I won't give a full spec as it's easily available elsewhere, but it's a 40 watt solid state modelling combo-amp with a single 12 inch speaker. It weighs about 15kg and it's roughly half a metre tall and wide, which is actually a bit bulkier than I was expecting (but that's my own fault for not reading the spec).

Intro

I bought this to replace a solid state Fender combo amp which has been my main amp for the past 12 years or so. On the Fender amp, the cleans are great and the di[...]]]> I've had the Peavey Vypyr VIP 2 for a month now. I wanted to write about it sooner but the breadth of options it gives you is overwhelming, so I've spent a long time fiddling around with it and feel I have a good understanding of most of its settings now.

I won't give a full spec as it's easily available elsewhere, but it's a 40 watt solid state modelling combo-amp with a single 12 inch speaker. It weighs about 15kg and it's roughly half a metre tall and wide, which is actually a bit bulkier than I was expecting (but that's my own fault for not reading the spec).

Intro

I bought this to replace a solid state Fender combo amp which has been my main amp for the past 12 years or so. On the Fender amp, the cleans are great and the distortion is pathetic. Unless you're in a Sex Pistols tribute band, you just won't use it. I knew this when I bought it and paired it with an MT2 pedal and later a 7 band EQ and got quite a lot of flexibility out of it, but it always had that slightly thin and slightly digital MT2 tone; anyone who has used one will know exactly what I mean.

When I bought the Fender the Line 6 Spider modelling amps were starting to get popular, but at that point they were generally regarded as being a bit rubbish. But hey, I like the idea of modelling amps from a cost perspective and (in my opinion) life is too short for pedals and valves.

...12 years later...

I mostly play metal and I was a bit worried the Vypyr's metal tones would be lacking. Obviously I had listened to various demos on YouTube but anyone who has tinkered with sound knows that you can wildly change the sound of a recording by something as subtle as moving the mic a few centimetres, and that's before you consider bigger issues like the quality of the microphone and the quality and inbuilt EQ of the speakers/headphones you're listening through.

This worry lasted for about 3 seconds after turning the amp on. I'm seriously impressed not just by the quality of the sound but also by how versatile it is. Back when the Spiders came in people were saying "but you're much better off with a Marshall than something that thinks it's a Marshall". That's still a valid complaint in a professional setting, but with the VIP 2, for around £200 I've got a range of high quality tones that would cost me thousands to reproduce traditionally. A 6534+ head alone would set me back well over £1000, and that's with no speakers (and no real option for cleans).

The amp models

The breadth of amp models is quite overwhelming initially so I've made an effort to learn each one and have written a rough guide to each one. Note that each model has three channels - clean, crunch (overdriven) and lead (more overdriven), or, as the user interface panel represents them: green, orange and red, respectively.

XXX

- Modelled on the Peavey XXX, and if you're unfamiliar with that, it's of the same vein as a Mesa Boogie Triple Rectifier. Shiny clean channel and the drive channels give very tight and heavy distortion with a big kick on the low end. It sounds very 90s Metallica - when their sound became quite processed, or, if you start with a scooped EQ, back off the bass and saturate the treble, it starts to sound like Pantera. If I have one criticism it's that it sounds a bit digital (and this is the only model this applies to), but I personally don't think mildly digital tones are a problem in the style of metal that this model lends itself to (Dimebag Darrell of Pantera famously used more digital sounding solid state amps for most of his career to give his sound a really tight fizz on top of very heavy overdrive). The overdriven channels aren't particularly versatile, so if you don't like that heavy, processed sound with the bass kicking you in the face, you won't like this model.

British

- Supposedly modelled after Brian May's Vox AC30 tone but I can't say I hear it; maybe because I'm using humbuckers. The rhythm channel with the gain dialled back to about 12 o clock sounds a bit more Queen-like, but the lead channel is a full and gritty classic metal tone. Think Supernaut by Black Sabbath. It's that kind of nasally and scratchy guitar sound.

Classic

- The Peavey Classic was released in the 90s but is intended to sound like something from decades before. It distorts a bit but has quite a smooth and soft tone, so the use case doesn't really overlap with my style of playing. It will break up easily if you turn the gain up but it still sounds soft. A lot of online presets for AC/DC use this as the amp - probably because of the word 'classic' - but it doesn't have any bite (using the Butcher or British sounds better). It's more suited to blues or country I think. Cleans are quite twangy and warmer than some of the other models.

6505+ and 6534+

- Separate models but I'll group them together because they are very similar. Supposedly Eddie Van Halen-esque, according to the manual, but really they're straightforward high gain amps for screaming metal tones. The main difference between the two is that the 6505+'s sound has a bit more definition and crunch at high gain when hitting low-E riffs, probably because the 6534+ has a fatter low end which blurs the sound a bit. The clean channel on both amps leaves a lot to be desired and breaks up very quickly into a bassy rumble, which might have its uses but it's not really the default sound you want from a clean channel. 6505+ is the amp model I find myself using most often for a reliable and clear high gain metal tone. Update June 2018 After six months of having this amp, I've shifted my opinion slightly to favouring the 6534+ model. It gives a thicker rhythm tone, and for leads, with the neck pickup selected and the guitar's tone pot rolled back slightly it starts to sound quite Steve Vai.

