Topic: Ghost Reveries/Paradise Lost

I found a CD of Opeth's Ghost Reveries and Symphony X's Paradise Lost (as well as Dream Theater's Metropolis Pt. 2) at my local record store for $8 and $12 (and $10), respectively. Do you think they're worth it? I'd gladly buy both if they didn't come out of the loudness war era. GR isn't horrible, listening to it again, but PL really hurts to listen to for me... ugh it's a limited edition, pristine CD with a live show DVD on the back. Considering how hard it is to find Symphony X in the wild at a good price like this, it's killing me not to get it, but I know I'll never listen to it 😭. I may get the Opeth CD, idk...

I also came across Death's Symbolic for $10, but that is an extremely common CD, so I'm not missing out by not acting on it.

It's been almost a decade since I last bought a CD. I'm just not interested these days. I am pretty much only listening through Spotify, then if I REALLY like a release I'll buy the files (on Bandcamp, preferably) and/or the vinyl as a collectors item.

I'm wondering: You gave Paradise Lost a D rating. Why would one ever consider buying a D-rated release? Why buy into mediocrity?

For me, with my own ratings, I would only ever consider buying A/S-tier releases. I respect the fact that we all have different approaches, but I'm often struggling to understand the logic in other approaches.

My rating comes from the poor master, which is why I am probably not going to get it (you see that in my blurb). It's not mediocre, it's just horribly produced. If it got remastered, I would find it to be a great album, and I've heard the vinyl master is much better, but I can't listen hat one on my phone unless I rip it, which is just too expensive to do.

I like phyiscal releases mostly because they're DRM-free, and if iTunes, Bandcamp, etc. ever go out of business, who knows what will happen to my collection I've spent money on. It's alo fun to go to a record store, support a small business, and cme home with something you had no clue you coming home with when yo came in. That's why I often go to record stores that cater to a digger mentality, because it's more fun (that's how i got After Forever's Invisible Circles, a few days ago).

Also there's just a pleasure in physically owning things. I know gen X despises physical music because of the CD price gauging of the 90s, but I never lived through that, and I hate streaming because of the poor quality of the music, and I just don't believe in subscriptions in general.

Look I can buy Ghost Reveries on iTunes for $10, or I can get the used CD for $8. You choose which is the better price. Hell, I could but GR for $8 on CD, rip it to my computer, and sell it back for $2. $6 for a higher rez or lossless download over iTunes $10, locked behind DRMified M4As.

Also I recently deleted my iTunes account because they locked me out because I refused to give them my phone number. Guess what happened to my ~$200 worth of music, there? I hate digital. What I did live through, however, was trying to my iTunes purchased AAC files to play on my Xbox 360 and my Motorola Droid 4, but both devices refused to play them because Apple coded their downloads to behave like that, so I had to resort to piracy to get the music I paid for to work on the systems I wanted them to. I understand that this happened to some CDs in the early days of piracy, where they couldn't be ripped to computers, but software to bypass that DRM was developed almost two decades ago, anyway.

I understand the convenience of streaming, especially for Gen X and older Millenials, but I could go on a novella-length rant on why I fucking hate all music streaming platforms and refuse to pay to use them, or listen to/watch ads for them. Not for me.

I'll buy digitally on Bandcamp or Qobuz if physical is too hard or impossible to get.

also, the upper end of your D tier is the lower end of my C tier (and I pointed out that this is why I don't like my numeric rating here assigned an alphabetical categorization, because it doesn't match my system) and my Paradise Lost rating is deliberately one point away from the C tier, because I couldn't let it get there with such a loud master. Any of my ratings ending with 9 or 0 is borderline the adjacent tier and could surpass/drop below the current one upon next listen, maybe.

The exception being releases I rated when i originally joined and haven't touched since that went off my tier listing from my Excel-based listen log. All those are rated in a multiple of 10, even if they aren't borderline.

^^ Sure, I understand why someone would not like DRM. I'm not a big fan either. The bulk of my collection is CDs which I bought from like 1990 until about 2005. After that I turned to mp3 (mostly from Amazon), which is DRM free. The lossy compression is a drawback, which is why I kept hunting for special offers on Amazon, so I got most of my favorite releases for around 5 EUR a "piece".

^ As for the rating drama: There need to be some standards so that we can compare ratings between users. Independently of whether it's stars, letters (tiers) or numbers, ratings should clearly communicate whether the user thinks a release is bad, mediocre, good or great. I think that the two of us are at the opposite sides of a spectrum when it comes to our intuition about where the those areas lie on a 100 point range. You are at the low end, which means that a neutral user (who might be between the two of us) probably thinks that there are very few releases you actually like. That user might get the opposite impression of me - that I really like the vast majority of releases that I rate. I think this can't be avoided ...

But regardless, I think that most users would not even consider C-tier releases worthy of purchasing. It obviously depends on budget and other factors, but when I imagine a typical music enthusiast who would probably buy 1-2k releases over a lifetime, I would imagine that at least as they grow older and realize that they're not really listening a lot to most stuff they buy, they would tend to limit their purchasing to B/A/S-tier releases. Personally, I am only getting A/S-tier releases except for rare cases when I want to support small artists, or I really like the artist for other releases and want to complete my collection.

