Battle of the Bands - We have a winner!

[[Cameron]]

The Rules
1. Don't steal other bands' work.
2. Don't brag, namecall or do anything childish.
3. OGG and MP3 only. No WAV or FLAC.
4. If you post something from your band, you must critique the other bands. As they will you. These critiques must obide by rule 2.
5. 3 song maximum submission.

This activity will end on July 31. You wont get any special award or run the next one. You will be getting your music out there and if you win you can act smug towards the other contenders.
There are no rules as to content, so feel free to make a song about anything you want, as long as it isnt overly offensive or nazi propaganda. The most important thing... Have fun

[LGM]

Not just Nazism.. Anything racial or hateful really should be posted here.

Oh and Cam, hate to tell you, but I think your sig breaks the limit.

[Gilbert]

Oh and Cam, hate to tell you, but I think your sig breaks the limit.

Not really:

NOTE: If you include an image in your signature, it MUST NOT be more than 600 pixels wide or 50 pixels high. Failure to respect this may result in your signature being removed.

[LGM]

He changed it already, gilbert.

And anyway, I submit my one man band attempt.

Jackie Get Out

[Rincewind]

Swell! Well, I'll just repost what I posted in gengen, then.

Schizophrenia
Parasite Dreams
Between me and my eyes

[=The=Brat=]

RinceWInd,
I really like
Schizophrenia

[Helm]

Here's my entry.

Recorded especially for this thread. It's named 'Nazi Propaganda' and the lyrics go 'Nazi propaganda. Nazi propaganda."

I hope gosh, this doesn't go against the rules!

[Rincewind]

Glad to hear you like it, Brat. It's one of our favorites among our own songs as well.

Hehe, Helm - Great entry... How can you go wrong with a bit of death/grind?
If there had been alternating high-pitched screaming/deep bass-growls, it would have made a great Nasum-song, methinks. (Too bad about Miezkos death, though. They were one of the better grindcore outfits out there, in my opinion.)

[Squinky]

I've got three songs all converted over, just having probs getting it to upload on slyph's webspace....

LGM, as far as crits on your work. I'd say your voice is good, but I dont like the presentation. I felt the guitar work was a little sloppy and mixed with all that reverb it made it sound worse in my opinion. But still, I was suprised by the vocals...

Don't worry, I'll get my stuff uploaded soon so you all can dig into me too...

[LGM]

Yea Squink.. I can't actually play guitar.

[nihilyst]

Hi!

Here are three songs by Hassu Irc -- not really a band, not really music. All this songs are played without preparation and with no musical skills. I do know some people who still like it, though.

Ein nettes Weihnachtslied (sehr besinnlich)
Die schwarze Fee
Pseudonym

All three are in German. It can be, that the downloading speed is very slow ... it differs from time to time.

cheers
nihilyst

[Helm]

LGM: The guitar reverb effect is making your guitar sound as if it was playing in a deep cauldron, half-filled with crap. No no no. The vocal isn't bad, somewhat out of tune in places. Get a backing band, or invent one or something because the guitar-vocal thing won't work out. I found your entry suprizingly non-racist and bigoted. You can do better than that.

Rincewind:

schizo: the intro tapping isn't as good as it should be. In fact, given the type of music you're playing, use more accidentals. You're not a power metal band, you don't need straight minor scale. Warp it around a bit, add some minor seconds etc The vocals are mixed too high. I get that this is an actual band recording so I know how difficult these can be to get right. The rythmics of this song are charming, and some of the guitar playing, as machinehead-chugga-chugga-pinch-harmonic! as it might be, still is cool.  Oh no, this song just turned into a power metal song. You might think nu-metal-ish death metal, then power metal is a good idea. I don't really agree. I guess each to his own. It's not that I don't like power metal, in fact I love some of it. The two genres just do not go well together unless you're Hammers of Misfortune or something. The vocals are too much to the front again, and very dry. A little reverb to create a 'space'. The clear vocal is note-wise pretty good, but in my opinion doesn't add anything to the song. Not enough conviction, I guess? I'm sick and tired of the 'brutal verse, clean chorus' thing by now. The tapping thing, when it comes back, suits the song, but the bit where the same note is played twice sounds as if the player just skips a note. Not good. Play picked sixteenths throughout is my ssugestion. Forget the tapping there, even if it's a crowdpleaser effect.

Parasite: Okay, I'm not trying to sound condescending or mean at all, but this is your first band here, right? I'm saying this because you're trying to do many different types of music within the context of one band. This isn't bad always but in this case it does sound a bit strained. Like the one guitarist thinks iron maiden is the shit and the other is into killswitch engage. Really, it's not pleasing to me to put the two together, but again, tastes differ. The playing is competent enough. If you were signed and this were recorded with better guitar sound it would be cool. Again, clean double vocal: I don't know, not for me. Pinch harmonic! Fun. That 'together with you' thing really sounds cheesy to me. I generally like the chromatic bridge in this song. Also: overlong. But I guess that's me again? I don't like too much chorus-verse-chorus in my music. At least the song ends with the part I like, and then you harmonize it, neat. I wish the guitar sound wasn't so muddy so the harmonics sounded out more.

Between:

chuggachugga-pinch! Modern thrash metal. The drums need to be more up on this one to accentuate the polka beat otherwise it's all lost. I like the shredded vocal more than the deep one, although I guess this grates too after some time. Nice legato runs. Gragh! double clean vocals! I really don't like. The riff after it's lifted from 'Painkiller' by Judas Priest almost Unintentional? The drummer needs to work on his rolls a little bit. Generally the drumming lets this song down most of all. Thrash needs a totally tight 'tu-pa-tu-pa" thing going on for it to work. Otherwise it's just muddy. This is more muddy than tight, which is a shame. Oh oh, bass breakdown in a thrash song. Now SOAD tricks. I... I just dissagree. At least the tricks are harmonized and I'm sucker for inventive guitar playing so I guess ok.

