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

Have you heard Devin Townsends new album "Deconstruction". Holy crap, there's some face melting heaviness there.

Behold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DKs...

Also... I really, really like Opeths new album Heritage. Not super heavy stuff, but well crafted and I really like hearing the Swedish folk music influences in the music.

Fredrik_S wrote:

Have you heard Devin Townsends new album "Deconstruction". Holy crap, there's some face melting heaviness there.

Behold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DKs...

That's like Tim Burton and Mr Bungle formed a metal band.

Fredrik_S wrote:

Have you heard Devin Townsends new album "Deconstruction". Holy crap, there's some face melting heaviness there.

Behold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DKs...

Also... I really, really like Opeths new album Heritage. Not super heavy stuff, but well crafted and I really like hearing the Swedish folk music influences in the music.

I just got this over the weekend after seeing this video a couple days before. Great stuff on there, and from what I've heard of other albums of his (Strapping Young Lad included), I'm surprised he's not more popular/well known.

MattDaddy wrote:

I just got this over the weekend after seeing this video a couple days before. Great stuff on there, and from what I've heard of other albums of his (Strapping Young Lad included), I'm surprised he's not more popular/well known.

He's a celebrity in the metal scene, but most of his sh*t is just too far out there for the average listener. Deconstruction is hilarious. Devin did a bunch of recordings with live choir and orchestra in Prague for the album, but the final mix is so ridiculously dense that the live musicians are basically indistinguishable from samples.

However, even when I don't feel like his stuff is a complete success, I still appreciate what Devin is trying to do, and his Ocean Machine - Biomech and SYL - City albums are two of my all-time favorites.

Tp

garion333 wrote:

I'm liking Mastodon's latest more than Skye. I was one of the few who didn't go gaga over Skye, I merely liked it.

Give me time.
I'm a huge skye fan because of the southern roots, and I like the new album but I don't know how much yet.

Been on an Internet forum break for a while, but back and late to the GWJ metal party...thoroughly enjoying the following this year:

The Devin Townsend Project - Deconstruction
Symphony X - Iconoclast
Leprous - Bilateral
Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn of Events
Circles - The Compass EP
Ghost Brigade - Until Fear No Longer Defines Us
Steven Wilson - Grace for Drowning (more prog than metal, but still awesome)
Opeth - Heritage (just saw them last week with Katatonia - GREAT SHOW)
Tesseract - One
The Human Abstract - Digital Veil
Last Chance to Reason - Level 2 (videogames meets metal)

Tesseract has been a pleasant find for me recently. They even have a couple tunes available on RBN.

DT got stale for me a long time ago. I&W is still in my top 5 of all time. The new one is better than the last few, but it's still missing something. I swear LaBrie is singing lines that I've heard him sing already on previous albums.

Did I already plug the new Textures disc? It's killer.

garion333 wrote:
Fredrik_S wrote:

Have you heard Devin Townsends new album "Deconstruction". Holy crap, there's some face melting heaviness there.

Behold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-DKs...

That's like Tim Burton and Mr Bungle formed a metal band.

Where do I sign?

Getting my mind blown away by this one.

IMAGE(http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6152/6201597490_c0a65266b5.jpg)

I really dig the risks they took with The Darkness Within. The chorus just chills me to the bone.

Spoiler:

Freaking ugly cover though. Plague for the plague god? Is Nurgle pleased?

Despite being incredibly pumped for the show two months ago, I ended up skipping Opeth last night, since setlist.fm assured me that they weren't going to play any of their metal songs. I like a number of their other songs, including a few they are playing, but it would have been a night of disappointment for me.

I hope this is just them doing a full set of stuff that's in a similarly non-metal vein to Heritage. I can appreciate that from an artistic and compositional standpoint. Next time, I hope they bring the metal.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to go see Saxon at the Key Club in Los Angeles. It has been 20 years since they have been back in the US. What a great show!

One of the opening bands was really, really, REALLY good.

They are called Borealis and come from Canada. Check them out!

Wow, Saxon is still together? I saw them in the early 80s where they were in the middle of a triple bill - Fastway, Saxon and Iron Maiden. They were pretty awesome back then.

So a metalhead friend of mine has been going on about this band Wolves In The Throne Room for years and years. Yesterday morning I was inspired to finally look it up and well, yes, this is right up my alley. I looked up if they perhaps had a show coming up in a country closeby and what do you know, they had played in a nearby town... last night. Coping with my disappointment, I managed to read on through the show list and realized that they're playing in my home town the very same night.

It was a transcending experience.

I have not come down yet. The space was almost completely dark, the guitarists needing dim lights mounted on their guitar necks to see what they're doing. The band said one word, "Kiitos" (Finnish for "thank you"), before the first song, and that was it. I think the most impressive thing was that you had a club full of metalheads listening to at times very aggressive black metal, yet they're all transfixed in place. (There were two guys pumping their fists in the entire club.) When songs ended, there was muted applause and very few shouts. When it ended, it felt like we had been taken somewhere and left there.

It's about sound pressure. You can feel every single sound they're making. Your whole body is vibrating in synch with the music. I felt like being guided by three shamans. But it's not all about the volume - the sound quality in general was the best I've heard, you could hear everything clearly. No wonder the sound check took ages.

