Results time.
This was a strong set of EPs. There were things I liked about all of them, even Cyril's. Two definitely stood out above the rest as being truly excellent, and the senders of those two will also end up placing first and second in the roulette as a whole.
I won't do the thing where I try to build anticipation because, let's be honest, y'all have already scrolled down. EPs in reverse order, winner at the bottom.
LetheanSolefald - Song Til Stormen
Sonata Arctica - Caleb
Arcturus - Shipwrecked Frontier Pioneer
Arcturus - The Journey
Solefald - Raudedauden
ICS Vortex - Flaskeskipper
Borknagar - Voices
Impression:
Hmm. There are a few songs on here that I just really have a hard time getting into stylistically. Then there's one that I sort of expected not to like, but wound up loving. Right now my listening experience to this is definitely one of ups and downs. Hard to sort out exactly how I feel about it as a whole.This EP definitely features an interesting combination of some different styles, some of which is definitely well in my wheelhouse, other of which is sort of pushing the boundaries in Cyril-like fashion. Overall, I found this EP to be a hit-and-miss affair. There are some songs here that I really enjoyed quite a bit, and others that rather missed the mark. Let’s talk about the hits first, then the misses, and then I’ll try to sum up.
The Sonata Arctica song is probably both the outlier stylistically and the song most likely to be in my wheelhouse. And yes, this is definitely a hit. I don’t know exactly what struck me wrong about the other song I got from this album last time, but this one really works for me. This is just a really strong melodic metal track. There are some twists and turns even within a quasi-verse-chorus structure, and there’s a real sense of progression and storytelling in the melodies. I really like the bridge at around the 4-minute mark. A strong track that’s convinced me to give this album a closer look. And while it’s a bit of stylistic outlier, I’d say it transitions pretty well out of the Solefald song.
Song Til Stormen is another one of the hits on this EP. I really like the vocal style used at the very beginning of this song (and elsewhere through its runtime). It made a pretty strong impression on me and set a nice atmosphere. The song as a whole was a pretty enjoyable opening track. Flaskeskipper is also a hit with me, I liked the sense of build-up on this track, which felt like a nice transition in context from the part of the EP I didn’t really care for as much to the strong conclusion.
The really big hit here, however, was the closer, Voices, which is the song I referred to as not expecting to like, but wound up loving. I admit, my initial judgment was prejudice based on seeing the album art with one of those illegible black metal band logos, but the actual music here was wonderful. There is such a strong sense of sorrow conveyed in the dirge like riffing and mournful performance of the singer. I like how the song alternates between these tighter, staccato parts that build up tension, and these huge, sweeping sections. Really powerful stuff. This is a very beautiful song, and I hope that there is more music like this to be found in this band’s discography.
Shipwrecked Frontier Pioneer was certainly interesting, and I liked a lot of what felt like was being set up in the first few minutes of the song. I was somewhat less keen on the middle section, due in part to the creepy male vocals, though there’s some solid piano work there. And the finale doesn’t really pay off a lot of what I had enjoyed in the first few minutes. I liked this song on the whole, but it kind of falls into a middle ground where it isn’t a hit or a miss.
The misses are the next two tracks. The Journey just really didn’t do much for me in terms of the atmospheric stuff it was trying to set up. The creepy vocals were present again. It’s not a bad song, and I even understand how it fits into the overall progression of the EP, but it’s not something I was really excited about. I wasn’t big on the harsh vocal style used on Raudedauden, and there wasn’t really much that appealed to me on this one in terms of riffs or melodies. I hope that Solefald’s music in general tends more toward the side that I liked on Song Til Stormen rather than this track.
The full experience of the EP, for me, is one where I enjoy the first couple of tracks very much, and then my enjoyment declines over the course of the next few tracks, only to perk back up with Flaskeskipper before finishing on what I’d call the definite strongest song of the EP, and one of the strongest songs of the whole round. The overall experience is still pretty good, with some moments of real excellence, but it’s not as strong as some of the other EPs where my enjoyment level is more consistent all the way through.
1. Borknagar - Voices (9.0/10)
2. Sonata Arctica - Caleb (8.5/10)
3. Solefald - Song Til Stormen (8.0/10)
4. ICS Vortex - Flaskeskipper (8.0/10)
5. Arcturus - Shipwrecked Frontier Pioneer (7.5/10)
6. Arcturus - The Journey (6.5/10)
7. Solefald - Raudedauden (6.5/10)
Score: 15.5 out of 20.
