Round 2 Results:
Luoto: Communic – Waves of Visual Decay First impression: Each minute I was expecting growls to begin, and they didn’t! This is great.Honestly, that was to be expected if anyone actually have heard this song, because this is exactly the kind of dark progressive metal music that was all over my latest Top 50 Albums Thread. Need, Wolverine, Evergrey, Vanden Plas, those kind of bands. This doesn’t invent anything new in the genre. This band simply takes the usual formula for dark progressive metal and gives it a little spin of their own, with the singer that sounds a bit rough, but also belts some unexpected high notes.
Catchy, changing, never overstaying its welcome even though it’s over eight minutes, engaging the listener with both well thought out melodies and fitting riffs, this scratches my itch for the progressive metal I’ve been into lately, and this band goes straight on my check out list. I’m impressed. Why the hell did I even give you immunity? You would’ve nailed this even without it. Welcome to the main part, maybe this time you will get it right.
9/10LordCost: Rishloo - LandminesFirst impression: I’m not convinced by what transpires in the middle of the song, but the ending is ridiculously good, the most memorable thing in this round so far.One week in, I’m moderately convinced by what transpires in the middle of the song, and yet the ending is still so ridiculously good, the rest of the song just can’t reach it. Instead, it builds the whole thing to this perfect climax.
The beginning here is chilling and beautiful, and then the song goes on an adventure by itself. I feel like it’s balancing right on the edge of madness, with those slight vocal effects and questing vocal passages, swaying from highly intense to calmer sections. I’m still not exactly convinced that was the best way to organize the main bulk of the song, but it works and I grew familiar with all the changes it offers during that short period of time; and when the song hits the calm section which goes into the guitar solo which goes into the ending, I know I’m in for a fucking good time.
I have no idea what this song is about, as the lyrics don’t make any sense (sixteen points to make? mnemonic man?), but once again they make for a perfect singing material, as the singer makes those syllables flow in “
I've had enough of idle reverie / I for one can only see / What dreams may come for us / I've had enough of flight and gravity / Spill me out evolved and screaming: I'm not meaningless”. This ending is fantastic. This song is great. Thank you.
9/10Sacul: Goldfrapp - StrangerFirst impression: This is beautiful. One of two songs this round that sent shivers down my spine on the very first listen. I’m fairly sure you should start planning your strategy for the next five rounds.While this song has lost a bit of its charm over the week, this is still a beautiful, warm and dusky song that still sends shivers down my spine during the wordless part after “I’m drifting deep, deeper in”. I like the soft melancholy of this song, and I like her voice a lot, although she really could’ve enunciate some words better, because sometimes she sounds like she’s trying to sing with her mouth full.
Actually, this reminds me of that album you sent in the weekly album thread, Beth Gibbons and Rustin’ Man. This has a similar warm, autumn-ish atmosphere, and small wonder I enjoyed this. As I said, it lost a bit of staying power as I started to pick on her accent and way of singing, but I was always glad to hear this song come up in the rotation.
8/10Puppies_On_Acid: Atlantean Kodex – Twelve Stars and an Azure Gown First impression: Interesting ballad-like storytelling, and definitely the coolest song title in this batch.This song meets the meaning of “ballad” in its original form, which I have found interesting. Epic, plodding atmosphere, anthemic chorus, and the verses slightly change the pace as the story progresses; this truly feels like an anthem, a hymn, a praising ballad.
High points here are the changing verses—I loved when the song suddenly switched into a high gear, classic heavy metal style—and the transitions between sections. Low points are the spoken word sections, which I didn’t get at all, the vocals which are quite an acquired taste and, I felt, could’ve used more power behind them. And I would say the repetitive chorus is a problem, too. But then again, the chorus is quite good by itself, so while I do think it’s repeated a little too many times in the song as it is (perhaps they should’ve changed it a bit each time?), I found I’ve enjoyed singing along with it.
While nowhere near the two best songs of this round, this song was good, simple as that.
7.5/10wolfking: Scar Symmetry – Ghost Prototype I – Measurement of ThoughtFirst impression: Each minute I was expecting growls to begin, and they did! This was somewhat engaging.This is more like it! I stand by my words, this is indeed somewhat engaging, with great guitar tone, nice vocals and catchy songwriting. The growls, when they appear, don’t detract from the song at all, and actually enhance this simple metal song to a somewhat menacing, heavier entity. The instrumental break is cohesive and in line with the rest of this track; short enough to not overstay its welcome, but long enough to evolve on the ideas presented.
One of the things this song could do a bit better is, perhaps, to make the chorus a bit more aggressive. As it stands now, the song is playing it safe until the growls come, then goes adventurous with the guitar solo, and then retreats back into a safe space behind the walls of its chorus. This was an enjoyable listen, though.
