[wrathzombie]

I preferred In Mourning over Be'lakor. I am just so bitten by the Progressive Death bug nowadays that I prefer it over melodeath.
 
Be'lakor still is one of the strongest releases of the year so far.

 

[DaveBSC]

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On the topic of eclectic death/doom, I thought Swallow the Sun's release this year was ahead of both of those albums.

It's also much better produced than both Belakor and In Mourning. It's louder than necessary and pushed right up the the edge, but it doesn't clip. The engineers at least tried to do their jobs within the expectations of what record cos expect in 2012. The other two are pushed way over the edge and clip like hell.
 

 

[Bcool06]

I'm going to have to check out Swallow the Sun's album. I've heard several times it was good, but never got around to it.

 

[macrocheesium]

Quote:

I'm going to have to check out Swallow the Sun's album. I've heard several times it was good, but never got around to it.

 
Check out their 2003 album as well, The Morning Never Came.
 
Quote:

I preferred In Mourning over Be'lakor. I am just so bitten by the Progressive Death bug nowadays that I prefer it over melodeath.
 
Be'lakor still is one of the strongest releases of the year so far.

 
I'm surprised to hear you say that. To me, Be'Lakor sounds almost exactly like Opeth in the Orchid days.

 

[SoupRKnowva]

I love the new Be'Lakor record, its brought some life into what has seemed to be a rather stagnant Finnish melodic Death metal genre.
 
I havent had the change to hear the In Mourning cd, ill have to give that one a listen.
 
As for the new Swallow the Sun, i got it at the same time as The Morning that Never Came, so its not that Emerald Forests is a bad album, it just cant compete at all with The Morning that Never Came

 

[Trogdor]

I love the new Be'Lakor record, its brought some life into what has seemed to be a rather stagnant Finnish melodic Death metal genre.

I havent had the change to hear the In Mourning cd, ill have to give that one a listen.

As for the new Swallow the Sun, i got it at the same time as The Morning that Never Came, so its not that Emerald Forests is a bad album, it just cant compete at all with The Morning that Never Came

The latest Swallow the Sun is this:

Its not an altogether bad album. But its not a good funeral doom album. But its also not a good melodeath album. So its left meandering without identity in the sea of mediocrity.

The Be'lakor album is absolutely spot on in every way except sound (see DaveBSC).

Epicloud sounds fun!

 

[DaveBSC]

Quote:

I love the new Be'Lakor record, its brought some life into what has seemed to be a rather stagnant Finnish melodic Death metal genre.

 
Be'lakor is Aussies, not Finns.

 

[SoupRKnowva]

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Be'lakor is Aussies, not Finns.

 
lol i am aware of this Dave...but i consider Finnish death metal to be its own genre. It all sound the same enough to lump it together, and Be'Lakor maintains that similar Finnish Melodeath sound, but making it new a fresh enough to warrant listening to it

 

[John In Cali]

Quote:

It's also much better produced than both Belakor and In Mourning. It's louder than necessary and pushed right up the the edge, but it doesn't clip. The engineers at least tried to do their jobs within the expectations of what record cos expect in 2012. The other two are pushed way over the edge and clip like hell.
 

 
Is there any problems with pushing it right up to the edge? I can't think of any. With digital mastering you can put it extremely close to the edge without it clipping.

 

[Bcool06]

The problem with metal in general is they compress the music so much in production for loudness that it takes out some of the dynamics. Which is why listening to this type of music wouldn't be to great through a very analytical/detail oriented headphone because it would show the production woes. 
 
 
Edit: Actually, I've been reading mixed reviews on this. If anyone can clarify this, I'd appreciate it. 

 

[DaveBSC]

Quote:

 
Is there any problems with pushing it right up to the edge? I can't think of any. With digital mastering you can put it extremely close to the edge without it clipping.

In theory no, but I don't think it hurts to give yourself something like a half decibel of headroom below 0dBFS. It's the RMS level where the album should be much lower than it is, say in the -14dB range as opposed to -8 or -9.

 

[macrocheesium]

Quote:

The problem with metal in general is they compress the music so much in production for loudness that it takes out some of the dynamics. Which is why listening to this type of music wouldn't be to great through a very analytical/detail oriented headphone because it would show the production woes. 
 
 
Edit: Actually, I've been reading mixed reviews on this. If anyone can clarify this, I'd appreciate it. 

 
Clarify what exactly? Yes, a revealing headphone would show you exactly how bad the production is and could make a poorly produced album hard to listen to. But in the case of songs like the above mentioned Swallow the Sun track, they sound just fine. Metal isn't the only genre suffering from loud mastering, though. Pop is MUCH worse.

 

[DaveBSC]

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Clarify what exactly? Yes, a revealing headphone would show you exactly how bad the production is and could make a poorly produced album hard to listen to. But in the case of songs like the above mentioned Swallow the Sun track, they sound just fine. Metal isn't the only genre suffering from loud mastering, though. Pop is MUCH worse.

Actually it seems like modern rock is the worst of the worst according to the DR database. Just unbelievably loud. http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?sort=dr&order=asc There are plenty of metal albums that are way up there though. Remind me to not even attempt to listen to that Sunn O))) album.
 

 

[macrocheesium]

Quote:

Actually it seems like modern rock is the worst of the worst according to the DR database. Just unbelievably loud. http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.php?sort=dr&order=asc There are plenty of metal albums that are way up there though. Remind me to not even attempt to listen to that Sunn O))) album.
 

 
That's been my experience, at least. Maybe it's because I don't listen to the more popular metal.

 

[Bcool06]

Quote:

 
Clarify what exactly? Yes, a revealing headphone would show you exactly how bad the production is and could make a poorly produced album hard to listen to. But in the case of songs like the above mentioned Swallow the Sun track, they sound just fine. Metal isn't the only genre suffering from loud mastering, though. Pop is MUCH worse.

 
 
I wanted someone to clarify that it is, in fact, the over-compression for loudness that's causing a lot of metal to sound sloppy. But you pretty much answered that.