LithoJazzoSphere Roulette V1: Variety & Reciprocity (Post-Roulette Playlist)

[Evermind]

Yeah cool. I'll be away for a whole weekend and I've got some important family stuff to do Monday evening after work, so I won't be able to send my next entry until Tuesday anyway. Take your time.

[TAC]

Litho, are you giving us a list of bands to pick from for the next round? Will you include what you've already heard by each of them?
When will you be releasing the list? After Results?

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Yeah, so most likely the day after I post results I'll post a list of eligible bands.  There should be enough variety that I have a hard time imagining there won't be multiple easy choices for pretty much everyone.  I'm fine with people submitting the same band as others (and a few will be bands that have already been sent in earlier rounds).  But I don't want duplicate songs, even from earlier or from other entries in the round, so there will be a bit of a first come, first served aspect to it.  I'll try and put it up in a late morning even if it has to be the next day after that so both continents should have at least the evening to get an early drop on a submission if they want. 

I'm still struggling with what exactly to do about listing what I've already heard from these artists.  It's been easier in earlier rounds with more unfamiliar bands to handle the smaller number of ones I did know a bit about and make judgement calls on what to accept as it came in.  But quite a few of these will be ones I've at least heard a little bit from.  There are some really obvious songs that I know far too well, but a lot of borderline cases where I've heard certain songs a number of times but can't necessarily recall them by looking at the titles.  I'm leaning towards just listing the most obvious songs and just have people pick an artist that they know they have a few backup songs that could easily be swapped out if necessary if I turn out to know more of the songs than I remembered, or if someone else already submits the same songs from the same artist earlier. 

[Lethean]

So, and you've probably said somewhere before, but does the ? mean they're too different to compare, or you're leaving some of the comparisons a mystery?

[LithoJazzoSphere]

It just means I can't decide if I like it more or less than the artist from the previous round. 

[Lethean]

I guess that's a good sign - that you don't hate it at least.

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Writeups, scores and everything are done, I just need to edit it all tonight, and should be able to post everything tomorrow evening. 

This round has definitely been something of a struggle to get through, but I've enjoyed aspects of it more than I expected to, digging a bit deeper than usual, challenging myself in numerous ways, and learning quite a lot in the process.  Honestly I could probably keep going, but I have to cut it off at some point, it's been a bit longer round as I had fully anticipated, and I don't want to keep TAC, err I mean everyone waiting too long.   

I'll see how these work, but I've added sentence summaries at the beginning of each writeup, which wind up being a cross between a less vague impression and a writeup summation.  Let me know if they are helpful at all.  There's also a special section which broadly addresses essentially a third of the entries and will keep me from overly repeating myself in those. 

[ariich]

and I don't want to keep TAC, I mean everyone waiting too long.   

Anyway sounds good! Interested to see the list of options for the next round...

[TAC]

Hurry up!...DTF is going down in 40 minutes!!!

[LithoJazzoSphere]

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Preliminary thoughts and personal history on -core styles:

So over a third of the people in this roulette have chosen some form of -core or adjacent music this time, most often post-hardcore, but also some more straight up hardcore and New York hardcore/crossover thrash.  Growing up not far from DC in the US, I would occasionally have people puzzled at why I wasn't really into the hardcore scene, since it has significant historical origins nearby.  But that was never my circle of friends growing up, and even the ones who were into adjacent punk, indie, emo scenes and such didn't seem to have as much in common with me musically, so I was never really native to it. 

It was kind of a long road to gain some appreciation for a lot of these styles.  There was various pop-punk that I considered guilty pleasures at the time around in high school, but it took until my 20s to really start getting into more "authentic" forms of punk, primarily a few skate punk bands and The Clash (and their later stuff is often considered more questionable anyway).  And I gradually began to increasingly appreciate some of the influences, energy, and ethos the punk sound brought to other genres from thrash and beyond, and especially some of the offshoots of it like the gothic rock, ethereal wave and darkwave scenes and so forth. 

But even then the more intense hardcore forms of punk mostly eluded me.  It was and to this day still is one of the final frontiers of music for me.  Extreme metal is notorious for people not being able to handle the growls and shrieks that constitute the main vocal deliveries for them.  I've long conquered that challenge, but a lot of the shouty/yelly/barking sort of vocals that you find in hardcore just don't tend to sit well with me aesthetically.  There are of course always exceptions, but it remains an ongoing struggle.  Usually the more extreme hardcore-related bands I like have significant metal components. 

And then on paper post-hardcore should work better, because those bands tend to have broader palettes of influences.  But oftentimes it's actually even more difficult for me to warm to, because the clean vocals are too commonly more of the nasal, whiny type, and those frequently don't often resonate with me.  I like a lot of melodic death metal that alternates between harsh and clean vocals, but when post-hardcore bands do their version of it, it often feels like the broken mirror world version where I don't like either style of vocal approach. 

It seems like there's a particular strain of post-hardcore that is kind of adjacent to prog rock/metal and is quite popular here.  Again, on paper I would think I could get into it more, since I generally like prog rock/metal.  But the way the influence manifests doesn't often seem to comport with my tastes.  So there's a reason I'm giving bonus points for these styles, because I generally anticipate they will score lower, and it will be even more random than normal whether something will score well.  But of course in this round I'm intentionally pushing people towards them to see what shakes out.  I still find it hilarious that four of you were fighting over sending Actor|Observer, but more on that later...

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Sacul - dreamcrusher - "Cathedral of Moths", "Pseudogender"

Early Impression - "This is so grating and obnoxious you may have driven me back into the comforting, loving arms of Han-Tyumi."

Final Summary: 

The production is just far too abrasive to physically be able to listen to this normally, though the melodic and structural elements do make me optimistic that a less extreme version of this sound might be more palatable. 

Details:

Yeah, so there was a reason this style is in nightmare mode.  Part of me hoped no one would even dare pick it because nothing I've ever heard in the broad harsh noise category has ever compelled me to listen to it again, and most of it is among the worst music I've ever heard.  But there are a lot of complexities to get into here, and dreamcrusher does challenge my view of a number of them, so there's certainly a number of things to talk about. 

So as my interest in electronic music expanded over time, I was increasingly drawn to a lot of industrial-derived artists, generally in the areas of industrial rock/metal, futurepop, EBM, and electro-industrial.  At one point I decided it was time to do a more thorough investigation of the origins of the genre to gain a greater understanding of it.  Conceptually I found it rather fascinating, with a deep well of history that I've barely begun to crack the surface of.  But what I discovered is that while a lot of techniques that tend to be associated with it, from more aggressive percussive timbres, unconventional items used as percussion, manipulation of found sound recordings, very in your face types of distortion and recording techniques, I tend to only like as ornamental elements in more blended styles.  The more purely industrial music is, the harder a time I have actually listening to it. 

It was fascinating back then reading about acts like Throbbing Gristle, homemade electronics that Chris Carter would make, seeing some noise artists in action with how they tweak effects pedals and devices to create unusual sounds.  I met a lot of people online that were really into these types of music, and while I sampled a decent variety of different artists, I just couldn't into the harshest strains of it, notably power electronics and harsh noise (which I know technically has a different origin than industrial-derived music, but has a similar listening function). 

Even as intense as a lot of metal can get, and people who aren't into it will sometimes mistakenly call it "noise", music of the actual noise type just goes levels beyond it in harshness, aggression, and abrasiveness.  Generally any sense of melody and harmony are abandoned, and the focus is more on rhythm (and sometimes that isn't particularly discernable or categorizable), texture, and in a more meta sense, the emphasis on process over result in composition and production. 

So, getting more specifically to dreamcrusher, much of what I find exceptionally difficult about this type of music is on full display.  The harsh clipping style of production is the core element here, and frankly it's the primary thing that makes this nigh unlistenable.  People who complain about clipping on something like Metallica's Death Magnetic as making it impossible to get through need to hear this to get some perspective.  I immediately had to lower my volume even more, as I suspected I might.  It's just an extraordinarily abrasive aesthetic that is fatiguing to listen to for any significant chunk of time.  The clipping is worse in "Cathedral of Moths", but it's intense in both songs.  My first feeling was that while I often try to give each submission a dozen listens or more, this might be one I would have to tap out on much earlier, and thought I might stop at just two plays and call it a day. 

