I wasn't a huge fan of Arkona's last release, but this new one is doing it for me in a big way. Thanks for the link, niki.

So I'm just back from the Turisas concert ...

We arrived at 7:30pm as noted on the tickets and the booking site. They were playing Heart of Turisas so we rushed in.

At the end of the song, they said "thank you ! see you next year !!!"

We looked at each others with WTF faces. The 5 of us came just for them.

And they actually left. Apparently this concert place is famous for starting it's first parts early.

The rest of the show was Annihilator and Iced Earth so we GTFO

So mad :mad: :mad: :mad:

Aww niki that's such a shame! I've done that before at Download festival, running from one tent to another in the blistering heat made it even worse.

Sooo the tracklist for the new Ayreon album, 01011001, has been revealed, along with a January 25th release date.

1. Age of Shadows 10:47
2. Comatose 04:26
3. Liquid Eternity 08:10
4. Connect the Dots 04:13
5. Beneath the Waves (Beneath the Waves - Face the Facts - But a Memory... - World Without Walls - Reality Bleeds) 08:26
6. Newborn Race (The Incentive - The Vision - The Procedure - Another Life - Newborn Race - The Conclusion) 07:49
7. Ride the Comet 03:29
8. Web of Lies 02:50

Disc 2
1. The Fifth Extinction (Glimmer of Hope - World of Tomorrow Dreams - Collision Course - From the Ashes - Glimmer of Hope (reprise)) 10:29
2. Waking Dreams 06:31
3. The Truth Is In Here 05:12
4. Unnatural Selection 07:15
5. River of Time 04:24
6. E=MC2 05:50
7. The Sixth Extinction (Echoes on the Wind - Radioactive Grave - 2085 - To the Planet of Red - Spirit on the Wind - Complete the Circle) 12:18

And with a FUCKING AWESOME cast (Dan Gildenlow, Tom Englund, Simone Simons, Floor Jansen, Jonas Renkse...), I think I already have a strong candidate for album of the year 2008.

Can't wait for my promo copy :tpg:

Yes, it truly is a strong candidate. And Opeth (just today, actually) started their studio recordings for the coming album planned to be released in April or May.

And there's also Nevermore.

Three awesomenesses to wait for. <3

So I bought the new Nightwish album. (Yes, I still buy my CDs. I'm hopelessly old-fashioned.) Now, this is a first - never thought I'd buy anything with the name Nightwish on it. Here's another first: It's fucking great. (Never thought I'd say that either.) The compositions are actually very intricate - it's pretty hard to write music for drums, two guitars, a bass guitar and an orchestra (including several choirs) and make sure one part doesn't drown out the other. The two parts flow together admirably into a whole, some melodies are catchy, some are complex growers, and all in all it's a pretty sophisticated album that should (partly) appeal to casual listeners, too. Kudos!

Zorro

I don't hate her anymore than I hate any other generic pop singer. And it's pretty clear that by personality I was referring to the personality of her voice, not how she is as a person, but I can't tell if you were being facetious or just hopelessly dense.

She's technically competent because she can hit her notes just fine. That doesn't mean her voice has any power, any passion or emotion. King Diamond sings in a shrill falsetto that would probably make any music teacher cringe, but he somehow has the balls and intensity than most technically proficient singers (say, just about any typical power metal singer) would never dream of having.


Agreed, though I wouldn't call any of those bands nu-metal other than Evanescence.

WTF? You don't know the meaning of the word, I take it.
Motörhead is as confrontational as it gets. The band's raw, dirty rock 'n roll is the very essence of youthful (nevermind Lemmy's actual age) rebellion. And that's why they rock so much.

...Why? Seriously. I don't understand why people think that popularity and radio airplay is something desirable. Especially when the bands in question are like DragonFarce, Trivium or Nightwish, rather than say, Candlemass or Gospel of the Horns or Sabaton...

