Comments on Metal Videos

Here's something I've been wanting to start for a while. We've all seen Youtube comments. They're one of the internet's dark secrets, hidden away at the bottom of every video. No type of video is ever safe, not even metal videos with under 1000 views. There is always at least one person with a keyboard and a loose understanding of the English language who thinks their opinion is more important than everyone else's.

In fact, metal videos have some of the worst comments. For some reason, people feel the need to go on music they don't like and leave a comment proclaiming their distaste with the music no one forced them to listen to. It's utterly baffling why this situation would ever occur, but it does and it leads to some of the funniest comments out there.

I'm starting a movement. Send screencaps of stupid or funny comments on metal videos or related pages (with context if needed) as a message to the Facebook page or as an email to vogelfrei25@gmail.com. I'll keep collecting them like I've been doing for a while, but I'm only one person and I only watch so many videos.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys can find. They will be posted at regular intervals over on the Facebook page, so give it a like if you haven't already.

-Zombie Viking

Parsifal

Parsifal is a Swedish/Norwegian/Dutch power metal band consisting of a few Youtube celebrities that decided to get together and form a band. I'm pretty sure you haven't heard of them because their Facebook page has about 150 likes and the songs on Youtube have around 1000 views. And don't bother trying to search up the band on Google, all you'll find is the opera that the name is inspired by. The Last.fm page for Parsifal is about some dance DJ but is slowly being taken over by the far superior band. They do however have a Metal Archives page, so that's nice to see. But needless to say, this band needs some more exposure. That's where this blog comes in.

Clockwise: Bjarte, Oscar, Victor, Bram

Parsifal is made up of Bjarte (guitars), Oscar (vocals), Victor (bass), and Bram (drums). I've been subscribed to Bram and Oscar for years, back when they were both making videos regularly and I subscribed to Bjarte shortly after I found out about the band. I don't know if Victor has a Youtube channel, but I'm sure he's a cool guy regardless. Needless to say, they're all extremely talented musicians. Bram has covered almost all of my favourite songs pretty close to flawlessly. Oscar does (used to do?) "different" covers of metal songs, singing clean vocals over ones that are usually growled. If you wanted to see the standout videos on both of their channels, it would definitely be Oscar's heathen warrior cover of Cascada's Every Time We Touch and Bram's epic collaborative cover of Sons of Winter and Stars originally by Wintersun.

Bjarte, Bram, and Oscar all have channels full of covers of other bands, but with Parsifal they've shown that they can create great music of their own. In my opinion, the band is best described as power metal with folk influences. They even throw in some keyboard and other instruments at times, possibly from a ghost player because no one seems to be credited with any extra instruments. The songs in their debut album, Here From the Past, cover a nice range, from slower to fast (but mostly fast, just how I like it) and atmospheric to slightly less atmospheric. The only thing that needs to be said is that Oscar's vocals take a little bit to get used to. It's an odd thing to say because his vocals are all clean, but he definitely has a unique voice. My only real criticism of the album is that Oscar's vocals are not always used in the best way. In most songs the music compliments his voice really well and it all creates a great atmosphere, like in Forever till Dawn. But other times he tries to fit too many syllables into too short a time or there's too many vocal tracks going on at once. I think it's just a matter of the short time the band has actually been working together and I'm sure it'll get better with each new song they write. My other issues with the album deal with the mixing and sound quality, but I'm guessing it was made with a very small budget so it's well within the limits of acceptable. The sound quality is actually surprisingly good with all things considered.


Whether or not I've sold you on the band, you have no excuse to not check out the album. Here From the Past is available for free on Parsifal's site. That's right, just go to http://www.parsifalband.com/ and scroll down until you see the download album button. And best of all, clicking the button won't put you on some stupid mailing list like so many "free" download links nowadays. Give the album a listen or two and then consider pressing the donate button right beside it. Just think about what these guys could do with their next album(s) if they had a bit more money to work with. Alternatively, it's available for "name your price" on the band's Bandcamp.

