If you are not familiar with the progressive doom project MONOLITHE, then you have been sorely missing out on one of France’s greatest exports. Their latest chapter, MONOLITHE IV, continues their extraterrestrial saga of black hole levels of heaviness and zero kelvin atmospherics in yet another single serving size, 50+ minute epic. For the record,…

This Friday is Dynamic Range Day (DRD), a seminal holiday where fans, engineers, and artists all take a moment to reflect and celebrate the glory that is dynamics in music. Each year all around mastering engineer and superhero Ian Shepherd of Production Advice hosts a get together over Google Hangout and YouTube where he presents…

Last week I delved into the song “Panama” from the new HDTracks high-resolution Van Halen releases, and while measuring the 24/96 and 24/192 versions, I noticed something disturbing – the two were so similar that it was entirely possible that the 24/192 version was just upsampled from a lower res file. While prepping for that…

“Can it be a peace between us? Peace? No peace.” This is the “famous” line from Roland Emmerich’s 1996 film, Independence Day. After the psychotic murdering alien wraps a tentacle around the throat of a scientist it can use him to speak and understand English, because you know, movie magic! It also serves as the…

It seems these days, Devin Townsend can do no wrong. If he is not crushing our eardrums with existential meanderings about the meaning of the universe, he is helping us find peace within it. Either way, HevyDevy is one of the most versatile and talented artists in metal today. Recently, Blood Music released The Complete…

2016 was another so-so year for dynamics in metal, with the number of hyper-compressed, brickwalled recordings far outweighing the number of well produced ones. Yet I still remain cautiously optimistic since our little Metal-Fi community is slowly but surely becoming not so little anymore, with more and more headbangers joining the cause everyday. But even…

The “audiophile mastered version” of Nine Inch Nails’ new album Hesitation Marks is something that we and plenty of other folks were really looking forward to. A few prominent artists have released fully dynamic recordings on CD in the last few years (Jack White, Fiona Apple, etc) and while NIN or Columbia or both didn’t…

Agalloch was one of the most popular bands in the world that no one has ever heard of. In fact, they were the paragon of underground success, building an extremely loyal fanbase over the years through a mix of touring and word of mouth yet never compromising their artistry in the process. Ironically, despite the…

We were fooled. Bamboozled. Duped, suckered, hornswoggled, and flimflammed. In short, we were deceived. And Alex’s wallet is $28 lighter. The only way to get the “audiophile mastered” version of Nine Inch Nails’ new album Hesitation Marks is through NIN.com. Seemingly worth buying it direct, right? After all you get the “audiophile” version of the…

Today is Dynamic Range Day! A day where the industry as a whole celebrates dynamics in music and where the holiday’s founder, Ian Shepherd, gives his annual keynote address. If you haven’t yet seen one of Ian’s live webcasts, you really should, as he is not only a fantastic speaker in his own right but…