Storytime

Nightwish's new album Imaginaerum has hit Finland. I'm listening to it now. Rest assured, a full review will come, but until then...SO GLORIOUS. Just listen.

Song Titles

I'm a rather fastidious record-keeper when it comes to my music collection--I update an annotated chart of my library size by time every few months. I also sometimes look for odder attributes of my music. Today I wrote two simple Python scripts--one to look for the most common song titles in my library, the other to find songs that have the same title, artist name, and album name. To get the music metadata into a form easily readable by Python, I selected my whole library in the main music list of iTunes and copy-pasted it into Excel. (You can do that) I then picked out the columns I needed (title for one; title, artist, and album for the other) and copy-pasted these into tab-separated text files that Python can easily digest. My results are below.

Top 50 Most Common Song Titles

Allegro - 36
Intro - 16
Overture - 15
Andante - 11
Forever - 10
Prelude - 9
Lost - 9
Home - 9
The End - 9
Adagio - 9
Coming Home - 9
Hidden Track - 8
Disappear - 8
Silent Night - 8
Broken - 8
Farewell - 8
Presto - 8
O Holy Night - 8
Beautiful - 7
Revolution - 7
O Come All Ye Faithful - 7
Falling Down - 7
One - 7
Wake Up - 7
Allegro Moderato - 7
Credits - 7
Rain - 7
Tonight - 7
The Promise - 7
Hope - 7
Alive - 7
Believe - 6
Savior - 6
Save Me - 6
Main Menu - 6
Falling - 6
Alone - 6
Grace - 6
Afterlife - 6
Escape - 6
I'm Alive - 6
Free - 6
Scream - 6
Largo - 6
Without You - 6
Revelation - 6
Hero - 6
Sacrifice - 6
Judgment Day - 5
Ganondorf - 5

(I can't say I'm surprised about #1...and I don't even have that much classical music)

Songs with the Same Title, Artist, and Album



Amesoeurs - Amesoeurs - Amesoeurs
Bang Camaro - Bang Camaro - Bang Camaro
Iced Earth - Iced Earth - Iced Earth
Into Eternity - Into Eternity - Into Eternity
Iron Savior - Iron Savior - Iron Savior
Outworld - Outworld - Outworld
Primal Fear - Primal Fear - Primal Fear
Theocracy - Theocracy - Theocracy


For those who are curious, here are the scripts I wrote in about 5 minutes each to do this parsing.

SongNames.py

import sys


topvalues = 50


if len(sys.argv) < 2:
   sys.exit()


filename = sys.argv[1]
counts = dict()


for line in open(filename, 'r'):
   l = line.strip()
   if l in counts:
      counts[l] += 1
   else:
      counts[l] = 1


topcounts = sorted(counts.keys(), key=lambda x: counts[x], reverse=True)


for title in topcounts[:topvalues]:
   print title,'-',counts[title]

SongData.py

import sys


if len(sys.argv) < 2:
   sys.exit()


filename = sys.argv[1]
finds = list()


for line in open(filename, 'r'):
   l = line.strip().split('\t')
   if len(l) == 3 and (l[0] == l[1] == l[2]):
      finds.append("%s - %s - %s" % tuple(l))


print '\n'.join(sorted(finds))

Jesu

Jesu is one of the most interesting metal bands I've heard in a while. I would describe their experimental style as "dream metal"--plodding, detuned guitar melodies, semi-electronic beats, and clean singing that fades into the background. Fascinating, soothing, and strangely beautiful.

Architect of Lies

This is another one of those posts where I talk about an album I love. Just like most of the time.

Danish band Mercenary ranks up there with Wintersun and Scar Symmetry in terms of combining power metal and melodic death metal to create an interesting blend that is both brutal and accessible to lovers to less extreme metal. (Particularly their previous album The Hours That Remain, during which they didn't have a harsh vocalist and went entirely with clean vocals) Architect of Lies is still more on the melodic side of things than their earlier albums, with some thrash and prog metal influences thrown in. The produced, reverb-heavy dual guitars and keyboards give it a very dense, "boomy" feeling, almost like a somewhat more laid-back, melodious Kalmah album. The album feels unified like a concept album, musically rather than lyrically.

