------ ---------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------- +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | .......METALSCENE CENTRAL PRESENT'S........ | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ ----------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------- ------ _______ ______ _____ _____ ___ ___ |\ ___ \ ___ ^\ | __ | | __ \ | __ \ / _ \ | | | \ | | | |__) / | |_\| | | \ \ | |_) ) | |_| | | | | \| | | __ < | / | | | | | __ < | ___ | | | | | | | \ \ | |_/| | |_/ / | | \ \ | | | | | | | |\ | | | /_/ |____| |____/ |_| /_/ |_| |_| |_/ |_| | | | / \ | |/ \| Issue 01/2000 http://metalscene.tsx.org galahad@netppl.fi / gregjesko@clds.net / amanojaku@death-star.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION -------------------------------------------------------------------------- It has been almost one year since the last issue of Red Rain. First it went to one issue in two months, but died before the issue came out. This was of course caused by R.E.D. going offline. In the end of 1999, Metalscene Central was opened, but Red Rain remained dead until now. Many great plans flied around like changing Red Rain from ASCII to HTML format, which was actually abandoned just after Gorjr came to MC staff. We have huge work of improving Red Rain back to the same level where it was in the moment it temporarily died and after that getting even better issue by issue. It has been so long that I forgot how to make this magazine and it concerned me for a while, but fortunately Gorjr saved my ass by taking the burden of editor. He did a good job with Red Rain and I eagerly wait for future issues. Without more bullshit I wish you good reading. Until next issue. - Galahad -------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE IRC QUOTE OF THE MONTH -------------------------------------------------------------------------- <[Gretar]> efnet? fine with me... efnet works fine for me, i'm an op on 2 channels there <[Gretar]> including #Metalmp3 :) bleh I'm op on #gaybigcocks <[Gretar]> thats nice galahad, thats nice <[Gretar]> :) ;P <[Gretar]> we are all different somehow -------------------------------------------------------------------------- NEWS -------------------------------------------------------------------------- * ORGANIZATION CHANGES There are some major changes in the Metalscene Central organization. This is the new complete structure: - Galahad (leader, organizer, pr) - Gorjr (organizer, editor) - Amanojaku (main reviewer) - Hybrido (reviewer) - Daoloth (reviewer) - Dragon (reviewer) - Ari (site design, HTML) - Samoth (IRC support, bot maintainance) - Hakan (Scene events maintainance, pr) - Crux Humanus (Additional support) Note that Crux Humanus has parly resigned, because he has no time to work effectively while he is in army. Nocri has resigned due to personal problems. * WANTED: REVIEWERS Metalscene Central is looking for two new reviewers. If you are interested, please contact Galahad, Gorjr or Amanojaku. Previous experience working as a reviewer or judge will give you an advantage. Remember to mention them in your mail if you have any. * MODULICA - TRIBUTE TO METALLICA Hakan Productions has organized four tribute disks. Three to Iron Maiden, one to Black Sabbath and now the work for the fifth is going. If you're interested, check http://hakprod.tsx.org * R.E.D. ALIVE In the latest IRC meeting it was decided to resurrect R.E.D. because there were no more compilation music disks creating organization anymore. New music disk project begins possibly in the late autumn 2000. You can access R.E.D. site via Metalscene Central site. You can download old music disks from the same page. Thanks to Grave and Necrocannibal for providing space for them. Thanks to Hakan who also put up R.E.D. disks on Hakan Productions site. * TOP METAL TRAX Metalmod.domination.org is dead, but Kosm saved the day by starting a new metal mod archive named Top Metal Trax. URL to this new shiny archive is http://topmetal.cjb.net. Site contains also tracker profiles. * TRACKED METAL COVERS TMC is a place to distribute tracked metal covers. Site is maintained by Assassin. Note that you must have your own web space for your covers, but you can get a lot of attention by linking your cover tune from TMC. TMC URL is http://w3.to/tmc * ANTICHRIST AWARDS 1999 This time we had three categories, individuals, groups and contributors and the winners were: Individuals: Hybrido Groups: Funeral Pyre Contributors: Metalscene Central and Necrocannibal * BETRAYER QUIT Betrayer quit but he still hangs around as NiC and has even told rumors about new sample packs coming. Stay tuned. * HYBRIDO'S BACK In three weeks Hybrido should return from the dark dungeons of army. Who knows, we might even finally hear the long awaited new music disk. * ARI = VANTAGE In case somebody didn't know yet. Vantage changed his name to plain Ari. * REVIEWS Because this is the first issue in a long time it's good to go through some reviewing principles. Singles must be reported to Amanojaku. Mail to mc-reviews@yeayea.com and tell the URL to your song. Music disks are reviewed automatically from now on so don't bother reporting them. It's enough if you just put an addy on scene events message board at MC site. * MP3 TAKES OVER TAKEOVER Maz reports: "Today I made a decision. Caused by the organizers of the (former?) demoparty Takeover 2000. They kicked all tracker music compos and accept MP3 only. They justify that with the 'evolving scene'. Crraaappp! Realtime calculated music is an essential part of a demo as well as realtime calculated graphics! I never saw VST or Logic at any musician's screen at a demo party - I see FastTracker and ImpulseTracker on 95% of the screens, the other 5% are ModPlug or Buzz! Is it possible to ignore this simple fact? Which evolution of which scene do they talk about? OK, no further comment, they will have to cancel that ****** decision anyway. Now my decision: there will be a 'tracked worx 2000' CD. And it will be tracker music only, no MP3's allowed. Open source only. FastTracker, ImpulseTracker, NoiseTrekker, MadTracker, Buzz, ModPlug, AXS ... welcome. This will be my active contribution in stopping the MP3-only trend. I'm still against *any* restriction in musicians tools by sick rules. But I know what the target of my tracked worx series is: being an idea- and learning-source for people. And a compiled MP3 doesn't serve this purpose. The tracking community will not continue to grow without swapping their songs in source format. That makes our scene unique and appealing to new people, nothing else." Source: Modplug Central news. http://www.modplug.com Organizer note: So I am not the only one who is worried about the scene future. * DTC FUTURE Distorted Tracks Contest 1 has been a success. This means naturally that it won't be the only big compo we will organize. As soon as we have the resources available again, we will start Distorted Tracks Contest 2. * IRC MEETING VI IRC Meeting VI was held on 06.05.2000. Thanks to all who were there. It was fun once again. Meeting log is included with the magazine. * IMPULSE TRACKER 3 Delay after delay, the work for IT3 is progressing extremely slowly. This time it was caused by broken motherboard. Let's hope IT3 will be out before year 2020 :-). