H-Bomb of the loudness wars

A further description of their music from their Myspace page -

Breath in: snuff a line speed, a half hour jump on your cheap amplifiers, salad yet once a half hour with you yet cheaper guitar against the wall. Write eleven pop songs, lay the emphasis on cryptic and forget everything your song teacher you ever learned has.

That explains it all, now doesn't it?

 

The way things are going, I wonder if the process won't start reversing at some point... I mean, once you reach zero, where else is there to go?
"Remastered from the original tapes for natural dynamics"??

 

http://www.myspace.com/timesnewviking Have a listen and see if you still think the distortion was created in the digital domain. I sure don't.

 

I'm sure it's terrible. Of course that doesn't make watching music any less pointless.

Tim

 

They can have their "loud and distorted" and I get to keep my money. If fans don't buy this because of the sound, then things will change.

 

Not meaning to be perceived as racial...but


WHITE NOISE

by the looks of it.

 

I wonder if this is part of a movement toward a kind of final frontier: NO-fi?!

 

Since all that I've seen and heard of this lot are via the Matador site and MySpace, I must ask, does anyone here (A) have the CD or other format copies of any of these songs, and (B) are they as distorted (sound the same) as these bits?

We need names, as well: Who recorded, who mixed, and who mastered this stuff? And the 'producer(s--sic)' need to be named and shamed too!

 

i dunno....i downloaded the song "My Head" and its pretty good. Its just a slab of noise...literally! but thats what its meant to be. Its meant to assault your ears and slap you around the face. i like it!

 

That's the sort of comments that support the record companies' standard policies towards CD masterings

This reminds me REM Accelerate. Despite it has some bloody great stuff on it, it sounds like s***, but given the fans give great reviews and nevermind the sound issue, the big shots of the music business think "They like it as it, so let's keep doing the same"

 

............But why bother downloading songs if that's what you like?.There are people quite willing to perform that task for you at your local pub I am sure. Me,myself, listening to the Masochism Tango by Spike Jones was always sufficient.

 

Hmmm... I thought Tom Lehrer did that tune.

 

yeah yeah i know! i just think in this case the music is supposed to be abrasive and the mastering only adds to that. whether that was a concious decision i dont know (but i'd hazard a guess at no)

 

i dont download songs. Who says music needs to be comfortable? like i said above, its supposed to be abrasive, its supposed to assault your ears. and it does just that! doesnt mean i'd want all my music to sound like that.

 

................Correct. Once again I am posting without consuming enough coffee first.

 

I agree with those that point out this will be the textbook example of how not to master a CD.

Perhaps we have just witnessed the peak of the Loudness Wars?

 

I would venture that that would probably be something by Merzbow. Anyone ever see a waveform from his CD Pulse Demon, which was once touted as the loudest CD ever?

 

Since you asked...here's "Woodpecker No. 2" from Pulse Demon(not retouched, honest).

 

I haven't. Perhaps you or someone can post samples of them, and excerpt clips?

 

Here is a picture of Times New Viking from the Matador website. Is that a Bose subwoofer inside of the bass drum?

 

Looks like they have a track titled "Imagine Dead John Lennon" on their MySpace site. That should make them even more friends around here...

 

haha, i have that Merzbow CD. it's a great release if you're into that kind of music.

 

You want an assault and a slap? Listen to Captain Beefheart's TROUT MASK REPLICA. Does it a thousand times better and its pain is on a much more pleasurable level.

 

Now that I've had a chance to listen to the .mp3 at the Matador site, I'd have to give it a rating of "just OK." The second song had a better vibe to it than the first and I imagine they're a buttsmacker of a live band, but neither song offered anything I hadn't heard before - and with more gusto and less irony. If this was back in 1994 they might have been worth digging through used CD shop racks full of Matador promos for, but for my 2008 dollar - I pass.