Rexorcist's Forum Replies

I think the answer is simple: a clan dedicated to punkish or electronic high energy.

"Artists of this style tend to overlap with the larger Alt-Idol movement, which attempts to subvert rigid idol music traditions using influences from Punk, alternative, and metal."

That's Babymetal for you.

On top of that, lemme just say that a part of me associates the deathcore scene with more extreme alt-metal bands because the two have seemed to draw many of the same fans outside internet culture and in general outside metal conversation.  What with their connections to trance metal and trancecore, two genres that often incorporate metalcore vocals and riffs, I don't really see why kawaii metal shouldn't belong under the Revolution other than for a little discomfort among "trve" metalcore fans.  But with so few releases in this genre, it begs the question as to whether or not this is a scene or just a temporary fad that never really kicked off the way a good genre does.

On top of that, this conversation practically goes hand in hand with the whole trance metal shebang.

"Tempo between 130 and 160 BPM, played with keyboards and metal instrumentation, sung with harsh and aggressive vocals including many clean melodic styles; regularly uses elements of Melodic Death Metal, Symphonic Metal, and Electronic Dance Music."

If we wanna compare this easily, the trance metal genre has over 160 studio albums on RYM while kawaii metal doesn't even have a full page of 40.  And since many of these releases have proven to be questionable, the logical conclusion would that we shouldn't really bother uploading the tags with the albums yet.  But if there are indeed releases solely tagged with either of these genres, then should we play it safe and temporarily upload the genres to the most appropriate clan(s) until further notice?  Because I don't wanna see the clans include a pink symbol of an anime girl's skull called "The Shojo.  We Will Squeal."

Pharoah Sanders - Thembi (1971)

Genres: Spiritual Jazz

Pharoah Sanders is a personal favorite of mine for his heavily spiritual sound, more so than the more consistent artist John Coltrane.  Coltrane was a master of many things, but two people beat him in the spiritual atmosphere department: Pharoah Sanders and Coltrane's own Wife.  The thing is, Thembi is a bit overambitious.  This album is infamous for having six very different types of songs, and thus the consistency is damaged.  We have a slower fusion track taking the intro, but immediately after is a rambling mess of artistic recreations of nails on chalkboard made to sound like an orchestra.  And though it definitely succeeds at this, this is as great an inconsistency issue as "21st Century Schizoid Man" and "I Talk to the Wind."  We even have a five minute exclusively bass-driven solo on Side B.  And most of these songs are absolutely gorgeous, and potentially jazz classics.  The problem is that the ALBUM as a whole is a beautiful mess.

93/100

To maintain my music log's balance in ratings, I gotta listen to a couple of albums that I'll likely think suck before heading to an avant-garde jazz album, because apparently bad avant-garde jazz albums are more difficult to find than I thought.  So I'm checking out the first bad band I can think of that I haven't checked albums out from yet, and today it was Tokio Hotel.  They really don't suck as bad as people said, but they're very standard, like Busted standard.

Today's jazz album's going to be Pharoah Sanders' Thembi.  More on that later.

Forcing myself onto an avant-garde jazz kick to see if I can get a few more jazz albums in my top 1000.

A good starting point if you wanna check out free jazz.  It's a little more accessible than all the free jazz I've heard so far.

Septicflesh - The Great Mass

Genres: Death Metal, Symphonic Death Metal

Having been completely taken in with Communion, I had to check out more Septicflesh as quickly as possible.  It's rare that I find a metal band that makes a point of variety.  Even though many claim that Communion was their high point, I wanted to make that call for myself.  I might end up on a death metal kick, so I have to be careful, considering that I'm still trying to maintain a general balance of multiple genres on my albums log.  But Septicflesh did something legendary for me, and I wanted more.

