Controversial opinions on metal

A Pleasant Shade Of Gray?
Get Awaken The Guardian, then thank me later.

I don't have any Diamond, but Mercyful Fate are killer.
And yeah, duh. Thrash. Kreator are actually my favorite thrash band atm. Enemy of God is a modern thrash masterpiece imo but don't tell anyone I said that. Extreme Aggression, Coma Of Souls, etc are obviously great aggressive thrash as well. Sodom are very cool too. I love M16. And then yeah, there's all the typical American thrash - Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth, Testament, etc.
 
oh, shveet.
I have One Evil Comes (A Million Follow) on repeat, I just listen to that song for hours. I like Phobia & Material World Paranoia as well.

Well I will slsk Awaken the Guardian some time, but were the italics on 'buy' in your previous post suggestig that you're not into music sharing on the interwebz?
 
I don't care, but there are some albums you should own.
I prefer to buy. Just nice to have it in my hands.

Btw, Voices of the Dead, Murder Fantasies, and Suicide Terrorist. Sometimes I run to those.
 
Noice. Don't forget Dystopia.

yeah I download everything, and then I buy the albums that I fall in love with and must own. fun to look at the booklet and everything.
 
Vossyrus said:
I enjoyed "Death Cult Armageddon" also. I think it's a harder album to appreciate because their really aren't any standout tracks...but, I think as a whole composition it is a great album.
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If you're going to hire a full orchestra, you might as well have them fully involved on more than just two tracks.
 
Zephyrus said:
If you're going to hire a full orchestra, you might as well have them fully involved on more than just two tracks.
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I would imagine that would be an extremely difficult process though, working with an orchestra entirely. I believe that's why the band decided not to use one for the new album. They'd have more freedom and control over things.
 
Vossyrus said:
I would imagine that would be an extremely difficult process though, working with an orchestra entirely. I believe that's why the band decided not to use one for the new album. They'd have more freedom and control over things.
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Abandoning the orchestral elements exposed what little fundamental creativity they had left. PEM and DCA were only good albums because the orchestras made up for the lack in Metal creativity. PEM had some great guitar melodies, but over all those two albums owe much to the symphonics. ISD stripped down the symphonics a bit, and there wasn't much left to take their place.

So those who think that the band would have been better not to hind behind the orchestrations are fooling themselves, since each album chronologically, in their entire discography, sees a steady change in proportion: the quality of the guitar melodies decreases over time, while the presence of symphonics increases. That's why ISD was a bad album, because they didn't take the next logical step from DCA, which was to increase the symphonic aspect to make up for their poverty in every other regard.

And that is why I find SBD to be their best album: because it is the optimum balance between great riffs and symphonics.
 
Zephyrus said:
Abandoning the orchestral elements exposed what little fundamental creativity they had left. PEM and DCA were only good albums because the orchestras made up for the lack in Metal creativity. PEM had some great guitar melodies, but over all those two albums owe much to the symphonics. ISD stripped down the symphonics a bit, and there wasn't much left to take their place.

So those who think that the band would have been better not to hind behind the orchestrations are fooling themselves, since each album chronologically, in their entire discography, sees a steady change in proportion: the quality of the guitar melodies decreases over time, while the presence of symphonics increases. That's why ISD was a bad album, because they didn't take the next logical step from DCA, which was to increase the symphonic aspect to make up for their poverty in every other regard.

And that is why I find SBD to be their best album: because it is the optimum balance between great riffs and symphonics.
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Well, it’s very common for a band to utilize the guitar less with a greater symphonic influence as Dimmu has done, so I’ll agree with you in that the lack of a full orchestra has exposed Dimmu’s current style of song writing for what it is, which is definitely weaker. However, I do not think Dimmu is better off “hiding” behind an orchestra and I don’t think it’s to anyone’s benefit should the band continue the trend of less guitar, more symphonics. The problem is with the band’s song writing, in particular Galder’s one-dimensional approach to writing in Dimmu as he does rehash a lot of the same ideas, and really fail to keep things interesting. He didn’t have much influence on PEM if any, but noticeably has on DCA and ISD. Galder is a good guitarist and he can do better so I think the band should focus more on improving the role of guitars first, and symphonics second.

