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BlizzCon 2011: Mists of Pandaria Overview Part 2

Posted on by necromoonyeti

I left off yesterday having discussed Blizzard’s initial overview of the Pandaria zone, the race of Pandaren, and the new Monk class. As with any expansion, World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria will feature much more than simply new quest and raiding content, however. Here is a look at some of the major additions and changes:

Talents 2.0

First of all, the talent system is getting a major overhaul, far beyond the changes it received in past expansions. There will now be only six talent points. That’s it. Blizzard made a big to do about Cataclysm’s failure to revamp talent builds, resulting in only 1-5 realistic choices out of 41 (the rest being pretty much mandatory for any given spec.) The idea in MoP will be to do away with every mandatory talent and instead create a system which should cater to a variety of playing styles without drastically influencing your dps. Or as I understand it, if you use them correctly every possible talent combination should peak for about the same overall benefit.

If that seems like high expectations, note that there will only be six talent points per class, not per spec. Your options will be the same whether you’re healing, tanking, dpsing, pvping, or whatever. Here’s a look at the tentative paladin talent screen:

If you are hoping to load up on all of the healing talents, think again. Your six points are not to be spent as you please, but can only be used once per row. If you get Blessed Life, Sacred Shield and Ardent Defender are gone, no getting around it. Don’t expect to waste thousands of gold checking them all out though. Talents will now function like glyphs, and rather than having to start from scratch you will be able to reset any particular row at any point in time outside of combat. Blizzard suggested this would be necessary for raiding, certain talents being more beneficial for certain bosses, so expect opportunities to put them all to a bit of use. As for those “ability” talents necessary for your spec, they will now just be given outright like other abilities.

Scenarios

Scenarios seem to me the most dubious of the new additions. They will be very short queuable events designed to replace the group quests of old, and they will not have any specific role requirements, so queues will be instant. They will be available at various levels, each should have a level 90 version rewarding a few valor points, and you will be able to queue for them while in dungeon queue. So far so good–it sounds like a pretty nice way to collect extra valor while waiting for those tedious 40 minute queues to pop. Here is a basic example of what the objectives of a Scenario might look like:

But aside from the fact that something that short could get really old really fast, here is the major drawback: Blizzard described a number of them as “pve battlegrounds.” What does this mean? Well, WoW Game Director Tom Chilton was fairly explicit in talking about them as battleground for people afraid to pvp. Does that mean they’ll reward honor? Does that mean the more sheepish players who don’t know what they’re doing–the ones I love graveyard camping oh so very much–will be able to get geared through these? Or even if they don’t, will this actually succeed in keeping bad players out of real battlegrounds? That, to me at least, would be a terrible disappointment.

But it gets worse. I first started to think Blizzard hated pvp servers when they updated village guards to prevent camping. My glorious days of sitting outside Grom’gol Base Camp picking off lowbie horde like flies are dead and gone; may they rest in peace. Scenarios seem to be further pushing towards refusing to reward dedicated pvpers for getting gear. The biggest catch though, really the biggest disappointment in all of Mists of Pandaria, I might as well throw at you now:

Resilience will be a base stat.

No, really. If you stand outside of your enemy faction’s city naked, you will have resilience. Oh, there will still be pvp gear, giving you more resilience, but I’m going to propose right now it will be useless. Right now going up against a raider in world pvp, my 4500 resilience means I win. And it should, because I joined a pvp server to pvp, and the guy I am fighting apparently didn’t. Narrow the gap to say, a 1000 resilience difference, and do you really think my measly Ruthless set is going to hold up against a full Firelands-equipped player?

As a hunter, I am well familiar with the lack of balance in WoW pvp. I win 1 on 1 because I am geared to the hilt. You take that away from me, and I’m just a fish out of water, dying to anyone who actively plays the game whether they care about pvp or not. Part of the idea is to make it so that players can jump into arena sooner–to prevent a block from progression. But isn’t honor already dirt cheap? Doesn’t it only take what, a week, to get fully geared for arena? Maybe it makes no difference, if you play on a pve server, but for me all this is doing is ruining world pvp–my favorite aspect of the game. Low blow Blizzard.

People have been complaining about how it’s too easy to get geared for raiding for ages now. I guess the idea with Scenarios and an overwhelming nerf to resilience is to give us pvpers something to gripe about too. Anyway, enough of that, let’s look at a more positive addition:

World of Pokemon

Lord only knows what has compelled me to so desperately seek out that 150 vanity pet achievement (I’m sitting around 135 at the moment), because I don’t even like the damn things. But it’s all going to pay off now in an addition sure to be both cheesy and addicting: vanity pet arena (I believe Pet Battle System is the official working title). You will now be able to level your pets (up to 25), form teams of between 1 and I believe 3 pets, and square off in turn-based battles both against other collectors and against new world pets that you can catch and add to your collection by defeating.

It’s looking to be a pretty complex process. You can visit trainers all over Azeroth to learn new abilities for your pets, you can trade them, you can auction them at high level, and they will be shared across your account. Imagine a pimped out White Kitten selling for 20k. I will be that man robbing you.

Without going into too much detail, pet stats will be randomly generated, so you might have to catch one multiple times to get the build you want. Pets will be seasonal, so certain ones might only appear in the summer or winter, and some will only appear in the day, at night, in the rain, in the night in rain in September, you get the idea. It’s going to be a whole game within a game, and it might sound silly right now, but I suspect this will soon stand alongside raiding and pvp as a third way to play World of Warcraft.

Other Features

* Dungeons will have a third form: “Challenge Mode”. They will consist of time trial runs in scaled-down gear, so they will never get easier as you gear up. There will be Bronze, Silver, and Gold times to beat, with different gear rewards (including statsless transmogrification sets) depending on your time. There will also be an in-game stats keeper showing your best time for each dungeon compared to other players on your server. I’m not sure how to take this. I play on one of the lowest population servers in Warcraft; we are pvp, and everyone knows everyone, so the competition to be on top is personal. I could see myself getting a bit obsessed over this one.