Part of this is that you don't have a collector's mentality, like I do, meaning I will sometimes buy things I don't actually love, just to complete the collection, like the recent Scardust album. It's not great, but I want to continue to support the band and own all their music (unless it's really, really bad) and part of it is that I'm more critical. Anything with a rating of above 6 is "likable" for me, and anything above a 4 may or may not be. Just because I gave it a relatively lower rating because it has some non-ignorable issues, like Paradise Lost, doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. It's when I hit the 3 range that the release becomes unobjectionablly and utterly unenjoyable for me me. Again, a 6 is not always mediocre for me. And sometimes, for collector's purposes I'll get a "mediocre" album, if it's cheap enough. I don't think my ratings are confusing at all. The plurality of my collection are C-tiers, but that's mostly because it's easily my most given rating (for me that's 51-69). You also use Spotify, and I don't, so I don't save purchases for the special best. I don't seek out C-tiers, typically, but if I come across one, like Ghost Reveries, it may be worth considering. With Paradise Lost, I have it at the top edge of D, and if it gets a good remaster one day that I can access, it may get reassigned to B. That's essentially what happened to Nightwish's Once. I don't particularly enjoy PL, but I thought about for collectors purposes. I probably won't get it because Symphony X has their fair share of albums that just aren't worth it. Maybe the vinyl for it if I can find it below $20. Maybe...

Sometimes I'm just in the right mood for Archspire's Bleed the Future, for instance, despite its poor master which is why I gave it a C instead of a high B/low A. It's a nice addition to my collection, even if it isn't special nor especially good - this is common for too loudly mastered releases, tbh. For Afyer Forever's Invisible Circles, I wasn't expecting it to be a great album, but it was right in front of me and it was time for a new symphonic metal CD to pop into my car's player on a trip during which I want more Epica-esque stuff. So it was worth it, despite getting a C rating afterward.

I doubt that your feud with Jens Bogren is of particular interest to anyone ... but if it is something you are passionate about, by all means tell the world :-) The dramatic impact it has on your ratings in my opinion skews them to the point of them being useless to most listeners. In particular, most metalheads love loud masters. It is no coincidence that most Opeth fans still consider Blackwater Park to be their crowning achievement (personally, I prefer Ghost Reveries).

Have you tried vinyl? It doesn't lend itself to loud mastering as much as CD/digital does. I really like the Ghost Reveries vinyl. Having said that, just as I also mentioned in my previous post, I do understand the concept of collecting albums. I have done it in the past, I simply don't do much of that anymore because it is too costly. I make decent money, but I'm not a millionaire. I simply could not afford buying all the releases that I think are "good, but not great".

^^ Regarding Spotify: I just wondered: Which of my releases (in terms of rating tiers) would I purchase if I suddenly, for whatever reason, could not use any streaming service anymore. A variation of the "which albums would you take on an island" question.

It would be the A/S tiers, that's my cut-off point. I can easily live with losing all the B-tier releases (and below).

From what you've said, I guess you would include everything C-tier and above? Maybe even D-tier?

Not that this is my debate to be debating, but a C or D tier album may still contain an individual track or two you'd consider an S or A no?

mike with all due respect, no not all metalhead like the loud masters. many are fed up with having no breathing room such as myself - go to angry metalguy reviews, you'll see them bitching all the time about poor masters as well, and they always include a dr score in their ratings. look at the comment box on many rym albums (even those beyond the metal realm, many people across all genres nitpick it - look at user alphawellenreiter, he'll straight up 0.5 every album with a dr below 7). you just haven't yet encountered someone with this mindset yet, largely because it's not an issue that bothers you. no my island records would all be the top end of A and S, but just because it's not "great" doesn't mean there's no merit and thus not worth listening to. yiu can be critical of some things, but not discard the whole package as worthless.

Edit: here, read this comment box, another instance where people are criticizing the mastering for being too loud. https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/coroner/dissonance-theory/ i am not an outlier

yes bartymj, within temptation's mother earth i gave a d, but the first two tracks on the album are low a, high b. this is actually common for me with classic rock albums, where half the album is filler and the only good tracks are the singles.

but this doesn't apply to albums that are poorly engineered, as all the songs could be highly rated but buried under an awful master.

First of all: My comments here are not intended as criticisms or complaints - by all means go on rating and commenting precisely as you see fit :-)

^ But also with all due respect, even though you are correct in pointing out that there are quite a few other users who speak out against load mastering, I don't think it's more than a small (but vocal) minority. I never claimed that you're the only one. I just think that if the majority of metalheads refused to listen to loud releases, we would see fewer of them, or they would downtrend on popular sites like RYM. But they don't: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/opeth/blackwater-park/, it's at 3.99 with 22k ratings, as just one example.

Not that this is my debate to be debating, but a C or D tier album may still contain an individual track or two you'd consider an S or A no?

Sure, but this usually does not make the release worthy enough for me to purchase, or to elevate the release rating.

i never said they refuse to listen. if i refused to listen, then i wouldn't be giving them ratings, now would i? i also never said a majority dislikes them, but that does not mean that nobody does. BWP is not Opeth's most popular release because of the loudness - if that were the case then Watershed would be up there, too and Damnation wouldn't be - but rather most people are unfazed by it.

i never said they refuse to listen. if i refused to listen, then i wouldn't be giving them ratings, now would i? i also never said a majority dislikes them, but that does not mean that nobody does. BWP is not Opeth's most popular release because of the loudness - if that were the case then Watershed would be up there, too and Damnation wouldn't be - but rather most people are unfazed by it.

I wrote "refused to listen", and I meant to say that they dislike it to the point that they can't listen to the release. Which is not the case for BWP. It is almost universally loved DESPITE its loudness.