New PHARAOH "The Powers that Be"

[Überschall]

This is an album I mixed the end of last year, and the beginning of 2021. It comes out in June.

Here's the first lyric video

[Budda]

That bass is punchy as fuck .

Sounds pretty sweet, dude .

[Chris]

You playing on this one as well?

[Überschall]

You playing on this one as well?

Nope

[Mike]

Who mastered this? It's a really good balance of modern and dynamic.

[Chris]

Nope

Aah. Then.

[Alan]

The mix sounds great!

[jacksonplayer]

My god, it's a power metal mix that sounds like an actual band playing. Will wonders never cease?

[Chris]

Mix sounds great btw.

[Überschall]

Who mastered this? It's a really good balance of modern and dynamic.

Dan Swanö.

[Soopahmahn]

Ooh I need to listen on not-a-phone.

[Chris]

Ooh I need to listen on not-a-phone.

HI SOOP

[Greg McCoy]

Nope

Matt Johnsen still? Probably my favorite player that posts here, definitely the one with the best judgement and restraint. (well posted on MG at least, don't know if he's on here yet) Fantastic ear.

Shame that well one of his best session appearances is a band that has been blacklisted from everywhere at this point. Not his fault obviously. The Dawnbringer stuff thankfully has no Blake Judd drama attached. All of his session stuff on the Sanford Parker type band albums kicks ass.

[Überschall]

Yeah, Pharaoh is Matt’s band.

[Greg McCoy]

Yeah, Pharaoh is Matt’s band.

I like his playing on your album too. Is he still in your group with the Manticora guy?

My only gripe with your album is whoever adapted the poems, didn't make the call to leave out some of the more ridiculous lines. Edgar Allen Poe is metal as fuck, but you could have cut out some of the lines like "lo, tis a gala night". When Bruce Dickinson adapts centuries old poems he definitely leaves out some of the more ridiculous lines....

Anthrax actually totally did the exact same concept as your intro track for Evil Twin. When that song came out like my third or fourth thought was, "This is exactly like Crooks song that is critical of organized religion/dogmatic systems of belief, only without all the frilly shirt melodramatic turns of phrase. It's like Mass Psychosis if Mass Psychosis wasn't wearing a frilly shirt."

"Mass Psychosis" is probably in my top 15 "cool songs critical of organized religion/dogmatic systems of belief" playlist. It would rank higher if it wasn't weirdly out place on the album of frilly shirt yet incredibly metal for their time poems. It doesn't rank as highly as it should because if I listen to Kreator's "People of the Lie" I know that like, three songs later the album it is on is still going to be really tough, and not be singing about swans.

Reality Divine is a great album but it has serious problems maintaining a uniform level of toughness. It's not possible to put biting social commentary and frilly shirt renaissance fair stuff on the same album unless you are Iron Maiden. You have to go all in on one or the other, I don't know if you can effectively hedge bets and do both. You could do it in 1980, but not nowadways. The guys who want the ridiculous frilly shirt fantasy bits are not going to dig the social commentary bits and vice versa. The musical landscape is definitely way more rigid thematically. No band these days can do Iron Maiden type shit like, "This is a song about social commentary on nuclear warfare, here's a kind of goofy song about ancient egypt, here's a 14 minute poetic adapation."

I'm not big on the whole "all bands stick to one theme and one theme only for their entire career" thing, but you are definitely wasting your cool social commentary songs on a fantasy metal album by Cruz Del Sur.

You can't put your tougher social commentary songs on an album issued by the guys that bring you albums like this. People are just going to skip them like,

"Fuck this song, bring me the songs about whatever the fuck is happening here"

[Chris]

Desert Warrior looks like a sad testicle that grew a body and is running around looking for his lost bro ball.

[Greg McCoy]

Desert Warrior looks like a sad testicle that grew a body and is running around looking for his lost bro ball.

