Previous thread.



"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)

Now playing: Imaginations from the Other Side - Blind Guardian

My friend gave me a loan of the cd a couple of days ago to put on my mp3, along with the Dream Theatre album, Octavarium.
Both fantastic albums, and who couldn't love the song Octavarium itself, with it's epic 24 minute length? lol

Octavarium was a pretty good Dream Theatre album, definitely not their best though. Personally, I liked the other songs other than the title track for that album, specifically, These Walls, Sacrificed Sons, and The Root of All Evil. The title track didn't really go anywhere in my opinion, there's no cresendo whatsoever in the song so the 24 minutes seem more dragged out than flowing to my ear. Besides that, and the U2ish song, I Walk Beside You, Octavarium was a solid Dream Theatre album.

I've heard nice things about Blind Guardian though, I should probably give them a listen sometime...


For the moment, the Song Du Jour is Through Glass by Stone Sour. I'm a sucker for good acoustic songs, especially from bands (or singers) who are normally known for their loud/aggressive songs. Another good acousticy song by this band is Zzyxx Road. I say because a piano is implemented with that song.

Oh, I'm seeing Blind Guardian live 24th September , third time I do and man they are good...

However, I'm now listening to Trans-Siberian Orchestra - An Angel Returned, a recently discovered band and man I love em'! A truly wonderful combination of rock and symphonic orchestras, no computers only real instruments. Pure joy .

I loved octavarium. Especially once you get about fourteen minutes into it.

Blind Guardian kind of lost its appeal. (To me, anyway) It just all kinda sounds the same, and they never stray from the fantasy lyrics. I've also become a litle more distant from Symphony X for the same reason.

All in all - can't wait for this Tuesday when Amputechture comes out.

Listening to a wild rant called Wizards in Winter ... here is a video from same said song ... but I have it on an audio loop and listen to it sometimes at FarFallen Studios.

Here is the video, Merry Christmas in September, y'all.

For those of you who doesn't know the above Christmas Lights song (Wizards in Winter) is composed by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

I somewhat agree with you Dantrag, lately I haven't listen much at all on Blind Guardian and when I do it isn't much their newer discs but the old and good songs (like from the record Imaginations from the Other side, etc..) as their new record isn't very special.


A new style that has catched my interest lately is more good'ol rock like Queen and also softish guitarr tunes like Kings of Convenience and Jose Gonzales.

I think Octavarium itself is a great song, but i like Sacrificed Sons more. Just a kickass song
Got another Dream Theatre album off my friend today, haven't ahd a chance to listen to it yet - Awake

Awake is good. Less dueling solos and more talent put forth through the melody.

Oh Bofra, you've got the whole band's site there .. sorry, didn't realize. Nice information but how do you hear the music samples at that site? I'd like to hear others.

Well, sitting here, playing along to an old Kiss classic, God of Thunder.

And well, life seems to go ever on, and I have taken a new avatar again, from one of my three favourite bands ever (Kiss, Iron Maiden and AC/DC), so now I have a picture of Gene Simmons, in his makeup, A.K.A Daemon from Kiss.

Kiss: Old:Yes, :Good music:Almost definately...something that will never be unpopular:true as hell.

For my weekend work music listening, I have decided to listen to the following albums:

Katorz - Voivod
City of Evil - Avenged Sevenfold
One-X - Three Days Grace
Flyleaf - Flyleaf
Stained Class - Judas Priest
Planets - Adema
Panopticon - Isis
Holy Diver - Dio

I'm currently listening to the Judas Priest album. Currently it's the song Savage. So that means I'm close to the greatest Priest song ever, Beyond the Realms of Death! Hehe, can't wait!

Flyleaf is an interesting choice. I wouldn't think you the type. WHile I don't like their music, I give the vocalist a thumbs up. One of the best female singers around.

Yea, she's definitely a good vocalist, and yes, the music that goes with it is pretty standard. I didn't know they were considered Christian Rock until after I got it and read some other reviews for it. I heard about the band way before I bought it. I ended up getting it with a good deal.

The CD is a bit short, but it's a nice rock CD.

Sure, I mainly listen to more aggressive stuff, but I always have a soft spot for simply good music. Like I listen to older Our Lady Peace, Snow Patrol, Beastie Boys. Kanye West (since he actually uses actual instruments in his music quite often), K-Os (uber talented Canadian hip-hop artist, sings and raps wonderfully), and Neverending White Lights.

