Jernlov

Best of luck. There's a lot of stuff to go through...

What do you dislike about Dark Moor? I personally think The Hall of the Olden Dreams is one of the best power metal albums out there. However, if you're aiming the comment at their later work, I can sort of agree. - I think the mood ruins the music, as with a lot of power metal. Plus, Dark Moor sound so heavily Spanish that it's hard to understand. I have similar problems with Sonata, but I much prefer the mood and subject matter of Sonata's songs. Anyway, here are all the main bands which I think are overrated: The Beatles - Disagree, after all they've done for the music industry they're hardly overrated. Death - Agree. Chuck Schuldiner was a good player, but a lot of death metal (except for melodeath, really) bores the hell out of me. Dragonforce - Agree, ZP Theart wins the award for the stupidest power metal voice ever. Also, their songs are ludicrous. Necrophagist Nightwish - Agree, unless it's Oceanborn or Angels Fall First. Wishmaster and Century Child were horrible, and so is Dark Passion Play. Opeth - Agree, but only if it's post Damnation. Pink Floyd - Disagree heavily, their influence on prog rock continues to the present day. Similar case to The Beatles. Queen - Same as Pink Floyd/Beatles. Rhapsody of Fire (I used to love them but have now realised how monotonous and uninspired their music is) - Agree, it's as boring as ____.

Looks like he's doing just fine. The flat out truth of this statement made me laugh hard. Also, Adio, your sig is hilarious. Another band I can think of is Cobra Starship. Their fans push them to otherworldly heights, but they sound the same as every alternative/pop-punk band that went before them.

I'll second all of this. I absolutely love Top Gear, one of my favourite TV shows. James is also the best. Also, Fifth Gear is dire. They try too hard to do it better, plus Adrian and Tiff annoy the hell out of me.

Moonloop (unedited improvisation) - Porcupine Tree 40 minutes of awesome music.

I may do Blind Guardian if I have the time. A big maybe.

[edit]

Oh wow. Amazing how sometimes listening to such a mundane song can lead into other things. :P If you like Mozart, try Haydn and Salieri. I used to listen to a ton of classical (the only thing I'd listen to as a kid, I couldn't bear the music of the time... probably a good thing), but studying music intensively for 3 years has sort-of put me off it. Nevertheless I have so many classical CDs that I'll just listen to one for the hell of it someday.

This Will Never End - Blind Guardian I've been trying to get into A Twist in the Myth for a while, but it hasn't grown on me yet. >_>

http://www.last.fm/user/Silver-Sword/ (:

Journey Through the Dark by Blind Guardian got me into power/epic metal. Actually, that's a half-truth, the first Blind Guardian song I heard (Majesty) got me into the genre. That was the one that made me truly, truly love it, though.

Edit: Will update later.

Guardian of the Blind - Blind Guardian

Lol. Progressive death = technical death; unless you call Opeth progressive metal. They're both right but personally I think tech death suits them more if I have to categorise. I think it's dire, and not because of Anette's voice. I like her voice; it's even beautiful at times (Eva, The Poet and the Pendulum); but the music on the album is all dumbed down and just plain boring; it seems like they've almost joined the crowd of bands that tried to copy their sound. Come on, Tuomas. Pull your socks up. Angels Fall First is an underrated Nightwish gem. My favourite and in my opinion, their very best album especially when compared to the sellout that was Century Child. (And I can understand if you don't like Tarja if you've listened to Wishmaster and Century Child.) Oceanborn is good and so is Once. I actually quite enjoy Dimmu Borgir. I'm not a poser or anything -- I like what I hear, especially For All Tid and Stormblåst.

Darkthrone are awesome, sure, but hard to get into. Truly amazing to listen to after a while, though. No 'best' bands, but here are a few from the subgenres I know about: - Metal -- Power Metal --- Blind Guardian --- Gamma Ray --- Sonata Arctica -- Symphonic Metal --- Nightwish (please avoid Dark Passion Play, not a good example) -- Progressive Metal --- Dream Theater --- Porcupine Tree -- Melodeath/Melodic Black --- Children of Bodom --- Dimmu Borgir -- Technical Death --- Opeth Should get you started metal wise.

ASUS laptops are exceptional, but one with mid-range specs would be about £100-£150 out of your budget. (I have no idea of the support, they don't seem to go wrong often) The HP that Bac_Talan recommended is pretty good for what you want it for. I'll see if I can dig up some more in the way of laptops later on. Toshibas seem to be good reliability-wise, not too sure on prices though.

I've been using the RCs (since I run Fx without addons/extensions anyway) and the finished product is great. Nice and smooth, a less noticeable memory leak and brilliant standards compliance.

I don't skip. I listen to the album in its entireity.

Porcupine Tree > Dream Theater. Yeah. Porcupine's sound is really unique. Love them to bits. Plus they're a [fairly] local band to me. I would never have thought that I would find such amazing musicians in the vicinity. Oh God did Nirvana suck hard. I tried to get my classmates to listen to something else once. Childish insults flew. I laughed. If Kurt hadn't topped himself, we would be blissfully ignorant to Nirvana's prescence. All of this said, I'm pretty sure that there must be Nirvana fans somewhere that appreciate more than the one band [and aren't brainless]. It all depends on whether or not you like hearing the same song over and over. AdioLovesSquall is right, y'know. Anyway: Overrated bands: Dragonforce (every album is cheesy and has quality traded for computerised speed) Dream Theater (except for Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence) Opeth (purely for Watershed, it was such a letdown, yet so many loved it...) Helloween (became sub-par and overrated the very second Kai Hansen lost interest) Rhapsody of Fire (same reasons as Dragonforce, but trade 'computerised speed' for 'a full symphony orchestra and terrible lyrics' Epica (too like Nightwish, that instantly makes them overrated) Nightwish (especially Dark Passion Play and Century Child)

Svefn-g-englar - Sigur Rós

með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust - Sigur Rós Listened to it a few times on Last.fm. Good album, but the lack of 'cello bow is a pity.

4chan: I'm usually browsing /a/, /w/, /g/, /o/ and /mu/; I make the occasional post too. /b/ used to be worth visiting and it's a shame that it has become... this. I avoid it like the plague; the amount of 13 year olds posting the same crap repeatedly makes me RAGE. From what I've seen, most of /b/ STAYS in /b/ and doesn't rear its ugly head on other boards. Thank God.

Completely agree. Even if I have a huge soft spot for Opeth amongst a handful of prog bands, for example Pink Floyd and Porcupine Tree. Dream Theater bore the hell out of me. Dragonforce give power metal a bad name and deserve to be expelled from the subgenre. They can take Rhapsody of Fire, Dragonland and Dark Moor with them too.

In Mist She Was Standing - Opeth

- Metal and its various subgenres - Indie pop - Post-rock - Some classic rock (Queen, Zeppelin) - (Dark) Ambient