Round 7 ResultsStadler: Mother Love Bone – Chloe Dancer/Crown of ThornsFirst Impressions:My first impression is that I am not a huge fan of this vocalist. Like I don’t know this style of singing just isn’t really appealing to me at all. Beyond that, this is just… doesn’t really have much going for it yet, at all. It’s got a solid enough chill vibe to it, decent enough power ballad stuff, but the instrumentation is just such a non-presence and I can only assume I’m meant to focus on the vocals… which I don’t care for.
The guitar solo near the end is pretty decent & the music behind it definitely gives it decent space to breathe. That’s really about all I can say though, the rest of this just did not do much of anything for me on first listen.
Final Thoughts:I take it Chloe Dancer is the piano part at the start of the song and Crown of Thorns is the rest of the song after that, correct? Doesn’t really matter that’s just, where I see the split between the two being but it’s tracked the same on the album so I am not exactly certain.
Anyways. Yeah. Just can’t get past the vocalist on this one, just absolutely not my style. I can tell he’s trying to be subtle and emotional during the first part of this to match the (rather thin-sounding) piano, but it just doesn’t work for me. I realize the style is not actually that different from By The Sword but it’s just different enough that there’s something offputting about it. There’s like, some notes he feels off pitch or some syllables overenunciated.
If there’s one positive I didn’t comment on during the first listen, the bassline is often pretty audible and never really mimicking the guitar line, which is something I always like to hear. The bassline itself isn’t exactly impressive but it’s effective enough for the tone the song is going for so I end up enjoying it. And it’s not like the basic music behind the vocals doesn’t have at least some power to it, I do like the swell of the chorus here, it has a nice full sound that makes for an effective climax on its own even ignoring the vocals.
There really isn’t much else to comment on here though. This song basically fails for me to some extent because what the primary appeal of the song is supposed to be is something I find that detracts from the song, and the rest of the elements in the song don’t do enough to salvage it for me. It’s not a miserably bad song or anything, it’s in general pleasant enough to listen to, but replace the vocalist with someone else and while I doubt I’d love it I’m sure I’d like it a fair bit more than I do at the very least.
6/10 Tomislav95: Enchant – Nighttime SkyFirst Impressions:Oh boy the quality of both that synth and those drums sounds kind of. Cheap honestly. Apparently this is from 1993 though. So I mean I guess. Fair enough. The early 90’s were basically just an extension of the 80’s. Ooh yeah the vocals are also super 80’s sounding yeah. I’ve probably said this before but the 80’s are definitely not my favorite decade of modern music. Anyways the song itself. So far it’s okay? I don’t know, there’s not really anything yet I can’t say I haven’t heard before, or heard done better. The instrumental break in the middle is just so standard prog it’s almost mindblowing. Except that awful-sounding snare, geez. It’s mostly that it’s just so… loud in comparison to the rest of the drums.
The classical guitar solo near the end is a moment that stands out at least, and it’s not like the instrumentation throughout the song is bland in general. It’s just… I don’t know, I’ve just heard too much prog I think, for this to stand out much.
Final Thoughts:This is one of those unfortunate instances where there are two similar songs dueling for my attention in one round and one of them has to come off looking worse because of it, and, well, this song definitely lost to the other cheesy prog rock song from 1993 that I got sent this round.
The vocals are definitely one of the weaker points for me, I just don’t like this style of singing at all. I’m glad as hell it’s basically dead nowadays. Though being replaced by the high-pitched whinyboy vocal sound a lot of modern rock and metal bands use isn’t a huge step up to be fair. And yeah geez that snare is just. Bad mixing, yo. That’s not even a production issue that’s an intentional decision that isn’t affected by the age of the song or anything.
I also just am not a huge fan of the really sparkly synth used throughout this. It doesn’t really have atmosphere, it doesn’t really have depth, the only thing it really does have is a rather dated sound. Would’ve been improved if they’d just used a piano for all the parts it plays.
I have all these harsh criticisms but in the end I think the song sounds… okay overall? It’s melodically pleasant and while it’s not overly prog the instrumental bit in the middle at least mixes up things a little even if it’s not really particularly memorable in any way. Also why does the song feel like it’s hitting its climax before the 6 minute mark, then keep going on for another three minutes after that? It’s weird. But yeah. Aside from sounding rather dated in all aspects it’s compositionally pretty sound and I don’t hate it or anything.
