KOREKYOJINN - ISOTOPE
Hash
[4:16]6.4 Mb
Arabesque
[5:31]8.2 Mb
Betwixt
[5:32]8.4 Mb
Quicksilver
[5:33]8.2 Mb
Out of Head
[3:28]5.3 Mb
You Know What You Like
[3:18]4.9 Mb
Doldrum
[5:55]8.7 Mb
Exodus
[5:14]7.6 Mb
4 Holes in the Sky
[3:48]5.6 Mb
Counterpoint
[4:10]6.2 Mb
Poet and Peasant
[6:29]9.5 Mb
Jackson
[6:28]9.1 Mb
Isotope
[6:35]9.5 Mb
Freestone
[5:29]7.9 Mb
Korekyojinn "Isotope" Album Review
Fast and furious
Korekyojinn are an instrumental power trio. Their playing is fast, aggressive, very tight, and highly intricate. The emphasis is on ensemble acrobatics, so there is no jamming and only a little soloing, but all three musicians are impressive players, with all three parts (guitar, bass guitar, drums) taking equal precedence in the sound and structure of each piece.
At first, I didn't know that Isoptope was a live album. The ensemble precision achieved here is more characterisitc of a studio effort, and there is a complete absence of audience noise. Overall, a very impressive and exciting recording by a band with very few peers.
SUBTERRANEAN MASQUERADE - SUSPENDED ANIMATION DREAMS
Suspended Animation Dreams
[2:25]3 Mb
Wolf Among Sheep (OK Maybe the Other Way Around)
[6:25]8.7 Mb
No Place Like Home
[7:59]10.6 Mb
Kind of A Blur
[3:11]4.2 Mb
The Rock'N'Roll Preacher
[9:04]12.4 Mb
Six Strings to Cover Fear
[6:47]9.1 Mb
Awake
[14:20]19.5 Mb
X
[4:27]5.8 Mb
Subterranean Masquerade "Suspended Animation Dreams" Album Review
Refreshing, Unique, but leaves room for improvement.
This is definitely one of the most interesting, refreshing and diverse CD's I have bought in a while, but I have my grievances about it too. You'll hear everything from death metal, jazz, middle-eastern folk, and calm ambience. Instruments include pianos, harmonicas, trumpets, saxophone, clarinet, trombone, violins, and flute. Vocals include death growls, whispers, choirs, female vocals, and well, regular singing.
If I had to pick one band that Subterranean Masquerade reminds me of, it would probably be Maudlin of the Well. They just have that same extremely artistic, unique, creative, quirky personality, and their albums don't have too many death vocals on them and add a lot of other instruments like this, and the lyrics remind me of them. Fans of Porcupine Tree and maybe even Orphaned Land might be interested in this as well.
This band's lyrics are extremely wacky, in fact, a little too silly for me at times. But hey, they're having fun. Here's some excerpts:
"Face the sky, see the big cheese smile?"
"Talk about philosophy and what comes next; the man or the monkey in space"
"Will get a dark purple carpet so I'll never fall; never sink inside this hole..."
"Virtual ritual, desktop icon, link to your inside"
For some reason, for me, the death vocals on this album don't really seem to belong. It seems like the songs could almost be better without them most of the time. (which is also what I say about Maudlin of the Well and Orphaned Land) Don't get me wrong - I probably have about 150 CDs containing death or black metal style vocals, and I'm very used to them. But for this music, they just don't seem to fit. Like they're almost forcing them in so metalheads will be more inclined to buy it. In "Awake" there are death growls and the music behind it is this cutesy little delicate piano melody and fairly slow percussion. In most cases, I love when two "opposites" in music are juxtaposed like that, but that particular part just sounds goofy.
Another thing that bothers me a little is sometimes the songs just change directions very randomly. There's no logical progression or crescendo leading up to a different idea; it's just kind of in your face all of a sudden. There are exceptions, like in "Six strings to cover fear" when the lyrics "Is the carnival on tonight?" are uttered, right after a heavy death-growl section immediately there's a spooky-carnival/playhouse-like violin melody, and that's very wild and cool. But most of the time, I think the song structure could be a lot better. In "Awake," the calmer section in the middle is decent, but they just stretch it out so long without really going anywhere with it. And even after all that, it just basically stops and starts a completely different melody with heavy guitars and death growls. Some bands can pull this off with somehow making the song still seem coherent *cough*Opeth*, but Sub. Masq. seems to have a hard time making it work.
Sometimes as well, the guitar riffs are kind of bland it's like they're relying too much on the other instruments to spice it up. Not to mention, you can barely even hear the guitars compared to everything else.
I might as well say the parts that I really do enjoy though. I'd say my favorite song is probably "No place like Home" which throws the unexpected harmonica at you after 20 seconds or so, while you desperately try to figure out the extremely eccentric lyrics. The middle of the song goes though all kinds of shifts until the last few minutes which are this really nice up-tempo middle eastern folk kinda thing with what seems like some parodic chanting in the background.
The second half of "Rock and Roll Preacher" is really cool; there is actually some good progression building up and the clarinets and everything actually all come together really nicely in a full-band ensemble, but the first half of the song isn't anything spectacular. "Kind of a Blur" is a charming little instrumental with pianos and violins, and a choir at the end. "Six strings to cover fear" is a pretty good song for the most part, the guitar riffs mixed with the violins at the beginning are very nice, and the carnival-violin part I mentioned before is also a nice twist. The first half of "X" is nice and calm with acoustic strumming, laid-back Caribbean-style percussion and female vocals.
