Jigsaw9

While the cover of their 1st album was just bad, this is so trashy that I actually kinda love it. XD

Marduk's upcoming album "Frontschwein" (release: January 19) tracklist and cover:
 
01 - Frontschwein 02 - The Blond Beast 03 - Afrika 04 - Wartheland 05 - Rope of Regret 06 - Between the Wolf-Packs 07 - Nebelwerfer 08 - Falaise: Cauldron of Blood 09 - Doomsday Elite 10 - 503 11 - Thousand-Fold Death  
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xfp1/v/t1.0-9/10710520_1028048487221059_5768197016989142034_n.jpg?oh=4e0cdca0c9869dfd2cc645f281dd107d&oe=551FC890&__gda__=1427913664_e2c6547076d76fe6c23db69c1e22ce9d
 
Not sure about putting the tracklist itself on the front cover, but otherwise looks neat enough.
 
In other news, I've been listening to some Varathron these days, pretty kickass stuff. Greek black metal with a great melodic sound. For example, the first track of their latest album:
 

Here's the explanation btw (screenshot is from yesterday):
 

Akane Aggrotech Project 2015 pls make it happen

Akane Aggrotech Project 2015 pls make it happen

New Marduk song as well: https://soundcloud.com/centurymedia/marduk-rope-of-regret
 
 
As for Varathron, I'm a massive fan myself and thought this new one was the best since their 1995 classic Walpurgisnacht. But they've got a long way before they reach the magnificence of His Majesty at the Swamp and Walpurgisnacht which is not only among the best greek black metal albums ever, which in all honestly says hella lot, but two of the best black metal albums EVER. The compilation Genesis of the Unaltered Evil are also worth a purchase. Fantastic comp with demos, and EP and the split with Necromantia. But the whole split is recommended. The Necromantia side is fantastic as well.
 
 
And I can never talk bout Varathron without mentioning Hail, which sounds like a mix of Varathron's His Majesty at the Swamp and Beherit's Drawing Down the Moon. Such a great album.

I'm cool with these so far. As long as they keep garbage like HATE away from this album I'll probably end up being happy. 
 
Although I have to admit that after listening to these I have no recollection of anything but the growls on SERVANT lol. I swear if I went through their entire discography with thought one day I'd probably find the same riffs being recycled like fuck with little to no alteration. 

their forthcoming 短編第五集 will include 8 songs (including new song(s), 50% completed)
 

This is really NOT what I expected. (most of the previews being quite sweet and romantic sounding)
 
One in particular, "Hungry Psychopath" which I suppose I had pegged as something quite simple and heavy turns out to sample a really pleasant and emotional sounding chorus. It sounds excellent to me.
 
In fact, after previewing 50% of the album here.. I start to wonder if Mejibray's heavy side will be fairly supported. SERVANT is the most glaring example of how it would be done, to me it sounds Diru-inspired with the way the riffs go with the Tzk's reaching for higher notes, while the actual melody he sings is still very Mejibray.
 
This may be deceiving, as a lot of these songs may have much heavier sections that one wouldn't guess from hearing this (as is common with them)
 
I am excited for this. Given Mejibray's inconsistent history and the sudden announcement of The 420 itself, this album in theory is easy to make jokes about, but I think there's going to be a lot to love if you have ever been a fan of them, which I have and still am lol

Not sure about these samples yet...

To be honest I often feel like the Visual Kei scene is like one big dog show. With one band trying to be more peacocky than the other you shouldn't be surprised to see so much snobbism among visual kei fans. It's a shame though when a good band is underappreciated because it's not 'visual' enough, but then it doesn't automatically mean that a famous band is a good band. With a few exceptions, somehow I always find the gems among the less known ones.

Oh this topic has been dead for a month! Well, time to revitalize it.
 


Visual kei fans are paradoxically some of the most open-minded and some of the most close-minded music lovers on the planet.
Now why are we open-minded? Take a look at your average visual kei band.
 