Parsifal is a band with all the talent and none of the fanbase. They definitely deserve to become better known and maybe have some money thrown their way so they can make more music and maybe even tour (am I being too hopeful?). The band's members are to blame too for not getting the word out about their own band. You guys all have Youtube channels, put some Parsifal songs/videos on them! It's not selling out or shoving the band down our throats because the album is free! Since I wasn't subscribed to Bjarte at the time (the only member who has Parsifal videos on his channel), I only found out about the band due to a small post on Bram's Facebook page. Just knowing the name isn't enough since you can't search "Parsifal" anywhere and get the actual band to come up in the results. It all just seems kind of silly to me. Oh well, hopefully they'll get popular enough that this won't be a problem anymore.

You can find Parsifal at the following internet locations:
http://www.parsifalband.com/
Facebook
Bandcamp
Metal Archives

-Zombie Viking

My Musical Journey

For those of you that wonder how I find new music, or are just looking for some new bands, I've decided to do a "live blog" of one of my youtube journeys. This is where I'm watching a music video for a band I like and I just start clicking on the related videos until I get into uncharted territory. Sometimes I find some great bands hidden away behind all the links and other times I fall into metalcore territory or just a bunch of boring bands. Luckily, this time turned out pretty successful.

This journey all started from this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnrGCp-N7Bo

I don't remember how I got there, I just had it written down from another day. The only other Taiwanese band I've listened to is Cthonic, and Anthelion has a similar musical style (especially the vocals). This vocal style and the fact that it's in Mandarin just sounds so much different from anything else. It's a breath of fresh air, especially in black metal where too many bands sound too similar. These guys are just a quality, groovy and catchy black metal band. You may also notice in the related videos that Massakren shows up. As you may or may not remember, that's the band that now goes by the name of Starkill and is awesome.

Here's Anthelion's metal-archives page. Turns out there's another band under the same name from Italy, but they've since split up. It's kind of crazy that these guys have put out so little in the band's lifetime. The band is over 10 years old and has only released one album. Though that's the way some bands are I guess. Still, I'll be sure to check out this album a bit more in depth.

Just looking at all the related videos gives a great reminiscent feeling. There's some Powerwolf, Dimmu Borgir, and a band that I haven't listened to in far too long: Anorexia Nervosa. Be sure to check out that song (Sister September), it's a good one. I think I'll check out Satanized next, they have a cool name.

Though it turns out that despite having a cool name, the actual band's music is pretty boring and uninspired. They sound like a poor man's Hate, which is a band that comes up in the related videos for this song anyway. Just check out Hate instead, there's some good Polish blackened death metal (also, RIP Mortifer).

I seem to have gotten into the bands-from-interesting-places part of youtube.. There's bands from Taiwan, Iran, Spain.. Not something I'm used to seeing. I got scared and clicked on a band called Immortal Souls.

Now this is good melodeath. Plus they have corpse paint on. No band wearing corpse paint has ever steered me in the wrong directions, so I will definitely be checking these guys out. They're also Finnish. This band just keeps getting better and better!

From reading the comments, it seems that this band is christian, or at least partially. From what I can tell, they seems to talk a lot about winter and coldness (like one of my favouritest bands ever, Wintersun), but I always enjoy bands that break out of the typical "metal" mould, such as the Christian Unblack Metal band Antestor.

After I few more clicks I stumbled upon Torture Squad. These guys are from Brazil, another place without that many metal bands. This is some really good quality thrash. I don't normally like thrash so I always have an eye open for thrash bands that I actually enjoy. It's just my desire to have as much musical diversity in my library as possible. I'm actually really happy I found these guys, this is really good and catchy music.

I blacked out and woke up on this video. The band is Ekho, a folk/black metal band from freakin' Israel! I already like them.

I'll end this escapade with a band I'm not quite sure of yet: Purgatory. They've got a cool name and all, but I'm not too sure about the music. It's some really solid death metal, but it's one of those bands that I'll either really like after a while or just never listen to again. I'll check them out later... much later.

Well that's it for this journey. I also accidentally stumbled upon a few metalcore bands that I didn't mention above, but I quickly navigated to another page when I realized what had happened. They started doing the weird metalcore thing of throwing their whole body up and down during a breakdown. It just looks silly and the opposite of brutal. Oh well, not the topic to get into right now. So I'd say I found a nice bit a of bands to check out. From here, I usually look up some more songs from each artist and decide if I do actually like them or not. This happens anywhere from the next day to the next month, depending on how interested I am in the band and how busy my schedule is. There's so many gems hidden away on youtube, you just have to know where to click.