TWN

- I assume this is supposed to be a Fender Twin, but trademark rules has it called TWN instead. Nice clear cleans, some breakup on the lead channel. Distortion sounds nothing like my Fender, but according to the manual the distortion is modelled by adding a stomp box, so that might be why. Not faithfully modelling Fender's lacklustre distortion is no loss in my opinion, but if you particularly love Fender amps it's something to be aware of.

Budda

- The manual's summary of this model is an unhelpful sales pitch for Budda Amps, so it's unsurprising that it turns out they are owned by Peavey. This model is more rock than metal as the distortion isn't as punchy as many of the other models. I was going to put this one in the "I'll probably never use this" box along with the Classic, until I noticed the warmth of the clean channel; I think this is my favourite clean channel on the amp, especially in the second pickup position (bridge + middle).

Butcher

- The Butcher model is a metal/rock tone, sitting below the 6505+/6534+ in terms of heaviness. It doesn't crunch as much as you might want so it sounds a bit underwhelming if you're going for some palm muted low-E thrash riffs, but it is a nice warm and creamy smooth tone so it could be used as a more chord-based metal or rock rhythm tone. With the gain dialled back this is a decent option for emulating classic rock tones like AC/DC or Rainbow, if you don't find the British model versatile enough. It bites a lot harder than the Classic and has a good, solid mid range.

Peavey Bass and Trace Bass

- I don't have a bass and I'm not sure a guitar play would ever use them, but they're there if you want them. I can't really evaluate them.

Peavey Ecoustic and Trace Acoustic

- As an electric guitar player it's tempting to skip over the two acoustic amps, but actually, if you pair them with the acoustic instrument models, they sound pretty great! Like an acoustic? Not exactly, but not like a standard clean electric either. It's definitely worth exploring these when you want a clean sound. I've spent a lot of time playing through these models.

Effects and extras

The layout of the effects is a bit confusing. A quick summary is that some are categorised as 'stompboxes' and some are categorised as 'effects', and on top of that there is entirely separate delay and reverb. You can have one effect, one stompbox (and one amp model) active at one time, plus delay and reverb. This is further confused if you use Vypyr Edit (more on that later) to control your amp, as it splits instrument models and stompboxes into separate categories, but instrument models are actually categorised as stompboxes in the amp's software, which leads to some confusing user interface.

Stompboxes

Stompboxes give you some standard and non-standard effects:

• Phaser
• Flanger
• Boost
• Chorus
• Compressor
• Ring Modulator (I have absolutely no idea)
• Slap (delay)
• Slicer (Like a tremolo effect)
• Univibe (vibrato)
• Fuzz Pedal
• Tubescreamer emulation
• Auto-wah

The Fuzz pedal and Tubescreamer emulation may seem redundant but they can give a bit of flexibility when paired with lower gain amps.

Effects

Effects give you some things like:

• Chorus
• Envelope filter (a bit like auto-wah)
• Compressor
• Flanger
• MOG (Monophonic Octave Generator - duplicates your sound one octave up and one octave down)
• Pitch shifter
• Reverser (runs on a loop and reverses the last x milliseconds)
• Rotary
• Phaser
• Octaver
• Tremolo

You'll notice the effects overlap a bit with the stompboxes, and you'll also notice the practical use for quite a few of them is far from obvious. I mean, if you really wanted to, you could practice with the reverser, sync your rhythm to it and get some interesting sounds out of it, but...

If you were to make frequent use of the effects you would probably want one of the separately sold and very expensive Sanpera pedals to control them adequately.

Instrument models

Alternative instrument modelling comes under the category of 'Stompboxes', which means you can't have for example a Baritone guitar effect and a Tubescreamer at the same time.

Sitar, e-violin and synth give you very different sounds but I don't really have any use for them. Maybe if you really want to pretend you're Paganini you might use the e-violin model...

Bass, 7-string and baritone guitar: These detune your notes by one ocatave, 2.5 tones and 3.5 tones respectively. I don't like the 7 string and baritone effects. They sound a bit off when you play the higher strings. Overall I find these a bit gimmicky and not useful.

12-string: The 12-string isn't a fully accurate model because the standard way of tuning a 12-string is to double the E, A, D, and G strings with a string an octave higher, and to double the B and high-E with a string of the same octave. The amp doesn't know which string you're playing, so it just doubles your note with one an octave higher, which makes the two high strings sound a bit silly. Personally I don't like it much for that reason, but it's certainly cheaper (and lower maintenance) than buying a real 12-string and does give you that kind of shimmering sound effect.

Resonator - Gives a twangy sound. Might be interesting if you play much Bluegrass or Country. But I don't.

