Best sound!"!!! Ireally like it!!!!

This is the best sounding mix of the three. The upper register guitars don't have any harshness and you can crank it up.

All three were fun to listen to. I see you are making some new stuff after a pretty good gap. Looking forward to it.

If you ever want to collaborate, I can go the death metal rout all day, and my drummer's nickname is "makes everything metal." He'll do double bass on a ZZTop cover :)

All three of your tracks ae fire.IM so stoked...what if i said i would expsnd my lyric into all thee of your racks...like a 25 min epic....I could do t...I could easily do it. I have never heard a song that long...WHat you say to either one segment of your three we collab or all three we collab? Please give me a chance. Bes regrds Brad

Regreetings, driver of thine valves.

"Are you thinking the Crowbar cover, or the original Zep version?"

Tool's version- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZKIfCJZvZo

If you've never heard this version, I just made your motherfuckin day! This is off of Salival, one that not everyone has. The absolute best version of "Pushit" is from that album.

Pushit- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgDwkSlCwHw

" It might be a little too sizzly"

Not necessarily. I was really just saying that I would have taken too much out of the highs. I'm glad you didn't rob it of that energy.

Mr. E

Loving that intro.....Nice Spaghetti western guitars. Fender if I am not mistaken? and that is before I read the comments. I feel the angst of the nineties Seattle sound and I hear the dynamics of a progressive sabbath sound. But I also feel the soul of our Neanderthal ancestors battling the cold and Grey glaciers for a morsel of food. The Blast beat drums give it a 2000+ feel as well. I don't know by 3:55 I felt Equally angry at Farmers and Bankers which is sort of a queasy place to be in. I think you just invented the genre Anti-industrial. Jesus H Christopher this song is just dripping with dread and cold and calculating evolution. This is the kind of music that will send those young earth creationists to stop and point and yell, "SEE that's what there all like..see! and then it just ends in a nihilistic cloud of vacuousness!
Creepy, entangling and an evocative piece of work Aaron. oh and damn good!

Steve

How be ye, V to the D?

Opening swells reminds me of "The Creature Lives" off Once More 'Round The Sun. Goes a bit different with some effective drums. Distortion kicking in makes me think of "No Quarter".

Goddamn impressive guitars here. Cannot lie. Great job making it sound like actual guitar lines. Listening to this, I know I would have EQ'd and mixed the life right out of this track. I've got it cranked in headphones and there is a bit of high end I would take out of the distortion, but I never know when to stop and wind up killing energy with several cuts.

Outro is epic and finalizing. Got no advice or thoughts on improvements. Good heaviness with awesome tones. Beefy.

I hope all is well and getting wellerer with you.

Evan

It's yet another regreet, Valvaaron.*

"If you had a dick, and two dick shaped testicles, I could call you Triple-Dick McGee."

You could indeed. But I was thinking more interesting would be someone with a testicle-shaped dick and two testicles, each of which is dick-shaped. People are born with all manner of abnormalities so maybe this will one day happen.

"I could have been drunk when typing it"

You're not getting drunk at work, are you? Sounds like a bad idea when there are heavy valves that need driving. Drunk driving!

" there was nothing that stood out as anything that would be a good basis for the next sluper track."

At least one of you two has got to get on this otherwise Tool will have put out five more albums before we've made even one.

"The B.C. Rih Midi Hammer?"

Yeah, that would work, as would the BC Battleaxe. The BC could also be a little pun ie Before Christ as it would look like an ancient battleaxe. So, with flint for a blade rather than metal.

"I have come to accept that I can NOT do cartoon/animation style."

I think with a cartoon, you need to keep it simpler and let the minimalism shine through. That's definitely a style that appeals to people. Same goes for music. I think you know what I do is not at all on the minimal side of things but I do sometimes have sections that are somewhat minimal. I've done some recent cello-dominated tracks that are mostly cello layers and drums and have a slightly simpler sound.

I think it's a lot easier to make interesting minimal music if you have vocals. Without them, I always feel I need to do more with the instrumentation to keep things interesting. Minimal dance and minimal ambient get away with their minimalism because you can either just entirely relax to it or just dance to it and not care that there isn't more going on.

"My brain just gets too deep and intricate for anything minimal."

Same here but sometimes you just have to have confidence in your few elements being really good and not needing anything more added to them.

"Mr. E, I haven't seen him around much"

He's still alive, making music and scaping the land. We're friends on Facebook and chat reasonably often. I let him know on there about this track so he'll no doubt be along soon enough to tell you how much he enjoys it, despite being firmly against guitar VSTs.

Later, intricate illustrator.

*Is that my best name for you so far? Sounds a bit like Wolverine.

Wow...Aaron, this must be one of your best works if not the best! To achieve such an acomplished sound only with vst's is just incredible! This is beyond any doubt class A metal stuff, so masterfully arranged and produced and the most important it also shows ValveDriver's recognisable identity. I would download this if i could...so the only thing that's left is giving this a FAV...and it's a big one and well deserved !

