Dark Tranquillity - Projector

I am not sure I can find any words to describe the mood of that album. The only thing I can say is that it's able to draw a map of what sadness can be, at the same time, it's able to bring you the anger you need to kick that sadness in the nuts. It can be so depressive and yet so motivating.

I used to listen to that album in some stale moment of my life so this one has a very special meaning for me.

To get back to the band, I find that album a lot different from the other Dark Tranquillity albums and I never found out why. It makes me wonder what was happening in the songwriter head at that moment.

They said in an interview that they wanted to do something different and conceptual, but we all know that's what they always say in interview, not what they really think/feel  when they do write the score.

Listen to the samples below, close your eyes and feel the intensity it's able to spit.

Tristania - Beyond the Veil

This albums is probably one of the most important in my metalhead journey.. it's really the album that got me into metal. Each song as something special. They play a lot with the energy provided by male vocals, chorals and female vocals. There are plenty of band now that use this recipe but no one succeed like Tristania did with this Beyond The Veil

The music is mostly composed by Morten Veland, a great songwriter which sadly lost some of its amazing inspiration in later  Sirenia/Mortemia albums.

Many considers this album the opus magnum of Tristania but I will go further than that by saying this is  one of the best symphonic gothic metal album ever made.

Arch Enemy - Doomsday Machine

A review of this amazing album will be available very soon, for now, have fun with this sample!

 

Cradle of Filth - Thornography

This album might be the least appreciated album from Cradle of Filth but for some reason I ignore, I really do appreciate this album. At the same time, I really don't like the other album from that band so that might explain why I'm different from the crowd here.

In other words.. If you think you don't like Cradle of Filth, listen to a few songs from that album and you might change your mind.

happy listening.

In Flames - The Jester Race

Album review soon to come. For now, enjoy this preview..

Website worth looking at for any metal fans!

Every week or so, I check all my RSS feeds and sites related to my favourite genre of music, Metal.
Here are some good source of information related to everything going on in the metal scene. those site have very good reviews as well!


- MetalStorm this is really my favourite one, very well done, information is easy to find and the shoutbox is very nice. Myspace player is embedded there, very useful
- Thrashocore (french)
- Encyclopaedia Metallum: The Metal Archives this is the reference for some people (I think this one was created before distortion was invented)
- Spirit of metal (multi-language!)

I'm sure there are a lot more, don't hesitate to comments!

Why is itunes so slow to start playing a song

I had that problem where my mp3 would start playing only after 2-4 seconds.

I found out that the problem is that Itunes totally sucks when it's time to decode a mp3 that was encoded with LAME, I even tried different version, I didn't find any way to decode the mp3 faster.

The only way I did find was to convert again to mp3 using the Itunes encoder, then it would be lightning fast to start a mp3 playback.

If someone has a way to speed up the decoding of an mp3 encoded with LAME in Itunes under mac, please tell me, I would appreciate because I'm not sure I want to convert all of my mp3 collection!!