Litho: Harakari for the Sky – Us Against December Skies
This song is like a microcosm of why this round has been so rough for me to listen to or write about. It’s like. yep. This is… this is black metal. That’s so true, bestie! Black Metal by John Blackmetal himself! What… do I say about it? What about this most painfully basic take on this pretty good genre could even register as interesting or noteworthy to me?
Uuhh. The riffs are. Okay. The production and mixing are… not great, actually, the drums are too loud – pro-tip, all extreme metal bands ever, do NOT mix the drums above the guitars, that tells me you’re prioritizing loudness over texture and it always sounds worse for it, that bit around 5:30 sounds especially awful, man! – but like, yep. It’s got the 6/8 groove. It’s got the crunchy guitars. It’s got the wails of agony.
It’s the most milquetoast black metal song of the round, and it’s subsequently scoring the lowest out of all of ‘em! That’s all I got to say about this one!
7/10
Oof, a writeup that scathing and not a 5/10 or lower, and somehow in the top half of the entries for the round? I guess I'll take it!
Just a few thoughts though. Black metal is so broad I guess we think of it very differently, but HftS for me is miles away from the standard second wave icons that I think of as having the quintessential black metal sound. To me especially on that song they sound almost more like a kind of proggy, blackened version of some of the melodeath I like, I've had parts of it stuck in my head off and on ever since it came out. A lot of the vocals sound almost hardcore-esque shouty more than the generic black metal shriek, so I figured it might appeal to you more given some other things you like, but we definitely seem to hear some things differently, so I'm fully prepared to keep chasing each other around the tree the rest of our roulettes. Maybe the drums are a tad hotter than some artists (but much quieter than some others), but I think they're doing lots of interesting things beyond just constant blasts and meat beats so I like not having them buried, and I can still hear the guitars just fine, so I guess I'll just have to take note of our preferences there.
i think y’all hyperfocused on loudness itself over, like, tunefulness!
You called it the "LOUD round", after all, not the "texture round".
I had some super-heavy and grimy death metal tunes I considered and rejected because I still figured you'd still want some melody.
I literally made a 30 song playlist of the kinds of music I love/am looking for more of, I really dunno what more I can do to help 
I will say as someone who effectively made everyone listen to a 17-song playlist of the pillars of my taste, it only helps so much.
Oh, and happy birthday!
Topic: Crow's Overdue Roulette v8 - FINAL RESULTS!!! (Read 46372 times)
