Trollheart

I'll give the Bekalor one a shot, but I should warn you, melodic death metal has had a bad track record with me so far. We'll see though.

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The Batlord

Nah they're one of the few quality bands, even if they're no In Flames.

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MicShazam

Cool
Can't promise you'll like them, but Batty is spot on in pointing out that they're one of the few real quality bands in the genre.

EDIT: Although it's worth noting that the album you'll be checking out is their debut and as such a tad more rough edged than their other 3 albums.

Trollheart

Re: Terrible Music Challenge. If I was you I might change it to the Terrible Music Initiative, as then the acronym is TMI... Just an idea, feel free to disregard.

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MicShazam

I could also go with Binging on Unbearable Music (B.U.M.)

I think i'll stick with the current name. I didn't even want to name it something, but after a few posts I realized that I'd like to make it clear when I'm listening to something questionable, and when I'm listening to something I'm 100% serious about. I realize the difference might be hard to spot with my tastes...

Trollheart

The Frail Tide – B'elakor - 2007
Genre: Melodic Death/Doom Metal (yeah)

Do I have to rethink my attitude towards Melodic Death Metal? Up to now, anything I've heard has been, to me, anything but melodic. I'm no fan of DM, though I can listen to it, and it's always slightly amused me that there is a subgenre that calls itself Melodic Death Metal, but I'm hungry now, and it may very well be time to eat my words, because this album is ****ing amazing. From the moment it started I knew I was listening to something different, something special, and yeah, hell, even when the expected growly vocals kicked in, they weren't so bad and I could mostly understand what the guy was singing. The vocals are almost an aside though, as it's really the music we need to concentrate on here.

Can someone tell me why, aside from those vocals, this is seen as any sort of Death Metal? Now, by all means correct me if I have it wrong here, but I always thought DM was fast, loud, blurry shredding and drums that sound like they're trying to outdistance a speeding Japanese train, but this is nothing like that. Hell, there's even the most beautiful piano instrumental in “Paths”. If I had to categorise this music I'd be more leaning towards the progressive metal side of things. I don't just say that because it's one of my favourite metal genres, but the music really does seem to me to be very intricate, varied and quite epic in its construction and flow, and I tend to associate that more with prog metal bands than any other type. Does not the use of keyboard and piano here make this less of a Death Metal record? I kind of always assumed those confined themselves to the traditional guitar/bass/vocals/drums model, but of course I don't know enough about the genre to confirm that.

Mind you, I see Discogs has the album as both Death and Doom Metal: I certainly don't hear any of the latter here (other than the vox). Nevertheless, there isn't anything here I don't love. I've been grooving along with the album (this is my third listen as I write) and there aren't many, if any, Death Metal (Melodic or otherwise) albums I can say that about. The playing is amazing, the melodies catchy and at times gorgeous, and yeah, I can even appreciate the vocals, Cookie Monster though they may be. Overall, ****ing superb. Top marks.

Track Listing

Neither Shape Nor Shadow
The Desolation of Ares
Tre'aste
A Natural Apostasy
Paths
Sanguinary

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MicShazam

Thanks for a thoughtful, well written review

I did think there would be a decent chance that you would like the album, but I didn't expect this positive of a reaction, so that's great!

I'll attempt to give my thoughts on why this should indeed be classified as melodic death metal and what, in my eyes, makes that sub-genre what it is.

From a compositional and 'music theory' sort of standpoint, there's a lot this has in common with regular 'ol death metal.

1) Heavy reliance on down tuned guitars and palm muted "chugging".
2) Death metal style growled vocals.
3) "Dark" lyrical themes about death and other ominous stuff. Although usually with a more sincere angle and less of an intent to be extreme (although a lot of regular and progressive death metal these days has more thoughtful lyrics than in the early years of the genre).
4) Like regular death metal, riffs are usually tied together and repeated in clusters. Could be something along the lines of; play riff A 4 times, then play riff B 4 times, play riff C 2 times, repeat A and B, but do a variation, then transition and play a new section of the song with new riffs and a similar "chunky" structure. The trick is to make it seem fluid and like a logical progression, but it's really quite simple from a song writing standpoint.
5) Double kick drum patterns and generally powerful sounding, propulsive drumming.
6) Lots of changes of rhythmic patterns.