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ARTICLES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ LAMERS VS. LAMERS by Galahad I've been watching the message board lately a bit more than I usually do and I began to read some messages that were more or less abusive against certain people. I couldn't believe my eyes because I really thought that this shit is over after the messes in the past. Unfortunately and/or fortunately scene gets new members almost daily and most of them are really nice and cool people, but there's always, and there is no exception in this, there's always couple of morons and homieboys who want to feel themselves cool and great. They can't track well or they can't do a good web site and that way earn some respect on the scene. What they do? They attack against those who have already earned their respect and who are actually trying to help new people by giving them advices and telling them what they are maybe doing wrong. A normal person takes this constructive criticism as a positive thing and follows the advice. I know personally many folks who have become very respected members of our little scene this way. This propably just one percent, but unfortunately the loudest percent however, take this criticism as a reason to start shouting against others about being "so superior". This of course almost always leads to a conflict. Why they do this? Simply because they want to draw as much attention to them as possible, no matter if they make everybody hate them. It doesn't matter what kind of fame they get. Of course best way to prevent them from getting any attention is by ignoring them. This however is quite difficult if several abusive messages are being sent to the board. Thing that makes me rather amused is that many people actually bother to reply on these messages. Maybe I've misunderstood it all and maybe we need that kind of stupid messages to make the message board more popular. After all it's just one message board among thousands. I'm not sure what I should do, fight back or actually support it. To take this subject a bit further and making it concern the famous song thievery also. In this case it's not just abusive, childish and stupid messages on a meaningless message board. This time it's modifying other people's work claiming it to be thief's own. In this case it's just the same, some poor loser can't track good stuff by himself so he has to steal other's work and release them under his own handle. Again someone wants to be noticed, but in this case it's a lot more serious than with the board. Imagine, somebody took a song where you have spent time and work to make it sound good and some motherfucker really comes and steals it. In my opinion that kind of losers don't deserve more than a bullet in the head. This article has been written as one person's opinion about things happening around metal scene. If you have your own opinion which is different than this, please send it to me and it will be published here. - Galahad galahad@netppl.fi --------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION TO THE MO3 MODULE FORMAT By Hakan Jerning For over a year ago it was told that Impulse Tracker 3 should been finished, and it would contain a new module format with MP3 streaming samples, IT3 is still not finished. But now we have a new module format developed by Ian Luck, the man behind XMPlay, that stores the samples in MP3 format. To convert your XM/IT/S3M/MTM/MOD to MO3 you use the program called BASS, you also have to download one of the MP3 encoders Fraunhofer MP3Enc or BladeEnc, Fraunhofer is told to be better but it's shareware (limited to encoding 30 seconds of audio data) and BladeEnc is Freeware. Put the MP3 encoder in the same directory as mo3.exe to make the command line option to work (since the Fraunhofer encoder is named mp3encdemo31.exe or something you have to rename it to mp3enc.exe). When you compress your module you can choose how much you want to compress each sample (bitrate) to not lose quality noticed by ear, or you can just choose how much you want to compress the whole module. MisterX and Oliver of Modplug told us that looping wouldn't work with MP3 samples. The way it works with MO3 is that it converts the MP3 samples back to WAVs before it starts to play them. This is also good for those who not have very fast computers, since the playing don't get affected just the loading time. With XMPlay version 1.6 we now can play MO3 modules, the player has a quite weird and messy interface and it takes a while before you understands it. For those of you who have 1024x768 resolution or more I recommend to use the double size interface. XMPlay can play the formats MO3, IT, XM, S3M, MOD, MTM & MP3. With plugins it can also play modules straight from ZIP, RAR, ARJ & LHA archives. So this format is probably what the metalscene needs now when many track modules with real guitars and vocals end up around 2-5Mb which has lead to the fact that some make MP3s of their modules instead, but imagine that the MO3 would be even smaller than the MP3 of the same song. Now there is also a unMO3 program that converts MO3s back to their original format. Here is a qoute followed by a table by Kosmikko about MO3 compressions: The MO3Šs are compressed with "no quality loss in compression heard by my deaf ears and lo-fi speakers", so I checked the every sample that they sound as they should, even more compression without quality loss is possible when tracker knows the correct sample rate for every sample; I didn't have time or motivation do to that. Amanojakus track represent the "huge" module and Warlords "average size" module. As you can see, they both compress pretty nice. If you don't believe, get BASS and fiddle with it! +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | MODULE | ZIP COMPRESSED | ZIP COMPRESSED | % OF ORGINAL | | | MODULE SIZE | MO3 SIZE | | +--------------------------+----------------+----------------+---------------+ | Crystal by Warlord | 296 kb | 111 kb | 37.5 % | | A New Breed by Amanojaku | 1,212 kb | 352 kb | 29.0 % | +--------------------------+----------------+----------------+---------------+ * Note by Hakan: Those songs have lots of 8-bit samples and MP3s are 16-bit, so BASS have to convert the 8-bit samples to 16-bit before compressing them. A real good example would be a module with only 16-bit samples, like Cadavers Planet Caravan (from Modules In Black) the original tune was a XM module with only 16-bits samples on 5.9Mb (unzipped) and the MO3 version was only 469kb (the MO3 is only 8% of original filesize, both unzipped). Requirements: DirectX 3 or above, Windows 95/98/2000 or Windows NT 4.0 (with service pack 4) Links: BASS & XMPlay : http://www.un4seen.com/music/ Archive plugins : http://sorry.vse.cz/maz/archives/xmp-arcs.zip Fraunhofer MP3Enc : http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/mp3enc/ BladeEnc : http://bladeenc.mp3.no/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ MAIN REVIEWERS COLUMN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Holy shit, we're back! Man it feels like it's been years since I've done this column, and it almost has. Yes, metalscene was back on track in November, but Red Rain was put on hold for various reasons. Hybrido is out for the moment because of his army training (looser, cough, cough). Nocri resigned for personal reasons, and that leaves, well, uhm...me. I do have lots of time to write reviews, but there is another problem. I am currently stuck in Romania (geesh) and the phone lines here are fucked up, to say the least. I have a nice new 56k modem, but I connect at 19200. Very nice indeed :) This is why those really big disks haven't been reviewed. Actually, that's why the review section is so damn small this month. Next month will be better though, because I will be back in good 'ol sweden. Ok, so now on to more important things. As you all should know by now, if you want your song/disk/ass reviewed, you should send a request to mc-reviews@yeayea.com. In this letter you MUST include the FULL url to the song. I don't have time to stroll around various crew sites just 'cause you are a lazy person or becuase you want more hits on your page. Ah..good, that's settled then. Second of all, make sure the URL is CORRECT. Since the birth of our lord (god/satan/mom/whoever) I have recieved 53255325 faulty urls, and then before these songs could not be reviewed, so please, pretty please with sugar on top, check those urls! Third of all, don't waste my time. I get some mighty stupid mail from time to time. For instance this month I got a couple of letters that said: "Hey, please review these 2 songs in RR ok?" And that was it. No url, no webpage, it didnt even say who the f^&k it was from. There was quite alot of this bull in my mailbox this month, so I decided to review some songs that had not been review requested as well (actually they were already on my HD). I hope you dont mind. Alright! Now I'm done bitching. The review system has changed back to the standard 1-10 score, with the difference that we (me) reviewers are now pretty ruthless. Scores will be kept pretty low, so don't be disencouraged to download a song that got a 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever. In other news, ehmm, ah fuck it. On with the reviews! Until next time people..... Stay Evil /AmanojakU ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SINGLE REVIEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Song: Fading To Lies By: Surreal Score: 6 Very fast and one of the best Surreal tunes. Slightly different from his melodic stuff. Very catchy riffs combined with crushing speed makes this song a classic. This is a fine example of simple but powerful song. Everything works very well. Stretching hardly over three minutes, this song can be very destructive for your furniture. ------------------------------ Song: The Fallen Ones By: Surreal Score: 4 A song that ended Surreal's huge wave of new stuff. Unfortunately it's also the worst one. Quite boring and ordinary melodic death stuff. In my opinion the guitars are too quiet compared to bass as well as the drums. It's not a bad tune, but not what we have used to hear from Surreal. In the end there are some synths used to give it some more life, but it doesn't help the tune very much. ------------------------------ Song: Angel Of October By: Surreal Score: 8 After a long break, Surreal finally releases a new tune. Actually he was doing a solo music disk, but it seems like it never got finished. Angel Of October is surprisingly slow tune with piano and nice heavy guitars. Very enjoyable song indeed. Quite short one, but because it doesn't change very much it's just good to keep it short. Surreal still hasn't gone into vocal business but I think it's just a matter of time. Good work. ------------------------------ Song: From Nowhere To Nowhere By: Downshift Score: 2 Hmm, ok this song starts off with a riff that I am almost certain has been ripped from Sepultura or somethin'. The guitars are heavily distorted and sound like a dog being screwed upp the a$%^. Tracking isnt's bad, but the song is very repetetive and very boring. There are only two riffs in this song. The sepultura sound-alike, and something else, which isn't really a riff, just chords on E and F I guess. Drumwork is pretty good, but still quite repetetive. If the next release from Downshift is as repetetive as this one, I'll be forced to use violence :) If you have trouble sleeping, check this out. ------------------------------ Song: We Will Never Forget By: Urgh Score: 4 Man, this is some loong tune. 8.48! I dunno if itŠs a record, but itŠs the longest I've seen for atleast a year. What can be said, well the intro is abit pale, but the "beginning" riff is really catchy. When I first listened to the song I thought it was a load of crap, but after going through it a few times it is actually not bad. Vocals are a sort of mix between growl and howl. There are some really good riffs in this tune, and if this was played for "real" I think it would be a great tune. Despite the songlenght, the song does not get very boring, since there is alot of variation between riffs, and ofcourse vocals. Towards the end of the song there is an acoustic part which I really like. Although the guitars are not really synced, you donŠt notice if you don't listen closely (which I always do :)). Ok, maybe I'm giving the song too much credit, because fact remains that the guitar samples sound like they come form that classic Amiga game "Harley Davidson", and the tracking has a few flaws (drumming is abit weird). To sum it up, the song would be fuckin great with some real guitars. Check it out. ------------------------------ Song: The Ladies By: Zack featuring Jaxon Score: 4 Hmm it's pretty hard to define what kind of music this is. It starts with some fast and high pitched drumming (which I really don't like at all by the way :). Guitars are good, like usual when Zack is on the case :) Vocals are pretty cool. It really sounds like this Jaxon fella is really tearing his vocalcords apart. What can I say, the song lacks "feeling". With only 4 or so lines of lyrics it gets pretty damn repetetive. Although there are some female grunts and great guitarwork by Zack it doesn't lift the song. I dunno, could be that this just isn't my kind of music. Maybe I'll just have to get drunk, go to San Fransisco and catch "Lords of Death" live to change my opinion :) ------------------------------ Song: Where Shadows Lie By: Skarf Score: 6 Skarf is back to enlighten us once more with his knowledge in everything that has to do with cool stuff :) This time it's primitive blackmetal, and it is pretty damn good. Riffs