Compliments and respect______Orlando

nice is this a virtual software? nice

Whoa man talk about shreddage the guitar tone and style are awesome! and considering that you played them via a vst is a real eye opener, that's some serious understanding of the software and instrument at work bravo!...The way you've mixed arranged and given this whole track excellent continuity is a testament to some real skills so don't sell yourself short I know some guitar aficionados who would be lining up to get this sound nailed down...very cool stuff! cheers Dave/PJB :)

Holy shit...you hit the great Pink in the sky here my friend....I have always felt that good guitar vsti`s were fantastic when used properly..and man did you ever nail it...The intro does carry a bit of the spagetti western vibe but it kicks into gear after that....I`m listening to the last section now & I think my hair is growing back in...(aw shit its not)..but I`m going upstairs & get me a beer & come back down to my music asylum & hit play again....freeking awesome Aaron...You D` man....may the Floyd be with you....Ed

Word up, sentence down, chapter across, paragraph where it is.

I like Phallic Nomad but you missed a trick as you could have gone for Phallic Gonad. Imagine a dick-shaped testicle. Or a testicle-shaped dick. Imagine them on the same body.

This NTB is the basis of a forum post I just made about guitar VSTs.

https://www.looperman.com/forum/thread/186149/great-guitar-with-a-guitar-vst

"Leads are my least comfortable thing ti attempt."

Same here - whether on synths or guitar or cello or whatever else. I'm much more of a groove/riff guy.

If you and/or Mr E can ever get round to putting at least something up for Slupergroup collaboration, you could well be the lead guitarist in the group. Sure - on stage with your mouse and keyboard you're going to look a bit pathetic next to me totally celling it up or getting my banj on or whatever. But maybe you can use a MIDI controller in the shape of a battleaxe or scythe. That would be rather cool.

"a bluegrass/gangster rap hybrid."

I look forward to it. One of the current tracks I'm working on is a dark, spooky hip hop track that, so far, sounds like some some rather authentic hip hop. But whenever I start adding guitar and so on to my hip hop beats, the genre always seems to shift to something other than hip hop. I'll try to keep this one more firmly in the hip hop genre but may fail if I find something cool that takes into some other genre.

Thanks for the detailed reply and congrats again on some badass Shreddage.

this is my first faved in this site .
I'm impressed , very welldone .

This is SICK , I really want to dissect it and tell you what parts i like the best, but i would have to quit banging my head and smoking my pipe, so i will let those other fine gentlemen sum it up for me, and i will just say FUCKING EPIC ! Made my stoned ears very happy. Excellent fucking track \m/

Epic song man! Beautiful guitar tones. Every single lead is perfect. The music really painted a picture for me. I'm not a big fan of super long tracks but I listened to the entire song. I could see the accompanying film being set in a post-apocalyptic desert landscape. Well done!

Man this is fun bro !
Its like Quentin Taratinos Heavy Metal version of the Good Bad and the Ugly ! I really dig the spaghetti western guitar picking in the beginning segment but that soon gives way to a nice heavy chord groove. I really dig those chord changes and, oh yeah, that's some real tasty lead. Man this is all done in Shreddage? Unbelievable. You throw in some real ominous breakdown and then a nice return to the western vibe guitar twang and those peaking single coils. Real slick transitioning. The last section really amps things up to another high level of intensity, some real edgy progression with guitar and drums laying down a heavy triplet cadence. This is wicked man, and I love the build to the abrupt hanging note ending.

Yeah, I'm all smiles right now bro. So happy to see and hear the Valvedriver cranking it out once more!!!

Word up, Driven Vulva.

I recognise this title. It's one of the 50,000 rejected Slupergroup names.

Cool, long, slow organy intro.

0:21 awesome wobbly, detuned guitar note. 0:42 another. 0:50 that high note really stands out.

1:04 cool distortion and big crash.

1:25 slow, plodding stonervalves for a while.

2:08 distortion returns. Drums have a reasonably thin sound but that's not necessarily a complaint. A bit of a 70s vibe there.

2:29 nice lead. No one will know this track didn't involve someone actually doing some guit fiddlin'.

A pleasant epic, anthemic sound, especially from the awesome lead guitar. Don't know how the software works or how you're adding all those realistic bends and accurate guitar player touches.

3:55 back down for some slow, plodding stoner chill. Quite psychedelic.

Next thing to really stand out is 5:20 and the low chugging.

6:14 nice lead screaming and then some nice, dirty, low riffage progression.

You can headbang to this now.

The low chugging and lead work come together nicely for the last few minutes in a pleasing and very realistic far out metal onslaught. Not really that heavy a track but that doesn't matter.

Congrats on this NTB. Have a large, solid metal trophy as a reward.

I forgot to say that while you were away being Mr Sloe and killing Mr Sloe I made my heaviest ever track. Press play for some nice swing metal from a few months ago:

Fist Bumps Of Fury

https://www.looperman.com/tracks/detail/180944

Static MetalMad