Jump to content
Monochrome Heaven is closed. We have moved to JROCK ONE.

Pandabear

Veterans
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    1179

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    4

Posts posted by Pandabear

  1. Posted

     

    Yeah, there’s no such thing as skreamz either. It’s likely people are just having fun with the people who label music screamo. 

     

    Checked out both bands and they’re post-hardcore with influences borrowed from other genres. Old Gray has some indie and post-rock influence in their music in addition to the post-hardcore. I thought they were okay. Vocals didn’t really do it for me. Both the cleans and screams are really rough. The lyrics are little bit better. They did have some interesting lines, but overall they still need polishing. Their songs had interesting sections I did enjoy. It’s always good to hear post-hardcore bands that don’t sound bland and completely weak. It’s the same problem that plagues metalcore.

     

    If you like this type of sound you might like Alexisonfire. They are what post-hardcore should be.

     


     

    Early Thrice was pretty post-hardcore influenced too. They’ve evolved over time but are still one my favorite bands.

     


     

     

    And these guys might not be post-hardcore, but if you want amazing lyrics give them a listen. They’re rock/alternative although they are known for having a vocalist who screams, but not in the metal type of way. They’re also one of my favorite bands and Jesse lacy, their vocalist, is one of my favorite songwriters. Lyrics are dark/honest and after their second album they resemble a lot of metaphysical poetry. Lots of paradoxical/deep content and the use of conceits. Recommend their last 3 albums.

     


    Brand New - Sowing Season


     


    Brand New - In A Jar


     

     

  2. Posted

    There is no such thing as screamo. At least not in the sense people use it. Most non knowledgeable people just label any type of metal that uses screams/growls as screamo. They tend to be noobs to metal so it's not surprising. Personally I like all the subgenres of metal. From post-hardcore to metalcore, deathcore, symphonic, death metal, thrash metal, technical metal, black metal, grindcore, etc. I'm a metal head so I listen to those genres on a daily basis. And I do enjoy bands who have well written songs lyric wise regardless of the genre. I'll give the band you mentioned a try.

    Augie1995 reacted to this

  3. Posted

    I think One Ok Rock is crap. They don't even make good and listenable pop. I don't understand why they get praised by so many people and why people treat them like they are the next big thing. OK, I understand if these fans are 13 year-olds who missed the era of early to mid-2000s Western "emo" band boom. Conclusion: they need this type of music for their teen life. You can't blame them.

     

    Haha I kinda feel the same way. Although perhaps not as passionately as you do.

     

    And on the topic of bands being influenced and copying each other, it does seem at times that people don't know the difference.

     

    To me a rip-off is a piece of music that steals heavily from another song for nearly if not all the entire song. Take for example Deathgaze's Forsaken and Breaking Benjamin's Diary of Jane.

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C1rUo20vUw

     

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoXo36YNQ2U

     

    I mean it's clear Deathgaze ripped of Breaking Benjamin. The guitar riffs, the melody and the chorus are exactly the same. It's no coincidence and it's not an influence. They pretty much blatantly stole the musical components of Diary of Jane. They would have been better off doing a cover of the song. I'll never understand why an artist or band would go through the trouble of recording the near exact song and pass it off as their own original work when they could have taken all that effort and made something original.  

     

    To me, an Influence can be a number of things and isn't always obvious. A similar guitar riff from another song for a few seconds or a melody for example. There are many bands that give nods to their influence by playing certain riffs, melodies, drumming parts or what have you during their songs for a few seconds and then move on. It's done tastefully and doesn't mean they ripped of whatever band their influenced by. Likewise similar chords or chord progressions can be used by numerous bands to create certain moods and at times may sound similar, but  that doesn't mean they're ripping each other off. They simply might be using similar established chords or chord progressions. 

     

    Of course, there are bands and artist who are influenced by other musicians and put out material that sounds nothing like what they were originally influenced by. It's really about execution. It's cool if bands want to pay tribute to their influence or have a similar sound because they love it, but they should try to be as original as possible. For example, writing entirely new original melodies that were inspired by other melodies, but that do not have any similarities.

     

    To be honest I don't bother with people who don't know the difference between bands copying and influencing each other. They usually tend to have a rabid fangirl/fanboy mentality or are musically immature. Sometimes both.