* Raids will also have a third form: Raid Finder. Breathe a sigh of relief; DF Raiding will be a tier below regular raiding. You won’t be able to just pug your way into a cross-server 25 man heroic run. It’s more a means to learn the mechanics while getting geared for normal raids, and I’m pretty excited about it. On servers like mine where low population means frequently bringing along one to two inexperienced players for progression attempts, there will be no more excuses. If you haven’t downed the boss through Dungeon Finder 10-man, you aren’t coming. I like it.

* There will be 9 new dungeons: six completely new ones, a heroic version of Scholomance, and a heroic version of Scarlet Monastery condensed into two dungeons. There will be three launch-ready raids, similar to Cataclysm.

* Blizzard failed miserably in Cataclysm by creating a lot of compelling world raid bosses and giving none of them any gear worth a damn. MoP is supposed to reintroduce world raiding proper. You can look for me ganking your healer half way through the fight.

* Expect 2-3 new battlegrounds, tentatively titled Stranglethorn Diamond Mines, Valley of Power, and Azshara Crater. If Twin Peaks and Battle for Gilneas were my two biggest disappointments in Cataclysm, these look to compensate thoroughly. Stranglethorn Diamond Mines is going to consist of transporting resources out of a mine down a whole mess of different passageways–the first team to successfully transfer the required amount wins. That means a lot of hiding, sneaking around, scouting ahead, and outsmarting rather than overpowering. It seems perhaps too complex to be 10 on 10, but I’m going to be disappointed if it isn’t, because it sounds perfect for rateds. Valley of Power is much more simplistic–a small square room with few opportunities to evade combat. Yet Blizzard managed to make it refreshingly unique. There will be an orb in the center of the room which any one player can hold, and so long as a faction is holding it they gain points, scaled to go up faster the closer you are to the center of the map (and thus to your enemies). But I don’t expect this to be a 2 minute fight followed by a 10 minute wait like Battle for Gilneas. There is an additional mechanic: whoever holds the orb will take periodic damage increasing over time. If there are no healers, it will eventually drop even if your team never touches the carrier. As for the third proposed battleground, Azshara Crater, Blizzard has said nothing.

* There will be a new arena: Tol’vir Proving Grounds. It looks identical to Nagrand Arena except the four pillars are diamonds rather than squares. Really? For as long as we’ve been waiting, it looks downright pathetic.

* There will be valor from daily quests. Thank god. Daily quests will also give you buffs that allow you to gain extra loot in dungeons. I’m not quite sure what to make of that.

* Many achievements will be account bound. They did not go into too many specifics on this, but I’m pretty damn excited. Achievements are my gig in WoW, even more so than pvp. I’m pushing 11,000 without hardly any from raids, and if this means I can roll a level 29 twink hunter and knock out all of the more insane pvp ones I’m going to be in the money. Not all achievements will be account bound however, and whether that means obvious ones like say, the level 90 achievement, won’t be, or if not all raid/pvp accomplishments will be either, is still up in the air. There will also be multi-toon achievements, like maxing out every profession.

* A few major class/stat changes were mentioned. The epic resilience nerf stands out as the worst, and maybe the worst idea Blizzard have for all of MoP. They will also be doing away with the range weapon slot. Relics will be gone, rogues and warriors will throw their main hand, and hunter bows/guns will become the main hand. Wait, how will hunters survive without a melee weapon? Ah, the most relevant buff of all for me: hunter minimum range is gone. Gone! No more frost mages locking me in place and taking me down without ever so much as taking damage. Hunters will finally be a viable dueling and 2s pvp class. Warlocks will also get a major overhaul to better distinguish the three specs, and the way they described Destruction I suspect they’re going to be pretty op, with a stacking damage buff that hopefully resembles Arcane Blast. Hopefully because I have an idle 85 warlock, that is. Shamans will no longer have buff totems, and lastly, druids will finally be recognized as officially having four specs.

There was one major question left in my mind when all was said and done. I play on one server exclusively. There are ten classes and ten toon slots, so I am full. As it stands, I will never actually get to play a monk. Will that change? Will they finally add an eleventh slot? WoW lead producer J. Allen Brack was asked this in the post-presentation interview, and his answer wasn’t promising: They’ve thought about it, but they’re not quite sure.

BlizzCon 2011: Mists of Pandaria Overview Part 1

Posted on by necromoonyeti

If you look at the main stage schedule for BlizzCon 2011, attention to World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria isn’t so much dominant as nearly exclusive, getting six and a half hours of discussion and demonstration, compared to two for Diablo 3 and not a minute for Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm. With that in mind, I imagine everything presented in the initial general overview of Mists of Pandaria will be granted much more thorough detail down the road. But, if you’ll allow me to take this one step at a time, here are the key points I took out of the overview.

The first thing you’re going to encounter in WoW 5 is the level grind from 85 to 90, so let’s take a look at that first.

The first thing you might notice is that Pandaria looks pretty small. It’s only five zones, for one thing (ignore the blob on the right for the moment), and I certainly would hope at least one of them, probably the middle, is a world battleground akin to Wintergrasp and Tol Barad. Blizzard did not actually make any mention of server battlegrounds in the introduction, and cryptically listed and dually ignored a third “Azshara Crater” battleground when detailing MoP’s two normal bgs, so perhaps this is not the case, but at any rate, Cataclysm’s five questing zones and one pvp zone felt small to me, and here only five are listed in total.

But there are a number of features to take into consideration. This scale compares Pandaria’s five zones on the left to Twilight Highlands on the right. Twilight might not seem that big, dashing around with master riding skill and the like, but if you expand your in-game map you’re going to realize Pandaria is well over half the size of Eastern Kingdoms. And there is a further catch: You can’t fly there until level 90.

This comment met with a great deal of applause from the audience, and I will gladly join them. Aside from my great distaste for the revamped lower level zones of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, what really made Cataclysm feel so weak quest-wise for me was level 60 flying. No more pick up, fly, kill something, fly, turn in, repeat here. No more complete disregard for terrain, either. Can you imagine hopping on a ground mount and waltzing the whole way across Twilight Highlands five times? Pandaria will feel huge.

Yet there are still only five zones. I loved the diversity of having ten in Wrath of the Lich King, but with only a 5 levels I suppose their options here are a bit more limited. They do try to account for this though, giving at least the second leveling zone, Valley of the Four Winds (bottom zone on the map), two distinct quest lines that will make leveling at least your first alt a more unique experience. In this case there will be both a northern “farmlands” region and a southern “coastal jungle” region, both of which should cover about the same level/exp range independently.