Cyril: Off the Deep EndA Novelist - His Kingdom is Vast
Black Peaks - Saviour
Eidola - To Know What’s Real
East of the Wall - The Apologist
Even the Trees - Tonight We Don’t Think, We Do
Actor | Observer - Dilettante
Protest the Hero - Skies
Impression:
On first listen, I really just found nothing that caught me interest for most of this EP's runtime. A lot of it has since grown on me, some songs to a pretty significant degree.I think you’ve known pretty clearly all along that this was a risky submission, and why it was. Even though I’m more growl-friendly than I have been in the past, I don’t think I will ever like them in too-large doses. Similarly, the really heavy, rhythmic-focused music that features at times on this EP is probably never something I’m going to want to listen to large quantities of. I say this now just to establish the baseline that I think you and I were both aware of going in: On stylistic grounds, this was always very unlikely to be a roulette winner, barring me having some huge revelatory change in my tastes. That’s not to denigrate what has gone into this EP, it’s just acknowledging that there is a clear stylistic gap.
Again, barring the unlikely big revelatory change, which in fact did not happen, the question with this EP was whether it would bomb or whether I would find some stuff on here that I do enjoy, maybe in a limited dose, but still. And on the first listen, things looked like they were going in the bomb direction, because I found a lot of this pretty impenetrable on first go. But fortunately, this EP did settle in pretty well on subsequent listens, and actually grew to the point where I find it to a fairly enjoyable listen on the whole. I would call it a success on the whole if the goal was, as you suggested in your first PM, to push the boundaries of my tastes and get me to enjoy stuff that’s sort of been on the periphery of what I’ve been willing to go for in the past.
In talking about specific tracks, let’s consult the predictions:
Here's my predictions (minor spoilers I guess)
Track 1: You'll like small parts of this but dislike most of it
Track 2: You'll like the first half but not the second half
Track 3: You'll like all of this one
Track 4: I dunno, could go any way
Track 5: You'll like everything except one part of this
Track 6: You'll like some of this but other parts not at all
Track 7: This will be your favorite on the EP
This is… not a bad prediction. I definitely agree with your assessment of Skies as one of the strongest tracks on the EP, and I’d definitely characterize it as my favorite. I thought there was a nice tempering of the chaotic, harsh sound by some strong melodies, and found it to be a really enjoyable storytelling track. That final vocal part, from “The wreckage was never” found to the end, is truly excellent, and I’d say really shows the potential of this style of music in combining harsh elements with melody.
The Eidola track probably is my other favorite. It’s not quite as relentless as the others, and it has a memorable chorus. And Even The Trees does come in third. I even don’t mind the harsh part that you thought I might not like. I think it works well as a climactic moment in the context of the whole. The Actor | Observer song has an absolutely killer chorus, but the harsh verses, as you likely expected, don’t really do it for me. On the whole, I’d call it more of a hit than a miss, though, because that chorus is so strong.
His Kingdom Is Vast, on the other hand, did end up as my least favorite. There is some stuff on there that I find interesting, and I wouldn’t say I dislike it, but it is just somewhat too in-your-face with the growls on the heavier parts.
I understand completely why you put The Apologist in the place where you did on this EP. It fits well in this position and contributes the up-and-down flow of the EP. On the other hand, I feel like there is so much in play on this track that it’s overall probably better suited to be sent in a non-EP round. I found that even five listens was really just not enough for me to get a handle on it when I’m also focusing on six other tracks and how they fit together. I will probably take some time to listen to this song on its own after the roulette, not only because I know you hold it in such high regard, but because there’s definitely stuff I’m interested in and want to figure out (I am still not a fan of the style of harsh vocals this group uses, but I definitely liked some of the softer parts on this one).
This EP, as a whole, is really well-together. You did an excellent job with the transitions, to the point where this almost feels like a cohesive album at times despite the clear stylistic differences between some of the tracks. The full listening experience is, unfortunately, a little bit tiring for me because I’m not accustomed to something this relentlessly intense, but there are a lot of moments that shine, and the full experience is made enjoyable despite being tiring by how well put-together it is.
If your goal was to win the roulette with this, then yes, it falls short. But if your goal was to make a well-structured EP and get me to enjoy some music in this style, then I’d call that a success. I think this EP did about as well as any EP in this style likely could have done.
