Champ213

This includes singles as well, just because. In Alphabetical Order. Japanese: A - White Album A - Black Butterfly Amber gris - Pomander Anthem - Heraldic Device dies - 発情 Dear L'Novel - Mistral Luna Sea - LUNA SEA NightingeiL - Dark Word Yaneka - All in the Air 実験台モルモット - 箱庭の音樂会 女王蜂 - 孔雀 Non-Japanese: Amon Amarth - Surtur Rising Corde Oblique - A Hail of Bitter Almonds Dark Suns - Orange Einherjer - Norron Kauan - Kuu... Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know ThanatoShizo - Origami Thy Catafalque - Rengeteg Tenhi - Saivo Turisas - Stand Up And Fight Týr - The Lay of Thrym If I had to pick one favourite, it would probably be Tenhi. Also, there is a still a lot of stuff from 2011 I haven't listened to, because I'm always lagging behind.

Moved to the Global Music > Asian section.

I think it would be also interesting to know what people mean by "they" (as in: the band). In a band you often have a main composer. In some bands, all the music is written by one guy. The other band members may give some imput on it, but we don't really know the whole extent of that. For all we know, one person could be writing all, and the rest of the band just performing his or her compositions. But it seems the perception is hugely different. A vocalist performing the song his band mate wrote seems to be fully accepted, but if the writer is not a member of the band, but a ghost writer, the opinion seems to be quite different. A band that doesn't write their own songs is often considered talentless, no matter how well they perform songs written by others. But wouldn't that make a band with one song writer and four "performing" members" at leat 4/5 talentless? Maybe we are automatically assuming that in a band there is always some sort of cooperation and equal status between members, and that a band would never perform a song written by one of their own if they didn't like it, or couldn't identify with it (whether this is true or not). Whereas with ghost writers we usually accociate labels that force bands to play something they don't really want. At least that would be my theory.

Great. Not early enough for our Christmas Night last Saturday!

The Discussion of the Week! How it works: - Each sunday a staff member will start a thread with a new music-related question. They can range from broad to specific, but they are usually more in-depth than just asking for your favourite band. - The discussion will be featured as announcement on the front page to get as many people involved as possible. - People should put some effort into their posts, ie. not just write a few words and leave, or quote a sentence from a previous poster without adding anything to it. At least 2-3 well-worded sentences are not too much to ask. - Other than that it's just like a normal discussion: you can discuss posts made by other users, but try to stay on topic and, of course, be civil. The thread will stay open even after the week has passed, so the discussion can continue, but it will be replaced in the announcement center by the next featured question. (Btw: you can also submit questions for the Discussion of the Week by sending them to any staff member.) Got it? So here's the new question: What do you think of artists that don't write their own songs?

You're right, that song is pretty aweseome. I'm also pretty indignant about racist/nazi stuff in lyrics (but in black and folk metal the line is sometimes very thin anyway and I hate idiots shouting "nazi!" at any random band because they use runes in their logo or whatever. I've seen people calling bands like Moonsorrow nazis which is just plain bullshit.) I always thought that with Nokturnal Mortum the case is more obvious - or at least was, not sure how it has been in recent years. But musically that is pretty impeccable.

Well, I'm going to schedule a night for tomorrow, let's hope many people turn up. Time: Saturday, December 17th, 9pm GMT (Use Time Zone Converter for your local time.) Theme: Christmas! But you can really play anything you like. Place: http://turntable.fm/mhturntable

^ That doesn't sound too bad. I like metal bands that do a bit of genre-mixing.

The Discussion of the Week! How it works: - Each sunday a staff member will start a thread with a new music-related question. They can range from broad to specific, but they are usually more in-depth than just asking for your favourite band. - The discussion will be featured as announcement on the front page to get as many people involved as possible. - People should put some effort into their posts, ie. not just write a few words and leave, or quote a sentence from a previous poster without adding anything to it. At least 2-3 well-worded sentences are not too much to ask. - Other than that it's just like a normal discussion: you can discuss posts made by other users, but try to stay on topic and, of course, be civil. The thread will stay open even after the week has passed, so the discussion can continue, but it will be replaced in the announcement center by the next featured question. (Btw: you can also submit questions for the Discussion of the Week by sending them to any staff member.) Got it? So here's the new question: How far would you go in hating/disliking a band because of its fans? Can the fandom of a particular band or genre turn you off from liking them or influence your listening habits?

Anyone up for a Christmas Night next Saturday? It would probably the best date to do it. It would be similar like the Halloween night: you can play whatever you like, but if you have something christmas-themed all the better.

I have Flash Player 11.1.102.55, which according to their site is the latest version. However, since I don't get the login screen at all I can't really reproduce that error. Logging in with a proxy has always been a bit of a hassle though, presumably because the login requires a https connection and most proxies aren't https. However, I never got the error you are describing, I just got a message that some error occured and I should try again later. I think I solved that prblem by using a https-capable proxy for the login.

I just tried it and it works fine for me. Then again, it didn't ask me to login at all, presumably because it still remembers my login from last time.