I don’t know, I don’t have much else to say about this. It’s just caught between not really being my thing and having to be negatively compared to another song in the same round. And with a dash of going on a bit too long too. Ehhh. That’s all.
6.75/10 Evermind: Jorn Lande & Trond Holter – Queen of the DeadFirst Impressions:Do I really have to listen to this, we all know I’m gonna hate it, corn corn corn corn corn. But no this is more downbeat power metal type of stuff which, like I said in my last roulette, I tend to be more into.
Like, I dig that really groovy riff behind the chorus, I’m all in favor of stuff like that believe it or not. Beyond that I mean, it’s fine. The vocals are solid, I’m pretty sure this guy has been on Ayreon before, he sounds familiar but I can’t pin it down. I think he was on Victim of the Modern Age (the song)? Probably wrong though. Oh man uhh that tapping in the guitar solo I am actually not on board with, I hate that kind of stuff lol. Yeah this solo is doing absolutely nothing for me but the guitar riff behind it is solid. This is… alright, I dunno, mixed feelings but I figure you expected that.
Final Thoughts:Sorry dude but you’re not landing in the 6/10 tier today. Please don’t send me a worse power metal song though. This is already so awful. Just the worst song I’ve been sent in the entire roulette, aside from all the songs that have scored lower than it so far, as well as all the ones that will score worse in the future.
Anyways the one part of this that definitely sticks in my head is the chorus, with that groovy bluesy guitar line going on in the background and a pretty catchy vocal line. I love that guitar work, honestly, it’s just great & it’s got quite a long loop to it, it’s like a full 8 bars of sweet guitar work. The rest of the instrumentation I don’t really care about at all though, it’s there sure but whatever.
The pizzicato string part before the solo kind of comes out of nowhere but it’s a nice moment to really kick the song in full gear for the ending solo section. I am still not too into that guitar solo itself though, it’s technically impressive and all but a lot of it kind of just sounds like crap honestly.
And yeah anyways I’m not huge on the vocal style here but they’ve got enough power and passion put into them that I at least like them on some level. Cheesy as heck, sure, but so is that guitar riff I really like so you know, whatever.
I end up not really having a ton to say on this one but there’s enough of this I dig to at least make it passable, though I’m far from in love with it. I think if there was like, more than two parts I liked a lot in the song with most of the rest being stuff I’m pretty indifferent to it’d have scored higher but well here we are. Oh well.
7/10LordCost: With Our Arms to the Sun – Memory: The DriftFirst Impressions:The vocals at the start of this have more texture and atmosphere than the guitars do somehow. Which may be a good thing but maybe a bad thing, possibly both, who knows. When the heavy stuff kicks in I genuinely can’t tell if that’s a violin in the background or if it’s a bagpipe, it’s rather distorted sounding.
I think I’m waiting for a moment to be really blown away by but instead I’m finding something that’s just. Solid. There’s no real peaks and valleys here, it’s just enjoyable enough prog metal the whole way through. Which I mean is fine to be, but has the unfortunate side effect of having this not stand out too much, at least upon first listen.
Final Thoughts:If you had asked me before this writeup what this song sounded like, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you a single thing, honestly. That doesn’t necessarily mean the song itself is bad, more than it doesn’t really have any memorable moments that particularly stand out to me. Because, yeah, this song is… pretty fine. I could basically end my writeup there and say all I honestly have to say about this song but I’ll keep going just to not look too lazy.
I call this prog metal in my first impressions writeup but there’s like, not actually anything prog about this song at all honestly, it’s just an alternative metal song. With some solid atmosphere, sure, and the vocals are pretty fitting for the style, they have decent atmosphere and all. But it really is pretty straightforward as a song, that one clean guitar line at the start is really the jumping off point for the rest of the song and there are echoes and variations of it basically constantly throughout the song. Which is a nice touch, certainly.
The guitar solo near the end is also remarkably solid. Not super into it but I dig it enough, it fills space and sounds pretty nice, not too indulgent or overlong but it’s nice to have it. And the chorus of the song, has a decent enough level of power compared to the rest, makes it stand out just enough. If I had one real criticism I feel like the ending is a bit weird, it returns to the intro and then starts to build up but winds right back down again after rather anticlimactically. I dunno, it’s just a little weird.
And well. I really don’t know what more I can say about this. Is it bad? Not at all. Is it really good? Nah, it’s fine. There’s just nothing here that really pops out, nothing that impresses me, I don’t mind listening to it but it’s an incredibly unremarkable song in every aspect.
