The CBB

Reyzadren's metal stuffz wrote:Sonata Arctica

Sonata Arctica has been coming up on Spotify quite a lot lately for me! I've liked what I've heard so far. Haven't actually sat down and listened to any of their albums properly, though.

Herra Ratatoskr wrote: ↑30 Sep 2019 19:27On a less goofy note, I'll also give props to Boisson Divine, a French folk metal band that sings mostly in their native Gascon dialect of Occitan (as well as a few songs in French, I believe). Some recommendations: Dauna de Brassempoi, Quin Braguer and Terre D'Attache.

This was awesome, thank you. Especially liked Dauna de Brassempoi (although the production quality seems to be more professional on the other two). Didn't understand much, but at least the video helped a bit - in marked contrast to Quin Braguèr, whose video I found less comprehensible than the language. Neat songs all three, in any case.

Glad you liked it. Their Bandcamp page actually has English (and French) translations of their lyrics for their second album, if you're curious. Quin Braguèr's video actually is, all things considered not that far off the lyrics, though they are a fair bit more risqué (it's about a priest who has a tryst with a prostitute, and the title translates to "What Udders!")

Herra Ratatoskr wrote: ↑30 Sep 2019 19:27 I see Alestorm listed, but not Gloryhammer (one of Christopher Bowes' side projects). If you appreciate the tongue-in-cheek humor of Alestorm's take on folk metal, I imagine you'd get a kick out of a similar take on lore-ful (their three albums form an ongoing story) power metal. Some personal favorites include The Unicorn Invasion of Dundee, Rise of the Chaos Wizards and Gloryhammer

Ooo, if we're going silly for a moment, I completely forgot about Evil Scarecrow

Herra Ratatoskr wrote: ↑30 Sep 2019 19:27 On a less goofy note, I'll also give props to Boisson Divine, a French folk metal band that sings mostly in their native Gascon dialect of Occitan (as well as a few songs in French, I believe). Some recommendations: Dauna de Brassempoi, Quin Braguer and Terre D'Attache.

Definitely adding them to the list!

So, BabyMetal. I quite like them, although a few of their songs aren't to my taste, but they're always doing something new anyway, so that's bound to happen. Their latest album though seems very "mixed bag" and muddled (a few fairly "dancey" songs, followed by an Indian mix, then a piratey song, a couple more "dancy" songs, a few heavier songs, and then the obligatory ballads). On the other hand, well, that's what BabyMetal do, i.e. they just have songs of different styles and throw them onto one album, so the more they try out, the more random their albums are going to seem.

I don't know if that's a problem, or if I'm just used to albums being a bit more consistent in terms of genre. I do enjoy picking and choosing what I like of them, though, across albums and throwing together songs of different styles into different playlists, though, so maybe that's the point.

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Lacuna Coil's Black Anima, though? Love it They've sort of carried on the sound they've been developing over previous albums, but they've also given Andrea a much bigger role in this album which gives the entire album a much heavier feel, and you can really feel the drum line throughout which helps add to that.

Herra Ratatoskr wrote: ↑30 Sep 2019 19:27 Also, wait a second, how has Sabaton not been mentioned? They're military-themed power metal, with a lot of WWI/WWII songs, but branch out often enough (they even did an entire concept album about the Swedish Empire - with English and Swedish language versions). They're also amazing live and probably my favorite band to go see.

I saw them live as an opener for Nightwish about four years ago. Quite impressive and energetic.

Also, in my "vampireshark's concert shenanigans" update, I haven't seen a lot this year since I had Thesis Doom dangling overhead, but I did see Delain (with Arkona as the opener) about two weeks ago (very impressive, especially Delain, though Arkona having a growling female was awesome) and Rammstein in July (11/10, would see again).

vampireshark wrote: ↑03 Dec 2019 12:01I saw them live as an opener for Nightwish about four years ago. Quite impressive and energetic.