Even if you're not into black metal (I'm not, generally), this comes fully recommended. The guys are basically hippies, there's nothing NSFW about their ideologies or imagery. No corpse paint or blood or dead animals or Satanic imagery in sight. Check them out on a recording and if you can get into it at all, do not miss this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07XF5...

jlaakso wrote:

The space was almost completely dark, the guitarists needing dim lights mounted on their guitar necks to see what they're doing. The band said one word, "Kiitos" (Finnish for "thank you"), before the first song, and that was it.

... Ok. Checking them out. Sadly it looks like their newest releases are running afoul of Zune's 'anything over 10 minutes long is Album Only.'
Really starting to question the sense of my membership.

jlaakso wrote:

So a metalhead friend of mine has been going on about this band Wolves In The Throne Room for years and years. Yesterday morning I was inspired to finally look it up and well, yes, this is right up my alley. I looked up if they perhaps had a show coming up in a country closeby and what do you know, they had played in a nearby town... last night. Coping with my disappointment, I managed to read on through the show list and realized that they're playing in my home town the very same night.

It was a transcending experience.

I have not come down yet. The space was almost completely dark, the guitarists needing dim lights mounted on their guitar necks to see what they're doing. The band said one word, "Kiitos" (Finnish for "thank you"), before the first song, and that was it. I think the most impressive thing was that you had a club full of metalheads listening to at times very aggressive black metal, yet they're all transfixed in place. (There were two guys pumping their fists in the entire club.) When songs ended, there was muted applause and very few shouts. When it ended, it felt like we had been taken somewhere and left there.

It's about sound pressure. You can feel every single sound they're making. Your whole body is vibrating in synch with the music. I felt like being guided by three shamans. But it's not all about the volume - the sound quality in general was the best I've heard, you could hear everything clearly. No wonder the sound check took ages.

Even if you're not into black metal (I'm not, generally), this comes fully recommended. The guys are basically hippies, there's nothing NSFW about their ideologies or imagery. No corpse paint or blood or dead animals or Satanic imagery in sight. Check them out on a recording and if you can get into it at all, do not miss this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07XF5...

Love it. Checking them out now.

(Btw, Wikipedia mentions Neurosis as an influence and I can totally see that. You should check them out if you haven't.)

jlaakso wrote:

Wolves In The Throne Room

Thanks for the tip. Listening to them now on Spotify. I like it.

garion333 wrote:

(Btw, Wikipedia mentions Neurosis as an influence and I can totally see that. You should check them out if you haven't.)

Speaking of Neurosis, did we ever get a plug in for Cult of Luna? Because I like those dudes.

I might've posted this on GWJ before but not in this thread. I haven't explored the band much, but I love these two songs to death. It's a Ukrainian Black Metal band, but it's quite different from most other BM. Give them a listen even if you don't think you like BM, these two are oddly relaxing.

MeatMan wrote:
jlaakso wrote:

Wolves In The Throne Room

Thanks for the tip. Listening to them now on Spotify. I like it.

I only found the first album on Spotify. They're available for cheap on the major DL services, though - at least 7Digital, eMusic and Amazon. I can't get Amazon over here, so I took a basic membership on eMusic, downloaded their catalogue for 10€, and cancelled my membership.

jlaakso wrote:
MeatMan wrote:
jlaakso wrote:

Wolves In The Throne Room

Thanks for the tip. Listening to them now on Spotify. I like it.

I only found the first album on Spotify. They're available for cheap on the major DL services, though - at least 7Digital, eMusic and Amazon. I can't get Amazon over here, so I took a basic membership on eMusic, downloaded their catalogue for 10€, and cancelled my membership.

For me, Spotify has 21 tracks. Sixteen of them are over 10 minutes long, and one is 20 minutes. Plenty of listening pleasure.

I don't think anyone has brought up Immortal yet either.
This album, Sons of Northern Darkness, is one of my favourite metal albums ever. It's too bad you need to have listened to a ton of aggressive metal to be able to enjoy this stuff. I think it's a lot like alchohol, you need to drink a lot of it to not be put off by it.

Tell me if I'm embedding too many videos.

kyrieee wrote:

Tell me if I'm embedding too many videos.

Impossible! Keep them coming.

45 Immortal tracks added to Spotify.

I'm spending my evening with Red Fang, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Mastodon.

Awesome.

Nice. Enjoy!

I finally saw Korpiklaani last night, and enjoyed it pretty well. They were one of the first folk metal bands I got into, so this was the definite fulfillment of a few years of trying. The sound in the venue was quite f*cked for the first little bit of the show, but it got better about a third of the way in. I didn't get too fired up at the show, but we came in right as they were going on so there wasn't a lot of time to get pumped up. Plus the show seemed like it was really short (and was not actually that short) so that's a good sign.

Thank you all for making this Black Metal Friday worthwhile!

Stoner Metal Monday:

So that was one of the best live shows I have ever had the privelige of attending. Absolutley mind blowing.

Dillinger Escape plan was everything I could have hoped for.. totally frenetic and insane. The guitarists spent half of their set up on the stacks, and Puciato spent half of the set in the audience crowd surfing. I was able to finally ascertain that their new drummer is in fact human, not a robot.

Mastodon was absolutely incredible. Great 22 song setlist with lots from The Hunter. I personally love the new album and I think the nay-sayers were silenced with how well the new record translates to the stage. They didn't say 2 words to the audience until after the show, and they didn't need to. Seriously one of the tightest bands around.

New Lamb of God single, Ghost Walking.

It rips faces off.

Whoaw Buck Satan & The 666 Shooters actually came to be!