As I said, these write-ups are pretty lengthy. For my own sake, I’ll probably tone it down a bit from now on
... Or I'll somehow end up typing even more for the second round results.
Oh well. Deal with it. Feel free to skim, or even just skip to the rankings if you want to.
Keep in mind that as of now I've only listened to each of these songs once. My opinion on some of these songs might change drastically with repeated listens, but for judging purposes, I'm going based on first impressions alone.
As before, I'll start by posting my thoughts on the songs in the order I received them:
Buddyhunter1: Anathema – ‘Untouchable, Part 1’Well, this is a little bit different than Gojira, isn’t it?
Gorgeous song, though! The whole thing had an interesting vibe to it, sort of melancholy and yet sort of uplifting. I’m not sure how a song can be melancholy and uplifting at the same time, but this one did evoke both those feelings for me. Strange, but really nice. And the vocals were lovely. Very passionate, very emotional. Especially during the second half of the song – as you promised, the last three minutes were amazing. A fairly straightforward song, but still great stuff overall!
jingle.boy: Flaming Row – ‘Unearth the Truth’Again you send me a song with excellent vocals, and again the chorus immediately gets stuck in my head. The female vocalist was seriously impressive. The guy was good too, but the lady had my jaw on the floor. The guitar player was outstanding, too; I’m not someone who typically focuses on a specific instrument much, but the guitar commanded my attention on this one. There wasn’t really one specific riff or melody that stuck with me more than the others, but there were several moments where I was blown away, especially during the instrumental section. The intro was great, too, and I seem to recall that there was a sort of mini-solo pretty early in the song (after the first chorus, perhaps? I’m not entirely sure) that I particularly liked. Cool stuff throughout, really. And the song definitely made me curious to check out the rest of the album and find out more about the story, so, kudos all around.
lonestar: The Deadstation – ‘Subsistence Defined’Unfortunately, I really didn’t care for the vocals in this one at all. I’m not sure what exactly the problem was, because I usually don’t have anything against this style of singing, but something about this specific singer’s voice just rubbed me the wrong way. I wish I could explain it better, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. All I know is that I didn’t enjoy the vocals, and they kind of dragged the song down for me. I honestly found them so distracting that I had difficulty focusing on anything else, and now I can hardly remember anything about the music itself. Seems like it had a really chaotic style that was actually very cool to me. A solid rocker with powerful, hard-hitting drums and some killer guitar passages. But whatever good qualities it may have had, I just couldn’t get past the vocals. I’ll give the song another chance later to see if I like the singer better the second time around. As of right now, though, based on first impressions, I’m not a fan of this one.
SomeoneLikeHim: Pain of Salvation – ‘Used’In your message, you said you had no idea how I would feel about this one. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how I feel about it, either.
Kind of a schizophrenic song, isn’t it? I almost felt like it was arguing with itself about whether it wanted to be a heavy song or a soft one, and it ended up just sort of changing channels back and forth. The combination of beautiful clean vocals and somewhat hushed spoken word passages was really interesting, too. It definitely had a lot of contrast to it. It was somewhat disorienting, but the overall effect was… actually really cool. I think. We’ll see how repeated listens pan out, as I certainly haven’t had time to wrap my head around it yet, but my first impression is positive. If nothing else, it has some great riffage. I’m definitely intrigued.
adace: Steven Wilson – ‘Drive Home’Breathtaking. I actually thought this song was a bit boring at first, but before long I found myself utterly hypnotized by it, and now I feel like an idiot for having ever thought it was boring at all. It was a lot of things – haunting, dreamy, eerie, atmospheric, richly textured, and soulful, to name a few – but it was
not boring. Listening to this was a very immersive experience. It had an ethereal beauty to it that drew me in slowly and then held me and refused to let me go. It still hasn’t let go, actually. I’m still hearing the ghostly ‘drive home…’ chants as I type this. And that guitar solo was possibly one of the most emotional I’ve ever heard. I’ve seen so much love for this album that I kind of thought it wouldn’t be able to live up to the hype, but if this song is anything to go by, the album probably deserves every ounce of praise it gets around here.
wolfking: Sieges Even – ‘Tidal’‘We are,
we are…’ Yeah, that bit’s going to be stuck in my head approximately forever. The harmonies there are very nice, and the layered vocals are done really well. Very majestic. Apart from that, though, this song didn’t stand out very much for me. Don’t get me wrong, it was consistently good, but nothing about it really wowed me. And now that it’s over, I feel satisfied with just the one listen; I don’t feel much interest in revisiting it. Not sure why, really, it just didn’t quite grab me. It did have a very cool energy to it, and I can certainly tell that they’re a talented group of musicians. I may end up checking out a couple more of their songs to see if they jump out at me more. When it comes to this one in particular, though, I thought it was good but not great.
kingshmegland: I Mother Earth – ‘Hell & Malfunction’I can see why you mentioned Tool, because there are definitely some similarities. I was, at times, reminded of Ænema – which is a very good thing for you, because Ænema is one of my favorite songs ever. That being said, the similarities aren’t too obvious or overwhelming, and these guys definitely have their own identity. I’d never even heard of them before now, but I’m impressed. I was a little bit skeptical at first, because I really didn’t care for the spoken word section right at the beginning, but as soon as the music started, my doubts were erased, because the rest of the song was awesome. I loved the guitar tone; it had a dark feel to it, very well suited for the somewhat doom-ish mood of the song. The bass did a great job enhancing that feeling. The lyrics were also a perfect fit, with powerful words delivered powerfully in a strong vocal performance. The middle section was every bit as good as you promised it would be. And, also as promised, the whole song had a lot of depth to it. I didn’t like the spoken word intro, but other than that, this song’s all aces.
