Stadlite RoundupI'm just gonna keep updating this for brief first impressions on the songs Stadler and Elite sent because Why Not
Soundgarden - Searching With My Good Eye Closedthe intro was a bit silly and i didn't dig it but the rest of this is... pretty solid. decent core riff, vocals are not exactly my style but he puts enough emotion into them that it's fine, there's some good lead guitar work, i do think it goes on a bit long for the amount of substance it feels like it has and i'm not especially inclined to return to it & i've heard better soundgarden songs before too (this might be among the least interesting i've heard from them tbh) but it's alright
In the Woods... - Empty Streetsfamiliar with this band too, have Pure from them and I know I definitely listened to this one at some point... the first, more doom metal half of this is okay but it's the kind of thing from them that never did a ton for me in the first place, the back half is a lot more solid, good guitar tone and intensity here even if it doesn't especially stand out. also good moments of lead guitar from time to time which is one thing i know them for. i don't think this is gonna convince me to check them out further but i'd say i do like it more than the song you actually sent me lol
Heretoir - To Follow the Sunand a band that was sent to me before in my album roulette that ended up losing the roulette, nice. i'm sitting here listening to this and thinking... wow, this sure is 100% texture 0% melody. 0% intensity too it's way too slow-paced to work for me as black metal. and the texture isn't even that great, save for some moments in the more ambient/percussion-less bits where it becomes more like a drone song than anything. but uhh yeah... it's not doing much for me overall & the things it does well i can get from many other bands
Hanging Garden - Borrowed EyesYeah this definitely seems to align more with a post/sludge metal sound and I guess by that metric it sure is one. I uhh. Don't really have a ton to say about this because this kind of non-atmospheric post-metal I find just never does much for me even if it's not, bad, either? I sort of zoned out in the middle despite it being like 4 minutes long
October Tide - Of Wounds to ComeAnother entry in the "doomy black metal" genre and it's... perfectly fine! Not as dynamic as the In the Woods song and I don't think it held my interest for its entire runtime but I didn't mind it at all either. I dunno, can't think of much else to say on this one.
Trepalium - Moonshine LimboWait so you're telling me all this time you had something this fun and striking tucked away in your back pocket and just didn't send it? Why?
This is the kind of unique and enjoyable stuff I wanna hear, even if maybe an entire album of it might get tedious? Possibly? Who knows but like, as just a song, this is like Diablo Swing Orchestra's evil twin and I'm totally on board with that.
Victoria - KeplerWell this is, from what I can tell, Animals as Leaders related and yeah it kinda shows. There isn't a djent lean to this, at least in terms of actual tone, but it's got that math metal/light jazzy feel to it all the same. I do think it also falls into the same trap of "showy technicality in favor of cohesive songwriting" but it's at least somewhat interesting the whole way through? I definitely feel like an entire album of this would get on my nerves though. Where are the melodies, the hooks, the emotions? More enjoyable than a lot of the doomy/sludgy stuff here though regardless.
in a perfect world where both participants sent the best song they had to offer, I think it'd be Fire Dance vs. Moonshine Limbo which would have much more easily gone to the latter anyways. I'm probably gonna check out that Trepalium al- oh it's an EP, but they have a 2020 al- THE ALBUM IS SHORTER THAN THE EP WHAT uhh. okay. I'll figure out something to check out from them. The rest none of them are really doing enough for me to want to bother.