the followup chapters:
Dysrhythmia: tbh I wasn't super hyped for this anyways and yeeeah it's kind of... really boring and lifeless. the instrumentation is way too bare and the compositions feel like barely-structured jams that never go anywhere. pretty mediocre/maybe a bit bad lol oh well
Ihsahn: damn, saxophone makes everything better. but i actually like this quite a bit, most likely the only of these i'll really keep listening to
Jesu: this is. so long. and so tedious. every track is too long. the album as a whole is too long. it's not even that crushingly heavy, it tries to be i guess but. meh. it still sounds alright overall but it's a slog to listen through
Speaking to Stones: these are like, 5 good 6-8 prog metal songs stretched out to 9-14 minutes. the two longest ones especially feel too long, repeating their choruses and main riffs a bit too much, and the soloing on this album is pretty generally dire. but overall it's passable enough
added to the rotation this week: