Jeff Loomis - the recording chronicles (2011)

^ i want that pick like a football player wants lionel messi's autographed ball.
and maybe a few extra fingers as well...

my god that video...

80401.jpg
 
No.......words. *packing guitar away and putting it up for good* And that solo from Tony, one of my favorite and most influential guitarists since the early Shrapnel days...just amazing. MUST HAVE THIS CD SOON.
 
http://www.msanthrope.com/blog/?p=2150

JEFF LOOMIES TO FILM NEW LIVE PERFORMANCE FOR EMG TV

Jeff Loomis will be visiting the EMG studios to film a live performance of two tracks “Mercurial” and “Sibylline Origin”, off his forthcoming second album “Plains of Oblivion”. Jeff’s first performance video of “Jato Unit” in 2009 generated over 1 million hits on YouTube.


1. Mercurial (feat. Marty Friedman) (05:32)

10. Sibylline Origin (04:35)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

http://metalassault.com/album_revie...jeff-loomis-plains-of-oblivion-9-5-out-of-10/

Album Review: Jeff Loomis – Plains Of Oblivion [9.5 out of 10]
 
Now this :

JEFF LOOMIS - Plains of Oblivion (Album Sampler) :

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJXxsbzYX0&feature=g-u[/ame]

Judging from this and the previous stuff we've heard/seen, i'm a bit underwhelmed since i didn't hear any parts that stood out (as in "that part is awesome and got stuck in my head", not "damn dude can shred his ass off) to me.
And it seems like it's non-stop shred with rythm guitars mixed low and considered as a background.

Otherwise, playing and production are ace (if it wasn't for the songwriting/all-out-shred approach and the quiet rythm guitars i'd love this). Drums sound way better than on the previous record (in which they sounded fine but a bit robotic and tiny).

Just my 2 cents, reserving final judgement when the entire thing will be out.

I love the acoustic part btw. Amazing vibe/tone.

EDIT : heard a familiar lick during the “Silbyline Origin” song :)
 
I can't wait for this. The tracks with Christine sound insane and that Ihsahn bit was just... fuck.

I always hear a lot of repeated licks with Jeff, to be honest. Did nobody notice that the descending lick in Escape Velocity is just a tapped version of the one in Enemies of Reality?
 
Honestly, pretty disappointed. Nothing in that video caught my ear as being really interesting, I felt like I had heard it all before...although I thought the Ihsahn one was pretty cool. And yeah I literally rolled my eyes at the Sibylline Origin thing. I think if you're going to have a "guitar record" which this seems to be...your playing is going to have to be a lot more expressive and meaningful and a lot less sterile/pattern based shredding. To quote one of my friends, "it's like sifting through a bunch of jerking off to find limited moments of actual sex"

EDIT: And there is definitely a double standard here, but coming from the guy who put out This Godless Endeavor I definitely expect better.
 
Well, I just listened to this sampler for the first time, and the stereo image is strangely skewed on a lot of it. Like, everything up until 1:28 is definitely skewed off to the right by a large amount, it's really weird and it's definitely not actually mixed that way. Surprised no one has mentioned that yet, actually. Most of the other stuff sounds about right, but it might sound a bit weird, kind of hard to say, and I'm not at home to compare to the actual WAVs right now. It's gotta have something to do with the video codec they used after editing this video...for example, when I had finished editing the video play-through of "The Ultimatum", when I would try to export it using an H.264 codec, from the full-quality .mov files, it would skew the mix off to one side. Using FCP X by the way...
 
JeffTD said:
I can't wait for this. The tracks with Christine sound insane and that Ihsahn bit was just... fuck.

I always hear a lot of repeated licks with Jeff, to be honest. Did nobody notice that the descending lick in Escape Velocity is just a tapped version of the one in Enemies of Reality?
Click to expand...

I can't think of a single virtuoso guitarist that's been around for over two decades that has that instantly recognizable feel/sound to their playing that don't have many repeated licks in their playing.
You know it's Paul Gilbert, Zakk Wylde or Yngwie Malmsteen by certain alt picking patterns they play and by their pick attack; you know it's Joe Satriani with that style of legato patterns, you know it's Steve Vai with certain tapping licks.
I had never heard anything else Chris Poland did from Peace Sells...But Who's Buying in 1986 until the OHM album in 2005, Amino Acid Flashback, and the phrasing, melodic choices, vibrato and all that stuff was unmistakably Chris Poland even though it was 19 years apart.
It's those kinda things that gives a player their unique identity and let's you know it's them.
When you have your own unique sound, your own DNA on the playing, you're going to come back to licks that you are apart of your style and who you are and after 20+ years of playing, it's not easy to come up with something entirely new and fresh. And that's okay, because if the feel and phrasing is there, we can probably appreciate it.
Jeff Loomis, while no doubt making the influence that Marty Friedman and Jason Becker/Cacophony had on him quite apparent, still has a style all of his own, something that 99% of other metal guitarists simply don't have.
A lot cooler than most guitar solos in metal that are completely devoid of any interesting phrasing, just putting it on the neck pickup, giving it a compressed as fuck sound and basically just going on autopilot with some 5 string sweeps that sound entirely indistinguishable from the lead guitarist in the band across from them.

Brandon E. said:
Honestly, pretty disappointed. Nothing in that video caught my ear as being really interesting, I felt like I had heard it all before...although I thought the Ihsahn one was pretty cool. And yeah I literally rolled my eyes at the Sibylline Origin thing. I think if you're going to have a "guitar record" which this seems to be...your playing is going to have to be a lot more expressive and meaningful and a lot less sterile/pattern based shredding. To quote one of my friends, "it's like sifting through a bunch of jerking off to find limited moments of actual sex"

EDIT: And there is definitely a double standard here, but coming from the guy who put out This Godless Endeavor I definitely expect better.
Click to expand...

