Say what you want, I’ve been a terrible roulette host over the past two weeks, not even telling what I was up to and not posting any results. I know, I’ve had some serious issues at home, with my studies and with various other things and I was also ill last weekend, so I simply couldn’t get myself to type these out. Since I’m short on time still, these results won’t have as lengthy write-ups as the past rounds. I’m honestly sorry, I hoped I could do better, but real life unfortunately takes up more of my time than I initially thought. For this reason, I have not listene to every song as much as I wanted to (I would usually go with at least 5 or 6 listens), but this round I have only listened to every song 3 times. Anyway, here are the results for round 4:
Through to the next round Participant: lonestar
Band – Song: Anciients – The Longest River
This is probably the darkest and heaviest song I have received in this Roulette so far, and given that the past few songs with growls all got eliminated, this was a quite risky pick. However, this song is brilliant. Very nice atmosphere, dark and sludgy sound, I liked this one a lot.
Participant: jingle.boy
Band – Song: ReVamp – The Anatomy of a Nervous Breakdown
Very nice track. Very jingle.boy-ish, in the sense that it reminds me of the first time I heard Flaming Row (which was the first round of my last roulette, the one you won). Very solid track with a very solid singer indeed. I’ll check this one out further.
Participant: Nihil-Morari
Band – Song: Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention – Echidna’s Arf (Of You)
Honestly, I kind of expected you to send me Frank Zappa earlier in the roulette, with you being the resident Zappa-person and all that. I have indeed heard some of his stuff before, but nothing much, as I never started checking out his stuff further. This is also a very daunting task, with the man having something like a hundred albums. Any idea where to start? Because I like what I’m hearing.
Participant: senecadawg2
Band – Song: Withem – Burned by Senses
Solid progressive metal, but not much more than that. It reminds me of all the great acts within contemporary progressive metal, but this band doesn’t really do anything new. I can appreciate the musicianship and the singer has a nice voice, but this song wasn’t anything special to me. If anything, they reminded me of Seventh Wonder, but with a slightly less capable vocalist. No bad song by any means, but as stated, nothing special to me either.
Almost eliminated Participant: Dr. DTVT
Band – Song: Tiles – Cactus Valley
For this one, the same commentary I gave to the Withem song applies, only this song is not that good (in my opinion). It long and therefore overly repetitive with little interesting things going on. The song is paced slow, which in the context of the other songs of this round didn’t really help, but the slow pace, combined with little melodic or harmonic intricacies makes it quite a dull song. I also don’t like the singer’s nasal voice. Sorry, but I’m not really feeling this one.
Unfortunately eliminated Participant: Scorpion
Band – Song: Native Construct – Passage
Apparently this album was only released about two weeks ago, but my first thoughts are: I don’t know. Maybe three listens isn’t enough to appreciate this one or to fully grasp what is going on, because there’s a lot of it in this track. And that’s this track’s problem: it’s a mess. I might regret saying this later, when/if I’ve listened to this band more thoroughly, but that was my initial thought. There’s no cohesion, everything seems jumbled together and it made for a very unpleasant listen. The growls turned me off as well, as they seemed to come out of nowhere in the context of the song. However, there’s a shitload of musicianship in there that I could hear, but for now, I’m going to have to eliminate you, because this track failed to prove itself to me in the limited time I have. If it’s any consolation to you; I will try and listen to this band some other time.
---
So there you have it. Sorry Scorpion, but you have been eliminated. The rest can send for round 5. I’ll try to get next round’s results in more quickly, if life lets me.