Comments on: Sylosis – Dormant Heart

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 23 Feb 2015 04:40:04 +0000

They obviously meant to leave the string picking sounds in to make it sound more natural. Do you actually think a professional producer could miss that and whoever does the mixing/mastering? I fucking love that sound, how could you not know what is is unless your relatively new to guitar driven music.

By: Vance

Vance — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 21:30:15 +0000

Wow, comparing these guys to lame ass All that Remains, Unearth and Machine Head? These guys sound nothing like that. This is pretty much straight forward thrash, with some unbelievable guitar work from Josh Middleton. That first album featured a different singer, then on the second album Josh took over and I must say he is doing a fine job. These guys are young and hungry and continue to crank out some pretty good straight forward, no frills, shredtastic metal. I would rather compare them to newer Wretched or Revocation if you had to make a comparison.

By: jerry

jerry — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 05:10:59 +0000

In a way I like hearing stuff like that in a record, since then you know it was actually played in a studio (I’m looking at you, Rings of Saturn) and makes the record a bit organic. Mixing that stuff out I imagine would be a pain in the ass. It’s more apparent on modern stuff like this that is so bright it doesn’t resemble natural guitar sounds anymore. Now I’ll be focusing on it in every record I hear, haha.

By: jm from nj

jm from nj — Mon, 16 Feb 2015 03:47:24 +0000

Jerry,

Thanks for that explanation. I had a feeling it had to do with the compression, but it’s so audible that I couldn’t believe it could get past mixing/mastering. It’s kind of amazing to me.

By: jerry

jerry — Sun, 15 Feb 2015 16:15:26 +0000

What you’re hearing is the natural attack of a guitar pick against strings before the note is audible. If the player rests the pick on the string for a millisecond before actually plucking you’ll hear this more pronounced. Modern metal recordings compress the fuck out of the sound so that the natural decay and dynamics are squashed to the point of every aspect about the sound you hear being the same volume, so minimal things like this will be as loud as the tones that follow. But if you pay attention enough you’ll probably hear it on most records you own. It’s really noticeable here at 1:20:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0Q6X0px9SM

By: Paul

Paul — Sun, 15 Feb 2015 02:13:15 +0000

Jm I have not heard the album but from your description I wonder if it’s the sound of the bass strings clicking on the fretboard? I was listening to Live After Death (again) yesterday and the bass clicks are very audible on albums like that….

By: Aaron

Aaron — Sat, 14 Feb 2015 12:35:25 +0000

If I could, I would suggest going back and having another listen to Conclusion of an Age. From what you said, I felt pretty much the same about it at first and dumped it in a stack of other stuff that didn’t click. After a while though I pulled it back out and it really grew on me.

I felt most of the metalcore sound on the album came from the poorly done clean vocal sections. Nearly every one of them had a stereotype “pre-clean vocal music change to something softer” that made them predictable and completely ruined whatever momentum they had built up prior. Tracks like “The Blackest Skyline,” “Teras,” and “Stained Humanity” are some pretty great thrashy modern metal though.

I know it doesn’t sound like a great endorsement for an album to suggest tracks to skip, but dump the ones with the metalcore-esque clean vocals and it’s a great album.

Been meaning to pick up the rest of their albums after I ended up liking Conclusion of an Age so much but every time I have money I end up finding something else to spend it on… Sounds like I need to keep them in mind.

/longest comment on this site(?)

By: jm from nj

jm from nj — Fri, 13 Feb 2015 23:31:10 +0000

Can you maybe shed some light on an issue I’m having with this CD. I love the songwriting, but there are moments on various songs (i.e. 2 mins into “To Build A Tomb”, or throughout the song “Dormant Heart”) where the picking sounds metronome-ish…almost like the plucking of the string sounds…argh…I don’t know what it is. And it’s driving me nuts and I can’t imagine it was missed in mixing/mastering.