bonsaijodelfisch

just want to mention, slowly working my way through the list and it's been an absolute blast so far. need to catch up on so many bands. (btw, would some kind of playlist feature be possible for this site? it sure would help a lot for all the "Picks from month" and other lists...)

cool list+reviews! thanks all the team for the compilation and all!
so with my predictions I stay at 75% and am totally happy with that^^ I can live very well with the not-inclusion of dogma

cool list+reviews! thanks all the team for the compilation and all!
so with my predictions I stay at 75% and am totally happy with that^^ I can live very well with the not-inclusion of dogma

^that. "breathing" has been growing on me a lot. it might still not be up to par with zyouk, but pretty close. This is a band to look out for

Day 23 - the piqnic - ZyouK posted
 

just as a clarification, what people actually hear as autotune has nothing (or not necessarily) to do with actual singing ability.
If there's a clearly audible autotune going on in a track, this has been a conscious choice to work as a creative FX.
For purposes where it's "just" there to fix fucked up vocal lines, it is usually not really noticeable to the untrained ear.
even the grittiest, pure folk-stoner whatever vocals have a high chance to be autotuned at parts, it's just that there they obviously chose to not use it as a noticeable effect.
 
that still doesn't make die a good vocalist tho^^

personally also not that much of a fan of this album in particular, but my predictions so far are fairly spot on (albeit not really adventurous)
 
now we'll just need the piqnic (which i'm fairly confident about^^) and DOGMA (which i'm considerably less confident about, but hey, the album had the forum in coocoo for months, so regardless of quality/notquality, i think it deserves a spot^^) and my predictions will be 100%

personally also not that much of a fan of this album in particular, but my predictions so far are fairly spot on (albeit not really adventurous)
 
now we'll just need the piqnic (which i'm fairly confident about^^) and DOGMA (which i'm considerably less confident about, but hey, the album had the forum in coocoo for months, so regardless of quality/notquality, i think it deserves a spot^^) and my predictions will be 100%

new album april 1st 2016!

lmao are you referring to his cheburashka obsession? anyway seeing as other members are currently 2busy with sukekiyo, decays, goth moomoo hoodies and finger paralysis, I kinda dig him just hanging out w. yoshiki and doing CGI looking photoshoots (like srsly he could model for FF VII re-release marketing pictures at this point, uncanny valley realness achieved)

nice to see they made it onto the list
I preferred this lots over the first one, but the couple of tracks on their split with HeavenInHerArms were still better. Maybe it has to do with what @CAT5 mentions, but the tracks aren't quite as distinct from each other, as the ones on the split (don't quite remember what my main problem with their first album was, I think the production was horrendous and personally I didn't really dig the tracks on it either...)
 
speaking of production, I had quite the opposite impression than @Ito (listening on HiFiMan HE400 btw). The low-mids, high-bass/treble approach he described would be the typical "scooped" way of things, generally associated with black-metal, particularly second-wave-norwegian and the lofi-likes. This Album on the other had has, in my opinion, a much more natural sounding feel, and a much more balanced mix of the instruments, pretty much an aesthetic you would otherwise more expect from a post-rock production. As a matter of fact I am fairly certain you could, without changing anything on the recording/mixing-setup, go straight on recording a russian circles album or sth alike.
 
A prospos postrock, that's the thing anyways about this band. @Jigsaw9 once mentioned sth along the lines of "japanese extreme metal just seems to never be quite as brutal as their western comparisons". Thing is, now for cohol in particular, I don't think they really want to be. Sure on the surface there are all the bits and pieces for black-metal, but with the atmosphere and soundscapes they create in their songs (and sounds) they actually are much more of a postrock(-ish) band, simply utilizing the blackmetal vocabulary. But well, of course genres are stupid anyways, and if I knew anything, I'd have to somehow also add DIY-Hardcore to the mix and such, so this just as a thought/brainfart

nice to see they made it onto the list
I preferred this lots over the first one, but the couple of tracks on their split with HeavenInHerArms were still better. Maybe it has to do with what @CAT5 mentions, but the tracks aren't quite as distinct from each other, as the ones on the split (don't quite remember what my main problem with their first album was, I think the production was horrendous and personally I didn't really dig the tracks on it either...)
 
speaking of production, I had quite the opposite impression than @Ito (listening on HiFiMan HE400 btw). The low-mids, high-bass/treble approach he described would be the typical "scooped" way of things, generally associated with black-metal, particularly second-wave-norwegian and the lofi-likes. This Album on the other had has, in my opinion, a much more natural sounding feel, and a much more balanced mix of the instruments, pretty much an aesthetic you would otherwise more expect from a post-rock production. As a matter of fact I am fairly certain you could, without changing anything on the recording/mixing-setup, go straight on recording a russian circles album or sth alike.
 