I think I might have seen them on the same tour. They were opening for Nightwish, and had Delain as the first set. Fantastic show. They're really good as openers (I also saw them opening for Amon Amarth), I finally got to see them as headliners a year and a bit ago and holy crap, out-fucking-standing. It's a shame they rarely swing by Kansas City (the last time they were headlining here before then was I think 2012)

Since most of it is metal, I will shamelessly post my top ten albums of the year here, conveniently marking the non-metal with an asterisk as well as providing a song to listen to from each of the albums (click the description) for your listening pleasure

1. Idle Hands - Mana

Classic heavy metal with some slight postpunk / gothic influences

2. Imha Tarikat - Kara Ihlas

Turkish name and titles, German band - crushing black / death metal, but with a definite sense of melody and structure


3. Cigarettes After Sex - Cry*

Melancholic pop, so doesn't belong into this thread at all, but you might still wanna give it a listen

4. Arch/Matheos – Winter Ethereal

Progressive metal with John Arch, ex-singer of Fates Warning (where Jim Matheos plays the guitar), possibly the best - or at least most unique - classic metal vocalist. A shame he's only sung on five and a half albums over more than 25 years


5. Lightning Dust – Spectre*

More melancholic pop!

6. Possessed – Revelations of Oblivion

Comeback album by one of the bands often cited as inventing death metal, and well worth a listen


7. Tomb Mold – Planetary Clairvoyance

Straight up no-frills death metal

8. Disillusion – The Liberation

Progressive metal with lots of different style elements

9. Blood Incantation – Hidden History of the Human Race

Crazy technical death metal with, judging from the titles, crazy alt-history/Ancient Astronauts lyrics

10. Traveler -dto

Classic heavy metal, lots of Maiden influence, but that's obviously not a bad thing

Today, I found LUSTRE - The First Snow and Thy Light - The Bridge.

Venom - Countess Bathory

See the following comments:

IMPERIAL
4 years ago
kurt cobain totally ripped off that main riff...

zzzzthemodzzz
3 years ago
Aparently Cobain was a Venom fan. \m/

Progress on the album is slow, but being made regardless. COVID-19 hasn’t helped things.

I've been listening to a lot of Powerwolf after discovering them a few months ago.

Incense and Iron

Looks like this thread hasn't been toooo active, but I'll ask anyway.

I've recently been a bit obsessed with the song End of Heartbreak by Killswitch Engage. However, after listening to the whole album its on I've come to find out that it isn't really representative of their overall style and "heaviness" as much as I thought. Anyone have suggestions for other stuff that may be more similar to what's going on in that song?

I’ll have to listen to that this weekend for my recommendations.

Anyway, in a few weeks we’re hoping to record our album.

Linguifex wrote: ↑16 Oct 2020 02:40 I’ll have to listen to that this weekend for my recommendations.

Sweet!

I'd appreciate that.

Recording starts today!

Thrice, I am so sorry I’ve forgotten this. I’ll have to remember to do it when I have some downtime.

Linguifex wrote: ↑26 Oct 2020 22:24Recording starts today!

Hopefully it'll go well! I just listened to your band's EP Counterfeit Gods on Bandcamp and it's really cool. Somehow it sounded nostalgic, while also sounding pretty fresh without being at all gimmicky or even "standing out", which I mean in the best way. The only "criticism" I can think of is that imho the clean vocals are maybe a bit too high in the mix and sound strangely autotuned (I have absolutely nothing against autotune, just that in that context it sounded a bit weird; if they're not actually even autotuned, not sure why but they sound like that to my ears).

If it's OK to ask, will the album be similar to that EP, or will it be something different?

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...and it's only because of you posting about your music right now that I feel like I can post about my own music, and it still feels weird to do so. My new album might already be finished, but I'm not sure what order the songs should be in, whether I should include two not-entirely-fitting ones, and/or if I should try to make one or two more and whether I should completely rework half of one of the songs.

Well, we’ve at least preliminary takes for all the drum tracks now. We also got to bust out the blaster beam, which I am totally excited about.

Linguifex wrote: ↑26 Oct 2020 22:24 Thrice, I am so sorry I’ve forgotten this. I’ll have to remember to do it when I have some downtime.

No problem, my dude, I'm in no particular rush or anything.

Good news is, that since posting here I've gotten a bit more inspired to do a bit more con-scripting and such, so there's that. :)

So, I'm guessing most of the metal-listening world has heard the news by now, but in case you hadn't: Alexi Laiho is dead. While I never became a huge fan of their music, Children of Bodom was still one of the first bands my more metal-oriented friends introduced me to back in about 2000 (I think it was this song, specifically). Not to mention the fact that the dude was only in his early forties. So yeah, this comes as a shock. The world has lost one hell of a guitarist.