---ROUND 4 RESULTS---1st Place: Sacul (+14 +28 Points) [PERK USED: DOUBLE POINTS]
Massive Attack - RisingsonFirst Impressions:
I was unsure about this at first, but I have a feeling it will win me over. Reminded me of Ulver in a handful of places.Alright, you seriously need to stop doing so well. I’m glad I made it so that prior score doesn’t matter in the final round, otherwise you might have already won with half of the roulette remaining.
You seem to have my tastes nailed down to a T, even outside of rock and metal, as the quality of this song suggests. This is like Ulver meets Gorillaz, which I never would have thought I needed in my life. The dark atmosphere here is fantastic and gives me some serious Perdition City vibes. This mostly comes from the layered instrumental which starts out great and gets even better halfway through when the feedback-y synth and clean guitars come in. I also liked the vocals a lot. They’ve got good flow, and they prioritize smoothness over flashiness, which compliments the vibe of the song well. There’s also a good contrast between the voices of the two different vocalists. Will definitely be checking this album out.
2nd Place: Kattleox (+13 Points)
Arcturus - For To End Yet AgainFirst Impressions:
That was weird. I think I liked it? I definitely liked the last half of it.This is much more up my alley compared to the stuff you’ve been sending up to this point. It’s got a weird, avant-garde metal sound with some unconventional instrumentation, and that’s almost always a plus in my book. The synths are often unorthodox, and the trumpets that come in towards the end are a great touch. Structure wise, the song has a heavier beginning and end, with an ambient section in the middle linking them together. This middle section is the only part I’m torn on; it does a good job at linking the beginning and the end together, but the first part with the piano definitely goes on for a bit too long. That said, I really like when it suddenly gets a lot darker sounding, then explodes back into the full band shortly afterwards. And the finale of this track is just fantastic; I’d say the build-up to it is largely worth it. I love how climactic it sounds, and that crazy keyboard solo at the end is just awesome. The ending is a bit abrupt, but that’s alright. I liked this one a lot.
3rd Place: Cyril (+12 Points)
Parius - Crashing Black MoonFirst Impressions:
This meanders a lot, but I like the sound. It’s kinda like if Between The Buried And Me had a better vocalist.Like I said in my first impressions, this reminded me of Between The Buried And Me a lot, both in terms of instrumentation and song structure. It’s heavy, it’s got some tight, technical performances, and the campy vibe is somewhat charming. That said, the highlight for me is easily the fun, manic energy that persists throughout. This is somewhat aided by the (lack of) song structure, which jumps all over the place with plenty of transitions that come at you hard and fast. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword though. I think the song meanders more than it should, and there’s a few sections that I probably would have liked to have gotten more attention. That might have come at the cost of some of the track’s energy though, so it’s hard to say. The ending is also probably the most underwhelming part of the song for me, which is unfortunate. I will say though that these issues bothered me more during my first few listens, and like most songs like this, once I got used to the transitions it ended up growing on me a fair amount. At the end of the day, it gets a pretty solid thumbs-up from me.
4th Place: Nekov (+11 Points)
Pure Reason Revolution - Bullitts DominaeFirst Impressions:
Straightforward song, with some nice sounding vocals and instrumentation.It’s somewhat hard to put into words why I like this song, but hey, I certainly like it. It’s pretty simple structure-wise, with a tried and true “calm verse, heavy chorus” pattern. Regardless of whether the song is in a verse or chorus, the instrumentation creates a really nice, soaring atmosphere through some strings and glittery guitars. There’s a great sense of dynamics between the calmer and more bombastic parts, and the transitions between them are handled really well. I particularly like the transition from the prechorus with male vocals to the chorus with female vocals. This song shared a lot of similarities with the following submission and they’re both pretty close in terms of quality, but I ended up giving this one the advantage due to its sound being more unique and interesting.