The first two tracks, "New Desire" and "Bloodsong", are both pretty standard and unremarkable, like if you took the average of the rest of the album. Harsh verses, cleanly sung choruses and NWOBHM-esque guitar solos abound. "Bloodsong" features somewhat slower, laid-back drumming, a hallmark of this album that is different than lots of melodeath. No blast beats for these Danes. "Embrace the Nothing" is slower still, with fairly quiet, almost plaintive verses. The keyboard takes part of the solo, making this song more of a breather than anything else.

And then it's on to the nearly six minutes of intensity in "This Black and Endless Never". (All the songs on Architect of Lies are excellent-length--the shortest is 4:50) The relentlessly pounding bass drum and guitar riffs are somewhat strangely contrasted by the lack of harsh vocals in this song similar to The Hours That Remain. It's great fun to listen and headbang to, but feels a bit monotonous as if they could have done more with it.

"Isolation (The Loneliness in December)" is virtually a ballad, another breather song before the metallic whirlwind that is "The Endless Fall". The heaviest song on the album, it has harsh vocalist René Pedersen turning his death growl into a ferocious roar, with the clean vocals only coming in during the chorus. The chorus riff, by the way, is excellent, with a synchronized guitar and bass drum attack that sounds quite epic. There's also the nearly two-minute instrumental section (including a solo) that, despite (or because of) its aggression is great fun to listen to

"Black and Hollow" is much slower, keeping an almost lumbering pace but a dark atmosphere throughout. Like "This Black and Endless Never" it has largely clean vocals. "Execution Style" is another fast, aggressive song, one of the thrashiest, but with an extremely expansive-sounding chorus that turns out to be pretty epic. In lieu of a solo it has a furiously chugging pseudo-symphonic section with vocal samples.

The last two tracks tie the album together and give it the musical feel of a concept album. "I Am Lies" has a fairly standard beat with some seriously catchy rhythms and riffs layered on top of it. The chorus has musical callbacks to "This Black and Endless Nothing" and the extended bridge is definitely the climax of the whole album, culminating in the title being shouted to make your skin crawl. After that, it does seem to drag on a bit long, awkwardly sticking around after hitting its awesome peak. Finally "Public Failure Number One" feels like an epilogue, starting aggressively but tapering off into a keyboard-laden, almost ambient and dreamy melody that carries you out of the album. After all its fury, the album goes out more with a whimper than a bang--strange but beautiful.

Overall, a solid piece of metal from a band at its peak. (Read: half the band left after it) They manage to make music that sounds huge and furious, but at the same time melodic and inviting (at least to fans of the genre). Some of the slower songs turned out a bit ridiculous and borderline-emo at times, but metal gems like "The Endless Fall" and "I Am Lies" make up for these moments of weakness. Recommended for fans of melodic death metal, or power metal fans looking for something heavier. (In this case, The Hours That Remain might help you get acclimated to Mercenary)

Porcupine Tree: A Primer

Tonight I'm going to do a post in the vein of some I've seen on a metal review website whose names escapes me now, where I do a longitudinal study of all the albums in a band's career to help people get a feel for their style and find a good album to check out. I can think of no better band to do than Porcupine Tree, as it's a band I really think more people should know and love. I can understand if DragonForce's absurdly fast video game metal or Dream Theater's 10+-minute prog excesses aren't your thing, but if you don't like at least some Porcupine Tree...well, let's hope you've just never heard of Steven Wilson. As a band they've displayed more variance in their style than possibly any other I know of, completely changing genres at least twice in 20 years. Through it all they've always been complex, enjoyable, and deeply satisfying to listen to. Let's go.

On the Sunday of Life... (1991)

Admittedly, Porcupine Tree's first album is pretty weird. At this point the band was pretty much just Steven Wilson in the persona of a mythical '70s prog rock band and this album is a compilation of the "band"'s early demos. It's highly experimental and isn't always as beautiful as later albums--"Linton Samuel Dawson" appears to have been sung in a room full of helium and tracks like "Space Transmission" and "Message from a Self-Destructing Turnip" feel more like jokes than music. But at the same time there are some enjoyable songs unlike anything on later albums where the band had settled on a genre, like the upbeat "Jupiter Island" or "Third Eye Surfer" which is basically a drum solo. Meanwhile other tracks like "Music for the Head", "Radioactive Toy", or "It Will Rain for a Million Years" hint at PT's upcoming spacey style. This album is interesting, but mostly worth checking out only if you already love Porcupine Tree.

