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Attitude Indicator
Apr 3, 2009

algebra testes posted:

This is so strange, For most of my life I subscribed to the "Dream Theater is a bunch of technical wank" school of thought, but now I find myself thinking that Scenes From a Memory, Awake, A Change of Seasons and Images and Words are good actually?

I never thought I'd turn 180 on a band so much.

That’s generally considered to be DTs good stuff, so maybe not so strange

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hexwren
Feb 27, 2008

I'm giving Peter Sinfield's solo record a listen for the first time and it's really one of the more disappointing efforts I've ever heard from this many ex-Krimsoneers.

There's several good ideas, but Pete himself has almost no voice (even before he's aggressively mixed into the background by Mel Collins and Greg Lake, who produce and make guest appearances that are, oddly enough, mixed way louder than any of the purported frontman's material.)

The whole affair plays like demo tapes instead of a finished record.

...also WG Snuffy Walden's on it for some reason?

I think if they'd put out even five bucks and a sandwich for a better producer, they'd come up with something way more listenable. I suspect it could be saved if someone gave Steve Wilson the masters, but who even knows.

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002
I had a dream last night where I was hanging out with Alex life’s on and Geddy lee and we were getting along really well until I crashed Alex’s wife’s car and it caught on fire, and it made me wonder if we’re going to hear new music from those guys. I imagine the answer is yes, but I wonder when or why or what.

hexwren
Feb 27, 2008

I honestly doubt it. Like, I like My Favorite Headache and would gladly listen to more (I have not heard Victor yet tbh), I have gotten the feeling over the last couple decades that they'd probably rather just take a break.

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002
Victor kinda sucks. But I think they’re too creative to just hang it up. It might take 5 years but I bet they’ll want to play again together some day.

El Gallinero Gros
Mar 17, 2010
Tim Smith of Cardiacs passed away last night

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jul/22/tim-smith-frontman-cult-band-the-cardiacs-dies-aged-59

FrankenVader
Sep 12, 2004
Polymer Records
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RwwU8Nvs1g


This new Fish song/Video ....my god this is good.

Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
Fish is known to be a great lyricist, but this might be his best work. Very touching.

tote up a bags
Jun 8, 2006

die stoats die

Thoughts on the new Haken? I feel like between vector and virus there's one album of solid content

Omnikin
May 29, 2007

Press 'E' for Medic
I’m a big fan and held off listening to the singles/leaks. I enjoy it. I’ve spun the whole thing and then just the Messiah Complex again separately... it feels super polished and has a ton of ‘oh holy gently caress’ moments, but I can’t put it above Restoration EP or The Mountain just yet

Btw all those theme callbacks in the Messiah Complex is v nice

Incoherence
May 22, 2004

POYO AND TEAR

tote up a bags posted:

Thoughts on the new Haken? I feel like between vector and virus there's one album of solid content
I like parts of it, but Messiah Complex felt too callback-heavy for me: I know it's part of the album concept but I don't usually get deep into prog lyrics lore so it just kinda feels like a rehash.

Double Bass
Feb 20, 2011
I mostly lurk on SA nowadays but I just wanted to drop this small preview of an instrumental prog-metal song I've been working on for the past couple years. It's only a 90 second teaser of a 10+ minute song but I'm really itching to get some feedback. I'm in a two man project with my best friend and we play drums and guitar respectively, for this track we hired Derek Sherinian on keyboards and Conner Green from Haken for bass, and the finished version is to be mixed and mastered by the great Jens Bogren. Really hoping you guys enjoy it and don't hesitate to give any feedback/criticism!

Meroda - Nonzero Entity

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002
Not my kind of thing but definitely sounds polished! Very cool.

Double Bass
Feb 20, 2011
Really appreciate it! There's definitely "proggier" parts later in the song but at its heart it's still a metal song through and through.

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002

Double Bass posted:

Really appreciate it! There's definitely "proggier" parts later in the song but at its heart it's still a metal song through and through.

So how much direction did you give to Derek Sherinian? Was it fully written out? Did he collaborate with you on his part? Did you just tell him to do his thing?