Well, I did come up with some workarounds.  One is that all of my successive listens to this were at very low volume, which causes its own issues, which I'll get into shortly, but at least I could continue listening to it and see if it provoked additional thoughts, which I suppose it did.  The other that I tried briefly, but failed at, was applying a parametric equalizer to the mix to see if I could attenuate some of the most conspicuous frequencies.  This was completely unsuccessful, as they are quite evenly spread out over the treble spectrum.  Perhaps chopping out frequencies over 10k hz helps slightly, but not enough to save it. 

In my earlier explorations, I have heard even more over the top versions of this style that I enjoy even less, but it's still quite headache-inducing.  It's the type of sound (most often applied to metal, particularly the extreme varieties) that people who've never really heard it say "that's not music", and while I disagree, it makes the sentiment a bit more resonant.  If music listening was a video game, and this style was the final boss, I'm not sure I could ever win. 

Now, mostly I've just given my own listening background on this type of music or focused on the negative aspects.  But there is a somewhat positive side in that it has given me a slight bit of hope that there could be music of this type that with some tweaks, could appeal to me more.  Underneath the nearly impenetrable wall of production, there actually is some structure and something of a tune here.  It's on the simplistic side, and the nature of the way it's recorded obscures the fine details of it, but with the right song, I could see a version of this being at least more tolerable.  It would require dialing back the clipping distortion quite a bit, but I could potentially see a modified version working somewhat better. 

To people who don't listen to anything anywhere close to this, a song from an earlier round like Blanck Mass's "Death Drop" probably doesn't sound that far off from it with the distorted vocals and rhythms.  A lot of other electro-industrial, aggrotech and such operates on a similar principle, and that's an area where I'm much more musically comfortable.  Maybe dial up the noise a bit more in those styles and perhaps something similar would be more listenable and still count as noise or more pure industrial of some type.  I know I've heard artists like Skinny Puppy and Autechre release songs that are somewhat closer to this than their normal output, so the potential might be there. 

It's just that as presently constructed, each listen presents an unsolvable dilemma.  Either listen at low volume so it isn't ear-piercing, but then you miss out on any possible details in the rest of the musical composition, or keep the volume normal, and suffer.  I just can't do it.  The closest it comes to being normally listenable is at 4:32 in "Cathedral" when it's more of a conventional and warmer overdrive effect, though even that becomes harsher and harsher as it goes along.  In my research I read that apparently a few artists like :wumpscut: and Combichrist have experimented with this style, and I like some of their other work, so at least this submission has given me the impetus to give something potentially similar another shot at some point. 

Some other random observations are that the cover of this album reminds me of some of the earlier Type O Negative covers, and apparently there's an EP called "Katatonia"?  Curious.  There is an interesting mini-documentary/interview with dreamcrusher that I watched, and along with some other reading, they do seem to be conceptually a rather fascinating artist, and quite in line with the original ideas in industrial music of confrontational subversion, iconoclasm and such. 

And well, you probably already scrolled down below to the score, and yep, you broke my scale.  I thought previously that the 5/10 for the pAper chAse could potentially wind up as the lowest scoring entry in the roulette in the normal rounds, but knew there was the possibility for something worse in this round.  Overall, I just can't give this the same score as tpc, because as many problems as I had with them, they're still much more tolerable than this is.  My true feelings are that this is closer to maybe a 2/10, but I don't want to completely destroy anyone's score who sends something like this, but provide at least some strong incentive to avoid it again, though the experience has been somewhat enlightening. 

Score:  4/10 + 0.75 power noise style bonus = 4.75/10

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Tomislav95 - Okkervil River - "So Come Back, I Am Waiting", "For Real"

Early Impression - "This has more promising elements than some of what I've heard in this genre that makes me feel negatively about it, but still leans way too much into the things that bug me about versions of this style, particularly vocally."

Final Summary:

The first song builds surprisingly well, with varied instrumentation, but the warbly pitch of the vocals confirms my worries about some types of indie folk/rock. 

Details:

So when you described this as "raw", I was really nervous.  It's not as bad as I feared (actually much better in some regards), but it does seem to at least partially come out of the camp of indie folk and rock that I've always struggled with.  When I was first hearing about the style and checking out some of the bands in it, I would too often find artists who were deep into the lo-fi, amateur end of it.  Some of them can barely play their instruments, don't really bother tuning them, have mistakes all over the place on their albums, and the production sounds like a cheap recorder improperly capturing the band from another room.  Fortunately, this is not that.  I've subsequently found a variety of artists of the indie folk/rock/pop stripe that I enjoy, including a few from earlier in this very roulette, but I still have negative associations with it from the past, like I do with raw black metal and some other genres. 

But the main challenge I have here still is the vocal style.  It's very unpolished and often not quite in-tune.  Whether this is intentional or just an attempt at an emotional, earnest delivery isn't quite clear, but I just find it a bit exhausting to listen to.  I suppose for some people there's probably an appealing attempt at authenticity and catharsis in artistic vulnerability, but it's just wearing for me to hear.  And it's more prominent in quieter moments which place all the weight on the vocal performance, and there is a sizeable portion here like that.  Micah P. Hinson worked better for me in comparison. 

On the more positive side, the musicianship is much more competent.  There's variety to the arrangements, and "So Come Back, I Am Waiting" is rather unexpectedly epic by the ending.  I was initially worried they would just draw out the first few minutes and it would be overly long, repetitive, and minimalistic, and it kind of is for awhile, but it does build fairly satisfyingly by the end.  There are a variety of sounds with the horns, strings, electric piano, active bass lines and such which are enjoyable.  I'm not crazy about the fuzzy guitar tones at 1:55 and 3:25 in "For Real", but they aren't really a deal-breaker compared to the vocals.  Overall that is the better song of the two though. 

Score:  6.25/10

[LithoJazzoSphere]

senecadawg2 - mewithoutYou - "Wolf Am I! (And Shadow)", "A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains", "In a Sweater Poorly Knit"

Early Impression - "There are some cool instrumental ideas here, but the growing array of types of vocals that vex me in this genre continues to frustrate me."

Final Summary:

Musically there are some quite enjoyable moments, particularly on "In a Sweater Poorly Knit", especially with the harp playing, but the vocal style just really does this one in for me. 

Details:

So this one of those bands I've heard mentioned many times over the years, but never got around to looking into.  The personal nature of their name actually made me mentally group them with artist from earlier in the roulette such as Ours.  I had gotten the impression they were more on the indie folk/rock side of things, I guess closer to how Okkervil River is, and I didn't realize they have a more aggressive facet to their sound.  Apparently there's some controversy over even the genre there, but 2/3 songs have the post-hardcore tag, so this gets the bonus. 

Unfortunately, while in terms of musicianship they're reasonable enough, they add to the bewildering number of different vocal styles that I just can't seem to get onboard with.  I will say, his delivery is rather unique, I certainly can't think of anyone else similar, but I just find the whole talky/shouty approach when they're more aggressive to be offputting, and even in the more melodic section, he just has a cadence and timbre (whether affectation or natural) that doesn't work for me at all.  At 3:36 in "In a Sweater Poorly Knit" when they are layered with background vocals they're more tolerable, but when isolated don't connect with me at all. 

Which is somewhat of a shame, as musically "In a Sweater" is actually pretty neat.  I especially adore that harp ending, and it's also incorporated early in the song as well.  The melodica, horns, and the drum rim stick clacking also adds some spice.  The other two tracks aren't quite on the same level, but with a different vocalist would probably be more than salvageable as well.  "Wolf Am I! (And Shadow) in particular has a fun energy to it.  "A Glass Can Only Spill What It Contains" also has a nice wah solo at 3:08. 

Score:  6.25/10 + 0.5 post-hardcore bonus = 6.75/10

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Puppies_On_Acid - The Fall of Troy - "Chapter III: Nostalgic Mannerisms", "Chapter IV: Enter the Black Demon"

Early Impression - "Did someone sneak The Mars Volta in again?"

Final Summary:

This feels like a rehash of everything I liked and disliked about The Mars Volta, with a few variations, and without the better elements of the more recent TMV songs that apparently their fans like less than I do. 