A prospos postrock, that's the thing anyways about this band. @Jigsaw9 once mentioned sth along the lines of "japanese extreme metal just seems to never be quite as brutal as their western comparisons". Thing is, now for cohol in particular, I don't think they really want to be. Sure on the surface there are all the bits and pieces for black-metal, but with the atmosphere and soundscapes they create in their songs (and sounds) they actually are much more of a postrock(-ish) band, simply utilizing the blackmetal vocabulary. But well, of course genres are stupid anyways, and if I knew anything, I'd have to somehow also add DIY-Hardcore to the mix and such, so this just as a thought/brainfart

nice to see they made it onto the list
I preferred this lots over the first one, but the couple of tracks on their split with HeavenInHerArms were still better. Maybe it has to do with what @CAT5 mentions, but the tracks aren't quite as distinct from each other, as the ones on the split (don't quite remember what my main problem with their first album was, I think the production was horrendous and personally I didn't really dig the tracks on it either...)
 
speaking of production, I had quite the opposite impression than @Ito (listening on HiFiMan HE400 btw). The low-mids, high-bass/treble approach he described would be the typical "scooped" way of things, generally associated with black-metal, particularly second-wave-norwegian and the lofi-likes. This Album on the other had has, in my opinion, a much more natural sounding feel, and a much more balanced mix of the instruments, pretty much an aesthetic you would otherwise more expect from a post-rock production. As a matter of fact I am fairly certain you could, without changing anything on the recording/mixing-setup, go straight on recording a russian circles album or sth alike.
 
A prospos postrock, that's the thing anyways about this band. @Jigsaw9 once mentioned sth along the lines of "japanese extreme metal just seems to never be quite as brutal as their western comparisons". Thing is, now for cohol in particular, I don't think they really want to be. Sure on the surface there are all the bits and pieces for black-metal, but with the atmosphere and soundscapes they create in their songs (and sounds) they actually are much more of a postrock(-ish) band, simply utilizing the blackmetal vocabulary. But well, of course genres are stupid anyways, and if I knew anything, I'd have to somehow also add DIY-Hardcore to the mix and such, so this just as a thought/brainfart

I'm sure they have their reasons, but I don't really understand, why they're not using FFXV engine. but whatever, it looks nice and dandy as is, and an established engine like unreal might speed up development even further...
http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/12/07/final-fantasy-7-remake-being-created-with-unreal-engine-4

I very much hope there might be some truth to this
however, just for the sake of the argument here's a few counter points to that.
 
I think it's way too early to assume anything about the battle-system at this point. The only thing I'd clearly rule out would be it being round-based, which is something I applaud as well. I am quite the fan of FF7's battle system, as a matter of fact its round-based core, with the brilliant materia-system on top of it is still probably my favorite combat-mechanic alltogether.
That being said, with its arena stages and turn-mechanic it wouldn't really fit into a game-aesthetic that the remake now is going for, which is much more pseudo-realistic instead of clearly game-y over stylized like the original. Curious how they'll implement the materia into whatever that new mechanic is. I mean magic and summons is pretty obvious, but with the more funky ones like counter/2x-Hit/block/mime etc. it gets interesting^^
With what we're seeing of the combat so far, it perhaps might look a bit like versus, but could also be anything really. The only thing we see is the characters doing their combat thing (and character switching, yes) plus the UI so far, which as far as i can tell seems like a placeholder to me. Just for comparison think about how the combat in the nearly finished FFXV-Demo is still subject of change for the final version (whole new blocking-/ targeting- and magic-mechanic, different limit-mechanic, new/different combo-mechanic), so I can only speculate what the FF7R combat will look like, with it assumingly being still in the early to mid stages of development.
Lots of comparisons have been made to Versus, to KH3, to CrisisCore and to XV, maybe it'll be like one of these, maybe a mixture, maybe sth completely different, but so far these all seem more or less equally reasonable.
Also about how far in development it seems to be, I too first was surprised to already see actual ingame footage of sorts. That being said, this could very well be just some of the first level-designs with an extremely rough/early stage combat-system slapped onto the XV-engine. It doesn't really need to be that long into development for sth like that i presume. On the other hand thank god they finally don't have to develop a whole new engine for their game so that's probably already a huge load off the developers back, plus the story+universe itself is already written. One could probably make the point though, that it might be just as hard to adapt an existing story to a new narrative as it is to write a whole new one, if not harder.
 
