts.

I'm trying to figure out why I dig this song as it sounds pretty standard. Yet I'm enjoying it for some reason I can't explain.

Pretty much explains all Spirit Adrift to me. Course they keep evolving their sound so it's tough to pin them down.

I feel sad that I skipped a free Spirit Adrift show last year, but it was on a Wednesday night, and while I can dig them, they only have a song or two I'd have been looking forward to hearing.

Also, Spirit Adrift and Gatecreeper appear to have experienced a conscious uncoupling. The singer/guitarist for SA no longer plays in Gatecreeper, and the singer of Gatecreeper no longer plays bass in SA. I hope it was amicable!

Speaking of Gatecreeper, I was listening to some Spotify suggestions this week, and Asphyx came on. To quote some internet duder (who was talking about Gatecreeper, when their first album was just blowing up) "The Bolt Thrower is strong with this one."

garion333 wrote:

Pretty much explains all Spirit Adrift to me. Course they keep evolving their sound so it's tough to pin them down.

I didn't know how right you were until I listened to that video Chris posted. Man! I think I like this mix of, what, thrash and trad? Shredilicious!

I didn't even realize the latest Orbit Culture album was out, but I found out and bought it and this might be the most I've enjoyed a new album on a first listen in a long time. Open Eye, in particular, feels like a track from an alternate dimension where Metallica evolved into something awesome.

Guess I'll be listening to this several times over the next week.

Yeah, there's a couple Metallica-like songs on there. I spun the new album a few times on my recent trip and was pleasantly surprised by the variety. It all sounds like Orbit Culture but they clearly are bringing in multiple influences that shine through. In a good way, I think. Makes me wonder if they have multiple songwriters.

Here's a band that strongly reminds me of Oranssi Pazuzu, but much heavier. Just some great psychedelic metal. Unfortunately all I could find on youtube was the full album:

I enjoyed that new Spirit Adrift track too, and if that's the album cover for the new one, it's amazing. Orbit Culture also seems to be getting better and better. The pandemic doesn't seem to have slowed down the metal genre much!

Enslaved did another livestream. This one is the entirety of Below the Lights.

So stoked for this album.

Huh. Looks like Pyramaze is coming out with a new album as well. Guess it is fitting that, during a year that's otherwise pretty bleh, there's a lot of solid metal releasing.

I really liked their last album, Contingent. This song, admittedly, sounds a bit like a "filler" track rather than a single. Like, this is the song you hear between the really good ones you spin up all the time.

Tough love time. Is BCI's further move into more progressive elements in this song good or bad? I've listened to it twice now and to me it feels more like the prog breakdowns detract from the song, breaking it up and separating the elements instead of unifying. Perhaps it's because the actual instrumentation isn't quite blow-me-away interesting (ie. simple). See the 4 min mark?

To me it's lacking a true moment that pulls me out. One of the reasons I finally though Soen was hitting their stride is because they had a handful of wow moments on their last album. I'm not finding any in this song. Take, for example, a Krallice album. There every riff is basically a wow moment. BCI is doing good stuff, but none of this is great. Probably could say the same about the Ocean song I posted above, though something about their sound hits me better.

Oooooor I'm simply in a bad mood. It's a pleasing listen, at least. I like the clean vox in the BCI song. It's memorable, unlike the riffing...

d4m0 wrote:

Here's a band that strongly reminds me of Oranssi Pazuzu, but much heavier. Just some great psychedelic metal. Unfortunately all I could find on youtube was the full album:

I enjoyed that new Spirit Adrift track too, and if that's the album cover for the new one, it's amazing. Orbit Culture also seems to be getting better and better. The pandemic doesn't seem to have slowed down the metal genre much!

Like this here, is some twisted, interesting stuff.

And, yeah, pandemics seems to be good for metal. Folks were already working with one another through the net, but now they've got nothing better to do!

garion333 wrote:

Tough love time. Is BCI's further move into more progressive elements in this song good or bad? I've listened to it twice now and to me it feels more like the prog breakdowns detract from the song, breaking it up and separating the elements instead of unifying. Perhaps it's because the actual instrumentation isn't quite blow-me-away interesting (ie. simple). See the 4 min mark?

To me it's lacking a true moment that pulls me out. One of the reasons I finally though Soen was hitting their stride is because they had a handful of wow moments on their last album. I'm not finding any in this song. Take, for example, a Krallice album. There every riff is basically a wow moment. BCI is doing good stuff, but none of this is great. Probably could say the same about the Ocean song I posted above, though something about their sound hits me better.

Oooooor I'm simply in a bad mood. It's a pleasing listen, at least. I like the clean vox in the BCI song. It's memorable, unlike the riffing...

I'm no expert in this band or prog, but for me this song didn't really begin until 2:19. I tend to multi-task when listening to new stuff, and one of the things that lets me know if I'm really digging it is when my attention is pulled out of whatever else I'm doing to stop and really listen.

There's nothing here that's offensive to my senses, but the opening felt really... well, you said "prog" and yet it felt to me like "Just learned guitar basics and decided to try writing a song without learning any real techniques". Then the growling came in and, well, yeah. I'm now at the 4 minute mark and there's not much there to really listen to.

So I've got no background with this band but I can certainly understand listening to this and finding it unimpressive. It's fine enough to have on in the background, but very little of it has me sitting up thinking "Oh, I like this sound..."

And yeah, the moments it suddenly goes quiet sounds less like they're transitioning to the next "movement" and just... didn't know how to transition.

That 2:19 mark and then the 6 minute mark to the end were effectively the strongest parts of the song to me. Everything else is fluff.

New Havukruunu is hella good.

It most certainly is.