The tendency to have more lead guitar lines is one of the things that separates "melodeath" from just death metal. On top of that, instead of going for this Schöenbergian atonal feel of regular death metal, melodeath tends to rely more on minor chords, similar to how, say, ballads or "sad" movie scores do. This lends the sub-genre a melancholic feel (especially a band like Be'Lakor, who rides this approach for all it's worth), but if you simply shifted the chords and note-scales around a bit, it would sound a lot like normal, scary sounding death metal.

These are the main things that make melodic death metal/melodeath what it is, I'd say. For the record, I'm not sure why this album is labelled as doom. That's a bit weird.

Trollheart

Hmm. I get some of what you're saying - I can definitely see they were going for a kind of one-speck-in-the-vastness-of-the-cosmos kind of thing, very epic and dramatic. The compositional details, sadly, are mostly lost on me. I did play - keyboards - really badly, but I have little clue as to how music is made up or played, and I haven't played (to be extremely generous with the term when applied to my dabblings) for decades now.

But I really enjoyed this and I've gone ahead and got their discography, so I'll be listening to them more. Thanks for the rec.

We'll see what happens when I give Tori a shot. I'll let you know when I have my review written on that. Thanks for the opportunity to contribute; even if I've sworn off journals, it's nice to write and post the odd piece, keep my hand in, as it were.

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MicShazam

I dig all of their albums, especially the 3rd album "Of Breath and Bone". I often blast the two first tracks off that album for a quick melodic death metal fix. I've got a few other CD's more or less tied to this genre, but Be'Lakor sit on 95% of my listening time with melodic death metal.

I'm looking forward to your reaction to that Tori Amos album. I still remember how you were less than impressed with her 2009 album, which you reviewed a few years ago. I'm hoping this one (From The Choirgirl Hotel) turns out to be more your thing, but I'm not betting on it

MicShazam

Terrible Music Challenge: The full discography of Britney Spears: Part 2

I've been going through the rest of Britney's discography, so let's jump right in!



Blackout


Immediately better than the previous four albums!

Blackout jumps from catchy dance pop tune to catchy dance pop tune, with both more memorable hooks and more inventive musical arrangements than most of what I found on those previous albums in Britney's discography.

The general style of the album is that of modern, R&B influenced dance pop. As such, it could fit right in with the current crop of pop-diva albums in 2018.

A song like "Break the Ice" shows the style that makes for the meat and potatoes of the album, while a song like "Heaven On Earth", with it's Madonna's Ray of Light, Ace of Base-ish, disco-tinged backing music show how there's some variety too.

The catchy songs keep coming all the way through the album, so it seems like this is a fairly strong one, actually. However, I'm still not quite sold, but I'll talk about my gripes when I sum everything up after going through the rest of her albums, as those are general gripes I have with Britney as an artist.

As a little note; there's a lot of incredibly video gamey sounding synths on this album.

Another small note is how the very last song on the album ("Everybody") sounds incredibly much like it's a leftover from a previous album, since it's got that unmistakable the-year-2000 feel.



Circus


While the album does have a different sound than Blackout, I think it's fair to consider it as a sort of follow up to that style. An attempt to carry on in that
direction to keep riding of the success that album probably had (not bothering to check out sales and such). Why repeat it if no one wanted it?

"Out From Under", the third track on the album, ensures that I'm almost immediately worried about how strong this album will be, since it's a pretty lame ballad and since the previous album was so kind as to not have any ballads at all. Even the pop divas I like tend to sink their own ship whenever they do ballads. Just keep those things away from me, please.

I'd say the track on Circus are a bit more hit and miss than what Blackout had on offer. "If U Seek Amy", for example, has an overly insistent but allright sequence of verses and choruses, but the underlying music sounds cheap as hell and really thin.

