hopefully_benign

Not the best timing OP

Well, GISM's first album is getting reissued by Relapse. So 1. RIP to all their cool-mysterious-cult band internet hype and mystique. 2. The cover will be censored, because 2020. hopefully it's not brickwalled.

I've only ever seen Nuclear Blast used as dirty word in my circles. They were good in the old days (because let's face it, underground metal was generally good back then), but kinda became a label for flowery melodeath and rising black metal bands looking for a "crossover" audience by the late 90s. Some of that stuff was good, some of it not so much. Yeah, Nuclear Blast did make a lot of bands into a big deal in the 90s, but they did so by encouraging them to switch to a really cookie cutter sound. Did Dimmu Borgir start sucking because they signed to Nuclear Blast, or did Nuclear Blast sign Dimmu Borgir because they decided to start sucking? Kind of a chicken & egg question. After that, total Wackencore territory with the same handful of producers giving everything the exact same plastic sound. I guess there's an audience for it somewhere, but eh... Fun fact, the guy who runs the label only likes obscure 80s hardcore/crust punk these days, and doesn't give a shit about metal.

One of those bands who have a lot to answer for, but I like on their own terms. There's probably not one good band who took heavy influence from them (besides, funny enough, maybe X Japan?) But at the time, their brand of sickeningly sweet happy-metal seemed like the natural end result of a bunch of German kids playing post-Iron Maiden metal in the late 80s. It just shouldn't have become a movement like it did.

I hate it If an artist wants to re-record a song for fun as a bonus on some release, it's whatever, I don't care. But re-recording an entire album is the worst thing an artist can do. Albums crystallize the youth and hunger of a band at a certain point in their career. If you make a few great albums and then start sucking for the next decade or two, who cares, at least your good stuff still exists. But the popularization of re-recordings means even that golden era is subject to its own kind of entropy. Re-recording an album to "improve" it (read: make it shittier with antiseptic production, brickwalled sound and noticeably aged vocals, usually) is cultural vandalism, I think. So what if the old version was lo-fi? An album sounds the way it does for a reason, it has quirks and an atmosphere that reflects the time it was made in. Just like modern production/recording trends will badly date a lot of what's released now in the future. There's an elegance to something just being the way it is. Why do you have to muddle things by throwing another version out there? Learn from your old "mistakes" (which usually aren't even mistakes--artists are notoriously bad judges of their own work) by adjusting the way you tackle new material, and improve that way. Re-recording albums is simultaneously the worst kind of backward-looking indulgence in nostalgia AND irreverence to legacy. It's somehow bad in two diametrically opposed ways at the same time.

Scorn Defeat is a top 20 black metal album, maybe even top 10. It's like that scene at the end of the movie Jigoku where giant orges are just smashing and eating humans for 20 minutes in neon buddhist hell, in music form. Infidel Art was pretty cool too, although the circus elements were already creeping in. I think the last one I heard was Scenes From Hell. They totally lost me there, not that it was much worse than anything else they did after the 90s, but that's just where it really sank in for me that they're releasing totally interminable stuff now (if you get past the "there's a sitar solo and techno breakdown in the same song so it's super innovative"-factor). If their last album is supposed to be "the most personal one yet" maybe I'll give it a spin. I'm sure I'm not missing much skipping what I missed.

Damn. I've been spending more time with Eden and it's JUST as good as st/Image/Mother. Maybe better than some of those. It's simple but it's so BUSY. There isn't a moment in the album where there aren't licks spilling out of licks. There's something almost otherworldly about the slightly distant sounding vocal recording. (I'm pretty sure it has something to do with how the vocals were recorded anyway, just slapping reverb on stuff gets a different, not-as-cool effect) Everyone told me this one was inessential. wtf?

(I know this is from a demo recording, but I'd argue it's well produced+mastered) For best results listen with headphones and crank it The snare drum attacks you because the waveform isn't compressed into a brick, it's spikey and has peaks. Because some parts are allowed to be quieter than other parts, stuff like that stop-start breakdown around 1:10 hits hard and feels really punchy. The recording's got a nice room ambience, the toms rumble. There's a sense of space, everything is where it should be in the mix. A++++++ play this at an equivalent volume Soso production, not-so-good mastering. Notice how the drums don't really punch through. Everything is kinda flat and fighting for space. When the "loud" part comes in around 1:50, it doesn't really hit you like it should, because the "quiet" part before it is compressed to be basically just as loud as the loud part. C- Bad mastering, bad everything else: this re-recording. play it at any volume, it will be loud no matter what volume you have it at. notice how it makes your ears bleed. every sound feels like it's coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. F----------- Generally speaking if production/mastering isn't something you care much about and isn't something that can impede your enjoyment, it's best to keep it that way. It can be such a pandora's box for people who get anal about stuff.

Basically if they're dramatically shaking and looking side-to-side in PVs it's true VK

Everybody: vk isn't a genre, it doesn't have a "sound" every riff in Image: *exists*

Day owaranai Endless rain sou mou ichido Once again What time is it now? wakaranai kaerenai Game Playstation2

Just putting the albums on physically (most of the time), or downloads (less frequently because my computer doesn't have a good speaker setup and I don't always want headphones blaring in my ears). I would rather abandon worldly desires like consuming media and go farm goats on some mountain with no electricity than stream. Absolutely fuck streaming.

Another psychobilly classic in the making

La'Cryma Christi - Sculpture of Time Kuroyume - 生きていた中絶児… (so it's not a full-length, whatever, play it twice in a row and pretend it is) X Japan - Blue Blood Deshabillz - 精神離脱者 Luna Sea - Image Something like that

Unfortunately the loudness wars hit vk before the mid 2000s. A handful of late 90s/early 2000s releases are among the loudest albums in my library. The waveforms on some of them look like Merzbow. I'm looking at you, Lucifer. That one's legitimately up there with Death Magnetic, Californication, et al. I think a lot of people incorrectly use "lo-fi" as a synonym for "I wish this album had more low-end." Something like Luna Sea's first album (not the re-recording) has better sound quality than Dir en Grey's last album or some other clipped-to-death modern release in terms of being able to hear everything, spaciousness, dynamics, everything being in its proper sonic space, etc. Of course it's really thin sounding, like a lot of old vk, but it's a tradeoff I'll take over brickwalling any day. Tangentially, the first Deshabillz album feels like you're watching a haunted VHS tape in some shed in a forest, and it would be a million times less creepy and awesome if it had more professional production