Noumenon Blog

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The phenomenon of PUBG - future of eSports or just another FPS?

With the recent explosion of Battle Royale type shooters, somehow PUBG gets the top spot in the hearts of gamers. First launched as a pre-alpha back in June 2016, the game quickly and steadily climbed up the ladder of Twitch viewer base and now proudly sits on the top spot with streamers such as the ex-CS:GO superstar Shroud and the “slick daddy” Dr.Disrespectful both amounting more than 20k viewers per stream. The biggest question everyone asks is whether the game is suited for a high level competitive gaming. Lets try to analyze the situation.

With the recent fluke of Quake Champions and underwhelming results of Overwatch and most importantly the great decrease of interest in CS:GO from both the viewer and player base signals everything looks like people are getting tired of the typical fps games. It seems that the good old objective based match is getting a little old. In my personal perspective what also gets a little confusing is the match formats that are used by these games. Maybe these things are the case of the current situation of competitive fps scene.

Now I’d like to see what exactly attracts players and viewers to the PUBG. First thing that comes to mind is the whole concept of Battle Royale. You put 100 players on the same map and only one of them will survive. It is up to the player to decide his play style. Whether he wants to play aggressive, focus on the kills, loot only when the time calls for it, or play i really slow: not taking any risks, looting as much as possible, choosing when to fight and when to avoid the fire. Aside from that there are other numerous possible things to do in the game. Driving vehicles and boats, trying to get that precious air drop with the AWM in it or just plainly running around screaming nonsenses into the microphone. These are just some of the things you will never get in a classic fps games, such as CS:GO. It’s the amount of choices you can make even before the game starts. You are not forced to take down the entire squad of the enemies, you are not forced to disarm the c4 pack planted by the terrorists and you don’t have to capture that damn flag. It gives the sense of reality that a lot of players are so looking for in the games these days.

But all the good things aside, PUBG and others alike have a built-in flaw that could never make the game we play right now into a full-fledged eSport that could be played on LAN tournaments. Once again it’s the concept of the game it self- 100 players on the same server. It’s simply impossible to make a LAN tournament where 100 players would be playing in the same area whether it’s an arena or a stadium to compete for the top place. Online tournaments still exist, but we can easily agree that a game is considered a real eSport only if it can be played in a LAN situation. Possible solutions? Well there are a couple of those such as narrowing the play zone where the players can land so it can accommodate smaller quantities of players without making the map too big and making the game feel very slow. Another way to improve the situation is just by making the play zone get smaller faster. To me all of this basically defeats the whole purpose of the game. You get so much and by implementing these things in a LAN situation you are basically taking a way half of the fun and uniqueness form the game. 

To sum this up, I want to say that games like PUBG have a bright future ahead. In the present day pretty much every single game is aimed to be an eSport at some point. Unfortunately for the developers, some of them are just better without it. It is my firm belief that PUBG is one of them. It should stay as casual as it gets. Meanwhile the developers should focus on new genres of eSport games because nobody wants to see products milked to death. I predict  that MOBA games might be the next ones to suffer from this stagnation that CS:GO community is facing right now. Maybe I’m just there to be proven wrong. 

Cheers all!

[noumenonblog]

Noumenons Album Review: Alluvial - The Deep Longing for Annihilation

The first album of Portland, Oregon based band Alluvial has been long awaited by the followers of both founding members o the band, Keith Merrow and Wes Hauch has been released in January 6th, 2017 . Both of these musicians have been involved in some of the most cutting-edge technical metal bands at some point, most notably Conquering Dystopia, where Keith and the seven-string guitar god Jeff Loomis (ex-Nevermore, Arch Enemy) made some of the most intricate, technologically-driven yet absolutely catchy and groovy instrumental music, and the notorious The Faceless where Wes was a part of their third studio album and touring cycle till his departure from the band in 2014. It is no surprise that The Deep Longing of Annihilation should be delivering some of the greatest instrumental death metal sounds ever recorded.