Details:

I know that I've heard something from this band before, but I no longer recall what, as it's been far too long.  So somewhat unlike ariich, if I like or dislike a particular artist or style, there's a much greater (though far from guaranteed) chance that I will feel similarly about other examples of it.  In this case, they really lean into many of the same sorts of things that bugged me about "Take the Cerpin Veil Taxt" from TMV in the prior round, except that while TFoT's drummer is also pretty good, I don't think he's quite at the level of Jon Theodore, and they don't have Flea on this recording either, although the bass playing does have its moments. 

I find it hard exactly to put into words what it is about much of this type of guitar playing that frustrates me.  It's not that I inherently dislike notey, busy, complex riff writing, I enjoy plenty of prog metal, jazz/fusion, various death metal, bluegrass, etc.  But there's all too frequently kind of a messy, random chaos to the way some of these riffs are written, that almost sounds AI-generated.  It's like they programmed in a key, a tempo, a list of techniques, and had a random riff generator spit them out.  They feel like they're trying way too hard for each riff to sound unique, and it often doesn't feel organic, like the tech death version of hardcore. 

I also tend to prefer heavier, chunkier, lower range riffing, with higher-range lines being complementary, rather than being the exclusive or primary focus.  Some of the guitar effects experimentation is interesting at times, and I might enjoy it more if I liked the rest of what was going on more.  From my readings I was running into the term "Swancore", which I've heard increasingly over the last few years, and from the description seems to capture or be adjacent to a lot of the musical elements I struggle with in bands similar to this. 

And then vocally, they're almost a carbon copy of TMV's vocal style, with maybe a few harsher lines here and there, at least on these songs.  And it's not really any more agreeable for me with them than it is with TMV.  In the section at 2:28 in "Nostalgic Mannerisms", the screams there are impressive in terms of range and endurance, I will certainly at least give credit for that. 

Back to the drumming though, there are admittedly some cool sections, such as the Bonham triplets at 5:30 or so in "Nostalgic Mannerisms".  Or the beat at 1:52 in "Enter the Black Demon", which is rather nice.  Additionally, I like the glockenspiel doubling the guitar at times, like at 4:21 in "Nostalgic Mannerisms", or the moments of strings in a few spots, though they're a bit buried. 

Score:  6.25/10 + 0.5 post-hardcore bonus = 6.75/10

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Vmadera00 - Cro-Mags - "Apocalypse Now", "2020"

Early Impression - "This is close to a style that I like (though don't always love), but it might be a too stripped-down version of it."

Final Summary:

I enjoy some thrash, but this hardcore version of it doesn't have enough going on to hold my attention, with overly simple riffing and vocals that don't do much for me. 

Details:

When I had a sizeable exploration binge on hardcore awhile ago, this is one of many bands I sampled something from, with an earlier album.  Compared to other more pure hardcore bands, they seemed more promising, as they clearly have some metallic influence to them that many others lack.  So you're getting the genre challenge bonus points, but this overall feels to me like it leans much more into the crossover thrash style.  But it's a really simplified version of it.  And that can be a risk of being too close to another style, while not having enough of that genre's attributes, which can sometimes be the opposite of a sweet spot. 

I grew up on a lot of thrash, but this is just missing some of the meat that you get in that style.  For being an 8:00+ minute long song, "Apocalypse Now" has surprisingly little happening.  The double-time riff in the middle is a pretty solid moment, and it has a decent solo in that section, but it's just not enough to make up for everything else.  The rest is just too plodding, with excessively repetitive riffs that I've heard dozens of other thrash bands do.  I'm not usually one to harp on the necessity of originality - much of the time I think novelty is overrated and I'm just fine with a band pulling off an existing style well, but there isn't quite enough to chew on here. 

The second half of "Apocalypse Now" is essentially just a rotation of 2-3 basic chugging riffs.  For me that sound is kind of a Goldilocks situation, where I often want a certain amount of it for heaviness and groove, but there has to either be some variation to it, or something else more exciting on top of it, and there isn't enough here. 

I didn't realize the Dave DiCenso (who played on Petrucci's Suspended Animation and other things) is playing here, and while his kit sound is actually fairly good, he doesn't have a ton to do here either.  And while thrash is probably home to more quirky vocalists than most other genres, most of the less or unfamiliar ones would take longer than the time I have in a roulette for me to grow accustomed to.  The vocalist here is no different.  I've certainly heard worse, and he doesn't outright detract from anything, but he doesn't really add to it for me either, which would have been needed to boost this. 

And then "2020" unfortunately is mostly a decades later revisiting of the same sort of thing as the first cut, but in a smaller package.  There are different vocals this time, but they're not really any more appealing.  There are more overly simplified riffs without much else of interest to make them work well enough.  There is some ok-ish lead playing, though it's a bit buried and seems kind of an afterthought in the arrangement.  I could imagine they have the capability of making something more compelling, but I don't think I've found it yet in these songs.  This probably come off as perhaps excessively negative and without even many positive attributes for me, but I suppose the basic thrash feel and energy of it does elevate it above a few of the lower-ranked submissions. 

Score:  6.5/10 + 0.25 New York hardcore bonus = 6.75/10

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Crow - Actor|Observer - "The Devil You Know", "Dilettante", "Pareidolia"

Early Impression - "Normally I dislike instrumental versions of vocal albums, but this might be one of those exceptions where I could need it."

Final Summary:

There are some aspects of instrumental brilliance, particularly in the verses of "Pareidolia", but I just can't connect with this vocal style at all. 

Details:

Yeah, so unfortunately this relies on too many of the aspects of post-hardcore that don't often work for me.  Like a number of other entries this round, most of the instrumentation is ok or better.  Some of it is actually quite good, but more on that later.  Regrettably, the vocal style is almost a textbook example of the sort of shouty/screamy hardcore vocals that I've never been able to gel with for the most part.  It's hard to tell how much of it is the vocal timbre, and how much is the vocal cadence, or maybe just a combination of them. 

"Pareidolia" is a perfect summary of the dichotomy of what makes a band like this vexing for me.  Because the vocals in the verses are over purely ambient guitars, they are really exposed.  It starts with the harsher vocals, and then when the chorus comes in, it switches to the whinier clean style, so it has both styles that bug me.  Unfortunately, that song actually has the prettiest soundscapes instrumentally.  The swirling delayed clean guitars there sound spectacular.  But being mixed with those vocal styles just ruins it for me.  The ambient outro is rather nice though with the glitchy effects. 

"The Devil You Know" is the second most interesting song instrumentally, with some pretty tantalizing riffs, particularly in the chorus, and another lush, reverb-laden guitar break that appeals to me more sonically.  However, this track in particular adds a third vocal type, since it also has a more melodic screaming approach in a few moments, but I don't know, none of it hits for me vocally.  "Dilettante" is a somewhat weaker version of the same idea. 

So the vocals hold it back from getting a more solid score like a couple later entries did, but the instrumentation in moments is gorgeous enough to levitate it above the weaker post-hardcore entries.  Oh, and I gave a few bonus listens to "In Your Ways", which at least three people seemed to think was a better song than these.  For me it is not, it actually would have been the weakest of the four, unless it grew significantly on me over many more listens, which is certainly possible, but seems unlikely.  I am clearly not on the same wavelength as a number of you when it comes to this sort of music. 

Score:  6.5/10 + 0.5 post-hardcore bonus = 7/10

[LithoJazzoSphere]

twosuitluke - Gallows - "Kill the Rhythm", "Come Friendly Bombs", "Abandon Ship", "In the Belly of a Shark"

Early Impression - "This isn't really my sort of style, but I have to admit it was getting a bit more fun and unexpectedly varied as it went along."

Final Summary:

I've never been into most of the more pure strains of hardcore punk, though this does a bit more with it than I expected it to, with a fun energy and expanded instrumentation. 

Details:

As I foreshadowed earlier, I've mostly been unable to get into more traditional styles of hardcore, despite trying a number of times over the years.  I like Bad Brains, but it's more that I tolerate their hardcore parts to enjoy their reggae side.  I like a lot of Swedish crust and D-beat style bands, mostly because of the proximity to Swedish death metal.  There are some melodic hardcore bands that I like, but they're almost always more of the skate punk variety, which is really its own beast.  But most of the more standard hardcore bands I've sampled over the years have either annoyed me or just didn't connect with me at all. 