are simple but effective (who wants trali-dadi-da riffs in BM anyway? :). Skarfs vocals are really good, especially in the chorus. Hehe it seems that Skarf always has something new to teach us. Every time I donwload one of his songs and read the info I learn something new about all kinds of not-that-important-stuff-but-cool-to-know. In this song we learn where the name "Burzum" came from etc. Once again, the chorus kicks arse: Ash nazg durbatuluk Ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk Burzum-ishi krimpatul Black fuckin' Metal! ------------------------------ Song: Under The Holy Sun By: IceLizard Score: 5 Another good tune from Ice, but I think he has stuck a bit too much with the same style. In Flames may be a good band, but amount of Ice's similar tunes is getting close to three BOTF disks and at this point it always gets a bit irritating. Very good samples combined with very good tracking and nice melodies won't save this song from the feeling of eternal repeativeness. ------------------------------ Song: No hope for Tomorrow By: IceLizard Score: 3 I remember a year or so back when Ice released his 4 song disc, and what a great fuckin' disc that was. It is truly one of my all time favourites. After that though he started spitting out release after release, and none of them could even get close to touching the songs on that disc (I forget the name :). No hope for Tomorrow is a slow song with a few acoustic parts. It sounds good, it really does, but it is still boring. I think what IceLizard needs is a change of samples perhaps? It's like listening to an In Flames Record without vocals or having sex with a dead biatch :) Find someone to growl for you Ice. ------------------------------ Song: Grin Reaper By: Icelizard Score: 5 Now this is better. Grin Reaper is a fast and agressive tune, and it is actually very catchy. I can only Imagine how fuckin' cool this tune would be with some cool growling on top of it. Somwhere in the chorus, (I think), there is some really weird drumming. The kickdrum just goes mad. I don't want to be a picky bitch but it sounds weird. Otherwise it's kickass At The Gates style stuff all the way. These Betrayer samples are starting to make me a tad ill though. Like I said earlier, get someone to growl for ye man :) ------------------------------ Song: The Scatologist By: Cadaver Score: 7 More thrashy tune from Cadaver. This is actually the style I used to hear from Cadaver first and also more familiar to the fans of Goatwarriors which still lives in most of our hearts. I can't help it, but The Scatologist reminds me a lot of Sadist, Cadaver's older track from the last Goatwarriors disk. Lyrics are very funny and they are growled with the right feeling which fits to this tune like a finger to Amanojaku's ass. Good work Cadaver. ------------------------------ Song: Runkaten Munaa By: Cadaver Score: 1 (as a real song), 4 (as a joke) Cadaver released suddenly a new joke song for our great joy. It's very short and very power. Lyrics contain only one line which goes like "runkaten munaa". What a surprise. By the way "runkaten munaa" means somewhat "jerking off" in english. I laughed a lot when I heard this for the first time, but it doesn't last listening several times. ------------------------------ Song: When World Attacks By: Vantage Score: 8 This tune was the last of Vantage before he changed his handle to simple Ari. When World Attacks is the most brutal one I've ever heard from Vantage and I gotta say that it's damn good. Fast aggressive guitars carry the tune onward while Hybrido's awesome vocals paint the visions of dark future in listener's mind. Everything in this tune is good. Samples, tracking, vocals, overall song. If you're into not so melodic stuff then you must download this. Only bad thing I was able to find was that the tune itself was a bit short. ------------------------------ Song: Belated By The Lurking Shadows By: Ari Score: 6 In the beginning there's very Vantagish intro which doesn't really lead you to anywhere, instead it's just an evil plan to cause a shock to the listener when the tune itself begins. Rageous guitars force you against the wall. Awesome tracking work, but this tune surely could use some vocals (which Ari also makes nowadays). Belated continues on the path that When World Attacks started and is a great sequel to it. Bad sides of this song are length and repeativeness. Solo is short, but good. ------------------------------ Song: Reflection By: Blue Shade Score: 7 First song with Blue Shade's own guitar samples and it's a very pleasant surprise. Everything works fine and only bad thing I found was that it was just a little bit repeative. Guitar samples are very good and the piano part begins smoothly after harder part. If you would ask me to categorize this tune I would tell you to do it by yourself. I suppose it's something between power, thrash, melodic death and atmospheric. You have to listen it to understand. Very good work and the violin in the end is just magnificent. This tune should have been longer. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ DISK REVIEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ EP: Burn The World By: Dendroid and Things Unseen Score: 3 1. Infested Cerebral Cortex Things Unseen 2. Burn From Inside DendroiD 2. As Dusk Conquers The Dawn Things Unseen 4. Come Back To Life(outro) DendroiD Since I first started reviewing songs for RR I've gotten crap from alot of the "Death" scene people. I don't listen to much death, I can admit that, but I do really like Cannibal Corpse and Cryptopsy (although Cryptospy is not real death). This stuff should have been reviewed by Hybrido, but he's jerking of in the army now. It is in my opinion that no good can come out of these Nintendo - 8 bit samples that are supposed to sound like guitars. Not many people agree with me, but I don't give a rats ass right now..... Infested.. is probably the best song imo, but it sounds more like hardcore than death in my ears. No, I'm lying...hehe..the best song is Dusk...it actually sounds like a song :) But it's very short. In fact all the songs are not more than about 2 minutes. I can't describe all these weird over-under-pitched riffs, you just have to download yourself and listen. I just wish that all the totalsuperevil death guys could get their arseholes in gear and do some serious growling. Even if the guitarsamps suck, it would really lift the songs. There are a few "vocals" on this EP though. A laugh in Burn...and a growl or two in Come.... Yawn...Gimme some crack... ------------------------------ Disc: Murderampage By: Armagon Score: 3 1.As I look upon the gate of Erishkigal............Things Unseen 2.Fucked with a broken bottle......................Things Unseen 3.Diabolic trial by fire...........................Things Unseen 4.The one under the grave..........................Aeuk 5.Hatefeuled massacre..............................Things Unseen 6.Elders fuck the peasants.........................Dendroid, Narco-Z 7.Stormed..........................................Aeuk 8.We bite(cover)...................................Things Unseen First of all, respect to Things Unseen for the songtitle "Fucked with a borken Bottle". I wish I had come up eith that one :) 1. Intro. Not much to say, some lightning effects, moody guitars, you know the drill. But it's good though. 