Acoustic - As I've said under the amp models section, the acoustic effects when paired with the acoustic amp models are surprisingly very good.

There are some limitations to the combinations. For example you can only use the acoustic models with either of the two acoustic amps, and the bass with the bass amp.

Miscalleanous extras

The Vypyr includes a full chromatic tuner built in, which is nice and fully replaces my TU-80 (although the free Boss Tuner app on my phone is more convenient than either).

Something of importance is the built in noise gate. There is a noise gate, but it's not configurable at all. Usually it works its magic without you noticing, but occasionally you're going for a noisy but percussive style, and instead of a sudden silence, you actually get a fade-out. Peavey should have allowed the threshold to be configurable, even if only by USB.

The USB connection

The Vypyr has a USB port (a printer style one - with the square connector) which lets you link it up to your PC.

The most obvious application of this is to get sound into your PC, which seems like a great feature for bedroom musicians, but I've had no real success with it because the audio quality through USB is severely lacking. No amount of tinkering in Windows has allowed me to improve it much. If you need to record, you're better off with a microphone (or perhaps using the 3.5mm headphone out - I don't have good enough headphones to fully evaluate the sound quality). If you do choose to use the USB (or headphone) output, it's also important to note the amp's speaker is muted while recording is active, which I'd imagine makes it somewhere between highly inconvenient and completely useless in real usage.

Edit: I now understand that the USB signal is just a signal, and it needs to be run through an impulse response to emulate a speaker cabinet and room acoustics. Unfortunately, even by doing this, I still haven't achieved anything I'd call good sound quality.

The more useful application of the USB port is the ability to edit the settings on the amp from your PC. I find this very useful. The software you need is called Vypyr Edit (download from here) and confusingly is not included on the CD. Vypyr Edit isn't the best piece of software (e.g. if you press the return key on the initial dialog to choose which interface to use, it seems to select 'Quit' instead of 'Continue', and it doesn't always pick up the initial state of the amp correctly) but it's usable.

Through Vypyr Edit you can save your own presets to your PC which lets you set up your own little library of sounds. It seems like a bit of an oversight that there's no community online sharing built in to Vypyr Edit itself. There is an underused area on the Peavey website where people have uploaded their attempts at re-creating classic tones, but few of them sound good and even fewer sound anything like what they claim to be. Some professionally made Peavey presets in a library like Amplitube's would be nice. The preset files are only a few kilobytes and you could easily stick them in Dropbox or similar if you wanted to.

It's worth noting that the amp settings aren't saved after power-off (despite what the manual says), and if you want to alter the presets, you need to use Vypyr Edit.

Conclusion

Overall, I'm really pleased with the Vypyr 2. It suits my needs well. It has a few drawbacks in peripheral features that I'd like to see Peavey improve, but the overall sound quality and flexibility is extremely good for the price.

What I like:

• Sound is great
• Huge versatility
• Probably the best metal modelling amp for the price.
• Maybe the best metal amp for the price?

What you may or may not like, depending on your perspective:

• The versatility comes at the price of being overwhelming initially
• LOUD - you won't go past 2 for bedroom usage
• You will need to plug it into your PC to get the most out of it
• The built in tuner is not as easy to use as a tuner pedal, but it's reliable, unlike a TU-80 with dead batteries and a loose power switch connector (yes, speaking from personal experience...).

What I don't like:

• No high quality online preset library
• USB out is too low quality to use
• Noise gate should be configurable
• No foot pedal control included, and the ones you can buy are very expensive (the Sanpera 2 is the same price as the amp!)

1. £10 a month is too expensive. In fact, at £9.99, €9.99 or $9.99 Deezer is more expensive in the UK than any other region (and doesn't offer anything extra to UK users to make up for that). I'd be much more tempted for £5 a month.

2. Being a paying user makes you eligible to freely use something called 'The Flow'. The flow is a good idea in that it's a random dynamic playlist which should play stuff you like. This is exactly the sort of thing I want from a music streaming service. This is exactly the sort of thing a music streaming service can do far better than an offline music collection. I want to hear new music I'm not familiar with that's reasonably similar to the stuff I like so that I get a good hit rate.

But in reality it fails miserably to play things I want t[...]]]> I tried a free trial of Deezer, which is a music streaming service similar to Spotify. I expected to start paying for it after the trial ended, but it turns out that I haven't. My reasons are:

1. £10 a month is too expensive. In fact, at £9.99, €9.99 or $9.99 Deezer is more expensive in the UK than any other region (and doesn't offer anything extra to UK users to make up for that). I'd be much more tempted for £5 a month.

2. Being a paying user makes you eligible to freely use something called 'The Flow'. The flow is a good idea in that it's a random dynamic playlist which should play stuff you like. This is exactly the sort of thing I want from a music streaming service. This is exactly the sort of thing a music streaming service can do far better than an offline music collection. I want to hear new music I'm not familiar with that's reasonably similar to the stuff I like so that I get a good hit rate.