There was not much more information on particular zones available at this point, but names always indicate something. Here is what I know of the map breakdown:

The Jade Forest (level 85 starting zone, to the east)
Valley of the Four Winds (second zone, to the south)
Vale of Eternal Blossoms (central zone)
Townlong Steppes (western zone)
Kun-Lai Summit (northern zone)

As you may have guessed from the preview video I posted earlier, they will all have an Asian flavor about them. Another cool feature, for me at least, is that Blizzard will try to make the dungeons more visible. Valley of the Four Winds’ dungeon, Stormstout Brewery, should be visible to scale within the zone proper, not simply as a portal (though I’m sure you still have to “zone in”), and WoW Lead Content Designer Cory Stockton’s comments lead me to believe the others will generally follow suit. Whether this will amount to something new or will merely reflect a continued effort similar to Lost City of Tol’vir in Uldum remains to be seen, but it was certainly emphasized in the overview.

There will be one final zone of course: the Pandaren starting zone. Worgen and goblin starting zones were something of a complete joke in Cataclysm, in so far as they were completely irrelevant to the game if you weren’t the relevant class. Already having ten toons on my server, I have not caught the slightest glimpse of either. I get the bad feeling the Pandaren starting zone will be equally disappointing, but in the meantime it at least looks pretty cool.

This zone, The Wandering Isle, is a giant turtle. No, really. There will be a giant turtle floating around off the coast of Pandaland with a whole mess of forests and mountains and civilizations thriving on its posterior. The reason I suspect it will be as inaccessible to those of us with 10 toons as the worgen and goblin zones?: Pandaren start off neutral.

As in, they start off neither alliance nor horde. You don’t actually choose your faction until level 10, and that answers another question: MoP will introduce only one race, available to either faction. I’m pretty confident Blizzard will keep them isolated with this in mind, because I could see an unwelcome (on their part–harmless and entertaining on mine) cross-faction black market emerging otherwise.

This starting zone is actually playable at BlizzCon, so expect most of the non-official images of MoP appearing over the next few weeks to be of The Wandering Isle.

While I am on the subject of Pandaren, here’s the information you’re probably most interested in in a nutshell:

Pandaren classes:
Hunter
Mage
Monk
Priest
Rogue
Shaman
Warrior

Tentative Pandaren Racials:
Epicurean – Increase stat benefits from food by 100%
Gourmand – Cooking skill increased by 15
Inner Peace – Your Rested experience bonus lasts twice as long
Bouncy – You take 50% less falling damage
Quaking Palm – You touch a secret pressure point on an enemy target, putting it to sleep for 3 sec.

Monks are the next order of business. Allow me to start with a video of one in action:

Did that leg spin look cool at the end? WoW Lead Systems Designer Greg Street quoted one of his colleagues as saying “If we don’t do gnome monks, monks aren’t worth doing.” Yes, gnome monks will be an option, kicking in the faces of all enemies willing to get within half an inch of them. … Actually, the class will be available to every single race except worgen and goblins.

As for what exactly a monk consists of, at face value they pan out to be much like druids without a Boomkin option–leather wearers with the following specs:

Brewmaster – Tank
Mistweaver – Healer
Windwalker – Melee DPS

But as far as how they function, I am a bit confused. Street described them using a combination of energy (chi) and a dual point system:

Monks will use two basic abilities, “Jab” and “Roll”, to build up Light Force and Dark Force, with which they can release higher abilities. Ok, ok, fair enough for tanks and dps. But what about healers? Nothing was said directly, but monks were described as “melee healers” and compared to disc priests for their ability to dish out some dps in the process. Does that mean we’re going to have a healing spec without mana? I am lead to believe so. Will this be raid-functional or strictly pvp? That question remains unanswered.

Well, it’s getting late here, and I didn’t get as far in my BlizzCon coverage as I’d hoped, but I’ll try to pick up where I’ve left off tomorrow. So far I’ve only scratched the surface.

BlizzCon 2011: Opening Ceremony Overview

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Better late than never, I just picked up my live feed of BlizzCon 2011. The event kicked off at 2pm my time, so I only have seven hours of catching up to do really, and they’ve improved their online feed tremendously this year: No lag whatsoever for the first time I can remember, and an easily accessible archive of past events. I’m hoping to make a number of posts today and tomorrow relaying some of the news. Just to give you an idea of what I’ll be focusing on, World of Warcraft is my primary interest, followed by Starcraft. Diablo I’ll be giving little if any attention to.

As usual, Blizzard threw out a few big surprises in the opening ceremony. Let me just start by detailing a few of the most important points in brief:

The first thing they announced, and really the thing I’m most excited about for the event proper, is a high-profile Starcraft 2 tournament. No more 30 second asides to show a few random segments of tournament between conference coverage–BlizzCon 2011 will feature a tournament broadcast in full. And while I am not as knowledgable in e-sports as I would like to be, it looks like they did a solid job of bringing in the pro commentators rather than using people inside the company. Day[9], whose Starcraft 2 strategies I talked about at length when the game first launched, will be involved in much of the commentary, along with a number of other names I recognized.

But that’s just what I’m looking forward to in the next two days. The long-term announcements are what you’re more likely to take interest in. Here’s a big one. I noted that Diablo 3 does not interest me much. As it turns out, I will be playing it anyway. Why? Because it is free.

Check this out. Blizzard CEO Michael Morhaime announced right off the bat that Diablo 3 will be free for World of Warcraft subscribers (and that the release date is still undetermined). A free trial? A demo version of the game? Not at all. The only catch is that you’ll have to pick up a one year subscription to WoW–not a heavy commitment if you’re interested in Warcraft to begin with. On top of a free digital download of the game in full, you’ll additionally get guaranteed access to the next World of Warcraft beta. Oh, and a flying horse mount that puts the celestial steed to shame: Tyrael’s Charger.

Not bad, eh? I’m still curious whether the one-year pass will be at the current discount rate you get for long-term subscriptions or if they will charge the single month rate for 12 months, but either way, count me in.

