Originally Posted by rammetal7 Have you ever tired Prog Metal?

!!!
What Are they About?


Today, at about 3:00, I couldn't get any sleep, I was awoken by the low pressures of an oncoming storm, and I couldn't go back to sleep because the pressure was so low that my nose started bleeding. For the next three hours, I sat upright, in the dark, waiting for the sunrise to come, listening to music. My MP3 player was on shuffle, and a !!! song from the controversial album Louden Up Now came on. I turned shuffle off, and immediately listened to the album in full. It had been years since I last listened to this album, so I gave it a go and suddenly something hit me. Besides making danceable music, what is the purpose or message Nic Offer* is trying to convey? Well, contrary to popular belief, it's not just dancing, getting drunk and being an idiot. In fact, it's completely different....


!!! is going on about freedom of speech. Clearly, with the amount of expletives going on, they're talking about freedom, and how it's gradually fading away as we all become uniform and reserved. Nic Offer wants to stay young, be stupid and say whatever he wants, and he's not going to let any laws or rules get in his way. I like to think of !!! as the intelligent version of BrokeNCYDE.


Another thing I noticed is the fact that no indie kids go to their shows. If you look at their live videos, there are no people with Indie traits such as converse or scarves or anything. They want to make them feel nervous, almost. I mean, I've never seen an Indie kid dance, and Nic Offer pretty much forces people to get up and dance while he has a quasi-dance flipout on stage. !!! is probably the most fun punk-funk band out there, and Indie kids are the exact polar opposite of fun.


Also, this band has a pretty cool fanbase, but the !!! haters are pretty bad. Sure, Nic can't sing even if his life depended on it, but you shouldn't even be paying attention to what the bro is saying. Pay attention to the instrumentation if you don't like their music. The psychedelic elements in the instrumentals are brilliant. If you've payed attention to what's going on in the Louden Up Now epic When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Karazee, you would notice how psychedelic and hauntingly beautiful it is. So if you don't like the band, don't go around saying that they're stupid or their music is talentless or anything, just don't say anything because this band is incredibly talented and intelligent- in disguise.

Originally Posted by Dayvan Cowboy not really.

Losing Your Math

I have been tossing around a concept lately,. and that is Math Loss. Math Loss is when a math rock band decides to stop being a math rock band and starts using less wacky riffs and less wacky time signatures. It's basically the math rock way of losing one's edge. There is a way to lose your math without being boring, but most of the time they become another boring indie rock band. I go absolutely crazy (not in a good way) when a band does it wrong. I don't want to hear another boring indie band. I've had enough of those. I WANT TIME SIGNATURES THAT MAKE MY MUSIC TEACHER WANT TO PUKE. I WANT GUITAR RIFFS THAT MELT MY BRAIN AND BREAK MY EARDRUMS BECAUSE OF THE SHEER LOUD COMPLEXITY! I WANT TO BE CONFUSED! the last time I checked, Modest Mouse or any of the billions of Indie Folk bands never did that to me. I enjoy complexity, folks.

Now, let's talk about some bands that lost their math. 65dos did it the right way on We Were Exploding Anyways. At first, they were just a glitchy math band we all knew and loved, and now, they got out the trance synths and got everybody to dance their arses off. They didn't have any of their edges lost. In fact, they got reinforced edges! A band that lost their math the wrong way is Foals. I really liked Antidotes, and I was so exited for Total Life Forever. I downloaded the album and after I had a listen, an unintelligible line of expletives in some foreign language came out of my mouth. I was hoping for some dancey mathy rawk tunes, but instead I got some overly perfect indie crap. That album had so much potential, but they wanted to be more accessible. I usually don't say this, but they actually SUCK HARD NOW!! The moral of the story: lose your math the right way. keep your edge.

/angry nerd moment.

