Tune or No Tune: August Edition

[Shad_]

Well, for me, folk rock is really more like Fairport Convention or Steeleye Span or even Pentangle, and those bands

I will definitely check all of these out when I get back home though!

[Gentled Ben]

For a rock fan, Fairport Convention is probably the best, and for a folk fan, Pentangle is probably the best, although they're more like Joan Baez folk than The Chieftains folk. Steeleye Span are in between, but closer to Fairport. Both bands moved in the same circles in those days, kind of like the San Fransisco music scene in the 60's where bands like the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane all hung out together. The song that turned me onto this genre was by Steeleye Span, called Allison Gross. It's more rock than traditional (in fact, I think it's an original of theirs, but I'm not sure), but I dug it and started poking around in their albums and investigating similar bands in my late teens, and now when I think of folk rock, I think of these types of bands.

[Guest]

My pleasure Ben

 

Ofc I'll say tune Even if I had to get used to the new singer (I liked the previous one), I have to say that she did a very good job. I don't think I'd manage to make these Gaulish lyrics sound as natural as she does

Also, I found the song quiet catchy ^^

(I may have played it a couple of times already lol)

 

That said, I agree with you Shad. There's some roughness missing here, compared to some other folk bands.

[Gentled Ben]

I liked that the first singer was a kid (at least when they started). I thought it was cool that a young person would have an interest in both metal and folk and would play an instrument like the hurdy gurdy in a metal band. She was a fine singer, but I think this woman has a better voice. It's just preference, and it's only based off of one song, although looking at some YouTube comments, I see that this whole album is acoustic, so I might check it out.

 

There aren't really any folk metal bands that I have heard and like. I like symphonic metal (it's my favorite metal genre), and I like folk music, and I think Celtic music especially and metal should go well together, but every time I hear it, it just seems off, like a recipe that you thought nutmeg (or whatever spice) would really enhance until you actually taste it.

[Guest]

Oh I think that my main problem is that I don't like it when a band gets new members lololol

The old singer of Eluveitie is now in a band called Cellar Darling and I really disliked the only song I heard from them

 

 

My fav genre is probably melodic death metal (?) well I like it when people grunt about epic stories

[Gentled Ben]

I'm not a big fan of deathgrunts, I never thought the Cookie Monster should pursue a singing career, but I like Sins of thy Beloved, Sirenia, Tristania, and Epica, and they all grunt a lot.

 

I hear you. I love Nightwish, so I understand getting used to new singers. I'm really excited about Floor joining them, I think she was the perfect choice, but man, that album sucked! I hope the next one's better, although of course, it's Tuomas' fault, not hers.

Man, she tore Ghost Love Score up like it was her own when I saw that tour.

[Guest]

HI5 on the whole Nightwish story lolololol

Tarja was great, Annette (or I don't know what was the name of the second singer) was awful. Floor is a very good artist.  I remember her from Revamp and After Forever, the two bands where she already did a good job. 

Tuomas seems to have kind of a big ego

 

 

I love Epica.... but I have never heard of Sins of thy Beloved. Gonna have to check this one !!!

[Thane Vakarian]

i'll go for TUNE on this one.

 

 

  And no, this has nothing to do Chae glaring at me  while I'm typing something... neither did she nudge me to log in...   

 

[Guest]

O.O

 

 

 

 

I didn't do such a thing! I was nicely covering Mystica with pink paint... somewhere on the boards....  BUT it's a good thing you logged in

 

[Gentled Ben]

HI5 on the whole Nightwish story lolololol

Tarja was great, Annette (or I don't know what was the name of the second singer) was awful. Floor is a very good artist.  I remember her from Revamp and After Forever, the two bands where she already did a good job. 

Tuomas seems to have kind of a big ego

 

 

I love Epica.... but I have never heard of Sins of thy Beloved. Gonna have to check this one !!!

Tarja>Anette, but Dark Passion Play and Imaginareum were good albums. Floor > Anette but Endless Forms Most Beautiful was not very good. Tuomas seems to have a huge ego.

The Sins of thy Beloved were a gothic metal band. I have the Lake of Sorrows album and like that one, especially Until the Dark. 

LOL @ Cookie Monster GIF.

[Guest]

So I tried Sins !

I found a couple of live songs from them but it was a little bit flat for me. Now, until the dark (thanks for the link ) is way nicer than the ones i checked out !!!!

[Gentled Ben]

Yeah, they're not one of my favorites, but I do listen to that album somewhat regularly. I really like the violin; I think that's a great addition to the music. That same guy played on Sirenia's first album, too (Sirenia IS one of my favorites, as far as metal goes).

[Guest]

We have a couple of Sirenia's songs in our playlist :)

Haven't they also had different singers over the years ?