Up the Downstair (1993)

On their second album Porcupine Tree takes a big step from their experimental early work to the spacey, psychedelic rock that characterized their earlier career. It's floaty, expansive, and yet often punctuated by loud sections--great use of dynamic range. This is exemplified by "Aways Never", the epic title track, and "Burning Sky". Meanwhile "Small Fish" and "Synesthesia" are more standard, medium-paced prog rock songs and "Not Beautiful Anymore" continues their habit of working interesting audio samples in with the music. Recommended largely for the amazing title track.

The Sky Moves Sideways (1995)

Six songs, 65 minutes. Both parts of the title suite and "Moonloop" are psychedelic rock masterpieces in excess of 16 minutes; the other three songs, which would be good on other albums, seem like filler by comparison. "Dislocated Day" is the obligatory louder song. I haven't listened to this album as much as I should, but it's good.

Signify (1996)

Signify is pretty much the height of Porcupine Tree's psychedelic period. It has soothing, confusing, meandering, crazy pieces like "Signify" and "Waiting Phase Two", amazing ambient songs "Pagan" and "Light Mass Prayers", and several brilliant sample-containing songs like "Sever", "Idiot Prayer", and "Intermediate Jesus". The finale, "Dark Matter", is one of my favorite epics of theirs, mellow yet intense, dark yet accessible. The deluxe edition of the album has a second CD with more goodness and early versions of some of the songs. The wealth of great material might have to do with how this was the first one recorded with a full band. I cannot get enough of this album, and it's only my third favorite of theirs.Modern music you hear on the radio cannot compare.

Metanoia (1998)

Metanoia isn't technically a studio album, just a compilation of ambient improvisations from the exceedingly fruitful Signify sessions. If you checked out Signify as recommended and liked the more ambient parts, by all means, look into Metanoia.

Stupid Dream (1999)

In Stupid Dream Porcupine Tree begins to transition away from their early psychedelic style to the more acoustic, alternative rock-influenced style of their middle years. They're at their most accessible during this album and the next two, but they by no means "sell out" or water down the complexity of their unique style for the masses. Stupid Dream is enjoyable the first time, but like all good albums it keeps getting better, rewarding each successive listen. I don't really have any favorites on this album, but check out "Don't Hate Me" or "Even Less" for an idea.

Lightbulb Sun (2000)

Ah, Lightbulb Sun. The height of PT's poppy, acoustic period. A beautiful, emotional, intricate album with lyrical themes centering around loss. Covered in quite a bit more detail in one of my early posts. If you don't feel like reading all that, check out the title track, "Four Chords that Made a Million", epic "Russia on Ice", or subdued final song "Feel So Low". But seriously, the whole album is indescribable.

In Absentia (2002)

In Absentia is the beginning of PT's journey to their current, metal-influenced home. Still plenty of spacey, acoustic beauty on this album (see "Blackest Eyes", "Trains", "Heartattack in a Layby", and "Collapse the Light into Earth"), but also some increasingly intense songs like instrumental "Wedding Nails", "The Creator Has a Mastertape", and "Strip the Soul". All around a very solid, well-balanced album and the one I'd recommend right after Lightbulb Sun.

Deadwing (2005)

Another PT album I haven't listened to nearly enough. Some songs like "Deadwing", "Halo", and "Mellotron Scratch" resemble a louder, slightly angrier old Porcupine Tree. Others like "Shallow", "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here", and "Open Car" are something else entirely. Their modern style is definitely shining through here.

Fear of a Blank Planet (2007)

I haven't listened to this one quite enough either. PT keeps its new metallic edge here, but tempers it considerably for quieter tracks like "My Ashes" and "Sentimental". "Fear of a Blank Planet" combines the free-roaming musical energy of Signify with a very modern sound, and "Anesthetize", their longest song since The Sky Moves Sideways, defies description. Overall a fascinating blend of the familiar and the new.

The Incident (2009)

Porcupine Tree's latest release is possibly their most experimental (among their full-length albums) since their first. The entire first disc runs together into one 55-minute song, with four unrelated tracks on the second. I suspect that The Incident might be the start of their move to a new, completely unique genre invented by them. At times it's dark, heavy, and brooding, other times light-hearted and thoughtful. Some songs, particularly resident epic "Time Flies", are just about everything. Highly recommended for one and all.