So yea, I like to consider myself more of a rocker than a metalhead. Mainly because I can't stand Death Metal, and the other "extreme" genres. There's maybe a few exceptions though. Really only Strapping Young Lad and Between the Buried and Me come to mind.

Right now, i'm listening to The Silent Man by Dream Theater, off the album Awake
Good stuff, as is the rest of the album.

Oh and you're right Dantrag, Awake is better than Octavarium.

And Tellie, Iron Maiden! WOOO!! I got me a ticket to their concert here on the 20th of December, can't wait

I'm listening to APC's Passive.

This song is unbelievably awesome, yet it depresses me so much.

I would have to say Flyleaf is friggin' awesome. The lead singer is one of the very, very few female vocalists I can stand, especially for something in the rock/metal genre.

My musical tastes constantly change. Right now I'm more into grunge (not just Nirvana, but AiC, STP, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam) than anything else. However, I still listen to Metallica, ACDC, Tool, and Disturbed.

I'll listen to everything at least once. Except Evanescence. That band is horrible, and the lead singer is extremely obnoxious.

Have you picked up A Matter of Life and Death yet?

Not yet, hoping to get it soon though.
Have you?

hehe...then we both have something to look forward to...I have gotten myself a pair of fine tickets to the gig in Oslo at the 21th November.

Also I picked up 'A Matter of Life And Death' yesterday, so now I'm currently sucking up the lovely music.

I like Marty O'Donnel's work (he's done HALO music)

-Halo 2 soundtrack
-Serenty (movie for the Firefly series)
-Advent Rising (sample here)

I also like light rock, and classcal (think Mozart)

Oh I love Amadeus!! Mozart that is....you can actually hear why and how he went mad in some of his music compositions. Almost as interesting as viewing the painted madness of Vincent Van Gogh in a different way.

But such creative geniuses they were ... I do believe the burning light of creativity inside them at times caused them great pain. Makes for unbelievable art, doesn't it?

So the waiting is finally over for me.

I actually hold a copy of Amputechture in my hands. Right now. Not kidding.

Seriously though, I have thoroughly enjoyed my listen so far. The Mars Volta never fails to impress me. They have some more structured songs than normal, such as Viscera Eyes, which has a constant progression going in the background, and then they have some that are even more odd than normal. I love it. Highly recommended.

Con Te Partiro - Andrea Bocelli

Not that I'm actually intot this Genre of music, but GD that man can Sing!!

Plus, this may sound macarbre, but it comes from seeing too many Godfather movies, when I am writing an Assassination scene in my fics, for some reason, that song starts flowing through my head. Indeed, if it were allowed, I would add Mp3 Attachments to specific post to exude what I feel the proper feeling would be during certain of these posts.

Eh, I digress.

Rainer wonders- Has anyone ever heard of Cirque Du Solei?

Well, Rainer has started getting back to listening to their music. Such is amazing work...

Rainer's favourites are "Distorted", "A La Lune", "Urban", "Reve Rouge", "Atmajia", "Zarabanda", "Incantation", and "Ninkou Latora" (that was a mouthful )

Ok! Well it's another Saturday so does everyone know what that means? It's time for Mallet's Weekend Work Listening!!! Yay! This weekend features the following albums:

Flyleaf - Flyleaf
One X - Three Days Grace
Ghost Reveries - Opeth
Team Sleep - Team Sleep
Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy - Helloween
Vheissu - Thrice
Mutter - Rammstein
13 Ways to Bleed Onstage - Cold


Hopefully on Sunday I'll have some time to get to the mall and get Mastodon's Blood Mountain. So far, I've heard plenty of good things about it so I'm getting a little giddy . Supposedly they do a bit more singing on this record which is always a plus if it fits the music. If you're into basically "metallized" jazz-drumming, anything by Mastodon would amaze you, they're drummer is crazy on a relatively small kit. Damn I wish it was Sunday!!

Right now I'm listening to Dragonforce, more specifically the song Operation Ground and Pound.
I heard various things about theses guys, but never got round to hearing anything by them. Then the other night I saw a video for one of their songs on tv, and liked what I heard, so now I have a bunch of their stuff

Rainer, Cirque Du Solei is right here near our house in Florida. We have never gone to see them but we see the commercials all the time on TV. I didn't know they have such good music. They look like a very interesting show though.