So this is certainly one of the entries that grew on me a little bit, though not quite enough.  It has more of the shouty hardcore vocal style that I don't often enjoy, though it isn't as overtly offputting as some of the earlier bands in this round.  Their basic sound is kind of an an awkward spot, where it isn't as heavy and beefy as some of the metalcore I like, but it's not particularly melodic and at times verges on dissonant. 

But I must say that it did become a bit more enjoyable as the songs went along, and watching a bit of live footage (particularly the '09 Reading Festival set), I can see how it's probably a blast to experience live.  I have the feeling they're another of the bands in the style that has some more conscious metal influences, with a few of the riffs, particularly the chuggier ones, a few guitar harmonies, incorporation of double bass and such.  For some reason overdriven bass breaks like at 1:01 in "In the Belly of a Shark" almost always seem to work, and this is no exception.  I was not expecting the dashes of organ and such, which helps a tad.  It's also incorporated in a section with one of my favorite production tricks, at 2:25 in "Abandon Ship" where the guitar is briefly EQed with a lo-fi filter and squashed into the middle of the mix, only to explode shortly after. 

So even though this isn't my bag, if I get in the mood for a more pure strain of hardcore, I'm definitely more likely to give them another spin than many of the other broadly similar bands I've sampled over the years, making them the best of the group of hardcore bands that didn't quite hit.  I actually enjoy them a smidge more than the tracks from Sigh next, though the style difficulty bonus vaults Sigh slightly past them. 

Score:  6.75/10 + 0.25 hardcore bonus = 7/10

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TAC - Sigh - "Voices", "In Memories Delusional"

Early Impression - "This is really hard to parse.  There are certainly elements I like here, but other elements I thought might be present are missing, the production is a bit rough, and I wonder if these are the right songs to have sent."

Final Summary:

Some of the more exotic or less common instrumentation is delightful, but the unpolished production and lack of cohesion pull it down. 

Details:

My experience with avant-garde metal has been very spotty.  In practice there seems to be no set definition of it, just that it's metal that's kind of weird, tries unusual ideas (sometimes in instrumentation, or in incorporating less common genres), and generally doesn't fit well under any other grouping of metal.  Much of what I've heard seems so half-baked, like they had a few decent ideas, but didn't know how to stretch them into full-length songs or albums, or at least not in a way that I generally have any interest in revisiting beyond occasional novelty. 

So Sigh is another band that I was aware of quite some time ago, and I know I heard something or another from them at the time, but I don't remember anything at all about it.  Unlike a number of earlier submissions in prior rounds, this takes the idea of metal with a variety of other influences, but never manages to make them feel cohesive or flowing.  In isolation there are certainly some intriguing things happening.  The piano playing in "Voices", some of the synthesizer work (apparently Mirai is a big fan of analog synths, which is usually a good sign), the hand percussion, the shamisen in "In Memories Delusional", all of that is splendid. 

These two tracks were recorded 17 years apart, and yet both struggle from the same production issue, in that while it isn't irritatingly lo-fi like some metal can be, it still sounds more like a demo recording.  The guitars are kind of thin, and the drum production is a bit odd.  Supposedly it is actually played on "In Memories Delusional", but it sounds programmed.  It may just be overly triggered, but I would think that a band that has been around as long as they have would have figured out how to make them sound good by now, so either it's an intentional choice or something went wrong.  The lack of dynamics in the snare fills are one of the dead giveaways, they're an Images & Words-level of static.  The guitar solo in "Voices" is kind of awkward.  The tone is thin there as well, and while moments of the phrasing certainly indicate a bit of playing experience, other moments feel rather amateur. 

The vocals are also kind of all over the place.  The harmony cleans in "In Memories Delusional" are kind of interesting, but the harshes sound almost like a cartoon black metal version with the speed they're going at. 

Also, with a few other people picking up on my interest in it, and Sigh being known for having someone who occasionally plays saxophone, I thought maybe one of these tracks would have some on it.  There's no guarantee I'd like how they incorporate it given how scattershot everything else is, but at least for my own curiosity I'll probably have to hunt down some other tracks sometime later just to see how they utilize it. 

Score:  6.75/10 + 0.5 avant-garde metal bonus = 7.25/10

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Stadler - Hank Williams Jr. - "The Pressure Is On", "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line", "A Country Boy Can Survive"

Early Impression - "There are a surprisingly high number of different components I like here, though there aren't quite as many of any of them in particular as I'd like."

Final Summary:

This has serendipitously diverse instrumentation and stylistic influences for the genre, which helps me start to get a foothold into an era of country music that mostly predates my own listening experiences. 

Details:

So early on when growing up there was a lot of country played in the house.  My parents at the time were big fans of the mainstream country of the mid-80s to early 90s, and I managed to absorb quite a lot of it, though I didn't really have any desire to play most of it on my own.  My mother mostly lost interest in it over time, though my father still listens to a decent amount of it.  But for whatever reason they rarely ventured into the older country of the 70s and earlier.  Getting into music exploration on my own, a mantra I heard from other people frequently was "anything but country", which I couldn't agree with.  But those types of people would occasionally admit that someone like Johnny Cash was alright, though in my own journeys I couldn't even get into his music either.  So I've felt for awhile that it's been a gap in my listening, and this definitely is a step in the right direction towards filling it. 

I think part of what helps here is that there are a variety of other influences other than just pure country, and quite a broad range of instrumentation.  There's some blues, there's funk, there's Hammond organ, dobro, pedal steel, fiddle, electric piano, sitar, harmonica, horns, piano, and probably more.  The Hammond especially sounds great on "The Pressure Is On".  Of course the challenge with so many different instruments is that most of them are rarely able to shine for more than a few seconds at a time, so it leaves me wanting more. 

Slap bass on "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line" was completely unexpected, but works astonishingly well.  The guitar solo and fills in that track are especially good - the timbre reminds me a lot of the Little River Band, which was one of my favorite bands growing up.  Some of the guitar work in the other tracks could use a tad more bite like that one has, clean electric guitar tones have always been kind of iffy for me.  "A Country Boy Can Survive" also has a fun moment with the whammy dip at 2:58.  But "Only Daddy" is easily the best track here, where even the drumming is pretty surprisingly fantastic with high-pitched toms, triplet fills and all. 

Score:  7.75/10

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ariich - Ocean Colour Scene - "Get Blown Away", "Alibis", "The Riverboat Song"

Early Impression - "The last song is really infectious, but the jury will be deliberating on the first two for a bit I suspect."

Final Summary:

A more traditionalist take on Britpop, with two ok but not particularly outstanding tunes, and then a monster of a closer in "The Riverboat Song". 

Details:

So I must say that I have a pretty limited knowledge of Britpop.  "Wonderwall" from Oasis has been a punchline to jokes about playing guitar at parties for a long time, though I don't ever remember hearing the song myself until well into my 20s.  I know I heard some material from Blur ("Song 2" in particular seemed to be a staple here, though RYM says it's alt/garage rock), and various others over the years, but nothing ever really caught my ear.  As a few people noted, it's probably not really an actual genre, and the wide divergence in the two different bands classified as such this round lend credence to that notion. 

OCS seems to have more of a traditional slant on it, of taking some of the trappings of 60s British pop/rock and porting them into the 90s.  The first two songs here are perfectly serviceable, and I wouldn't skip the channel if they came on the radio, but I wouldn't actively seek them out either.  The driving piano in "Get Blown Away" is probably my favorite thing about the first two, but otherwise they never really stuck in my head like I hoped they might. 

But it's "The Riverboat Song" that easily steals the show.  This has to be the best song the Rolling Stones never wrote.  The vocalist even sounds kind of like Jagger on it, which has to be intentional.  It's such a simple but hypnotic riff, and the lilting drum pattern gives it an endless flow of life.  The panning of the killswitch flickering at 3:08 is a barrel of fun.  I still need to figure out the difference between a Farsifa and a Vox Continential organ, but the moments it punches in give it some lift as well. 