Double Bass
Feb 20, 2011

BigFactory posted:

So how much direction did you give to Derek Sherinian? Was it fully written out? Did he collaborate with you on his part? Did you just tell him to do his thing?

We wrote the entire song in Guitar Pro before actually recording so having all the instruments notated and being able to provide sheet music + a midi track made it very easy to get across what we wanted him to play, although at the end of the day it really was just a "do what you think sounds good" thing and he just used our parts as a reference. It really was fascinating how quickly he learned and recorded the parts in literally a single afternoon, really wasn't expecting him to learn all the guitar solos on keyboards either, but hey now we have some crazy unison parts. He definitely strikes me as someone who's VERY busy but it was really enjoyable to work with him. Conner was a great dude too, I felt pretty honored that these esteemed musicians actually want to play anything I wrote haha. I'll definitely be posting the finished version when it's ready, and once again I appreciate the interest even if it's not everyone's cup of tea!

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002
That’s really awesome! Amazing to be able to bring a project to fruition like that.

Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!
I didn't check the description at first, and thought, wow, somebody's doing a really good Sherinyan impression there. Cool track.

JAMOOOL
Oct 18, 2004

:qq: I LOVE TWO AND HALF MEN!! YOU 20 SOMETHINGS ARE JUST TOO CYNICAL TO UNDERSTAND IT!!:qq:

hexwren posted:

I'm giving Peter Sinfield's solo record a listen for the first time and it's really one of the more disappointing efforts I've ever heard from this many ex-Krimsoneers.

There's several good ideas, but Pete himself has almost no voice (even before he's aggressively mixed into the background by Mel Collins and Greg Lake, who produce and make guest appearances that are, oddly enough, mixed way louder than any of the purported frontman's material.)

The whole affair plays like demo tapes instead of a finished record.

...also WG Snuffy Walden's on it for some reason?

I think if they'd put out even five bucks and a sandwich for a better producer, they'd come up with something way more listenable. I suspect it could be saved if someone gave Steve Wilson the masters, but who even knows.

I like the title track and "Under the Sky". though there's a GG&F version of the latter that's way better. what can you say really. Sinfield ain't much of a musician.


still bummed about this. Tim Smith was really a one-of-a-kind musician. gifted in a way that no one outside of maybe Christian Vander is. his music really did mean a lot to me, even if his recent situation made it difficult to listen to sometimes. there was a part of me that still believed he was gonna recover, no matter how impossible that seemed. this one hurts a lot.

Pretty good
Apr 16, 2007



Paladinus posted:

I didn't check the description at first, and thought, wow, somebody's doing a really good Sherinyan impression there. Cool track.
Same. Sounds sick, looking forward to hearing the full thing.

BigFactory
Sep 17, 2002
He has the most recognizable sound in keyboard-dom

Edit: and I’m not a huge dream theater fan, but it’s a pretty great sound.

Nightmare Cinema
Apr 4, 2020

no.
If this track made it onto Falling Into Infinity it would've definitely been bumped up a few notches for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKZkL4dL58Q

Colonel J
Jan 3, 2008
I think DT is good up until Train of Thought. I'm not sure though, because 2005/6 is around the time I started branching out into heavier metal and other styles, so I don't know how much of the fact that they started sucking for me at that moment is due to them actually sucking, or me becoming uninterested.

Nightmare Cinema
Apr 4, 2020

no.
Octavarium's an interesting album (2005). A lot of stuff either melded with modern UK alternative (Muse, Radiohead, U2) and old school 70's prog. Probably the last time they experimented to such a degree while staying memorable.

Something happened with following two albums where Mike Portnoy pushed for a more radio active rock sound and, uh... it didn't work.

Then of course Portnoy left, but except for the "return to form" that is A Dramatic Turn Of Events and maybe half of their self-titled, they've hit creative bankruptcy.










The Astonishing is an abomination Jesus loving Christ.

tote up a bags
Jun 8, 2006

die stoats die

MasqueradeOverture posted:

Octavarium's an interesting album (2005). A lot of stuff either melded with modern UK alternative (Muse, Radiohead, U2) and old school 70's prog. Probably the last time they experimented to such a degree while staying memorable.