Also, with the first part of your post. I don't think those albums are only good because of the orchestra. The band of course elected to take an arguably more ambitious direction with their music by including an orchestra and an album like PEM still showcased the band in a creative light so they could have easily gone without an orchestra and would've likely included more guitar and a stronger presence of keyboards like on SBD (though they didn't have Astennu). It's of course intentional they reduced the role of the guitar with more orchestra and the only reason the band didn't use an orchestra earlier is because they couldn't afford it, but with PEM they could and the direction they took was intentional. However, I'll agree that ISD has proven that the band is lacking creativity currently, and I'll agree that it was also something that affected the quality of DCA (though I still enjoy that release, it could have been a lot better).
 
DCA had only a handful of riffs that, on their own (without orchestral or keyboard harmony) would I consider excellent. PEM had more of these riffs, which made the album fundamentally better, but still relying on the symphonic complement for its crux.
 
HumanEquation said:
I'm not ignorant when it comes to vocals! I've heard some awesomely done harsh vocals. I just think, PERSONALLY, that his particular vocals sound like a cat being continually stabbed.
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And that is more or less the point behind Varg's vocal approach. It is meant to sound tortured, this is his vocal aesthetic and it serves a very particular goal within the purposes of the music.

Perhaps my original post was too harsh, but if you simply dismiss Burzum's work as nothing special and go onto to praise stuff like Mirrorthrone then, I'm sorry, you are acting in near total ignorance. You don't have to like it, but you need to understand it at least before dismissing it as 'nothing special'.
 
Zephyrus said:
DCA had only a handful of riffs that, on their own (without orchestral or keyboard harmony) would I consider excellent. PEM had more of these riffs, which made the album fundamentally better, but still relying on the symphonic complement for its crux.
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I agree DCA wasn't particularly good on guitar at all, and PEM wasn't nearly as good as SBD but it still seems like you're making an unfair criticism. It's not so much that the band owed a lot to the orchestra, it's just that they allowed the orchestra to take the centre stage, and increasingly reduced the role of the guitar on purpose to allow for it, and now haven't really adjusted accordingly. Better songwriting overall would improve the band's music, not more symphonics to make up for a poor songwriting which is what you initally wrote regarding ISD. I'm sure we essentially agree, it's just the way things have been worded.
 
Yeah, my point was that an album that continued the orchestral progression from DCA would have sounded better than what they did instead, which was ISD.
 
I think Theory In Practice is better than both Atheist and Cynic, the comparison due to the fact that Theory In Practice obviously were heavily influenced by these bands. I think they took what these two bands did and turned everything up a bit quality wise. Dont mean to say Atheist and Cynic are bad though.
 
^Cynic are pretty meh. Atheist kick TIP's ass, though.

WeAreInFlames said:
Go out and buy Mabool.
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Mabool was pretty boring, I think people only took notice because they tossed in some storyline and middle-eastern-ness to an otherwise run of the mill album.

Mort Divine said:
I never stated it was a genre. It is an artistic state of being in a sense. It can NOT have any ties to musical convention, that is why John Cage is avant-garde but uneXpect isn't. That is why the first noise record/release/recording was avant-garde, yet why Merzbow isn't.
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Yes, it's a state of being innovative. What you're saying doesn't make much sense: obviously, for us to consider something "music," it has to have ties to musical convention to some degree. Also, you can be "avant garde" to a greater or lesser extent, whether you're pulling a Cage and "composing" 4 minutes and 33 seconds of whatever the audience happens to hear, or incorporating new instruments and time signatures to an existing genre against convention. You're investing the term with a significance and an absolutism that don't belong to it.
 
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