There aren't that many female-fronted metal bands I enjoy (probably because too much of it is boring gothic/operatic metal), but Arkona is certainly one I like. Some may remember that a year or two ago I even had a Masha avatar for a while. Also, I just love the sound of the russian languages, and they're irresistibly folky, so it's win-win-win for me. I must admit though that I never got into their older stuff, but maybe just because I never tried it that much. The stuff I listen to is basically from От Сердца к Небу and onwards.

Thanks for the recommendations guys! "To The Moon" looks pretty neat but I'll check out the other suggestions as well.

The Discussion of the Week! How it works: - Each sunday a staff member will start a thread with a new music-related question. They can range from broad to specific, but they are usually more in-depth than just asking for your favourite band. - The discussion will be featured as announcement on the front page to get as many people involved as possible. - People should put some effort into their posts, ie. not just write a few words and leave, or quote a sentence from a previous poster without adding anything to it. At least 2-3 well-worded sentences are not too much to ask. - Other than that it's just like a normal discussion: you can discuss posts made by other users, but try to stay on topic and, of course, be civil. The thread will stay open even after the week has passed, so the discussion can continue, but it will be replaced in the announcement center by the next featured question. (Btw: you can also submit questions for the Discussion of the Week by sending them to any staff member.) Got it? So here's the new question: What do you think about the Indies vs. Major discussion? Do you have a preference? Do you think that bands will inevitably lose their style/trademark sound if they become major?

Yes, it was this one: diIyLIFgH24 I would say that quality-wise the albums Väre, Maaät and Saivo (the latest) are all pretty much on the same level and similar in style. But if you were to check them out, I would probably recommend Maaät, I guess it's the easiest to get into. Although this isn't the kind of music that always kicks in at first listen. When I first listened to Tenhi I was immediately drawn to the music, but it took me a while to get really into it.

The album is officially out now. My copy arrived yesterday and I refrained from listening to any leaks or rips from the internet before I got it. Anyway, it's as beautiful as I imagined. Just the right music for this time of year. Pojan Kiiski is my favourite song from the album so far.

Okay, here's the deal, I'm currently buying christmas presents and I thought about giving a computer game to my sister. But not being much of a gamer myself I'm not sure what to give her. So maybe you can give me some recommendations to look into? Some info: - My sister is 21, so don't worry about age restrictions. - The game should be a few years old. So don't bother recommending Skyrim or whatever. For once, new games are fakkan expensive and since I have a lot of presents to buy, I can't pay a fortune on some game. Plus, I'm not entirely sure about her computer specs. I think her computer is 3-4 years old, so better be safe than sorry. - She doesn't have any consoles, so the game has to be for PC. Games I know she plays and enjoys: - Simulation games like The Sims etc and real-time strategy games. - Adventure-style games like Monkey Island - WoW. Not sure if she plays any other RPGs though. Don't bother recommending stuff like Call of Duty or games that are basically just shoot 'em ups. I know it's a bit all over the place, but if you have any suggestions I'd be happy to look into them.

Alright, let's see how many show up: Time: Saturday, December 3rd, 9pm GMT (Use Time Zone Converter for your local time.) Theme: None! Play whatever you like. Place: http://turntable.fm/mhturntable

Ok, thanks, I will give those a try.

Anyone up for another meeting tomorrow?

Firefox. I switched to Chrome for a short period, but the fact that Chrome was missing such a simple, essential feature like a fixed sidebar was annoying the crap out of me, so once FF updated the browser to finally be fast again I switched back. In terms of speed there isn't much of a difference anymore, FF has a few addons that Chrome doesn't have though I could live without them, but I do need my fixed sidebar. I still use Chrome for some thinsg though, like Turntable.

Wouldn't touhou metal be of interest to you? It's ptetty guitar solo-ish and from what understand there's quite a few instrumental touhou metal. I really don't know much about this genre, so I just randomly youtubed some example: mmjZkwFxOt8 Zesshoku and Wind would be better suited for more suggestions, they upload touhou metal regulary.

I think I listened to a few of their songs a while back, but I never took the proper time to get into them. I'd like to revisit them though. What would be a good album to start? I have "Those Whom The Gods Detest" on my HD already, but I'm open for other suggestions.

Why me? Anyway, recently I was browsing Youtube and somehow stumbled into videos that showed old commercials from the 90s and 80s. The comments on the videos were without exception positive, praising the ads as better, funnier, more tasteful than those today. However, if I think back, nobody was overly fond of commercials in the 90s either. Somehow those commercials turned from a nuisance into some magical memories from previous days. I guess it can work the same way with music. Apparently, even something you didn't like 15 years ago can suddenly turn into something cool thanks to nostalgia factor. Personally I do no see it that way though. I remember a lot of really crappy music from my teenage days. I mean, is this really artistically more profound than something Kesha would put out: Z6jB1B-VRXA I cannot comment much on times before I actively listened to music. However, there may be a very good reason for that: the further back you go the greater the likelihood that the really crappy stuff simply gets forgotten. Only the classics remain, so we are inclined to think that everything was golden back then. Hence it's obviously a bit skewed to compare Kesha to Louis Armstrong. The music of the past already comes to us in a filtered form: the forgetful, generic, volatile and insignificant stuff has already been sorted out, and only the timeless stuff survives, while in the present we get it all at once: the good, the bad, the passing fads and all that. Now, if Kesha is still being played in 60 years and considered a huge classic, then we have something to compare.