I can understand you don't dig it, but the guy has 10000 times more balls and attitude to his lead playing than most metal guitarists today and you absolutely cannot deny that regardless of whether the solos 'speak to you' or not.
That pick attack, the way he just aggressively pushes and pulls the strings with his bends and vibrato, it sounds like he's giving it all his got, he can play slow passes with amazing phrasing that shits all over so called 'feel' guitarists and he can do the 'patterns' as well, whereas seemingly most of today's metal guitarists, all they have is the sterile 'patterns.
They never bothered to learn (or, well, they learned from Kirk Hammett it seems) to do vibrato and bends properly, have no concept of varying the pick dynamics and aren't interested in sometimes using carefully phrased slow passages.
Loomis is in the top 1% of lead playing in metal.
 
I agree, I just find it to be a bit more blatant with him than with most others. I distinctly remember there being a lead line on his last solo album that ended up on the last Nevermore with only one note changed, and there's just certain specific runs/shapes he does over and over without much variation in it that wear on me after a while.

A unique identity is one thing, running out of licks is another.

I will agree with Brandon about him being a way stronger songwriter than solo guitarist, I don't see a point in arguing that. Citing things he does technique wise isn't going to change our minds.
 
I agree with everything you just said Harry, and yeah he is fantastic, one of the best in metal without a doubt, and I love the way he man-handles the guitar. But his ability to make an interesting solo album is another issue...as I said I simply expect better from the top 1% of metal guitar players as you put it. This sounds kind of like just a metal cd but with shredding over the whole thing instead of vocals. Not a good approach to an instrumental cd I think...and I'll reserve judgement until I hear the whole thing. Also it should be said that it's coming from somebody who generally hates 95% of metal guitar players, especially the ones who try to "shred" (keyword being "try"). Loomis is one of the good ones.

The way Tony MacAlpine played that guest solo is exactly the kind of guitar playing I think it takes to make a guitar cd...looser, less predictable, less rehearsed, more dynamic...it sounds like he just hits record and busts out some shit that rules on the spot, and it's gold.

Man I am such a hater on this forum lately, hahaha apologize for that.
 
Djabthrash said:
Now this :

JEFF LOOMIS - Plains of Oblivion (Album Sampler) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJXxsbzYX0&feature=g-u

Judging from this and the previous stuff we've heard/seen, i'm a bit underwhelmed since i didn't hear any parts that stood out (as in "that part is awesome and got stuck in my head", not "damn dude can shred his ass off) to me.
And it seems like it's non-stop shred with rythm guitars mixed low and considered as a background.

Otherwise, playing and production are ace (if it wasn't for the songwriting/all-out-shred approach and the quiet rythm guitars i'd love this). Drums sound way better than on the previous record (in which they sounded fine but a bit robotic and tiny).

Just my 2 cents, reserving final judgement when the entire thing will be out.

I love the acoustic part btw. Amazing vibe/tone.

EDIT : heard a familiar lick during the “Silbyline Origin” song :)
Click to expand...

This is how I've felt about all of Jeff's solo stuff so far. I love him as a guitarist, love his song writing with Nevermore, huge influence on me... But his solo stuff just lacks any kind of... "zazz". It all feels very "I wrote 3 riffs then put sweeps over them lulz".

Agreed though, will reserve judgement for the full release obviously
 
JeffTD said:
I agree, I just find it to be a bit more blatant with him than with most others. I distinctly remember there being a lead line on his last solo album that ended up on the last Nevermore with only one note changed, and there's just certain specific runs/shapes he does over and over without much variation in it that wear on me after a while.

A unique identity is one thing, running out of licks is another.

I will agree with Brandon about him being a way stronger songwriter than solo guitarist, I don't see a point in arguing that. Citing things he does technique wise isn't going to change our minds.
Click to expand...

+1

A(n ?) unique amazing lick is one thing, hearing the exact same lick copied on another song just kinda lowers the awesomeness of the original lick.
 
Magero said:
This is how I've felt about all of Jeff's solo stuff so far. I love him as a guitarist, love his song writing with Nevermore, huge influence on me... But his solo stuff just lacks any kind of... "zazz". It all feels very "I wrote 3 riffs then put sweeps over them lulz".

Agreed though, will reserve judgement for the full release obviously
Click to expand...

Actually, i dug the first solo album, because there was some killer rythm riffs and some killer parts, including loose/emotional lead parts, like you can find on the best Nevermore stuff. But still i found there was too much auto-shred stuff.

For now, most of what i've heard from the new album tends towards more auto-shred and less towards amazing songwriting/memorable parts/epic loose lead work, so i hope the entire album will change my original feeling.
 
Aaron Smith said:
Well, I just listened to this sampler for the first time, and the stereo image is strangely skewed on a lot of it. Like, everything up until 1:28 is definitely skewed off to the right by a large amount, it's really weird and it's definitely not actually mixed that way. Surprised no one has mentioned that yet, actually. Most of the other stuff sounds about right, but it might sound a bit weird, kind of hard to say, and I'm not at home to compare to the actual WAVs right now. It's gotta have something to do with the video codec they used after editing this video...for example, when I had finished editing the video play-through of "The Ultimatum", when I would try to export it using an H.264 codec, from the full-quality .mov files, it would skew the mix off to one side. Using FCP X by the way...
Click to expand...

Weird... You got me curious and now i wanna listen back and see if i notice something :)

Sucks when a record company dude does a shitty export/upload of something amazing-sounding in the first place.
 
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