I turned this on immediately after finishing their previous album, Communion, and suddenly I was blasted with a wave of heaviness and disturbing violins that were just loud enough to echo through the wall of sound created by the blasting.  I was face-punched with the words "what the fuck just happened" playing in my head constantly.  Here in The Vampire from Nazareth, the violins and the female backing singer are just fucking surreal.  It's like listening to death metal from another world.  This weirdness and heaviness combo is as present as ever in the more brutal and tribal title track.  It's slower and more dramatic than before, like it's a surreal ballad or a funeral dirge for a pharaoh.  And suddenly, it gets louder and louder until an army of zombies and spirits declares war on your earlobes.

I was taken by surprise when the mid-tempo behavior of songs like Narcissus and Sunlight/Moonlight came into play on Pyramid God, which takes the melodeath route.  Of course, halfway through it takes the surreal route again to make sure its main riff doesn't get overused.  This was the best decision as it helped the song feel more in place.  Five-Pointed Star is where the band shows off the three biggest angles of the album by switching between them: guitar-lead blasts, hyperactice symphonic melodies, and slower funeral dirge instrumentals.  But a complete different element arises in Oceans of Grey, where industrial repetition and even tremelo-picking take their place in between serene backdrops and djenty composition.  Unlike the other songs which were largely excellent pairings between the two focal genres that make up the band, Oceans of Grey is a catchy and yet ever-mutating experience of organized stability and metal chaos acting as two sides of the same coin.  Up to that point, I decided it was my favorite Septicflesh song, bearing a vibe that deeply reminded me of my own zombie horde from my debut novel, as cinematic metal played a heavy part in writing battle scenes.

Halfway through it, I was more than eager to see what The Undead Keep Dreaming held in store for me.  I was very happy with its dissonant / blackened guitar style switching with Devourment drumming paired with a deep-voiced male choir in the back.  This song's honestly hard to peg down genre-wise.  It's obviously prog, but it has elements of slam death, deathcore, black, symphonic, funeral doom, all switching through a spinning wheel of experimentation.  I suppose this is the song where Septicflesh proved they could literally do anything.  No matter what direction the band took in that song, I found myself eager for more and more directions and randomness.

We go back to accessibility on Rising, which is more riff-oriented.  The symphonic sounds take a big step backward to allow the guitarists to do the work, which I think is perfectly fine considering that the symphonic genre had a heavier say on this album already than it did on Communion.  And this song is also shorter, so while it fits the melodeath sound of Pyramid God, maintaining the album's balance, it doesn't feature the avant-garde second half which connected Pyramid God to the two before that, so it's a wecome, simple addition that's good while it lasts.  Apocalypse, however, goes back to those classical sirens and gothic weirdness that the album made a point of, and even feells like something out of a Tim Burton movie at the begginning.  It becomes a combination of extremities, symphonies and progginess much like half of Emperor's final album, Prometheus.  As that is my choice for the number 1 black metal album, I welcome this as ithis direction is both consistent with the album's behavior and reflects why I gave Emperor's album that position.  However, the experimental side of the violin interludes rings of Blut Aus Nord's recent album, Disharmonium Nahab, which is practically the scariest album I've ever heard and is also a welcome ingredient.

Next comes mad Architect, which features a wacky and maybe even dorky cabaret intro of piano and violin that proves that Septicflesh aren't afraid of the dorkier side of their chosen influence.  But the brutal and monotone blastbeats find their way into the song before combining with the dorky side on occasion, delivering something absolutely gothic in spirit and menacing in sound, as if I just walked into an abandoned circus where a clown is waiting to kill me.  So now their brilliance found its way into Pleasure Island.  As the lyrics represent going through a labyrinth, I find that this decision to go both menacing and quirky to be a perfectly artistic one.  And finally, we have Therianthropy, which starts Sotoris V. singing before we get to a good and energetic power-riff which leads us to the death metal we know the band for.

