Bolsters™ The Roulette, v2 ★ THE CONCLUSION ★

[Evermind]

Axiom
Fates Warning
Pathosray

What are we guessing again?

[Bolsters]

You got two of those right.

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

Spheric Universe Experience

[jingle.boy]

At Vance was at the top of the list.

[Bolsters]

They still are.

[Elite]

I can't see the image

[jingle.boy]

Rather than Axiom, I'll go with Arion.

[Bolsters]

Rather than Axiom, I'll go with Arion.

Nope.

What are we guessing again?

Why don't you tell me?

[Train of Naught]

Soen?

[Bolsters]

Correct.

[splent]

Atlas?

[Bolsters]

Round Five Results

jingle.boy - Xandria - Like a Rose on the Grave of Love

• I'm still not sure what you were expecting with this submission. By all accounts you seemed to have "checked out" and your goal was to cover all of the seven bonuses in the remaining rounds, and to hell with trying to impress me. But then you send a song that I actually quite like, and ended up wanting to award diamond to? I'm just not sure if you did it on purpose or not. Anyway this is a beautiful celtic-inspired ballad, I'm loving the instrumentation and the backing vox especially. I mean the line Like a Rose on the Grave of Love is pretty damned corny and quite a mouthful for a hook, but that might be my only real "complaint" here, if you could even call it that. Anyway, with your first diamond and bonus star, and potentially a pearl star later, you've really gained some ground.

Elite - Eisley - Mr. Moon

• This was a very wise choice. I'm loving the 90's vibe I get from the songwriting in this track (even though it was released in 2011). I'm loving the chorus especially here, very nice vocal melodies in particular and a good voice and vocal performance. The rhythm section is a little active aswell (in a good way) to keep things interesting.

bl5150 - Saffire - The Redemption

• Once again you send me a solid melodic rock track, this one leaning more towards synths and organs though. There's a ton of different sounds in this song; synth, organ, keyboard strings, clean funky guitar, distorted power chords, piano - and it all works for each section that these sounds appear in. It's rounded out with a pretty good solo section aswell, I like the melodic beginnings to the guitar solo and subtle use of wah, which is a nice break between the first half of the song and the rest of the instrumental section. Vocally things are more than decent aswell. This is good stuff as usual.

Evermind - Rainbow - Ariel

• Well I knew I was probably getting these guys from you eventually, since you asked about them, but I thought you'd be going for the amethyst star. Anyway, it seems like from your description that you chose a song from the black sheep album of the band's discography, and from this song I can kind of see it - this doesn't sound too much like the few Dio-era songs I've heard. But I didn't mind this at all. The plodding and predictable main guitar riff is not really that great, and isperhaps a big reason as to why I don't rank this higher, but the song has a nice atmosphere and groove to it, so I can forgive this particular grievance. It is perhaps a little overlong aswell, but not so much so that it's much of a grievance either. The lead work throughout the song is good though, the little licks in the verses break the monotony of them a bit, Doogie isn't a singer I'm really familiar with much but I'm not minding him here, especially towards the end of the track. So yeah, pretty good, but I do have to wonder if perhaps something from the 70's might have scored better. Still, silver is pretty good.

Shadow Ninja 2.0 - Ihsahn - Until I Too Dissolve

• This one turned out to be a bit of a grower this round. I like the retro-style guitar riffing combined with a really fat-sounding rhythm guitar/bass sound, it sounds kind of like a melding of modern and classic styles. The pre-chorus is probably my favourite thing here, the subtle synth sounds round out the sound nicely. The vox here are pretty good too, the harsh stuff is perhaps a little borderline, but is utilised in moderation so I don't mind.

Tomislav95 - Nevermore - Believe in Nothing

• So I'm pretty sure I've listened to a little bit from Nevermore before, but I couldn't tell you what. I remember my impressions being that they were fairly generic and I failed to be interested at the time. I guess this song is a touch generic aswell, but I actually quite liked it. I like the contrast of the acoustic-driven verses and the heavier sections especially, infact the acoustic parts might be my favourite thing about this song funnily enough.