[Gentled Ben]

So many singers. Morten must be hard to work with. They went through a new singer every album for their first four albums, then they kept a singer for four albums before firing her. I don't know why they let her go, but it was done with class and no drama, not like when Nightwish fired Tarja. The new Sirenia singer has been a backup and choir singer for them all along. She's good, but she doesn't do the previous singer's material justice, which is too bad, because they played a lot of it when I saw them. It would have been better if they had played all old stuff and the new album, because she can sing all that stuff just fine. No biggie, though. I was happy just to see them. It was the first time they've played the United States. They are better in the studio, but if they come again, I will go again.

[Shad_]

Next up is a selection from LedZepMan, featuring a legendary bassist who rose to fame in the 90s

 

[Gentled Ben]

TUNE That song's hilarious. I remember when my friend showed me the video for it. I'd never heard it before. Amazing bass, indeed.

[Shad_]

Easiest Tune I've given all month.  Primus is a band I appreciate more and more the older I get.  I think they were a bit too eclectic for me as a kid.  These days, they're right up my alley.

[Guest]

Tune indeed, it's a very funny one !

[LedZepMan]

Most definitely a tune. I love Primus. Always puts me in a good mood.

[Shad_]

My turn

 

and

 

it's Death Grips

 

 

This is actually the only song I could think of by them that was appropriate for DM's code of conduct.  It wasn't my first choice by them, though I certainly like it a lot.

 

I'm not sure that I have a "favorite" song by them, but if I do it's probably

that I am not going to directly post on Dragonmount. 

[Gentled Ben]

No tune. It's almost like it's deliberately obnoxious, like a deconstruction of melody for the sake of being offensive. Sorry, not my cup of tea. 

[Shad_]

Interesting choice of words there.  "Offensive" is usually dropped in reference to lyrics rather than sound.  I can definitely appreciate distaste for bands that seem to be trying to offend just for the sake of doing so.  (See: the entire genre of yuck known as nu metal and most of its heirs.)  But in terms of audio I guess I look more towards artistic vision or lack thereof?

 

Like Peste Noire recorded a song that used samples from scat porn and I find it infinitely more enjoyable to listen to than most cookie cutter pop music.

 

You've got me curious, because I don't think the samples in that song are even particularly unorthodox (though the same can't be said for a lot of their music).  Is it the downtuned droned out nature of the melody that rubs you, or something else?

 

I do think the music gets a bit repetitive for the sake of cramming in 6 minutes of lyrics and they might have offered a little more progression on that front.

[Gentled Ben]

Offensive might be a strong word. I mean it like punk, which is also intentionally tonally offensive with bad singing, etc. Things like Title Fight's "Your Screen Door" come to mind, which even though it has some cool, jazzy-sounding chords in it, seems designed to sound like noise, as if it were crafted specifically to upset your parents. This strikes me the same way, as if a large part of its appeal is that your parents will not like it.

 

Yeah, the droning melody reminds me of nausea and a hangover. It's like they want it to be unappealing. I liked the intro, but once he stopped talking and they started playing, I liked it a lot less, and by three or four minutes in, I was getting aggravated by it. Maybe it's just a matter of personal taste. 

[Shad_]

Hah, I'd never heard of Title Fight so I pulled that song up on youtube, and I really dig the vocals.

 

I don't think any bands really intend for their music to sound bad.  Well, I've ran into a few here and there that do, but they're usually left disappointed to find that they have a fan base anyway.  That's the funny thing with art; its pursuit of fulfillment through introspection grants almost anything the capacity to produce a positive emotional response if the individual experiencing it wants it to.

 

Post-hardcore is a particularly artsy genre of music, and that's the sort of thing I'm drawn to.  I actually tend to find music that pursues traditional established forms of perfection the most revolting.  A lot of the names you and Chae were dropping earlier, like NIghtwish, bleh.  I can't endure more than a 10 second snippet most of the time.  It just feels stale.

 

Maybe a lot of these sounds originated as a childish form of counter-culturalism.  Black metal certainly did.  I'm pretty sure punk did.  Hell, the most cliche and mindnumbing standards of rock and roll were once cool for being rebellious, and it still blows my mind to meet people who think they're unique snowflakes because they listen to Led Zeppelin.

 

But we normalize sounds pretty quickly when we want to, and then they just become a means to an artistic end.

 

Like it's hard for me to wrap my head around a perspective on this Title Fight song as an attempt to ruffle feathers, because it's all quite standardized to me.  It's like looking at a pretty decent but not mind-blowing 21st century impressionist painting and thinking "oh you rebels!"  The fact that the artistic style was once revolutionary is lost on the person who grew up immersed in it.  They're just trying to take an honest crack at a style they enjoy performing.

 

But music is different from visual art in that it evolves at a radically faster pace and the vast majority of people don't have the time, interest, or resources to keep up with it, so what sounds utterly foreign to the average unimmersed listener might be par for the course to the enthusiast and the actual composers.

[Shad_]

Now I just want to jump straight away to the last track I'd intended to post in this, because it is radically innovative and got a lot of "wtf is this s---" reactions even within its niche of origin, but I think it's a masterpiece.  Easily my favorite album since its release early 2015.