But in reality it fails miserably to play things I want to hear, so I don't use it. I like metal and rock, but sometimes I also want to listen to Johnny Cash. Deezer's algorithm thinks this means I spend most of my time in the flow skipping past whingy American nu-metal and really bad country music.

3. I'd quite like proper support on my phone. Occasionally. I mean, like everyone else I have a fairly low data cap because mobile data is absurdly expensive, and a pretty underwhelming connection so I couldn't use it to stream music over 4g (if I'm lucky), but it would work over wifi. But "I have wifi but not a PC" is very much a special case for me, so it's not worth £9.99/month.

So overall: too expensive for what it offers.]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/21/why-i-love-death-the-sound-of-perseverance Sun, 21 Oct 12 16:04:30 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/21/why-i-love-death-the-sound-of-perseverance

Over the course of their career, Death went from being a good but fairly ordinary death-metal band to being a technical thrashy-death band. Okay, so maybe not a huge change on paper, but they are one of the few bands who underwent an evolution and whose later albums far surpassed their earlier output. Partly this might be because the only stable member, Chuck Schuldiner, seemed to get a bit fed up of death metal and had other aspirations, and partly it might be because he kept altering the line-up to include fresh talent with new perspectives. People who are now well established metal players like Gene Hoglan (Strapping Young Lad), Steve DiGiorgio (Vintersorg, Quo Vadis, others), along with a vast array of lesser known musicians have played in Death at some point.

The Sound Of Perseverance was the final Death album and easily the most technical. It was an obvious progression from the previous Symbolic, which significantly moved Death away from straight-out death and into a slightly more progressive and[...]]]>

Over the course of their career, Death went from being a good but fairly ordinary death-metal band to being a technical thrashy-death band. Okay, so maybe not a huge change on paper, but they are one of the few bands who underwent an evolution and whose later albums far surpassed their earlier output. Partly this might be because the only stable member, Chuck Schuldiner, seemed to get a bit fed up of death metal and had other aspirations, and partly it might be because he kept altering the line-up to include fresh talent with new perspectives. People who are now well established metal players like Gene Hoglan (Strapping Young Lad), Steve DiGiorgio (Vintersorg, Quo Vadis, others), along with a vast array of lesser known musicians have played in Death at some point.

The Sound Of Perseverance was the final Death album and easily the most technical. It was an obvious progression from the previous Symbolic, which significantly moved Death away from straight-out death and into a slightly more progressive and technical area, while not falling into the trap of being overly self indulgent with it. It was generally slower and more thoughtfully arranged than previous excursions. TSOP retains that careful arrangement, but ramps up the tempo and the attack.

The production is crystal clear and unusually for death metal, the instruments quite sparse. The bass is clearly audible under the guitars. The vocals move away from standard death metal grunts into a sort of compromise towards the more melodic sort of singing that Chuck evidently preferred. It's a bit strange, but you get used to it. The guitars are heavily distorted but the tone is tight and cold (solid state amp). The guitars are also melodic, and they often stay above the standard death metal low-e string register.

TSOP opens with Scavenger of Human Sorrow, which kind of sets the stage for the rest of the album. It's fast, the intro isn't going to be constrained by details such as time signatures, and it has time changes almost every few seconds. It's kind of like going through a washing machine, but on the other hand, there's a sort of formulaic structure to the songs, spread out across some frighteningly good riffs and vaguely neoclassical leads. Everything's a very stop-start affair, but that's not a bad thing.

It's hard write about TSOP and not draw particular attention to Voice Of The Soul, an acoustic chord (and later arpeggio) pattern rounded off with Pantera style squealing solos over the top; it's a strangely introspective experience, especially in the middle of 7 incredibly aggressive tracks.

The album reaches a sort of climax with the straightforward thrashy aggression of a cover of Judas Priest's Painkiller. Painkiller is an awesome song in any conditions, but TSOP's version makes it sound like it's on steroids.]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/14/the-current-nightwish-singer-fiasco Sun, 14 Oct 12 12:29:42 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/14/the-current-nightwish-singer-fiasco It's sad to see Anette Olzon leave Nightwish. I say this as someone who thinks Nightwish peaked at Oceanborn, wobbled at Once then floundered from there onwards. Although this coincides with Tarja's departure and Anette's arrival, I don't think Nightwish's problem is their singer, and a lot of unfair criticism has been levelled at Anette for no better reason than she's not Tarja. The real problem is the Jack Sparrow lookalike on the keyboards.

It's Tuomas's band and he can do what he wants. Fair enough. But as his composition and musical awareness soars, the quality musical output of the band plummets. He's fallen into the standard trap of not realising that making music more ambitious in terms of the number of instruments in the composition doesn't make it better, and his apparent obsession with film scores makes this worse. Film scores fulfil a very different role than standalone music, and even so, overblown composition is a modern trend in film scores; [...]]]> It's sad to see Anette Olzon leave Nightwish. I say this as someone who thinks Nightwish peaked at Oceanborn, wobbled at Once then floundered from there onwards. Although this coincides with Tarja's departure and Anette's arrival, I don't think Nightwish's problem is their singer, and a lot of unfair criticism has been levelled at Anette for no better reason than she's not Tarja. The real problem is the Jack Sparrow lookalike on the keyboards.