7.25/10Tran of Naught: Hypno5e – Acid Mist TomorrowFirst Impressions:Has guitars, 0/10. The first thing I’m going to point out is that I don’t like these harsh vocals much at all. Too screamy and angery. The clean bit after is nice though, solid amount of atmosphere and the clean vocals sound totally fine, pretty good really. The heavy riffs have this really janky lumbering feel to them. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing though. The song has this cyclic loop of LOUD PART quiet part going on but it sort of feels like it’s lacking the in-between level of loudness that I actually would prefer having at least sometime.
This is one of those weird cases where a band does quieter moments way better than louder moments but still insists on being a metal band when they’d probably be better off as a softer rock band. I mean, the metal stuff is, alright, but the parts I’m finding myself more interested are all the cleaner, acoustic parts with the good vocals. I guess it’s nice to at least have contrast.
Final Thoughts:I get why you sent this and I get the impression that people think I think being heavy automatically makes something good which I can assure you is not the case, I actually tend to steer away from mindless heavy stuff like deathcore and meshuggah. Especially meshuggah. And again it’s not like the heavy parts are really that bad. I do not like the vocals at all, that hasn’t changed, but the riffs can be decent at times.
But seriously now, it’s just plain unfair how much better the clean parts of this song are. It’s basically the same phenomenon that I’ve observed with Exotic Animal Petting Zoo, at least on their first album. They are really great at atmospheric and sinister sounding quieter moments but these often get lost in a homogenous mix of uninteresting heavy bits. Granted they can have their solid heavy moments that I dig a lot but that’s beside the point. The point is, I would like this a lot more without any of the heavy stuff.
I don’t even mind the very liberal use of samples throughout the clean bits, they’re in the background and don’t go on for too long. They build tension alright enough. And man, I am serious when I say these clean parts are really quite good, there’s a lot of feels to be had and there’s even a decent sense of dynamics to them, going from more dense moments to more sparse and intimate moments.
And then every time it just cuts right back to something heavy that doesn’t really interest me much. The stuff I dig is when there’s some dissonant guitar melodies going on but a lot of the more monotonous/chuggy parts don’t do much for me at all. There’s also one bit around 8:30 where there’s a really good level of atmosphere going on that makes for a solid climax. But then it cuts to a generic, jagged djenty riff right after and kills any momentum. It’s just a sequence of weird decisions that don’t really work out overall and don’t form a cohesive whole.
Overall I would definitely say I have a love/hate relationship with this – on one hand there’s a lot of parts I do like a fair bit, on the other hand there’s a lot of parts I could do without entirely, though I think the former does outweigh the latter overall. In the end I’m going with what feels like a kind of safe score but ehh it’ll do.
7.5/10twosuitsluke: Megosh – Checkerboards & CigarettesFirst Impressions:Having a kind of clunky transition so close to the start of the song isn’t filling me with confidence on this one. The vocals are… hmm. Something, alright. Yeah that intro is just completely disconnected from the rest of this isn’t.
I think the instrumentation throughout is pretty solid, I particularly like that guitar solo. And the vocals are certainly enthusiastic if nothing else. I guess I’m just not into the vocalist’s tone, more than anything, I don’t know. And it’s over. This is the shortest song here by over two minutes so I guess I was caught off guard by how quickly it ended haha.
Final Thoughts:What the heck is up with post-hardcore leaning bands like this to have these intros completely disconnected from the rest of the song? It’s just a weird choice. Instead of developing that idea into its own song it’s just awkwardly shoved at the start of another song that would be perfectly fine without it. It’s like, an okay musical idea, not in love with it but ehh it’s passable.
The main song is better though, for certain. The chorus in particular, I like a lot, even if I’m still not sold on the vocalist. A bit too breathy for my taste. But there’s a lot of power and swell to that chorus, there’s like quiet horns and choir vocals in the background I swear. And the muted guitar and frantic drums give a nice energy to the verses.
Beyond the verses and choruses there’s not a whole lot else to this song except a pretty solid guitar solo played over the instrumentals of the chorus, and then a kind of anticlimactic quiet reprise of the chorus that’s not really a great way to end the track. Yeah it’s a bit short and ends a bit abrupt doesn’t it. Also I have no clue why hotel california is being evoked here.
Basically on the whole I am kind of behind this one, but also not like, super behind it in any way. I like most of it but only feel really strongly about the chorus, and the weird intro detracts a bit for how out of place it is. And it just feels underdeveloped in general. I like it but I wish I liked it more.
7.5/10