2. Yes, that wonderful song title :) This ain't bad actually. I really like the beginning when the drums stop and some sort of string sample fades in, and then the mayhem starts. Ok those darn guitarsamps are still there. There is a cool "nintendo" solo towards the end. Cool. 3. Hmm the beginning sounds like somethin' I've heard before...can't quite point my finger at it though. Sadly this isn't half as good as Fucked... It's long, and yes, pretty much a sleeping pill. Hehe just check out those kickdrum stunts..I would like to see someone try that for real. 4. From what I can remember, Aeuk has been tracking for what, ten years?? Respect to you for that man. There are some grunts and growls in this, but I guess that's about it. Man it sounds weird. I'm not sure if there are any guitars in this, it sounds more like bees flying around in my computer :) Repetetive and weeeiiirrddd.... 5. Now this actually has some melody. Really fuckin' cool starting riff. Despite the gitsamps it's a pretty good tune. Man that first stuff is good. Hehe I could say download the disk just for that riff, but I won't :) Hmm the other parts are ok, but I promise you will just be waiting for that first part to come back hehe.... 6. I'm curious what kind of drugs amragon provides for their members :) This has that weird coke-feeling that Aeuk had in his song. Some growling or somethin is in here aswell. Hehe I just find it amusing... Send me some of that dope plz :) 7. Yep, this song is alot better than the last one. Guitarsamples are quite good, and the riffs are kewl if I may say so. Some occasional growling fill up this high speed tune. What's up with this "T"""rgh" stuff anyway? Has anyone ever heard of something called lyrics, that perhaps mean something? Didn't think so :) 8. We bite...hmm..yes, this truly bites. Argh after 37 or so seconds something goes terribly wrong with one of the guitars. Sounds like when I stick bottles up my arse :) There is a nice little solo in this song though. I haven't heard the original so I really can't say much about it. Bite me. Overall this is an ok disc I guess :) Like I said earlier, I'm not really into this death stuff, but there are some songs and one perticular riff that i really like hehe... I'd really like to hear a song with some real growls and some lyrics.. The Uarghhhh stuff gets kinda old....really fast.... ---------------------- Disk: To The Karjala By: Vantage Score: 9 1. Intro 2. Live With Eternity 3. Suicide Noose Of Lalli 4. Ousted 5. Outro First of all, this disk is special because it's tracked to one single XM file. It starts with nice piano intro which leads tenderly to the first song. All tunes on this disk are more or less soft metal which is very familiar from new Sentenced albums. This disk doesn't need vocals which would just propably ruin its beauty. It's full of melody and catchy riffs. So why I didn't give it full 10 points then? Well, not so much good that there wouldn't fit any bad in it. Disk ends with the same piano melody which has been heard already in the beginning. Unfortunately extremely perfect work is required in all areas to get the highest score. Strings are also quite bad from time to time. However, I highly recommend that you get this disk if you don't already have it. ------------------------------ Disk: Christmassmurder By: Storm Of Belial Score: 8 1.In The Throes Of War............................Balzeloth 2.Another World...................................Dismal 3.The Forest Of Fears.............................Wolfheart 4.Henget..........................................Nocri 5.Ode To Winternight..............................Dismal 6.The Journey To Nowhere..........................Wolfheart 7.The Fatal Desire................................Balzeloth 8.Ad Noctum.......................................Dismal 9.Kaksi Aurinkoa..................................Nocri 10.Total Perversion...............................Wolfheart 11.Howl...........................................Balzeloth Eventhough this disk is already rather old it's still sounds very fresh and new. Storm Of Belial didn't disappoint us with their second disk. In The Throes Of War- intro starts the disk with quite average feeling, being very bad intro for any disk. Fortunately Dismal fixes this with his awesome tune named Another World. He has created the most sick and twisted atmosphere with huge amount of synths and already in this second track, all who liked the first Belial disk feel themselves very familiar with this. The Forest Of Fears- begins with sad guitar melody and keeps the sad mood on for whole tune. Very good and well tracked tune which however is ruined a bit with repeating the same almost continuously. Belial's new member, Wolfheart, has done a very good job with it anyway. Wolfheart- is followed by Nocri with his Henget track. It's a great athmospheric tune with more than interesting vocals. Ode To Winternight- is an ordinary black tune with no surprises being just well made black tune and The Journey To Nowhere is not better, though not worse either. Stable good work. Balzeloth's The Fatal Desire- offers the greatest piano track I've heard so far and I have to mention that this tune reminds me more than a lot of Balzeloth's older song named Lands Of Azeroth Burning. Very nice work and covers the bad intro well. Then we go fast again with Dismal and Nocri tunes Ad Noctum and Kaksi Aurinkoa, which gets to another level with Wolfheart's Total Perversion. Disk ends with Balzeloth's Howl. Slow acoustic tune which gently carries you back to reality when it ends. Indeed, Storm Of Belial has created even better disk than the first one and beside of the name and the intro, everything on this disk is good or awesome. If you happened to download In Semination Artificelle and liked it, then this is a must for you, if you didn't, download this and enjoy the high quality black experience with a bit of folk in it. ------------------------------------ Disk: Modules In Black By: Hakan Productions Score: 8 1.Black Sabbath (Skarf) 2.Lord Of This World (Razor) 3.Electric Funeral (Moonlight) 4.N.I.B. (Dragon) 5.Sweet Leaf (Razor) 6.Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (Malekith) 7.Planet Caravan (Cadaver) 8.Paranoid (ZXPKNOBB) After three Best Of The Fans disks which were all a tribute to Iron Maiden, Hakan finally changes the band to which he makes a tribute to. Selection just couldn't be much better than this. Black Sabbath truly deserves a tribute disk. Nice bunch of skilled trackers created this fantastic tribute to one of the grandfathers of metal. All songs from Skarf's Black Sabbath to ZXPKNOBB Paranoid are high quality stuff. Little exception makes Dragon's vocals which are no good when covering Black Sabbath. I was very surprised of Razor's extremely good work with Lord Of This World and Sweet Leaf. Moonlight's Electric Funeral worked well as did Malekith's Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Score went down also because there was one MO3 on the disk. Because of this, some extra work was needed to download XMPlay. Cadaver's Planet Caravan was great, but somehow I was disappointed. I expected a lot more from MO3. Is the compression rate of MO3 too cruel for the quality? Planet Caravan is good work from Cadaver, but it also really made me to doubt the chances of MO3. From all versions of Paranoid what I have heard ZXPKNOBB was one of the best. He has also begun to use his own guitar samples and I also noticed that from the times of Wintry Amazon his skills have improved about 100%. No complaints about this one. Overall Modules In Black beats most BOTF disks in quality, which shows some nice progression on the tracked metal scene in general. Or maybe it's just the heavier sound, who knows, but I highly recommend Modules In Black to every Black Sabbath fan and also to those who are not so big fans. It's truly worth of downloading. We start waiting for the new Modulica - Tribute to Metallica music disk very eagerly. ---------------------------- So this concludes this months review section. Once again i apologize for the small number of reviews, but this month I'm on my own, and with a totally fucked up connection. Next month will be better... Hail to the King, baby Stay Evil AmanojakU ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ INTERVIEWS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ASSASSIN INTERVIEW Hello assassin, how's it going? :) just fine thanx :) First thing that comes in mind is that I don't really remember when you appeared to metal scene, so tell us a bit about your history. okey... i started tracking in November 1997 after i had read it about some magazine. My favourite style was of course metal, and i composed it with Scream Tracker. After about one year (?) practising i founded RED's page and started to hang around in metalscene... hmm... what else you wanna know.. ? :) Hmm...scream tracker. You don't use it anymore? nope! it was really pain in the ass... it doesn't have any good tricks or anything :) which tracker has? :) impulse tracker :) it rules Ah...my mistake, I was 95% sure you used fast tracker hehe haven't never used it i've tried to learn how to use it.. but too hard... Alright, when and how you got the idea of founding Tracked Metal Covers site? and tell us about the site in general too I was wondering what can i do for metalscene... First i thought that maybe i can put up some mod archive, but that idea went cause there's many mod archives allready i wanted to make something special and something new so, i got this idea to have all metalmod covers to one place How one can get his cover to TMC archive? i hope that some day there will be some automatic submit-thingy, but nowdays just mailing me :) there's plenty of info in TMC page how to do it :) It's like a link archive? No actual files on your account? (or do you have 54938054938534 megs free space?) :) yes, just links... but that will maybe change too... (in my dreams :) actually just mailed and asked Spaceports to give more space for me :) Well I think it's a cool idea to have own archive for covers too, there's so much of them nowadays. yep maybe too much... :) it's hard work to put them all up I bet... Do you have any other "normal" group affilities? Emerald Visions, but i wouldn't say it normal :) just kidding... heheh Yeah, what's happening in Emerald Visions? Any big releases coming? well, nothing much right now... some single releases. But we just were talking with Kosm, that how about making another disk. No special plans yet Kosm didn't quit after all? he quit tracking, but he's still heart and soul of EV... :) i'm brains :) joke again.. damn i'm funny.. I see. Let's jump to another subject. What do you think about the fact that big scene sites are starting to advertise metal scene sites? it's fucking great! i'm sure that there's lot of people who doesn't know that there is a big metalscene... maybe all stop listening techno... :) too In our dreams I'm afraid :) yeah... Another hot subject. Are mods too big? Should MC and MDO accept MP3's or should we shove MP3's up to Amanojaku's ass? hmm.. this is really hard issue... Well could you accept MP3 covers to TMC? Mods are gonna get bigger and bigger all the time, but modem's and all are coming better too... yeah.. actually i've put one Vantage's mp3-cover there... it wasn't even tracked totally but i mentioned that in there You are totally right about that it's indeed a hard subject to handle, many people think that accepting MP3 kills tracking. hmm... But this is all about your opinion :) i don't think that it kills it, but maybe it does have bad affect but.. for example in TMC people want's to hear covers of their favourite band, they don't care is it xm, it or mp3 maybe there comes the limit when it's not tracked anymore in nothing way.. I hope not We'll see :) yeah Next one is a hard one :)...question that has been very popular on message board. hit me.. :) For short: Define brutal. argh :) :) for me, it's so fucking hard that i don't get it... :) hmm.. Is there any so fucking hard examples that you could mention? necrocannibals their latest disk was brutal.. i didn't like it :) heh ok...I'm going to ask this same difficult question from everybody in the near future :) i know in my mind what brutal is, but it's hard to explain it in ENGLISH! :) ok Back to TMC. What's the URL? oh... this is hard... let me think... http://w3.to/tmc that was it! :) heh Your advice to cover makers how to make a good one? eh.. :) Your advice to cover makers how to make a good one? i knew this would happen... :) hmm... couse music ain't you're own, you gotta have good samples.. and of course it have to sound like original, unless you're making some different version or something.. Do you think that tabs are required to do a good cover? well, if you got a good note ear, i don't think so Name the best tracker of covers. hah.. is this a joke? :) Betrayer heh no it's not a joke, but somehow I knew it's either Betrayer or Cadaver :) ok Last question then... aah :) Name your favorite alcohol-containing drink. beer (Karhu III) Alrightie...thanks for the interview Assassin :) thank you Assassin contact information: e-mail: jkantonen@hotmail.com personal URL: http://www.nettilinja.fi/~lkantone Tracked Metal Covers URL: http://w3.to/tmc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ HAKAN INTERVIEW Hi Hakan, let's start with traditional first question. Tell us about yourself, your past, your present and few words about future plans. Well I started to listen to tracked metal back in those days I called local BBS:es, it was almost only Betrayers Metallica mods back