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Topic ClosedMy band's last album, comments very welcome.

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O Rly? View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Topic: My band's last album, comments very welcome.
    Posted: July 07 2009 at 14:34

Most of you wont know my band (maybe someone does), but anyways this is our 2nd studio album, 3rd overall (including an "unplugged" live album).

 
We're just looking for any feedback at all... and if you liked the album, we encourage you to share with anyone you may wish. The band is currently in indefinite rest as half the band members are currently residing out of the country, so live playing and more writing for now is halted.
 
General info:
 
Band name: Synesthesia DR
Location: Dominican Republic
Style: Prog/rock/metal
Influences: Pain Of Salvation, Opeth, Muse, Dredg, etc.
Founded: 2003
Background info: Voted the best metal band in Dominican Republic in 2005, most selling metal band in the Dominican Republic in 2005, won best song and best album in 2005 in the Dominican Republic, voted best live act in 2006.
 
Anyways... I hope you guys like the album, and please do share any and all comments you may have. The rar file also includes lyrics (translated from spanish) and the artwork for the album.    
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 15:08
Hey thanks, I'm downloading right now!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 15:20
Wow, that seems like a quite a big give away. Thanks a lot, I feel like I owe it to you just to give it a listen Smile
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 16:02
You're welcome guys!
 
We seriously where not expecting to profit much of it... though we sell well in our home country, sells here don't even cover 50% of the cost of producing the album, and seeing as we are completely unknown outside the DR... charging for that outside would be counterproductive.
 
We do hope to get the album as out there as possible... and expose our music to as many people as we can... and then see what we could do as an unsigned band, in the middle of the Caribbean surrounded by salsa and merengue :P
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 16:08
The free program that I have on my computer for opening .rar files has expired.  I will have to try and find another program to try and access it.  I'm looking forward to hearing this album once I am able to access it.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 16:27
Is there any way you can make this a .zip file rather than a .rar file? 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 16:30
I was able to access the .rar file by downloading this free file here.  http://www.7-zip.org/download.html  There doesn't appear to be any strings attached.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 16:33
Originally posted by rushfan4 rushfan4 wrote:

The free program that I have on my computer for opening .rar files has expired.  I will have to try and find another program to try and access it.  I'm looking forward to hearing this album once I am able to access it.


http://www.izarc.org

For rar and many more!
"Music is much like f**king, but some composers can't climax and others climax too often, leaving themselves and the listener jaded and spent."

Charles Bukowski
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 16:37
I just gave the album a listen and it's very good! It sounds very professional and well done. I think you have a good chance to make a breakthrough! I would like you to experiment more with sounds and especially with composition, but that's only my taste. Thanks again for the free download and good luck from now on!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 07 2009 at 18:17
Sounds like generic Prog Metal upon first preview, but I'll listen to it fully later on tonight before giving my final verdict.

It's really cool seeing more musicians sharing their work on the forums like this; it's something I think would really catch on if enough people did it.

Good luck in your music career.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 08 2009 at 07:27

Thanks for the comments thus far guys! I'm gonna try to package it on a .zip file and upload it as such during this week, it just was easier for me with the .rar option that was why I used that, but indeed we should .zip also since it's still the most used program for that.

The band has changed noticeably since our first album...
 
 
In our myspace there's stuff from all of our albums including the live one, in our first album we wen't full blown prog metal with some power metal and thrash metal thrown in the mix along side latin themes and stuff like that. In our live album we took the songs from the first album and re-wrote them in a more psychedelic theme more Mars Volta/King Crimson-ish and in some cases industrial... for this album we dropped the distorted guitars a notch and used a more Dredg/Muse/Ours approach still keeping the sound people already knew us for.
 
It's still somewhat prog metal, but for this last album our fans are accusing us of leaving the metal out completely... so go figure hehehe :P 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 08 2009 at 08:08
Nice myspace! Smile

And I've changed my opinion on you're 'sound' upon listening a bit closer to the music. You definately are more than just run-of-the-mill generic Prog Metal.

Plus, you are fans of Porcupine Tree, Opeth and PoS, so I'm absolutely sold, now. Clap

So,I trust that this 'freebie' was an exclusive thing, and you do actually charge money for your records, right? Because if you don't you should! I would certainly pay!
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 08 2009 at 14:07

Ok here's some feedback from a Finnish point of view. Don't take this too personally, and too harsh because I do actually really like what I'm currently hearing. I knew someone from the Dominican Republic once btw, just on a side note there.

I raised my point of view there, because coming from the land of heavy metal, I was actually expecting for something a lot heavier than this. And while it surely isn't all that heavy, I'm very pleased. Personally I don't like heavy rock all that much Wink

Singing in Spanish won't probably grant you a global breakthrough, especially when you're doing progressice rock. I'm sorry, but that's just how it seems to be. I think it's stupid when there are A LOT more people talking Spanish in this world than there are who speak English. It's just the people who listen to music like this that are your audience, and who are what they are. You've done well where you come from, and that's great, but you'll never make it big in, say, Finland.

Your singing reminded me a lot of a Hungarian band Everwood. Don't know if you've ever heard of them, but they're listed here on ProgArchives, and there's a free streamer too at http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1560. Funny thing that. Hmm... Anyway, you don't have a lot of metal where you come from, do you? Just asking, when I'm used to hearing Children of Bodom from a pop channel like NRJ, while your's would surely be mostly rock.

