I Don’t Think We’re There Anymore
On a stormy sea of moving emotion, tossed about, I’m like a ship on the ocean. I set a course for winds of fortune, but I hear the voices say…
Black Tusk – T.C.B.T. (Season of Mist)
Uada – Cult of a Dying Sun (Eisenwald)
Cast the Stone – Empyrean Atrophy (Agonia)
Bonus Track:
The Nietzsche – “Shake Your Spear”
Kansas
Existem
Black Tusk – T.C.B.T.
UADA – Cult of a Dying Sun
Cast The Stone – Empyrean Atrophy
BANDS ACROSS AMERICA:
Existem
Hmm, Black Metal bands with modern production? Man, that new album from Dimmu Borgir sure has some slick production. And most big name classic black metal bands such as Immortal now use modern production on their new releases. I suspect that your idea abount black metal bands having production that sounds like it was recorded on a shoestring budget in someone’s garage stems from 1994. It was certainly true that bands in Norway in 1994 didn’t have a lot of money and recorded their albums for very little money with crappy analog technology. And it is certainly true that there are bands still today that try to replicate that crappy sound from 1994, but I think those that have that sound today are trying to be some combination of throwback, nostalgic, artistic, cheap, or hipster. Bands like Immortal didn’t record that way in 1994 because that was the exact sound they wanted, it was the sound they could afford. Now that both the band and the technology have reached the year 2018, an Immortal album actually sounds pretty great.
Brian: So this is where I would argue with my co-host a bit – I know there is a ton of well produced BM that we would enjoy. We have few problems though. 1) Much of the stuff we come across on bandcamp searches or in our promo is not that well-produced stuff. It’s intentionally made “raw” or is some one-man atmospheric depressive pagan whatever BM. That’s not for us. We can seek this stuff out, probably quite easily, but… 2) I think it is safe to say we have an unjust bias against BM. I say it is unjust because there is plenty we do like, especially when there is some “modifier”: to it (melodic, folk, progressive, etc.) but they are few and far between compared to everything else. And that leads to 3) we just like other styles more than BM. I mean, that should be fairly obvious to anybody that listens. And even those BM albums we like, I think I can speak for both of us when I saw we don’t go back to them nearly as much as anything else we like. Even using Uada as an example – it is a very good album, and I love it while listening, but I know even this soon I will go back to, say, Ingested more often.