Okay, some personal issues delayed me a little bit, but here I am with the result of the first matchup. Hopefully I will have the second one done tomorrow (which puts TAC and Evermind on the hot seat).
Match 1 Result:
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twosuitsluke (The Mars Volta - DeLoused in the Comatorium) vs. MoraWintersoul (Sieges Even - The Art of Navigating by the Stars)The Mars Volta Impression:
I completely see why people would think this is a great album, but I’m pretty skeptical that it’s going to connect with me.Sieges Even Impression:
I really enjoy the depth of the instrumentation on this one. It feels like there’s so much to dig into.This matchup was a contest between two albums from which I received a song in my second roulette—I received Son et lumière and Inertiatic ESP from The Mars Volta, and Unbreakable from Sieges Even. Neither of these songs scored particularly high, so it mattered a lot how well the rest of the albums performed and how good these songs were in the context of the album.
I warned Luke about the dangers of sending me The Mars Volta. While I liked Inertiatic ESP musically, I found its lyrics pretty repulsive, and was not keen on some dissonant noisy elements that came in at the end of the song. These are elements that can really turn me off. Nonetheless, he wanted me to hear this album anyway, in hopes that I’d nonetheless come around on it.
So, how did the full album come off? Honestly, my view of the album is very similar to my impression of its opening song. There is some genuinely strong material here, and I get why Luke might have thought this would be my thing. There’s sort of a Coheed thing here where this is proggy music with a post-hardcore edge. And I do genuinely like the parts of this album that lean into that, like the central parts of Roulette Dares, Eriatarka and Televators. There are a lot of strong, jagged riffs here and some powerful vocal melodies on songs like the former two. And I have nothing bad to say about Televators, which is my clear favorite on the album and one that I may well come back to as a stand-alone song someday.
But when I say I don’t like a certain kind of lyrics, and that it can hurt you if you send those lyrics anyway, that’s something I mean. So many of the lyrics here are pretty repellent to me, which leaves me feeling conflicted about the vocal lines that I do like. For example, I like the swagger of the chorus to Eriatarka, but it sours somewhat for me when I realize he’s singing about tapeworms and “cocooned meat” (?).
I also do not like the dissonant/noise stuff that shows up rather frequently on this album. That stuff is just obnoxious. It has no musical value in my eyes, and it only serves to annoy me and lower my opinion of the songwriter. There are bad instances of this throughout Drunkship of Lanterns, for example, and during the second half of Cicatriz ESP, cutting in half an instrumental section with a guitar part I enjoyed for several minutes of just utter amelodic nonsense. Also, the end of This Apparatus Must Be Unearthed, which is extremely obnoxious. Or right in the middle of Take the Veil Cerpin Taxt… I could go on.
The result is that this is an album that I have to acknowledge as having a lot of really strong elements, but one that I ultimately don’t find myself eager to return to. The parts I enjoy, I don’t enjoy enough to ignore those that I don’t. And the double whammy of gross-out, drug-related lyrics and interludes of noise is too much to take. I’ve been trying to say this as kindly as possible, but… look, in many cases, I’m outright telling you guys, “I do not like these particular things.” I’m telling you that for your benefit and for mine. And if you send those things anyway, you have to expect to lose.
I’m leaving The Mars Volta unbanned. I don’t think they are for me, but I’ll leave it open in case they have a later album where they totally drop the weird noise stuff and morbid lyrics that someone wants to risk sending. But I really advise against sending more of the same.
So The Mars Volta gets a mixed review in which I emphasized the negative elements. It wasn’t an album I hated, but it also wasn’t an album I have unmixed positive feelings about. It should be pretty clear, then, that this was Mora’s match to lose. Did Sieges Even do what they needed to do?
This album is a perfect proof of the limits of song roulettes. Unbreakable did not make much of an impression on me when I listened to it on its own, without the rest of the album, in a fairly large round with a bunch of other songs. I really feel like I gave this song the short shrift years ago when I heard it on its own, because hearing it now, in the context of the album, it feels really deep and rich.
That description is pretty fitting for most of the album. There really feels like a lot going on here between a pretty impressive rhythm section, including basslines that always feel like they’re going somewhere interesting, and guitar parts that vary from smooth acoustic sections, like on Blue Wide Open, to some heavier, low riffs. These compositions really feel like they reward repeated listenings, and I’ve gotten more out of them the more I’ve listened to this album.
Another strong point of this album is that it feels quite cohesive, structurally, and it feels like it tends to get stronger as it goes along. Ultimately it doesn’t matter too much whether an album’s strongest songs are at the beginning or the end, but it is nice to feel like an album is picking up steam as it goes along, like this one does. The early songs certainly have their moments, but the album really hits its stride about halfway through with Stigmata, and peaks on the wonderful climactic combination of Lighthouse and Styx.
Particularly in comparing these two albums, another strong point for the Sieges Even album is that its emotional tone resonates pretty well with me. I’m including this point in part to help those who are trying to get a sense of what I’m looking for in an album’s mood. This is not an overwhelmingly joyful album; in fact, there is a strong sense of sadness on a lot of the tracks. But it is a sadness that is imbued with a sense that life has meaning and beauty. That’s going to do a lot better where I’m concerned than an album that seems to focusing on ugliness, depravity or nihilism.
This album, I should say, is not an instant top favorite of mine. It’s an album I like a lot, but not one that has totally bowled me over. That’s not really a problem; few albums absolutely bowl me over, especially on the first few listens. I just don’t want to give the impression that this is the absolute ideal album and that one can do no better. I wouldn’t say I know this album deeply enough to be able to confidently say where I find it particularly weak, but I will say that one area an album could potentially do better than this one is to have an absolute knock-out song that impresses me as a standalone piece. Styx comes somewhat close, and it’s a song that I’ve appreciated significantly more on each listen, but it hasn’t quite gotten there so far. But all that said, this really is an album I like quite a bit.
I think the winner here is quite clear from the writeup. Mora gets off to a strong 1-0 start with Sieges Even. Luke falls to 0-1 after taking a chance on The Mars Volta.
Favorite songs from The Mars Volta: Televators, Inertiatic ESP, Eriatarka
Favorite songs from Sieges Even: Sequence VIII: Styx, Sequence VII: Lighthouse, Sequence IV: Stigmata
Winner:
MoraWintersoul with Sieges Even - The Art of Navigating by the Stars
Topic: 425's Roulette v4: Hiatus (Read 18492 times)
