Fri 17 Jul – Artmania Festival

http://141.85.0.93/~foxx/mob/Opeth%20Sibiu/thumbnails/artmania_097.jpg

So indeed, might be the general impression that Sweden's the land of metal, but as Mikael Åkerfeldt said, you won't ever see a festival this big right in the middle of the city. Huge props to the city council of Sibiu.

At around 10 in the evening the guys from Opeth walked on stage in the frantic cheering of the crowd, with their standard lineup:
Mikael "Bubba Smith" Åkerfeldt
Martin "Uruguayan Deity" Mendez
Martin "Axe/Legolas" Axenrot
Per Wiberg
Fredrik Åkesson

http://141.85.0.93/~foxx/mob/Opeth%20Sibiu/thumbnails/artmania_104.jpg

Song number 1 - Heir Apparent; as seen in other gigs…

Sat 17 May – Moonspell, Indian Fall, Sincarnate

As a master über-geek, no less than 2 times have I checked Google Calendar in the past months since getting the ticket to Moonspell for the phases of the moon. To my great disappointment, the reports there were about a one-quarter moon; so the first surprise of last night's was the (almost) full moon (apparently Google didn't report for Romania) with its wimpy corona through thin clowds above the Mihai Eminescu Amphitheatre.

Enter, came Sincarnate, a band I haven't previously studied. A mixture of melo-death and doom, greatly impaired by really…

My first ghost post ^_^.

This morning, while wearing my CX300 headphones on the T10 iRiver mp3 player, I realized just how high I'd left the sound volume after the last time's usage.

I'm just wondering, is there any study about the side-effects of all the portable players out there? Numbers reflecting all the deafened victims of pocket multimedia?

Probably the senses get dumber over day, that's why things normal in the evening seem extreme in the morning.
My belief is that, for compressed sound (low dynamic range like in most modern rock/pop recordings) any volume can do. The heavy dynamic range music, like classical…

Fri 30 Nov – Katatonia

Been there, done that.
All my expectations towards this concert went down in flames as the first riffs from Katatonia unwound. After the 2 opening acts from Abigail and Subscribe I really wasn't expecting anything from that Preoteasca venue in regard to sound quality.

Abigail (the Romanian band) sounded weak. Don't know where their singer had left her voice, probably somewhere along the amplification line, or what the pianist was thinking with his ``atmospheric" yet lame and rudimentary touches; at times I found myself (and I generally enjoy progressive music) completely at a loss when…

On December 9th 2006, Therion went classic in Bucharest. Several things went wrong, the event was still disturbing and it took me almost 3 hours to digest.

A few words first.
The location, Sala Palatului from Bucharest, is simply NOT the place you want to be close to when things involving sound happen. It was designed for applause amplification, with a wide-opened hard ceiling and long, tilted box-like public space. The sound of this box is a continuous race between the primary wave, its reverberations and the explosive echo descending from behind.
Therion knew this, as they previously performed here…

Too bad my couple of hundreds of listens to In Absentia and Deadwing don't show here (used Power DVD for playback).

They are awesome 5.1 DTS mixes, and audio DVDs, as mentioned in the title and a lesson of progressive metal.

related:
Porcupine Tree
Dream Theater
Opeth
Riverside

Just got Second Life Syndrome from the CD shop. It took them some months since I've ordered it in may but I'm now the legit happy owner of Riverside's masterpiece.

gg

Riverside is killing me. Their albums like totally own.
To leave one breathless.

Been listening to works by Riverside for about a month and I'm completely hooked. Just enqueue Second Life Syndrome or Out of Myself in foobar and do whatever it is that I'm doing until a completely new song stands out and makes me observe it and wonder what's Duda whispering there, or heh, look how elevated is that bass part, smart keyboarding or catchy melodic guitar.

I can only file this band with the title of revelation for me, along with Nirvana, Metallica, Anathema,…

Ok. This is insane, but I can't listen to classical music without getting unable to listen to my standard progressive/death/gothic music.

An Wagner's Ride of the Walkyries is simply mindblowing. I've chosen this track being inspired by Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and I'm thinking into getting even more into classical, since it hears so cool here.

Just to mention, I've completely got past Opeth, Porcupine Tree and Dream Theater for the time being. Even Rise of Sodom and Gomorrah sounded like in lack of something.

After 2 auditions of Wagner's track, the only things…