Round 3 ResultsStadler: The Michael Schenker Group – SamuraiFirst Impressions:Okay knowing what I know about this artist I am prepared for this to go very, very poorly. Like hmm… yeah this is an alright hard rock song but I am just not sure what about it is supposed to stand out at all.
The guitar work here is at least pretty solid, both the leads and the riffs are interesting enough. I don’t really care for the vocals, barely notice the drums and the bass, the organ mostly just provides texture. Uhh. Yeah I don’t know what to say sorry.
Final Thoughts:I could just post an endless string of confused emotes and that’d be a good enough take on how I feel about this but. I genuinely don’t know what you’re doing at this point, dude. I can see how the last three entries border on stuff I might be interested in but this one just eludes me entirely why you’d think to send it to me. 80’s hard rock is not generally my thing.
Anyways, the chorus of this is actually really good and I like it more than I expected it to. The vocals on the verses are also… strange. I still haven’t figured out if I like them or if they completely miss the mark for me, so we’ll settle on a “ehh”.
Also I’m pretty sure the version of this I was sent has an audio glitch in the third verse & I’m not going to take it into account because it absolutely sounds like an audio glitch and nothing else. It really bugs me though, like, a lot lol. Okay anyways.
I like the chorus on this but the rest I can’t say does a ton for me. It’s not. Awful or anything but it’s really not my style of music and I don’t get much out of this on relistens. So yeah. That’s all I have to say.
6.5/10Train of Naught: The Nautilus – AccupuncherFirst Impressions:So it’s not impossible that I missed listening to your song right when you sent it, so, oops.
Right away this is definitely hitting some right notes, a nice heavy riff going on in the intro. When the vocals enter I’m more like “oh…” though. I’ve decried this –core style of harsh vocals before and I’m not finding it particularly appealing here either. Yeah a lot of this actually ends up feeling like heavy for the sake of heavy which I’m generally less a fan of. The quiet break in the middle is pretty cool though. It’s a nice reprieve from the rest of the song. The rest of the song being… ehh!
Final Thoughts:Yeah, I don’t think my opinions on this have changed much upon relistens. That intro is pretty killer & if the whole song had stuck in that vein I bet I would’ve really liked this. But this devolves too much into “generic loudcore” metal for me to really stay interested in, unfortunately.
And those vocals are incredibly, absurdly unappealing. I’m thankful they’re at least buried under the music most of the time. I think the “chorus” of this song in particular would’ve worked a lot better had it been sung instead of screamed, or even if there was a layer of sung vocals mixed in with the harsh vocals.
Really musically I guess the song isn’t bad. There are riffs here that work & the instrumentation is solid, there’s a moment in the middle with some cool bass work going on. And that clean break is honestly pretty nice.
Man, the more I think about it, the real big failure of this song for me is the vocals. I mean, the music isn’t really that outstanding or unique, but it’s solid. But the vocals just destroy a lot of the appeal for me. And there’s definitely an argument to be made for a lot of it being kind of samey-sounding. Also I guess, the bass drum is too loud. That’s more a nitpick though.
This certainly hits more right notes for me than stuff like Textures and Old Man Gloom previously, in terms of really heavy stuff, but it’s not something I can imagine myself getting too into. It’s not a bad song by any means though, just, kind of okay with a few problems and really genuinely unappealing vocals.
6.75/10Nekov: Immanu El - Under Your Wings I’ll HideFirst Impressions:Okay when I say I like post-rock it comes with the disclaimer that most post-rock doesn’t do enough to stand out in any real way so unless it’s really emotionally captivating it’s a risk to take. But let’s see. Thus far I would say that it is, indeed… a song. I dunno, the drumming is pretty solid. If this is building up to a great climax then I can see it working for me. Because it kind of has the vibe that it’s going to… and nope that was supposed to be the climax, not the buildup to it. Dang.
This does have a nice chill vibe to it though, even if it’s lacking the emotional potency I prefer having from this style of music. And it’s diverse enough. Not like, especially diverse, doesn’t do anything particularly unusual for the genre but it’s, fine.
Final Thoughts:This is just a very… fine post-rock song. It sounds nice. The instrumentation is solid. It’s definitely very explosions in the sky-esque.
Explosions in the sky don’t really do a lot for me. They were never one of my favorites and at this point I find them really dull, honestly. I mean yes, this isn’t unpleasant in any way. But it’s just kind of. Dull? Something I can only see myself enjoying as background music, I guess. It’s got all the twinkliness of standard post-rock and it has decent atmosphere to it, but.
Well there’s just not really much emotional depth here. Things are nice and they sound nice. There’s no conflict in this music, nothing challenging to make it interesting.
All that said, I mean, I don’t mind listening to this at all. The strings and vocals at least make this kind of worth listening to, but I am not going to remember what a single second of this sounds like a week from now, I imagine. It’s just wholly unremarkable and unmemorable. But it’s fine enough.
