senecadawg2 - Renaissance - "Ashes Are Burning"
Early Impression - "I'm so glad you've brought this band back to my attention. Sick bass tone, and what a vocalist."
This is certainly the band I came in knowing the most about. This is probably around the tipping point level of familiarity with a band before I tend to put them on the soft banned list. I'm cognizant that they've been a legend of the second or third tier of popularity of the original wave of classic prog, and felt they were probably worth exploring more in the future. I've heard Annie Haslam's name in particular come up many times over the years. I've heard two albums from the band, and own a third on vinyl that I snagged for a good deal, but hadn't gotten to dropping the needle on it yet. Neither of the two I'd heard was really a favorite yet though. The title of this song is familiar, and it's possible that I listened to it in isolation at some point or another in past years. So while this band is on my radar, I'm enjoying having them pushed to the front of the line now. I also notice that Gavin Harrison was part of the band at a later point, I may have to check that out.
Like many of the longer songs in this round, there is quite a lot of digest, and trying to weigh my feeling about each individual section into one cohesive score and ranking is a real nightmare. The bass lines start becoming more prominent around 3:17, and make for easily the best bass tone of the round. I was suspecting it's a Rickenbacher, and sure enough, live footage shows him playing one. Such a fat and distinctive sound. No question either about the 12-string guitar, organ (the percussive tone at 5:26 is quite a treat), piano, harpsichord, and bells, all are well-recorded and a joy to hear.
Annie Haslam is one of the notable highlights of this tune, though she's not in it for as long as I'd like. She has a very captivating pure tone, and I can see why she places well on some vocal lists. But not ours, where she's below Weird Al Yankovic. That ain't right. Additionally, I've read that Andy Powell of Wishbone Ash recorded the solo near the end, which was certainly another standout. I was expecting a Les Paul by the timbre, but it seems he's known more for Flying Vs. But it's a Gibson with a PAF humbucker, so close enough. I was worried that 70s and 80s bands wouldn't compete well with more modern ones, but so far they're doing quite well. I'm looking forward to spinning the album of theirs I have on vinyl after this round, it was clearly wrong of me to neglect it.
Score: 8/10
---
SoundscapeMN - Barock Project - "Happy To See You"
Early Impression: "I was worried this might be the lowest scoring one of the round yet in the first minute or two, but it won me over by the end."
I'm not sure why I reacted negatively at first to the opening minute or so. I suppose it felt a bit generic, almost like stock music for a movie trailer. It didn't bug me as much on later listens. But things really get moving at 1:38, and kept getting better and better from there on out. Two of the songs from the first day of listening had completely faded from memory by listening session number two, but I still remembered the broad strokes of this one.
The keyboards seem to be the core focus of the band, and they are quite magnificent. There appear to be endless layers of cascading melodies weaving in and out throughout the piece. There is a really alluring organ solo, it sounds a bit synthetic, but isn't a big deal, it's so well-executed. I like the choral patch around 5:29, though it's a smidge loud in the mix and obscures the guitars a bit too much. The bandoneon? patch noticeable around 4:28 adds some charming additional timbral variety. Further, the violin parts are a gratifying touch, and give some lift to certain sections. The vocals are copacetic and competent. They don't really elevate it, but nor do they detract from everything else going on.
The drums are really effective, I enjoy how the kick pattern is a pretty driving four-on-the-floor beat for a good chunk of the more upbeat portions of the song, which anchors all of the other rhythms dancing around. There are lots of high-pitched toms and splashes, which always make me happy. There's some fun snare displacement, I was trying to predict it in parts the second time around and kept getting fooled.
Probably the peak of the track is the guitar solo. It has the best low-gain tone of the round, and I like how it becomes more saturated as it goes along and becomes more frenetic. I was predicting that it's a Strat, and sure enough, he's playing one live. There's also a compelling harmony that pipes in at 6:48.
The key change near the end especially put this over the top. This is one of those songs where I feel like I could listen to it another 100 times and keep noticing additional interlocking layers. It really rewards repeat listens with arrangement details that are constantly evolving, adding and subtracting to keep the song entrancing, which it succeeded with in spades.
Score: 8/10
---
Puppies_On_Acid - Knight Area - "A Million Lives"
Early Impression - "24 hours after listening, I couldn't remember a note of it. After the second play, I had the chorus stuck in my head the next day. Go figure."
So out of the whole round, there were only two songs that when I looked at the song titles a day after the first play, I couldn't remember a thing about them. This was the other one of them. No idea why, because the second play was fantastic, the song seemed to improve as it progressed, and as I noted, the chorus became an earworm the next day. I adore the key change fakeouts. It modulates up for the chorus at 5:05, which was a common trope a few decades ago, but then modulates down to an in-between key for the final one, which is much less common. I love it when bands do things like that.
