Black metal fans? Check out my new band

[sam_justice]

We have started a new black metal band, there are a couple of songs up (vocals will be added tomorow (friday))
www.myspace.com/miserymetal

It is formed by me and the drummer of Killing Mode (www.myspace.com/killingmode, who have now split up)

The tracks on the space have programmed drums (this is due to time for live recording of drums)
But hopefully next week we'll be starting to record our EP which will have the live drums.

Anyway, check it out and let me know what you think, Cheers!

 

[Laivasse]

Are you aware that there are (at least) 3 other bands named Misery, one of them also a metal band? That might cause you some problems.

As for the music itself - it's kind of generic death/black like I've heard often before. In the first few seconds it sounded a bit like Thorns but that was probably just the DI guitars. The computerised drumming didn't cause me any problems since I'm used to it from bands like Anaal Nathrakh, Mutant, Hate Forest and others, but the whole uptempo BM thing is getting a bit overcooked. It didn't really do much for me (but then I'm pretty jaded all-round lately in terms of music so take what I say with a pinch of salt).

I don't want to sound like I'm slagging your band off since I didn't massively dislike it on the whole, but it does seem that you're doing it a bit by-the-numbers so to speak. With the track Therion you have that explosive beginning with the ominous dirgey riff, then you shift into the midpaced blast with a bit of blunted deathy riffing, knock back and forth a bit, you hit a nice epic-ish riff for a while around 2:00, then you slow to walking pace for a while before seeing the song out on another blast - it does seem a bit like you're trying to visit all your bases. Your riffs tend to resolve a bit too easily as well, if you know what I mean - they end up back where they started a bit too simply. Don't know how to describe that any better, or even suggest improvements for that really.

Actually for one of the riffs in Therion I misheard the timing, and what I thought it was was better than what it was, lol no offence Damn, how to describe the part I mean. I don't know any music theory or terminology so WOAAARRGH here I go with the typed riff effort:
with the riff that first comes in at 0:11 where you go
dernernerNER- derNERner *repeat
I wasn't paying full attention and thought you were going
dernerNERnernerNERner| *repeat
What's that, 7/8 time? 7/4? *ignorance* Before ending up in conventional time (the way you wrote it) at the end of the riff (ie. on the 4th time through it reverts to the way you wrote it). I heard the start of the riff a beat late in other words, but I think it's better that way. It's up to you but I think it would be a cool change, and would vary the timing a bit which I think is something that would sit well with the type of BM you're trying to write.

My favourite bits of each song are about 1:58 in Therion and about 3:00 in the other one, where they open up a bit and do the epic/melodic bm-with-hazy-riffs thing for a little while. It's no less generic than the rest, but it's more to my taste and you can (and bands do) hammer away at that kind of riff all day just aiming to churn out atmosphere, which I think is lacking a bit in your music.

In the midpaced blast don't be afraid to stray from the K S KK S (k=kick S=snare) pattern, since there is the danger of overdoing that. God knows I used to love that kind of blast ages back - Nick Barker's good at varying it. But then once your drummer steps in I'm sure he'll put his stamp on things anyway. Also once you get live drums down think about making the production less in-your-face and pumping

Vocals will obviously make a difference when they're added too but don't overdo them. It does sound at the moment like you're writing leaving a lot of room for the vocals, and maybe there's a danger once you lay them down of just drenching the song in vox, but I'm a firm believer in just letting a song breathe, esp. in BM. Don't shy away from mismatching them with the song's tempo now and then, and remember that a couple of lines of lyrics go a long way. After all, the material pretty much stands up on it's own atm already.

When you've got live drums and you're mixing it I think it could benefit from making the production a little less punchier and make it more obscure instead - maybe giving the drums a little less pride of place. To be very honest though I'm probably saying that and a lot of the things I've said because it simply isn't quite my style of black metal. For the same reason don't take any of the negative comments too badly. It's pretty solid for what it is, but could surely use improvement - bit more coherence, bit more originality, bit more atmos, bit more obscurity. IMO.

Out of interest what are your lyrics/imagery about?

 

[Laivasse]

Ever notice in black metal that trios (or duos even) with a guitarist/vocalist tend to use vocals much more sparingly? That's what i used to love about a lot of Immortal (thinking about mainly At The Heart of Winter period material), they were part of the school of songwriting where they're fully confident about letting their songs go minutes at a time without even a whiff of vocals - except maybe the odd 'HERGH!' - just letting the riffs progress and the momentum build on itself. At the same time their vocals are not just formless screams or random bits chucked in as an afterthough - they have very definite verses and stuff, just that they have an excellent grasp of when and where to apply it in a song. Great example of conventional songwriting done well.

When you have a dedicated vocalist they tend to just want to babble away endlessly or else they feel like they're not justifying their place in the band. Busy vocals have their place (if you jump genres and look at, say, Origin), but it doesn't make for good BM IMO.

 

[sam_justice]

cheers for the crits its much appreciated