Dystopia

So apparently Iced Earth's singer has retired again, they've brought on Into Eternity singer Stu Block, and they've released a new album! I'm not going to do a full review, but suffice it to say that it's probably their best in a while. The whole band is playing at their best and Stu is almost, almost good enough for me to not miss Matt Barlow. For now, check out the first song, "Dystopia":

Dichotomy

Try as I may to enjoy the "Christian" music scene, it's never easy due to numerous bands who try to distinguish themselves only by their reverent, Christian content-packed lyrics while staying content to follow in the well-worn musical footsteps of their secular counterparts. I treasure the albums of bands that are pioneers both in the truth of their lyrics and the ingenuity of their music. Where alternative rock has bands in this category like Switchfoot, Jars of Clay, and Needtobreathe, power metal has Theocracy, and metalcore has August Burns Red, death metal has one that darn near tops them all: Becoming the Archetype. Possibly my favorite non-melodic death metal band by any stretch, it's a nice bonus that they write cool concept albums comparing the spread of the gospel to fire melting ice or containing extensive references to one of my favorite authors.

Yep, if you haven't read That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis and recognized the album art, Dichotomy is heavily inspired by his Space Trilogy, as well as the gospel. But on top of that, it's some of the best progressive death metal I've ever heard. (Except Opeth, but it's in quite a different vein) Like the Swedish masters, Opeth successfully mixes brutality with peaceful sections, but their compositions are more average-length and their sonic palette somewhat more varied.

To start off, "Mountain of Souls" begins with a rather ghastly, dramatic riff that morphs into a full-on death metal assault before the first verse. It also features a spacier bridge with clean vocals and a mellow, very Opeth-style piano outro. Excellent starting song, but not even close to the album standout. The title track mixes more furious riffing with some soft backing keyboard which is an interesting and rather puzzling effect. it again has a quiet, piano interlude with clean vocals that builds back up to the song's full force in a rather epic manner. The lyrics are more or less a retelling of the second half of Romans 1--the hopelessness of the human condition without God and our tendency to bring destruction upon ourselves.

"Artificial Immortality" shows how BtA toys with melodic songs that are enjoyable for more than pure brutality, without crossing over into melodic death metal. Fantastic blast beats in the chorus and a fist-pumping pseudo-breakdown are also awesome. Lyrically it recalls the horrific experiments of the NICE to "improve" humanity. "Self-Existent" is pretty much a retelling of the resurrection...with furious blast beats! The sheer power of the screamed lyrics "I watched him die/I watched him die" counterpointed by "I saw him rise/I saw him rise" is pretty epic.

"St. Anne's Lullaby" is a brief acoustic interlude...I hope I'm not making BtA sound too much like Opeth; they use some of the same compositional techniques, but sound very little alike. "Ransom" starts off similarly quietly but is definitely one of the heaviest songs on the album, with a particularly awesome, shredding guitar solo and lyrics using Ransom's final battle in Perelandra as a metaphor for Christ's victory over death. "Evil Unseen" has some excellent double-bass work, but seems a bit less compositionally "tight" as other songs.

"How Great Thou Art" is, of course, a death metal retelling of the classic hymn. I'm just waiting for the Hope worship band to play it during offering one day. Someday... "Deep Heaven" uses dark, dense synthesizers in the intro and verses for a really cool effect as the lyrics compare leaving the earth with leaving behind the weight of sin and death. Once again, cool piano interlude. They don't feel overdone on this album. And finally, "End of the Age" is pure epic all the way through, with awe-filled lyrics about God's glory and the second coming like "He pulls down the sky/To crush His enemies/He descends upon them with fire". The chorus has death grunts mixed with what sounds like a choir for "He is clothed in greatness/His voice resounds throughout the earth". The last two and a half minutes are instrumental and provide  more-than-adequate closure to the album.

Overall, this is a fantastic album both in its death metal prowess and its deep, truth-packed lyrics. (And C.S. Lewis references) Vocalist Jason Wisdom gets major points for his heavy-yet-intelligible vocals that get the band's message across, but they always come off as poetic rather than preachy.

Map of Metal

This is possibly the greatest metal thing I have ever seen. I've drawn a few basic maps of music evolution, but this just takes the cake. Link