Here is an example of a song that isn't too over-the-top on instrumentation, but just about everything here works. Some dazzling synth leads (four of them, in fact!), a lot of savorous drumming (particularly the splashes and some of those sextuplet and triplet tom rolls), some sweet melodic bass lines in the mellow section in the middle and elsewhere. I love the texture of the synth pad over the choruses (probably a Mellotron). After the first minutes I'd figured this was another neo-prog-ish band like IQ where the synths take primacy over guitars for leads, so the guitar solo at 5:34 was a pleasant surprise, with some striking harmonies to end it as well. The guitars and keyboards also interact splendidly in the middle section, with a different arpeggio going on in each ear from them in the mellow middle portion. I'm quite appreciating the sound of the whole drum kit as well. The vocalist is just alright, but the chorus melody is so catchy that it doesn't matter.
For some reason artists from Sweden and the Netherlands tend to hit for me more often than most other countries, something about their melodic sensibilities connects with me. And for the fourth play, when I started to do some research on each artist, I found out that they're Dutch, and now things make more sense. I even notice that Peter Vink (of Ayreon, Star One and others) joined this group later on. Not that being from either of those two countries is a guarantee, every place has memorable and unmemorable artists, but I just find it amusing how lopsided the ratio is for me.
Score: 8/10
---
Nachtmerrie - Cobra the Impaler - "Scorched Earth"
Early Impression: "Not what I was expecting, but actually now I'm not sure what I was expecting. You may have found some of the hacks into my taste though, because I'm really digging this, especially the heavy guitar tones."
This one sold me right from the intro, it has this really entrancing feel to it with the harmonics, open strings, and cymbal flourishes. As I alluded to in the impression, I think I had different expectations for this submission, but it pushed those aside and went down a path I didn't even know I wanted to go on, but I'm glad I did. I'm not typically a huge fan of stoner metal, so getting two songs in that vein in this round that I liked was rather serendipitous. I can't say it'll work again, but it is proof that every genre has its gems to be unearthed.
So the first exceptional note is the guitars. I don't know whether he's a conscious influence, but there's a lot of Nevermore to the parts and timbre, though a bit less flashy, but Loomis being one of my favorites, this makes them hard to not like. The whole thing sort of feels like Khemmis covering Nevermore. There are a lot of spots where it sounds like the right rhythm guitar is playing an octave higher than the left one, which is a cool trick that I'm not sure I've heard done that often. The harmonies starting around 2:43 are vibrant, and the riff that keeps cropping up starting at 3:25 is probably my favorite in the song. Also, this is a bit subtle, but the section that pops up around 0:51 and elsewhere gives it a bit of the feel of the scales in "Amon-Ra", so that's a fun little nugget.
I still can't tell if I like these vocals, or I just think they work perfectly for this song, but they do. I don't know if you had any easy way of knowing this, but Dirk Verbeuren is one of my favorite drummers, so discovering that he is playing on this was another pleasant discovery. In typical Dirk fashion, he takes what could be a mundane performance in the hands and feet of a less creative player and crafts some really scintillating parts. The intricacies of his ride and bell work on the intro is delightful, and he inserts those hyper-clean blasts and light-speed double bass in a few spots that adds a dash of bravura without overwhelming the song.
I love how Metal-Archives lists member Tace DC's instrument as "unknown", like, "yeah, he's in the band, but no one knows what he does." I see that he was a guitarist in Aborted, so maybe that's also his role here. I don't know which of the two is the primary guitarist, but either way, they win the award for the best heavy guitar tone of the round. I read somewhere that they were inspired by the sound of old Mastodon. I don't remember them sounding this similar, but maybe what I hear in this song is what Mastodon fans hear when they listen to Mastodon.
Score: 8.25/10
---
TAC - Lost Domain - "In the Waiting Room of Death"
Early Impression - "This might be the most impressive blending of some of the unique features of my two songs, but it also goes beyond them in other ways."
I could swear I commented on this band in 425's roulette, but I went back and could find no evidence of it, so maybe I just didn't get to it. Anyway, I had listened to the two songs you sent in that round a couple times, and they were one of the better bands I've sampled in his roulette so far, but I don't think there was any way for you to know that unless I just missed a comment I made elsewhere. Well, now we have a third song from them, and my interest is really piqued.
