Big Big Train of Daftness Roulette! POST-ROULETTE CEREAL HOURS

[Crow]

that's cool. that just means the other 5 are not and a few are on my shortlist

[Train of Naught]

It's pretty ballsy to send me a full album (let's face it, coming in at 49 minutes it's more of an album than EP ) of genres I'm fairly lukewarm to. That said, I'm pretty happy to admit there are moments on this thing where I genuinely get interested in the albums of some of the songs that are playing. The flow I also have to admit is very good, regardless of my opinion of the quality of all these songs.

Mostly the first half (or as you call it, the 'ugly' half)  is engaging and powerful and the back half fails on a lot of fields for me. I can already tell some of the bands on the front half are going to get some serious playtime from me though, you hit the sweet spot between infectious melodies and grooves and straight up monstrous energy that I love. The songs that are more vocal-driven seem to be the ones I like least which happens to occur more often later on. Even the second song borders a bit too much on the post-hardcore vocals at times, but regardless it's probably the best song on here. It's super interesting how everything fits together, and is almost theatrical how much they play with different moods and motifs in that song. The Actor Observer song is probably where I start losing a bit of interest, as the first half of that song is killer, but the second half and then into the State Faults songs I find myself not hooked nearly as much anymore. There's too much that just sounds like a wall of screams with some simple guitar licks here and there, and straight forward drum patterns. My one exception to this pattern is the song Owari, there are some major Deftones vibes there that I'm a big fan of, and the song is catchy enough but with good use of repetition, not so much the obnoxious kind. The last song has parts that I wish to remove from my memory, but then also has some really cool stuff going on. Sometimes it borders Cardiacs amount of strange but without the compelling aspects of that band. The oddly catchy and appealing melodies of that band resonate way better with me than this one.

All in all this is probably one of the best customised albums I could have wished for in this style, I think you did a really good job at constructing it. I will most likely check out at least the Tripsitter, Chiodos, Joliette and We Never Learned To Live albums.
Ranking time

Tier #1
1. Tripsitter - Bury Me
2. Chiodos - Why the Munsters Matter
3. Joliette - Señor Mora
4. We Never Learned to Live - Owari

Tier #2
5. Sparrows - Worship Song
6. Actor | Observer - Low and Beholden

Tier #3
7. Cursive - Noble Soldier/Dystopian Lament
8. Even the Trees - Tonight We Don't Think, We Do
9. State Faults - Spectral
10. State Faults - Incantations

[Crow]

i'd recommend checking out the sparrows and actor | observer albums too since they're my favorite two albums from the entire bunch  well maybe the tripsitter one is up there too, that album is feeling like a friggin revelation right now
anyways i'm satisfied with getting you to like at least four of the songs a fair bit

[Train of Naught]

Yeah pretty pleased with this man, I may have said but I think I've already listened to the Actor Observer one time, but I'm sure I'll listen to those two at some point anyway.

[Crow]

better than glass beach
i think sparrows would be way up your alley tbh, i would've used the heavy-as-balls closer from that album if i didn't want to use the cursive one instead

[Evermind]

What disaster? You got to the finals

Losing to a 30-minutes instrumental track is always a disaster

[Evermind]

Also the talk about prizes in your roulette made me think, let’s make this interesting! it’s not a big prize, and some of you may hate this, but the winner of the roulette gets one free download code from the Pelagic Records catalogue of their choosing (inb4 Pelagial)

Just had a random thought that I missed out on this! How about new The Ocean album when it airs? I'll take Lo! if that's not an option just to see how terrible it is.