Can you tell this stuff apart? (Black metal edition - Answers)
. . .
A week ago I challenged people to identify 10-second excerpts of songs by 10 well-known black metal bands.
The general response astounded me, both in enthusiasm and accuracy, at times. I bet some of these bands can’t even tell their own songs apart sometimes.
Below are the top finishers, and at the bottom are the answers. (The sharp-eyed may notice that I ended the contest a day early. I was just impatient.) I awarded one point for identifying the band, one point for identifying the album, and two points for identifying the song. For the wishy-washy who had two guesses per song, I cut the points in half accordingly. (Albino probably would have won otherwise.)
Siamese Almeida was the runaway winner by correctly identifying four entries all the way down to the song title. Do black metal fans even know any song titles? TheWolf gets special mention as the only person who correctly identified every band.
Siamese Almeida 17
Albino 13.5
TheWolf 13
slowcrawl 12
Jan Fischer 11
dunkelheit 11
(Siamese Almeida, please email me to claim your “prize”, as your email address on file is not real.)
A final note: This contest was a lot harder to put together than you’d think. These bands (most of them, anyway) have gotten to their status by sounding at least somewhat unique. I really had to hunt down “generic-sounding” passages. 1349, for example, has, to my ears, very idiosyncratic performances on guitar (light-speed thrash, almost) and drums (Frost sounding like a thousand firecrackers). Since I didn’t present much musical information, a good number of you guessed correctly based either on a deeply internalized knowledge of how an album feels (of which production is a big part) or a familiarity with the smallest details of songs that, to the average listener, would all sound alike.
In other words, y’all are big nerds. Cheers to that – and look out for the next installment of this contest next month.
. . .
CAN YOU TELL THIS STUFF APART?
Black metal edition – Answers
1. Darkthrone – “I En Hall Med Flesk Og Mjod”, 3:50 (from Transilvanian Hunger)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_01.mp3]
2. Wolves in the Throne Room – “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog”, 7:13 (from Black Cascade)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_02.mp3]
3. Marduk – “Deme Quaden Thyrane”, 3:12 (from Opus Nocturne)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_03.mp3]
4. Watain – “Mortem Sibi Consciscere”, 2:38 (from Rabid Death’s Curse)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_04.mp3]
5. Deathspell Omega – “Desecration Master”, 3:37 (from Inquisitors of Satan)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_05.mp3]
6. Satyricon – “In the Mist by the Hills”, 3:16 (from The Shadowthrone)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_06.mp3]
7. Gorgoroth – “Huldrelokk”, 0:33 (from Pentagram)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_07.mp3]
8. Funeral Mist – “Circle of Eyes”, 7:23 (from Salvation)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_08.mp3]
9. Immortal – “As the Eternity Opens”, 3:28 (from Pure Holocaust)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_09.mp3]
10. 1349 – “Internal Winter (Ad Infeinum)”, 2:45 (from Beyond the Apocalypse)
[audio: CANYOUTELL_BM_10.mp3]
. . .