 


  There's no way in hell that shit would fly in any other country but Japan. One band could do it and it would be seen as a gimmick. But an entire scene revolving around that concept died out in the 80's with glam metal and there's still a bad taste in everyone's mouth about bands that don't prescribe to some pre-approved dress codes. I still live in a country with a split personality; one half wants to accept and embrace diversity. The other thinks that being gay is some unhealthy sin because you happen to like the parts you came equipped with. How many of us on this forum don't talk about visual kei to our real-life friends because they "wouldn't get it"? Are you afraid of being judged for listening to your "tranny metal"? How many of us are here because this is the only place on the internet where we can talk with other people that do "get it"? The fact that we're able to look past the visuals enough to give the music a try says a lot. There are a lot of fans of Japanese music who look down on visual kei because they think all the fans are horny teenage girls and all the music sucks.  We gave it a shot and all discovered something to love here, and that's why you're reading this post, right?
This is where the paradox comes in. Visual kei fans can be the most irritating, closed-minded individuals you will find on the Internet. We rival black metal fans in how obnoxious we are in claiming what is and isn't visual kei, and there's no consensus on what "it" actually is. What's worse is that we have some preconceived definition of what "real visual kei" ought to be. If you don't look a certain way or if you don't play "the right kind of music", it's much harder to keep anyone's attention. You could play the exact same music as a visual kei band and get no attention just because of that. When a session or band member leaves the visual kei scene to go play in another band very few fans will actually follow them to see where they end up - simply because they aren't in a visual band anymore. Bands that straddle the line between visual kei and something else get universally ignored no matter how amazing their music is.
Most notably, we've given off the impression that a band can pull a NOCTURNAL BLOODLUST and do nothing but add visual kei hooks and ugly costumes and they'll get tons of fans simply because they have visual kei hooks and ugly costumes. What the fuck guys? I thought we were supposed to be open-minded and about the music.
But of course, it was never about the music. It's about the looks. It's always been about the looks long before most of us got here and it will be long after we leave. If you're the kind of person who says that you listen to all sorts of visual kei and you go on to name 30 of the same band, 28 of which are recently started indies bands please be honest with yourself. You like the way the bands look and that's why you listen to visual kei, and that's fine. Just don't lie to yourself and say it's about the music when the bands you listen to range from average to absolute garbage. I honestly feel like if I hadn't thrown my administrator weight around earlier this year and exposed I.T.G for the lazy, cheap sacks of shit that they are someone on this forum would be hyping them all crazy.
Oddly enough, the reasons why we don't give chances to fringe visual kei is the same thing other people to do us if we try to expose them to visual kei. How open-minded can we actually be about visual kei if we ourselves don't give all of it a chance?
Take this not as a rant from someone who thinks he's got better musical taste than you. Take it from someone who was where you were quite some time ago (if said rant applies to you), who has some regrets about his visual kei phase, and wished he looked beyond the borders of visual kei to find other types of music sooner. There is some irrational fear in the back of many fans minds where they think if they start listening to other types of music that they will be "less" of a visual kei fan. I was one of those people once. That's false. None of us here believe that. Monochrome Heaven won't blow up because you decided to listen to something else. Visual kei isn't going anywhere either and you'll discover that all types of music can coexist peacefully on your MP3 player. So if you have some sort of irrational fear about trying out something new, the only person that's stopping you is you.
After all, the worst thing that could happen is that you discover you don't like something and that visual kei music is the only type of music you enjoy. But I can assure you, with all the blatant stealing and "inspiration" vk bands themselves find outside of visual kei, there's something out there that you will like. It might not even be metalcore.

Just saw that yesterday - niiiiiiiiiiiiiice

Yeah, it was very fun. Was fun 8-10 years ago as well. I think it was right after the release of Chimera. Heh.
 
 
Cool, that looked good. Shame about Corpsegrinder's invitation to a pit though. Fuck pits, fuck ninja dansing and fuck moshing.

^ Sounds like fun! First (and to this day, last) time I saw Mayhem they played at some hole in the wall club here, and everyone else was so tall (and there were so many people) that I practically couldn't see a thing and the sound wasn't the best either. xDDD They have a cool live presence tho, that's for sure... at least from what I could gather.
 
My last gig was 2 days ago, saw Cannibal Corpse for the 2nd time. I couldn't get there for the first opening band (Aeon -- I didn't mind), only the second one, which was Revocation. I liked their last album and some of their other tunes but they were a bit weird live. I mean, they weren't bad, just kind of all over the place in terms of sound/style and kinda lame in contrast to the awesome br00tality that followed. Cannibal Corpse was of course excellent, even more so than last time I saw them! The mixing was unusually good too, very punchy and powerful without being obnoxiously loud and overdriven. Also, bonus points for the setlist: the bulk of it was different than what they played here last time. All in all, a cool show.
 