Usually I start the review from the instrumental standpoint. This time I want to put the emphasis on the one of the most crucial aspects of the record. First thing that hits the listeners ear is this eerie atmosphere you don’t really find in this kind of music. Instrumental guitar oriented music tends to sound a little bit dry for most cases. In the case of Alluvial you don’t really get that. Right off the bat you feel like you’ve been put in a different dimension where a certain nihilistic sense of dread takes control. 

Now let’s go over the instrumental part of the music, and as usual I’ll start with the guitars.

The opening track “Colony” starts with Wes’s lead that immediately suggests that his technical abilities to play the instrument is no joke. As soon as the rest of the instruments kick in you are being pummeled by massive yet clear and instantly recognizable tone of rythm guitars. If you check out the official album stream in Youtube, you’ll see why the comment section is saturated with comments praising Keiths understanding of guitar tone and after witnessing it by your own ears it leaves little to no doubts why. 

The drumming in this album is handled by Dan Presland, most notably the drummer of Australian extreme progressive metal band  Ne Obliviscaris. If you try to compare the drum parts to Conquering Dystopia’s record, it is not a saturated and overly complex yet it has a really obvious purpose along with the rest of the instruments - the atmosphere and making sure everything glues together for the same reason. The production is immaculate, every single hit is articulated to perfection without making it sound sampled or somewhat synthetic. 

The bass guitar plays a huge role in overall sound, tone and feel of the music. While listening to parts where the entire band is playing together, it is not as recognizable as you’d expect, but as soon as the rest of the instruments take a little step back, you can clearly hear what the bass is doing. It’s extremely distorted, yet punchy, the low end is something that pretty much ties it all together. Personally I’ve never heard a bass this distorted but still able to maintain the character and precision that it is required for this type of music.

The track listing of the album is really thought out. While the opening track starts with a certain fury, the second track that shares the title of the album really puts you in the general mood of the rest of the songs. It takes you through these mood swings of melancholy growing to the heaviest extremities of technicality and brutality.

To close up the review I want to thank the guys in the band for this amazing record. It’s been a long since the instrumental music scene has put out anything like this. So for anyone who enjoyed the Conquering Dystopia this should be a real treat to listen. Of course the album is somewhat aimed towards the guitar nerds and recording enthusiasts, it should satisfy anyone who fancies heavy metal music.

10/10

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Dota 2: The plebs point of view Chapter 4: The 6.84 is here

So it’s been a while since I posted my thoughts regarding the Dota 2 stuff and finally I found a right moment to do so. Not only the current moment in the scene is packed full of all sorts of tournaments and lans, the long waited patch is finally here. Well, it’s here for quite a while now but it is still really really fresh. And finally I can easily say that I enjoy Dota 2 again. It was almost a full season of a really one-sided meta, which wasn’t pleasing to watch nor to play. Even though I don’t play Dota 2 anymore, I can really feel for the players who had to endure all the struggle they went through the notorious 6.83 era. I feel that this was probably least personal-skill demanding patch ever, even though it was far from easy to play one. But I don’t want to go deep into this, I talked about it already and I’m done whining. 

What is exactly that makes this patch to get my attention in Dota 2 again? Well, there are a lot of things. And it pretty much is the answer to the question. It is not just one massive thing that changes one thing, but a lot of much smaller things that affect the game in a different way. I believe the pivoting point in 6.83 was the “rubber-band come-back” mechanic implementation. Which didn’t make much sense from the very start. I would love to quote EG’s Fear about the issue: “For example in football your goal could be made bigger by moving the goalposts if your team is winning a lot. Or maybe they could count one goal as two goals for the team that is behind.” That pretty much sums everything up about the patch. And the prayers have been heard, Icefrog finally decided to fix that stuff PLUS add a ton of other little things that potentially changes dynamics for every single hero (in the sense of new added items). 

For once I enjoy the drafting stages again. And I love this moment of being lost and when I really have no idea who’s going to be banned and picked. It’s not the interchanging the same ~30 heroes between the two of teams. Now everything seems viable and the surprise factor is back, where one single pick that forces the enemy team to play to others rules. I also find the games now are so much more dynamic and fast, even though the patch was aiming towards longer games with examples like the Alchemist buffs, usable items that give permanent buffs etc.