Actually, it strikes me that this album generally doesn't sound great. There's a feeling of low-res samples running through all of it and I'm not sure what the idea was, from the side of the producers. Maybe they were going for grit? What they got was a trebly, thin and unpleasant sounding album. I find it increasingly less appealing the more time I spend with the album.

"Unusual You" is a mostly pretty bland, overly auto-tuned half-ballad. "Blur" is also pretty limp - and repetitive to boot. There's some more unimpressive tracks, but overall the album is not bad. Not on that account at least.

I really do feel like the general sound of the musical arrangements on Circus sabotages it's potential. I'd have a hard time finding a blander sounding mainstream pop album - purely from that perspective of musical arrangements, instrumentation, synth choices, production choices, etc.

Basically, Circus is Birtney trying and failing to out do or replicate Blackout. Hopefully the next album tries something different.

Oh, and by the way, "My Baby" is completely awful. Plus there's a confusingly inecessary remake of the song "Radar", which was on the previous album. Why?!



Femme Fatale


Kind of more of an R&B influence in some of these tracks.
Also a sudden influx of various pop clichés of that time, seemingly aimed at making the album soud current - which it would no doubt have at the time.
More whoah oh oh oh's in the choruses and more pulsating club synths and tense build ups, etc. I can't shake the feeling that the album is sort of faceless, honestly.
These songs generally don't resonate with me at all. The backing tracks feel both gimmicky and under developed, placing all focus on Britney's unimpressive singing voice.

There's also some real stinkers here. Check out "How I Roll" for an example.

Around the time, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and more did stronger albums of this sort. Femme Fatale, in hindsight, comes off as a hurried, trend hopping effort that doesn't have much to recommend it over the records it seems to imitate.



Britney Jean


I don't know what to say. Seems marginally better than the previous album, but it also feels sort of bland. It's a bunch of standard template tunes with no real character. I'm also learning a bit more about what I see as being Britney's limitations, but I'll talk about that soon, when I'm done with her last album.

This one is just sort of there. I guess it's ok, but it's like why would you listen Evile when Slayer and Metallica exist, unless you're just desperate to listen to
all thrash under the sun, no matter how bland.



Glory


This album seems a bit more inspired than the previous two. It's hard to say why. Just an all-round more appealing sound to it, some better songwriting and perhaps Britney's voice even seems a bit more matured here.

Can't say I'm blown away, but it's the second best Britney album after Blackout, as far as my opinion is concerned.



What I Learned:
Allright, so that was the entire Britney Spears discography. What surprised me was how much of this was really just very vanilla and lacking in any sort of personality. It's hard for me to really describe Britney's personality and style as an artist. Middle of the road pop sadly seems to get closest to hitting the mark. She's a chameleon, but in a bad way, where she seems to blandly imitate rather than innovate and/or follow trends with flair and personalized style.

What really defines Britney as an artist is her voice, but it's also exactly what keeps me further at arms length. She's a very limited singer and clearly needs every songwriting and production trick in the book to pass as a vocalist. She does her trademark vocal fry a lot, she's got a sort of squished, sweet sounding, somewhat nasal voice and seems comfortable inside a very limited tonal range only. She's also extremely limited in terms of expressiveness. She's got basically one mode, and that's it. She can't sell any of her sexy and seductive tracks and she doesn't have any grasp on how to sell harder edged tunes either. She just trudges along, doing her "thing" as usual, no matter the lyrical context and musical style of the song. Name any big-name pop diva and I'd probably argue that Britney is a weaker singer.

If you just like her voice for some reason, then it will work for you, but I find her thoroughly unimpressive.

Basically, Blackout is the only album I could see myself going back to again... but even that's a stretch, to be honest. I just don't really see what Britney's "selling point" is, basically.

That was it for the Britney experiment.

This one took a while... I don't think I'll take this approach again in the future. Instead of slavishly writing about each album in a discography one by one, it's way more meaningful for the purposes of this series to do an overall reaction to the output of the artist, with zoom-in's on key albums. I'll remind myself of that for future posts about various supposedly terrible artists.