Tyrias - Chelsea Wolfe - Reins

• This one was a bit difficult to get a read on. I think ultimately it's another song that seems to go nowhere, the intro builds quite, I like the building up of the dynamics even if the guitar tone is a bit of an acquired taste that I can't say I have completely acquired. The soft dreamy vocals throughout the song are nice aswell. But after the intro the song seems to just stop and start building up again. I'm kind of reminded of something I said about one of Elite's tracks in a previous round, where it sounds like the song builds up to nothing over and over, and while these buildups are reasonably effective (if a little drawn out), it just feels like something is missing from the song as a result.

senecadawg2 - James Blake - Retrograde

• This was an odd one. The first half is pretty ordinary, the cheesy clap sample that sounds like it's straight out of the FL Studio demo isn't doing it for me and is a bit annoying to be honest. Near the halfway mark the song takes a somewhat interesting turn with the chiptune-esque synths that take over the soundscape, because on first listen I wasn't really expecting it and it made the song a bit more interesting, but ultimately this disappears and then the song doesn't really go anywhere at all after that. I must say however that I do quite like everything about the vocals in this track, the humming as backing vox in particular works very well and is executed perfectly. I guess there just isn't enough going on here other than the vocals and some brief moments that manage to hold my interest.

splent - Imogen Heap - Hide and Seek

• Yeah, I'm not sure I have too much to say about this one, because virtually nothing happens in this song at all and there's not much to comment on. It's entirely vocals and vocoder? I mean she has a very nice voice and the vocoder is setup to be somewhat interesting, and I know how a vocoder works so I know there's some keyboard playing controlling the pitch of it aswell. But I've had an opportunity to play with a vocoder before, and you basically just turn knobs until it sounds "good" or "interesting" - literally anyone can do that, there's no effort required to make a vocoder do something cool. So to have an entire piece centered around one just strikes me as being a little lazy, and since that is literally all the song is, it just makes the song as a whole feel very bland despite how nice Imogen sounds and how well she controls the pitch with the keyboard. So yeah I was pretty disappointed with this, on first listen I liked what I was hearing but it was disappointing when I realised that this wasn't an intro to something, that the entire song was just that.

Train of Naught - Thrice - Beggars

• This had some good and some not so good stuff for my tastes. The first couple of minutes are actually quite good, I like the subtle effect on the guitar and the softly spoken vocals work well together with the guitar. I like the bass aswell, it's a little more active that I was expecting. Anyway, once things become a bit more aggressive it loses me a little - I can appreciate the emotion in the vocals here, but the timbre of his voice when he really strains puts me off a bit. The guitar is pretty sludgy-sounding aswell, not sure how to describe it really. The lead guitar in the outro is a bit annoying aswell, especially when the guitarist just picks one note quickly, probably because I just don't like the tone. I don't have a problem with a raw sound, but in the two Thrice songs I've ever heard, it's maybe a bit too raw for me. I had a hard decision between this and splent's song for the coal star, but in the end I decided that while his song was rather bland, it didn't really annoy me at all. Yours did. So, hopefully you can turn it around now that you've got a second coal star, like Rich seems to have managed.

Scoreboard


Bonus Star Rankings

So there we have it. I would like you all to now send me songs that will be used as your submissions for the sixth round of this roulette.

[Train of Naught]

I'm just gonna go out on a bang, not sure how this will fare but the next round could very well be my last.

No regrets from me so far apart from the Deadly Circus Fire, but maybe I was pushing my luck with Thrice a bit after getting a positive response from the TDH song.

[Bolsters]

Oh, and here's the thing from that rather pointless deviation earlier. Figured out what they are yet?





In other news, there's only three rounds left and some of you haven't been going for bonus stars. So here's a reminder for all of you about that.