Overal, I dig how white power-ish your songs are. Aryan Hatred! Good job on that end.

Also, thanks for liking my song. I really don't like Nasum or any other clear-cut grind bands. I like Autopsy, Demilich, Brutal Truth and Gorguts though, so that's where I'm coming from.

Nihylist:

german song 1: Wonderful. I like the drunken friend you have doing the second vocals with ( undoubtedly, the mastermind of the sponta-band) you. I like to think the song is about a german farmer's daughter and her fervent affair with a cow. Something in the farmer daughter breaks at the end of the song.

german song about pigs: What's with the classical guitar cadence! I hope you rape it later.

...

Turns out you don't.

german song number three: the fact that you talk before songs start makes me giggle. I guess you're presenting the song and talk a little on what it's about for people with short attention spans? Kinda like having a song called "Sixth Sense" and prefacing it by saying: "hi, we're this band, and this song is about the movie, sixth sense. Turns out he's a ghost!" I like the jazz touch here even if you can't play jazz. I guess that's even better? I was expecting something abrupt to happen, I'm not happy that it didn't. The first song spoiled me.

Also, given that you're a german band, I take it all the songs are about hating jews and/or liking soap, which pleases me very much. White pride!

[Haddas]

I don't know what you're talking about. LGMs song is awesome 90% of the time

[Squinky]

Heres my stuff.

Vocalist/guitar/guy to blame for writing lame songs: Me
Bass: Some pot-head named Josh
Drummer: A hillbilly I somehow befriended name Taggert
Backup singer that just screweded us up and had to have his tracks removed: Monty

I put them here, I have no idea how long it will be till the bandwidth is all used up....

http://patrick83617.tripod.com/

[Rincewind]

Helm, I appreciate the honest critique, so I'll try to do a short comment meself.

First of all, none of the songs on our demo are mixed in the least yet, so, yeah, you're completely right about that one. Nothing is the way it's supposed to be, level-wise. We will mix the demo and hopefully get a proper sound out of both guitars, drums, bass and vocals sometime in august.

Heh, and about the style-mixing-thingie...
...Well, that's kinda our point, to mix as much as we can when it comes to influences and styles, and get a diverse sound, and just do whatever we feel like. We realize that it will upset a lot of people, and that not everybody aprreciates the sound, but we do what we want to do, and we're happy with that.
But I can fully understand if it comes off as sounding too strained, though. That's the backside of mixing styles, I guess...

So, I therefore guess you might not appreciate our full demo which features bothÃ, death-powerpop, Sepultura-gothic-funk, pseudo-tr00-black metal and something as rare as a more plain death metal-song and even a power metal-ish one?

Oh well, thanks for the critisism, anyways, even though it might not affect the way we do music that much in future.



(- And no, I'm not really into grind that much myself, but Nasum is one of the few bands in the genre I really, really like. Napalm Death have good lyrics, and the fun value when listening to "Scum" is great, but that's about it.
And I almost suspected that if was more influenced by death metal, in a way... :)Ã, ) Ã, 

[Helm]

well I mostly dabble in style-bending myself, but it's for different reasons: www.locustleaves.com/hellokitty.ogg for example. Your songs are not  'pushing it' as far as i can tell. They're mixing modern genres in an almost post-modern way were 'everything we like can be together' but I personally dissagree. Each genre and style of music operates under different assumptions and to switch from one to another realistically and without it being cringeworthy is very difficult. If you want to sound sincere too, even moreso. I don't claim I can do that easily, but as I've been writing extended suite pieces with no 'chorus' or verses, that genrehop so much I've had many thoughts on the subject. The way you change from style to style is in the 'density' of elements you introduce. A generic metal riff with death vocals, or with power metal vocals over it can change the hue of the music, and that's what you do, you play your riffs, and introduce elements from genres, at different dencities, with the brutal vocals, the harmony leads, the clean vocals. Beneath that is a metal band playing things they like, however.  But for me, to go from death metal to power metal, everything, from the ground up, has to shift from the prime maligant beauty of death metal to the hopeful anticipation of power metal. It's very difficult, and between them there might need to be bridges that constitute a lot more than just  a new riff or something. You might even have to play stuff you don't like, to twist the music in ways that isn't comfortable etc

sorry to ramble

[LGM]

My entry wasn't a real entry, so I refuse to crit others' work because I have nothing else to say than what has already been said.. But I guess I can comment:

Rincewind: I don't like death metal, so I can't really comment. from what I heard, you at least know what you are doing.

Helm: If you were saying "Nazi Propoganda" I couldn't hear it.

nihilyst: That made me laugh. Surprisingly I understood quite a bit of it.

Squinky: Pretty neat

Yep, I'm lame.

[Helm]

Yup.

[Squinky]

Squinky: Pretty neat

Yay!

[earlwood]

Kind of a Robert-Fripp-meets-Dickey-Betts-to-kick-Lindsey-Buckingham's-ass-after-school sound, plus 60 cycle hum as an added bonus!

Chalis of Pelm-Merr


Music made as a backdrop to a song we wrote with a voice-over by an "Alien Abduction victim" type rantings. The vocal is not on this track. The guitars are recorded in 4 parts and were tuned slightly apart to give it that "drunken hillbilly" sound (Ala "Deliverance".)

Eine Kliene Corndog Musik


Inspired by 60's Psychedelic bands free-style improvs. Nails it pretty close, too. LSD will enhance the experience.

Syko-del-ork