Well, this is gonna be a long post.
Going over some other things, I first want to add in a proper ranking, but instead of showing the total scores for each player, I’ll instead list all the artists sent by each person. There’s a lot of artists that I listened to, and while you can find them all in the opening post, this is a good place to see who sent what, and in what round. Think of this like an ending credits, I suppose.
THE RANKINGS1. twosuitsluke (Coheed and Cambria / The Dear Hunter / The Black Mages / Mastodon / Thank You Scientist)
2. 425 (Nightwish / Kamelot / Seventh Wonder / Blind Guardian / Metallica)
3. Cyril (The Hirsch Effekt / East of the Wall / Exist / A Novelist / Mithras)
4. Buddyhunter1 (Devin Townsend / David Maxim Micic / Riverside / Anamanaguchi / Periphery)
5. Evermind (Beyond the Bridge / Avantasia / Pain of Salvation / Ayreon / Iamthemorning)
6. Lethean (Katatonia / Leprous / Riverside / Threshold / Angra)
7. Elite (The Ocean / Wilderun / Pain of Salvation / Ulver / Cardiacs)
8. romdrums (Genesis / IQ / Karnivool / Mastodon / Meshuggah)
9. kingshmegland (Rush / Muse / Mile Marker Zero / Barock Project / The Pineapple Thief)
10. jingle.boy (Led Zeppelin / Pink Floyd / Queensryche / AC/DC / Trans-Siberian Orchestra)
11. Sacul (Anathema / Steven Wilson / Riverside / Portishead / Massive Attack)
12. TAC (UFO / Teramaze / Burden of Life / Fates Warning / Lost Domain)
13. Luoto (Amorphis / Ne Obliviscaris / Iced Earth / Fireproven / Wintersun)
14. MoraWintersoul (Chroma Key / Sonata Arctica / Queen / Conception / Unleash the Archers)
15. HOF (Journey / Kip Winger / Big Big Train / McStine & Minnemann / Mew)
16. Stadler (KISS / Iron Maiden / Deep Purple / Rainbow / Black Sabbath)
17. Puppies_On_Acid (Marillion / Moonsorrow / Oceansize / Arch/Matheos / Agalloch)
18. Anguyen92 (Alter Bridge / Switchfoot / Black Stone Cherry / Soundgarden / Within Temptation)
19. Nekov (Frost* / Alcest / Spock's Beard / Pure Reason Revolution)
I also wanted to make a list of my top 10 favorite songs from the entire roulette, but I don’t think I could make that in one day. Instead, what I’ll do is just post a list of my favorite songs which would all be worthy of a placement in the Top 10, and update the song’s ratings if they’re now different. (I will display the original score, then the new score. Example: 9 > 9.5. If only one score is shown, it hasn’t been changed since my original rating.) Also, all the new scores don’t affect the standings of the roulette, because it’d be kind of unfair to re-score some of the results, especially after the roulette is finished. And it'd be a lot of work, anyway.
- Hyperventilate (9.5)
- Black Light Machine (9.25)
- The Poet and the Pendulum (9.5)
- Forced Entry (8.5 > 9.5)
- Twisted Mind (9.5 > 9.75)
- A Night on the Town (9 > 9.5)
- The Apologist (9 > 9.5)
- Writhe (8.5 > 9)
- The Architect (8.75 > 9)
- Second Life Syndrome (9.25 > 10)
- Egoist Hedonist (8.75 > 9)
- Driven to Destruction (9 > 9.25)
- Dancing Mad (9.25 > 9.75)
- Voorhees (8.75 > 9.25)
- Caveat Lector (9)
- The Future Sound of Music (9.5)
- The Day That The World Breaks Down (9)
- Blood and Thunder (9.5)
- Capillarian Crest (9.25)
- The Wolf is Loose (9.75)
- The Czar (9.25 > 9.75)
- Comforting Sounds (9)
- Carolina IV (9.5)
And for the sake of trivia:
Highest-scoring song: Mastodon - The Wolf is Loose (9.75/10)
Lowest-scoring song: Unleash the Archers - Northwest Passage (6/10)
Highest-scoring submission: twosuitsluke - Mastodon (9.3)
Lowest-scoring submission: Stadler - KISS (6.4)
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It’s been a long journey, but we’ve finally reached the end. So, how do I feel about this roulette?
