Now Listening To - The show must go on..., And it sure will. Options

[Rane]

Previous thread.

Here we go again.

And a quick addendum before we get started.

What this thread's purpose is:

To let people gather up and discuss music, music tastes and everything thereof.


What not to do in this thread:

Posting one-liners telling only what song you are listening to.

"Here we go again". Wonder why I tend to state the most obvious all too often.

Anyhow, due to having so very, very few days left of my service time in the ever vigilant and meaningful Finnish army, I decided it would be fitting to listen to a song fitting for the mood.

Therefore, now playing: Europe - Final Countdown

Old? Yes.
Overused? Most definitely.
Perfect for these last days? (I'll let you figure out the answer for this one on your own)

[The Metal Mallet]

Hurray for Saturdays! I picked an excellent "theme" for listening music today. In actuality, it's really just a collection of certain band albums, but listened to chronologically. Here's this weeks list (which will actually be listened to in this order, minus the ones I don't get to:

Remission - Mastodon
Leviathan - Mastodon
Blood Mountain - Mastodon
The Mantle - Agalloch
Ashes Against the Grain - Agalloch
Stained Class - Judas Priest
Screaming for Vengeance - Judas Priest
Angel of Retribution - Judas Priest


I'm really looking forward to the Agalloch albums (though Blood Mountain will also be a VERY enjoyable listen) just because I got them this week. They don't seem to be well known in this neck of the woods, as I had to order them from the CD store to get them. I was really glad it only took a week for them to get in, I was told it could take 8 weeks if it was hard to get.

Agalloch seem to get a lot of comparison to Opeth for some reason. Sound-wise, they are quite different but I guess you can say that they are basically doing the same thing with their genres. Like, Agalloch incorparates long songs with loud and soft moments on a fundalmentally Black Metal background, which is similar to Opeth only they use the Gothic/Death Metal as their backdrop.

Just with the two Agalloch albums I have, they both have different sounds. The Mantle is actually quite a soft album to listen to. There are lots of acoustic guitars, as well as some other instruments that aren't typical of metal music like accordians (and it actually sounds good!), windchimes, booming orchestral drums (I don't know what the official name is), and even deer antlers. Nearly every other song on that album is a beautiful instrumental which reminds me of walking in a light forest in the winter, but the skies are slightly greycast. It really puts you into a mood.

Ashes Against the Grain on the other hand brings back the electric guitars. It's a "heavier" album but it still contains it's soft moments, as they kinda pull a move like Isis does and takes their time to get things loud. Vocal-wise, the singer switches between an echoy clean voice and a very raspy voice that sounds like it's almost whispered. He uses the latter a lot more on this album while the Mantle had much more clean vocals.

Hehe, I'm totally a fanboy