Your speculation is obviously just as valid, this just as a few points to maybe consider
Also regarding the points about (HD-)remakes in general I agree for the most part. Especially the ones that just supersize the textures and beef up resolution (and maybe UI or sth) are pretty much pointless in the best case, in the worst case they even destroy the originals "charme". For FF7 however it's a bit of a different cup of tea. The medium has changed so much, the possibilities and the aesthetics as well. It may be the same story, but how the narrative will be directed is a completely new thing, voice acting, camera-movement, cutscenes, facial animations etcetc. so despite this being "just" a remake, it is more comparable to a new adaption. Think like the adaption of a book to a movie (obviously not quite as much, but certainly a bit more in this direction).
That all being said, if the game really has been in development since 2012, if pre-existing engine+story really speed things up a ton, could we [pinkflowerdreamglasses=ON] perhaps think about a release 2017? 20th anniversary anyone? [pinkflowerdreamglasses=OFF]
yeah yeah, i know it's probably 2078 or sth, but a boy can dream, right?
 

I very much hope there might be some truth to this
however, just for the sake of the argument here's a few counter points to that.
 
I think it's way too early to assume anything about the battle-system at this point. The only thing I'd clearly rule out would be it being round-based, which is something I applaud as well. I am quite the fan of FF7's battle system, as a matter of fact its round-based core, with the brilliant materia-system on top of it is still probably my favorite combat-mechanic alltogether.
That being said, with its arena stages and turn-mechanic it wouldn't really fit into a game-aesthetic that the remake now is going for, which is much more pseudo-realistic instead of clearly game-y over stylized like the original. Curious how they'll implement the materia into whatever that new mechanic is. I mean magic and summons is pretty obvious, but with the more funky ones like counter/2x-Hit/block/mime etc. it gets interesting^^
With what we're seeing of the combat so far, it perhaps might look a bit like versus, but could also be anything really. The only thing we see is the characters doing their combat thing (and character switching, yes) plus the UI so far, which as far as i can tell seems like a placeholder to me. Just for comparison think about how the combat in the nearly finished FFXV-Demo is still subject of change for the final version (whole new blocking-/ targeting- and magic-mechanic, different limit-mechanic, new/different combo-mechanic), so I can only speculate what the FF7R combat will look like, with it assumingly being still in the early to mid stages of development.
Lots of comparisons have been made to Versus, to KH3, to CrisisCore and to XV, maybe it'll be like one of these, maybe a mixture, maybe sth completely different, but so far these all seem more or less equally reasonable.
Also about how far in development it seems to be, I too first was surprised to already see actual ingame footage of sorts. That being said, this could very well be just some of the first level-designs with an extremely rough/early stage combat-system slapped onto the XV-engine. It doesn't really need to be that long into development for sth like that i presume. On the other hand thank god they finally don't have to develop a whole new engine for their game so that's probably already a huge load off the developers back, plus the story+universe itself is already written. One could probably make the point though, that it might be just as hard to adapt an existing story to a new narrative as it is to write a whole new one, if not harder.
 
Your speculation is obviously just as valid, this just as a few points to maybe consider
Also regarding the points about (HD-)remakes in general I agree for the most part. Especially the ones that just supersize the textures and beef up resolution (and maybe UI or sth) are pretty much pointless in the best case, in the worst case they even destroy the originals "charme". For FF7 however it's a bit of a different cup of tea. The medium has changed so much, the possibilities and the aesthetics as well. It may be the same story, but how the narrative will be directed is a completely new thing, voice acting, camera-movement, cutscenes, facial animations etcetc. so despite this being "just" a remake, it is more comparable to a new adaption. Think like the adaption of a book to a movie (obviously not quite as much, but certainly a bit more in this direction).
That all being said, if the game really has been in development since 2012, if pre-existing engine+story really speed things up a ton, could we [pinkflowerdreamglasses=ON] perhaps think about a release 2017? 20th anniversary anyone? [pinkflowerdreamglasses=OFF]
yeah yeah, i know it's probably 2078 or sth, but a boy can dream, right?
 

Conspiracy time. I reckon VII started development at the same time Nomura got taken off of Versus. I imagine they greenlit VII, assigned Nomura as the director, realised he couldn't handle three AAAs at once (Versus, KH3, and VII) and so they took him off of Versus and replaced him with Tabata. Then Nomura decided that he wanted to use the battle system he'd been using on Versus in VII, and so they decided to have Tabata just come up with his own action-RPG system for Versus instead. At that point they decided to just rebrand the latter game as XV since it was essentially becoming a different game anyway. This would explain why the gameplay in VII looks extremely similar to Versus' original gameplay (command-based action RPG, character switching, etc) whereas XV's has become increasingly different since Tabata took over (direct input-action RPG, no character switching, etc). It would also explain why the game looks so far along in development now. Rumours about Versus being canned and repackaged started making the rounds as early as 2012, so if my theory is even remotely close to being correct then VII should have had a decent amount of development time already.
 
