I think ethernet is still the gold standard when it comes to gaming. As far as normal, everyday internet stuff I'd say WiFi in most cases is more than enough, but I guess it depends on your internet's base speed.
The Halo Effect - New Album 2023/2024
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I think ethernet is still the gold standard when it comes to gaming. As far as normal, everyday internet stuff I'd say WiFi in most cases is more than enough, but I guess it depends on your internet's base speed.
Xpyro125
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Yeah, it does. I feel the same sort of way, though I also do enjoy covers that kinda just ‘refresh’ (I don’t want to say modernize because I would be dead wrong) the original in a well-executed way. I know Stairway is the song you don’t cover, but Heart and Mastodon did it wonderfully. Stuff like IF’s covers of Everything Counts and It’s No Good and Devildriver’s covers of Sail and Black Soul Choir are generally more of my sort of thing though.
I think something like 6-8 songs is the sweetspot for me. I’d love to hear quite a few, but not too many. Five songs like this just doesn’t interest me much, especially since How the Gods Kill just feels like Cemetery Skyline (Still like the track a lot) and since If You Were Here was boring. I’m hoping to hear a tried and true THE cover, rather than another excuse for Mikael to sing— Not that I’d complain about his clean vocals, they’re wonderful.
Then again, Down, Wicked, and No Good is a genuinely really enjoyable experience despite just being four songs. I think it’s because they’re all different from each other and from your usual In Flames affair, though I wish Down in a Hole and Wicked Game had a bit more guitar/were a little more In Flames-ish. It’s No Good did that perfectly to me, and I still regularly go back to that track to this day.
That’s what I’ve heard for a long time, though I was stuck with shit wifi pretty much my whole life up until a year and a half ago. Heaving ethernet combined with a computer that can run games smoothly at higher than medium settings is still insane to me, I’m not used to it whatsoever. Really wish I could add Ethernet to my phone, but beggars can’t be choosers.
The Grayfox
Nija
There are a few cover albums I do enjoy, namely Metallica's Garage Inc. They picked interesting songs to cover and really made them their own. In quite a few cases, I think them covering those songs brought more attention to the original artists too.
I have ethernet since... ever. And we have a more than decent speed here. Right now I think that it's 600 mb but that is relative since it doesn't only depend on your side bilut also on the server that you are trying to access. So, the speed is always far lower than expected. Still, good.
And yes. This place sucks. My guess is that it's mostly abandoned by the owners of the page and was moved to slower servers.
And yes. This place sucks. My guess is that it's mostly abandoned by the owners of the page and was moved to slower servers.
Xpyro125
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That latter thing’s another wonderful quality for a cover to have. Admittedly, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is Black Soul Choir, I don’t think most people have heard of 16 Horsepower, and a lot of those who do these days are likely because of that Devildriver cover (Myself included). I’ll give THE a point there since I didn’t know of Kent before, but their cover of If You Were Here is so by the numbers that those points really don’t do much at the end of the day.
Xpyro125
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Well, I’ll be damned. That’s exactly what they did, it’s a tried and true THE cover. At first I felt the chorus was a bit stiff, but I’m gonna go against the grain: It’s stiff in the original too. I’m not as kind towards 80s rock and roll as most people, but I know a good 80s chorus. The original’s not really a great one imo, so I don’t blame THE for it whatsoever. It’s a pretty enjoyable cover, actually feels like it’s coming from the entire band this time, and I love that. It’s got a pretty Conditional/Detonate/What We Become sort of energy or feel to it, and I think that works pretty nicely. Turning an 80s rock and roll song into a modern melodeath song probably isn’t revolutionary to anyone within the melodeath sphere, but it’s about enough of a new spin on things for me to be happy with it.
Also, I’m only realizing it in retrospect, but I love how the cover art of the singles showed how many songs are on the EP from the beginning and where each song is placed within it with their symbols. That’s a really cool touch. I was gonna say it was cool how they progressively add more gold in the art, but no, that’s only If You Were Here adding some gold to the snake, I Wanna Be Someday only has gold in the symbol. Bit of a shame there, but this is still so cool on a micro level anyways.