So yeah, quick thoughts, I’m stoked about the upcoming Dota 2 stuff. 

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Noumenons Album Review: Au-Dessus- Au-Dessus

I always found it hard to like pretty much everything new that comes up these days regarding the Black Metal genre. I was never fond of Post-Black Metal either. We all love the good old De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and A Blaze In Northern Sky but when it comes to bands like Deafheaven or Alcest, opinions start to get a little shaky. Au-Dessus is quite a different act that wants to reward the listener with certainty, clarity and is here to put a strong statement that’s beyond the band members previous musical efforts.

Guitars. Black metal was always known for it’s rebellion against some certain aspects of other metal genres - tuning low is one of those aspects. It seems that the same rebellion is maintained here, by dropping the tuning really low instead of the standard tuning used by the veterans of the genre. I do believe that this gives something really fresh to overall sound - no more thin, shrieking, ice-picky type riffs, but heavy, yet really atmospheric ones instead. It has a nice balance between the tight modern character and more traditional, rich and smooth, yet unpolished sound. The riffs aren’t too complex, but they never sound sloppy or somewhere beyond technical capabilities of the players. 

Vocals. I always knew this man as a master of modern death metal growls and the approach he took on this album is quite a surprise for my ear. The ability to maneuver among all sorts of different techniques is just stunning. You can easily find a lot of similarities to the very best vocalists Black Metal has to offer - from sinister throat singing Attila Csihar of Mayhem is known for, to depressive cries heard on Det som engang var by Burzum. Vocals never seem to sound out of place, they always fit the theme of the song or a certain part of it and compliments it as another instrument that’s being played by a virtuoso. 

Bass. The bottom end of the sound is bonded with the guitars and is quite recognizable. At some certain parts of songs it comes out as this fuzzy foundation that gives overall sound a filthy, unclean feeling that enhances the atmosphere the band is reaching for. It fits in perfectly and I personally can’t think of how everything would sound with something of a different nature. 

Drums. This is probably the most complex and technically efficient part of the album. Variations between the beats are really diverse, tempo tends to change once or even more during a single song, giving a strong progressive feeling that lifts up the music from being monotonous. The performance here is impeccable. 

I do feel that some certain parts of songs tend to get a bit repetitive but the dramatic changes between them are what makes this album a big highlight in modern Black Metal. The fact that this is the debut of this band makes up for everything you could criticize on. I do believe this band has a great potential and perspective. I wish them all the best.

8.5/10

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Noumenons Album Review: Conquering Dystopia- Conquering Dystopia

I feel bad for almost forgetting to put out a review on this gem. Metal music scene has had a lot of that kind of “all-star” bands, where the giants of this genre gather up to make something special. Most of the times, it doesn’t work. One thing that comes to mind is Eibon, a band that consisted of Phil Anselmo (Pantera, Down), Killjoy (Necrophagia), Fenriz (Darkthrone) and Maniac (ex-Mayhem, Skitliv). It existed for such a short period of time and just did not work out. Well, Conquering Dystopia is another kind of a beast. Everything went off when Jeff Loomis started working with Keith Merrow, who mostly did guitar related gear reviews on youtube. This colaboration had a huge success among the viewers of Keith’s channel. This was a good starting point for the two of them to start working on some more serious material. The guys started a Kickstarter campaign to fund the making of the album. Later on the full line-up was unveiled. It consists of Jeff Loomis and Keith Merrow on guitars, Alex Rudinger (ex-The Faceless) on drums and Alex Webster (Cannibal Corpse) on bass. And needless to say, everything came out just so perfect.