Following Michael Morhaime’s introductory announcement, the “slightly” more outspoken vice-president Chris Metzen took the stage in rock-star fasion, Dalaran theme blasting overhead. The upcoming game preview cuts came rolling in, starting with Diablo 3 and then preceding to “Blizzard Dota”, a game I have never heard of which looks awesome. Apparently they’re creating a cross-over fighting game which will pit Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo characters against each other and incorporate pvp elements of all three. The preview included Arthus fighting a siege engine and ended with “Coming Soon… Seriously.”

Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm got its trailer too, looking par for the course–that is, pretty awesome. The new units glimpsed in brief didn’t stand out to me much, though I’m sure they’ll be gone over in detail later in the convention. One that did catch my eye was a zerg unit that had… how should I describe it… a DK Death Grip.

But what I was really here for–what I really wanted to see–that came last. We all knew it was coming. It had to be coming. But until now I’d not heard a word about it: World of Warcraft 5.

The description Chris Metzen had to offer for the premise of WoW 5 excites me, as a major pvper, to no end. No super villians this time. No joint effort against a common foe. WoW 5 will focus on alliance against horde, straight up. The video certainly doesn’t reflect it though:

Remember the Pandaren pet Blizzard was selling a few months back? It is now a race, accompanied by some awesome Japanese-themed landscapes that will apparently comprise an entire continent: Pandaria. (Apparently Blizzard almost made Pandaren the alliance race in Burning Crusade in place of Draenei.) We can look forward to a new class I’d been expecting for a while now–monks–and the level 90 cap raise everyone expected. Is only the alliance getting a new race, will there be evil pandas too, or is there a new horde race yet to be revealed? That was my biggest question, and Metzen announced early in the post-ceremony interview that they would be more or less neutral–not only available to both factions, but as I understand it identical in racial abilities and appearance.

That’s it for the opening ceremonies. I’ll do my best to catch up and keep up from here on out.

Review: Krallice – Diotima

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Krallice began as a joint project between Colin Marston of Behold… The Arctopus and Mick Barr of Orthrelm some time in 2006 or 2007. My very limited experience with both of these bands has left the unpleasant taste in my mouth of haphazard noise for its own sake–barely coherent avant-garde math rock which never has and never will excite me. Inexplicably, with their powers combined the two have produced some of the most beautifully constructed songs I have ever heard. Their self-titled debut in 2008, especially the opening track Wretched Wisdom, completely blew my mind in a way that no other band has accomplished since, taking the still formative genre of post-black metal and practically perfecting it in one shot.

Their second album, Dimensional Bleedthrough, never quite moved me the way their self-titled did, and while I listened to it aplenty when first released, it was soon forgotten. I was nevertheless quite excited to try out Diotima, released this past April, and within the first, well, really five seconds or so, I knew something had changed. By the end of its 70 minutes I had experienced one of the finest masterpieces of metal ever written.


(untitled intro)/Inhume

There’s a lot to be said even of the two minute introduction leading in to Inhume. Never mind that ten minute tracks is their norm, the introduction (they didn’t even bother naming it) is an incredible song in its own right. Diotima begins with a nuclear bomb, the chain reaction of which never ends. The desperate melody is more emotionally driven than anything on Dimensional Bleedthrough, calling to mind their first release, but the intensification of the drumming established on Dimensional Bleedthrough persists. It’s a perfect merging of all of their first two album’s finest qualities–beautiful song-writing on the one hand and intensity on the other–and I enter Inhume a deer in the headlights.

There is barely room to breathe before the next song slams a frantic vision of shapes and patterns into your brain that disturb and terrorize. It overwhelms you with ordered chaos. It’s never inaccessible, never obscure, but rather all too comprehensible. Often I speak of the importance of listening to an album in two states of mind, first passively, appreciating its aesthetics, and then attempting to analyze what’s really going on. On Diotima these experiences are one and the same. The drumming locks your eyelids in place, wide open, and the guitars assault your rationality.

Inhume is followed by The Clearing, and the album begins to calm down. The song initially picks up where Inhume leaves off, but before long the sensory overload fades into something more dark and moody. Mick Barr offers up his tortured, otherworldly black metal vocals for the first time on the album, and Nicholas McMaster’s bass lines and rhythmic death metal vocals become a little more pronounced. The song goes on to repeat a pattern of ascending chords which periodically break, here into a moving melody, there into a brutally bassy grind. Rather than ultimately coalescing into something grand, it ends in the midst of gloom, Barr and McMaster trading off screeches and growls in something dark, sinister, and perhaps a bit unfulfilling.

The mood of the ending is a bit unpleasant, but in so far as it leaves the listener discouraged, it’s perfectly placed to be followed by the album’s most uplifting track, Diotima.


Diotima

This album is more or less brilliant from start to finish, but two songs stand miles above the rest. The fourth track, Diotima, is one of them. It begins in the depths of The Clearing’s conclusion, with some bizarre creation in the form of tremolo guitar bubbling and boiling forth from the pit. The guitar battles against slow, brooding drums and vocals to find its way out of this miasma, and finally, around 5:30, it breaks free. The amorphous creation briefly stands alone, a vision of volatile beauty in perpetual motion, but before long the bass and drums begin to slowly creep up from beneath, ready to collide and set off a chain reaction which, well, might be the most incredible minute of music I have ever experienced.

The song is barely half over when this movement comes to an end, and the rest is experienced in a state of shock and enlightened awe. Something of a return to Inhume’s overwhelming combination of constantly fluctuating guitars and consistently warp speed drumming characterizes what immediately follows, and then a sort of death metal breakdown paves the way for the tracks final explosion, which never actually ends, instead fading off into the distance.

The fifth song, Litany of Regrets, is the only really questionable inclusion on the album. It consists of fourteen minutes of oscillating guitars and a single sustained drumline, breaking only infrequently and never for more than a few seconds. I could try to dig for some deeper complexity to it, but frankly if 20-some listens haven’t converted me nothing ever will. It’s the only track I ever skip, and I feel no inclination to speak at length about it. In reviewing the album just as in listening to it, I just find myself impatiently anticipating Diotima’s other exceptional masterpiece, Telluric Rings.