7/10Evermind: Sunburst – Remedy of My HeartFirst Impressions:The lunatic. The mad. He is. For sending such a long song. This is opening very much like some epic movie score or something. Thus far the metal in this song is… very solid, I can dig it but it’s not anything unique. The constant bombastic nature of the song is what the real draw here is, I imagine. The singer is “technically” pretty fine though not really my style so much.
It’s solid stuff overall though not hitting me especially hard. Right near the halfway mark though I am digging this more jagged groove going on. Oh good they’re doing. That one thing I’ve always dug. Putting a noodly guitar in the background of the instrumentals to provide a nice energetic backdrop. I don’t know why but that always works really well. Mmm. The clean break is fine enough though really nothing special. The guitar lead at the climax of the song is pretty great though and the music behind it has a nice driving swell to it. I don’t know if this really needed to be as long as it is, it’s a very standard prog metal semi-epic, but I mean, it’s alright, yeah.
Final Thoughts:Really I’m trying to figure out why you’d go out of your way to use up your one song over 12 minutes on this. Because it’s just so… average. At least for about half of the song. I know that’s a weird as heck thing to be feeling about this but this song just feels kind of by-the-numbers as far as symphonic prog metal goes. I will say the orchestration is at least pretty good, though not Mob Mentality-good. But it’s definitely more than a gimmick.
Beyond that though I really do not know what to say about the rest of this. The riffs are okay. Nothing really that unique and nothing that hits me particularly hard. The vocals are fine, very power metal-y but they have decent power and depth to them. There’s just not much that stands out in the first half of this track except the bombastic intro, really. Heck it’s basically just a power metal song and nothing else.
It definitely does get better at the halfway mark when it takes more of a turn towards jagged metal riffing, and I do genuinely love that bit with the noodly guitar in the background. Way more compelling than the very, very average solo after it. Very much a “look how fast we can play” kind of solo, it just sounds like something I’ve heard before a dozen times.
Honestly most of the back half is where the appeal of this song lies for me though. The clean break is notable both for being the only really chill moment of the entire song and also being pretty nice. Nothing amazing, but enjoyable. And yeah that solo right after it is way more of the kind of guitar lead I prefer to hear. And honestly it builds up into the intense & aggressive finale well too.
You know. If the front half was cut down to just the intro and maybe a bit of the standard, generic metal stuff and then the rest of the song played, and it was like 8-9 minutes long, I’d probably like this a lot. But it’s really slow to get anywhere unfortunately. It balances out to just being… solid. The good parts aren’t really thaaat good but they’re pretty fine. And the weaker parts aren’t really bad at all, just standard and not really that compelling.
So ehh. Overall I think this is actually getting a slightly better score than I was expecting it to going into this writeup, mostly for the better moments in the back half alone. But I doubt I’ll be checking out this band further. Who knows though.
7.5/10Tomislav95: Kaddisfly – CampfireFirst Impressions:Can’t find a video or bandcamp link or anything at all here, unfortunately. And yeah I’m not gonna complain about the awkward intro whatever. It still has enough of a start by its own. Anyways right away this is giving off really similar vibes to the Rx Bandits song from last round. So obviously I’m going to have to mentally compare it to that one.
I like the vocals on this a bit more, that chorus especially is pretty nice. This goes more of an atmospheric route though and less of a “controlled chaos” route. And it’s… pretty solid, yeah. Not really blown away by it but, it’s nice.
Final Thoughts:I kind of don’t know what else to say about this one that I didn’t already say in my first impressions writeup. Hmm. The chorus is really good. Wait no already said that. The chorus reminds me of a Thank You Scientist chorus quite a bit? A slower-paced and powerful release of emotion with a pretty catchy vocal line. Okay there that’s an original thought.
The bridge is also a nice cooldown moment and builds up decently into the final chorus. So that’s good. Look I’m trying it’s genuinely hard to have much new to say about this one. It’s not really that similar to the Rx Bandits song I guess I just compared them because the previous one was on my mind.
Outside of the chorus of this one the rest is fine but not really as strong, but that chorus is actually genuinely really great. The ending feels a bit abrupt but I imagine it bleeds right into the next track on the album the same as how it starts so ehh.
This is a fine enough song. I enjoy listening to it. I don’t really have much else to say about it though, really.
7.5/10home: Eidola – Humble Ledger (Gnostic States)First Impressions:When you get sent post-hardcore it’s basically impossible to predict what you’re going to get because it’s such an awful genre identifier that covers a wide variety of styles somehow. Like this starts out as just. A pretty dang solid alt-rock song.
Honestly if this was just the entire song I’d be okay with that? The vocals are nice and I enjoy the laid-back, nostalgic vibe of the guitar work. And oh dang, the vocals building up to the second chorus, that harsher vocal layer in the background especially, man. O-oh and then this changes to something completely different halfway through. Well. Alright. There’s a nice frantic energy to this half of the song but I think it could use a bit more crunch. Again I like the guitar work in general though. Okay and the last minute is back to chill stuff. That is. Really bad transitioning honestly. Unfortunate really. I honestly do prefer the more chill stuff in this song and would’ve been fine if it had just been that stuff and honestly the awkwardness of the faster stuff makes it feel a bit out of place. But it’s still a good song nonetheless?
