Above the Sea and Fog But Still Perpetually Obscured.

Alrighty, I’ve been ingesting a lot of new music recently and can’t be bothered writing full reviews, so short reviews are the go! All my game soundtrack reviews will be on gamepron.com!

Sigh – Scenes From Hell

Stand-out: Musica In Tempora Belli. Lots of orchestra and choir. Explores a lot of ideas and executes them well.
Let down: Prelude To The Oracle. Doesn’t fit with the rest of the album and not as spectacular.
8th album from Japanese black metal band Sigh. Loved the 7th album, Hangman’s Hymn but prefer this one, even though it has less brass in it! Explores more ground that Hangman’s Hymn and instead of being an onslaught of noise, it has some nice slow(er) parts.

Van Canto – Tribe Of Force

Stand-out: Hearted. Features the wonderful Tony Kakko. Epic sounding but I wish the guitar solo was done A capella as well. It does rival some regular power metal.
Let down: To Sing A Metal Song. It’s way too cheesy for me. Cheesy and dull.
3rd album from A capella metal band Van Canto. Always a nice change! Their cover of Metallica’s ‘Master Of Puppets’ is just marvellous!

Isole – Silent Ruins

Stand-out: Hollow Shrine. Closest track to funeral doom metal but faster! The vocals are just amazing!
Let down: Forlorn. Not really a let down, just not my least favourite track on the album.
4th album from Swedish doom metal band Isole. Not strictly one style of doom metal but takes note from most of the variations. I must get their other albums. Finnish doom is still better though!

Hevisaurus – Jurahevin kuninkaat

Stand-out:Louhikäärme ja ritari. This really shows the quality of the musicians!
Let down:Rupu-Rupu Mörkö. It’s very similar to 80s heavy metal, not all that interesting. The vocals are still awesome though!
The debut album from Finnish children’s metal band Hevisaurus makes me jealous that I didn’t grow up with this. I also wish I knew what the lyrics were.

Arthemesia – a.O.a

Stand-out:Valkoinen Susi. Layers and textures galore. Similar in style to many WITTR and Enslaved tracks.
Let down:Liber Omega (& The Macrocosm Manifest III). It just doesn’t fit with the rest of the album. It really sounds like it belongs on a seperate EP.
2nd album for Finnish symphonic black metal band Arthemesia. Very different black metal, similar to Ihsahn’s solo stuff just with more speed and force.

Back on my older blog (salintheus.wordpress.com) I was doing a sort of regular feature being my favourite album of the week.  Sure I didn’t really keep up with it or what have you but I want to give it another go.  I should have the first one up tomorrow so, maybe it’ll be a Sunday thing.  I hope that people will listen to some of the stuff I post and expand their musical horizons.

That’s pretty much all I had to say.  I might post some screencaps taken with my new ATI 5870 I can finally play Crysis at full bore!

So, this evening I was going through various thousands of unread posts in my Google Reader and found a few mentioning that the PSN game, Shatter, had an amazing soundtrack and that it was on sale for a $US1. Intrigued by this, I decided to have a quick listen on the site. To my amazement, its actually quite fantastic. So fantastic, that I paid $US1.20 for the FLAC version after listening to 30 seconds of the track ‘Aurora’.

How would one describe this album? Well, its kinda difficult.  I could say electronica but that’s cutting it short.  It has elements of techno, 80s synth pop and early game music (80s/90s).  More accurately, its like if you combine Giorgio Moroder, Daft Punk, Nine Inch Nails (With Teeth and onwards) and a chiptune artist.  The entire thing is just fun and catchy as hell and seems to me that it would make good driving/coding music. The whole production is quite excellent but of course, it’s almost all electronic instruments with the odd guitar here and there.

As for the game… No idea, haven’t played it mainly because I haven’t really logged onto the PSN for a while because my connection issues.

If you wish to purchase this album for a minimum of $US1 you have until christmas day. I suggest you do because a) its mega cheap and, b) its just excellent.

It can be purchased from Sidhe’s Bandcamp site at http://sidhe.bandcamp.com

Yep. That’s right.  End of the year means top 10s galore and of course, I shall be providing mine, like last year.  Last year was a bit crappy but this year has been a real pleasure with awesome releases throughout the year.
Shall we begin? Excellent!

Top 10 Albums.
Obscura – Cosmogenesis
Immortal – All Shall Fall
Swallow The Sun – New Moon
Wolves In The Throne Room – Black Cascade
Alexander Rybak – Fairytales
Cain’s Offering – Cain’s Offering
Nile – Those Whom the Gods Detest
Clint Mansell – Moon OST
Dark Moor – Autumnal
Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions

No surprises there apart from the two non-metal albums, Alexander Rybak’s Fairytales and Clint Mansell’s amazing Moon soundtrack.
Dark Moor’s Autumnal started the year and Nile’s Those Who The Gods Detest closes it. Cain’s Offering’s eponymous debut album was mine (and I think my fiance’s) most anticipated of the year and it blew our expectations right out of the water.