Guitars. I was getting so sick and tired of the monotony of current approach to playing the guitar. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of modern metal guitarists, but there is just one Misha Mansoor and just one Tosin Abasi. These guys may be your biggest inspiration, but being original should be your top priority and trying to do things the way Misha or Tosin does just not cut it. For this reason I do think that Jeff and Keith deserves a medal big time. Everything from guitar tone, to riffs are just so unique. Of course you can hear some typical modern guitar sounds here and there but the way these things are presented are just a proof of how well thought out the entire material is. Lead playing is super intense and technical, yet it retains the vast knowledge and experience of musicality Jeff is known for to it. Rythm playing is where Keith shines. This guy really knows the way things should be going. He manages to keep everything under control, his playing dictates the direction the songs are going for. And there is not a single song that resembles another. I do believe Keith is really the one who’s responsible for everything sounding so tight, accurate and well pronounced. 

Bass. Everyone knows who Alex Webster is. If someone asked me to find a better replacement for this band I honestly wouldn’t have any options. Come on, this guy plays in Cannibal Corpse! The most crushing death metal band that has ever existed that is still pushing out the most brutal music the whole world has ever heard. And his playing in Conquering Dystopia is probably the biggest compliment to the entire band. Bottom end is so well balanced and audible, yet crushingly heavy. 

Drums. Alex Rudinger was the replacement drummer for Lyle Cooper of The Faceless right after Lyle left the band pretty quickly after their 2012 album “Autotheism”. I started watching his youtube channel and found out that this young man has some serious potential. Another thing that I really like about his playing is that he looks like a machine behind the drum kit, every single hit is so accurate and powerful. Besides that, he approaches the kit from a different perspective than most of the drummers do. He utilizes the cymbals in a very efficient way, giving them a higher priority than just hitting them once of twice between certain parts of a song. These things sum up as a great addition to a band that is already so full of diversity to it. The blast beats are probably the most aggressively sounding ones that I have ever heard, since every single hit is so hard, the kick drum is really loud and full but still has this really hard attack to it. 

I would put the last song, the “Destroyer of Dreams” as a highlight of this album. It starts off with this really melodic, multi-layered interlude which builds up to the most aggressive section of the entire album, with insane riffing and blast beats. I’m pretty sure I’ve listened to this song more than a hundred times by now and it still gives me chills. This is my favorite instrumental album by far. I could be comparing this to something like the debut Animals As Leaders album but they are just so different, probably the only thing that is shared between these two is the fact that there is no vocals involved. Conquering Dystopia has truly conquered my playlist from the day it was released and I am so happy to have an opportunity to live in the age, full of such immaculate musicians like Jeff and Keith.

10/10.

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Noumenons Most Anticipated works for 2015

Since I got into metal, which was almost a decade ago, I always struggled with keeping up with the pace of music that’s being released. I’m always the last person among my peers to check some certain artists, while my friends have already moved on for something new. For this particular reason I thought I should make a list of bands that I want to keep my eyesight on for the upcoming year. Once again, I’m a bit late, it’s spring already but it doesn’t matter. 

First band that I’m looking to hear from is of course the australians Thy Art Is Murder. These guys are dropping hints about a new album, that was secretly recorded in the fall of 2014 in between tours. Ever since I heard these guys, I was so stoked about the new material. This band have released only 2 albums, and they seem to differ like a night and day. “Hate” was and still is so crushing, so hell knows what are we going to get from their next effort.

When I found out the Job For A Cowboy, I started listening to The Faceless almost in parallel with them. I really liked their sound in the “Planetary Duality”, and thought that “Autotheism” was a decent album. So it is pretty natural for me to wait for their next album that is going to be released this year (hopefully, knowing the man Michael Keene is, no offence of course). The prog-metal direction they took in “Autotheism” was a step ahead, but I do think needs to be purified and enhanced even more, the whole statement wasn’t as strong as the one you find on the “Planetary Duality”. I guess that’s why I’m waiting for some new material to see if my wishes will be granted. Oh well, that’s just my thoughts, every single band should follow the path they want to follow and not be the slaves of their fans.