Score:  7.5/10 + 0.25 Britpop bonus = 7.75/10

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SoundscapeMN - Mutyumu - "Intro / II y a", "die Ewige Wiederkunft", "L'oeil est Dieu"

Early Impression - "The non-metal facets of this are easily the strongest, but the metal ones and the production hold it back."

Final Summary:

While the string and piano work in particular is quite pleasant, even beautiful, the muddy drum production and guitar sound in the metallic portions brings this down a decent amount. 

Details:

This is probably the start of the entries where the proximity to other styles I either like or at least am more familiar with helps keep submissions from sliding too far down.  In this case, a good chunk of this is essentially chamber-scale symphonic metal.  And in that sense I tend to like it more than some of the more bombastic "we want a 120-piece orchestra scored by Howard Shore, but we only have the budget for a mid-tier keyboard workstation" sort of bands.  The piano work and the strings in particular are quite good.  Apparently they have a full-time violinist, which usually helps.  The clean vocals are pretty solid, though not particularly a standout, and are a bit buried at times.  Melodically it's a bit plain, but it's not a deal-breaker. 

But what holds it back is that the main thing that makes this avant-garde is that they're trying to graft an almost raw black metal underpinning to the heavier sections.  And for me they just don't really mesh together.  The drums and bass sound ok in the more moderate moments, but in the more intense passages with blast beats and such the mixing gets really messy, and everything just turns to mush.  And not in an ethereal wall of sound sort of way that can work for other artists.  It just sounds way too sloppy.  And the guitar tone, mostly for the heavier bits, is of the paper-thin and brittle type that has no weight to it. 

Score:  7.5/10 + 0.5 avant-garde metal bonus = 8/10

[LithoJazzoSphere]

soupytwist - Manic Street Preachers - "A Design For Life", "Australia", "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough"

Early Impression - "This seems kind of middle of the road, but you might have accidentally? stumbled upon some sneaky cheatin' points for an element of one of the songs."

Final Summary:

Like Ocean Colour Scene, the first two cuts are alright, but the final tune really takes the cake in elevating this submission a bit, with a more relatively modern flavor of Britpop. 

Details:

So you'll have to read the intro of ariich's writeup to see my very brief history with Britpop.  The Manic Street Preachers demonstrate that there are at least two different sides to Britpop, with Ocean Colour Scene having a more traditional 60s flavor, and MSP having a more relatively contemporary sound for the 90s and later.  It's actually not worlds away from some of the American pop/rock of the time.  Interestingly enough, this has a similar build that OCS did.  The first two songs are good though not stellar ("Australia" is the better of the two to me), but then takes a leap going to the final song of the set.  That drum outro on "A Design For Life" with piles of reverb is kind of a unique conclusion to a track though. 

Something seemed oddly familiar about "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough", but I was pretty sure I'd never it before.  Turns out it's the guest vocalist.  The Cardigans is probably one of my most long-running casually favorite bands, since I started more frequently listening to modern radio in the mid-late 90s, and "Lovefool" was one of the first songs I taped and listened to obsessively.  I never internalized Nina's name despite picking up other music of theirs over time, but it's such a familiar voice that I don't know why I didn't pick up on it instantly.  I guess this technically makes it Swedepop in addition to Britpop?

Even aside from that, "Your Love" is just the catchiest of the lot, and with perfect production for the style, with an excellent light crunch on the guitars, and a cool but not quite long enough guitar lead.  I have an ever-expanding summertime music playlist with Gin Blossoms, Goo Goo Dolls, Splender and others on it, and this is going right on that. 

Score:  7.75/10 + 0.25 Britpop bonus = 8/10

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Elite - Ornette Coleman - "Lonely Woman", "Congeniality"

Early Impression - "The first song feels like a funhouse mirror version of a style I like, but the second is more appealing, so we'll have to see how it balances out."

Final Summary:

I've had an aversion to free and avant-garde jazz for some time, but perhaps the origins of it aren't all that bad, with "Congeniality" in particular tapping into friendlier post-bop listening territory for me. 

Details:

I've known about Ornette Coleman for quite some time, and definitely listened to this album at some point a long time ago.  I wasn't quite ready for it then, and I'm still not sure I am now, but I'm certainly closer, and this is not as over the top as I worried it might be.  Back when I devouring everything on jazz that I could, one of the things I did was to read Miles Davis' autobiography.  I remember that he had some less than kind things to say about Ornette, which probably poisoned the well for any possible enjoyment of Ornette's music back then.  I also knew that John Coltrane, my favorite saxophonist, was directly influenced by Ornette in his last few years, and I didn't/don't? like that era of his career for the most part.  Well, I'm somewhat less impressionable these days, so it's as good as time as any for a reevaluation. 

I've heard a fair amount of truly bizarre avant-garde and free jazz, from later Coltrane to far beyond.  A lot of it I find quite unlistenable, with a completely unmoored sense of melody, harmony, rhythm, and an excessive focus on dissonant tonal clusters, overblowing, various squawking effects and so forth.  I can put up with it in small amounts (Trane's Sun Ship for example, has sections of more "out there" sonic explorations interspersed with more traditional playing), but when it's the focus for extended periods of time I generally just can't do it. 

So I suppose I was serendipitously surprised that this album, being near the beginning of the explorations of avant-garde jazz, is actually still fairly rooted in post-bop sensibilities.  His idea of harmolodics sounds interesting, and I may have to look into it further at a later point.  I did a bit of self-directed study in philosophy awhile back, so I didn't realize worlds were going to collide, with Derrida having interviewed Ornette at one point. 

On to the music, "Lonely Woman" is the more challenging piece to wrestle with.  Significant chunks of it feel like normal modal jazz, but the saxophone and trumpet are intentionally a bit out of sync with each other in the repeated motifs in terms of pitch and rhythm, which is a little jarring.  I understand that they're trying to convey a theme topically with the dissonance, but it is a bit fatiguing to listen to. 

On the other hand, "Congeniality" for the most part could appear on almost any other recording of the era.  It has the typical swing of the drums, the walking basslines, the harmonized head, and fairly normal soloing, perhaps a bit more outside in note choice than usual in spots.  I get what they're trying to do in not having a chording instrument for accompaniment, though I'm so fond of piano in this era that I'm always going to miss it (even Sonny Rollins would do this at times to my disappointment).  It frees them up more in terms of having less dictation of their harmonic choices, but it does make the sound a tad sparse and hollow.  Still, it otherwise has a very familiar feel that I'm probably always going to enjoy. 

I'm pretty sure I recall reading that Ornette used a plastic saxophone here.  It's certainly far from my favorite saxophone timbre, but it's richer sounding than I would have expected. 

Score:  7.75/10 + 0.5 avant-garde jazz bonus = 8.25/10

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Lethean - Solefald - "Song Til Stormen", "Tittentattenteksti", "Vitets Vidd I Verdi"

Early Impression - "Two of these songs are kind of cool, but I feel like I'm observing a scuffle between two demons arguing over who gets to devour this poor sinner's kidneys first."

Final Summary:

One of the most unique submissions in a sea of unique submissions this round, this rises with two quite melodic and memorable pieces and a third "memorable" one in "Tittentattenteksti" which is memorable for stranger reasons. 

Details:

I've heard their band name mentioned many times over the years, but for some reason I had the impression they were some kind of folk metal band.  "Song Til Stormen" really isn't avant-garde at all, it's just a pretty and melodic warmup tune.  I like how in some of the vocal harmonies they will hold one note constant and shift the other notes around it, that's a rather unusual harmonizing technique.  "Vitets Vidd I Verdi" is a bit more experimental, but it's a really joyous combination of elements, with the horns, the organ arpeggios, the choir, and even the cowbell!  The ride bell work such as in the section at 0:31 is delicious as well.  The song does contain a shorter section of insanity more relevant to the middle song though. 

Now "Tittentattenteksti", I'm not quite sure about this one.  Instrumentally it's alright, perhaps a bit plain.  But wow are these vocals out of left field.  The melodic ones are fine, but the harsh?, (that's probably not quite the right word, but it'll have to do), vocals are so comical that I don't know whether to laugh or sit in bewilderment.  Some of it sounds like demented jazz scatting.  One of the songs from an earlier round in the roulette was "Demon Kitty Rag", which seems way more appropriate a title to this song than to that one.  Maybe that's what "Tittentattenteksti" means in Norwegian! 