Assuming that all of you actually want three bonus stars:

The following people need to ask for a bonus in all three remaining rounds
senecadawg2

The following people need to ask for a bonus in two of the three remaining rounds
jingle.boy, Shadow Ninja 2.0,  Train of Naught, Tyrias

The following people need to ask for a bonus in one of the three remaining rounds
Elite, Evermind, splent, Tomislav95

The following people don't need to pay any attention to this, they have three bonus stars already
bl5150

[splent]

 Man, oh well. I guess considering this is around five and is the first real bust that I've had, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it happened. It was going to happen sooner or later. I will send something more to your liking for the next round. I have a couple of ideas I'm playing with.

[Tyrias]

I'm convinced I have no idea about your tastes now . The only 3 songs I know here are all damn great, and 2 of them (Chelsea Wolfe and James Blake) got nothing and the other one the coal star.

[Evermind]

Yeah, fine by me. I was hoping for gold, but I'll take silver, especially since Brent got a silver too. Nice job Chad. Good that you didn't ask for a ballad star.

Funny how Brent and me are the only people who grabbed five non-bonus and non-coal stars in five rounds. 

[Tyrias]

Oh, and after reading that Thrice write-up again I'm thinking I won't send what I had planned originally for the next round. Will think a bit about that.

[Bolsters]

I'm convinced I have no idea about your tastes now .

This seems to be a rather common reaction during a Bolsters™ roulette.

[Train of Naught]

Sent last round, goodbye fellas, this has been fun and to splent: congrats on your pearl star

[senecadawg2]

I'm convinced I have no idea about your tastes now . The only 3 songs I know here are all damn great, and 2 of them (Chelsea Wolfe and James Blake) got nothing and the other one the coal star.

Yeah, I'm struggling here. Oh well...

Actually, never mind. I just sent and now I have 3 diamond pearls lined up. I can still win this thing.

[Tyrias]

3 diamonds and 2 pearls here, hopefully.

First one is a dubstep track.

Go hard or go home, they say.

[Train of Naught]

I promised myself at the start of this roulette to go out with some balls to the wall djent if I got 2 coal stars, but I pussy'd out.

[Bolsters]

I promised myself at the start of this roulette to go out with some balls to the wall djent if I got 2 coal stars, but I pussy'd out.

I do actually like some djent though.

[Train of Naught]

I know, but apart from the fact that I don't like sending all-time favorite songs because it can be annoying to see those get bashed - and this is one of those all-time faves - I gave the edge to the song I just sent, so far I've had a better reputation here with the less heavy stuff.

[Crow]

well, if you don't get a coal star this round, you can send the djent song next round

[Evermind]

I suggest Elite and ToN both send the most awful tune they can think of, that should be fun to watch.

[Train of Naught]

No, the djent song is not an option here stop it I still have two bonus stars to grant.

Also:

If I get a coal star, Parama is to blame, and if I get a positive result it was all me

This is your fault for turning me on to Beggars

[Crow]

no, it's bolsters' fault for sucking tbh 
there is nothing wrong with beggars.

[Bolsters]

I've got four submissions thus far.

[Evermind]

I'm not sure if I will be able to send today to be honest, I don't have a song planned (I do have a few of them lined up though) and I have some other business to attend. So it could happen that I will send tomorrow. But hey, I'll try my best to send as soon as I can.

[Shadow Ninja 2.0]

Sent.

[Elite]

I suggest Elite and ToN both send the most awful tune they can think of, that should be fun to watch.

See who gets booted

No way man, I'm winning this one!

[Evermind]

Wonder if I should go for peridot or amethyst star... got two songs I'm sure I will send, one peridot, one amethyst and I've got only one bonus star left to earn. Probably should wait this round out though. But that's where the chance of being cockblocked comes to play too.

Have I mentioned I love the way you handled bonuses? Very entertaining.

Edit: And sent. Let's see how my song fares in this round.

[splent]

Still having a hard time deciding what to send. jKLSDjglkasdjgl;kadjf;gkljad;lk