Something happened with following two albums where Mike Portnoy pushed for a more radio active rock sound and, uh... it didn't work.

Then of course Portnoy left, but except for the "return to form" that is A Dramatic Turn Of Events and maybe half of their self-titled, they've hit creative bankruptcy.










The Astonishing is an abomination Jesus loving Christ.

I thought Distance Over Time was alright although I cannot remember a single moment of any track from it so maybe it's not, heh.

The Astonishing is genuinely horrendous and even the album title makes me feel a deep fatigue

Henchman of Santa
Aug 21, 2010
The Astonishing is one of the funniest pieces of music ever

Kazinsal
Dec 13, 2011



Raise the Knife is a genuinely good track and as much as I actually kinda like Falling into Infinity, I think Raise the Knife would have been a much better opener than New Millennium is.

Train of Thought is basically Mike Portnoy's teenage angst album and is not good except for Stream of Consciousness and the track that James LaBrie wrote about his daughter nearly dying. Octavarium is good and so is Distance over Time, as well as some of Systematic Chaos and bits of Black Clouds and Silver Linings. The Astonishing is John Petrucci having a quantum leap into the born-again body of Dave Mustaine and coming back with some wacky ideas about Jesus and trying to make a sci-fi prog epic about it.

Dream Theater was my second major foray into prog when I was in high school and for better or worse a lot of my musical tastes branched out from there.

tote up a bags posted:

Thoughts on the new Haken? I feel like between vector and virus there's one album of solid content

IMO it's "more Haken" and that's about all there is for me. I prefer Vector as a whole cover-to-cover album but there's some really good bits in there. The callback to Cockroach King was funny, but in a good way.


e: completely unrelated I realized today that Neil Peart has been gone for less than a year and that's still kinda weird to me and hard to get through in a way

Skjorte
Jul 5, 2010
Train of Thought saw DT go way overboard into being a "metal" band, but they had enough new riffs and ideas at the time that it's their last worthwhile album, IMO. I was surprised when they completely dialed the heaviness back on Octavarium, but I really disliked their overt tributes to Muse, U2, and whatever nu-metal inspired These Walls. I never want to listen to that album in its entirety, though the title track is a lot of fun. Although knowing what they would become since then, I kinda resent Octavarium for giving Jordan Rudess the impression that it's OK for him to write insanely overlong atmospheric intros. I was looking forward to them going as ridiculous and cheesy as possible on The Astonishing, but I seem to remember it having half a dozen similarly sleep-inducing keyboard intros that made it even more of a slog to get through.

When Spotify's Release Radar put on Haken's opening track off of Virus a month or two ago, I thought I was listening to Fear Factory or something at first. I'm not crazy about the direction they've taken, but they're definitely good at it, and I already like the new one more than Vector, which I thought was by far their weakest outing.

Skjorte fucked around with this message at 11:47 on Jul 31, 2020

Kazinsal
Dec 13, 2011



Yeah, These Walls is clearly them looking at other bands and JP going "well, I can go one further" and tuning down to drop-omega and hoping like hell that the Mark V will take a guitar tuned that low. It's a fun song but the obsession around that time that he had with going a full step lower every album was so far beyond having jumped the shark at that point that it was a few seasons of Happy Days later.

Even some of the newest stuff would honestly be better served if it wasn't played on seven strings. The bonus track on Distance over Time owns even with the drop-brown-note tuning but IMO it would be better off in standard with just adding the lower fifth where needed for extra harmonics and chugging. The six-string version of the intro to The Mirror played before Take the Time on the Images and Words tour is a good example of that being used.

e: Threw on A Change of Seasons and man this EP is good, Derek Sherinian is an *awesome* keyboardist

Kazinsal fucked around with this message at 12:23 on Jul 31, 2020

tote up a bags
Jun 8, 2006

die stoats die

Dream Theater's biggest mistake was letting Petrucci (and Portnoy for a while) anywhere near the production and mastering desks.

edit: God I just remembered when the self-titled was coming out and Petrucci did some interview where he's like oh my guitar tone is like chocolate cake, so thick and layered and then it turned out tinny and awful

Nightmare Cinema
Apr 4, 2020

no.
Eh. I think the guitar tone on their ST comes across better on the "audiophile" master of that album (drums do too).