Honestly, I stopped caring about that epiteth a long time ago. So what if people think we're close-minded - at least our brains aren't falling off. I still like Loreena McKennitt, Pink Floyd, Dead Can Dance, Omnia and Sol Invictus as much as Bolt Thrower, Saxon or Varathron, so it's not like the name-calling has any sort of meaning.

Additional Spam:
Actually, you were implying that I said all christians were unoriginal, piggy-backing frauds, by mentioning the influence of christianity in classical and other music. I was merely correcting your gross assumption by emphasising my reference to the specific christians who try play "black" metal.
...Which has nothing to do with lyrical themes and such. Oh well.

Neither - I'm just not a native English speaker, honey.

I'd say beauty lies in the ear of the listener.

I agree. I just had the feeling knkwzrd was driving at something else. Of course, I may have been wrong. Still, there's actually very little confrontation in "mainstream Metal" these days. Yet I wouldn't regiment bands that are not, well, "confrontational" into another category. Metal started out as an idea and a way of life, but at the end of the day it's a musical style.

Would it be okay for the ones you like to get airplay? Anyhow, take the worst Metal band you know - wouldn't it be nice to hear more of that and less of Britney, 50 Cent and all the other crap when you turn on the radio?

Zorro

I much prefer crap that knows that it's crap to crap that pretends to be something else but still smells like shit up close.

The plastic pop and rap that's clogging my speakers knows it's crap? If only its target audience knew, too...

Zorro

That I can't agree with you more on.

Neither am I, sugartits*.


*Perhaps you are unaware that such epithets are condescending. If you were aware, well, fuck off. ;)

Oh sure. But it's undeniable that the singers for Hammerfall or Freedom Call have as much balls as my pet cat.

And that is why most of them blow donkey cocks. :beer:


Oh, sure. I'd be a lot happy for them, certainly. However, I'd get a tad concerned that such commercial success would give them big heads and turn them shitty. Not because popularity is inherently bad (plenty of bands dealt with it just fine), but because the band-who-starts-to-suck-once-they-get-popular phenomenon is just way too commonplace in my experience for me to not be just a little wary.

I don't turn on the radio. :) But if I have to hear it, like say, in the bus, yeah, I'd rather hear Dragonforce than 50 Cents. That depends on the band, though. Nu In Flames or Trivium are nearly as unlistenable as those.

Haha :D

I meant to be condescending. Just thought to myself, 'If you can be a bitch, I can be a prick' ;)

Judging from their voices and general appearance, I have to give you that one :D

Okay, this I understand. I was afraid it was about this self-important elitist shit many metalheads are into. If it's about commercial success that turns a band on its head - I hear you.

Neither do I, because of the crap you get bombarded with. If there was a decent supply of actual music, I'd love to tune in. This way I'd come to know bands whose albums I'd buy in a heartbeat - but in order to be able to do so, you have to know they exist, playing their asses off somewhere for a beer and some greasy fries while Metallica can afford to wipe their asses with 100 dollar bills.

Zorro

Last I heard Metallica members were on the verge of being homeless because of everyone pirating their shitty albums.

I tend not to follow Metallica much (at all), but I'm having a difficult time believing that.

I guess Niki meant to imply that if you illegally download one of their albums, Metallica will hunt you down, burn your house, rape your dog and kill your sister - or the other way around. They've been know to... wax melodramatic when it comes to piracy. Poor guys.

Zorro

I believe niki was making a funny.

Oh. I'm not very good with subtlety today.

Niki's joke reminds me of Ozzy whining about how he has to make a huge tour to make money now, because his latest album sold like crap - because of, of course, illegal downloading, and not just because no one cares anymore.
As if he lacked money.... and worse yet, according to Wikipedia it turns out that Black Rain debuted at #3 on some top 200 chart, and is one of his fastest selling album ever. What an hypocritical douchebag.

