Re: Bassista
Tyr (I think this is a pseudonym he uses, his real name is Erik Tivaz but don't trust in that) is a real talented bass player somehow related to Steve Digiorgio. Steve DiGiorgio plays bass on the last two Vintersorg albums (you probably know that) and Vintersorg (the man, not the band) sings for Borknagar. Until recently Tyr was the bassist for Borknagar. He is as good as Steve DiGiorgio in terms of rhythm parts and soloing but in my opinion he tries to show his talent off a little bit. He can play insanely fast and I love his solos on Borknagar's Empricism album. You've got to check him out.
Re: Razorhead95
There might be several reasons to have a fretless bass. The fretless bass has a characteristic sound to it which some people call as "mwaaah" sound. Frets on the fretted instruments limits the positions on which the strings rests. Hence, the pitch of the sound is independent of the position of the finger within that fret. This gives a more crisp sound. But as you slide up or down on the neck this makes the sound discontinuous. One other reason for a fretless bass might sound strange, but it was done on the Elegy album of Amorphis. The western music is based on seminotes. That is to say if you think about the divisions of the scale except in between B-C and E-F, there is a seminote. This makes a twelve semitones in one octave. In the middle eastern music (and naturally the instruments) each whole note is divided into 9 subnotes. To attain the middle eastern melodies with a fretted bass (which is set for western music) is quite difficult. The fretless bass, on the other hand, has no limiting elements and you can obtain any frequency of the strings by positioning your finger on the fretboard onto the position you want and this enables the player to play the middleeastern melodies.
To give you a short answer, people usually prefer fretless bass for the mwah sound and its less crisp sound.