Telluric Rings

Unfortunately, the studio cut of this track seems to have been recently removed from youtube. I’m not sure what’s up with that, but out of respect for the band (especially since all other tracks were left up) I will hold off uploading my own copy of it until I find out why it’s gone missing. None of the live recordings are quite sufficient to pick up all of the subtitles I intend to describe, but it’s nice to display some of their visual intensity, and you really ought to buy this album anyway.

This song sweeps you off your feet in the first second–a beautiful, captivating flow of sound perfectly paced to mesmerize. The perfect bend in the midst of tremolo picking around the 25 second mark just blows my fucking mind. Diotima might sport my favorite moment on the album, but Telluric Rings is by far my favorite song over all. At no point, not for a single second, does it ever let go. The lyrics to the opening movement might make no sense to me, but they are somehow beautiful, and more discernible than most of the album. “The eye seeks a desert. / The anchorite sits, pensive, / thought encumbered. / Pillars of cracked rock and the catarrhs of coarse winds”.

The first transition begins about 2 and a half minutes in, allowing a few seconds of obvious escalation in which to wave goodbye. There is a bit of sadness in its coming. You sense correctly that the bliss of the first movement will never return. But the moment the actual transition ends and the second movement begins your attention involuntarily shifts focus. The violence and brutality of what follows is overwhelming. Here again the song is paced to perfection, indescribably captivating in its new form. McMaster’s vocals reach their finest on the album with the rhythmic belting out of “where lie old dreams of caverned maws and light in gulfing void.”

The next transition happens far more abruptly. Around 6:40 the guitars explode in pure desperation, perhaps the most emotional moment on the album save the title track, underscored and amplified by a creative baseline.

At 9 minutes, everything stops. The band all hang their heads, and nothing on the stage moves save Colin Marston’s fingers. A twisted melody drowns itself in distortion. There is nothing beautiful here–nothing like the solo guitar segment of Diotima. This is just pure morbid foreboding. You know it will break, it does break, and well, enjoy.


Dust and Light

Diotima’s final track, Dust and Light, is also its most difficult. It leaves nothing of the bad taste of Litany of Regrets, but neither is its quality immediately apparent. The beginning is a very fitting comedown from Telluric Rings. Mick Barr’s vocals and the blast beats which soon arise are distant now, dissolving in a pure and beautiful haze. The sense of ascension does not last forever, however. The song undergoes three transition beginning around 4:45, first into something more direct, then into something more typically violent and aggressive, and finally into another sort of haze starkly different from the first. No longer is the music dissolving into something greater. Now it is just combusting, breaking apart into a cloud of its own sundered particles. And thus it ends. Perhaps the final lyrical line best explains this song: “Acknowledge divinity’s mortality.“

Review: Аркона – Слово (Arkona – Slovo)

Posted on by necromoonyeti

I would like to believe that Аркона, or Arkona for you non-purists, is a band requiring little introduction. They did not create the Slavic brand of folk metal, nor are they necessarily the best of their kind, but I would argue that they are the most accessible. Eschewing the common pagan metal dependence on raw production, Arkona deliver directly, presenting a full sound pervaded with folk and ferocious intensity.

At least, that is how I think of them. My ability to relate to the band is a bit narrow. I have somehow only ever listened to Возрождение (Vozrozhdeniye) and От Сердца к Небу (Ot Serdtsa K Nebu), but I’ve listened to both countless times. I am in no position to describe what precisely has changed here since Гой, Роде, Гой! (Goi, Rode, Goi!), but 2007 isn’t that far removed.


Азъ/Аркаим (Az’/Arkaim)

Following their best introduction track to date, Slovo kicks off in standard Arkona form, exploding briefly and then opening up to Masha’s breathtaking vocals. The instrumentation employed differs little from the past–bagpipe and woodwinds driving over epic synths and intense pagan aggression, with slow, tense interludes setting each stage. In the details though, much has changed.

The first difference that caught my eye was the introduction of a violin to accentuate the tension. This application (not its use in general), as it turns out, is more a feature of the opening track than the album as a whole, but the mood it aims for is a recurring theme: expect softer, subtler means to distinguish Slovo’s dynamics shifts.

The other thing I immediately noticed was a diminishing in the intensity of Masha’s metal vocals, and this, unfortunately, is consistent throughout the album. Oh, she can still belt them out better than just about any female metal vocalist out there, but that Slavic shrillness behind the gutturals seems to be gone, degrading into something a bit deeper and a bit more typical to metal in general.


Никогда (Nikogda)

When I returned to a few Ot Serdtsa K Nebu tracks to confirm this latter observation, a lot of other disappointments surfaced. Masha’s mellowing out from a violent she-wolf to a standard death metal growler is only the tip of the iceberg, though her clean singing might be as good as ever. The entire album is really a step down in ferocity. Primitive folk transitions have been replaced by a more consistent reliance on synth and whispered interludes to create a sound that is perhaps fuller but not nearly as inspiring. The track at hand is a bit of a counterexample, but consider it among the heaviest Slovo has to offer, not par for the course.

Don’t get me wrong though. I consider Ot Serdtsa K Nebu one of the best albums of all time, and that’s a pretty high standard to maintain. On Slovo, Arkona continue to produce absolutely solid pagan/folk metal, they’re just complacently maintaining the genres rather than redefining them. The specifically Slavic sounds of pagan metal are here sharing the stage with a more universal approach to the genre.

The album still brings a lot of uniqueness to the table. The guitar on Nikogda manages to maintain a constant tension that never bores in spite of (or even perhaps specifically because of) its simplicity, and it pairs up with the vocals perfectly. The song Леший (Leshiy) delightfully converts a border-line cheesy, carnival accordion into convincing metal. And though no hammer dulcimer is mentioned in the album’s credits, a sound I can describe as nothing else (perhaps very convincing keyboards?) peppers many tracks like falling snow, giving them a decidedly wintery vibe. (I can’t resist pointing out, to the complete apathy of anyone potentially reading this, a peculiar reminiscence I perceive in this last feature to Midwinter Land, the Sindar Ruins theme of Suikoden III, by Michiru Yamane, Keiko Fukami, and Masahiko Kimura.)


