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Favorite metal recommendations - Metalbros unite!!!

Portal and Svartidauði have tickled my imagination in recent years.
Portal's video is brilliant! Seems inspired by Jan Svankmajer. Music is a bit too close to death metal for me. Svartidaudi have great atmosphere and sound, but it's slightly too chaotic for me. Worth looking at for inspiration though!

Special mention to The Great Discord as a guilty pleasure.
Music started very promising, but I can't deal with the singer. x]

Thanks for the recommendations!

There is a band called Hecate Enthroned, one of their videos is considered one of the most ridiculous of all time (because it is) but the song is actually pretty good. I remade their song using only virtual instruments 5 years ago, when I didn't know anything about mixing and mastering.

Here's my remake and their video.
Very nice! I listened first to your version while watching the video muted. Your version has a believable black metal sound to it and the virtualness of the guitars doesn't jump out too hard at me, though I do hear some of the issues I'm trying to solve myself here and there. Compared to the original, their guitar sounds seem to have a "smoother attack". I'll need to experiment with that aspect and see if I find a solution for my own mockups.
Also I see you have not found a substitute for the vocals either. Any ideas what kind of instruments could fill out that part of the frequency spectrum and overall sound aesthetic? I find instrumental black metal is often "missing something".
I experimented with routing Requiem Light through distortion effects, but didn't get any good results.

Can you define what qualifies as "making"? A ton of bands use all sorts of VI's, but guitar is something which is very rarely used as a virtual instrument.
Since (for good reasons) they are so rarely used, my interest in virtual guitar setups in this genre is pretty big. These and substitutes for the trademark vocal style would be especially interesting to me. Drums and bass seem easier to do (or at least I'm ignorant enough to not notice the issues with them as much). I even have bought the "Kvlt Drums" plugin, though I ended up not using it, because it sounds too raw for what I want to do.
I do have a real guitar, but every single time I tried to seriously play things like this I've ended up injuring myself and I don't think it's a technique issue. I seem to just not be cut out for it because I have some joint issues. When I did a bit of research, it seems to be relatively common for Guitarrists in those extreme genres to struggle with chronic pain issues and I don't want that shit.


P.s.: I'm aware of voices of rage, but don't think it'd fit black metal:
https://soundiron.com/products/voices-of-rage
 
I actually made a gibberish Kontakt patch from some vocal tracks a couple of years ago to use it as a vocal demo placeholder, which worked quite ok or horribly depending on the rhythms. :D A bit later, I found out there actually IS already a product doing quite the same (VoR), yet the style wasn't what I was really looking for. Nowadays I tend to just scream gibberish/ cookbook/ newspaper myself on top of the demos quickly as it's even faster that way.

KVLT drums are fun, but technically just a gimmick and a joke more than an actual drum kit- you'll get way better results with e.g. SD3. I have them too, and I think I've used them maybe once. The best part of the set is definitely the brutaltruth-esque logo, though. :D
I used to sample (and still do) my own kits for years which I also recommend, especially when layering with more professionally done drum kit VST's. I actually still do it every now and then, if I really like the individual sounds we're about to record in the sessions.

For what it comes to guitars, my friends use Shreddage a lot in their demos and it is actually somehow convincing even for a guitarist like me. But the "injuring yourself while playing extreme metal guitar" is complete and utter myth. I've been playing metal guitar since the turn of the 90's and know literally tens of professional extreme metal guitarists and no-one has ever even joked about having any sorts of problems with any sort of pain. Your joint problems seem to be the problem for you personally, but it's still rather uncommon though. I hope you can get rid of those, because playing metal guitar is awesome!
 
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For what it comes to guitars, my friends use Shreddage a lot in their demos and it is actually somehow convincing even for a guitarist like me.
I have shreddage II, are there any versions of shreddage that are more well-suited for shredding 16th notes on chords? I find that to be the biggest problem. Or are they all more or less the same articulations, just with a different "guitar tone"?
And also I've found an issue with the tremolo articulation: when I play higher notes the scripting sometimes decides to play them on frets that have no actual samples for the that articulation, even though on a higher string there would be a sample for that pitch. It's annoying as hell because the notes just drop out then. Setting fret- and string- preferences seems to partly work, but only partly. I haven't tried the 1-midi-channel-per-string mode with tremolo articulations yet. That should probably work now that I think of it.


KVLT drums are fun, but technically just a gimmick and a joke more than an actual drum kit- you'll get way better results with e.g. SD3.
I've used the free "Drummica" kit for a while and I think now I'm using the "Garage Kit" from Studio Drummer (whatever version was in komplete 10), but I'm not 100% sure, I was experimenting with different kits a few days ago. Either sound fine to me.


But the "injuring yourself while playing extreme metal guitar" is complete and utter myth. I've been playing metal guitar since the turn of the 90's and know literally tens of professional extreme metal guitarists and no-one has ever even joked about having any sorts of problems with any sort of pain.
Ah, cool. Must just be me then :-/. I'm glad you and your friends are ok!
 
Hear hear. I too have gotten old lately, and not many new metal bands spark any of the enthusiasm I used to have for metal. The latest Shinedown album was nice, great to hear them diversifying their music. Alter Bridge anyone? Great alternative metal band, The Last Hero was a good album and I think they're about to release a new record.

And to say all metal genres are the same is pretty much as accurate as saying all classical music is the same ;)

Myles Kennedy's voice is just awesome.
 
But if you guys are lumping Myles Kennedy, Alter Bridge (Creed) and Shinedown into the Metal category, I'd love to hear what "sub-genre" you think they fall into. That's why all the labelling is bogus. Metal is Metal, period.
 
Back in the days, I used to be a huge fan of bands like Opeth, Katatonia, Pain of Salvation, Porcupine Tree (more a prog rock band, but had a big fanbase in the metal community)...

But these days I'm afraid the metalhead in me is dead and burried. The only band I just can't stop loving is Type O Negative, one of my all times favourites :) But not really a metal band either.
 
I used to be very into Metal. Nowadays, not so much, I find it very silly and fake.

Hear hear. I too have gotten old lately, and not many new metal bands spark any of the enthusiasm I used to have for metal.

I have long phases where I don't listen to metal at all anymore...

But these days I'm afraid the metalhead in me is dead and burried.

MANOWAR DOES NOT APPROVE THIS.

 
I'm enjoying Dysrhythmia right now:

I couldn't get into a lot of their older stuff because they seemed to have kinda wimpy production, but I think the guitarist's and bassist's involvement in Gorguts has changed them for the better
 
Actually, I've been listening to a lot of Periphery lately. Their latest album is freakin' good! Especially Reptile, that's the best song I've heard in ages.
 
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Any other Russian Circles fans here? They are the heavy equivalent to Hammock in the instrumental-only vein. But some of their songs are equally beautiful. This is my favourite.

 
Actually, I've been listening to a lot of Periphery lately. Their latest album is freakin' good! Especially Reptile, that's the best song I've heard in ages.

Old comment but whatever. Exactly same with me. I love progressive stuff but more like Dream Theater, Ayreon, Neal Morse Band, Devin Townsend etc. I tried couple times to listen to Periphery but it just didn't click wit me whatsoever, always got bored after 3-4 tracks.

However PIV is just CRAZY good and Reptile wins "song of the year" for me. Such an awesome album. I still get bored with their earlier works though, I double-checked :)
 
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