Normally I don't care much about lyrics, but I just had to try and locate these to see what the heck was going on.  Finding them and Google translating them was hardly of any help.  Some were already in English, and some of it is probably gibberish.  What I could make out or read wasn't auspicious anyway, something about rats and butts - maybe I don't even want to know. 

My biggest complaint is that the guitar tone is kind of thin and ratty-sounding, which in weaker submissions would hold it back more, but so much else is so indelible that I can't ding it too much. 

Score: 8.25/10 + 0.5 avant-garde metal bonus = 8.75/10

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Buddyhunter1 - Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - "Ambugaton", "Phthisis"

Early Impression - "Now this is going to take some getting used to, I feel like I'm in one of those dreams where everything's a little off, but you can't quite put your finger on what it is."

Final Summary:

Easily the biggest sleeper hit of the round, some rather unusual music becomes increasingly endearing over time with the eclectic percussion and other instrumentation. 

Details:

Like some other style-related genres, you may have to read the first bit of my writeup on Sigh for a tiny bit of my personal experience with avant-garde music, or even Ornette Coleman's, Ske's, or Mutyumu's.  Avant-garde groups seemed to be a hot commodity awhile back, and I always mentally grouped StGM with other weird, genre-hopping explorers like Mr. Bungle, Estradasphere, Secret Chiefs 3 and various others.  Each had interesting things about them, but I generally found the whole packages unpalatable for sustained listening, especially over time.  But I haven't really revisited most of them in quite awhile now, though I apparently relistened to Of Natural History half a dozen years ago and found it decent, albeit I remember nothing about it. 

So this group turns out to be a perfect example for me of how I find additional listens to be very helpful in some cases, particularly for much more challenging music.  If I'd had to grade this after the first listen, I'm not sure it would have passed a 6/10.  It took quite awhile for it to grow on me, but it's obviously risen quite a bit since that initial session.  Music this dense and unusual is really hit or miss for me (often much more miss than hit), but some of the attributes started warming me to it. 

One is that there is quite a lot of King Crimson DNA here, and they have had more staying power for me than a lot of the earlier prog acts, and possibly because of KC's influence on Tool and the downstream effects of that.  Apparently Tony Levin is even a big fan of StGM.  There's a lot of fascinating-sounding percussion and cymbal work scattered throughout, which supposedly is a combination of conventional gear, and found or homemade objects.  There's almost this tribal feel to it (especially watching a few live performances) that Sepultura and then the nu-metal scene tried to tap into, but StGM at least on moments of these tracks flirts with a far more interesting version of it. 

Then there's the electric violin, which makes a welcome second appearance in this roulette, and some of the vocals in the second song, which give it some fantastic contrast.  When the music is this outré, there's a temptation to make all the vocals bizarre as well, but having them be a bit more conventional at points grounds it a bit more. 

Score:  8.25/10 + 0.5 avant-prog bonus = 8.75/10

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Evermind - Black Peaks - "The Midnight Sun", "Slow Seas"

Early Impression - "Getting the right balance of vocals that don't annoy me and guitar work that isn't overly fidgety seems to be a key for getting this style right, and this is one of the ones that comes closest to nailing it."

Final Summary:

In an ocean of post-hardcore entries, this is the first with more digestible vocals and some chunkier riffs. 

Details:

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised that even when selecting from genres I don't have as much fondness for, that people scoring higher in this roulette would be able to find me more appealing examples of that style.  And that is exactly what is happening here.  In this case, it's probably helped by this also being considered progressive rock, but yet not in the more chaotic style that some earlier bands in this round and the last one are part of. 

One sizeable difference is that the guitar work connects with me much more.  It has a lot of cool textures and some effects experimentation, but not in as unrestrained of a way, and the playing is less jittery, and with some much-needed crushing riffs, especially in "Slow Seas".  The acoustics are a superb touch there as well, and with some excellent bass work throughout.  I'm hearing a fair amount of Tool influence in numerous spots, which is usually a good sign.  The other is the vocals, which both harsh and clean, are much more pleasing to the ears than some earlier entries. 

Score:  8.5/10 + 0.5 post-hardcore bonus = 9/10

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HOF - Ske - "Insolubilia I", "La Nona Onda"

Early Impression - "So apparently there's at least two sides to this style, and I'd only checked out the one I really have to be in the right mood for, because I'll probably be in the mood for this much more frequently."

Final Summary:

Avant-prog seems to come in a gentler and more melodious form than I've previously encountered, which along with the panoply of varied and intoxicating instrumentation makes me more likely to revisit this band than other similar ones. 

Details:

Well, so I've spent a bit of time exploring the more intense variants of avant-prog, from the earlier Rock In Opposition bands to the more modern brutal prog and Windmill Scene bands.  The jury is still out on the latter, but the former tends to appeal to me in highly specific moods that don't arise that often.  But as it turns out, there's a calmer and more melodic but still piquant and tasty side to avant-prog that is adjacent to more conventional symphonic prog rock, just a bit more unusual. 

There's a neverending litany of different timbres here, with piano, chromatic percussion, flute, vocals, woodwinds, guitars, violin, synthesizers, organ, saxophone, and surely more.  Kind of like Hank Williams Jr., but in a very different way, the presence of so many different sounds is almost overwhelming at times, and makes me wish I could hear more of each individual one, but everything comes together so well that I can only complain so much.  You also seem to have a knack for finding bands with interesting and exceptionally well-captured drumming, it's so crisp here. 

A lot of avant-garde music seems somewhat random, like they don't really care about songwriting and structure and just want to try whatever weird idea they can come up with.  And in some cases I imagine that's true, either consciously or incidentally.  But here there are actual builds, particularly in "La Nona Onda", which becomes surprisingly epic towards the end.  These are quite exquisite compositions with compelling orchestration that feel like they deserve to be more fully dissected, but would need much more time than I can give them in the crowded context of a roulette.  I just know that I really like them. 

Score:  8.5/10 + 0.5 avant-prog bonus = 9/10

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Nachtmerrie - Svalbard - "Listen To Someone", "Open Wound", "Pearlescent"

Early Impression - "The key for some of the better submissions this round might be being adjacent to genres/artists I do like, and this one achieves that with a lush, beautiful and powerful sound."

Final Summary:

The overall sound of this just hits it out of the park, with the right mixture of meaty guitars doused in ambiance. 

Details:

Now we have the best example yet of how to get a style I'm mostly not into to succeed.  This sort of feels like a combination of Alcest and Sylvaine.  I was pretty late on getting into the blackgaze scene, but they've been probably the two that have resonated the most with me, and this really lands with a similar vibe.  As I mentioned earlier in the round, I'd listened to an interview with this band a couple years ago, and I imagine a song or two was played somewhere during it, but I'd never managed to follow up on them. 

Apparently this also counts as "screamo", which of course is often the word people unfamiliar with extreme music genres mistakenly tend to call all metal bands.  But it's also a actual subgenre that I have heard relatively little of, so perhaps that inches me in that direction as well, I've been a bit surprised by a few other artists I've come across with that tag in recent years. 

As for Svalbard's sound, getting the guitars to sound heavy enough, to have rhythmic propulsion, and to have it be really rich, atmospheric and spacious can be a challenge, but this accomplishes it.  The combination of the lower rhythm guitar with the higher post-rock-esque wooly leads is quite enrapturing. 

I'm actually a little puzzled that Crow likes this band, because the drums are pretty hot in the mix, but for my tastes, I don't mind punchy drum production.  "Open Wound" is the strongest song here, the fluidity in switching subdivisions really gives a lot of dynamics to it.  Double-time isn't uncommon, and quadruple-time isn't unheard of either, but I think this has sections where the backbeat is slow enough that it's actually octupling it if you start counting from there.  If it had blast beats like "Listen To Someone" does in moments it could have gotten to 16x, I believe. 

The instrumentation is easily the high point here, but when too often the vocals in this style rub me the wrong way, these are fine.  The cleans tend to follow more of the shoegaze mushy wall of sound approach, but it works, particularly on "Pearlescent", where they're a bit more upfront.  "Listen To Someone" is the weakest song of the batch, but it's still quite good. 

