What's that I see, approaching fast from 12 o' clock? Wait, it's still a speck, but I can make it out now. Look properly, it's right on the edge of my musical horizon. Still no? Oh, it's streaming radio, that's what.
Yes, folks, after many months of frustration with Grooveshark (the darn thing streams as slow as a tube of toothpaste), I've turned to free online streaming radio. There're a LOT of options as it turns out, even if you're like me and listen to a genre within a genre within a genre that only fifteen year old White Australian boys listen to.
A long time ago, I listened for a bit to KNAC. It's not bad - if you search for 'streaming radio rock' I'm pretty sure it'll be up there in the results. (Or maybe you have to throw in a 'free'.) But it doesn't play too much metal, and I wanted metal this time.
Shoutcast, it turned out, was exactly what I was looking for. (Do check it out: you can even filter by genre.) I filtered by 'metalcore' and hit upon Chronix Radio.
Chronix Radio (they have four channels, I'm talking about the one called 'Chronix: Metal') plays a lot of brutal death metal, a lot of metalcore, a fair amount of melodic death, a fair amount of black metal and nothing at all that has clean vocals in it. While I'm not particularly a fan of brutal death metal, it's brilliant for the workplace. A 'Bovine Decapitation' (by 'Humanure') playing in your ear cuts off all sound like a thirty foot thick lead wall. On the other hand, your screen flashing "Now Playing: 'Fetid Eviscerations' by 'Necrophile Castration'" while somebody's over your shoulder may be slightly awkward. Pfaw, we're metalheads and they don't know what they're missing out on, do they?
Melodic death: I've heard a lot of Amon Amarth, In Flames, Children of Bodom. Metalcore, I've heard a little of everything: All That Remains, Killswitch Engage, August Burns Red, As I Lay Dying, Unearth and many, many unknown basement screamers that don't even have Wikipedia entries. I've listened to plenty of screechy black metal - Satirycon, Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir and the likes. There's a fair bit of Opeth I've heard too.
So, here's the one line review: pretty good, but I hope there's better out there. There're a lot of great songs, but for every good song, there's a terrible one. I'm not talking about the musical quality of the song, just the recording quality. I think they put in a lot of free, filler bands because they can't afford to play A-listers all the time. The stream quality is OK, the audio does crackle occasionally, but it never breaks to buffer, so I'm fine with that.
Yes, folks, after many months of frustration with Grooveshark (the darn thing streams as slow as a tube of toothpaste), I've turned to free online streaming radio. There're a LOT of options as it turns out, even if you're like me and listen to a genre within a genre within a genre that only fifteen year old White Australian boys listen to.
A long time ago, I listened for a bit to KNAC. It's not bad - if you search for 'streaming radio rock' I'm pretty sure it'll be up there in the results. (Or maybe you have to throw in a 'free'.) But it doesn't play too much metal, and I wanted metal this time.
Shoutcast, it turned out, was exactly what I was looking for. (Do check it out: you can even filter by genre.) I filtered by 'metalcore' and hit upon Chronix Radio.
Chronix Radio (they have four channels, I'm talking about the one called 'Chronix: Metal') plays a lot of brutal death metal, a lot of metalcore, a fair amount of melodic death, a fair amount of black metal and nothing at all that has clean vocals in it. While I'm not particularly a fan of brutal death metal, it's brilliant for the workplace. A 'Bovine Decapitation' (by 'Humanure') playing in your ear cuts off all sound like a thirty foot thick lead wall. On the other hand, your screen flashing "Now Playing: 'Fetid Eviscerations' by 'Necrophile Castration'" while somebody's over your shoulder may be slightly awkward. Pfaw, we're metalheads and they don't know what they're missing out on, do they?
Melodic death: I've heard a lot of Amon Amarth, In Flames, Children of Bodom. Metalcore, I've heard a little of everything: All That Remains, Killswitch Engage, August Burns Red, As I Lay Dying, Unearth and many, many unknown basement screamers that don't even have Wikipedia entries. I've listened to plenty of screechy black metal - Satirycon, Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir and the likes. There's a fair bit of Opeth I've heard too.
So, here's the one line review: pretty good, but I hope there's better out there. There're a lot of great songs, but for every good song, there's a terrible one. I'm not talking about the musical quality of the song, just the recording quality. I think they put in a lot of free, filler bands because they can't afford to play A-listers all the time. The stream quality is OK, the audio does crackle occasionally, but it never breaks to buffer, so I'm fine with that.
No comments:
Post a Comment