Good ol' Recommendation thread

[Dev]

Two French bands :

. Monolithe : http://www.monolithe.free.fr/frameset/frameset.htm for samples and reviews go to the Medias section

. Blut Aus Nord : http://ns328.ovh.net/~nawebzin/BAN/index.php?vp=mp3&la=uk . 2 mp3's from their last excellent album though it's definitely not for everybody .

 

[Dev]

Also , you might have heard of Septic Flesh (Dreamlord ^^). If not Check out their first album : Mystic Places Of Dawn , it's one of the best debut-album I've ever heard . All that I can say is that they are a unique band . No one sounds like them .

While this is not the best review ever , I think it's a great description :

[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]S.F. mix darkened death metal with classical compositions (guitarist Chris has later been studying classical music). Their style is original and interesting, not soft at all. 'Mystic Places...' is a record, that needs concentration from a listener. Brutal blast parts are very often broken into more calmer and eerie parts. S.F. never forgets melody. The band has an original guitar style, not any typical metal riffing. The guitars are like brush strokes on unseen canvas. Synths play very important part in Septic Flesh´s music. They give a certain Greek feel, together with acoustic guitar and violin (which are used quite seldom).

The album´s nine songs are mostly quite long, even 8½ minutes. There´s a couple of faster and shorter tracks, but music is varying and it is not the usual verse-verse-chorus-verse-chorus -stuff. Lyrics are about Greek fables and other mystical things. Spiros´s low vocals are also a S.F. trademark. A big minus comes from sound of this record: It is muffled, not very sharp. Still the instruments are audible enough.

Septic Flesh´s style began on this release and it broke into a full bloom on their 1997 classic 'Ophidian Wheel'. This is interesting, but newer album´s are more polished and always evolved. But this must have been an original release in 1994, because this sounds original even 6 years later![/font]

 

[Nate The Great]

I've been waiting months to find Blut Aus Nord's new one for a good price.

 

[J.]

Erik, thought you'd like to know that I just worked a trade for two Evoken CDs, and I'm currently working on a trade for an Esoteric CD.

Also just traded for another Scald CD.

It's good to be the King.

 

[monikaedv]

Well, Orphaned Land categorize themselves as "oriental metal" but I have to put this down to an extremely weak understanding of the English language, or that they just want to be labelled in a unique fashion for whatever reason. Century Media, however, should know better. Take for example the following description of OL by CM: "More Oriental than ever (by the use of an Arabic tools section with Tarbuka -arabian drums-, Kannun, Hud -Arabian guitar- etc...)". Just ridiculous.

Ever read The Metal Observer? Both "Black Seeds of Vengeance" and "In Their Darkened Shrines" are described as having 'oriental flourishes' or using 'oriental instruments'. SAY WHAT? And Cleopatra's real name was Yip Wang Chong?

hey, this is strange! I listen lots to Middle-Eastern and Indian music and the music is often described as oriental on the covers of these albums so I have thought of the term oriental as referring to the whole eastern world... But in my wordbook it says that the term refers to the far east countries, i.e. China, Japan etc.

I guess it's a similar thing as the confusion about the term schizophrenic; most people seem to think it means having multiple personality disorder for some reason. It's being used that way "everywhere" it seems and I didn't learn what schizophrenic really meant before I started to read psychology books...

 

[Nate The Great]

Next thing you know somebody will tell me Indians are actually people from India!

 

[JayKeeley]

hey, this is strange! I listen lots to Middle-Eastern and Indian music and the music is often described as oriental on the covers of these albums so I have thought of the term oriental as referring to the whole eastern world... But in my wordbook it says that the term refers to the far east countries, i.e. China, Japan etc.

Is that music metal related? If so, I'm not surprised. I'm sure some idiot one day started referring to everything east of Turkey as 'oriental' and it caught on. The fact that Orphaned Land refer to themselves as 'oriental' is just horrific being that they're overt arab/semites.

The 'Orient' geographically should encompass SE Asia and the Far East (specifically south and east of the Himalayas so this includes places like Nepal and Mongolia). To be honest, I even think that Japan being a part of the orient is debatable, but whatever.

I guess it's a similar thing as the confusion about the term schizophrenic; most people seem to think it means having multiple personality disorder for some reason. It's being used that way "everywhere" it seems and I didn't learn what schizophrenic really meant before I started to read psychology books...

True dat. Apparently, the main symptom of schizophrenia is hearing voices in the head.