This whole thing was very, very worthwhile. Back before it all began, this was something I’d been considering doing for some time. I’d had a pretty rapid growth in what I listened to in the first half of 2020… but that was three new artists to add to three others that I’d frequently listened to. Throughout this roulette, I’ve gained exposure to 90 new artists. 90! Back in 2018, when what I listened to consisted of mainly Dream Theater, LTE, and a little bit of Between the Buried and Me here and there, knowing that I’d be listening to that many artists would’ve been insane to me. And now that I realize that that’s the actual number, it’s still a bit crazy to me. And the best part is, a large amount of these artists are ones that I’m interested in looking into further. If my counting is correct, I plan on looking into the discographies of 64 out of the 90 artists I listened to. And that’s another fascinating part of this roulette to me. I think I mentioned this before elsewhere on the forum, but there was a time where checking out new artists wasn’t a priority to me, because I figured “I’ve already got Dream Theater, and Dream Theater is the best, so what’s the point?” Discovering Haken, Porcupine Tree, and Transatlantic really helped me to change that mindset a little bit, and now running this roulette has pretty much shattered that line of thinking. Well, I still think Dream Theater is the best, but you get my point.
I really enjoyed the selection of artists that you guys sent me. Sure, I didn’t love every one, but honestly, I’m glad I had the chance to listen to every single one of them, even the ones I found underwhelming. And the diversity, too… Of course, there was a lot of prog, since this is a Dream Theater forum and I enjoy prog a lot. But I also heard some stuff other than that, like electronic music, hard rock, death metal, and whatever in the world Cardiacs is supposed to be. I also enjoyed how a lot of you guys were consistent in what you sent. 425 sent a lot of symphonic metal, Cyril sent a lot of hardcore metal, Stadler and jingle.boy sent a lot of classic rock/metal… The list goes on. And while there may have been a few artists that I didn’t exactly care for, the vast majority were ones that I enjoyed a lot. And there were quite a few artists that made me think, “Where have you been my whole life?”. Riverside, Angra, Devin Townsend, East of the Wall, Cardiacs, pretty much everything that Luke sent… Needless to say, there are a lot of artists here I love.
And of course, there’s another thing I have to mention. This took WAY longer than I anticipated. Looking at the roulette FAQ prior to starting the roulette, I was under the impression that the expectation always was that you needed to complete each round within a week. I even made a calendar showing when I would need to get out results, impressions, etc., and if I’d stuck to that schedule, this would’ve been over on November 1st of last year. At the same time, though, if I stuck to that schedule, I’d be so burnt out on the roulette that I might not have even bothered to finish it. Having said that, I did take a very long time. I could have done a better job of staying committed to the roulette and being efficient enough to get things done in a decent amount of time. In hindsight, though, I will also say that one week was too short. I got Round 1 done in a week, but I also think that had its own downsides. Mainly, there were a couple artists that I’d only listened to
twice, and I had to form my opinion on just those two listens because I felt it was necessary to get every round done in a week or less. Taking too long in the later rounds at least gave me time to properly absorb the artists and get a solid opinion on them. But anyway, I know this is about the 30th time I’ve felt that I should apologize for something in this roulette, but I really am sorry that I took so long to get this thing done.
Before I wrap this up, I want to briefly mention something I talked about back in Round 1 (or even before Round 1 started, I think). There was something I was working on that I said would be complete by the time the roulette is over. That has been scrapped, because I soon realized it was really boring and nobody would be interested in it; it’s really not even worth mentioning.
However! I will be working on something else, which won’t be complete anytime soon, but the plan is to have it done by the end of the year. This thing being a huge list of all the artists I’ve discovered in the past two years, and they will all be ranked and reviewed. I won’t have a lot to say about every artist (I don’t really have any interest in listening to more Massive Attack, for instance, so a review of that would be pretty short). But this is something I think would be worthwhile to do, and I think since a majority of these artists will be ones I discovered from this roulette, maybe you guys might be interested in reading such a list.
Well, that’s all the main things I wanted to talk about, reflecting on my time doing this roulette. It feels great to finally see this through to the end. Do I want to do another roulette in the future? Absolutely. Like I said, this was very, very worthwhile. Next time, though, I will definitely change some things (such as limiting the number of participants so I don’t have 19 people sending me a whole bunch of music), which should help me stay engaged and keep everyone else from waiting too long for results. But that’s not gonna be for a long time. It’s very relieving to finally not have this weighing on me, plus I’ve got a lot of discographies to listen to!
Lastly… Thank you to every single one of you who participated in this roulette. You all helped amazingly in expanding my musical horizons, and that is something I’ll always be grateful for. I really enjoy this community, and hosting the roulette has also been great for interacting with you all. Please feel free to tell me any thoughts you have about my roulette, the artists/songs I was sent, me myself, or just anything relevant, I suppose. Again, thank you all for participating.