I have nothing to do with the band, no. I just like it. But I dislike substanceless criticism like "that was just bad. Everything about it was atrocious." Is it wrong to want specifics?

I'm a Magic: The Gathering fan and I feel embarrassed for everyone involved in that video, especially Brittney Slayes because she's actually a great singer.

Weak vocals and melodies, embarrassingly awful video and lyrics, no cohesive good melodies and chorus that anchor things into being a strong song... I mean people will have different tastes but for me it was a true flop and everything I hate about this kinda music.

New Krallice... Love the opening track, this could be a pretty solid album of atmoblack if the rest is that good...

"Weak vocals" lol. All of them are objectively good, competent, if not great, singers. Not liking them is fine, calling them weak is disingenuous. "Awful video" again, substanceless criticism, and has nothing to do with the music. "Lyrics" another non-argument, whether you have context or not the lyrics are fine, they're no different than listening to any song about fantasy, history, or folklore that you have no context for--or foreign language for that matter, clearly you lack imagination. Melodies are fine, not all songs need choruses. The song is telling a story so having a repetitious chorus wouldn't make sense. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you (or others) have to like it, and I'm not trying to force you to, as you say people will have different tastes and that's okay. Like, I thought this was good, and you thought Senjutsu was good, so I'd say that balances out.

Saw it mentioned upthread, but I've been listening to Sonata Arctica's Acoustic Adventures Vol. 1 pretty much on a loop since it came out. It's got some definitely interesting re-interpretations (Wolf & Raven being a particular stand-out). Obviously not gonna make my top-10 this year, since it's not original material (or metal, I don't think), but it would definitely be a contender for a not-Metallum top-10.

Of course, the year is still quite young.

So far:
Tony Martin - Thorns
Boris - W

If you like it there's nothing to be embarrassed or sorry about, nor do you need to reason why. I like stuff 99% of the community here would bash me to hell and back for and I have 0 problems with it or letting them know about it. I like songs from Santigold, David Getta, Sia and a bunch of others like them, I absolutely love Lauryn Hill's MTV Unplugged 2.0 and think it's one of the best non metal albums ever, A Portuguese band called "A Naifa" is probably one of my favorite bands out there. The list would go on but this should be enough to make my point.

As for the song in question here's my take (and bare in mind this is from the 3 min I've listened to):

The starting riff is ok, but hardly anything that hasn't been done 1000 times already, then things start to go south right away, orchestration and choirs are a bit to much, I could do with less crying in the back.

Blue dude's vocals are ok, what you would expect for the genre, nothing that stands out but not bad. The elf girl not so much, feels like she adds nothing to the song and is just there for the sake of having a female voice, might as well let the 1st guy carry on with it.

The worst part of it all is the section that starts around 02:10 and that's what made me gave up, the down-tuned, nu-metal wanna be, with harsh vocals is just dreadful. I'm a big fan of harsh vocals but they don't work at all here, not to mention the guy doing them is clearly not the best at it as well (or at least fails totally here, I don't know who he is, maybe he's done better work in some other band). But the whole arrangement is on par with the worst Nu-metal I've heard back in the day and it's a huge no-no for me.

I love that Exhaustion EP and just blasting Schrat, great stuff (thanks for the recs!) and the new Owls Woods Graves is very good too. Big surprise to find M from Mgla there, very different to his main band.

You clearly aren't that OK with it. Lots of insults toward me for not liking this. All this talk about "non arguments" that conveniently make it so everyone has to like it by your standards of what an argument is. Talking about "objectively" - I don't really think anything about music can be objective when you're talking tastes. "Lacking imagination," nah I just can't stand ridiculous awful fantasy garbage like that. If you're into this, that's cool, but stuff's gonna be criticized if you post it online and not everyone has the same criteria as you. And yes I did like Senjutsu and it is a marvelous piece of work. Not sure why people always have to bring that up like it's some "gotcha." Looking through my reviews or posts just to insult something I like back... very weird behavior.

I noticed a lot of people saying they don't listen to PM but like this. I dunno. Seems like you're really missing context for what everyone else hates about it then, because there's plenty of way better stuff out there than this to me anyway.

You're basically saying that no on can dislike elements in a song for any reason, ever.

I tried the song because once in a blue moon super cheesy power metal hits me in just the right way - best example is Twilight Force - Tales of Ancient Prophecies, but I found myself agreeing with all of Empyreal's criticisms. Biggest problem with the song is the total lack of memorable hooks and cohesion.

I looked back at what I said and it's all totally valid and fine as an opinion. Thinking there are such ironclad, rigid rules with which you can criticize music is very closed-minded thinking. If anything it's interesting that everyone has different ways of seeing things.