1. Protest the Hero - Skies (8.5/10)
2. Eidola - To Know What’s Real (8.5/10)
3. Even The Trees - Tonight We Don’t Think, We Do (8.0/10)
4. East of the Wall - The Apologist (8.0/10)
5. Actor | Observer - Dilettante (7.5/10)
6. Black Peaks - Saviour (7.0/10)
7. A Novelist - His Kingdom is Vast (6.5/10)
Score: 15.5 out of 20.
Tomislav95Rae Morris - Push Me to My Limit
Rae Morris - Physical Form
Let’s Eat Grandma - Hot Pink
Let’s Eat Grandma - It’s Not Just Me
Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion
Carly Rae Jepsen - I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance
MGMT - Little Dark Age
MGMT - Me and Michael
Carly Rae Jepsen - Now That I Found You
Rae Morris - Dancing With Character
Impression:
I enjoy this EP fairly well most of the way through (with the exception of one song that is a pretty strong miss), but the opening and closing are well above the rest and sort of buoy the whole thing up.Okay, I was trying to figure out a way to say what I had to say without giving it away too much. At first, I thought about saying that one particular artist is the one who buoys the whole thing up, but that would narrow it down too much to the few EPs that used multiple songs from the same artist. And “opening two and last one songs” would also be too obvious. So I settled for excluding Physical Form from the literal meaning of the impression while still conveying more or less what I felt most important to say about this EP, which is:
Rae Morris is really, really good.
I absolutely love her voice. She’s got the sort of distinctive tone, range (including solid low-end) and power that I love in a singer on this type of pop music. And the songs are wonderful. The vocal melodies are just dripping with emotion. The performances are wonderful. These songs just immediately caught on with me and only grew more in my esteem the more I listened to them. Physical Form was, as it turns out, in fact my least favorite of the three, and yet it’s still an excellent, memorable song. Push Me to My Limit is dripping with emotion, a fantastic EP opener, but not as good an opener as the fantastic and incredibly emotional Dancing With Character is a closer. That song just stays with me. One of the best of the roulette.
On the other end, we have Move Systems II: Hot Pink. Okay, I actually think I like this one better than Move Systems, but Hot Pink does do most of the things that bother me in some synthpop. The vocals are pretty annoying at, the melodies, outside of the intro, are… not particularly good, the stop-and-start stuff just does not appeal to me. Fortunately, the other song from this artist is markedly better in my estimation. Not a favorite, but a solid pop song for sure, one that I can sing along with and enjoy pretty well. So maybe Hot Pink is an outlier, but it is a definite black spot on the EP.
There is not anything on the EP from the other artists that I enjoy nearly as much as I enjoy the Rae Morris material, but that is a pretty high bar. Fortunately, the non-Hot Pink songs are much more toward the better end of the spectrum, even including the aforementioned It’s Not Just Me.
MGMT was my second-favorite artist here. There was this interesting approach to the vocal melodies on both sides, especially Little Dark Age, that I found really appealing. That song in particular had a cool vibe that was sort of both laid-back and ominous-sounding at the same time? Definitely interested in hearing more from this artist.
The expectations that some of the hype I’ve seen online set for Carly Rae Jepsen put her, I think, at an initial disadvantage, but not a serious one. None of these songs is transcendently great in the way that the reputation might have suggested they’d be, but all are more than solid pop songs, the way that a lot of the songs on an album like Taylor Swift’s
1989 are. So in the end, CRJ is a hit, even if she’s very much in the shadow of Rae Morris on this one.
As a whole, this EP is enjoyable most of the way through, with Hot Pink being the exception. I would say that most of the songs in the middle rate as solid pop songs. With the exception of Little Dark Age, nothing in there really wows me. It’s all good and reliable without necessarily going up to that next level. Rae Morris does go to the next level, and, so, like I already says, her three songs really buoy the EP up markedly higher.
1. Rae Morris - Dancing With Character (9.0/10)
2. Rae Morris - Push Me to My Limit (9.0/10)
3. Rae Morris - Physical Form (9.0/10)
4. MGMT - Little Dark Age (8.5/10)
5. Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion (8.0/10)
6. Carly Rae Jepsen - Now That I Found You (7.5/10)
7. Carly Rae Jepsen - I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance (7.5/10)
8. MGMT - Me and Michael (7.5/10)
9. Let’s Eat Grandma - It’s Not Just Me (7.5/10)
10. Let’s Eat Grandma - Hot Pink (4.5/10)
Score: 16.5 out of 20.
Topic: 425's Third Roulette v. Fell and rose and tried... (Read 32862 times)