Most people favor Communion, and I know why: this album is less accessible than Communion, and as such it even rings a little of the avant-garde behavior we know Blut Aus Nord for.  But the way I see it, that's a very healthy step forward. Septicflesh improved on everything that made Communion so brilliant and special, being heavier than ever before, reaching heights in that vein that have rarely been met by a select few, and delivered a cinematic experience that no one had created before.  The most important thing, however, is that Septicflesh not only improved on their brutality, but found a stronger balance between their own death metal sound and the classical genre by relying on the spirit of war songs and funeral dirges.

Every one in a while I find that one album that makes me question my standards for a genre.  The Great Mass is the next album to do that.  I'm gonna cement this here as my new choice for my number one death metal album, and I may go back to Morbid Angel to see if I still feel the same way about them.  This is now my new number one death metal album and my number four metal album.

100

Septicflesh - Communion

Genres: Death Metal, Symphonic Metal

I avoided Septicflesh for a long time during my early days in discovering music because my Christian behavior was more fear-oriented at the time.  These days I'm less and less afraid and don't really treat these things as things that'll kill me.  Thing is, I never really got into "symphonic death metal" as a thing, so I ignored these guys and Fleshgod Apocalypse for a while.  Now I'm slowly getting back into metal and music thanks to a whole new year of albums ahead of us: 2024, the last year of the first half of this decade.  Hell, Ryan Adams gave us four new studio albums on New Years.

This is my first Septicflesh album, and I knew they made a point of diversity since their early days from the genre tagging of their debut on RYM.  But seeing this one only tagged as "symphonic metal and death metal" made me weary about the possibility of this being another monotone and potentially overrated album.  But if there's gonna be a genre passed around called "symphonic death metal," then I'm gonna explore it.  And thankfully, this album gave me everything I could ask for.

This whole album is about as unpredictable as an art film, but it never once breaks the character the band gives this release.  We have moments that are just brutal, murderous and terrifying to an otherworldly extreme, such as on the title track, but we also have room for some of that Children of God mindfuckery, like the progressive violin interludes on Persepolis.  We even have some of that Nile-style mysticism on Anubis, which favors atmosphere over death heaviness, but transitions effortlessly from the edgy opener.  "We the Gods' is practically a black death hybrid, something that was amiss on this album despite the variety.  But the real clincher here is its progginess and catchiness.  And Sunlight/Moonlight has a slower, higher and more melodic sound which might have the feel of the album fully intact thanks to its unpredictability, but also sounds like something off of Dark Tranquility's Damage Done, except better.  The same foes for our closer, Narcissus, although it's much catchier.  And let's take Sangreal's deathcore breakdown paired with the rhythmic melody that between two instruments starts out in the background and switches to the front before switching to the vocalists taking turns.  Brilliant usage of simplicity and quirkiness.  Brilliant.

On top of this, we have two different singers switching between one impressively deep vocalist and another with clearer and higher-pitched singing, both of which bring out the best of the songs they sing.  This can be compared to the works of System of a Down with their singers, and both singers are absolutely perfect, and is most blatantly present on Sunlight/Moonlight.  Seth Siro Anton might have the best death metal voice I've ever heard.

About our title track... I just gotta say it... that vocal riff?

It's the Meow Mix theme song.  It's literally the fucking Meow Mix theme song with maybe a slightly higher pitch in note at the end.  But I don't really know if I can take off points for that, because as much as I don't want to say this, the riff works perfectly with the song, and it doesn't change the fact that this album is still giving me everything I asked for.

Septicflesh boasted a level of creativity that I beg for every time I hear an album, especially in genres loaded with posers.  And boy, is metal full of them.  But Septicflesh are anything but.  They are composers of the highest metallic form and have committed the rare achievement of perfecting symphonic metal, overcoming it cheese and relying on whatever menace may be found in traditional classical or even movie soundtracks.  This album switches between the lighter influences of prog, doom, black with just enough behavior to incorporate into a different type of death metal song.  In fact, in essence they're like the death metal band I myself would form if I wanted to form one: cover a couple loosely connected genres with even balance while incorporating other influences and a couple singers.  Although, even if I did, what are the chances I'd be as good at it as Septicflesh?