then. Later when I got Internet I checked out Betrayers ssite an found out how much better the mods there was. I also noticed he had 2 Iron Maiden modules. Later on I started a site called Iron Maiden Midi Archive, which only included 4 mods. But I found Dragons site, Cadavers and so on. Now it's more than 70 Iron Maiden mods in the archive and I have been working with these BOTF disks and so on. My future plans is to release more cover disks, but in tribute to other bands than Maiden Yeah, Maiden got a huge tribute. What's so special in Iron Maiden? :) Good question, actually I just wanted to make a website with different content than all others, and yes Maiden is my favorite band. Who do you consider as your favorite trackers? Cadaver, Amanojaku, Betrayer, Hybrido and Skarf Now that was a surprise. Mostly black metal trackers, so you like black metal too? Yeah, I like the tracked black metal very much, It's because of that they are very good vocalists too, and there is not many good "clear" vocalists on the scene. It was very nice to hear Zack's TA5 submussion though, the best clear vocals I have heard in tracked metal. Yeah, was a positive surprise to me too. One thing that has bothered me for a while, or it just interests me. Was the original idea of BOTF series yours or Dragon's? It was Dragon Idea, but he didn't have enough webspace back then, so I got involved that way. Alright, good to clear some things sometimes. You are currently doing the Black Sabbath tribute. Wanna say few words about it? A guy named Galahad got pissed everytime I released a new disk with Iron Maiden covers, on other hand I got lots of mails asking when next botf will disk be released. Galahad mentioned more than once that I should do a Black Sabbath tribute, I told him that maybe one day I do. Then for some weeks ago Dragon mentioned the same thing, I asked some people and noticed that the interest for doing a tribute to Black Sabbath was big. Hhehehe, thanks for pointing that out. ;) Without you, things would have been different :) It's amazing what you can do by bitching a lot to right people :) bitching reminds me of something... I know, I bitched Cadaver alot to make Necromancer There has been a lot of bitching on message board during this year. Some say even "too much". What do you think of it? Stupid, or just necessary for the scene to grow? Not necessary at all IMO, a lot of people express there feelings with to much swearwords and call each other names. The behaviour sometimes is way too childish, and the topic they are bithing about can be so much nonsense. I think it have been way too much bithing on the msgboard. There will be a real life meeting next summer/autumn, will we see you there? I hope so, if the date for the meeting fits in my calendar and some more swedes go, I will there Certainly, at least Hybrido said he will come if he just have some money. Gather all swedes together and get drunk on the ferry. :) Amanojaku and Betrayer also sounds interested... Yeah exactly, it's always nice to booze on the ferry... Heh...and now to our special annoying/hard question. :) Define brutality. I don't give a shit actually, I guess brutality depends on the listener. It may be true that TA5 was not as brutal as expected, but it was not Friz fault. We where 4 judges and 33% of the score was the brutality so a song without any brutality needed to have very good quality tracking and samples. Isn't it interesting? Whenever there's talk about brutality nowadays, there must be TA5 mentioned. At least that disk has got a huge amount of downloads because of all that bitching. :) I guess your question was inspired by the TA5 bithing too Partly yes, mostly because the bitching about brutality went so big on msg board and got kinda hilarious. Well anyway I think TA5 is one of the best MetalMOD disks, but I am maybe not the right one to judge, since I did :P heh :) What will be the future of tracked metal scene? Little bit of forecasting now. I really hope that it will be some better compression of the modules, since modules loses a lot of the idea if they are bigger than mp3:s. I think it's sad to see that Betrayer, Vantage, Kosmikko etc. wants to stop tracking, on other hand its great to see some old faces back on the scene like Zack. There is a lot of newbies right now, and it looks like the scene will continue to grow. Let's hope that will happen. We are getting to the final question. Name your favorite alcohol drink. Beer of course Heh, should have known that. Thanks for the interview Hakan. yer welcome ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ HYBRIDO INTERVIEW Hi Hybrido, tell us all the dirty details of yourself. All of them? Well, IŠm 19 years old, live in southern Sweden in a city called Helsingborg. IŠve played guitar for around five years and tracked for hmm.... 5 years I started to do metal in 97 I think. Before that I only did Nintendo/dance stuff What turned your head to tracked metal? I had wanted to do metal for a while but I never got any proper samples for it. I didnŠt even knew that you could get samples from the net and to do my own samples was out of question. So one day I got some samples from some french guys, canŠt remember the names of them though That really made me go nuts about tracking metal Nearly all of it was shite in the beginning but I still liked it Ah...but now you are making own samples and vocals too. How you changed to this after all? I started doing my own vocals before my guitarsamples. I guess I just realized that if I can do samples with my mic then why not with the guitar Another thing was that I just had found RED on the net and I saw some of the other trackers using there own samples So I just tried it and got pretty satisfied with the result SSS is a rather old group now. What's your version of the story? :) History of SSS? Me and Amanojaku started the group about two years ago. We were just doing Nintendo and dance then. But at the beginning we had no homepage, just a group. Then Azaghal (our schoolmate) suddenly started to track. We all knew that he had Internet so we thought "letŠs get him in the group and start a homepage". So we did... After that everything developed quite fast cause on the net we found lots of new samples/tracking techniques... Then one day Aza and me got in trouble with Amano. I donŠt wanna tell you what it was really about cause itŠs a quite long story. LetŠs just say that it was about stealing html... So Amano decided to leave us and I think that was best for us all (if he wouldnŠt leave by his own we would probably have kicked him out of the group). Amano started his own group, what was it know. Total Darkness? Yeah.. Then we just kept on doing our stuff and gradualy turned into a pure metal group It's kinda sad. Amanojaku's style would have fit so well for SSS, though he's doing quite well by his own too. Yeah, I think so too. But Amano has always been a rebel (hehe). He always comes with lots of new strange ideas which me and Aza doensŠt really