It's Tuomas's band and he can do what he wants. Fair enough. But as his composition and musical awareness soars, the quality musical output of the band plummets. He's fallen into the standard trap of not realising that making music more ambitious in terms of the number of instruments in the composition doesn't make it better, and his apparent obsession with film scores makes this worse. Film scores fulfil a very different role than standalone music, and even so, overblown composition is a modern trend in film scores; Ennio Morricone's "Fistful of dollars" is basically a guy whistling. Film scores are usually big, epic and colourful. But they must also be safe, cautious and conservatively inoffensive, and it is harder to create good art within those constraints. The constraints of commercialisation.

Besides, early Nightwish albums were ambitious, they created rich soundscapes with few instruments and a tasteful sparsity across the frequency range. Newer Nightwish albums are heavily orchestral and hit you over the head with vast arrays of sonic frequencies at every possible opportunity. There is no 'tasteful' here. And as a result, nothing really stands out any more. Bizarrely, although the music's trying to head in the opposite direction, some of the lyrics are regressing into teenage angst. "Bye bye beautiful", "I want my tears back", "For the heart I once had", what is this, post-emo? It's getting embarrassing.

In previous albums the main focus was usually Tarja's soprano voice. For those of you who argue that Nightwish's quality dip is due to Tarja's departure and their failure to replace her with another soprano, I contend that you should listen to Ghost Love Score from Once, which is one of the few tracks from that album where she actually showcases her vocal range, where she's clearly struggling to stay relevant against an increasingly overblown backdrop. Tuomas had already evolved the band away from the operatic style before Tarja left.

I don't think it matters who Nightwish's new singer turns out to be, as it doesn't seem like the singer is an important part of the band any more. Same for any other individual member, save for Tuomas. Floor Jansen is currently filling in for them; it would be a shame if this turns out to be a permanent arrangement as Floor is very talented and doesn't deserve to have her voice assimilated.]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/13/why-i-love-devin-townsend-ocean-machine-biomech Sat, 13 Oct 12 18:20:48 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/13/why-i-love-devin-townsend-ocean-machine-biomech Ocean Machine: Biomech, by Devin Townsend. A review, of sorts, of one of my absolute favourite albums. Released in 1997, it was the first proper solo album Devin created (ignoring Punky Bruster, which sort of doesn't count), and came after he with Strapping Young Lad released the insanely heavy City album. City is angry, it's heavy, but like most extreme metal, it's very composed. Ocean Machine is a complete departure from that style, and as great as City is, Ocean Machine offers something far more interesting. I'm not going to say that OM:B is the best Devin Townsend album, because that's subjective and I'm not sure I even agree. But I will argue that it's the most open, expressive, and therefore remarkable.

Ocean Machine isn't just an album, it's a journey. If you listen to it as individual tracks, you're missing out on its brilliance, you're missing out on its expressiveness. That's really the key focus here, the album is expressive and stun[...]]]> Ocean Machine: Biomech, by Devin Townsend. A review, of sorts, of one of my absolute favourite albums. Released in 1997, it was the first proper solo album Devin created (ignoring Punky Bruster, which sort of doesn't count), and came after he with Strapping Young Lad released the insanely heavy City album. City is angry, it's heavy, but like most extreme metal, it's very composed. Ocean Machine is a complete departure from that style, and as great as City is, Ocean Machine offers something far more interesting. I'm not going to say that OM:B is the best Devin Townsend album, because that's subjective and I'm not sure I even agree. But I will argue that it's the most open, expressive, and therefore remarkable.

Ocean Machine isn't just an album, it's a journey. If you listen to it as individual tracks, you're missing out on its brilliance, you're missing out on its expressiveness. That's really the key focus here, the album is expressive and stunningly emotionally open and honest in ways you very rarely hear in rock or metal.

Dev loves to put out long albums and this one flows particularly brilliantly. And as such, I'm going to explore it in order. It's very proggy, but it never goes into long-winded instrumental sections. It's progressive in the sense it moves.

Seventh Wave opens and sets the tone with a hard-rock style driving riff. It's going somewhere, it's relentless, but it's not overly heavy. We move through a number of similarly sounding songs until we get to Sister, where everything slows down into purely the echoes and ambience Dev's famous for.

And that marks the end of the straight-up hard rock section of the album. The next track is softly ambient and echoey, but leads perfectly into the next section.

This is where things get a bit weird. Up until now, we've heard mostly hard-rock (not even metal) songs with what we can now recognise as the trademark Devvy slant, and if the album continued like this, it would be solid but unremarkable. We're seven songs, or 25 minutes, into the album and we hit a very noticeable mood change. Things go strange. And coincidentally, or perhaps by design, this change fits well with your attention span.