100

It's fucking Meow Mix.

Doomy, stoney, dirty, METAAAAAHL

Folk.

One of the best heavy metal jams of its era.  It's easy to see where Metal Church got their inspiration.

I guess English folk's a good tag, but I feel like I should take the electric guitar into consideration when labelling it, and nobody really uses "electric folk."

One absolutely has to admire the acid rock undertones here.  Perfect for a Black Sabbath song.  This is also a step further into the hard rock of the time with effects and attitude taking up much of the metal influence.  I think it's say, 60% hard rock, 40% metal, not quite there for me.

Rex, before you run away to your Movieforums thingy, can you please private message me your The Infinite feature release nomination for next month?

Ma-ma-ma-message... sent!

Ironically I came back for this just to check because I lost interest in metal right now, largely because I'm focusing on three different games on Movieforums about noir movies.  But I have to say, I always found Sweet Leaf to be metal, and is probably my favorite Sabbath song.  Thanks, Beastie Boys.  Very proud to have this album on vinyl.

Another album I've been meaning to revisit. You're on a roll, Rex, thanks!

Thanks a bunch!

Today's NORTH album:

Arcturus - Aspera Hiems Symfonia

Genre: Symphonic Black Metal

Votes: 4

Reason: Arcturus is a classic experimental band, but this provides an interesting look at what they used to be, like Amorphis.

When I first heard this album, I chose it on a whim, never once considering that it was an album about sci-fi movies until I recognized the plot of Stargate in track 6, The Eye of Ra.  Most of these sci-fi topics weren't things I was familiar with, and I totally missed The Empire Strikes Back references in Master of Darkness the first time since there are many dark lords in this world and none of them should be taken lightly.

Star One is effectively an understated supergroup.  I was about to compare the vocalist to Symphony X's Russell Allen until I realized... is that him?  Turns out, this album has two members of Ayreon, a touring member of Ayreon, Dan Swano the founder of Edge of Sanity, and the replacement for Nightwish's Tarja, Floor Jansen.  It goes as no surprise that these people are taking turns being lead singers.  Much of the instrumentation was done by Arjen Anthony Lucassen, while the others helped out.

 After our sci-fi synth opener, track 1, Set Your Controls, is all about Doctor Who.  Now there are too many doctors for me to get into this series, and even episode 2 of the reboot couldn't keep my interest.  I'm a Farscape guy.  But I like the song.  It seems to be a neoclassical organ side with hard rock undertones in the vein of pre-Highway Star Deep Purple, which is a welcome and unique addition to 2000's metal.  It's a jammer.  But track two, High Moon (Outland) is different.  it's slow, deep, menacing and repetitive.  Now I can't really relate to Outland either, but the real problem for me is that there's practically no melody in the overpowering backing bass, and the melodies are a bit weaker than Set Your Controls, despite the new direction.  Next is Songs of the Ocean, which recounts Star Trek IV, a movie I know nothing about except that it has whales.  I appreciate the synthier backdrops for its aquatic vibe, recalling other aquatic albums, notably electronic ones like Sirens of the Sea of Behind the Sun.  We also see the organs from track one used in a more atmospheric way and finally hear Floor Jansen singing.  But it's hardly a progressive song, mostly just decent heavy metal.  Master of Darkness is out Empire Strikes Back song, and gets right into a metalcore riff to up the modern-day progginess of the album, but otherwise it's still built on a heavy metal vibe with simplicity attached, leading the lyrics to do all the "dark atmosphere" work.  But the second half of the song pumps things up to a neoclassical power metal level without ever letting go of the space vibe, at least, which is a good surprise.