Слово (Slovo)

As for my gripes about intensity, the title track does manage to rise to the level I’d come to expect from Ot Serdtsa K Nebu, and might bring to light the stylistic change I had in mind. What springs to life here around 3:30, THAT is what I was looking for on this album. If brief, it demonstrates the intensity hedging on insanity that Slavic folk can offer to metal. That the sort of impact I got from Ot Serdtsa K Nebu in its entirety can only be compared to a passing phrase in Slovo speaks against the album, but in all fairness, that’s a pretty high measuring stick. Slovo is a really enjoyable album throughout, and it’s taken no effort on my part to keep it on perpetual repeat these last few nights. It’s more mellow than what I’d come to expect, in its folk features even more so than in the metal, and the overuse of whispered/spoken introductions and filler tracks is a mild annoyance, but it’s still a cut above much of the competition. If you’re new to the band and these sample tracks left you unimpressed though, do acquire a copy of Ot Serdtsa K Nebu before you write them off altogether.

Review: Caïna – Hands That Pluck

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Hands That Pluck is highly erratic black metal cum indie post rock, dubious yet seldom disappointing, as presented by your inconspicuous next door neighbor. Or something like that. The pictures of Andrew Curtis-Brignell scattered across the internet range from creepy skinhead to a guy fully immersed in modern trends, thick frame glasses and all. What he pretty much never looks like is a black metal artist. His music follows a similar trend, full of uncharacteristic oddities, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse


Profane Inheritors

The only sustained features you’re going to find on the opening track are a tendency towards constant moody transitions and rather awkward, out-of-place vocals that do not necessarily work. The further details are unique to the track at hand. Given that the album is about 124 minutes long, it would be beyond my means or particular desire to take a close look at each one. At any rate, if you think you have swallowed all Hands That Pluck has to offer in one attentive listen you’re probably not giving it enough credit. Much of it teeters on a narrow pinnacle, ready to fall into an endless brilliant void on one side or a festering trash heap on the other at any moment. There are tracks I have marked off as exceptional on one listen and found entirely meritless on the next, and vice versa. Most, on any given listen, will stand their ground and leave you uncertain.

The opening track, Profane Inheritors, reflects that. The deep, shouted vocals dominate the raw black metal over which they are layered, and before long the music winds down to give them undivided center stage. A dissonant solo here, another vocal solo there, and then suddenly you realize the song has gotten really intense. Encased in the music’s peculiarity, the crushing sort of post-metal ending emerges while you’re still trying to figure out what’s going on, and perhaps just as you give in and start to really enjoy it the song transitions again, into a minimalist ambient outro.

A well-crafted song, or a jumble of random movements masking nonsense in some faux-esoteric mishmash? The truth is I think most of the album is a combination of both, and if you accept that the artist isn’t trying to bullshit you but doesn’t always quite pull off his emotional intentions faultlessly, you might be well on your way to appreciating Hands That Pluck.


The Sea of Grief Has No Shores

Because it’s by no means perfect, but neither is the artist arrogantly throwing out random notes and believing himself to have created a masterpiece. It’s something you should listen to with an ear for what the artist is trying to create, not what he necessarily always does, and sometimes (or if you’re better off than I, every time) the message gets through to create a highly moving song, peculiarly emotional for its style.

Or at least peculiarly emotional for black metal. Stylistically in general terms, the album is an equal mix of black metal, post-rock/metal, and ambient sounds, and never so much an amalgamation of the three as a timeshare. That is, I find it misleading to describe Hands That Pluck as post-black metal. It is post-rock and black metal. Sometimes entire songs divide them, sometimes he jumps back and forth between the two right and left, but both are too dominant in their pure forms to call it post-black.

The post-rock is the more coherent side of his sound, and the more consistently appealing. It furthermore sheds light on a sense of awareness which lends credence to his more spasmodic moments. The Sea of Grief Has No Shores is the sort of song that reminds you, if the other tracks leave you in doubt, that he really has some vision in mind. What you might have liked in Profane Inheritors did not transpire merely by chance.


Ninety-Three

You can listen to Hands That Pluck a dozen times and take an entirely different experience out of it every time, but let whatever strikes you at a given moment be the prize. Don’t dig too deep, or you might end up chasing the wind. There’s more to it than you will be able to take in in one sitting, but not necessarily as much as your initial bewilderment might lead you to believe, nor as little as a skeptic might first assume. The vocals are his biggest stumbling block, and I’m inclined to say they’re downright bad, but they’re not a game ender, and behind them I think he pulls off a good song more often than not.

This will be Andrew Curtis-Brignell’s final full release under the Caïna monicker, though a split with White Medal is still to come. It is his fourth album, the first coming in 2006. It should be interesting to see where his musical inclinations take him from here. It is definitely his less black metal, more post-rock/metal moments, such as the majority of Ninety-Three, that appeal to me most, but if it’s the post-whatever that draws me into Hands That Pluck (and makes the ending of this current track so awesome), it’s the black metal that makes the album stand out as something original. All of the immediate “high” points of Hands That Pluck I can compare to a dozen different bands. The album as a whole stands alone, an entirely unique work. It can phase from immediately accessible and borderline catchy to completely obscure at a whim, and while its finest moments in either form are certainly enjoyable, none of them stand out quite enough to consistently move me. It’s only when taken as a whole, I think, that you’ll be able to get sense of his bigger picture.

I don’t know, I feel no compulsion to listen to this in its entirety a dozen times over, and I think that’s what it would take to really appreciate it. At the same time, the fact that I feel no such compulsion speaks against it; I am not convinced that the payoff would be sufficient. The more work you put into appreciating something, the higher your expectations rise, and I get the feeling Hands That Pluck is ultimately a bit on the average. I definitely recommend listening to the entire thing a few times, because with the right disposition you might find it amazing. Me, I’ll be moving on.

Review: Arckanum – Helvítismyrkr

Posted on by necromoonyeti

I am not overly familiar with Arckanum. I associate the one-man act more with Johan “Shamaatae” Lahger’s peculiarity than with his music. From releasing a music video frequently featured among metal’s cheesiest to releasing an album absurdly titled ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ, his minor exploits will perhaps always incline me to regard Arckanum with an eye towards the ridiculous. ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ did, however, receive some pretty gushing reviews (I never got around to listening to it enough to judge one way or the other), and when I saw that he’d released a new one I thought it due time to give him a shot.