Voices In The Fan is still rock, but it's much slower and much more pounding, despite the fact the vocals get softer and more distant; perhaps more unsure. There's a certain amount of incongruence as the album appears to lose its way and just tries to push forward in many directions at once. The music starts to feel much less stable, much less organised, much less focussed. It starts to feel unsettling, it hints at a haunting sense of desperation and hopelessness, while trying to hold it all together. It's rare you hear music that can convey emotion like this.

This continues throughout the rest of the album. As we're reaching the final run, 38 minutes in, we hit an 8 minute track then two 10+ minute tracks. These are long tracks, and their lengths provide a certain amount of stability. At this point it seems like the music has reconciled itself into a more united force, but it's dropped the uplifting, positive sounds from the start of the album. It's more content, it's more calm, it's also more determined and more unified, but it's definitely not happy. It's slow, it's relentless, it's crushing, but it's also soft enough to be relaxing and even slightly reassuring in places. The Death Of Music climaxes these three tracks with a huge, wailing vocal wall and fades out into the final track.

Things Beyond Things is a change of style which gradually and gently concludes the album on a soft and calm vibe, a satisfying, but not uplifting, way to dispel the emotional turbulance of the previous 83 minutes and 53 seconds of emotionally expressive musical brilliance. Or at least, you thought that, until the very final seconds when Dev lets out a massive, distorted, frustrated scream.

Overall, it's an epic. It's not a happy album, it's not an uplifting album. It's a satisfying album that takes you through a huge range of emotions, good and bad. Mostly bad. But in between the futility, the depression, and the hopelessness, it's sprinkled with hope and relief, and that, whether it is purely a musical technique or whether it's a consequence of Devin's manic depression, provides a powerful ongoing tension/release exchange throughout the second half of the album.]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/12/review-devin-townsend-epicloud Fri, 12 Oct 12 20:52:37 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/12/review-devin-townsend-epicloud The first thing to say about Epicloud is that according to a sticker on the case, it's pronounced epic-loud, not epi-cloud.

The second thing to say about Epicloud is that it won't change your opinion of Devin Townsend. The Dev is probably one of the most unique and prolific metal artists around at the moment (or ever), and it's a shame he's virtually unknown outside of metal, because most of his stuff overlaps with metal rather than sitting within in. The man's a genre unto himself.

Epicloud is the 5th album Dev's released under The Devin Townsend Project, but while the previous four were distinct enough to justify the new moniker, Epicloud's not a huge distance from some of his older stuff. In particular it reminds me a lot of Accelerated Evolution. It's hard to pin down exactly why, but possibly because it's fairly commercial and despite being hard hitting high tempo rock, it's pretty well cushioned.

Personally for me, The Dev occupies a disproportion[...]]]> The first thing to say about Epicloud is that according to a sticker on the case, it's pronounced epic-loud, not epi-cloud.

The second thing to say about Epicloud is that it won't change your opinion of Devin Townsend. The Dev is probably one of the most unique and prolific metal artists around at the moment (or ever), and it's a shame he's virtually unknown outside of metal, because most of his stuff overlaps with metal rather than sitting within in. The man's a genre unto himself.

Epicloud is the 5th album Dev's released under The Devin Townsend Project, but while the previous four were distinct enough to justify the new moniker, Epicloud's not a huge distance from some of his older stuff. In particular it reminds me a lot of Accelerated Evolution. It's hard to pin down exactly why, but possibly because it's fairly commercial and despite being hard hitting high tempo rock, it's pretty well cushioned.

Personally for me, The Dev occupies a disproportionate amount of my favourite music. Infinity, Ocean Machine, Terria, Synchestra, Addicted, Ghost, Deconstruction, City, Alien, and let's not forget Vai's Sex and Religion are all albums I rank up there as being some of the best music ever created. But for me, Epicloud doesn't quite hit the same spots. That's not to say it's not enjoyable, it is. It's just different and focusses on different things. It's a lot more uplifting, a lot more positive. And it's a lot bigger. Dev's always been about the echos and the ambience, but Epicloud takes it to a new level. And that's possibly a downside: when so many things are layered up, there's a risk of losing personality; there's a risk of blunting the attack. And that happens to a certain extent here.

On the flipside, it's not all blunted and the production is crystal clear. And for example, the re-recording of Kingdom is absolutely incredible. Dev's vocal technique is incredible. That vibrato! And Anneke filling up the sound is great too. It's well known that Dev didn't like the production on Physicist, and (personally I didn't think Physicist was bad, but) hearing his reimagining of Kingdom explains that perfectly!

In summary: if you didn't get Dev before, you still won't get him now. If you did, you still will.