Top 10 Games.
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin
Braid
Trine
Borderlands
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Dragon Age: Origins
The Chronicles Of Riddick: Assault On Dark Athena
Call Of Juarez: Bound In Blood
Overlord II
Empire: Total War

Once again, pretty obvious but with some things missing and a couple of indie games in there. I’m quite certain Forza Motorsport 3 would be in the list but I don’t yet have it. Actually, I think Assassin’s Creed 2 would be as well.
I must say that Trine is easily one of the best small dev games I have played in a long time. Borderlands somehow keeps eating my time (still haven’t played co-op yet!!). Batman: Arkham Asylum was amazing. Why? Because it was classic, fucking, Batman and not the modern Nolan/Bale bastardisation of it. The rest of the list are just amazing games and I’m sure some people out there disagree with me.

Top 5 Movies.
Moon
Watchmen
The Hangover
A Christmas Carol
I Love You, Man

I could only think of 5 awesome movies this year. Moon is my favourite film of the year. It almost takes out 2001: A Space Odyssey at being my favourite science fiction film of all time. It also establishes Duncan Jones as a great director. For those who do not know, he is the son of David Bowie.

Well, there it is. My favourites of 2009.

Now Rammstein have a new album coming out in a week. I heard the single ‘Pussy’ a few weeks ago and found it to be, while rather catchy, very nearly tasteless.
I know very well that this fits in to Rammstein’s style both lyrically and musically but it just seems like an attempt to shock rather than a real effort. Lyrically, it’s pretty poor and Till’s choice of vocal delivery for the chorus just makes it hilarious.

The accompanying video clip….its practically weak porn. You can be the judge but only the censored version is up on Youtube. You can find the uncensored one but I’m sure people still have working imaginations!

Although, I’ve never really cared for Rammstein’s video clips, I have been a long time lover of their music (about 11 years, since I was 10). This song for me? Puts a dent in a pretty awesome career.
“Don’t judge the album by one song!!@(*^#!@&*^#@!#” is what you may possibly be thinking and guess what? I have heard two other songs from it and I rather enjoy them. They are the title track ‘Liebe ist für alle da’ and ‘Rammlied’. Much better songs but not anywhere near as catchy as ‘Pussy’ which helps explain the choice for it as the single.

But fair enough, I’m sure it will grab many peoples attention and it sure as hell hasn’t deterred me from buying the album when it’s released on October 16th. I may even post somewhat of a review.

Well, another music post! This one is about the Washington-based prog/tech death metal band Sculptured.

How did I find them: Basically, trawling through Agalloch’s wiki (another band I adore) and clicked on Don Anderson’s other band which happens to be Sculptured.
What intrigued me: Well, I was looking at the album descriptions and upon viewing the one for their 2000 album ‘Apollo Ends’ it mentioned that two of the tracks on it use extremely complex classical music techniques. Being a classical music nut, I had to try and download their three albums.
How much have I heard: Only their latest album. Why? Because no-one seems to seed the others although I do have 63% of their first album ‘The Spear Of The Lily Is Aureoled’ but that hasn’t moved in a few days.

First impressions: Mind-fucking-blowing! Its like if you merged Agalloch, Cynic, Wolves In The Throne Room and Spiral Architect. Well, something very similar anyway. The track “The Shape Of Rage” reminded me a lot of Cynic’s first album with Vintersorg. The whole album flows from track to track while not exactly jamming itself into anyone genre. Quite ingenious!

I love discovering new music! It feels so rewarding…well sometimes anyway.

As last time here is their wiki and my favourite track of the (only) album I have of theirs which is ‘Taking My Body Apart’ off their 2008 album “Embodiment”

01-Taking-My-Body-Apart.mp3

Just thought I would make a very quick post before going to bed about a bloody amazing band I just started listening to called Weakling.

I heard about them in a conversation discussing Wolves In The Throne Room (another band you shall learn that I adore!)
Quick history: San Francisco based, one album released in 2000, never toured, disbanded in 2000.

Basically all I can say is that these are quite possibly some of the best long (shortest is 10:28, longest is 20:39) songs I have listened in the the progressive/black metal genre.
Compared to other bands under the same genre umbrella, these guys are somewhat on the black side of things.  A lot of bands in this genre seem to either have acoustic passages or a lot of ambience.

Not Weakling. Consistently distorted guitars and light keyboards. Brilliance!

Enough fapping, its too late and I’m too tired to do a track by track rundown so I’ll give you the epic title track to listen to.  There is a very short wiki of them but it lists all the other bands the members are now affiliated with

Enjoy!

‘Dead as Dreams’

Weakling-02-Dead-As-Dreams.mp3