Helvitt

Arckanum has a somewhat odd history musically as well. After releasing three full-length albums between 1995 and 1998, he took a decade long hiatus, not reappearing until 2008 and releasing a full length album every year since. (Sviga Læ, which was never brought to my attention, came out between ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ and Helvítismyrkr.)

In the meantime, Shamaatae has been an active writer on the subjects of “Chaos-Gnosticism” and “Anti-Cosmic Satanism”. A scholar in his field I’m sure. Whatever all that means, it apparently falls into a similar boat as the rituals practiced by fellow Swedes Dissection and Watain. Jon Nödtveidt took his own life in proclaimed accord with such teachings, and though I can never resist a tasteless joke that he had listened to the final studio cut of Reinkaos for the first time moments before his death, suffice to say these guys take themselves seriously.

One might expect that sort of intensity and personal conviction to be reflected in the music.


Nifldreki

Throughout Helvítismyrkr though, I’m not really hearing it. The album is in no sense bad, but it rarely surpasses the generic. Neither the song writing nor the atmosphere in which it is presented conjure for me much beyond a decent musician’s create outlet. He fails to take me beyond himself.

The album does have some catchy feature riffs however, Nifldreki being a prime example, and, the slow grind In Svarta aside, Shamaatae maintains a breakneck pace throughout the majority of each track, giving Helvítismyrkr a particular coherence and consequent appeal. Again, there is absolutely nothing bad about this work, I just had higher hopes.


Svartr ok Þursligr

Helvítismyrkr’s high point almost beyond debate is Svartr ok Þursligr. The breaks in the opening riff come in hard rock fasion that really drive the song, if in a peculiarly fun sort of way. Given the background, I was expecting the best tracks to be more on the esoteric side, but Shamaatae seems to be in his prime on Helvítismyrkr when he’s rocking out.

What propels the song from being merely more fun than the rest to being something really outstanding follows the transition about 3 minutes in. He incorporates a woeful, weeping violin that, aside from completely catching me off my guard, pairs up with the tremolo guitar with astounding success. It’s something I’ve never heard before in black metal, and the effect is a sort of tragedy in the positive sense–maybe not the vibe he intended to deliver, but one that certainly appeals. I can’t imagine it being sustained throughout an album without sounding over the top, so I wouldn’t encourage him to push for more of it in the future, but as a single instance it works exceptionally well.

I am not sufficiently well-versed in Arckanum’s catalog to personally recommend better efforts, but if the sparks of talent you’ve heard in these sample tracks entice you, ÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞÞ seems to be popularly regarded as his best work. As for Helvítismyrkr, it is a decent effort but nothing to brag about.

Review: Thantifaxath – Thantifaxath EP

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Thantifaxath are a new black metal band out of Toronto. They released their debut ep this year in cassette format on Dark Descent Records, and I think you will like it.


10,000 Years of Failure / Violently Expanding Nothing

The amount of diversity they’ve managed to cram into a five and a half minute long song (excluding the introduction here merged) is pretty amazing. The track, and most of the ep really, isn’t so much moody as thematic. It’s got a sort of sci-fi horror vibe throughout, apparent right from the bass riff introduction, and the ample mingling of melody in between epic black metal explosions almost gives the song a plot line. Even the choice of album cover, Nicéphore Niépce’s La cour du domaine du Gras (supposedly the first photograph ever taken), resembles something of an extra-terrestrial sighting. If the track title is any indication, this was likely their intent, and they pull it off well. Outer space and black metal are an uncommon mix, and one usually attempted through an emphasis on slow-moving, vast atmospherics. Violently Expanding Nothing (the youtube label “Violently Expanding Emptiness” is wrong; I’m taking the track title from the actual packaging) is, in contrast, gritty and abrasive, and all the more effective because of it.


Freedom is Depression

Thantifaxath definitely lay down their best card first, but the album’s other two tracks (both under five minutes long) carry much of the same appeal. Freedom is Depression, peculiar title aside, continues to give me that sort of b-side horror flick vibe, especially with its low production atmospheric guitars. The main riff following the introduction calls to mind recent Enslaved, and that might be the only clear comparison I can make of this album to anything else in particular. It’s among the most unique black metal I’ve heard in a while, and it makes excellent use of relatively low production value to create an eery, unearthly vibe.

Keep an eye out for these guys. They’re brand new, and I suspect their best is yet to come.

Review: Craft – Void

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Here it is five days into October and I haven’t covered a black metal album yet. I ought to be ashamed. Allow me to belatedly kick off my favorite season in good proper satan-worshiping style.


Serpent Soul

Craft’s new album kicks ass. I might go on long analytic rants right and left about modern black metal hybrid bands standing at the forefront of innovative new metal today, but when it comes time to dig out the really sinister shit, tradition still carries the flag. Craft have spent the last ten years proving that corpse paint and spiked bracers still have a legitimate roll in black metal.

Void starts out by punching you in the nuts, then Mikael Nox gets about an inch from your face and compliments your tears with spittle while John Doe plants his foot on your chest and breaks out the tremolo. By the two minute mark they’ve finished chalking a pentagram around you and the ritual begins. If this transition strikes you initially as a disappointment, leaving the opening brutality behind too soon, just give it some time. As the three minute mark approaches, the tremolo guitar invokes a brief vision of awe and terror, soon to be lost in a chaotic haze. If you haven’t moved by now, you’ll probably find your intestines dangling from the ceiling beams.

The only real disappointment in the entire song is the fact that it ends.


The Ground Surrenders

It’s not that Serpent Soul, or any other track on the album for that matter, is aesthetically above standard. As song writers they follow the black metal status quo, and if you don’t like this genre of music they’re not the sort of band you’re likely to make an exception for. Rather, what makes Void as a whole so great is all in the details of delivery. The vocals, guitars, and drums all merge perfectly to create a single solid sound in which nothing seems out of place. It’s all so tight that every dynamic shift delivers; the impact never falls short of their intentions.