5th Place: Tomislav95 (+10 Points)
Klone - NebulousFirst Impressions:
Not very unique-sounding, but nice enough.Well, the end of the previous write-up pretty much spoils my opinions on this one. This is another track with the “calm verse, heavy chorus” structure, and it also executes it pretty well. My one big complaint about this song though is that its sound feels incredibly derivative. There’s not really anything I can point to here that hasn’t been done in at least one or two other bands I listen to. The vocals sound like they’re lifted straight out of Katatonia, except maybe with a little bit more range. The instrumentation, especially with the clean guitars in the verses, is a dead ringer for Insomnium’s Shadows Of The Dying Sun. Don’t get me wrong, the sound and atmosphere here is nice, I just feel like I’ve heard it plenty of times before. Good song, but I think it would have done much better if it sounded more original to me.
6th Place: jingle.boy (+9 Points +18 Points) [PERK USED: DOUBLE POINTS]
Queensryche - Promised LandFirst Impressions:
There’s a lot of stuff going on here, even though the song’s pretty simple structure-wise. Very interesting mood.This was another grower, but my opinions on it are still somewhat mixed. Let’s start with the positives. The intro here is great; I really like the slow riff at the beginning, and the little lead guitar line that connects it to the following verse. The vocal melody in the chorus wasn’t too memorable at first, but it eventually managed to get stuck in my head on a regular basis. This song’s quite moody, conveying a strong sense of desperation and hopelessness. Queensryche gets talked about on this forum enough for me to be aware about the context surrounding this album, and how it was the follow-up to the band “making it big” with Empire. As far as I’m aware, the theme of this album is dealing with success and how it may not bring you the happiness you were hoping it would. That theme definitely comes through here, though it’s not exactly subtle. I don’t think the bar samples at the end were necessary, but that doesn’t bother me too much. My one big problem with the song is that its production is way too busy. I know that sounds weird coming from me, as I’m usually a big fan of dense, layered, and full-sounding instrumentation, but in this particular song the layers just don’t seem to compliment each other very well. Rather than cohesively coming together to create a pleasing wall of sound, a lot of the instruments feel like they just get in each others way and cancel each other out. I think you could completely remove the saxophone and dial down some of the keyboards and the song wouldn’t be any worse for it. It could just be the mixing too; everything is very loud, even stuff that should probably be more in the background. I feel like I’m starting to ramble here, so I’ll just conclude by saying that I enjoyed this song well enough, but between this and the other stuff I’ve heard from this band, I’m still not sure if they’re really for me.
8th Place 7th Place: Puppies_On_Acid (+8 Points) [PERK USED: RANKING SWAP]
Sieges Even - Sequence III: UnbreakableFirst Impressions:
This is another one that will need more listens for me to figure out if I like it or not.This one was just a bit too inconsistent for me. There certainly were parts of it I liked, but only parts of it. I found most of the calmer sections with clean guitars and vocals to be a bit boring. Most of bits that worked for me were in the instrumental section in the middle. Some of the keyboards and melodies give me some serious classic Dream Theater vibes, specifically A Change Of Seasons for whatever reason. That said, too much of this section is focused on some high-pitched lead guitar noodling which isn’t very interesting or appealing. The guitar solo shortly after the instrumental is done really well and is a great climax. I just wish the song had ended sooner after that climax, as there’s still a couple minutes to go afterwards. Overall, I didn’t like this song as a whole too much, but it at least had some bits and pieces here and there that I enjoyed.
7th Place 8th Place: Ruba (+7 Points)
Death - Crystal MountainFirst Impressions:
Lots of good riffs here. I like me some good riffs.This song had a stronger focus on melody than I was expecting. While it has plenty of heavy riffs, pummeling drums and some raspy harsh vocals, it also has some surprisingly-clean sounding guitars in the verses and even an acoustic guitar solo at the end. While that provides some nice contrast, I find myself wondering if I would have liked this song more if it had focused on these melodic elements less. I liked this song the most when it was at its heaviest, especially the opening riff and some of the slower parts around the middle. The rest of the song was alright, but didn’t impress me too much. To be clear, this isn’t me saying that I don’t like melody in my metal music; I just think this song would have been better playing to its strengths and providing more riffs and heavy sections than it did.