-Zombie Viking

Finding New Music

Finding new music is always an interesting subject, no matter what type of music you listen to. There's no right or wrong way, but every method will get you slightly different results. You will always easily find the most popular bands in the genre but it's all the other bands that you don't know about.

When I was first getting in to metal, I found a lot of new music through Last.fm. I found a band I liked and looked for similar bands. Easy enough. But there gets a point where Last.fm gets kind of wonky. It constantly recommends bands that I don't like or are from a genre that I already listen to too much. If I wanted to listen to more power metal, I could easily find some power metal bands, I don't need some snotty website recommending 20 bands that sound the exact same! This is where Youtube comes in. It's great for finding similar-but different bands, if that makes sense. I have found some of the weirdest crap on Youtube. Smaller bands like The CNK, Ajattera, Le Grand Guignol, etc. are all strange bands that I somehow found from clicking related video after related video. I have no idea what video even led me to these bands, I just know that there's no way in hell I found have found out about them anyway. Especially since they're unlike anything else. Honestly, listen to this:



Too bad they've since split up. Really interesting music can be brought back from the bowels of Youtube. It's especially good for finding new genres of music, since you can just click until you find something you like. There's also some youtubers like InfidelAmsterdam that give great recommendations. I've also subscribed to a few record labels' accounts which helps every so often.

I don't have too many friends who listen to metal, and even less who like the same types of metal as me, so it's unfortunate that I don't get too many friend recommendations for bands. I'm sure it's pretty nice, since they can filter out the bad music for you. I'm usually the one giving out recommendations though. And I try to spread awesome music *cought*Wintersun*cough* as much as I can.

So currently, my favourite method of finding new music is through Youtube. I also like to expand out into new genres every so often since it gives my library a fresh coat of paint. I'm a firm believer that you can like any genre as long as you find some good bands in it and listen to them enough. Never stop searching.

-Zombie Viking

New Content Coming Soon, I Swears It

Hey guys,

I've been a little busy lately with exams and summer jobs and the like. Within the next couple days, I should have everything sorted out and can start posting things here regularly again. I'll also be able to decide what type of posts I want to put on this blog. I'm thinking of doing more frequent reviews since they seem to generate the most traffic and are easiest for me to write (since I'm just stating my opinion which saves me from having to fact check or do research of any kind, yay). I also might do some event thing, like I try to find 100 new bands or something like that. I do think the number 100 sounds pretty good, and it'll be good to post something new consecutively for 100 days.

Anyway, I'll leave you with this youtube comment I found the other day.

-Zombie Viking

PSA: No One Cares If You Don't Like a Band

I'm tired of seeing people complain that a musician left a band. Stuff happens guys, people move around. It's basically the equivalent of complaining that someone switched jobs. Are you really expected to work at the same job for 20 years? Well that's what musicians do.

Yeah! Wait, what?..

Yes, Jari left Ensiferum and Petri is there now. That doesn't mean the band is now crap. It's a new band now with a new style. Petri may not be as skilled technically as Jari but that doesn't mean that everything he plays on guitar is terrible. Anette is currently the vocalist of Nightwish and she has been doing a great job. She sings in a different style than Tarja, which doesn't mean she's bad. If you want to listen to Tarja, listen to old Nightwish or her solo albums she started releasing. Nightwish is a new band now with new members. That means it should be looked at differently than their first few albums. And can everyone please stop complaining about Rafał and Krimh. It's very tragic what happened with Vitek and Covan, but Decapitated is and always will be an amazing band.

Seriously, no one ever complains when the bassist leaves.

-Zombie Viking

Where Has the Stupid Gone?

Youtube comments just aren't what they used to be. I had planned to make a "stupid comments on metal Youtube videos" post, but no one seems to be posting anything funny anymore. Where have all the Justin Beiber comments gone? Why is no one arguing about religion? All that's left is people preemptively telling everyone to enjoy the song and not start any flame wars. Where's the fun in that?! I haven't been going out of my way or anything, but I've been casually searching the comments of videos I've watched over the past couple months and this is all I've found.