  5. Posted

    Yeah V/H/S 2 was much better than the first one. I just saw it last night and the shorts were much more interesting. All of them were pretty good, but Safe Haven was the best one. That short alone makes V/H/S 2 worth watching.  It got really creepy towards the end and then it gets totally messed up. That ending was great too.

     

    I think I'm going to check out more anthology type horror movies. 

  6. Posted

    KInda messed up her songs for her second album leaked. Instead she released an EP from the few select that weren't. That being said Utopia may only be an EP, but it's one of the best pop releases I've heard for 2013. Not surprising since it's from Kerli.

     

     

     

    I love the positive energy Utopia had and the mix of electronic/piano songs. And I didn't really like the Lucky Ones at first, but it really grew on me. It's extremely catchy. It managed to chart in the U.S too so that's a plus for Kerli. She's so incredibly underrated it's not even funny. 

  7. Posted

    I've heard very good things about the Audition. I've been meaning to check that movie out.

     

    And I agree with jigsaw on there being a lot of boring horror movies. The haunted house cliche being one of them. I don't get the hype surrounding some of them. Paranormal Activity being one of them. It was so overhyped when I watched it, I was extremely disappointed. It wasn't scary at all.

     

    The most recent major horror flick I've been interested in is the remake of Stephen King's Carrie.

     

    There were already remakes of Evil Dead, The Thing and Dawn Of The Dead and all those turned out decent. Maybe not as good as the originals, but they weren't butchered.  

  9. Posted

    I swear we had a thread for this already but I couldn't find it. Perhaps it was in one the previous incarnations of this forum, but anyway here's a new one. A place for discussing/recommending horror movies. 

     

    I love horror flicks in general and since Halloween is coming up, I've pretty much have been watching loads of horror movies.

     

    Just finished watching the Evil Dead Series. The first two films are sick. They're some of my favorite horror films. Army of Darkness was good too, but it was departure from the stick horror genre into comedy. I'm still looking forward to Army Of Darkness 2 though.

     

    Evil Dead

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coGH4OaR9hc

     

    Evil Dead II

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6mEiJRiXqc

     

     

    Going to watch V/H/S 2 for Halloween with some friends. A cool anthology of horror shorts.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63Tv0lhD1fw

     

     

    Some of my other favorite horror flicks have to be

    v/h/s

    The Thing (80 version)

    The Exorcism 

    28 Days later

    An American Werewolf in London

    Night of The Living Dead (original)

    Dawn of The Dead (remake)

    It

    The Shining

     

    And that's all I can come up with at the top of my head but there's tons more. What are some of yours?

  11. Posted

     Yes. Make tagging obligatory. The system will be more efficient if everyone has to use it. No more releases will fall through the cracks and go as untagged either.

     

    I like the open tagging system we have now. However I can see the downsides it poses. For example people tagging releases incorrectly, whether they are using quotes, "rock" or using incorrect descriptions that have nothing to do with the music genres. I'm with Aion on only using tags that apply to the music and not having labels, band members etc used as tags. I say keep the open system for now, make tagging obligatory and sees how things go. If people are tagging too many releases incorrectly and it becomes a big problem switch over to the closed system. 

     

    Although tags by bitrate/realse date would be cool, I think it's unnecessary. Most people already provide those two things in the post anyway. And I'm not sure how often someone would use those tags to look up a release. It seems like a lot of effort to go through when someone could just easily look up a release using a number of other keywords like band/album/genre etc.

     

    The only tags I think should be disallowed are redundant ones. Like the ones that already banned. J-pop, J-rock. I have no problem with people using visual kei, old school, or a specific genre of kei as a tag. Although they may fall under the vk umbrella each of the subgenres of vk have their own distinctive sound which may help people who are looking for a certain type of kei. 

     

    I think tagging by mood is flawed since releases can have several moods. I don't want to tag an album with a half dozen moods in order to post a album. And I said before, I think tags should stick to describing the musical genres of a release. However broadening tags for releases marked visual kei would be useful. Tagging an album as VK isn't enough to describe what type of genre it is. In addition to the vk tag, it should have at least another tag like rock, metal, pop or whatever. Unless this poses a problem. Say your looking up a rock tag and then get a whole bunch of vk releases you're not into. If it's possible to use the search function in the vk download section and like wise,  use the search function in the general download area, but only get results for the respective section your in, than do it.

