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Album Rating: 4.5
@MementoMori
Instead of posting exponentially longer and longer posts, let’s instead address one subject at a time. Unless you’re a hard solipsist I assume you’d agree that phenomena is relaying some information about “external reality.” Yes, our experience of this information is subjective, and, yes, it’s almost certainly different from noumena; but surely you’d also admit that phenomena have a different “ontological dimension” than non-phenomena like feelings. So, if I can sense a wall, I can love or hate the wall, but my feelings towards the wall have no external reality to my mind, while the wall itself presumably does, even if I’m only experiencing it subjectively. This distinction is important is because the phenomenon of a wall imposes certain limitations on what else I can experience phenomenally; I can’t walk through it or see past it, and punching it will probably cause pain. This is different than my feelings towards the wall, which can change merely by me changing my mind.
Similarly, the phenomenal aspects of music—acoustic vibrations at various frequencies and amplitudes in time—is different than our feelings towards and understanding of music. Things like melody, harmony, and rhythm are subjective concepts in the same way the rules of a game are subjective concepts; but like those rules they often exist as a way of describing/modeling phenomena. So a “note” may be a subjectively created/understood concept, but it’s also meant to describe those acoustic vibrations at given frequencies.
Personally, I’m not interested in “proving objective reality.” My epistemology is based around modeling phenomena via probability like Bayes’s Theorem. I can be completely agnostic about noumena, about external reality, while simply recognizing that there’s a difference between non-phenomena like thoughts and feelings and persistent phenomenon like the wall, or like music; and THAT is the difference I’m referring to when I speak of subjective VS objective.
If you want to keep discussing this we can, or we can move onto the influence of culture VS biology on musical tastes.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
On ranking Ulcerate, their music is so dense that I keep coming back to each album and finding new things to like, so I find it really hard to rank them even after them being a near permanent fixture of my playlist for the last year. Last time I went through their discography I found myself really loving Vermis for the first time and thinking it was at least on the level of Destroyers, which is the album that I found myself really loving time before last. Right now my ranking is: Fire > Stare > Shrines > Destroyers > Vermis > Fracture, but that could very easily change.
I still think Fire has the best riffs and overall best/most memorable songs. On Stare I'm loving the introduction of more melody/harmonies, which is giving them a new dimension to their tonality. Shrines is like a mix of Fire's aggressive riffage, the post-metal atmosphere of Destroyers/Vermis, with hints towards Stare's melody/harmonies. Destroyers is definitely their most post-metal influence, and can be truly awesome/overwhelming in the right mind-set. I'm not a huge post-metal guy, but I do love Cult of Luna and I think Destroyers is about as good as anything CoL have done. Vermis is probably their darkest, dirtiest, rawest album. It's like if Destroyers went from this cosmic perspective down into bowels of the Earth. On last listen I really appreciated how the production has this claustrophobic feeling. Fracture is somewhat underrated. It's just balls-to-the-wall tech-death, but it lacks the originality of everything from Fire onwards.
Anyway, my $0.02.
| | | Album Rating: 5.0
oddities of 2020
1. AOTY question settled for good in April
2. CoVid lockdown reshapes the notion of what's possible in the world
In this order...
| | | Album Rating: 4.7 | Sound Off
Instead of posting exponentially longer and longer posts,
As you hit the character limit in two separate comments to provide some lengthy prose... and maybe get to a point?
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
MementoMori's last response to me spanned 4 separate posts. My response back was 1. Simple math. And my second comment was about Ulcerate, wasn't a continuation of our discussion, and didn't hit the character limit.
Geez, it's like some people around here are allergic to serious discussion. I'm more than happy to exit if all anyone wants to do and read is shitposting. And how ADD do you have to be to where 300 words is "lengthy prose?" And on a review that's nearly 3x that?
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
why does good prog death have to be so main stream and overhyped all the time
| | | Album Rating: 4.7 | Sound Off
It was a light-hearted/non serious jab. Please don't get upset.
Geez, it's like some people around here are allergic to serious discussion.
I'm more interested in relevant discussion to be quite honest. No one is saying you can't discuss music, in fact it's rather encouraged. What this thread is/and has however, is an actual clusterfuck of "what the hell set this off?" Or discussions dragged from the depths of over 6 pages ago...
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Ah, sorry for the over-react, didn't catch you weren't being too serious.
Relevance is relative, I guess. The objective/subjective distinction/discussion, as well as the one about biology VS culture, is relevant to the meta-subject of how/why we react to music how we do. It may not be directly relevant to Ulcerate or this album, but AFAIK there's no meta-forum around here to discuss the subject. Plus, I think it's rude to just ignore someone who takes the time to respond to you at length, 6 pages back or not. MementoMori and I seem to be on very different time schedules so I can't help if I wake up to find the thread six pages past where he responded to me...
| | | Album Rating: 5.0
"why does good prog death have to be so main stream and overhyped all the time"
Good prog death...rates it a 2...
| | | Album Rating: 5.0
no scroll gang whaddup?
| | | Album Rating: 5.0
Still rules as much as it did yesterday
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
@Solrage:
I think our epistemological views are not so irreconcilable as I thought. In terms of ontological distinctions, I would certainly contend that our experience of a wall and our feelings towards that experiences are part of the same ontological dimension: the phenomenological domain. However, as I understand it your distinction between objectivity and subjectivity does not seem to be dependent on the possibility of our experiences being somehow detached from our own subjectivity, our own perspectives, but more so revolve around the providence of the experiences themselves: are they directly attributable to perceivable external phenomena or are they concocted by your mind, such as thoughts and feelings.
Now I will add that your feelings and thoughts towards the wall are equally limited by the specific wiring of your brain and the way in which this dictates your reaction to certain experiences. Changing your mind is something equally as restrained and regimented as your ability to alter the state of the wall. Moreover, the wall, as in the concept, itself only exists in your head as a thought, a piece of text, which in and of itself, similar to all language, doesn’t actually refer to any external reality. The image of the wall however, is indeed something derived from external experience. Your new definition I think is therefore practically useful, but not necessarily concerned with distinguishing between “non-phenomena like thoughts and feelings and persistent phenomenon”, as much as it’s concerned with distinguishing the providence of certain phenomena and their relation to (inter-)subjective reality. I feel as if the term objective doesn’t apply here and creates too much semantic confusion, so I would find a more epistemically concrete way of formulating this distinction and reject objectivity, as a concept, altogether.
We can discuss our second point of divergence if you’re so inclined, although I’d ask you take into account that our discussion is far more philosophical than expressly scientific and that the scientific fields we've both been appealing to have no concrete, clear, factually decided answer to offer.
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
@slikphuk This is neither progressive death metal, nor is it mainstream. We might be able to agree on the overhyped part, but that seems like a moot point now.
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What an absolute bunch of arse
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
What are you referring to exactly?
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The lot
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
Awfully specific...
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Ah. And there the answer is found
| | | Album Rating: 5.0
zak with the vague putdown
| | | Album Rating: 4.5
I'm totally flustered.
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