Talking about The Faceless, their ex-guitarist Wes Hauch is one of my favorite guitar players ever since I discovered him. And some time ago, it was somewhere in the middle of 2014 or something, he joined the band called Glass Casket together with the guitarist of Between the Buried And Me. Dustie Waring, who is an original member of the Glass Casket. The band seems to have some sort of a legendary status, they kinda pioneered the deathcore genre. Knowing the capabilities of Wes and Dustie it is quite obvious that this duo is going to kick some major ass with the upcoming material. I do hope I’ll have the opportunity to hear it in the upcoming year.

Update No.1

I’ll just write down the band names, possible album titles and dates just to keep the track of things.

Gorgoroth - Instinctus Bestialis

Dimmu Borgir

Faith No More - Sol Invictus (18.05  )

So, as of yet, my list is pretty short. I hope I will manage to broaden it up a bit. I think I will add something to this list later.

Cheers,

Noumenon

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Noumenons Album Review: Job For A Cowboy - Sun Eater

Job For A Cowboy is probably the first band that really got me into modern death metal. As I already mentioned it in my earlier reviews, I was more of a Black Metal guy, but this band managed to change my views quite a lot. The amount of craftsmanship that goes in to this music just blows my mind. The first album that I had an opportunity to listen from these guys was the “Ruination” that was released in 2009. The band’s line-up has changed almost entirely, except for the only original member, the vocalist Johny Davy, and so did the sound when I try to compare the “Ruination” with their newest effort. Which a full lenght album, called “Sun Eater”. Everything here seems to be different, more mature, the rudiments of generic deathcore band have been purified into a really strong statement that this band is here to lay down the foundation for the upcoming generations. So, as usual, let’s start with every instrument.

I usually start with the drums, but this time, everything seems to be upside down with this particular album. The bass. This was the thing that caught my ear first. It seems that ever since Nick Schendzielos joined the band, the bass got the top priority in the overall mix. This was not your usual semi-driven bass that is buried deep under the wall of guitar riffs and is there with the sole purpose of tightening the whole sound while making it huge. While this scenario sounds good for some, “Sun Eater’s” bass is on a totally different level. Very mid-frequency centric, precise and melodic, the bass shines through everything. While maintaining the virtuosic playing skills, Nick still manages to remain precise, tight and the songs remain ferocious and catchy. Huge thumbs up for Nick and all the sound guys, this really pleased my ear, I felt so inspired by it.

Drums. Danny Walker who plays drums in Intronaut, did a fantastic job (no pun intended) adapting to the bands needs. The transition from Jon Rice to Danny was really smooth for me, I didn’t feel any major changes, but you can definetely tell that these guys have their own character. Overall approach of the drums seems to be quite similar to their previous effort “Demonocracy”. Nothing is over-quantized, drum rolls feel natural, the kit sounds pretty organic and not over-sampled. I was always a big fan of their drum sound, and since it did not change drastically over the past 4 years or so, I’m satisfied with the results on “Sun Eater”.

Guitars. This album is the first one where the seven string guitars were introduced to the band. Metal elitists always seem to jump into this conclusion, that all the modern bands can’t even play their six strings, so playing seven just does not make sense. Well, in my humble opinion, this does not apply to this band. These guys have proved themselves in their previous works, that the band is evolving really fast and additional string will just broaden the spectrum of sound possibilities. The riffs you hear on this album are never based on chugging the seventh string over and over again. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Riffs are going all over the entire range, from massively sounding chords, to melodic passages, to crazy fast runs, to metalcore-ish ideas and so on. All the solos have that Tony Sannicandro flavor, which proves that the guitarist has found or is about to find his own identity as a musician. Even though the solos are extremely technical and complex, the ones you find on the “Sun Eater” aren’t as catchy and memorable as the ones in “Demonocracy”.

Vocals. I don’t even know If i should go deep into this. Johny is a beast. His vocals seem to get deeper and deeper, stronger and more expressive over the years. The only other vocalist I enjoy as much as Johny is CJ from Australian band Thy Art Is Murder. I personally think that the vocals that have been laid down on the “Sun Eater” are the best ones to date in the entire existence of Job For A Cowboy. The lines don’t just follow the rythm guitars and aren’t just being spewed one by one. Vocals have their own niche in every song and follows it’s own path.  They vary from rapid high pitched screams, to long multi-layer low guttural growls. It s that make the vocals an entirely separate instrument that has it’s own character and serves a deeper purpose than a way to throw out the lyrics to the listeners ear. 