Also, this really doesn’t have anything to do with anything, but I have to comment on it anyway: Quicksilver Meat Dream? If this was an album title competition, these guys would have just won the whole thing for you.
Nekov: Frost* – ‘Welcome to Nowhere’Sorry, but no, I don’t love this song, at least not on first listen. There were certainly things I loved
about it. The lyrics were excellent, particularly in the chorus (which was great in and of itself), the vocals were really good, the piano melodies were gorgeous, the soloes were awesome… really, the song had quite a lot of great stuff going for it. But the way all of that great stuff was put together just didn’t work very well for me. I didn’t think it had a very good flow, and the pacing didn’t seem right. It felt very start-and-stop to me, building momentum but never really sustaining it, slowing back down when I felt like it should be speeding up instead. Because of that, I just wasn’t able to get fully into it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Maybe I’ll have better luck with repeated listens, but going on my first impression, I’m not into it.
Dr. DTVT: Haken – ‘Cockroach King’I don’t know what the fuck I just listened to, but I’m pretty sure it was amazing.
To be honest, I feel kind of helpless trying to talk about this song after just one listen. It was… quirky, to put it mildly. I’m not sure ‘quirky’ really covers it, though; ‘bizarre’ would probably be the more accurate choice. But bizarre in a brilliant way. I would compare it to Pennywise, the dancing clown from Stephen King’s It: wacky, yes, but also gleefully sinister, with an edge of menace beneath the fun and games. There’s a ton of really neat stuff going on in this song musically, and it’s shockingly catchy – a song this crazy has no right to be as catchy as this one is. I thought the vocalist was a little bit weird, but then, so was the song, so it seemed to fit. All in all, I loved it. I feel slightly insane for loving it, but I loved it. Very fun song.
Elite: Haken – ‘Pareidolia’So, yeah, I got two songs in a row from the same album. But I’ve been very curious about this album anyway, so I was happy to accept both songs. And I’m glad I did, because they’re both awesome.
After listening to Cockroach King, this one felt incredibly sane by comparison. It was still quirky in its own right – there was a particularly oddball instrumental passage fairly early on (I think) that I especially liked – but overall they definitely seemed to take a more focused and serious approach with this one. Because of that, it didn’t have quite the same charm that the other did for me, but it was still a damn good song. There were great melodies all over the place, and the song had a very nice flow to it, even in the passages where they indulged their wackier side a bit. I like the vocals better in this one than in the other, and I love this band’s harmonies. I’m thinking I’ll definitely be getting this album.
Oh, and by the way everybody, this was the first song I’ve received that went over the 10 minute mark, and I did listen to the whole thing. Of course, it was only an extra 51 seconds, and the song felt much shorter than it was anyway, but still, thought I should mention it.
Round Two rankings:1. adace
2. Dr. DTVT
3. kingshmegland
4. jingle.boy
5. Elite
6. Buddyhunter1
7. SomeoneLikeHim
8. wolfking
9. Nekov
10. lonestar
In a surprising twist, lonestar strikes out in the second round after hitting a huge homerun in the first. Luckily for him, his first submission was strong enough to earn him immunity here, so he’s still in the race.
Unfortunately, that means game over for Nekov. Sorry dude. I certainly didn’t expect to be eliminating you so early, because I really love that Subsignal song, but I’m afraid your submission this round just wasn’t as strong as the others, in my opinion. Maybe I could have gotten into it if I had listened to it more, but I'm going on first impressions, and it didn't make a very strong one. No hard feelings, I hope! And thank you very much for your participation! I deeply appreciate your time and interest, and I’m sorry to see you go.
In happier news, congratulations to adace! Your song was my favorite this round, and for that, you have earned immunity from elimination in round three. I was pretty sure somebody was going to be sending me something from TRTRTS before this thing was over, and I honestly expected to be underwhelmed by it, but Drive Home blew me away. Great choice, and thanks for sending it.
Once again, thanks for your songs, everybody. I'm thoroughly enjoying this process, and I hope you're all getting some fun out of it too. Let's move on to the next round, shall we?
Round Three: A Joyous OccasionThis round, I want to hear some happy songs. Of course, 'happy' is totally subjective, and I'm not going to be super strict about it ("THIS SONG DIDN'T MAKE ME HAPPY ENOUGH YOU'RE ELIMINATED!"); just try to send something that evokes positive feelings. How it accomplishes that is up to you.
I doubt I'll get results done over the weekend, so I'm going to go ahead and give you guys until the 13th to get your songs submitted.
Topic: Jaffa's Prog Rock and Metal Roulette - Final Results posted!!! (Read 42602 times)