OK as I said before, sorry about the delay. I’ve been trying to keep these rounds at 1 week or less, but I went a bit over this time. Hopefully I can keep things more timely for the next two rounds.
ROUND 5 RESULTS
NekovAutumn Moonlight - Letters To God
So here we have a sort of post-rock piece. In a decidedly atypical fashion, though, the song doesn’t start out sparse and build, opting instead to begin full-force, and then move to a quieter section and build up again from there. This is a really sonically appealing piece of music, all the instrument tones, especially the guitar, just sound really nice to me. There’s some really great bass work near the beginning of the song, and the guitar is quite excellent throughout the song. My main issue with the song is that it seems to go on a bit too long; I think it would have been a lot stronger if it had wrapped up around the 5 minute mark. As it is, it seems to just repeat the same ideas that had been used earlier in the piece, and I think this is to the song’s detriment. I did like the audio samples, presumably the titular letters. Those were pretty cool.
7.5 pointsTomislav95Woods of Ypres - Everything I Touch Turns To Gold (Then To Coal)
This one starts out with some slow, really doom-y sounding guitar chords. I really expected this piece to feature mostly harsh vocals, so I was quite surprised to hear a deep, clean voice start singing. Some harsh vocals do come in after that, but they’re overlaid with the clean voice in a way that works extremely well. My problem with this song is in its lack of variation. Though it’s pretty short, it seems to be quite repetitive. Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be? I’m guessing this is some sort of doom metal, and that could well be a staple of the genre. Still, while I do really like those sections of the song, after they’ve been repeated several times without much variation, I start to get a little bored with them.
7 pointsBolstersMeatloaf - Bat Out of Hell
OK first, the link you sent me was 240p. I should dock you some points for that.
Anyway, I have, of course, heard of Meatloaf, but as far as I know, this is my first time actually hearing any of his music. And it is, in a word, awesome. The intro is great, with some fantastic guitar work, and really the whole piece is quite strong instrumentally, but obviously the main event here is the guy’s voice. The way he sings honestly seems to me almost like something you’d hear on Broadway, if Broadway were a bit more metal. As I said before, I really love this kind of theatrical, over-the-top kind of singing, and this is about as good as anything I’ve ever heard in that style. He goes from the softer, melodic parts, to the rougher parts, to the huge soaring sections with ease, and as a plus the whole song is incredibly catchy. This song is nearly ten minutes, but honestly it doesn’t feel like it at all; there’s no point in the song where I feel like it’s dragging. I will definitely be investigating Meatloaf further, and asking myself why the fuck I didn’t do so sooner.
As a side note, this song really reminds me of some other song every time I hear it. I thought I’d have figured it out by the time I wrote these results, but I haven’t, so I’m leaving this here as a sort of note to myself in case I ever do.
9.5 pointsbl5150Beyond Twilight - Ecstasy Arise
So this is a fairly solid prog metal piece. There’s nothing here that really blows me away musically; though the band is quite adept, much of it isn’t hugely memorable. The high point here is obviously Kelly Carpenter. He is fantastic. Not on the “what the hell is this” level of Outworld,
but still, really good. The chorus is the best part of the song, and despite being sort of an “unexpected” melody (I don’t really know a better way to put this), it ends up being quite catchy.
Unfortunately, as I said before, the rest of the song doesn’t do a ton for me. It’s all perfectly well performed prog metal, but there’s just nothing here that really catches my attention, beside the aforementioned Kelly Carpenter.
7 pointsSaculIgorrr - Tout Petite Moineau
And while we’re on the topic of “what the hell is this”….
Sacul, sometimes you hit, and sometimes you miss, but you pretty regularly send me some of the weirdest stuff I’ve ever heard. This definitely falls under that category, and also falls under being a huge fucking hit.
So let’s talk a bit about it. I feel like if Mike Patton were a woman, this is what his music would sound like. Operatic vocals, bizarre growls/roars/whatever the hell those are, electronic music backed by very stately violin…. Honestly, this song should just be a fucking mess of a disaster, but somehow it’s not. Her vocals are absolutely amazing, whether they’re of the operatic variety, or the shrieks and screams. The dubstep-y electronic backing works shockingly well with the avant-garde vocal performance, so much so that I’m actually surprised this is the only time I’ve heard such a thing done. I also love how the violin maintains its same classical sort of pace and sound, regardless of what’s happening with the rest of the song, which again REALLY SHOULDN’T WORK, but for some reason it does.