Only way to get that though is to either re-buy it for $20 at HD Tracks / Qobuz / Tidal or something or like... pirate.

EDIT: Lyrics were unfinished, but the Moore-era arrangement of A Change Of Seasons is *chef's kiss*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWqtihQvDrI

Nightmare Cinema fucked around with this message at 23:02 on Aug 1, 2020

whose tuggin
Nov 6, 2009

by Hand Knit
A golden oldie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kesio4k-dMU

In the '80's, 2 mormons created the hardest known route up El Capitan and named it after this song. Noone was able to climb the route again until a few years ago, and by none other than the Pirate of El Capitan. There's a pretty good documentary about it https://www.amazon.com/Assault-El-Capitan-Ammon-McNeely/dp/B00STUXTGA

I'm actually not sure if its a fact that they named the route after this song but where else could the name have come from?

tote up a bags
Jun 8, 2006

die stoats die

Pain Of Salvation dropped another single - PANTHER, and it's got these cool electronic tinges to it but the vocal lines are really weird, kind of a weird spoken poem rap

Paladinus
Jan 11, 2014

heyHEYYYY!!!

tote up a bags posted:

Pain Of Salvation dropped another single - PANTHER, and it's got these cool electronic tinges to it but the vocal lines are really weird, kind of a weird spoken poem rap

From Spitfall it was pretty clear Gildenlöw fancies himself a bit of a rapper.

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Paladinus posted:

From Spitfall it was pretty clear Gildenlöw fancies himself a bit of a rapper.
The embarrassing Geddy Lee-quality raps go back at least as far as "Ending Theme" on Remedy Lane, but this song has a real aesthetic of Lin-Manuel Miranda rapping in iambic pentameter in front of a bunch of dancing cartoon devils

abske_fides
Apr 20, 2010
Wow the singles from the new Pain of Salvation is probably the worst thing I've heard from them. That said, they've always bit hit or miss. Be was such a bloated pretentious album with few redeeming qualities for example.

I've been listening to a lot of Crimson-related material recently. Trey Gunn is a really underappreciated musician. A lot of his albums are really great. Besides that I'm really digging the Dizrhythmia self-titled and the Europa String Choir album is also absolutely fantastic. Levin Torn White also shows that Alan White can actually play drums in a non-boring way!

XBenedict
May 23, 2006

YOUR LIPS SAY 0, BUT YOUR EYES SAY 1.

From a couple of months ago, but I didn't see it mentioned here. Ayreon's forthcoming album looks pretty good, and it comes with a graphic novel of the story.

I will listen to it for the Tom Baker narration if nothing else. :colbert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2PidKn4IbA

Colonel J
Jan 3, 2008

abske_fides posted:

Wow the singles from the new Pain of Salvation is probably the worst thing I've heard from them. That said, they've always bit hit or miss. Be was such a bloated pretentious album with few redeeming qualities for example.

I've been listening to a lot of Crimson-related material recently. Trey Gunn is a really underappreciated musician. A lot of his albums are really great. Besides that I'm really digging the Dizrhythmia self-titled and the Europa String Choir album is also absolutely fantastic. Levin Torn White also shows that Alan White can actually play drums in a non-boring way!

Gunn was part of Gordian Knot too right? I loved that band. Which of his albums would you recommend?

abske_fides
Apr 20, 2010

Colonel J posted:

Gunn was part of Gordian Knot too right? I loved that band. Which of his albums would you recommend?

Gunn played Warr guitar on the first Gordian Knot album yeah. I also really like his albums The Third Star and The Waters, They Are Rising. I'm slowly exploring some of the other stuff he's been on. I'm a geek for touchstyle stuff as well so...

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Sir Lemming
Jan 27, 2009

It's a piece of JUNK!
I've never heard Jon Anderson's speaking voice until today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWib02yZmKc

It's literally just his singing voice. Wild.

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