Nevertheless, it's good stuff. I'll be keeping the files on my playlist, though I must admit I thought I wouldn't, as I'm not, as I said, so into metal.

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 08 2009 at 14:36
Originally posted by Passionist Passionist wrote:

Ok here's some feedback from a Finnish point of view. Don't take this too personally, and too harsh because I do actually really like what I'm currently hearing. I knew someone from the Dominican Republic once btw, just on a side note there.

I raised my point of view there, because coming from the land of heavy metal, I was actually expecting for something a lot heavier than this. And while it surely isn't all that heavy, I'm very pleased. Personally I don't like heavy rock all that much Wink

Singing in Spanish won't probably grant you a global breakthrough, especially when you're doing progressice rock. I'm sorry, but that's just how it seems to be. I think it's stupid when there are A LOT more people talking Spanish in this world than there are who speak English. It's just the people who listen to music like this that are your audience, and who are what they are. You've done well where you come from, and that's great, but you'll never make it big in, say, Finland.

Your singing reminded me a lot of a Hungarian band Everwood. Don't know if you've ever heard of them, but they're listed here on ProgArchives, and there's a free streamer too at http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1560. Funny thing that. Hmm... Anyway, you don't have a lot of metal where you come from, do you? Just asking, when I'm used to hearing Children of Bodom from a pop channel like NRJ, while your's would surely be mostly rock.

Nevertheless, it's good stuff. I'll be keeping the files on my playlist, though I must admit I thought I wouldn't, as I'm not, as I said, so into metal.



Damn, crucify the guy, why don't ya? Tongue j/k
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 08 2009 at 14:43
Actually for this album we're selling a few limited edition hard copies, but for the most part the intention is to get it out there for free, to at least gather some listeners from abroad.
 
Our first album we sold completly as hard copies (it's aviable on iTunes now, but I dunno how the sales for it are doing there) and we sold around 500 copies of it, which is quite a feat in this country where metal and rock are rather obscure as a whole. We sold ou of copies of the live album in 2 months (we printed 300 copies of it) too...
 
For this one we just did 50 limited edition copies, that sold out in the first week, as our intention from the beginning is the free online release. We haven't done the "official release" yet online, so you guys are the very first to have access to it in this manner.  
 
In regards to the language, oooooh trust me it has been a subject of a lot of debate within the band... I for one wanted to do lyrics in english, while the rest of the band didn't (call it a national thing, as all of our gigs have been in the DR... they thought it was kinda of silly to be singing in english in an all spanish speaking audience) in the end, democracy took over and lyrics ended up being in spanish.
 
For the first time though we translated all lyrics in this album to more or less reach out to people abroad... but we know the language limitations it poses. And it's not that the singer's accent is bad or anything, hell for the live album we included a cover of Opeth's "To Rid The Disease" and the vocals came out rather nice with almost 0 accent in it, I just wasn't convincing enough I guess :P
 
Down here we have 1 metal show on the radio every tuesday... and several rock oriented radio shows. Society as a whole is getting more used to the rock thing, specially because of the new generations that are growing up on it... but we're still walking baby steps, not many people attend the shows yet, and fan support for the local scene is still timid at best, and not in a million years we'll get a decent major act (rock or metal) playing over here. But for metal or rock bands here... always the ultimate frontier is landing some success outside of the country, and that was always been near to imposible 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 08 2009 at 16:17

It's a good thing you listened to your bandmates in my opinion. One day when you'll go abroad, You can re-record the tracks translated into English. It's been done before. Also, it doesn't mean, that you'd have to give up singing in Spanish.

For instance, look what for example Opeth, or even Nightwish did. Opeth has in their newest album this son, Den Ständiga Resan, which is in Swedish, and I don't know if it's for fun, or if they want to give something to their Swedish fans or if they just want to buy foreign listeners who want some exoticism. But Nightwish has a song on their last album with Tarja Turunen, which is a good example of trying to buy listeners, this Kuolema Tekee Taiteilijan, which is a totally crap song, but had to be recorded so that the fans would think "wow, this is a Finnish band and sings in Finnish, therefore I listen to Finnish."

It's a funny thing, a psychological thing. They'd never get famous by singing in Finnish, but one song in every other album reminds the fans, that they're something exotic, and in that sense makes them more interesting. After all, too many bands sing in English nowadays when they have no plans whatsoever in going abroad.

Oh, and I think I speak for all of us, when I say I'm very thankful for the opportunity of being one of the first to get this album then. Perhaps you might even post this at the "free mp3s online " -thread at the prog lounge. Might get you guys some more attention.Tongue

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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 08 2009 at 17:54
I think the way The Mars Volta mixes English with Spanish vocals is very successful. 
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 09 2009 at 00:19
Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:

I think the way The Mars Volta mixes English with Spanish vocals is very successful. 


Yeah, but that's The Mars Volta.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 09 2009 at 01:28
Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:

Hey thanks, I'm downloading right now!


Word - I'll come back and post after I listen to it a couple of times.
-Joel
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 09 2009 at 02:03
Originally posted by p0mt3 p0mt3 wrote:

Originally posted by harmonium.ro harmonium.ro wrote:

I think the way The Mars Volta mixes English with Spanish vocals is very successful. 


Yeah, but that's The Mars Volta.


I know, LOL but that doesn't mean they shouldn't try. Smile I see a lot of potential!
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