So it took a round style bonus to get there, but this actually winds up tying the score for the highest of the roulette yet. 

Score:  8.75/10 + 0.5 post-hardcore bonus = 9.25/10

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Round 10 Adjusted Scores:

Nachtmerrie  .........................................  9.25
Evermind  ............................................  9
HOF  ..................................................  9
Buddyhunter1  ...................................  8.75
Lethean  ..........................................  8.75
Elite  ..............................................  8.25
SoundscapeMN  ..............................  8
soupytwist  ...................................  8
ariich  .........................................  7.75
Stadler  .....................................  7.75
TAC  ........................................  7.25
Crow  .....................................  7
twosuitluke  ...........................  7
Puppies_On_Acid  ..................  6.75
senecadawg2  ......................  6.75
Vmadera00  .......................  6.75
Tomislav95  ......................  6.25
Sacul  .............................  4.75


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Round 10 Top 8 Songs:

1:  Svalbard - "Open Wound"
2:  Black Peaks - "Slow Seas"
3:  Manic Street Preachers - "Your Love Alone Is Not Enough"
4:  Solefald - "Vitets Vidd I Verdi"
5:  Sleepytime Gorilla Museum - "Phthisis"
6:  Ske - "La Nona Onda"
7:  Ocean Colour Scene - "The Riverboat Song"
8:  Ornette Coleman - "Congeniality"

Bonus nods to the instrumentation of the verse of Actor|Observer's "Pareidolia" and the harp ending of mewithouYou's "In a Sweater Poorly Knit". 


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Current Cumulative Standings (after 10 rounds):

Nachtmerrie  ----------------------------  83
SoundscapeMN  --------------------------  82.5
Evermind  ---------------------------------  81.75
TAC  ----------------------------------------  81.25
ariich  ---------------------------------------  80.25
soupytwist  ----------------------------------  80
HOF  ------------------------------------------  79.75
Lethean  ---------------------------------------  79.25
senecadawg2  ----------------------------------  76
Buddyhunter1  ----------------------------------  75
Stadler  -----------------------------------------  75
Vmadera00  -----------------------------------  74.25
Elite  ------------------------------------------  73.75
Puppies_On_Acid  ---------------------------  73.5
twosuitluke  --------------------------------  73
Sacul  --------------------------------------  72.75
Tomislav95  -------------------------------  72.75
Crow  -------------------------------------  70.25
romdrums  ------------------------------  14.25 (had to drop out after the second round)


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Round Score Breakdown:

ariich:  7.75 + 7.5 + 7.5 + 8.25 + 8 + 8 + 9 + 7.75 + 8.75 + 7.75 = 80.25
Buddyhunter1:  7.5 + 6.5 + 7.75 + 7 + 8 + 7 + 7 + 7.75 + 7.75 + 8.75 = 75
Crow:  6 + 6.75 + 7 + 7.5 + 7 + 5 + 7 + 9.25 + 7.75 + 7 = 70.25
Elite:  6.5 + 7.5 + 6.75 + 8.5 + 7.25 + 6.75 + 8 + 7 + 7.25 + 8.25 = 73.75
Evermind:  7.75 + 7.5 + 8.25 + 7.75 + 8.75 + 8.25 + 8 + 8.5 + 8 + 9 = 81.75
HOF:  9 + 9 + 6.5 + 7.25 + 8.5 + 7 + 8.25 + 7.25 + 8 + 9 = 79.75
Lethean:  7.75 + 8.25 + 7.5 + 7 + 8.25 + 8.25 + 8.25 + 7.25 + 8 + 8.75 = 79.25
Nachtmerrie:  8.25 + 9 + 6.75 + 9 + 7.75 + 8 + 8 + 8.75 + 8.25 + 9.25 = 83
Puppies_On_Acid:  8 + 7 + 6.75 + 6.75 + 8 + 7.75 + 7 + 7.5 + 8 + 6.75 = 73.5
romdrums:  7.25 + 7 + x + x + x + x + x + x + x + x = 14.25
Sacul:  7.25 + 8.75 + 6 + 7.75 + 7.25 + 6.75 + 8.25 + 9 + 7 + 4.75 = 72.75
senecadawg2:  8 + 7 + 8.5 + 6.75 + 8.25 + 8 + 8 + 7.25 + 7.5 + 6.75 = 76
SoundscapeMN:  8 + 8.75 + 8.75 + 8.5 + 8.75 + 7 + 8 + 8 + 8.75 + 8 = 82.5
soupytwist:  6.5 + 6.75 + 9 + 8.75 + 8 + 8.25 + 8.25 + 7.75 + 8.75 + 8 = 80
Stadler:  8.5 + 7.5 + 7 + 7 + 8.75 + 7.5 + 6.75 + 6.75 + 7.5 + 7.75 = 75
TAC:  8.25 + 8.25 + 8.75 + 7.5 + 7.25 + 7.5 + 9 + 8.5 + 9 + 7.25 = 81.25
Tomislav95:  7 + 8.25 + 7.25 + 7 + 7.5 + 7.5 + 8 + 7 + 7 + 6.25 = 72.75
twosuitluke:  7.5 + 8.25 + 5.5 + 7.5 + 8.25 + 7 + 7.75 + 7 + 7.25 + 7 = 73
Vmadera00:  7.25 + 7.75 + 8 + 6.75 + 7 + 7.75 + 7.25 + 8.75 + 7 + 6.75 = 74.25


---

Wow, so we have our second lead change, the first since round 3, and our third separate leader.  Things have tightened up a bit near the top, with several in striking distance - we definitely have ourselves a competition now! 

The clustering was rather interesting this round, with nothing much in the low-mid low-7s range, which is usually the tipping point for when my issues with artists become smaller, or are outweighed by other elements. 

I'll post the list of eligible bands for the next round mid-late tomorrow morning assuming something pressing doesn't come up.

[twosuitsluke]

Nice to see Svalbard do so well, great band. I personally don’t hear much post-hardcore in their sound, but probably just me.

[HOF]

Woo! Back to the 9s (with an assist from the bonus point). That whole album is just delicious musically. I think you’ll really enjoy it. That drummer and drum sound are amazing for sure. There was an earlier Ske album that is a bit more out there, but this one seems to strike the right balance between technicality, randomness, and being memorable.

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Nice to see Svalbard do so well, great band. I personally don’t hear much post-hardcore in their sound, but probably just me.

That seemed to be the secret this round, to find things labeled one genre that are probably closer to another in actuality. 

[TAC]

I'm losing ground.

[Crow]

an above average score for me in this round, let's goooo 
also yeah clearly you are not gonna enjoy the genre ever if you are resistant to a major factor of its appeal (both its usual vocal styles) so idk what to tell you, i got to send one of my favorite bands and not completely tank so there's that i guess 
frankly if i don't see something i can reasonably send for round 11 out of my own library i'm probably just gonna drop out of the roulette after this 'cause we clearly don't jive and i really don't feel like digging thru pre-90's music (a thing i don't listen to) or making a 45 minute EP for this roulette at this point, sorry 

[Buddyhunter1]

Damn, I somehow jumped to the middle of the rankings after the round we were all supposed to tank in? I must have made a deal with the donkey-headed adversary of humanity.

Of Natural History is definitely their best album, but their debut has some real highlights that I couldn't fit into the submission, namely Sleep Is Wrong and Powerless. Their third album never clicked with me - to me it just lacks the dark, unsettling atmosphere that made the first two so unique. But I know it has its fans.

[LithoJazzoSphere]

an above average score for me in this round, let's goooo 
also yeah clearly you are not gonna enjoy the genre ever if you are resistant to a major factor of its appeal (both its usual vocal styles) so idk what to tell you, i got to send one of my favorite bands and not completely tank so there's that i guess 
frankly if i don't see something i can reasonably send for round 11 out of my own library i'm probably just gonna drop out of the roulette after this 'cause we clearly don't jive and i really don't feel like digging thru pre-90's music (a thing i don't listen to) or making a 45 minute EP for this roulette at this point, sorry 

I may never be able to love the genre as a whole, but if I can at least add a few more bands I enjoy in the style I consider that a win.  And over time that can snowball into shifting my whole opinion on a style, you never know.  Occasionally things I don't normally like break through. 