Who knows, maybe this album will grow on me. And whoever's reading this, might like it more than me. But personally, I think this band has a lot of room to improve. However, this was still a worthwhile purchase. I think I've been a little too lenient on giving 5 stars out lately.
Video Some great lesser known metal songs part 2
These are some of my favorite songs by lesser known artists/bands in no particular order. While some of them are well known in the underground metal scene, most of these artists don't get the recognition they deserve. The only reason why I did this was to show these great artists to a broader audience. Thanks for your interest! Enjoy! The song list is as followed: -"Skvoz' Tuman Vekov" by Arkona on "Vo Slavu Velikim!" -"Crimson Waters Part 3: The Messenger" by Sequence on "Plague Solstice Part I" -"City of Ib" by Demiurg on "Breath of the Demiurg" -"Million Year Summer" by The Angelic Process on "Weighing Souls With Sand" -"Moot Lie" by Raintime on "Tales From Sadness" -"I Long" by Saturnus on "Veronika Decides to Die" -"End of All Days" by Mob Rules on "Savage Land" -"Last Vestige of Old Joy" by Nest on "10" split with Agalloch" -"No Place Like Home" by Subterranean Masquerade on "Suspended Animation Dreams" -"Immram" by Oakhelm on "Betwixt and Between"
PRELAPSE - PRELAPSE
Menstrual Mystery Meat
[0:57]1.6 Mb
Alarms
[3:27]5.8 Mb
Corkscrew
[0:44]1.3 Mb
Mintcrumb Rosette
[3:30]5.6 Mb
Slingshot
[0:54]1.7 Mb
Blood Sucking Freaks
[1:25]2.3 Mb
Screwball
[0:43]1 Mb
Cold
[2:59]4.3 Mb
Message for Alex part 1
[0:52]1 Mb
Lachrym
[3:29]4.7 Mb
545 Mystery Hole
[2:28]3.7 Mb
Leper Sap
[2:31]4.3 Mb
Spectres of Bird
[0:59]1.5 Mb
Basketcase
[0:39]0.9 Mb
Fat Neck No Neck
[6:18]9.4 Mb
Message for Alex part 2
[0:46]1 Mb
Drag
[3:11]5.7 Mb
Bug Skull
[0:29]0.7 Mb
The Shrike
[1:16]2 Mb
Pools of Urine
[2:10]3.7 Mb
Bloodbath
[0:38]0.9 Mb
Purged Specimen
[8:38]9.8 Mb
Coda
[0:16]0.4 Mb
Prelapse "Prelapse" Album Review
a potentially great band constricting itself
When it comes to John Zorn, I get bored. His work with Naked City was wonderful, but most of his other stuff I find tiresome nowadays. This particular band has great potential, but they chain themselves far too tightly to the Zorn aura--the best stuff on this album were the tracks written by Prelapse themselves, not the 'unrecorded music' of Naked City. I hope this band realize their own artistry and branch off into their own work.
Video John Zorn - Bone Crusher (Music For Children)
a short fun with a tune from MusicForChildren, an unrecorded Naked City song played by Prelapse & Zorn / Tzadik 1998 (stopmotion excerpt is from "Mother Goose: Little Miss Muffet" by Ray Harryhausen, 1946)
EDGARD VARESE - THE COMPLETE WORKS
Tuning Up
[5:06]6.8 Mb
Ameriques
[24:47]34.8 Mb
Poeme Electronique
[8:07]11.4 Mb
Arcana
[18:31]26.8 Mb
Nocturnal
[10:36]13.5 Mb
Un Grand Sommeil Noir
[4:07]5.3 Mb
Un Grand Sommeil Noir
[2:49]3.2 Mb
Offrandes-Chanson de la-Haut
[3:11]3.9 Mb
Offrandes-la Croix Du Sud
[3:42]4.6 Mb
Hyperprism
[4:27]6.2 Mb
Octandre-Assez Lent
[2:33]3.2 Mb
Octandre-Tres Vif ET Nerveux
[1:45]2.4 Mb
Octandre-Grave-Anime ET Jubilatoire
[2:26]3.2 Mb
Integrales
[10:24]13.3 Mb
Ecuatorial
[11:33]15 Mb
Ionisation
[5:51]8.4 Mb
Density 21-5
[4:11]5.3 Mb
Deserts-1st Episode
[3:11]4.2 Mb
Deserts-1st Interpolation of Organised Sound
[2:25]4.2 Mb
Deserts-2nd Episode
[7:33]9.6 Mb
Deserts-2nd Interpolation
[3:13]4.8 Mb
Deserts-3rd Episode
[1:36]2 Mb
Deserts-3rd Interpolation
[3:08]5.2 Mb
Deserts-4th Episode
[3:10]3.8 Mb
Dance for Burgess
[1:47]2.2 Mb
Edgard Varese "The Complete Works" Album Review
Lighten Up Please
I once heard that Frank Zappa was inspired by Varese, so I decided to give him a listen. Now I understand why I never really took to the Mothers of Invention. Varese's composing style seems very heavy handed. Generally the brass and percussive pieces are really (and too often) over-layered and over-the-top, and his use of percussive toys is, all to often, way over done. The electronic experimentations seem disjointed and simple and don't really seem to fit well and the vocals seem a bit silly. Having said these things, three pieces (11-12 minutes of sound out a 140 minute-plus 2 disk box) did work very well for me - Ionisation, Density 12.5 and Dance For Burgess, which were all on disk 2. So now I program these as an enjoyable little 3 piece suite.
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