The Eye of Ra is where I originally picked up of the themes.  I couldn't actually believe I recognized it since it had been years since I had watched that movie, but I remembered enough of it after the second watch to recognize it years later.  Maybe it was the "seventh sign" line.  As far as the song goes, the band used the slower pacing in metal along with heavy atmo-synths to not only bring out science fiction, but fantasy as well, as the movie had to do with Egyptian mythology.  Next is Sandrider (Dune), which immediately takes a very energetic approach with upgraded progginess.  It's a pretty catchy tune for the longrun, but it doesn't really progress after a while.  Next comes Perfect Survivor, which is a darker and creepier song, perfect for a song about the movie Alien.  Our next song has a title that doesn't shy away from the honesty about their themes: Intergalactic Space Crusaders.  Unfortunately, the source material doesn't share this name.  It's Blake's 7, a British space TV show from the late-70's and early 80's.  So, yeah, never had any experience with this, nope.  And I gotta admit, I am NOT into the rhytmhs or melodies of this song.  It feels like pointless filler that should've been left off.  Our final track is a nine-minute epic called Starchild, written about the movies 2001 and 2010.  Now I never saw the latter, but it's on my to-do list.  I've seen the original three times (and gave it the exact same rating each time), so I couldn't fully relate to this, but took in as much as I could.  I liked the more melodic approach taken after the slow synthy intro was over.  But this lasts throughout the whole song, which means this prog epic isn't as proggy as it should be.

Well, I love the general concept.  All these well-recieved prog players banded together to make an album for nerds, and they did a pretty decent job of it.  They mostly focus on atmosphere and lyrical content, and do a bang up job.  But I feel that the progginess and melodies sometimes suffered.  Overall, pretty good album.

76/100

Once I get back into music I'll check out some funk metal.

Yes, I agree but none of the Primus albums I’ve heard contain anything much in the way of metal.

It feels pretty alt-metal to me.  Not extreme but heavy enough.

Lemme just say that I've heard several Primus albums and all of then, save their Wonka album, are very funky to me. 

Stereotypical hard rock

This week's INFINITE album:

Star One - Space Metal (2002)

Genre: Prog Metal

Votes: 1

Reason: this is an understated classic which I've been meaning to revisit.

Hard rock

I'm not the biggest Behemoth fan myself, but I'm not gonna lie: I was really looking forward to this one.  After a busy day of work and some heavier shopping than usual, I needed to rest.  Somehow, their brand of death metal really did the job for me.  Something about the quality of their music put a part of me at ease.  I checked out a few Behemoth works before just because I wanted to get some blackened death under my belt, even though these guys are largely pure death, and even though they didn't live up to the legend I had heard about, I was eager to check out more and more, but didn't get to this album until months after I put them aside to focus on a bunch of other acts.  I chose this one specifically because I felt an obligation to them after hearing all their early works.

There seems to be the occasional switch between melodeath and typical death.  There are moments that are more focused in the blastbeats and moments more focused in the rhythm.  Other than style, there really aren't very many similarities between these songs.  Each song is about maintaining a presence that never really wavers while adding a little something new to each entry, although originality does wane a little by the end.  But among the weaker, less fleshed out moments are some serious bangers like the extremely melodic intro and the more blastbeat-focused Mysterium, constantly maintaining that menacing atmosphere and never losing strength.  I have to wonder how much methylene blue these guys put in their coffee before recording this album.  But I'd say the real star of this show belongs to Inferno Prominski, whose creativity on the percussions is displayed at incredible force.  Demigod shows several of his best performances so far.  The guy's a whirlwind that keeps switching from one drum to the other and even overshadows the rest of the band.

I think people who are more into Behemoth will get a stronger kick out of this album, but I'm still really happy with the results here.  Demigod shows excellent growth from their early days and shows real promise for their future which is later lived up to on The Satanist.  That drummer is a wild wild menace in his field, and he makes what could've been just another decent death album much better by leading the bands as the melodies work around him.

83

Hint for tomorrow's INFINITE album:

I didn't tag it metal when I put it on my chart.  Skip it.

As for this song, just plain heavy psych to me.

There seems to be an early "taditional heavy metal" backdrop in the production in some places, but it can be easily compared to the metallic backdrop of 80's metal into hair metal, so I'm not gonna call this metal.  But it sure kicks some fuckin' ass.