Yay! I got Blood Mountain today and I'm very happy with my choice. So far I'll need to give it a few more listens to figure out which the really good songs but so far Sleeping Giant was the song that amazed me, simply because it sounds like nothing Mastodon has done before. Very atmospheric.

I also bought Black Sabbath's "Heaven and Hell", Judas Priest's "British Steel" and "Sad Wings of Destiny", and Danko Jones' "We Sweat Blood". I've been looking for that last album for like forever so I'm glad I got that one as well. Listening to new music always rocks!

I was thinking of buying that one myself. Never heard anything by them, but I do know that The Mars Volta guests on the new album.

Yea, Cedric has some backing vocals on the track called Siberian Divide. He sounds very creepy in it with very high pitch kinda unintelligable moans. If you don't mind hearing kinda Mudvayne-esque gutteral vocals from time to time, I strongly suggest Blood Mountain.

Does the singer always sound like that? It sounds good sometimes, but I think it's a bit overdone at times. (judging from the three samples I heard) Does he sound different in any previous albums?

The Blood Mountain album probably has the most varied vocals Mastodon has done. They actually have two vocalists in the band, though I think the bassist handles most of them. On previous albums, there wasn't as much variety in the vocals. I just recently purchased an older album by them called Remission and the basic vocal style was basically hardcore vocals. Leviathan introduced some clean vocals (Seabeast, Naked Burn, Heart's Alive) as well as a different hardcore/gutteral vocals that were actually comprehesible or clear sounding (Blood and Thunder, I am Ahab, Iron Tusk) and then some screechy sounding vocals (Island, Aqua Dementia, parts of Heart's Alive).

But on Blood Mountain, they use a lot more stoner rock/metal vocals (Colony of Birchman, Hand of Stone, This Mortal Soil, Sleeping Giant), some Mudvayne-esque aggressive vocals (The Wolf is Loose, Capilliarian Crest, parts of Circle of Cysquatch). You get two different sounds from each vocallist, in previous albums I could tell which one was singing but the new vocals sound different enough that I can't distinguish who is singing what.

I would have to say that in each song there's basically at least of couple of moments where they use aggressive vocals. Even the one instrumental, Bladecatcher, has this schizophrenic gargling noise for vocals in it. Pendolous Skin, the other instrumental, is the only exception as the vocals sound like the singer is moaning unintellible words.

For me personally, I listen to Mastodon for the musicianship rather than the vocals, but I really enjoy the vocals on Blood Mountain. So that easily makes this my favourite album by Mastodon, but I'll have to give Remission a few more listens just to make sure.

Wow, that was quite a mouthful...

I'm weird when it comes to singers. Usually the ones I hate on the first listen end up being my favorites. People such as James LaBris and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. MAybe this one will be no different.

I think I'll pick up Blood Mountain at work on Saturday.

Mendelssohn: Concerto for violin and string orchestra in D major

It's everyone's favourite weekend day, Saturday. So I bet everyone is interested in my weekend listening. So without further ado:

Remission - Mastodon
Amputecture - The Mars Volta (I decided to give them another chance since I liked the musical parts of Frances the Mute)
Heaven and Hell - Black Sabbath
We Sweat Blood - Danko Jones
Sad Wings of Destiny - Judas Priest
British Steel - Judas Priest
Master of the Moon - Dio
rEVOLVEr - The Haunted
A Predator's Portrait - Soilwork
Metal: A Headbanger's Journey Soundtrack - Various Artists (probably won't get to this one due to time)

Basically my theme for this weekend was "CDs I recently bought" which only excludes that last CD (though it is still a fairly recent purchase). I all ready have a feeling what I'm going to be listening to next weekend seeing as my order for two Agalloch CDs, The Mantle, and Ashes Against the Grain have come in. If you want a vague description of that band, the closest I can say is that they're Folk Metal.

So yea, some of the music I listen to can be considered "odd" at the least. I also saw a new music video from a good Canadian Hip Hop artist named K-Os (pronounced chaos), so that makes me think there's a new CD coming out by him soon. I'll need to get my hands on that, "Joyful Rebellion" was an awesome CD.

I love this album. While all of it is awesome, Asilos Magdalena and Tetragrammaton really stood out to me.

Let me know what you thought of it.

