but I won’t be at the parade

Album Rating: 3.5 | Sound Off

i think the ambient and prog were integrated much more smoothly on Luminescent Bridge, tho maybe that's bias since it had only one dm song.

Album Rating: 5.0

Luminescent felt very Part 1 and Part 2 to me. I'll have to think about the ambient/prog separation, though. I'm not sure I get that. I mean, take a classic like Yes, Close to the Edge: right in the middle of the 18 min title track, they drop a quiet ambient section. They do similar on Gates of Delirium, where they do an ambient section before the closing "Soon" coda. I guess I'm saying ambient and prog have always had a close relation, compositionally.

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

“Juxtaposition is so clearly a BI compositional choice“



Ok… but “juxtaposition” is a tricky thing. There are ways of doing it well, but sometimes it comes off hackneyed or disingenuous. I think the distinction between when it’s done well and when it’s not is self-awareness.

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

tbh if ur going to ruin dm with prog it may as well be like this i ended up 3ing bc i did find the pure synth sections more enjoyable than not

Album Rating: 3.5 | Sound Off

the metal sections needed more fleshed out yeah. I get wanted to go prob asap but the album cutting to ambient two minutes in was a bit unnecessary when those riffs could've just continued a bit longer. Same thing on The Message 1, coulda just done another cycle of those Morbid Angel riffs and added two minutes to the start, and it would've been better. I think the structural problems that I have with the album are largely that it wants to be prog but paradoxically not let its metal sections actually breathe like it feels they should.

Album Rating: 4.0

fucking LOL'd at the raw production comment. what in the fuck. this is about as polished as it gets.

Album Rating: 3.0

It depends on what you're comparing it to I guess.

Album Rating: 5.0

So listening to Enslaved at Hyperion's suggestion and I certainly see the point about how they smoothly transition between styles in-song. That is definitely their intent when you listen to their stuff. They structure their songs to move in and out of different styles even if it's predominantly moving from black metal into a melodic break into a clean vocal passage. It's clear, then, that BI just made a conscious decision to create more abrupt or jarring transitions and that is being misconstrued as poor songwriting. With how talented they are, I imagine that they could have developed smoother transitions, but I think they chose to create a little sturm und drang by employing this sort of piecemeal approach. I really wish we could get a song-by-song breakdown from the band.

Album Rating: 5.0

"“juxtaposition” is a tricky thing. There are ways of doing it well, but sometimes it comes off hackneyed or disingenuous. I think the distinction between when it’s done well and when it’s not is self-awareness."



That's a fair point, but self-awareness is just as easily something intuitive. What BI is doing works for me, and clearly a larger audience than maybe what people expected. That's evidence it IS working, whether another group disagrees or not. Aesthetics is tricky that way.

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

blood incantation is the sleep token of death metal confirmed

Album Rating: 5.0

lol sleep token sucks tho

Album Rating: 4.5

There comes Smok with the outlandishness, like clockwork. Anyways, this production certainly isn’t as raw as Starspawn or something like that, but it still feels much closer to updated old school production than the overly sterilized dm prod like Entheos or the average core record.

Album Rating: 3.5 | Sound Off

why does the clunkiness have to be intentional just because they're talented, could they not be talented and also have written some clunky music

Album Rating: 4.5

Yeah, I agree that the transitions are clunky at times. Switching directly from more straight up dm sections straight to atmospheric prog parts with clean singing kind of gives the effect of the songs being bolted together without enough care being given to the transitions. It’s a fair critique regardless of their talent. Tomb Mold actually pull off the prog meets cavernous vibe with more cohesion if you ask me.

the “but a lot of people like it” is the weakest argument you can make in favor of any art. there is so much popular music that tons of people listen to that is objectively dogshit, so I don’t see why “being popular” has any bearing whatsoever on the quality.

if anything it speaks to whatever is being presented as being unchallenging and palatable to the lowest common denominator which more often than not isn’t a good thing.

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

outlandishness? trickert's the one who convinced me

Album Rating: 3.0 | Sound Off

wow hype are you saying everyone who has this, ulcerate, and/or defeated sanity as aoty are all sheep ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)?

Album Rating: 5.0

"the “but a lot of people like it” is the weakest argument you can make in favor of any art. there is so much popular music that tons of people listen to that is objectively dogshit,"

Yeah, BI is going to crack the Billboard Top 20. Watch out, total pop sell out.

More pointedly: a band finding a larger audience is always worth watching. That doesn't mean it's the only thing worth watching--popularity alone doesn't equal quality. And I never said it did. So I'll also stand by what I also said: I think the juxtapositions are more carefully chosen than many here want to admit. I think the riffs are great. The derivations are clear but do something new and smart. And I have listened extensively to what they are deriving, at times, from. They also do their own thing.

Album Rating: 3.5 | Sound Off

the riffs are the weakest part and a downgrade from everything else they've done 🙁