Succumb to Sin

Granted plenty of black metal bands have preferred moderate tempos, it’s one of Craft’s great consistencies on Void to always take maximum advantage of the sort of heaviness a slow and steady plod can offer. It’s almost as if the tension of each track is measured, with the opening brutality as the measuring stick. Any time it cuts back you’re practically guaranteed a return. Whatever’s built up is always properly released, whether it be in the form of the explosion at the end of The Ground Surrenders or through the more subtle bursts employed on Succumb to Sin. Add a quick guitar solo at the end to let out the leftovers, and here you’ve got an exceptionally well-formed song.

I’ve talked this album up quite a lot, but let me be clear as to why. It’s not great in any of the ways I usually get fired up about; it’s pretty plain and simple black metal. Like Total Soul Rape and Terror Propaganda (I never actually knew Fuck the Universe existed until I started writing this), it will probably be a fall staple for me when I’m itching for good black metal with no trappings, but the only thing I’m really going to remember is that I liked it. I’ll forget the intricacies of the songs that I’ve picked up on while writing this pretty quickly. But what really struck me when I paid attention to it (and what might subconsciously continue to draw me to their first two albums) is not ingenuity but the quality of their musicianship. This album shines because every member of the band does the right things at the right times every time, feeding off of each other’s performance to create a really tight, unified sound. It’s just really well crafted music, no pun intended.

Review: Flogging Molly – Speed of Darkness

Posted on by necromoonyeti

Dave King, the frontman to Flogging Molly, is going to turn 50 in two months, and the band’s debut studio album is barely a decade old. King has a long musical history pre-dating Swagger, playing in various bands that included former members of Motörhead and Krokus, and he was actively involved in writing and performing Irish folk music by at least 1993. So while Speed of Darkness might only be the band’s fifth studio album, spanning only six years, it’s something of a late career effort.

Float disappointed me. It had nothing of the immediate appeal of Swagger, Drunken Lullabies, or Within a Mile of Home. Though the music and lyrics might have been appealing after a few reflective listens, I never felt compelled to put in the effort. What I liked most about the band was missing and I frankly didn’t have the time in 2008 to dig deeper. The thought immediately came to me that their first three albums had been the product of a lifetime of creative creations that had simply not been fully developed into recorded songs, and that on Float, in contrast, for the first time Flogging Molly had to produce new material from scratch. Given King’s age, perhaps the four years between Within a Mile of Home and Float just weren’t sufficient to really develop something noteworthy.

But again, 2008 was an off year for me in general. Speed of Darkness I am at more liberty to assess.


Speed of Darkness

What I noticed immediately was a more explosive sound. The opening song kicks off with a sort of energy that I never picked up on passively listening to Float. It definitely grabbed my attention. But while a part of me was excited by this return, the actual content of the song had me worried. It seemed a bit too heavy for its own good. That the song is meant to be a little more dark than usual might be implied by its title, but really, what Irish folk song isn’t dark? In a style so permeated by a morbid sense of humor, the song’s serious tone just felt shallow. The folk takes second stage to the punk/hard rock, and the sort of anger King expresses is neither particularly poignant nor encased in music sufficiently care-free to drive its point home.

It lacked the means by which Irish folk conveys such a heightened feeling of sincerity. I didn’t feel like whatever King had to say got through. This sort of shallowness, not of thought necessarily, but at least of its conveyance, would be my watchword for the rest of the album.


Revolution

I didn’t have to look far. Revolution probably wasn’t the best choice of songs to follow up Speed of Darkness, because it only served to confirm my suspicions. The whole power to the proletariat theme permeating the album is presented so narrowly that it seems a century distant from reality, never mind that the issues they wish to confront are quite active. This song attempts to tap into sentiments that may have stood strong in the industrial age, but I question whether their target audience, in spite of being able to relate to the problems King addresses, really view their hardships in terms of a simple class struggle. Americans aren’t starving in the streets of Detroit, reading Marx, and forming up political discussion groups. Times are tough, but the issues manifest elsewhere, and “I lost my job, it’s time for a revolution,” is an absurdly shallow (if anything counterrevolutionary) solution to modern concerns.

I’m not picking sides or calling Flogging Molly out on anything, I’m just saying that the lyrical theme which appears on Revolution and continues to surface throughout the album isn’t nearly so inspiring as they would like it to be, and as, given another year of brainstorming before entering the studio, I think they could have made it.

Hand in hand, the music is a bore.


The Power’s Out

But my negative remarks take precedence only because their previous albums were so good and because they seem to be trying so hard. Speed of Darkness is not a dead weight; it’s a mish-mash. That initial impression on the opening song–that feeling that something of their old energy was back–was not a complete illusion. The Power’s Out is at least one song entirely on par with their old material. The sort of shallowness I sense in the album’s overarching message is entirely forgiven when given to lyrics and music that are effectively moving. What I hear in this song that Speed of Darkness and Revolution lack is earnest conviction. This is the sort of song where you can feel King’s passion. He’s speaking from the heart, not just regurgitating rhetoric, and the whole band seems to feed off of it. The lines are better composed, the music better written, the delivery more convincing… There’s a central spark igniting their real talent.


A Prayer for Me in Silence

And while I think it safe to call Speed of Darkness their most rock-oriented album to date, snubbing the folk side of their sound far more than I would have liked, there are a number of nice little acoustic numbers filling the gaps that serve well to warm an otherwise bleak collection of songs.

Speed of Darkness is one of those textbook average albums. It’s never “bad” but frequently bores, pays ample homage to the generic, struggles lyrically to live up to its own standards, but does occasionally break into something above the bar. As I said, Dave King is about to turn 50, and to call it a disappointment would overlook the fact that he has a long, successful career behind him. It can be hard to accept this, given that they’ve only released five albums, but in context it’s perhaps unfair to even compare this to the likes of Swagger. I mean no one says of a new Iron Maiden album “It’s got nothing on Number of the Beast,” or refuses to enjoy it on those grounds. There comes a certain point in an artist’s career where average becomes appreciable, and you have to respect him for at least trying to keep it real.

But this is a band, not a one-man project, and furthermore I have no insight into King’s state of mind. If he still feels like his musical peak has yet to come and he has something to prove, and the rest of the band is with him, then I challenge him to do better. If they’re just out there having fun and aren’t trying to surpass their finer hours, then Speed of Darkness is a respectable work. Just nothing special.