Originally Posted by Dayvan Cowboy Scenes The other day, I was milling around by the high school down my street with my uber-indie friend, who said that she wanted me to meet some girl from her class. She said that she's pretty cool and hangs around with equally cool people. I agreed, simply out of curiosity, just to see what this girl was like. Well, I met her, and her predominantly male group, and introduced myself to the group of seven people. Well, before then, I always wondered what scene I wanted to become familiar with. I didn't know if I wanted to be an indie kid, because the indie kids around here are pretty damn annoying, and I would be ashamed to associate myself with them, and I could associate myself with the nerds, but my knowledge of science fiction or star wars wasn't to their standards, so I kept myself away from any form of scene or subculture. Well, the people that I met wore predominantly black clothes, and were a little quiet, and had their MP3 players at all times. Once I saw one person's EITS T-shirt, I knew who I was dealing with. I was in a group of post rockers. They had unkempt hair, and a blank, timid look on their faces, and I instantly connected to their bleakness. They welcomed me into their F#A# infinity discussion and their distaste over how Tyondai left Battles, and I decided that I wanted to be one of these people. The next day, after an exchange of phone numbers, I got a call from one of the girls there asking if I wanted to hang out with them and be a part of their group. I instantly came over to their gathering in the local park at sunset and we talked about nature, we talked about Mono and If These Trees Could Talk, we even got into a few moral discussions, which are right up my alley. I think I've finally found a scene I could be a part of.

Originally Posted by Dayvan Cowboy Scenes The other day, I was milling around by the high school down my street with my uber-indie friend, who said that she wanted me to meet some girl from her class. She said that she's pretty cool and hangs around with equally cool people. I agreed, simply out of curiosity, just to see what this girl was like. Well, I met her, and her predominantly male group, and introduced myself to the group of seven people. Well, before then, I always wondered what scene I wanted to become familiar with. I didn't know if I wanted to be an indie kid, because the indie kids around here are pretty damn annoying, and I would be ashamed to associate myself with them, and I could associate myself with the nerds, but my knowledge of science fiction or star wars wasn't to their standards, so I kept myself away from any form of scene or subculture. Well, the people that I met wore predominantly black clothes, and were a little quiet, and had their MP3 players at all times. Once I saw one person's EITS T-shirt, I knew who I was dealing with. I was in a group of post rockers. They had unkempt hair, and a blank, timid look on their faces, and I instantly connected to their bleakness. They welcomed me into their F#A# infinity discussion and their distaste over how Tyondai left Battles, and I decided that I wanted to be one of these people. The next day, after an exchange of phone numbers, I got a call from one of the girls there asking if I wanted to hang out with them and be a part of their group. I instantly came over to their gathering in the local park at sunset and we talked about nature, we talked about Mono and If These Trees Could Talk, we even got into a few moral discussions, which are right up my alley. I think I've finally found a scene I could be a part of.

Originally Posted by rammetal7 wait, so there is groups at your schools?! if so, then are there any metalheads?

Originally Posted by Freebase Dali Ahh childhood. I remember being a part of what you could consider a scene in highschool... we all listened to punk predominantly, some of us were skateboarders, most musicians, and all of us drank and did whatever drug we came across, and were generally anti everyone else. I guess what made us all stick together is we all had the same lifestyle and the music was a byproduct of that. When people did it the other way around, we called them posers. Now days, I couldn't care less about what the scene is. But it's always good to fit in somewhere when you're young. It's a part of building your identity and it's cool that you've found some folks you click with.

My Favourite Opening Tracks

Good opening songs are crucial to a good album. It's what intrigues the listener to continue listening to the album, and when done right, it can push the listener to think the rest of the album is great, even if it isn't. Crafting good opening songs is an art, and here are a few of my favourites:

Tortoise: TNT



This is an amazing album, and this song made me immediately love the it. The drums on this song are so warm, and the guitar line is brilliant. This song is the kind of song that you listen to when you're awake at 4:00AM waiting for the sunrise, I love it so much <3

Tortoise: Djed


(since the full song is about 20 mins long, I posted the first part)
This is an awfully long opening track, but it's undeniably awesome, and it definitely reminds me of NEU!. Tortoise are so good at opening tracks that they get two votes from me. Jazzy post-rock FTW!

Autechre: Foil


Fan videos FTW! Autechre made an awesome and creepy opening track with Foil, one of my favourite songs off of it. I love the evolutionary aspects of their album Amber. Songs always begin simple, and evolve in unexpected ways. IDM to the max, bros.

God Is An Astronaut: The End Of The Beginning


Hooray, more fan videos! This is a personal favourite because it reminds me of some video game I had when I was little, not to mention that the song itself is just plain win, nostalgia or not.

Aphex Twin: Xtal


It took me a year to figure out what the song title meant . great track, though. A great way to open a killer album.


And that's all, folks!

Originally Posted by Dayvan Cowboy Yes, but they suck because the only band that they like is Metallica and if you say anything bad about them, they'll hurt you. badly. I got a huge bruise on my shin for telling them that Metallica isn't the only metal band out there. I'm pretty sure the only reason they know of the aforementioned metal band is because they saw them in guitar hero.