Side note: Picked up Blood Mountain todoay, and I am enjoying it quite a bit. Haven't got to Cedric's part yet, though.

My first impressions of Amputechture is that it is much more frantic and off-kilter when compared to Frances. Makes for a good listen since you don't know where it's going. Sometimes the horns bother me, but for the most part they add to the music nicely.

So far the tracks that have stood out are Viscera Eyes, Day of the Baphomets, and the beginning of Vicarious Atonement.

I'm definitely going to have to give it some more listens though. I'd say I enjoy it more than Frances simply because of the lack of "progressive filler" I'll call it.

While it's more frantic overall, is has the most structured songs they've ever written on the album. Asilos Magdalena and Viscera Eyes.

I forgot day of the Baphomets. One tiny part of that song was stuck in my head all day, the part where he repeats, "Poachers in your home, Poachers in your home," over and over in a dissonant note.

Wow, you have gotta be kiddin me... not one person whose listening to classical music ^^. Well, get used to it, thats all I listen to and I listen to it a lot. ATM, I have my computer rotating between 3 outto the 5 beethoven cello sonates, some of which Im playing.

Ha, Cedric's part in the Siberian Divide could easily be replaced by a guitar. As a matter pf fact, his exact part is played by a guitar earlier in the song. I was kinda disappointed in that, but oh well.

Yea, it's more of a sound cameo than an actual vocal performance, but you gotta admit, it sounds awfully cool.

And for Suffas:

I remember watching a documentary on metal and it's quite amusing to hear them talk about the roots of metal for one of them was classical music. They basically said that if classical composers from the past were alive today, they'd be in metal bands. I think they said Beethoven would be in Black Sabbath and some other guy (his last name starts with an 'L' and he really liked the bass section, so that section was huge for his composistions) would be in Deep Purple.

Of course, the other roots were Blues and 'slave music' as they called it.

Im actually not too surprised that metal has roots in classical. After all, classical is one of the oldest forms of music (of course there is ancient music from different cultures).

House of Pain - Same As It Ever Was [from the same-named LP]

The second H.O.P. album that followed their super-popular debut, "Fine Malt Lyrics", brought more darker song themes and samples that were much more 'underground' than the classical hip-hop which brought them so much fame in the beginning. Needless to say, this album wasn't as popular as their first one, but true fans were blessed with this masterpiece of rap. Needless to say, this song and album, which was the first one I bought as a bootleg in the early 90's, remains one of my favourite rap records.

Right now I'm listening to Shadows That Move by Mastodon. Cool stuff, nice and heavy too lol

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

Uriah Heep!

Now that's a damn cool band! I'm listening to their "Best Of Uriah Heep Part I" which includes such smash hits as.

Easy Livin'
Gypsy
Look At Yourself
Return To Fantasy
Stealin'
Bird Of Prey
Lady In Black

Damn that stuff is good! I'll probably listen to it all day long.

She came to me one morning
One lonely sunday morning
Her long hair flowing
In the midwinter wind
I know not how she found me
For in darkness I was walking
And destruction lay around me
From a fight I could not win
Ah ah ah ...

Right now I'm listening to to Machine Head's Through the Ashes of Empires, more specifically Imperium. Great stuff, and it has the added endorsement of everyone else in my family hating it

That album is sooo sweet. Gotta love Vim and Days Turn Blue to Grey as well.

Another Saturday, another weekend music list. Here it is in no particular order:

Panopticon - Isis
The Mantle - Agalloch
10,000 Days - Tool
Frances the Mute - The Mars Volta
Amputechture - The Mars Volta
Sleep is the Enemy - Danko Jones
Blast Tyrant - Clutch
Vol.1 - Hurt

No theme today, other than I guess I'm listening to my entire Mars Volta collection by giving Frances another listen in quite a wile.

It's Saturday! And an excellent one at that. Here's this weekend's list of albums:

Alive or Just Breathing? - Killswitch Engage
10,000 Days - Tool
Blood Mountain - Mastodon
The System Has Failed - Megadeth
Heaven and Hell - Black Sabbath
Holy Diver - Dio
Master of the Moon - Dio
Constitution of Treason - God Forbid
Monochrome - Helmet

Today's basic theme is Ronnie James Dio Day, as the Black Sabbath album and the two Dio records are sung by him. Good stuff, early eighties had some nice metal/rock.