Overall impression was undeniably amazing. I enjoyed every single moment of this album, I found some songs that I like more than the others, but as I mentioned before, that’s just preference and everyone is allowed to have one. It definetely was a highlight of 2014 for me and I want to thank the band for such an amazing piece of art.

9/10.

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Dota 2: The plebs point of view Chapter 3: Thoughts on 6.83 meta

I thought I should talk a bit about this. I will mainly talk about competitive Dota rather than pubs, cause we all know, pubs have their own meta, with Witch Doctors carrying a butterfly and Assault Cuirass, people telling you that Enchantress is a hard carry etc. Jokes aside, I will talk about couple aspects of this topic.

Hero pool. Ever since the Dota was created, the creators goal was to balance the game to a point where every hero is viable. Most of people agree that we are currently approaching that state of the game where everything seems so balanced. This creates a perfect environment for imbalanced things (heroes, items, skills, etc etc.) to start the meta. A hero gets a slight buff, and it immiedietly becomes the flavour of the month. First it was Puppeys Chen, then Admiral Bulldogs Natures Prophet, now we see heroes that were never picked before become the top priority- Sniper is a great example. For some reason I alwas saw the potential in this hero, it always seemed to be so good on paper but just couldn’t perform well against other heroes that were popular back then. We can easily make a conclusion that competitive Dota is all about broken heroes. But is it?

I see a lot of forum posts talking about how this current meta is not as interesting as it was back in the golden Na’Vi days, when the big plays happened, massive 5 man black holes, million dollar coils, all these fancy things. While I do agree that visual aspect is not as entertaining, the tension that is being created during the games is so much bigger. It seems that everything matters so much more now. Exact timers, super accurate understanding of economy during and outside the game, psychological state of the players etc. This leads me to one thing - this game is starting to get really mature and should be taken more serious that it was before. While the big plays still matter, they are just a one part of this massive list of things you need to take care of. For this reason I respect teams like Cloud9 the most. Even though Aui_2000 is not a part of the team any more, I think his approach to the game is the prime example of this current meta - everything matters! The broken heroes I was taking about earlier are also just one part of the list. I’ll give you an example. A well farmed Chaos Knight paired with a experienced Pudge player might sound really good on paper and could destroy everything - pick off one hero, destroy towers, move on, win the game. But that sounds well just when given the best possible circumstances. For this reason, Pro players pick heroes that are reliable in any situation, that can farm efficiently or can pick off heroes solo without much of risk. This is why Axe, Troll Warlord, Juggernaut, Sniper are the top priority heroes in this meta. 

So that’s pretty much what I think about the issue.

Cheers,

Noumenon

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Noumenons Album Review: Bloodbath - Grand Morbid Funeral

Bloodbath. What a band. For me, it is more of a celebration, than just a band. Back in 2010 when I discovered them, I was already a bit late to the party, but nontheless I still was able to get a good grip on what was the intention of this project. “The Fathomless Mastery” was the first album I heard, It emmiedietly struck me deep inside. I used to be a black metal fan back then and for some unknown reason I felt the the same atmosphere black metal has to it shared in the Bloodbath material, especially in “The Fathomless Mastery”. I started digging in deeper, found out the incredible artists behind it, I became a big fan. Well, enough with this, lets start with the album.

I couldn’t wait for the new album to come up ever since I started listening to them. When things started moving I thought to myself “Yes! Finally!”. Many people were hoping that Peter Tägtgren once again will be the vocalist for the new album. Somehow I managed to refrain myself from speculations and just waited. And then the new vocalist was revealed - Nick Holmes, a vocalist of a British band Paradise Lost. I’ve heard about this band but never got an opportunity to give them a spin. So I was eager to hear the capabilities of this man. And he delivered. Lets get into it.

