ROUND 4 RESULTSSacul
Boris
Ibitsu
Woman on the Screen
Blackout
Farewell
3 points
So you were right, I don’t dislike this as much as the other Boris song you sent me (although I think it’s actually getting a lower score, since my scale is a lot different this time), but I’m still not really liking it. Foremost, the production just makes everything so damn noisy. It’s almost painful to listen to. It kind of makes a cool garage-band kind of vibe on the rocky Ibitsu, but the rest of the time I just have to wonder why. Clearly it’s an intentional choice, but it baffles me. Then the vocals. Man. Again, they’re all right and kind of fun on Ibitsu, but the rest of the time I can’t seem to find any melodies, he’s just yelling. Farewell starts out pretty solid with some post-rock-y chiming ambiance, but then the vocals show up and start doing… whatever they’re doing and I don’t get much out of it.
Sorry man. Ibitsu is pretty cool at times, and there are good ideas elsewhere, but the vocals are pretty offputting and the sound is so abrasively noisy it’s hard to even enjoy.
Luoto
Wilderun
The Means to Preserve
O Resolution!
5 points
I’m strangely ambivalent towards this. It’s got a lot of stuff I like, heavy riffs combined with quiet acoustic sections, present but not overpowering death and black metal influences, strong clean vocals, but even though I enjoy listening to it, it doesn’t make much of an impression on me. The swelling clean vocal sections in The Means to Preserve are my favorite bit here and I enjoy them quite a bit, but the rest weirdly leaves me a bit cold.
romdrums
sleepmakeswaves
Tundra
Something Like Avalanches
pyramids
5 points
This is pretty nice music that feels like it’s sitting somewhere in between post rock and post metal. There are some pretty meaty riffs as well as cascading guitars and spacey ambient sections and they move pretty seamlessly between all of them. Unfortunately, for me it kind of falls into the trap I feel most post metal does, which is that the music doesn’t feel full enough to stand on its own without vocals. It’s nice while I’m listening to it, but none of it sticks with me afterwards.
The Walrus
Magic Sword
Empress
Prophecy
Ritual
A New Quest
5 points
Based on the artist name and the song names and the fact that you sent this, I was expecting it to be power metal. But instead it’s some very 80s-inspired electronic instrumental tracks. And it’s got a really cool vibe and atmosphere, sounds like it would be a soundtrack for a really stylized video game (maybe it is?). That’s kind of the weakness here too, though; it feels a bit too empty to stand on its own as pieces of music. It’d be a cool backdrop for a game or just to listen to going about your day when you want to feel like you’re in TRON, but on its own it’s not quite enough.
(and less I realize this is a strange opinion coming from a guy who listens to Bohren & der Club of Gore)
Elite
Major Parkinson
Impermanence
Madeleine Crumbles
Heart Machine
197
6 points
First off, I gotta say that I appreciate you sending me weird stuff. Sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s always interesting. This, for instance, has so many things that ought to make it a slam dunk with me. The dark, dramatic, half-spoken vocal style, the weird lyrics, the shifting styles of the music, the Tom Waits-esque delivery in 197. It’s all interesting and it comes really close to working for me, but for every melody and vocal line that I like, there seems to be one that falls completely flat. The opening lines to Impermanence are spectacularly bizarre; the female vocal lines in Madeleine Crumbles don’t work for me at all. The verses in Heart Machine I seem to both like and dislike at the same time.
Honestly, this is probably the most difficult entry to score so far in the roulette. It feels accurate now, but it’s possible I’ll come back to this in a few months and be completely in love with it.
TAC
Ereb Altor
A Fine Day to Die
With Fire in My Heart…
6 points
It was funny reading Heretic’s writeup for this song, because the clean vocals are actually my favorite part here. The gritty-but-still-clean ones used in the heavier parts; the style is pretty cool and the melodies are interesting. The harsh vocals, conversely, I find to be ok but not particularly compelling. Musically, it feels like competent, maybe above average proggy/blackened metal; the riffs are crunchy, solos are blistering, and it’s fun to listen to, but there’s nothing really to set it above a lot of other stuff I’ve heard in this style.
Tomislav95
Stoned Jesus
I Am The Mountain
6 points
I’m not really sure what kind of music this is? Progressive stoner sludge is my current diagnosis. There’s a lot of nice stuff here, spacey, atmospheric sections, groovy drumming, some pretty heavy riffs, but overall it’s not quite connecting with me. It’s something I can definitely see the appeal of, and it’s a nice listen, but for me I feel like it spins its wheels a bit too often for too long and I’m left waiting for a while for the next interesting part to come up.
(also I like the vocals pretty well, since that often seems to be my sticking point on stuff)
wolfking
Warbringer
The Black Hand Reaches Out
Defiance of Fate
Glorious End
6 points
This is some pretty solid thrashy metal. The vocals are a bit further into the harsh spectrum than I generally expect from thrash, and they’re a bit monotone but still work fairly well. All the instruments are tight and well performed, the solos are good, and I enjoy listening through the songs, but ultimately nothing stands out too much to me. That is, with the exception of the lyrics to Glorious End. I’m not generally a big lyrics guy (as you folks can probably tell, I barely ever mention them in these writeups), but I found these to be pretty compelling and perfectly suited to the vocal style and they end up really elevating the song.