Yeah, that's the thing a lot of people seem to misunderstand about the so-called elitists: that they inherently hate what's popular. I have been around a lot of elitist douchebags that make even me seem like the most open-minded art fag ever, but other than a handful of kvlt kiddies I haven't really met anyone who hates bands just because they're popular, or who liked bands but started hating them only once they got popular. In truth, if it looks like it, it's probably because bands that start to suck at the same time as they gain popularity just happens so bloody often that it can scarcely be called a coincidence. Some would argue that they always sucked (and I might not entirely disagree, and would in fact agree 100% on some of those but they all have become worse and worse) but bands like In Flames, Nightwish, Children of Bodom, Opeth, Cradle of Filth, Blind Guardian, Iced Earth, Samael, and of course the ubiquitous Metallica, Megadeth, Sepultura or Slayer, are fine examples of this phenomenon. Of course, in some cases it might have nothing to do with popularity and just be a result of a lack of creativity (I strongly suspect this is the case with Blind Guardian and Iced Earth, though I have admittedly little evidence) that coincides with raising popularity... who knows.

On an unrelated note, does anyone have the new Witchcraft uploaded anywhere, by any chance? :D Thanks for the Arkona album too, Niki, I dig it. I even liked that ambient outro - very cool atmosphere.

So, it might be old news, but I was trawling Therion's official site and apparently they are going to be playing Kali Yuga Part III at some shows, and recording it sometime in the future.

Thrilling.

I really don't listen to the radio, so I wouldn't even know if the bands I listen to are played on it. I download albums based on recommendations from the artists I already like and my music taste branches out from that. If the song's good - I don't care whether the artist/band are big headed twats. Music is music after all.

*waiting for Metallica to burn her flat down*

I might get shot down for suggesting this, but I know the J-Pop thread has a little introduction with a list of bands people might want to check out if they want to start looking into the music more. Anyone interested in making one for this one? I love metal, but I admit hands down to not knowing an awful lot about all the bands that are out there. Maybe pitching together we can make a nice dandy list and some descriptions for people to check out. Just a thought!

The problem is that we'd get either something over-simplified or something over-complicated. There have been many instances of people asking "I like xxxx band what do you recommend in the same style ?", and I think it works better that way.

Browsing Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives by genre works fine too, or even looking at the similar bands in Last.fm. Also, talking to people in metal DC hubs, but not everyone uses DC. :3

I'm in no position to disagree since this is your personal experience. However, I know my share of narrow-minded metalheads who do exactly what you described. Of course they deny that it's just because of the sudden popularity of band X or the like, but I get the feeling it is. Maybe you're one of those, too, maybe I am one of those, too, who's to say? ;)

What I'm saying is that I'd be inclined to agree with you on half of the bands you listed, and I'd disagree on the other half. The popularity argument is effective if it's a huge popularity - the kind that involves the cover of the Rolling Stone for years, stretch limos, regular features on prime-time TV and all that crap, stuff that does fuck up an ego. But Iced Earth and Blind Guardian, for example? The way I see it, that's Schaffer's and Kürsch's going it alone, respectively. Samael? Popular? In this case we define popularity differently. I'd agree in a heartbeat on Metallica, Megadeth or Sepultura, though.

I don't know... The thing people who don't know anything about Metal just don't get is that it's hugely diversified. I doubt there's a single human being out there who will listen to every sub-genre Metal has to offer, and while I don't know anything about J-Pop, I know that we won't be able to agree even within a sub-genre on what to listen to. Heck, we won't even agree if a band is Metal or not. Your compilation will never work, I'm afraid.

Zorro

I saw a thread a long while ago on another board which was called something along the lines of 'An Introduction to Metal'. The first post had little headers describing the different genres (not mentioning sub-subgenres like groove metal, thankfully), what they entailed, how they came about, how stereotypical "metal" bands are anything but, and examples of prominent bands of each field. I'd be more than happy to throw one together for this topic.

That'd be great. It doesn't have to cover every single band under each sub-genre but the obvious players in each one would be make good. I could always help out where I could i.e. the female fronted metal ;)