Switzerland's Deathcult released an album after six years. If you're not familiar with the band, they play death metal with a tinge of death/thrash, heavily influenced by the 80s and early 90s era of death metal. It's nasty and I'm on repeated spins.
https://invictusproductions666.bandcamp ... -unearthed

Dusk released a new album. This Dusk hails originally from Pakistan and they have contributing members from Singapore. They play doom/death with a bit of progressive elements. This album also has the band experimenting with some ambient sounds too. The guitar work especially the solos stand out for me.
https://cyclopeaneyeproductions.bandcam ... ary-dead-2

This is some pretty good shit right here. I'm hearing Entombed, Dismember, Autopsy etc in there but it feels fresh. Good stuff.

The new Malefic Throne EP is pretty good, about what I'd expect from those involved:

First of all, thank you for taking the time to respond and actually having thoughtful criticism.

Oh, I'm not embarrassed about it, just taken aback by the negative responses, most were needlessly cruel. I will unabashedly continue to share it (maybe not here though).

Anyway, as far as the riffing goes, I can see that. I don't listen to enough power metal for it to sound stale though. Orchestration/choirs, yeah I can see how that would be a turn off, just made it sound more powerful to me. As far as vocals, I agree about the blue dude (he's actually in the band, the other singers were guests for this song)-vocals were acceptable, I wish they were a little more powerful. But the elf girl is Brittney Slayes of Unleash the Archers, her vocals are great (not her best performance though). There were two other vocalists that joined in later on as well--I like the second male vocalist the most (R.A. Voltaire), they're deeper and stronger than "blue dude". The harsh vocalist is actually a woman (Heather Michelle, which might account for the harsh vocals sounding off) and then she also does clean vocals as another character later in the song. There's a part in the song where there's kind of a call and response vocal duel which I found funny because it's like she's dueling herself.

You're not the first person to mention that part, actually. I showed it to my friend who's got a better ear than me and he pointed that part out too (though called the song "solid" overall). He had similar comments on the harsh vocals as well. I didn't really notice it that much when I first heard the song, but there was a small part of me that got scared thinking it was going to devolve into chugging (which it didn't). I can kind of hear the nu-metal sound, but nu-metal isn't as offensive to me as metalcore/deathcore. It sounded as if they were trying to go for the heavy metal galloping sound but didn't get it right. Anyway it wasn't enough to detract from my overall enjoyment.

Again, a lot of my enjoyment comes from being familiar with the story, which is lost on a lot of people. A lot of the choices the band made for the song were because of the story: (why was the elf girl there? because she is a main character in the story, and it couldn't be told without her).

Yep, seems that certain people just can't handle music being criticized, boohoo.

Being a female is not why her harsh vocals sound off. Mara from Gateway To Selfdestruction is one of my favorite vocalists of all time. You probably don't want to share cringe on this site. There have been a lot of metal themed around specific fantasy works that work, this certainly is not one of them.

As an aside, its funny how e-communities opinions differ so drastically on albums. That Planeswalker is getting raked over the coals here (it also recently scored a rather negative review), while its enjoying a pretty good rating so far at Rateyourmusic.

14 ratings, and 14 people I have no idea about, not sure how loved it is.

Not at all. I took issue with some of his word choice--unspecific, inflammatory language. Like it's possible to criticize without being insulting. Though, I suppose I went about it dickishly too, and didn't really explain. His wording irked me, and I suppose my wording irked him. I think I'll just drop it here. I get it, ya'll didn't like it.

I will say though that if any of his arguments are invalid, it is assuredly the one about the music video being awful. Liking or disliking the video is fine, but videos are NOT "elements" of songs.

I'm totally baffled by the fact you've spent more than a page trying to convince everyone here to just stop being so harsh on one of the most hilariously shit songs I've heard in at least a year. Are you seriously not a memeber of the band? What is your deal?

The video is part of the artistic representation and experience, so it’s absolutely Game for criticism. How can you not think it is?

Nah, it was just the way the criticism was presented that bothered me. But that was a personal issue.



Well, whatever the reason they sounded fine to me. Haven't listened to that band in a while, I'll have to revisit them at some point. Well, cringe is subjective, but noted.



Let me rephrase, and this goes for music in general, not just for the song/video in question. You can criticize the video, yes, I'm not saying you can't. But however one feels about a music video absolutely SHOULD not impact your opinion of the SONG. I don't see how that's a difficult concept. You can listen to the song without watching the video.



I don't know, maybe just stop responding? Post something else? Ya'll seem to be the ones who want to continue beating the dead horse. Anyway, I'm going to bed.