This is the best the internet has to offer. Thanks for sucking the humour out of Youtube comments everyone. Now it's just a mass of one word comments that mean absolutely nothing. I already know that the song is awesome, that's why I'm listening to it. I want to see people discuss something completely unrelated. That's why I read the comments.

If everyone who reads this can go start an argument on a random Youtube video, I will be one very happy person. I only wish to make the internet a funnier place. To bring it back to its former glory. Go my minions, go spread anarchy. *queue evil laughter*

-Zombie Viking

Stop Breaking YouTube

What is this crap? Why did YouTube make the thumbnails for my subscription area bigger? Now I can see even less of what I actually want to see. They've been doing this for years now, slowly taking away more and more features and making the site harder to navigate. I want to do one thing when I'm on YouTube: watch videos. But for some reason they don't want me doing that.

This new layout has been nothing but problems. Half the videos you're subscribed to don't even show up! I don't want to watch "featured" or "trending" videos, I want to watch what I want to watch. What I told YouTube I want to watch. All I want is simplicity.

Does anyone remember when there was a "new uploads" box where it showed videos from the channels you were subscribed to? Whenever you watched a video from that box, it would disappear. They even made it so you could click an x and remove the video yourself if you didn't want to watch it. Now not only can you see much less of your subscribed uploads, but the videos you have watched grey out with a little "watched" there to taunt you. It's like the site is laughing at you, showing you how much of your life you've wasted away scrolling through this huge list it's putting there. I just want that one feature back, the new uploads box. They can keep the rest of their new crap, I'll still be happy.

If they're going to add something new though, how about a "stupidest comment" highlight. It would have to update every 5 minutes or so because of the speed at which stupidity is spewed onto the comment box. Maybe even add a new voting button where you rate how stupid the comment is. That would be a fun little time waster.

Anyway, I just want them to fix YouTube. Ranting helps, but it still doesn't get rid of the problem. Tomorrow I want to see everyone trending with the hashtag #fixyoutube. (And I don't even twitter). Actually, just post that in the comments section of this post. That'll make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside :3

-Zombie Viking

Decapitated and Their (Talented) New Drummer

This post is sort of a continuation of yesterday's. So if you didn't like yesterday's... read one of my older posts (yay for views!). Now for today, I wanted to reserve a post for this man. Technically it is not a one man band, because it is not a band, so it didn't fit. Plus the pure awesomeness of the songs beckons its own attention.

Kerim Lechne, also known as Krimh, is the current drummer of the band Decapitated. In addition to filling in the huge role of Vitek (more on that later), he also maintains a fairly active YouTube account. While Krimh is mainly a drummer, he's actually pretty talented at writing songs himself. Here is an example of one of my favourites.



Now since we're talking about the current drummer of Decapitated, I might as well tell the story. It makes for a good read.

Decapitated, as you may or may not know, is a pretty big band in the Tech Death scene. It was started in 1996 by Wacław "Vogg" Kiełtyka and his brother Witold "Vitek" Kiełtyka. They were just 15 and 12, respectively. Releasing their first album in 2000, they quickly became Poland's and Europe as a whole's most respected technical death metal band.

Six years and three albums later, on October 28, 2007, something very tragic happened. While on tour, Decapitated's tour bus his a truck, killing Vitek who was just 23. Their vocalist, Covan, slipped into a coma which he has still not woken up from. The band was obviously put on hiatus.



 Two years later in 2009, the band was reformed with Krimh on drums and a new vocalist. Their fifth album, Carnival is Forever, was released in 2011. While many longtime fans like to moan and complain on YouTube and other sites, I think the new lineup still makes for a pretty darn good band. At the very least, the band has an interesting new sound. Check out their newest music video for reference.



I'm glad this band is still around and still making awesome music. It definitely helps that they have (and have always had) an extremely talented drummer.

-Zombie Viking

Giving Back to the Fans

One thing that separates metal from the other facets of life is how close-knit the community is. To see this, you need not look farther than the bands. Metal artists love their fans, and if they don't, well, they're probably angsty teenagers playing metalcore and you should pay them no heed. Or money for that matter.