Cyril
Glass Beach
classic j dies and goes to hell part 1
cold weather
glass beach
orchids
6 points
Once again, I have mixed feelings about one of your submissions, which I guess is fair enough because there’s a pretty strange mix of sounds here. The sections with less busy, more electro-indie-ish (just made that up) instrumentation really work for me, along with the accompanying quirky smarmy indie vocal style (another term I just made up), like most of classic j dies and goes to hell part 1, especially the first half, and the verses of cold weather. The more busy/hardcore-y sections, though, I feel are kind of a miss most of the time. The production is really paper thin which reduces the intensity that ought to be there and the sound just sort of turns to mush a lot of the time. The bits I like I think are really good, but the ones I find offputting pull the score down.
Puppies_On_AcidBuddyhunter1
Black FutureBlack Future
Tetrastructural MindsOblivion
Charging the VoidTetrastructural Minds
7 points
OK, first thing, these vocals are disgusting. They’re disgusting in a really enjoyable way, though, and I think they work really well, with the exception of the five-year-old-girl-screaming style, which is just… why? But that aside, this is really fast, heavy, relentless music, though they’ve got enough slightly calmer sections to keep it from being overwhelming; I don’t have much criticism instrumentally. The bass in particular is just utterly absurd. To be honest, I don’t have much to say about this other than that (with caveats) I’m enjoying it.
Your submissions were close enough (like, 66% the same
) to give them the same score. I’m not totally sold on the clean vocal bits at the end of Charging the Void, but the other hand it’s longer than Oblivion, so overall there’s probably more there that I like just in terms of minutes of music. Anyway, super close. I’m almost convinced you guys coordinated this.
HOF
Field Music
How We Gonna Get There Now?
Give It, Lose It, Take It
Working to Work
Disappointed
It’s Okay to Change
Time in Joy
7 pointsYou know, on the surface there’s nothing particularly strange about this, but if you asked me to describe what type of music it is, I really have no idea what I’d say, except that it sounds British to me.
There are a lot of multi-part harmonies, unexpected song structures and instruments (cellos and flutes?), pretty catchy melodies, and tight instrumentation. I guess it sounds a bit like what the Beatles sound like in my imagination (the Beatles in reality tend to bore me). There are some things that aren’t working for me; the verses in Disappointed are super shaky, and I don’t really get that point of It’s Okay to Change, but the majority of this I’m enjoying quite a bit, Working to Work and Give It, Lose It, Take It especially.
Evermind
Árstíðir
While This Way
Lover
Sunday Morning
Cannon
Silfurskin
Shades
8 pointsThis is a really interesting sound. I love how they seem to incorporate stringed instruments (violin, maybe a cello?) as a primary part of their sound, along with keyboards and acoustic guitars. The music and melodies have a really great minor, melancholy, sometimes-bordering-on-ominous sound that really appeals to me. Vocals are restrained and suit the music perfectly, excepting a few moments that don’t work for me (the harmonies on Sunday Morning, and I’m not totally sure how well they work with the more forceful instrumentation on Shades). Overall I enjoy most of this, but Lover is the best song of the bunch, and probably the best song this round.
Stadler
Bruce Dickinson
Jerusalem
Accident of Birth
Tears of the Dragon
8 pointsThere’s something hilarious about giving you your highest score so far for an artist I explicitly told you I didn’t really like.
Musically this is both more varied and more heavy (Accident of Birth) than I was expecting. Songs move from clean picking to heavy riffing to ripping solos seamlessly, and avoids one of the other things that bugs me about Maiden (namely, that their production makes their music sound like mush). But these songs are mainly about Bruce, so let’s talk about Bruce. In the past, it’s been his wailing that hasn’t done much for me. And yeah, that hasn’t changed
too much here, but everything else he’s doing is really working for me. The softer, dramatic style he uses in the verses of Jerusalem is great, and the grittier growl in Accident of Birth is right up my alley. All this has the result of making me appreciate the wails a bit more when they come up, particularly in Tears of the Dragon, where it’s really clear he’s putting everything he’s got into his vocals (reminds me of Tobi from Avantasia in that way), which makes it pretty compelling even if his timbre isn’t quite working for me.
This probably won’t make me a Maiden fan, but bizarrely it seems to make me a Bruce Dickinson fan, who is one of the main reasons I don’t like Maiden.
I recommend that you continue to ignore my recommendations in the future.
As a side note, I knew Tobi was a huge Bruce fan and based his singing style on him, but it’s still crazy to me how much
Metal Opera I &
II-era Tobi sounds like Bruce. Stadler, have you heard those albums? I’ve never been a huge fan but you might find a lot to like there.
ariich
Rx Bandits
Intro
Ruby Cumulous
Wide Open
Fire to the Ocean
Will You Be Tomorrow
9 pointsI’m similarly baffled as to how to describe this style (maybe I’m just bad at identifying genres
), but I am really into it. The music is all over the place, energetic to pensive, rock to pop to math rock, the bass is always doing something interesting, from support to counterpoint to crazy little runs, guitars and drums are always in motion, but everything always fits and never sounds forced. The vocals are just flawless. They’re kind of poppy/jazzy (maybe this is just what ska sounds like? My only experience with ska is Detective Jake Peralta saying he’d never abandon it), they’re gentle, they’re soaring, the harmonies are amazing and I just really have no complaints at all about them. (a staggering achievement
)
STANDINGSTomislav95 32
ariich 30
Buddyhunter1 29
Luoto 28
Cyril 27
The Walrus 27
Elite 27
Sacul 27
romdrums 26
Evermind 25
Puppies_On_Acid 25
wolfking 24
Stadler 24
HOF 23
TAC 21
Send for round 5!
Topic: SN's Homestuck roulette: jpeg hero (final results) (Read 57304 times)