like What you're going to do after army? Hmmm... I donŠt know. I gotta fix some old school-rates (?) cause IŠve been stupid enough to do a "havetostudymore" education I think IŠll work some too But sooner or later it will probably be school again Your opinion about converting modules to MP3? In one way I think it rocks. On the other hand it really sucks. I guess I can say it in this way: After youŠve converted a xm/it song into MP3 it has nothing to do with the trackingscene Alright, tell all the readers about what it is to work as a reviewer in Red Rain? :) And besides I think itŠs pretty meaningsless to convert them to MP3Šs as there are much better programs for doing MP3Šs To work as a reviewer. Hmmm... Well, sometimes it can be hardwork and a lot of pressure, especially when you get your songs like three days before deadline. But I also like it a lot. You feel that yoŠre doing something for the scene and itŠs also fun to tell the readers whatŠs really good and what sucks... back to previous question for a while. ItŠs just damn annoying that IŠm so bad at english What do you think about releasing MP3's on tracked metal scene? little re-phrase I think itŠs like releasing opera at a "Cannibal Corpse" release party. I has nothing to do with us. If you really want to do MP3Šs then I recommend you to use some other programs then FT2 and I also think that you should compete with the "real" scene and not with us FT2/It You just canŠt tell whatŠs tracked and whatŠs not if you convert your songs true So itŠs not fare well...quite rude subject change again :) who are your favorite trackers ItŠs really hard to say, but thereŠs some people out there who really impresses me. Betrayer for his enourmous skills at tracking. HeŠs a god at mixing samples together and his covers are just so damn accurate. Some other old trackers which still rocks are Vantage and Cadaver. Always good stuff from them. Nowadays thereŠs lots of new (well, new for me) trackers which are really good. I guess Amok and Zack has impressed me most. ThereŠs many more good trackers bu Azaghal, Galahad, Puer Impius, Tarantula I could go on for a while Well that's pretty much enough I guess :). What's your equipment? ZOOM 3000 pedal, RAT pedal, Ibanez 540S (custom made) guitar, Fender Stratocaster guitar, Ibanez acoustic guitar (donŠt use that much though), a lousy computer mic, a good expensive mic (which actually sound worse than the shitty mic) and last a P 333 I think thatŠs all The fucking "suppossed to be good" mic costed 1400 kr! grrr... Tell us about your new music disk. :) IŠm really excited about my forthcoming disk. Right now thereŠs two finnished songs (without vocals) and IŠm really satisfied with both of them. I got a competely new sound which I prefer from my old one. ItŠs hard to say what kind of metal it is though. I guess thereŠs lots of blackmetal influences but thereŠs lots of other stuff too, like punk, heavy metal e.t.c. The only thing IŠm really worried about are the vocals no growling anymore? ThereŠs will probably be some or only growling. I really want to sing in another way but itŠs damn hard. but I donŠt want to call it grownling That's the way it's been called from the dim past :) ItŠs actually just my voice. I just scream like hell and it ends up the way it does. Hehe Oh, would be interesting to hear your real growling then. But howlings would be nice if I just could Hehe. Well, I admit that IŠve done some growls like the beginning of Bloodred Mal Ah, this leads us to the next question. ThatŠs not just my voice. I really trie to sound like an angry zombie This will be a hard one then. Define brutality. Haha... ThereŠs been lots of bull on the board about this. Well, letŠs put it this way. WeŠre all doing more or less brutal music so brutality for me is the really extreme stuff like Necrocannibal. That's why I asked this. Brutal songs should be really heavy and just wipe out your entire brain Where you will be on new year's eve? No idea. I hope that IŠll be lost somewhere in Europe and drunk as usual. But thatŠs not for sure as the fucking army can destroy it Will you show up in the real life meeting next summer/autumn? Yeah, probably. If my economy allows it It will be really cool I think We are near the end of this interview, so tell us your favorite alcohol drink. Beer in one way. It tastes good and you can drink it for a while without becoming totally fucked up. But the problem is that I like being fucked up and do stupid things which I canŠt remember. So I think I have to answer all kinds of strong liquid. Absinth is cool too But maybe that doesnŠt count as just an alcoholic drink? Hehe absinth? wait wait I don't want to know Thanks for the interview :) Thanx to you too. ItŠs been an honour ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE NEW (or not so new) GUY? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A brief history for those that don't know.. I leaped onto the metalmod scene in a fairly big way by helping Friz bring Metalmod.Domination.Org (MDO) back to life. Well as many know by now MDO is gone. After it's departure, I took a break from it all (and I mean all). So there I was idling in #metaltrax one night when this dude that goes by the nick Galahad asked if I wanted to help out with Red Rain (RR). Guess what my reply was.. hmm.. ?!? ;) I don't remember how RR used to be setup and galahad- gave me freedom to do what I thought best. This file should be readable by any OS that is capable of reading 80 column plain ascii text files. If you would like to see something changed gimme some suggestions. ------------------ Thoughts on the state of the metalmod scene: Seems like more and more people are doing their own guitar samples. That is definately a good thing. There will be more variety in the overall sound. One word of caution for those making their own guit-fiddle samples - don't stick to one sound all the time; experiment. Now on the other hand I am not and will never complain about people using the existing samples. Not every has their own instrument(s) to record with. I've seen these types of complaints and you know what I'm talking about so I'll go no further here. This brings me to the mo3 thing. If used properly, mo3 files can be a very good thing. A lot of people are starting to do riff sampling or "real guitars" and this of course can make filesizes leap into the atmosphere and beyond. Although high quality note tracking can do the same. If you know you're going to compress to mo3 then record higher than normal quality samples - it's that simple. Just don't go overboard and record everything in stereo, 16bit, 44khz. ;) I personally don't see the scene dying. Maybe back "underground" but that is a relatively good thing I think. With that said... I'm back - like it or not. Thanks, -Greg J -gregjesko@clds.net -grj.hispeed.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Red Rain 02/2000 will be released 10.06.2000 (dd.mm.yyyy). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------