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Xpyro125
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I don’t know how we missed it, but Nuclear Blast released Dance With the Devil four weeks ago. Meaning that four of the five songs on the EP were released before it dropped. That’s fucked, and I’m really starting to hate the label for this bullshit. Imagine having your EP release only for people to freshly hear one new song from it. I hate the idea of that.
Dance With the Devil’s fine, they don’t really do anything to elevate it to me, but hey, we have strings and some female vocals, so that’s cool. If there was some real melodeath guitarwork, it’d kinda feel like somewhat of a renaissance for their older material stylistically.
Anyways, full thing is out. It’s good, really like Shoreline, it and HTGK are probably the best songs on here imo. The order of the songs thankfully makes a ton of sense, so there’s a nice flow to it.
Dance With the Devil’s fine, they don’t really do anything to elevate it to me, but hey, we have strings and some female vocals, so that’s cool. If there was some real melodeath guitarwork, it’d kinda feel like somewhat of a renaissance for their older material stylistically.
Anyways, full thing is out. It’s good, really like Shoreline, it and HTGK are probably the best songs on here imo. The order of the songs thankfully makes a ton of sense, so there’s a nice flow to it.
I like covers by Iron Maiden. They used to be great. King of Twilight and Rainbow's Gold are great covers. Really enjoyable. I like covers by Dimension Zero because they made them their own. But they just serve as an anecdote. I don't like covers that mostly consist on making the exact same song just adapting it a bit with the production. They don't add anything to the original songs so I can't understand their purpose.
Xpyro125
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Yeah, that is a pretty big failing with the EP. I don’t really feel like it’s all too memorable even though I Wanna Be Somebody attempts to be a bit thrashier than the original, which makes the first 60% of it kinda… I’m not sure that unremarkable’s the right word, but not very impactful.
Shoreline’s the big exception for me. It doesn’t just add harsh vocals and call it a day, it starts out with the same tempo as the original before jumping up from 110 BPM to 165 BPM. It almost feels a little surf rock-y, and that’s just cool. It’s also got some of Mikael’s highest cleans, which is interesting. Unlike something like If You Were Here, it feels like the cover genuinely has a reason to exist. I never heard the original before listening to the cover, but I do think I prefer the original. I don’t mind that though, I’m glad the cover exists.
I don’t think How the Gods Kill is bad. It’s well-executed and a little different, but the one thing I just don’t love is that it feels more Cemetery Skyline than THE. I quite like it, but that is a bit of a problem for it.
I think the EP’s biggest issue is just how forgettable it is, and I think it’ll end up being forgotten.
I’ll be honest, I actually really like quite a few of the covers they’ve done. I don’t think the Strong and Smart cover’s fantastic, and the Land of Confusion cover, while fun, isn’t exactly good, but they absolutely hit both Depeche Mode covers out of the park for me. I genuinely wish they had more synth rock compositions like their cover of It’s No Good, it felt surprisingly natural for them in a way that I don’t quite think we got before or after in the Benson era. The rest of the stuff of DW&NG are… Bensoned, but I almost like them most of the time, and sometimes I actually do kinda like them.
Either way, I don’t think there’s ever really been an uninteresting or generic IF cover the way that something like If You Were Here is. I think if I we got five standout tracks with great execution, we’d be singing a different tune, but a good two out of five just isn’t enough for me. I’m glad this exists, but I do agree that I want to just hear the third album’s material already.
Xpyro125
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Can’t help but agree, especially since finding the original Shoreline. I’ve kept it on repeat since I found it, can’t quite say the same about the cover, even if I think they executed that one the best out of the batch.
I really like all of IF covers from the golden era of 1994 - 2000. Unique takes on songs that aren't adjacent to the MDM genre in any tangible way. World of Promises in particular is one of my favourites in their discography. So, I'm absolutely not against covers if done sparingly and with creative intentions. I still don't like the idea of an EP dedicated to them because it just feels self-indulgent, but as bonus tracks or one offs, cool.
Land of Confusion is the first one from IF I didn't like. I find the production appalling and Anders' nasally vocals are frankly disgraceful. I find little to no redeeming value to that attempt at a cover, and the less said about their horrible EP the better.
THE covers EP isn't in that category - it is perfectly OK and competent. I just don't care about it. If they'd done an Upon an Oaken Throne cover, then we'd be talking.
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