Rating: 4.5/5

If you do get it, it's worth spending a bit more for the version that comes with the bonus CD. Although the songs on there are supposedly demos, they're no less enjoyable than the main CD.]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/12/review-ensiferum-unsung-heroes Fri, 12 Oct 12 18:49:18 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/12/review-ensiferum-unsung-heroes

Ensiferum's original vocalist/guitarist, Jari Mäenpää, is an absolute beast. His guitar chops are close to virtuoso and both his growls and clean vocals were unique and fitting to the music. Tracks like Token of Time and Windrider set the bar for folk metal.

After Jari left to work on Wintersun's album¹ Ensiferum wobbled a bit. They nabbed Petri Lindroos from fellow Finnish metal band Norther to replace Jari. Petri is good, but Norther were always hit and miss, and they were never exceptional when they hit. Ensiferum then released Dragonheads (not a full length album, more a "look we're still here"), which was alright but the stand-out tracks were Into Hiding (an Amorphis cover) and Finnish Medley, which featured a female singer. They were still there, but they weren't hitting with the same force in the same areas. This continued throughout their next release, Victory Songs, which again was reasonably good, but never exceptional.

At this point, you'd be forgiven f[...]]]>

Ensiferum's original vocalist/guitarist, Jari Mäenpää, is an absolute beast. His guitar chops are close to virtuoso and both his growls and clean vocals were unique and fitting to the music. Tracks like Token of Time and Windrider set the bar for folk metal.

After Jari left to work on Wintersun's album¹ Ensiferum wobbled a bit. They nabbed Petri Lindroos from fellow Finnish metal band Norther to replace Jari. Petri is good, but Norther were always hit and miss, and they were never exceptional when they hit. Ensiferum then released Dragonheads (not a full length album, more a "look we're still here"), which was alright but the stand-out tracks were Into Hiding (an Amorphis cover) and Finnish Medley, which featured a female singer. They were still there, but they weren't hitting with the same force in the same areas. This continued throughout their next release, Victory Songs, which again was reasonably good, but never exceptional.

At this point, you'd be forgiven for thinking they'd lost it. But you'd also be wrong. They hit back with From Afar, which was blisteringly good. Everything clicked perfectly. They weren't writing songs for Jari any more, they'd figured out how to get the best out of Petri.

So, high hopes for Unsung Heroes, then.

Unsung Heroes opens with a symphonic (rather than folk) instrumental, a bit different, but so far so good. Then we move into standard Ensiferum territory, but it never quite lifts off. There are a few surprises later on, the album is a lot more diverse than previous offerings, but overall there's little that stands out. As seems to be tradition amongst some metal bands, the final song is 17 minutes long, but it's meandering and unfocussed; it moves from hints of the spaghetti west through to operatic soprano passages (Finnish metal band identity crisis?) and then onto traditional folk via a few neoclassical licks and a spacey-synthesiser that wouldn't sound out of place in something by Jean Michel Jarre, and, while there are good bits in there, it just doesn't seem to unify itself. Like the rest of the album, really.

The production's mostly good but the vocals seem to have been intentionally dropped down the mix, probably to make them sound a bit darker, but in reality it makes them sound weaker.

Overall, it's not the logical progression from From Afar. It's more like back to the Dragonheads/Victory songs era.

¹. Their yet-to-be-released second album, we all await eagerly and have done so since about 2006. It is aptly called Time, although supposedly it will be released later this month. I'll believe that when I see it.]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/06/song-a-day-2 Sat, 06 Oct 12 23:15:18 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/10/06/song-a-day-2 This one is more like half-a-day. It's heavily inspired by some of the ambient music in Fallout New Vegas, and the general experience too. New Vegas's music is hit and miss; well, to be honest, it's more miss than hit, apart from the tracks that were taken from Fallout 1 (like the excellent 'Children of the Cathedral'). It's mostly made of grandiose, carefully arranged orchestral scores, which are at odds with the post-apocalyptic wasteland it should be trying to depict.

But every so often, for example in 'How The West Was Lost', it hints at country guitar, and that is where it shines. The quiet, sparse, calm desert settlements are embodied wonderfully by lazily timed simplistic pentatonics, the hint of tension under the surface captured perfectly by the careless bends and the buzzing open strings of a beaten up old steel string acoustic guitar and the endearing nonchalance of "you know what, I don't even care if this note is wrong".

That is the kind [...]]]> This one is more like half-a-day. It's heavily inspired by some of the ambient music in Fallout New Vegas, and the general experience too. New Vegas's music is hit and miss; well, to be honest, it's more miss than hit, apart from the tracks that were taken from Fallout 1 (like the excellent 'Children of the Cathedral'). It's mostly made of grandiose, carefully arranged orchestral scores, which are at odds with the post-apocalyptic wasteland it should be trying to depict.

But every so often, for example in 'How The West Was Lost', it hints at country guitar, and that is where it shines. The quiet, sparse, calm desert settlements are embodied wonderfully by lazily timed simplistic pentatonics, the hint of tension under the surface captured perfectly by the careless bends and the buzzing open strings of a beaten up old steel string acoustic guitar and the endearing nonchalance of "you know what, I don't even care if this note is wrong".