Maybe.  But there are very few "post" subgenres of metal that I really take seriously.  But as I've said before, if they're missing the sludge then I just won't call it atmo-sludge.  Biggest example is Rosetta.  Too atmo, not sludgy enough.  There needs to be more "truth" to the "post" tag for post-metal as well, which is where bands like Solstafir come in.

Feel like it's pertinent to put this here rather than anywhere else, just found out that my old college radio station has moved away from music for the most part and is just another NPR station that spouts pre-recorded talking shows and such. Dunno how I feel really, other than sad. As someone who enjoys music and sharing it, I'm just glad that I was able to take advantage of that opportunity when I could. It really shaped how I look at music, and especially Metal music, when I was able to share it with so many people that would legitimately call in and cared about what they were listening to on some random college station in their hometown. As things move forward I can only see it getting worse for these kinds of stations, so I can only be thankful what what I was able to do in my 3 years there. 

The pain of cancellation of something you love.  It's kinda like a part of your soul was disrespected. 

There's definitely early doom influence here, but as a full on song, it's mostly typical 70's hard rock.

I'm not Fallen, but I really do see a clear distinction between atmo-sludge and post-metal, and refuse to call one the subgenre of the other.  There's a little overlap, and that's it as far as I'm concerned.  Post-metal shouldn't just be long atmospheric metal.  Take bands like GYBE, Sans and Tortoise in post-rock.  There's more to it on a structural spectrum, and most atmo-sludge doesn't meet that standard.  They're just slow and atmospheric, big woop, like atmo-black.

So my final point is: I wouldn't mind if atmo-sludge returned as a separate entity, but I have little to do with the Fallen save voting on alls that the Fallen happen to be on, so whatevs.

Bluesy and proggy, but not heavy enough for a metal tag.

Forgot about the album this week.  It'll continue next Tuesday.

I think the horn is distracting people on this one. Hard rock.

I listen to power metal.  Horn doesn't bother me.

Ride the Sky was also a single, and since singles are usually released before the album, but Zeppelin also performed the song for the first time t the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music in June.

Major Rainbow vibes here.  Heavy metal.

I found about a third of it to be "traditional heavy metal" and that's about it.

Fixed.

Hard rock in every sense of the term.

Kinda psych but mostly blues rock.

Turns out the edition I heard when I made my first comment had sides A and B reversed, so my comment on the first track was from muscle memory on the wrong tracklist.  So I switch my commentary on the first track to this rym standard:

Hard Rock, Blues Rock

Heavy Metal

I feel like it's more inspiration than anything.  The Planets is too popular of a classical piece to credit as your own.

Yeah, I'm going stoner metal and traditional heavy metal on this one.

It’s the added complexity in the arrangements & song-structures as well as the cold, angry atmosphere. It also helps that it’s a thrash riff masterclass with all four band members at the absolute peak of their powers from a performance & musicianship perspective.

Gonna have to give it a replay today.

After I'm done with Draconian, I guess I'll put together private doom and goth lists and see where they're going.  Unfortunately, I'm still in a position to where I'm safe with the way I want my log if I listen to one metal album a day, assuming I listen to enough albums in that day to make up for it.  Today I finished the Poppy catalog and heard the new Duran Duran as well as their debut.  But I'm definitely not into them as much as I'd like to be considering their status in the new wave scene.

My day's likely going to be spent with DJ Shadow.  He's got a new one out and I've only heard his debut and a singles compilation.

I think I'm gonna go hard rock heavy metal on this one because it's got a lot of energy that makes me want to bang my head despite its obvious blues rock elements.

Lotsa thrash there.  Hard to avoid it in that decade.  Out of curiosity, what sets And Justice for All above Master of Poppets and Ride the Lightning IYO?

I don't care what folk we put it under as long as it's not metal.

I seem to remember that as well, but I think that was a good move for them because the two sides compliment each other well.