Next round is going to to have a pretty massive and varied list, so I'd be shocked if you can't find something in it.  And I understand if you don't feel up to putting your usual meticulous amount of effort into an EP, but even just quickly throwing together a bunch of songs is bound to have something that'll hit, you've already had a few moderate ones and one huge one. 

Damn, I somehow jumped to the middle of the rankings after the round we were all supposed to tank in? I must have made a deal with the donkey-headed adversary of humanity.

Yeah, it's tight enough in many spots still that a strong round can catapult someone up a number of places. 

[HOF]

So when do we get the list of bands?

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Tomorrow mid-late morning. 

[Evermind]

Good job on that 4/10, Lucas

Also good to see I'm in the Top 3 but since we have a pre-90s round coming soon I expect Tim to overtake me.

[SoundscapeMN]

it's interesting per as I commented right after my submission, I thought of a possible better choice for this round. However, reading some of the comments Litho made, I'm not sure if the band I was thinking of would have made as much sense now.

Dunno, however I guess I could include them in the EP round potentially.

I honestly have never had major issues with the production on the Mutyumu music that you describe, nor have I really thought of them as Metal really. Maybe "Post Metal" I guess in some ways, but their other styles have always stood out much more, rather than sounding all that heavy.

[Elite]

Well, that went quite well!

Love your write-ups, very well worded and detailed.

[soupytwist]

Pretty happy to get out of that round with a OK score.  Was annoyed when I discovered I couldn't feature any songs from 'The Holy Bible' which is the Manic's masterpeice, because it wasn't classed as 'Britpop'.....but I wouldn't have included 'Your Love....' if that was the case, and that song seemed to have saved me. 

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Ok, here are the details for round 11.  Here are a bunch of bands I'm curious about to choose from.  I've heard something from many of them, I even like some of them to a certain extent, but I don't feel I've gotten over the hump in considering myself a fan of theirs, so that's where you come in.  For the people who think I know everything, you'll be shocked at the names on this list. 

Eligible Candidates - Agalloch, Alice Cooper, Angra, Arena, Artificial Language, Atomic Rooster, Band-Maid, Baroness, Battle of Mice, Between the Buried and Me, Beyond the Bridge, Big Big Train, Blackfield, Blind Guardian, Bon Iver, Boris, Borknagar, Brian Eno, Bruce Dickinson, Buckethead, Caravan, Carole King, Cat Power, Chaos Divine, Chris Stapleton, Chroma Key, Circus Maximus, Conception, Cradle of Filth, Crimson Glory, Crowbar, Curved Air, Death Grips, The Descendants, Destiny's Child, Devil Doll, Dinosaur Jr., Dio, Dir en Grey, Elliott Smith, Enslaved, Envy, Explosions in the Sky, Faith No More, Fallujah, Fates Warning, Fen, Fleetwood Mac, Florence & the Machine, Flying Colors, Flyleaf, Frank Ocean, Gacharic Spin, Gentle Giant, Ghost, Gillian Welch, Girlschool, Gojira, Husker Du, In This Moment, Intronaut, IQ, Isis, Janis Joplin, Japanese Breakfast, Jason Isbell, Jeff Buckley, Jefferson Airplane, Jimmy Eat World, Jinjer, John Legend, Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, Joy Division, Julia Holter, Kansas, Kate Bush, Keep of Kalessin, Kevin Gilbert, Kimbra, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, KISS, Klone, Kyuss, Lamb of God, Leprous, Lita Ford, Lonesome Blue, Lovebites, Madonna, Mahogany Rush, Manowar, Marillion, Mary's Blood, Mastodon, maudlin of the Well, Metric, Mindmaze, Mitski, Motorhead, Mr. Bungle, Mutoid Man, My Bloody Valentine, Myrath, Ne Obliviscaris, Neal Morse, Nemophila, Neurosis, Nick Cave, nofx, No-Man, Obsidian Kingdom, Oceansize, O.S.I., Pagan's Mind, Pallbearer, Parkway Drive, Paramore, Pat Benatar, Patti Smith, Pelican, Pendragon, Persefone, Peter Gabriel, PFM, Pharaoh Sanders, Phish, Phoebe Bridgers, PJ Harvey, Prince, Queens of the Stone Age, Radiohead, Rage, Rina Sawayama, Riverside, Robert Rich, Run the Jewels, Scale the Summit, Seventh Wonder, Shade Empire, Shadow Gallery, Sigh, Sigur Ros, SikTh, Sleater-Kinney, Sonic Youth, Spock's Beard, St. Vincent, Steely Dan, Sting, Sufjan Stevens, Sun Ra, Talking Heads, Talk Talk, Tame Impala, Taylor Swift, Television, Textures, Thank You Scientist, The Acacia Strain, The Arcade Fire, The Birthday Party, The Dead Kennedys, The Dear Hunter, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Dixie Dregs, The Dresden Dolls, The Flaming Lips, The Flower Kings, The Grateful Dead, The Pretenders, The Pretty Reckless, The Runaways, The Velvet Underground, The Who, The Winery Dogs, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Theocracy, They Might Be Giants, Thrice, Tim Hecker, Tori Amos, Traffic, Transatlantic, Triumph, Uriah Heep, Usher, Van der Graaf Generator, Vanden Plas, Voivod, Warpaint, Wolverine, Yusuf Lateef, Zao, ZZ Top

*Remember for this round it's as many songs as you can fit into 15 minutes, from one artist on the above list.

*Send your submission to lithojazzosphere@outlook.com.  If you can, send me both Youtube and Spotify links for your song(s).  The Youtube link is so I can make my own playlist and rip the audio.  The Spotify link is for the group playlist.  If you can't or don't find both links I will find them myself, but the more of you that find both, the less extra work I have to do. 

*Also remember that just because an artist is on the list doesn't mean I'm going to like them, take my normal taste preferences into account.  I could definitely regret having listed some of these.  Some of these artists have already been featured earlier in this roulette, so if they are, I'd highly advise reading the writeups on them to see what did and didn't work before. 

*If you are choosing an artist from the list that has already been used in an earlier round, it can't be one you yourself sent, or songs I already received. 

*I played around with listing what I've already heard from these artists, but it's too much and too subjective what to include.  I would just recommend to try and pick a band that you can easily substitute songs for if I'm already too familiar with some, especially if you pick singles or more well-known songs of theirs.  You can also ask about a few specific artists via PM or e-mail.

*As I mentioned earlier, I'm fine with receiving the same band from multiple senders, but I don't want the same songs, so that's on a first come, first served basis. 

[ariich]

Luke is sending NOFX. (EDIT: Or he's sending King Gizzard again)

Shame RJ isn't playing, there are several j-metal bands on the list.

[LithoJazzoSphere]

I honestly have never had major issues with the production on the Mutyumu music that you describe, nor have I really thought of them as Metal really. Maybe "Post Metal" I guess in some ways, but their other styles have always stood out much more, rather than sounding all that heavy.

Yeah, I think they'd be way better off if they left the metallic elements behind, or at least really cleaned them up. 

Was annoyed when I discovered I couldn't feature any songs from 'The Holy Bible' which is the Manic's masterpeice, because it wasn't classed as 'Britpop'

I have a long running list of things to listen to after, so I'll probably get to it at some point, particularly if people highlight where to go next.  The highest scoring ones get first preference, so I won't get to many until well after the roulette, but I'd theoretically love to listen to everything that's maybe 7.5 and above at some point, and maybe even some below if I felt there is potential in their sound but maybe the songs weren't the right ones. 

[twosuitsluke]

Luke is sending NOFX. (EDIT: Or he's sending King Gizzard again)

Shame RJ isn't playing, there are several j-metal bands on the list.

I’m going to send Destiny’s Child, but I assume that’s what everyone is doing?

[LithoJazzoSphere]

Luke is sending.... (EDIT: Or he's sending King Gizzard again)

*If you are choosing an artist from the list that has already been used in an earlier round, it can't be one you yourself sent, or songs I already received. 

[twosuitsluke]

Luke is sending.... (EDIT: Or he's sending King Gizzard again)

*If you are choosing an artist from the list that has already been used in an earlier round, it can't be one you yourself sent, or songs I already received. 

You fucker!! I’ll find a damn loophole.