Conspiracies aside, the game looks decent. I'm not a fan of the voice acting but otherwise it seems to be progressing nicely. I'm glad they had the balls to scrap the original battle system. I've never seen the point in remaking something but then keeping it exactly the same in all areas except for graphics; it's both shallow and a waste of time/resources that could have been spent on creating new things. I'm curious as to who's re-arranging the OST. They already said that it isn't Uematsu which is a good thing; he's just not a very capable arranger (hence why he doesn't even arrange his own compositions any more). It doesn't sound like Hamauzu too much based on that track, and I don't think they'd give a game of this scale and importance to Ishimoto. My only guess at the moment is Narita since he's one of Uematsu's most trusted arrangers (XIV, The Last Story, X HD). Either way, I'm excited to hear more from the OST.
 
EDIT: That track is from Distant Worlds, so disregard my comment about Hamauzu.

y'all better make dat YOHIO christmas album your top pick, or mh just can't even
 
more realistically i'm pretty confident that novembers latest, as well as the piqnic - zyouk will make their way on here. would also like to see cohol there, but not sure, if the album makes the cut into AOTY-tier. Finally, as meh as it may be and despite all the shit it has gotten from me and others on here, the list wouldn't be quite complete without gazette^^

y'all better make dat YOHIO christmas album your top pick, or mh just can't even
 
more realistically i'm pretty confident that novembers latest, as well as the piqnic - zyouk will make their way on here. would also like to see cohol there, but not sure, if the album makes the cut into AOTY-tier. Finally, as meh as it may be and despite all the shit it has gotten from me and others on here, the list wouldn't be quite complete without gazette^^

y'all better make dat YOHIO christmas album your top pick, or mh just can't even
 
more realistically i'm pretty confident that novembers latest, as well as the piqnic - zyouk will make their way on here. would also like to see cohol there, but not sure, if the album makes the cut into AOTY-tier. Finally, as meh as it may be and despite all the shit it has gotten from me and others on here, the list wouldn't be quite complete without gazette^^

for anyone who might be interested, the whole album is now availible for streaming on soundcloud

Funk/Rock/Swing stuffs.. roundabout 50mins of that^^
 

this is some really cool stuff!
I know faithfull 8bit(16bit etc..) music creation is an artform all by itself, trying to work with the restrictions of the old console/pc-soundchips and their properties, so kudo's for that. Especially for making it work for songs, which i'd never guessed to do so in this style (namely those on the nu-metally/-core side of things).
 
I once tried to dabble in the chiptune-corner myself, but in the end wound up using a gazillion of synth instances and a shitload of postprocessing, so the result ended up to be about equally as faithfull to the chiptune-era, as these crappy hipster-pixel-art-monstrosities on tumblr claim to be "8bit bcus pixelz" so big applause for being authentic (for as much as i can judge^^)
 
tiny suggestion tho, the parts that probably recreate some sort of downtuned chugchug rhythm guitars, try to not add the powerchord fifth to the riffs. They work with distorted guitars because of the nature of distorting amps, but when using synths the fifth quite often seems to dominate over the root-note, so maybe drop it in favor of an octave or sth. (powerchords still work when holding chords, but not for rhythmic riffage)

Personally, I agree that if you don't have anything nice to say, then you shouldn't say it at all. Most of the time, negative comments are nothing more than users stroking their e-peen or attempting to build their ego - which usually stems from some sort of insecurity. So as deplorable as some comments may be, it's really something that should be pitied.
 
Some people tend to come on here and think that they can say whatever they want because "it's the internet", but they forget that this a forum run by people - people who have established rules.  Even though rules number 1 and 2 are clear as day, we don't go as far as to police every negative sentiment as long as it's presented in a civil and inoffensive way. Now we do our best to enforce these rules and weed out the troublemakers, but unfortunately, we don't always catch everything. This is when members, like yourself, can be of assistance. There is a 'report' button that you should see at the bottom of every post. It's a much more effective measure than using the rant thread. And even beyond that, the staff is always around to hear any complaints that you may have and you're always welcome to message us. We'd like to keep this a pleasant place for everyone.
 
And regarding @Lestat's comment. We're actually quite lenient and save banning as a last resort. We take bans seriously and they are something that the entire staff has input on. So suffice to say that out of the few bans that we've actually given out, each and every one of them has always been warranted.

Had to check out what's with all this fuss about the piqnic, and man, I'm glad that I did.