Final Thoughts:Really, the first half of this is so good. I don’t know exactly how to describe the sound they’re tapping into here but it’s a sound I really, really like. It’s subtle but there’s a ton of power to it. Like, no fancy guitar work or anything, very basic instrumentation in general. The vocals do most of the work, both the main vocal lines and all the other little touches that are added in, vocal harmonies and occasional background voice coming in. It’s really just great stuff and it builds up so well.
And then... the momentum completely fizzles out as it transforms into an entirely different song that just isn’t as compelling. In comparison, at least. It’s solid enough stuff, the vocals are still powerful and the instrumentation is doing a lot more work, and this part of the song definitely has its own build to it as well. It’s just. The transition into this feels so poorly handled and it doesn’t feel like a logical continuation of the same song. And the transition to the quiet finale is even worse. The song just… stops right as it’s just about to hit a climax, again.
So in the end this song feels like kind of a total disaster structurally. It has two separate segments that both cut off right before they reach their peak preventing either of them from reaching the power they could have had. And as well the entire last minute is completely disposable.
This song is just so frustrating to me. On one hand I am interested in checking out this band more & planned to listen to their recent album anyways. On the other hand I just can’t like this song as much as I want to because of the extreme wasted potential here. Ugh.
7.75/10Luoto: Oddland – UntrueFirst Impressions:So you’ve played these guys in plug.dj a number of times and I’m sure everyone will know this is your song the moment the band name gets guessed in hangman. Nice. This intro is… something. Oh man I actually really dig that dissonant melody and the mood is just so frantic and heavy. Dang. What a way to start a song.
Yeah, I can dig the jagged feel this song wants to seem to go with. Though they haven’t done anything as cool as that intro since, unfortunately. I think the song could serve to be a bit more diverse in the middle? They do hammer on a kind of similar sound for a lot of the song but there’s a cleaner moment to break things up about two-thirds through and that brings my interest back, so. That’s cool. Oh nice the outro comes back to the sound of the intro, that’s a good note to end on.
Final Thoughts:I don’t know what it is about this song but I see that it’s 6 minutes long yet it always feels way shorter than that every time I listen to. Like in a “oh, it’s already over?” sort of way. Which can be both a good and bad thing but it’s definitely a good thing here because I get that feeling in more of a “I wish there was more” sense than anything else here.
I don’t know, I just like the guitar work in this song mostly. This kind of jagged riffing is totally my jam, especially with the drums playing really straight on top of it. And the vibe of the entire section of the guitar solo near the end is pretty cool too. Uhh. I think that’s about all I have to add on that note though.
The vocals are pretty solid. Of the stuff I listen to they’re probably closest to Dissona though pitched a bit deeper, but the singing style is very similar. Considering I think it’s a pretty solid singing style no complaints here, not my favorite style or anything but it fits.
But yeah this is just a pretty solid prog metal track, I don’t really know what more to say. I don’t feel it incredibly strongly but I enjoy it quite a bit every time I listen to it & there’s enough here to keep me interested the whole way through. I feel like this writeup is a bit short but I don’t really have much else to say other than, yeah, good stuff.
8/10LordCost: Twelve Foot Ninja – Dig For BonesFirst Impressions:Would you call this, party rock, then? Ahaheh. Eww. Right away though this is… huh. It’s got this kind of eccentric vibe and then the djent guitars show up. This singer is actually pretty fitting for the style, the deeper tone of his voice plays well off the vibe of the song. And there’s the frantic cleaner (Arabic?) moments that break up the louder bits to create decent dynamics. Okay, and, suddenly chiptune. You did say this song was kind of all over the place but it feels a lot more cohesive than something like Cardiacs.
It has its moments where it really plays its core sound straight but the oddities throughout the song don’t just feel shoehorned and they break up the heavier moments effectively. Granted I can’t say I feel it especially strongly but it is an enjoyable metal track for what it is.
Final Thoughts:I can’t really pin down what this song is going for, but I almost end up not caring because it’s just interesting and enjoyable the whole way through so whatever go with the flow and let’s rock out to some weird chiptune interlude while our faces get djented off by sitar. Woo.
But no really what ties everything together here are these vocals. They play off all the different styles the song goes through really well and sound damn fine while doing so. There’s more of a focus on the clean singing too but the harsh vocals sound pretty fine as well and are used to accentuate some of the more intense moments.
You know what. These guys are kind of. A less weird SikTh. Which is exactly what I’ve always wanted SikTh to be. That might be it. Like there’s weirdness here but there’s still definitely a core to the song (and a pretty good chorus) and there’s also a lot of different vocal styles here (I’m pretty sure there’s at least two, maybe three singers, actually) but none of them are grating or overly weird like SikTh tends to have. And they’re not as technical either but that’s totally fine by me.
I can’t say this song is especially powerful or anything but damn is it a fun listen regardless. Totally get what you mean when you say you’d play this at a party. Definitely going to be checking out more from these guys and hopefully it’ll be as good or even better, maybe.
8.25/10