I bet it's full of sunshine and lov

YouTube is the easiest and probably most popular way for bands to interact with fans. It also keeps them a safe distance from the crazy ones so they won't end up with a lock of their hair on Ebay. Bands like Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy, Korpiklaani, Sabaton and Eluveitie all have channels that they (usually) keep updated with tour videos, recording sessions, or general shenanigans. Many official channels even respond to video comments occasionally. I'm sure it's just when they find a comment that isn't a religious battle or about Justin Beiber. So you, the viewer, get to have a personalized message from the roadie who got put in charge of shifting through a pile of dog crap. It's this extra bit of effort that makes it so much more satisfying to watch music videos on the band's channel as opposed to the record label (damn you NuclearBlast, stop posting bad music).

Some bands have even taken their fan service to other parts of the interwebs. Mysp- I mean.. Facebook is a great way for bands to post updates, pictures, snippets of their songs and links to websites that will actually make them money (i.e. br00talmetalmerch.com). There's one band in particular that's been spamming the hell out of my Facebook lately though: Pathfinder. They're a small band from Poland with a large amount of things to say. For the past couple months, they've been posting pictures of very non-metal-looking people holding their newest album. Awkward smiles make my day. So does sitting. I love sitting.

The internet is great and all, but nothing compares to the real thing. Which in this case means concerts. Bands that genuinely enjoy what they do put on the best shows. I may be getting a little sentimental here, but it's great seeing bands go that extra little bit. I could get all sentimental here, but I'm just going to post a video instead. It's less writing for me, and this is already a sizable post. Thanks for reading this far by the way. You're great. Anyway, this next clip is of Manowar, you may have heard of them. Sometimes they allow fans to come up on stage and play with them. I just can't think of any better fan service than this. Take a look for yourself.


Just take a moment and appreciate the pure awesomeness of that song. Listen to it a second time if you need to.

-Zombie Viking

Metal Wallpapers

My gift to you, my fabulous reader. The title of this post may be a bit of a misnomer, I admit. While these wallpapers are not directly metal-related, they are all the product of a wonderful YouTuber by the name of Tillsilence. He creates charming symphonic covers of metal tunes along with a background picture for each. These images just happen to make for marvellous wallpapers. I'm out of flowery adjectives so check him out here. Additionally, I've posted some more wallpapers after the break.

YouTube Today

I've fiddled around with the customization options on this blog for a bit so I think it'll be fine for now. Time to write my first real post:

As I mentioned previously, I had to create a new google account for this blog. That means that when I went to YouTube, I was greeted with this.

Ah! The horror!

Now I know what you're thinking, I just posted two pictures in a row with barely anything of substance between them. I have not gotten this blog off to a good start. 

How about we analyze the above image. YouTube suggested a variety of things. Crappy music, that's a staple, nothing new there. Sports have always been pretty popular. Ellen... sure, why not? EpicMealTime is the latest in a long line of people doing stupid things on the internet. UberHaxorNova though, that's new. That's the craze that seems to have been sweeping YouTube for quite some time now; watching other people play video games.

I'm not sure exactly when this started, but its popularity has taken off. Every hour there's a new "Let's Play" or something of the sort. The best part is that anyone can do it! Any pimply teenager with no talent can record himself playing video games. Searching "Let's Play" yielded "About 11,500,000 results".

I am also guilty of feeding this craze, I do not deny it. I've been subscribed to Nova for about a year and various other commentators for even longer. I got into the whole scene because when I started university, I realized I no longer had time to play sweet sweet video games. This is my fix, if you will. It's my escape to a simpler time, when fields were bathed in blood and I didn't have to sleep.

But enough reminiscing from me, my question is why other people do it. Surely everyone can't be a recovering video game addict in university. Some of these series get close to 500,000 views per video. And judging by the comments, some of these viewers are 8 years old.

This is the first comment I found.

In my professional opinion, I think it's because the commentators (the people making the videos) are funny. Why play a crappy game on your own when you can watch someone louder do it? The loudest and most irrelevant commentators seem to have the most views. "But" you say "why do the viewers have to play these crappy games alone? Can't they play with their friends?". My answer, of course, is that these viewers do not have friends. That's why watching people playing video games on YouTube has become so popular. As opposed to finding someone to play with, this mass amount of people has either started playing or started watching video games over the internet.

So if you are a loud and lonely dude who just happens to play video games, maybe you should think of quitting your day job and becoming a YouTube celebrity. Those guys make a lot of money.

-Zombie Viking