7/10Indiscipline: Toto – Better WorldFirst impression: Wait, they had other songs this whole time?Well, my experience with Toto is obviously somewhat limited, as I only know one song. The most refreshing thing about the song you sent was the vocals, which were memorable and had a pleasant tone, because that’s honestly more than I can say about half of the songs in this round.
I liked the restrained instrumentation during the vocal performance, tastefully done. I liked the guitar solo between the first vocal section and the last one. What I can’t really comprehend is the need for a two minutes long intro, which, as it gets more progressive, doesn’t fit the rest of the song at all—the song even stops before it leads into the first verse. Neither have I understood the need for the outro, which takes another minute of instrumentation I could’ve lived without, also not quite connected to the main bulk of the song.
This could’ve been a fine song under five minutes, and then it would’ve cracked the “good” barrier, but as it stands, more than a third of this song don’t fit with the rest of it.
6.5/10Tyrias: Patrick Watson - LighthouseFirst impression: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I’ve got your strategy here.This is very different from Miðaftann, of course. This song has a floating, dreamy vibe, with just the piano in the background and the lightest touches of instrumentation, and the singer quietly wails over them. I always associate lighthouses with something dramatic, you know, probably because of White Pearls, Black Oceans song by Sonata Arctica, but even then, my recent favourite lighthouse song by iamthemorning is still pretty dramatic. This song isn’t dramatic, although the grand ending with trumpets (are those trumpets?) may suggest so; it’s more like a… very relaxed ballad. While this is nice, I feel that the ending either didn’t had enough buildup, because for me, it comes out of nowhere, and the rest of the song was too dreamlike, lacking real substance.
Well, your strategy still worked, because I enjoyed, but it’s not even close to Miðaftann or even Stranger, the song that robbed you of another 0.5 bonus for your ability.
6.5/10jingle.boy: Moon Safari – Lover’s EndFirst impression: Man, this might rival Spandau Ballet in how deliberately sweet this is.Look, I’ve never said “deliberately sweet” is a bad thing.
Of course, this is not exactly the songs I usually tend to love. Happy songs often don’t quite excite me—though sometimes they do—and while I’m afraid this also falls under the “happy” label in my book, this has this almost wistful quality to you that does have a certain impact on me. The chorus here is a bit annoying, and overall the song balances on a brink of being too sweet, but somehow it manages to balance on it all the way through and land somewhere between average and good.
I won’t go out of the way to listen to this song, and—you would probably think it a blasphemy—I liked the Spandau Ballet song more, but this is decent. Not sure if it puts it in the upper or the lower half of this round.
6.5/10Lethean: Believe - MemoriesFirst impression: This definitely has potential, although I feel the singer isn’t doing this song justice.This might be the most frustrating song of this round, because it does a lot of things right: the mournful beginning, good transition into heavy guitars, fantastic usage of strings, and even the verses work alright in context of the song. And that’s where the horrible chorus comes in.
Not only the chorus exposes this nasal whining tone of the singer on “I’m lonely, all in my memories”, it also does it while the strings are playing happily in the background (at least the first few times the chorus appears), and I half expected to see a Russian traditional dance ensemble to spin away happily on scene while this chorus was playing. And the chorus is actually not bad when it’s toned down in the final part of the song, but the way he holds those notes during faster parts is akin to nails on a chalkboard for me.
I feel I shouldn’t be that fixated on a bad chorus, because the rest of the song actually works quite well. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t work is two choruses in the middle of the song. This certainly have enough good aspects to warrant a score above average, but thanks to the chorus, not only does it not qualify as good, is also fails to award you bonus points for your ability.
6/10TAC: Allegaeon – Threshold of PerceptionFirst impression: Each minute I was expecting clean vocals to appear, and they didn’t! This is… salvageable.Well, at first I thought you were running away with it, as the beginning of this tune rivaled the Human Supremacy Illusion with its brilliant slow start effortlessly flowing into the ever-going guitar shredding along with female choir (or probably synth effect). Then it turned out that this song is full-growls, no clean vocals.
This song was a huge advantage over the other growl-fronted songs in this round. It’s neither plodding, nor it’s a full blast beat assault. It keeps moving, it keeps the riffs going, chugging at the fast pace, and it also gives the song a little space to breathe with the instrumental interludes before it launches into another growl assault. It also seems like there are two singers here, which is a welcome variety.
So what I dislike here is that I feel that the full-on growling vocal technique all the way through the song makes this song extremely one-dimensional. There are no vocal melodies on this song, not like on some of the Insomnium songs, even with growls, Ephemeral comes to mind. I can’t sing along to this. To draw some comparisons, this is also like a heavy freight train chugging along the tracks at the highest pace. It doesn’t get into a trainwreck, but if you aren’t a particular fan of trains, it’s not that engaging to watch it going forward and forward.
6/10