That is the kind of vibe I was going for.

(Edit: sorry I have no idea why this isn't working on Internet Explorer. If you can't see the above audio controls then you need to be on Chrome or Firefox)

You're supposed to imagine yourself being here:

The challenge is this: you have 24 hours to write a piece of music. Completely. That's it. It can be as long or as short as you like (although completing a Wagnerian epic in 24 hours might be a little ambitious), just so long as it's a piece of music written to a level that it could reasonably be performed and not baffle the audience as to why you bothered, while you shout out "pretend there's a really cool bass solo for the next 8 bars". You can record it if you want and have the time/equipment, but that makes the 24 hour limit much more restrictive, and it's not really the point. It can have lyrics, it doesn't have to. It's up to you.

You can, of course, revisit it after 24 hours, that's not the point. That deadline is there to make sure you get something finished, and to a certain extent, polished. It's there to force you to develop your ide[...]]]> Here's a music writing challenge I've done a few times, which I've found incredibly useful so far.

The challenge is this: you have 24 hours to write a piece of music. Completely. That's it. It can be as long or as short as you like (although completing a Wagnerian epic in 24 hours might be a little ambitious), just so long as it's a piece of music written to a level that it could reasonably be performed and not baffle the audience as to why you bothered, while you shout out "pretend there's a really cool bass solo for the next 8 bars". You can record it if you want and have the time/equipment, but that makes the 24 hour limit much more restrictive, and it's not really the point. It can have lyrics, it doesn't have to. It's up to you.

You can, of course, revisit it after 24 hours, that's not the point. That deadline is there to make sure you get something finished, and to a certain extent, polished. It's there to force you to develop your ideas, not spend all your time searching for that perfect base idea. Even if it ends up rubbish, you learn far more from fully developing everything else around your core idea than you do from getting frustrated, putting your half-baked idea in a box and saying "I'll come back to this later...".

I use Guitar Pro for this as it makes it fairly easy to transcribe things, and, better, it plays them back for you with synthesised instruments of varying sound quality (it does clean and light distortion really well, heavy distortion not so much, but it's either that or MIDI. Drums sound great though).

Examples

Here's some stuff I've come up with doing this, which I'm pretty pleased with (you'll need a fairly modern browser to hear these and IE probably won't suffice):

Fairly straightforward metal. I'm happy with the flow on this, but the leads don't seem to quite work out quite as they could. Not sure if that's the note choice entirely or whether the really awful guitar tone gets in the way. The rhythm is very strong though.

Slightly Ennio Morriconeish, well okay, the middle part is more than slightly. I'm pleased with the time change towards the end while keeping in with the western theme.

Minimalistic bass driven bluesy-rock. Again with a hint of Morricone. It's entirely possible the snare drum makes no sense. Listening to it again now, I have no idea. I thought it was rubbish when I wrote it but it seems to grow on you.

This too was supposed to be minimalistic until I threw in all the spacey arpeggios. I think some of it could benefit from the sound being fleshed out more, it seems a bit sparse, but not too bad otherwise.

]]> https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/09/26/falkenbach-asaland-guitar-pro-tab Wed, 26 Sep 12 10:47:41 +0000 https://blog.asgaard.co.uk/2012/09/26/falkenbach-asaland-guitar-pro-tab Download

I couldn't find it anywhere online so I worked it out myself. This is in Guitar Pro 6 format so you'll need Guitar Pro 6 installed, which if you don't have already, is a fantastic piece of software (when it works). You'll get get playback that sounds something like this:

As for the transcription quality:
+ The original is really reverby which makes some things hard to hear clearly. I think there are two acoustic guitars but it might be that there's just a quarter-note delay on the lead. I've got it as two anyway.
+ The high synth might be slightly wrong in places... It kind of rolls around and fades in and out a bit. It's hard to make out. The way I have it looks a bit strange on paper, D5 -> Gsus4 -> G, but it keeps the high D note constant, which is the prevailing tone throughout, so it could be right.
+ I'm not a drummer so the drums won't be exact; they aren't too bad t[...]]]> Download

I couldn't find it anywhere online so I worked it out myself. This is in Guitar Pro 6 format so you'll need Guitar Pro 6 installed, which if you don't have already, is a fantastic piece of software (when it works). You'll get get playback that sounds something like this:

As for the transcription quality:
+ The original is really reverby which makes some things hard to hear clearly. I think there are two acoustic guitars but it might be that there's just a quarter-note delay on the lead. I've got it as two anyway.
+ The high synth might be slightly wrong in places... It kind of rolls around and fades in and out a bit. It's hard to make out. The way I have it looks a bit strange on paper, D5 -> Gsus4 -> G, but it keeps the high D note constant, which is the prevailing tone throughout, so it could be right.
+ I'm not a drummer so the drums won't be exact; they aren't too bad though.

If you find it useful or improve it, please let me know!

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