9th Place: TAC (+6 Points)
Keep Of Kalessin - EpistemologyFirst Impressions:
Oof, that ending dropped the ball hard. It was going so well, too.This song is mildly infuriating. The first few minutes are some pretty unappealing heavy power metal. Not bad, but just not really my thing. After those first few minutes, the song is entirely instrumental, and gives the sense that it’s building up into a massive, climactic finale. This buildup is done really well: there’s a calm break, then a driving riff kicks in signaling that shit’s about to get intense. This transitions into some nice Eastern-flavored lead guitar melodies, then the intensity starts to gradually ramp up until some blazing guitar solos come in, an epic sounding lead guitar melody starts going… and going… and going… and that’s it. It never stops. That’s the ending. This melody literally goes on for a third of the song and then it slowly fades out. It’s like the songwriter just gave up. Everything was lining up perfectly, and all this song had to do was deliver one final climactic explosion to complete the fantastic buildup and deliver an epicly satisfying conclusion. Needless to say, it didn’t do that. And that makes me sad.
10th Place: DTA (+5 Points +10 Points) [PERK USED: DOUBLE POINTS]
The Flower Kings - The Judas KissFirst Impressions:
Something about the aesthetic feels pretty dry to me, but I like the progression in the second half.This one didn’t do all that much for me, unfortunately. I suppose it had some quirky instrumentation and melodies in the instrumental section that I kinda liked. I also appreciated that the whole second half of the song is dedicated to this instrumental section, as I didn’t really like the first few minutes at all. It has a decent crescendo at the end, but I can’t say the journey to that point was all that enjoyable. There isn’t much in the way of memorable melodies, rhythms or musical bits, and the whole thing felt more dry and flat than it should have.
Newly banned artists:- Massive Attack
- Arcturus
---THE SCORE SO FAR---1: Sacul - 68
[ALL PERKS USED]2: Tomislav95 - 53
[PERKS USED: DOUBLE POINTS]3: Cyril - 44
[PERKS USED: RANKING SWAP]4: Nekov - 43
[PERKS USED: RANKING SWAP]4: jingle.boy - 43
[ALL PERKS USED]6: Ruba - 42
[PERKS USED: DOUBLE POINTS]6: Kattleox - 42
[PERKS USED: DOUBLE POINTS]Eliminated8: DTA - 36
[ALL PERKS USED]9: Puppies_On_Acid - 34
[ALL PERKS USED]10: TAC - 31
[ALL PERKS USED]11: Stadler - 18
[PERKS USED: DOUBLE POINTS]12: kingshmegland - 17
[PERKS USED: DOUBLE POINTS]13: senecadawg2 - 12
[PERKS USED: DOUBLE POINTS]14: Evermind - 9
[ALL PERKS USED]Farewell, DTA, Puppies, and TAC. Thanks for playing!
---ROUND 5: DOUBLE SUBMISSION---For those of you still in the game, congratulations! You've made it to the halfway point! You've done well to make it this far, and all of you are safe for at least one more round, as the next couple eliminations won't be until after Round 6. Don't rest too easy though, as the themes are going to get more involved from this point on. So, let's talk about this round.
For this round, you will be submitting
two songs from the same artist. I will then judge and rank them
together. You'll still get a single ranking at the end of the round, worth the usual amount of points, but that ranking will be based off of two songs instead of one. You could try submitting two wildly different songs from the same artist, or double-down on a style you think I'd like. The choice is yours!
A couple additional rules for this round:
- The two songs must have a combined length of under 20 minutes.
- Since this roulette has a rule of no more than two song submissions per artist, you cannot submit songs from
any artist that was sent in a previous round.
Good luck!
Poll
Topic: Buddyhunter1's Roulette v4: Post-Roulette Updates: Sacul (Read 43661 times)