Now this is a curious case study. I talked with regards to Knight Area how for some reason bands from the Netherlands and Sweden tend to create more appealing melodies to me on average. Well, here we have a band from Sweden, but it's not so much the melodies that I cherish. I wish I could have had a camera on my face when I heard the intro, because it definitely has some uncanny resemblances to "To Turn the Tables". And then the riff at 9:12 has some of the flavor of the riffing in "Amon-Ra", with the phrygian dominant scale.
The powerful and rich vocals elevate the song right away, though the chorus melody doesn't stick with me like it should. Given how long the tune is, I was wondering where it was going to go, and it was absolutely worth the travel. The changeup to acoustic guitars and Mellotron at 6:59 was good for a change of pace, but it was 8:01 that really capped things off, right out of the Opeth playbook. The filter sweep at 8:20 sets up the monster riffs after remarkably well, and I was not expecting the harsh vocals. Is she performing them as well? No other vocalists are listed in the online credits. Too small a sample of them to really say if I like them on their own, but they definitely kicked things into overdrive and made this one of the most spellbinding songs of the round.
There are lots of other satisfying moments, like the early synth solo, and the bits of piano and organ. The two tremolo-picked counterpoint guitar lines at 6:11 panned to either side are delectable. At first I didn't like the fuzz tone of the guitar solo at 7:33, but it grew on me, and it adds some diversity to the textures, as does the brief modulation-effected one at 10:04. The descending and slowing pitch of the ending is also snazzy. And no, the song is not in one of my "magic keys", but it didn't need to be.
Score: 8.25/10
---
Stadler - Saga - "Wind Him Up"
Early Impression - "You took a big risk, but it might pay off, this is more fun than I remembered."
So I don't know if you looked at my RYM ratings, but even though Saga wasn't on the soft ban list, I had heard the album this song came from and rated it 3.5. Which, given that my ratings are more generous than RYM's in general, usually means I found something interesting about the album, but it didn't totally resonate with me. It's more or less my default rating for new music I hear and neither overtly like nor dislike. So this was definitely a risk. Well, oh boy did it pay off. I've known of Saga for a long time, but that's the only album I'd managed to get to at this point, so I'm glad to have them brought back to my attention, because I was clearly missing something, and you've helped me find it.
If you'd told me ahead of time that several 70s and 80s songs would be ranking near the top I'd have been surprised. And not that this tune is in this genre, but one of the fascinating things I find about the synthwave movement in the past dozen years or so is that the artists tend to pluck components from the 80s that have dated well, and jettison the ones that don't. What this effectively has done is to just get that balance right in the first place in the decade itself. No benefit of decades of perspective needed for them, they were Nostradamian. The synth patches all definitely feel of that time period, but I really like almost all of them. The funky synth bass, the ambient pads, the fizzy pads, the arpeggiations, all very nice. The most fun one might be that FM synthesis-derived ring-modulated patch around 3:00. 4:13 has a cool instrumental restatement of the chorus melody in a different key, which I didn't catch the first couple times, and then snuck up on me, Doug Helvering I am not.
Another impression I had when I first heard this but didn't put in the snippet, was that I felt this song ended too soon. It felt as if it was building up to something even bigger and grander, and then was done before it quite got there. Well, as it turns out, the payoff I was looking for is that chorus. It didn't stand out so much on the first or second play (which I suppose was technically the third or fourth), but by the third or so, wow, it really started to hit. So the buildup paid off both in just making me want to hear the whole song again, and in that addictive chorus, which has been stuck in my head quite a bit in the past week. And it's built over a chromatic chord progression, which makes it even more of a marvel how they constructed the rising tension and release of each cycle of it. The vocalist didn't really appeal to me at first, and I'm still not sure how other songs would sit with me, but the chorus is so infectious that I just don't care.
The instrumentation is quite enthralling as well, with all of the unison lines between the guitars and synths, which have this perky rhythmic vivaciousness. If I have to nitpick a tad, the muted guitar part around 2:30 has a more brittle tone than I'd prefer, like I've discussed in some earlier entries, but again, this song is too thrilling for me to worry about it, and in fact, around 2:45 where it's starting to become less of just repeating a note and more of a DiMeola impression, the tone actually kind of works for that bit. I also like the volume swells around 3:14.
This is probably the most meteoric graph line of my opinion of a song in this round. It went from me being worried because I know you sometimes send unusual choices (which I'm more than happy to continue to receive), and I'd already heard and given a just ok score to this track, to thinking maybe it'll be competitive in the middle of the pack, to pondering, "is this my favorite song in the round?" Well, not quite, but it came awfully close.
Score: 8.5/10
Topic: LithoJazzoSphere Roulette V1: Variety & Reciprocity (Post-Roulette Playlist) (Read 113043 times)