     

     

     

     

    Champ213 reacted to this

  14. Posted

    Yeah the weird guitar intro has been addressed, other than that the mix could be improved. Drums could have slightly been more prevalent and perhaps try to pan your lead to the left instead of the right. It's fine the way it is, but it threw me off, since I usually pan lead guitar left like everyone else does. Although that's just personal preference. You could also experiment with having some leads in the center. You don't have vocals so it would be easy since most of the instruments in the center are bass and low mids and the guitar could easily fit into the unused higher frequency range.

     

    Maybe the rhythm would have sounded better without the chorus or flanger effect on it? Just some nice clean rhythms with some delay or reverb to taste. Or perhaps you tried that and it it didn't sound good? You could always do another take of the rhythm but with a clean guitar and then mix that behind the rhythm guitar with the effects and you'll get the chorus/flanged guitar with the sparkle and more defined attack of the clean guitar. 

     

    I did really enjoy the bass playing on this track.

    ficsci reacted to this

  19. Posted

    ^ you might be overreacting there a little. 

     

    And I read the link you posted and I'll have to disagree with you on the reason western vk bands fail. It's not because of how the Japanese music industry works. I don't know how authentic that interview is you posted, but even if everything in it was 100% true, which I'm sure isn't, it wouldn't explain why western vk bands don't work out.

     

    Vk western bands not working out is not due to the connections to business people they lack, access to studios, producers, marketing or because they don't have a pimp label to get them out there. It's because of the reasons people have already mentioned here. They're young, inexperienced, sing in Japanese, don't know to dress VK, and lack any originality, basically knocking off bands like the gazette. When you can't sing/play your instrument properly, have a unpleasant image, don't appeal to your native speaking audience, and are a near carbon copy of some foreign band, how can you not expect disastrous results? 

     

    Added to this is the fact that most western vk bands will further comes across as trying to hard or "weebos" to people who are familiar with the Japanese music scene and do low budget production studio recordings or cheaply made music videos. Plus if they only listen to horrible indie vk bands, then how can you expect something good to come out?

     

    When you put out subpar or crappy music regardless of what genre you play (vk or not), you better expect to have people call you on it and be prepared for all the criticism. 

     

    I'm not saying it's impossible for there to be a good western vk band, it's just no one has done it properly. You would need people who know their instruments, have some basic knowledge of theory and composition, actually write lyrics in their native tongue and have a good sense of how to dress. And they would also have have to some originality and not just sound like X vk band. I know bands/musician who listen to j-music in general and are inspired by it, but they don't blatantly rip off the sound/image of another band. They do their own thing in their own original band/project.

     

    So far, I only know of 2 western vk bands that actually are decent. And the reason they more or less have succeeded where others have failed is because they avoided the common pitafils other western vk bands have fallen into.

    Augie1995, Karma’s Hat and ficsci reacted to this

  24. Posted

    Reviving this thread from the dead and renaming it. Discussion for all types of electronic music. House, club, electro-pop, trance, techno, drum and bass, dub step, experimental, ambient, etc.  

     

    It's been a couple of years and after getting to properly know this genre, I've become a huge electronic music fan.

     

    Recently I've been into stuff like Flux Pavillion. Who's probably my favorite dub-step artist right behind zomboy. Guy has great melody and danceable beats.

     

    Flux Pavillion - I Still Can't Stop

     

    Flux Pavillion - I Feel It

     

     

    Also love Trifonic. He mixes ambient-triphop-experimental-glitch together for some amazing stuff. 

     

    Trifonic - Ninth Wave

     

  25. Posted

    ^Also curious about the new album. And lady isn't as horrible as some of mainstream western pop music out there. She's pretty good. You might want to give her a try. I think it's just trendy to hate on her because she's a pop artist and is extremely well known.

     

    The Fame was allright. The Fame Monster was a good step up and I love the more heavy electronic influence on that release. And Born This Way, was probably the best thing she's done so far. I recommend working you're way backwards with her releases. 

×
×
  • Create New...