lol I too just remembered that FF exist and how good Obsolete and Demanufacture are, I guess thanks from me too for the reminder.
Although I have not yet gave a full listen to Digimortal and remember very little of it, I fully agree with the rest. Obsolute was for sure a landmark, although I personally prefer Demanufacture over it, but both are still top tier albums in their discography.
Their latest ones are also pretty good, I remember somewhat enjoying Genexus (2016) and I actually really liked Aggression Continuum (2021), very solid album overall IMO.
I listened to Obsolete and the 25th anniversary version of Demanufacture (including the live show). I definitely preferred Demanufacture. I do not care for the clean vocals at all and Obsolete had so much of them. His voice gets on my nerves so badly and it’s even worse live, but the rest of the band and music in general is much better live imho. That Ozzfest 96 show included in the 25th anniversary version was great (sans cleans).
Unrelated: the new Periphery album out today is incredible. It’s all over the place but it works so well.
I keep listening to Djent is Not a Genre over and over. It’s so good! I can’t even pick a favorite song from it. They truly get so much better on each release. Looks like it’s time to go through their whole catalog again.
EDIT: I take it back, I think “Thanks Nobuo” is my favorite track:
It’s the perfect ending to that journey of an album.
Yeah, those riffs are really funky. Definitely very interesting.
Love how hard the drums and vocals hit on this! Definitely will listen to more.
It has some interesting stuff going on with the melodies and the rhythms together yeah, might have to take a listen later.
Here’s a few:
I have been going through Trivium’s discography, listening to The Crusade right now. While not as good as Ascendancy it still has some bangers. This song is my current earworm, especially the second half at 2:18 with its infectious melody.
I know I’ve posted from this album before but it’s honestly such a personal favorite of mine. I miss this style of german metal with the sharp drums, heavy guitars, and deep vocals.
This is a pretty talented band that I love the energy of.
Bleed The Future is a really great album, definitely Archspire’s most technical album to date, although I’m not the biggest fan on the production on it (but the sheer energy and technicality does make it up for me).
Bit of a rant
It does come off as congested more times than I would like it: spatially, the instruments kind of all blend together and aren’t as nicely separated as with their first album The Lucid Collective. Might also be because it’s just so technical and every instrument is at 110% all the time that it becomes kind of hard to try to make everything have it’s own space in the soundstage, in fact The Lucid Collective is not as technical Bleed The Future, so that may be another reason for it sounding congested.
Relentless Mutation sits between The Lucide Collective and Bleed The Future in terms of production, with it being closer to the latter, just not as congested IMO.
Yeah, that sounds pretty accurate to me. Personally I am not as picky as I used to be with music these days but those are good critiques of the album.
I’m loving the energy and clean vocals on this! Really good.
Spiritbox is doing some really interesting stuff in metal. This is probably one of my favorite metal songs. Something about the tuning, atmosphere, combined with Courtney’s vocals is so entrancing.
Yeah I too am not that picky, or at least I think so, usually when I complain about the mastering it’s more of a “if they mastered it better it would have been an insane album”, more sad for the “wasted opportunity” than anything else.
And speaking of some recent releases:
The new Enslaved album is really good, still need to give it a more thorough listen but so far I’m really liking it, the songwriting and composition is a standout, never gets boring or feels like it’s been dragging itself for too long.
And here’s some proggy tech-death from a band I’ve never heard of but they’ve been around since '97, pretty good:
No, it’s not drama so much as just the unfettered, endless circlejerking of Spiritbox. The mods have really cracked down on it, but for a while, especially leading up to their album release, there were at least 10 threads a day about Spiritbox. And all of them were reposts of the same music videos and tired-ass fanboy takes. And in the vast, vast majority of threads in the sub, regardless of what the actual post topic was about, at least one comment would spark a long tangential thread about Spiritbox.
It just got to be a lot. And the band’s decision to release, what, 5 singles (half the album) in the like 9 months leading up to the album’s release fueled the endless hyping of the band and album, only for it to all come crashing down after the album released. People were kind of bored with it from the release because half of it had been out for a long time already and the other half wasn’t all that it had been built up to be by the fanboy hivemind.
I think they’re fine, their pre-album material is much better than the actual album imo, but that jerking and simping for the band and Courtney in particular was so obnoxious. r/corejerk (the dedicated *core circlejerk sub) even got to be insufferable because of all the nearly identical threads in there each day mocking all the nearly identical threads in r/metalcore about Spiritbox.
I guess it was just one of those things; had to be there and in it. Not trying to shit on anyone for liking them. I just chuckle now any time they’re mentioned. I’m actually glad they weren’t ruined by the internet for the rest of you.
I actually agree here. The album didn’t live up to the hype for me. I like a lot of their live stuff better than the album version. The Mara Effect, the SiriusXM live set, Circle with me one take. Rotoscope was different so I’m curious where they go next.
Ah okay. That makes sense. Yeah, I did not even know about all that. Personally for me I would agree that their non-album stuff is better, which is a bit disappointing since albums are supposed to be where you showcase your ability as an artist. My favorite work from them is definitely Rotoscope, the three songs on there are quite interesting. That’s a bummer to hear about all that though.
I seriously can’t stop listening to this new Periphery album. It’s basically been on repeat every day while I’m awake and able to listen. This is easily my album of the year so far and I’m back to not being able to pick a favorite song, but I’ve been especially enjoying this one lately:
My only complaint is that with this song as well as the majority of songs on the album is that they have these long running times, but the tracks are maybe 2/3-3/4 the song itself and then there’s some completely unrelated interlude that either starts or ends (or both) the track. I wish these interludes or appendages were their own stand-alone tracks so they were easier to find and repeat.
New Paledusk single to celebrate them signing with Sharptone Records! This song is chaotic as fuck and has one of the catchiest choruses I’ve heard in years. And the bridge that crescendos into that ridiculous breakdown is just…
Cannot wait for a full release from them. They’re like a modern sasscore revival and I can’t get enough. All their singles are fantastic.
