Thread:Vorknkx/@comment-3547390-20170901233307/@comment-3547390-20171031024512

Yay! Glad you saved humanity. Have a cookie.

Me, I like as little distractions as possible. A wall means I won't see movement, which means my eyes won't travel off the game at an inconvenient time. It is a nice feeling, it gives you a sense of seclusion as well as being able to forget what time it is. Especially on weekends.

That is from their final album. I am not actually a fan of that stuff, it got too progressive rock for my particular tastes. Definitely not what I would recommend.

Never question if I am crazy or not, I live to prove it by reading Star Wars sourcebooks and listening to Therion albums. Yeah, I figured you didn't get as obsessive with me in regards to listening to everything. I make sure I check all b-side tracks, I refuse to skip a single song. Vocals are an important part to me, I think that is mostly the portion that makes or breaks a song for me. Needless to say, Therion has good music in the background (I preferred the sound of the third album, the fourth was more regular rock and felt more generic) but the vocals just aren't great. The lyrics indeed seem a bit odd here, the singer is apparently part of some cult and is entirely insane. All I know is that I hope the fourth album wasn't the start of a trend for his vocals, that tops After Forever's mock fights and Lou Reed as the most hilarious voice in metal.

I have continued on and listened to the 5th Therion album, also known as the first album that is actually considered symphonic metal as opposed to death or just standard heavy. The transition is indeed obvious, gone are the generic rock sounds, instead we get a lot of arabic sounds and operatic themes that remind me of early After Forever. The female singer is more active, the male sounds mostly punkish which isn't great (according to Wikipedia, this is the last album he sang in, which I am celebrating in the hopes that we get someone I actually like) but is definitely a lot better than the atrocious songs on the last album. In Therion's history, this is an all-around improvement. Of course, something about it is still not good. Maybe it is the punk vocals. Maybe it is the repetitive nature. Something about these songs just makes me bored until they eventually end. I can recognize melodic elements, but it is like late Tristania or Sirenia, I just find it boring for some reason I cannot explain. Something about the sound production is possibly off as well, it doesn't sound as bombastic as I am used to. I know 1996 is earlier than most other symphonic metal bands, but I easily was drawn to Nightwish especially with Oceanborn. Released two years earlier, you could say they were pioneers, but I have no context to fall back on here nor do I really care to be a historian. I think a big problem might be the poor sound. I actually wondered if somehow tonight I just was underwhelmed by the sound of my headphones, but a quick play of Nightwish and I immediately see a glaring difference. This is almost from another era, an earlier era of metal where thrash was big and it seemed the point was mostly just to shout words into a microphone. It is a lot better than the disaster of the last album, but I think I actually preferred the third due to growling instead of punk vocals, and a feeling that there was more complexity even when this is trying to be operatic. It just lacks that bombastic feeling I look for, instead we are just lost in the desert with some naked eagle guy who teaches us that sand gets everywhere. At least, I think that is what they meant by the new Empire soon to come. Grandpa Simpson may like orchestras now, but he is rambling about his cult once again, and I think the purpose of these songs is a bit lost on me. "It sounds deep man, listen to all those cult references". I think this might be one of the first bands who consistently makes stuff that I have no idea what they are talking about. Metal can have complex lyrics, but never before have I been so baffled with essentially every line in the man's insanity for being part of a dragon cult that somehow is connected with the evil side of the Jewish faith. I wonder if he just picked Adlib phrases "Let's throw a Set here, a Kheperas here, and talk about Sorath's flame here." The naked eagle guy of course symbolizes that we have absolutely no idea what is going on, so you might as well get some suggestive imagery from a bird man in the middle of the desert to show we are about more than dragons. We are about metaphysical concepts and Egyptian Gods, obviously two concepts bird-man happens to be an esteemed professor in.

Then again, the riffs sound like Ayreon, which I wasn't a fan of at all. I found a chip on the floor. It was old. I still ate it, but it tasted disgusting. I found more entertainment in that than this, which is the main reason I ate the chip, to do something to pass the time. Because this is the equivalent of waiting in the doctor's office if your doctor was a shirtless bird man but otherwise was entirely boring. But you like shirtless bird men they say, even if they forget the others weren't doctors but psychotic men who beat people with hammers. Now, the doctor is nuts and may eventually snap, plus he does reflex tests, but for now he just feels sort of tame. He's a shirtless bird man, but the type that wants to blend in society to the point you end up forgetting he is a shirtless bird man until he mentions his hairy nipples in an attempt to get you to like him. Therion ripped me off. The doctor should have been ripping someone's arms off or at least throwing someone down a flight of stairs.

Be thankful you only know the Star Wars games. Experiencing as much of the Star Wars EU as I have, the contradictions never cease. You don't want to know how many sources directly contradict each other in regard's to Bespin's surface or what Kashyyyk is like. If there is one thing to grasp, it is that all of the plots were hanging on thin wires that everyone squints to try to link into a consistent world, when in reality it barely makes any sense. Add the craziness of "Boba Fett is back!", "The Emperor isn't actually dead!", "Jabba's father wants revenge!", and you end up getting the feeling that it is a bunch of fan works where they all stretched for some shocking twist that ends up making it all as a whole feel mundane - "Oh, look, Boba Fett".

Anyone who defends the old Star Wars EU hasn't read it or cherry picked the few shining diamonds in a sea of headaches. The Thrawn trilogy is amazing, at least the first 2 parts, since the third is in 1993. But everything else can be quite the mess to navigate, no sane person would defend the Jedi Prince series. The more I read, the more I support it all being considered Legends. The 90s in particular shows this quite heavily, the 80s lucked out since it was mostly Marvel telling the story and thus they just had to avoid contradicting each other. Now with this new upsurge, you can't go a short distance without running into some glaring contradiction. We can't even get the planets we should know from the movies correct, nevertheless all these additional planets. One thing to learn from this is to not cherish any perception you have on the Star Wars world, as the next story may change the rules to fit their pivotal plot points.