Guitars. I was expecting them to return to the “Breeding Death” EP era type of sound but I was pleasantly surprised. The buzzsaw tone was enhanced, seems like someone injected it with steroids and made it sound so devastating, even the modern approach that was introduced in “The Fathomless Mastery”, seems dull and weak compared to the one you can hear in the newest album. Guitars are tuned even lower than before, you can hear some heavily distorted artifacts created by loose guitar strings in some certain parts of songs. This was a huge plus for me, it gave the sound a general unpolished yet articulate character.

Drums. I think drums win the prize in the “do it the old school way” category. Kick is chunky, has a really small amount of clickyness to it. For some reason it reminds me of 70-80′s rock, with it’s thumpy kick drum. Also the entire set seems to have quite some room echo around it, which again, gives it a lot of raw feeling, where computer processing is very minimal.  In general drums sound really well, and they compliment all the other instruments.

Bass. It is audible yet unnoticable. It has a lot of distortion, which in my opinion works well with the mix, but does not push through it. I’m that kind of a person that wants to hear everything. Even if its Swedish Death Metal, I find it that this aspect is the one thing I’m missing in the entire album.

Vocals. As I stated before, Nick Holmes delivered. After the super low growls of Mikael Akerfeldt, the mid range vocals from Nick is something that makes the entire album so unique. Atmosphere is once again enhanced with the kind of feeling you get while listening to some of the best Black Metal albums.

To sum things up I want to say this - everything seems to be alright, even though it is kind of generic. While “The Fathomless Mastery” was a truly unique album, that sounded like nothing before, blending old school Swedish Death Metal rawness and ferocity with modern approach of production and song writing, “Grand Morbid Funderal” is kind of a step back. While I do know that this was the direction the band decided to go right after the 2008 album, it did not leave the same impression. 

7.5/10

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Dota 2: The plebs point of view Chapter 1: The Mmr Calculation

I wanted to talk about this topic a long time ago. A lot of players have been there or are still there. And we all know what does this mean. I’m not going to talk about the actuall things that happen in 2-3k mmr bracket, everyone knows that. 

People would say the largest problem about The Trench are the players themselves. While I do agree with that, I think there are a couple other reasons why the game is so unattractive and boring for players with low mmr

I have my own opinion why mmr calculation should be improved. Since mmr games have only two modes- All pick and Captains mode, the possibility of abusing certain things grows exponentially.  We all have encountered Shadow Fiend pickers, Troll pickers etc. While this is perfectly fine, when the player gets to play the hero he spams, it becomes really ugly when they don’t. This is where all the flaming starts, teammates become enemies and the game is lost. 

One simple addition to Mmr calculation system I suggest is All Random mode. All the new players who are starting to calculate their mmr, should have to play 10 to 15 All random mode matches. Why 10 to 15? In my opinion this would separate the players belonging in higher mmr bracket from those who are yet to reach it. A player that has a commanding score in all of his first ten games could have his mmr calculated right after that, while the players with shaky performances should prove themselves playing 5 more games.  Now I know, this would hinder a lot of things, such as smurf accounts or even general mmr droppage, but I think that would balance things a bit. 

Well, that’s my thoughts on this really touchy topic.

Cheers,

Noumenon

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Dota 2: The plebs point of view Chapter 0 (introduction)

So I will try to introduce you to my series of blogs about Dota 2. In these posts I will be trying to express my thoughts about issues and topics people following Dota 2 scene are coming up with. I named these series “The plebs point of view” with a reason. I’m not a professional player, nor an employed journalist working for a big organisation. I’m a casual gamer in all aspects- I don’t compete, I don’t buy tickets to tournamets etc. I’m pretty aware that there are tons of people like me, who don’t consider gaming a big thing,  might find these posts interesting. 

I already have a couple of topics to talk about. I will try to avoid ranting as much as possible and instead I will be trying to find possible solutions to the issues I’ll be talking about. 