Desert Warrior definitely busts into parties and yells, "LO TIS A GALA NIGHT". Which is just "it's party time" translated into the high elvish tongue of the second age invented by JRR Tolkien and will definitely get you thrown out of any place you say it in modern society and possibly arrested.

That's actually a sentence from the fourth edition of the Silmarillion. "The young squire Peregrine Crooks merrily pranced through the corridors of the fortress, singing 'LO TIS A GALA NIGHT' in his high sweet voice. Single handidly dooming his rather good album to obscurity."

The only way you can recover from that is by making a song called GALA KNIGHTS about knights that party really hard on gala nights. And the EP cover is just the gala knights in question doing the "clenched fist of solidarity" thing in their sweet jeweled gauntlets.

[Markus]

That's actually a sentence from the fourth edition of the Silmarillion. "The young squire Peregrine Crooks merrily pranced through the corridors of the fortress, singing 'LO TIS A GALA NIGHT' in his high sweet voice. Single handidly dooming his rather good album to obscurity."

I thought the Silmarillion was just a phonebook to Middle Earth. The only thing I can remember from it is that it was basically just a list of names.

[Greg McCoy]

I thought the Silmarillion was just a phonebook to Middle Earth. The only thing I can remember from it is that it was basically just a list of names.

It's like 900 pages and covers 27 million years of history in Middle Earth, so I'm assuming there tis at least one gala knight in there.

Don't know for sure though, I have also never read it, I quit after like 4 pages. Most confusing book ever.

[Chris]

Desert Warrior definitely busts into parties and yells, "LO TIS A GALA NIGHT". Which is just "it's party time" translated into the high elvish tongue of the second age invented by JRR Tolkien and will definitely get you thrown out of any place you say it in modern society and possibly arrested.

That's actually a sentence from the fourth edition of the Silmarillion. "The young squire Peregrine Crooks merrily pranced through the corridors of the fortress, singing 'LO TIS A GALA NIGHT' in his high sweet voice. Single handidly dooming his rather good album to obscurity."

The only way you can recover from that is by making a song called GALA KNIGHTS about knights that party really hard on gala nights. And the EP cover is just the gala knights in question doing the "clenched fist of solidarity" thing in their sweet jeweled gauntlets.

FYI Sandstorm can dress for the metal bringing.



"Sandstorm was formed in 2017 by Swedish brothers Stevie Whiteless and Reptile Anderson, and Canadian drummer PJ "The Butcher" La Griffe"

"Reptile Anderson"

"Reptile Anderson"

[Greg McCoy]

FYI Sandstorm can dress for the metal bringing.



"Sandstorm was formed in 2017 by Swedish brothers Stevie Whiteless and Reptile Anderson, and Canadian drummer PJ "The Butcher" La Griffe"

"Reptile Anderson"

"Reptile Anderson"

Lo, 'tisn't a motherfucking gala night until the dude in SRV conch belts with chains padlocked to his nipples shows up.

[Chris]

Lo, 'tisn't a motherfucking gala night until the dude in SRV conch belts with chains padlocked to his nipples shows up.

I started a sweet Sandstorm thread so we could stop shitting on Matt's BKP MIXTEST 2.0 BLUB PRESET thread. Not that the derail can stop once it's in progress anyway.

[Greg McCoy]

I started a sweet Sandstorm thread so we could stop shitting on Matt's BKP MIXTEST 2.0 BLUB PRESET thread. Not that the derail can stop once it's in progress anyway.

Nonsense, Crooks band needs more hype.

If I am at a USPM type show I will nearly always tell the guy in the coolest obscure longsleeve shirt who looks like he definitely has a review site/blog to check out his album.

Sometimes I will even use the phrase "hidden gem".

[Joel]

Sounds really good! Is this the vocalist who was in Control Denied with Chuck Schuldiner?

[Soopahmahn]

Matt, sick fucking mix. I assume you engineered too?

Tell Big if he wants to come by, we'll tell him how sweet his chops still are