Have some points.
9.5 pointsTrain Of NaughtBlack Stone Cherry - Blind Man
I think I’ve heard of this band before. I just kinda assumed they were a typical radio rock band. And well, they kinda are… but then maybe not? Maybe about 20 or 30 years ago.
Despite being a modern band, they’ve got a decidedly old-school rock’n’roll sound about them, but with the plus of modern production, so all the instrument tones are nice and clear.
I guess I don’t really have a ton to say about this one. It didn’t blow me away, but it’s very good and I haven’t tired of listening to it yet.
8 pointsScorpionTYR - The Lay of Thyrm
BY THE SWORD IN MY - wait a minute this band has other songs? Huh.
I have not heard this one before. Despite knowing of TYR for probably about five or six years, I have only ever listened to two of their songs.
This one is… well, pretty much what I would expect from them. Galloping guitars (adjective chosen because I’m pretty sure I actually heard a horse in this song), great vocals, anthemic choruses. I guess you might call this predictability? Normally this would tend to be a detriment for a band, but somehow TYR fuckin’ make it work. I don’t think it surpasses By The Sword In My Hand (but then, what can??), but it’s a solid piece of power metal awesomery nonetheless.
Also, your song 2 I am 90% was one you’ve sent me before. Fortunately, your song 1 submission was accepted.
8 pointsTom BombadilTenhi - Huomen
You know, from the cover art, I kind of presumed this would be a black metal type band. And maybe some of their other music is, but this piece definitely is not. This is a very atmospheric, kind of eerie piece of music. The eeriness, (is that a word?) comes mostly from the vocals. I don’t know what he’s saying, or even what language he’s saying it in, but his deep voice and his delivery of the lyrics gives a very mournful cast to the song. It makes an interesting contrast with the music, which, while not cheerful by any stretch, does carry a more hopeful sound to it. Also I should mention, the acoustic guitar here as beautiful. It really seems like the centerpiece of the song here, moreso than the vocals.
8.5 points425Lorde - Buzzcut Season
For future reference, any time you think to yourself, “Wow, this song was such a big hit, Shadow Ninja has definitely heard it”, just go ahead and send it, I probably haven’t heard it. I have not heard Royals, as far as I know.
Nonetheless, I find it hard to imagine that you could have made a better choice than you did here, so lament not. This is a fantastic piece of music, and I’m going to say it’s dream pop, or at least what I
think dream pop should sound like. Lorde’s voice is absolutely incredible, very light and melodic and perfectly suited to the dreamlike atmosphere created by the music and the lyrics. And since you mentioned the lyrics (and I did as well), let’s mention them for the moment. You are quite right that the lyrics are more to my taste than probably any other song you’ve sent so far. To be honest, I find it hard to quantify what kind of lyrics I enjoy. A sometimes I just straight up don’t listen to them, but I think more often I’m looking less for words that convey any sort of meaning, but moreso words that fit together in an artful kind of way, that contribute to an emotion or a feeling of a song, but not necessarily conveying any meaning in and of themselves, at least to me.
I don’t know if that makes any sense. One thing me and my brother discussed yesterday was lyrics, and he happened to mention liking vague or metaphorical lyrics, so that he could create his own meaning around them. I often like the same thing in lyrics, but I really don’t associate any “meaning” to the lyrics themselves, I actively prefer the lack of any specific meaning, whether in the song, or by my own association. Or I think, at least. Most of this is me noticing the stuff I like, and then kind of triyng to reverse engineer from there. You can ignore most of this, I’m fairly sure it doesn’t make any sense. Regardless, this song is awesome, and I love it.
10 pointsSTANDINGS
Scorpion - 43
425 - 42.5
Tom Bombadil - 42.5
Bolsters - 42
Nekov - 41
Sacul - 40
Tomislav95 - 40
Train of Naught - 39.5
bl5150 - 37.5
OK now it is time for ROUND 6!! I will try to keep this round under a week this time. I have gotten a ton of awesome music so far, and I am sure you guys will deliver once more. Actually, one of my main motivations for writing up the results is so I can listen to the songs whenever I want, instead of within my specific roulette listening rubric. So the awesomer your songs are, the quicker results will come! …I think that is the conclusion to be drawn from the thing I said. ANYWAY, two round left to go, you guys! We can do it, I believe in us.