Feel free to ask, share your opinions with me, I will try to take them into consideration

Cheers,

Noumenon

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The very first Noumenons review of an album: Thy Art Is Murder- Hate

I’m not going to talk much about the band itself as much as I want to talk about the album. Hate was released in October 18th, 2012 on Halfcut Records.

We’ll start with the line-up for this album:  Lee Stanton on drums, Sean Delander on bass, CJ McMahon doing vocals, Andy Marsh and Tom Brown on guitars.Will Putney, the guitarist of another Australian band Fit For An Autopsy, recorded, mixed and mastered the album at The Machine Shop Studios in New York City, New York, United States.

The very first song that I heard was The Purest Strain Of Hate and it immiedetly caught my attention. Every single thing about the sound was just so right to my ears which leads me to talk about the general mix of the album. I really want to refrain myself from using such words as “massive”, “huge” etc.

Drums. I think I’ve never heard the drums sounding so tight and accurate and well performed before. The snare has a lot of body to it, think of Lamb Of God’s snare sound, it has that prolonged “bang” after the hit. Kick is audible at all situations, has a really strong attack but does not sound too clicky, like it does on several other albums of this genre. Another thing I really love about the drums are the toms. Every single drum roll has a lot of musicality to it, since the toms are properly tuned and doesn’t just sound different from others. They have a real purpose here. I really think it’s one of the main reasons the album sounds so great.

Guitars. This is another aspect of the album that shines through. Guitars sound really unique. It’s not your typical progressive modern metal guitar tone (let’s call it “djenty”, even though I hate this term). It’s still really tight, but does not sound thin in any areas. In fact, it sounds really fat but still has the modern character to it. The engineers did a tremendous job right here. I was never a big fan of breakdowns but I think i was exposed to wrong type of breakdowns before this album and it was like a breath of fresh air to hear them here and to really feel that they have a true meaning and are a huge part of the song structure. Pretty much all riffs are well thought out, didn’t sound too repetitive to my ear. People might say the entire album is a big chuggfest, they might as well go listen to some Abba or Bee Gees (no offence to these bands though). Solos sound really good. Guitarist managed to keep the balance between really shreddy parts and really melancholic, melodic stuff. 

Vocals. This is pretty much the No.1 reason why I still keep on listening to this album since its release. CJ instantly became my favorite vocalist ever. To this day, I’m still looking for someone that can do something as good as this guy does. The pronounciation is spot on. The lows sound just as good as highs which usually is a big problem in modern metal- think of Mitch Lucker. He could do these insane highs, but the lows were just a mic cupping and just didn’t cut it. Also the different types of vocals sound so well placed on different parts of a song. 

Bass. This is probably the only part of the mix where it seems to be a tiny bit lackluster. I was hoping to hear a really loud hairy bass tone when comparing it to all the other instruments but it seems to me that the bass was used as a glue to make everything sound tight and big. The bass is still audible but is not as pronounced as I wished it to be. 

Overall, I think this album deserves all the praise. I usually get really bored of some certain artists, but this is still spinning in my player over and over again. I do have my favorite songs, but it does not mean that these ones are better than the others, that’s just a preference of mine. 

9/10.

[noumenonblog]

The very first blog

Hello everybody.

As you can already tell from the title, this is my very first blog entry. I will try to specify what I’m going to talk about in my upcoming posts. 

Since I have a couple of interests and hobbies, I’ll try to split them in categories. Currently I have some thoughts on these topics:

1. Dota 2. I’m a fan of this game, I’ve been following the pro scene for quite some time and I think I have some thoughts to share with you about it.

2. Luthiery. I’m a guitar-driven music enthusiast, and luthiery is one of my hobbies which I hope will turn into a full on business some day. 

3. Band/Album reviews.

4. Various social topics where I’m going to give my 2 cents on some things that I find interesting.

So, please, bear with me, my English sucks, I know that. I’ll try to do these blogs as much as possible. I hope you will find them interesting and will give me some feedback on them. Your opinions are welcome, share them with me, this will help me to make this thing better.

Cheers.