^ Sounds like fun! First (and to this day, last) time I saw Mayhem they played at some hole in the wall club here, and everyone else was so tall (and there were so many people) that I practically couldn't see a thing and the sound wasn't the best either. xDDD They have a cool live presence tho, that's for sure... at least from what I could gather.
 
My last gig was 2 days ago, saw Cannibal Corpse for the 2nd time. I couldn't get there for the first opening band (Aeon -- I didn't mind), only the second one, which was Revocation. I liked their last album and some of their other tunes but they were a bit weird live. I mean, they weren't bad, just kind of all over the place in terms of sound/style and kinda lame in contrast to the awesome br00tality that followed. Cannibal Corpse was of course excellent, even more so than last time I saw them! The mixing was unusually good too, very punchy and powerful without being obnoxiously loud and overdriven. Also, bonus points for the setlist: the bulk of it was different than what they played here last time. All in all, a cool show.
 

Thought Mayhem gave us a good gig. The setlist was great, with 10/14 or 11/15 songs being pre-Chimera stuff. Hellhammer is Hellhammer and the drum sound could've been much better, but it wasn't as bad as I'd thought. Not very good, but not annoyingly bad either. Whore, Illuminate Eliminate and Psywar didn't work at all live, but apart from that they did a good job.
 
Necrobutcher seemed to have an absolute blast on stage. Seemed to really enjoy himself and Teloch seemed to enjoy himself, but you couldn't see his face as he's joined the latest tend in black metal, following Mgla and Svartidaudi as far as his image goes. Which is a bit of a problem to be honest. Attila being the only one with corpseish paint works well because he's the vocalist, but Teloch wearing his stuff looks a bit out of place considering what the rest of the band looks like. He did look awesome, though, but perhaps a BIT cheaper looking than mentioned Mgla and Svartidaudi.
 
And Charles Hedger looked like he was hating it. Just stood there and did his job, and that was it. Didn't look like he was into it at all.
 
 
But the highlight oh the show was Attila. He looked great and his theatricals were awesome on the night. He looked like a relaxed, black metallic version of a cybergoth dancer with his arm movements, with both a skull and inverted cross in hand. A lot will hate this, but I thought it worked really well, even though it shouldn't.
 

 
That was Attila like, just without the leg movements. It was so corny, yet so fucking cool. No idea how he pulled it off.
 
 

What I like the most in this band is probably the way they manage to stay creative and at the same time they prevent their sound to go generic, which is not something easy when you're a deathcore/metalcore band. After their debut I've been a bit worried because they started to suffer of a lack of inspiration but thankfully they fixed that problem. Because yeah, usually, a deathcore band's originality doesn't tend to last long enough... That said, I just hope that GENESIS won't be the only good song coming from the album.

lol @ dat pretty nice riff that pops up at 1:18 only to never appear again
 
...ARCHMEH.

yaass @ merry recognizing the 500,000 baidu downloads iMpAcT, nokubura will never

I have to agree mostly. It's been over a year since I listened to this album it's it's entirety and I have to say that I'm so much more impressed with it this time around. Listening to an album fresh, long after all the hype has died down definitely helps to get a clearer picture...especially because you're listening to ACTUALLY listen...not just so you can have an opinion to throw in the pot while the stove is still hot, ya know?
Definitely better than TOXIC and DIVISION, and I can also hear how they drew inspiration from both NIL and SR. Some of the tracks weren't necessarily impressive, but they weren't "bad" either. The tracks that DID standout I plan on incorporating into my normal rotation, though.
This isn't a proper review, but if I were to give it a score, it would be a 7/10. Well done, cohesive album with a few really great moments. I'm glad that sweetholm got me to revisit this!

I recently did a listening session with CAT5 and we revisited this album together, and while i can't fully speak for CAT5 I do have to say i definitely hear the influences of their previous work in this. There was even a few tracks that screamed NIL or Stacked Rubbish... and even a few that screamed out DIM. Personally after DIM their music went south for me and I jumped on the gazehate wagon, however I'm going to hope off the wagon for this album because i feel that the production was on point and while some (about 2) songs didn't cut it for me, the overall album had a great flow. I think to be able to combine so many scattered sounds in to a way that flows nicely and sets a specific atmosphere is a great accomplishment, and an impressive one at that. 

I think this album deserves at least an 8, but based on personal preference I'm going with a 9.

While the cover of their 1st album was just bad, this is so trashy that I actually kinda love it. XD

Here's a pic of a bunch of ex-key party bandmen.