Anyway, I liked this new Thorn album Yawning Depths. I was surprised to see a second album coming so soon after the first one but I am not complaining. Although they might use a drum machine I still enjoy their brand of death/doom.

https://thornx.bandcamp.com/

Also this Night Hag album is probably worth a spin for the death/doom crowd. They did a split last year with Cryptic Brood that got my attention. I still haven't given the album a full spin but I like what I've heard so far.

https://rottedlife.bandcamp.com/album/p ... al-scourge



I think I like the first album a little more. The style overall is pretty similar but a bit more Death-like to me. I prefer the production on the first album too.

They haven't qualified as metal for some time now but the new album from 40 Watt Sun is my first top album of the year so far.

The new record from Det Eviga Leendet is really good. Jacob Buczarski from Mare Cognitum is their new vocalist and he really does a great job here:

So far, these
(Sadly, I am not great at describing music)

Ysyru mollvun - s/t
Black metal, kind of medieval. First track is slightly underwhelming (at least personally) compared to everything afterward. Its a good one... Listened to it about 5 times.

Storm Kvlt - Europa's weg zum grab
Black metal. Nothing crazy, but excellent and has a lot of character.
Listened to it about 4 times.

Krallice - crystaline exhaustion
I know, I know... But this one is firmly planted and quite engaging. If I didn't know it was them, I wouldn't guess, but still be impressed. I've also never hated them... Don't know if I've enjoyed them on a mature level more though. Drums are amazing. Vocals are a bit cavernous. Some atmo key pads. Overall, just pretty impressive. Listened to it about 4 times and at the moment.

Yes, it's fantastic. Listening that and new Celeste in turns these couple of days.

Yes, this surprised me. I didn't care for it since it's basically acoustic and I'm usually not fond of acoustic versions of metal songs, but some of these are fun. Wolf and Raven is actually really cool and worth the listen, so is Don't Say a Word. If I had one complaint is that it's not the best setlist - their good songs sound great on this album, but the acoustic treatment didn't improve the songs I like the least. Also, the pacing of the songs is a bit off. But I'm now looking forward to vol. 2 hoping there will be more standouts.

As for Planeswalker, it's not that bad.

OK, I take that back, the video IS pretty bad. Really cringy. Almost in an amateurish "young power metal fan's first video", and certainly not befitting musicians with a few albums under their belt.

But the song is ok. The lyrics are silly of course (but I don't mind) and some movements don't completely flow into the next IMO but it's competently done otherwise. I wouldn't call that a standout, and in the vein of "silly power metal", other bands have done it best, including Gloryhammer and Helion Prime themselves. I'd probably give it a 6, 6.5/10.

I guess liking silly power metal helps. If I had one advice to give the band it's this: tone it down. Plenty of bands make songs or albums about geeky things like Dark Souls, Magic, Zelda, etc. but they usually do it in a more "general" manner, like you could listen to the song and not immediately realize it, or if you do it's more in a "Ohhhh, that's what this is about", not a constant barrage of names and places referenced in the game/other media.

I agree and I am.

Venom Prison - Erebos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5rnl3y ... diaRecords

https://venomprison.bandcamp.com/

A band that is not very talked about around these parts, these guys just dropped a killer record; an early contender for best death metal of the year as far as I'm concerned.

I'm rubbish at describing music so I'm no even going to try, but if you have any passing interest in punishing death metal, grab this.

Wędrujący Wiatr - Zorzysta staje oćma

If there's one album you listen to today, make it this

https://wedrujacywiatr.bandcamp.com/alb ... staje-o-ma

No idea who these people are, but based on that new song (that hardly has any death metal in it), they must be a rubbish band.

Thanx for this, will definitely explore this more followed by the new Prurient.

I knew they were working on new music, but the release came unexpected to me. I love the previous 2 albums and have high expectations. I'm on my first listen now and so far really enjoying it. The 3rd track is really good.

Much like their previous albums it gets better with each listen. Truly compelling.

I’m with this, this album is excellent. It’s pretty complex but not in a “tech death” way. A lot going on for 24 minutes.

Sort of surprising coming from the vocalist of Fluids, this is the complete antithesis of that.

My contribution to this thread is Wiegedood. My first time hearing them, and I was impressed. I liken it to something of a Marduk/Wolves In The Throne Room hybrid. I know in the dedicated thread, there were complaints about the repetitiveness of the riffing, but I thought it was done to good effect.

No worries, no need for you to bother, then.
The year is young and there's a new Immolation on the way!

Venom Prison is from the classier metalcore and hardcore lineage of Integrity and the like. They're one of the more interesting bands doing that style now, together with Jesus Piece and Gulch. I wouldn't call them Death metal in the traditional sense at all cause the emphasis is not on riffs.

New record is indeed killer.