The Metal Thread Genre • Page 113

Unpopular opinion: colors was not the best album put out by btbam.

It's important to note the difference between prog and tech death. NeO I find being closer to tech death and I find they do it well but not as good as let's say first fragment, arsis, decapitated. I have similar issues with prog in general, the length of the songs need a whole different part of my brain to be turned on. Just doesn't click all the time.

Oh, and anyone who has beef with animals as leaders is a lying liar who lies.

 

If we're going with some unpopular metal opinions I basically find all black metal songs, new and old, to be poor in technicality and song writing. Not to mention some of the newer "over produced to sound under produced" material.

I can still find it fun to listen to, I just don't respect it much from a musicians perspective.

 

Alaska is my favorite album by them so I don't inherently disagree with you there. Colors is right below that because it flows so well up until White Walls, but my mind usually turns off about halfway through that song. Otherwise, Sun of Nothing and Prequel to the Sequel are among the best tracks they've ever written.

I'd still prescribe the prog label to NeO over the tech death one because they're in a completely different ballpark than bands like Gorguts or Obscura. The longer, drawn out songs put them more in the ballpark of a Dream Theater or BTBAM. But that's just my opinion. When you're as out there at NeO, you're likely to have a bunch of different labels applied to you.

 

I'm not going to challenge you on this because there's a lot to pick apart and disagree with you on here. I'll just try to offer a different perspective by sharing a few of my favorite black metal songs from the last few years. I believe that black metal has a lot to offer in terms of technicality, atmosphere, and songwriting. Just try and give these a listen if you want. :)

Mgla - Exercises in Futility VI

UADA - Natus Eclipsim

Pantopicon - Into the North Woods

Vattnet Viskar - Breath of the Almighty

Thantifaxath - The Bright White Nothing at the End of the Tunnel

 

I've gone down this road many times with many people. I'll listen to anything and like I said, I can enjoy some of it... but I have my doubts when it comes to musicianship. It's largely because the genre lies on a lot of subjectivity...things you mentioned like atmosphere and whatnot. That doesn't compensate for lack of musicianship. To parallel it with prog, alot of people don't give it a chance because of nonsensical things like the type of gear used/not used and how the musicians come off holier than thou. Shit that really doesn't matter at the end of the day.

Just me tho whatever.

 

I'm not here to convince you to like a certain genre of music if it sonically just doesn't appeal to you. However, to argue that black metal genre as a whole doesn't possess musicianship just falls flat to me. Especially on the melodic side of things, most of the black metal bands that get traction nowadays are amazing musicians. In the examples I shared: 1) Darkside of mgla is a hell of a drummer (and might be my current favorite drummer in all of metal) and 2) Panopticon (in studio) is the one-man project of Austin Lunn where he plays everything and includes instrumentation that you don't normal see in metal (flute, banjo, dobro, mandolin). And then you've got black metal artists with classical and jazz training like Ihsahn.

Black metal is more abrasive and out there compared to other metal genres. I completely get it if you don't like it just based on that aspect alone. But like every other genre of metal, there's a lot of acts that have talented musicians associated with them.

When did Tom start to look so old? Jeeze. At least they sound compared to a lot of the other bands that play Fallon.

 

Neurosis/Converge/Amenra tonight. hopefully I live.

 

Damn I forgot how good that Mgla album was. Also I second the Panopticon thing, dude plays everything by himself and integrated bluegrass elements into black metal and somehow made it sound awesome.

 

I will be there in a week or so. Never really listened to Neurosis so I've been trying to get into them. Through Silver in Blood is very good, I prefer The Eye of Every Storm. I listened to Times of Grace but it didn't grab me.

 

Speaking of black metal and/or long songs, this album is a mix of black/death/doom and it's been devouring my soul all morning:

Tchornobog, by Tchornobog

 

@Richter915 listen to better black metal?

and bands like Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord are more technical than most any bands anyone could list off

 

Yeah my mind went to Deathspell Omega, Oranssi Pazuzu, and Dodecahedron in terms of current examples of black metal that exude technicality

 

My unpopular opinion in response to these suggestions: Deathspell Omega sounds like a bunch of pots and pans being thrown down the steps in succession to me.

Oranssi and Dodecahedron are backed though. Oranssi especially. They were INSANE live when I saw that back in May.

 

fuck that tb completely honest

 

New Dark Descent records sampler featuring new tracks from Thantifaxath and Spectral Voice:

 

love Thantifaxath

they are probably pretty informed by Deathspells influence

 

meh. DSO has just never done it for me. they're a super talented bunch of dudes, but most of their recorded output sounds cacophonous to me. different strokes for different folks.

meanwhile, the new Thantifaxath track is TIGHT.

 

Man Dark Descent records has been killing it

 

Their newest album is also cool

 

I've never seen Neurosis live but I imagine it'd be a spiritual experience haha.

 

My thoughts exactly. It's ok not to like a band, genre, etc but to say outlandish things that are not exactly factual is a bit over the top.

 

No of course the good bands are good and I enjoy stuff like Blut Aus Nord because they incorporate some skill into it. But they aren't really in the same vein as, let's say, Dark Fortress (who I enjoy listening to! lol). Another example, I really really fucking like Anaal Nathrakh which has a lot of typical BM in there but have a lot of fun death metal in there. I've come to really like blackened death which I think is better than traditional black metal. So I stand by my comment that most black metal is relatively mundane musically and technically speaking. Things like atmosphere and who recorded the album and how it was done means little to me, but that's just me.

I'm gonna nip this convo in the bud as some of the comments above are getting to be too judgmental for me. I don't think my opinions are "outlandish" (@Nate_Johnson), they're just opinions, I think we've all just got different definitions of what constitutes good musicianship, and that's ok.

 

Some of the later tracks are better than I expected them to be...feel like these guys are finally expanding out of their "let's tap every fret ever as fast as ever" mold. Gotta listen again but this might be my favorite album of theirs.

 

@Richter915 I am going to refer you to both the Unpopular Opinions thread and
Doom/Sludge/Black/Death/Post/Experimental Metal Thread