Category: metal

King Diamond, Least Essential?

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

The Onion AV Club features their list of the Least Essential Albums of 2002 (the AV Club isn’t a parody, though I wouldn't blame you for being confused). Most of the artists I haven’t even heard of, but I recognized King Diamond.

Though it's a bit of an acquired taste, I do enjoy some Diamond from time to time. And, as his Abigail album was one of his best, I was rather looking forward to the follow-up. However, The Onion AV Club put it this way:

[…]The album includes a family tree so the easily confused can keep the characters straight, while the lyrics sheet, as always, makes it clear which guitarist is responsible for which solo at all times.

And, they say that like it’s a bad thing ;).

AC/DC – Death Metal

Ashley Bischoff5 Comments

While driving to Bed Bath & Beyond last night, I was listening to Sirius Radio’s Metal channel when I heard a cover of AC/DC’s classic “TNT” by Six Feet Under, a death metal band. From their website:

Launched in 1995, Six Feet Under, was originally conceived as a side project by then Cannibal Corpse lead throat Chris Barnes along with Obituary guitarist Allen West, Death’s Terry Butler and drummer Greg Gall. Chris’ departure from Cannibal Corpse that same year expedited the bands rapid evolution beyond a one-off Death Metal super group into the world's most respected name in extreme music. The combination of speedy riffs, down tuned groove and lyrics inspired by the horrors of the mind and the world at large had established SFU internationally as the reigning, if not, most feared Death Metal act. […]

Imagine, for a moment, what a growling death metal version of “TNT” would sound like, and you’d probably be fairly close. It was at once slightly amusing but surprisingly catchy ;). And, as it turns out, it’s available as an mp3 from their website if you want to hear what it sounds like.

Metal on Sirius Radio

Ashley Bischoff1 Comment

I wrote to some of my metalhead-friends about the metal available on Sirius Radio. In case it’d interest other metalheads, I thought I’d post it here as an open letter as well.

Hey guys,

As you may have read on my blog, I’ve recently upgraded my car audio, including Sirius Radio.

In case you’ve been living under a rock ;), satellite radio is similar in some ways to satellite tv: I have a satellite radio compatible head unit in my car, along with a small antenna on my roof (about the size of a 2-pack of Twinkies). I pay about $12/month and, in return, I get 100 channels including 60 commercial-free music stations.

There’re all kinds of genres: 70s, 80s, jazz, classic rock, and so on. I signed up because they had content that I just couldn’t hear on the radio including electronica/techno and extensive news coverage (NPR, BBC News, and others).

Specifically, I wanted to write to you about the metal on Sirius Radio. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. Their metal station is channel 29, “Hard Attack”, and its description listed bands such as Slipknot and Korn (bleh).

But I soon discovered: it’s the real deal. They may only list some lame nu-metal bands in the description, but that was probably what their marketdroids thought would work best (heh).

I’ve been making notes of just some of the bands that I’ve heard so far. Sure, there’re the “expected” metal bands such as Rammstein and Metallica. But, it gets better :).

Lacuna Coil and Hammerfall? Yeah, got that.
Meshuggah and Opeth? Got that.

Dark Tranquillity? Sure.

In Flames and Nevermore? Oh yeah.

And, last but not least…
King Diamond? Yes!

For the price of about one CD a month, you can get all kinds of metal. If you’ve been thinking about satellite radio, I urge you to give it a try.

But, in due fairness, I’ll include one caveat. Sirius Radio does use psychoacoustic (mp3-like) compression and I have been able to detect artifacts. From time to time, I’ll notice the characteristic spwish-spwish of overcompressed cymbals or the fwuth-fwuth of an overcompressed bass drum.

In fact, I’ll say this right off the bat: Josh, you probably don’t have the stomach for Sirius Radio (at least not in its present state of compression). Then again, maybe I’m wrong (you’d have to listen to it to be sure).

Matt and Mike: if you can stand listening to mp3s on a regular basis (and I think you can), you'll probably get much enjoyment out of Sirius Radio (especially since a moving automobile — road noise and all — is not exactly a critical-listening environment).

If you go to a car audio store to evaluate Sirius Radio, just be sure to flip through various stations — some are compressed more than others.

The bottom line: would I buy Sirius Radio again? Definitely.

Sirius Radio

Ashley Bischoff6 Comments

Over the past two weekends, I’ve had my car audio reworked, including Sirius Radio. In all:

Though I’ve only had it for a day and a half, I’m very pleased with it so far. Of all the features, I’ve been most excited about Sirius Radio. For those not aware, Sirius Radio offers 100 radio channels, delivered by satellite, including 60 commercial-free music channels.

There’re all kinds of genres including classic rock, electronica, jazz, and decade-based channels such as 70s and 80s. In particular interest to me, there’s also a Metal channel. Initially, I didn’t have my hopes up, as their description made it seem a bit lame (Korn? bleh.).

However, in the past day-and-a-half I’ve already heard Hammerfall, Dark Tranquillity, and Meshuggah (!). All right, so Meshuggah is listed in the channel’s description, but Hammerfall and Dark Tranquillity are two bands that I thought I’d never hear other than on CD.

Sirius Radio’s tagline says “You’ll never want to leave your car”, and it’s true. I’m actually contemplating whether there might more longer and more scenic routes I could take to work (HHOS).

Techno Internet Radio

Ashley Bischoff3 Comments

I haven’t brought my CD player in to work yet (when you have to leave for work at 7:30am, mornings always seem to be a rush), so I was jonesing for some music this afternoon.

Figuring that I wouldn’t mind hearing some non-mainstream, a quick Google search turned up Digitally Imported, which has all kinds of techno — trance, hard trance, hard house, eurodance, and so on. I listened to eurodance for a while, and I’m listening to hard house at the moment — but they’re both very good.

If it weren’t for the poor audio quality of streaming MP3s (compared with Redbook CD audio), I would be half-tempted to leave my CD changer at home and just try streaming Internet radio for a while ;).

PS If you have any techno or melodic death metal streaming-radio stations to recommend, please post them in the comments :).