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thisaintascenereviews · 6 years

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Album Review by Bradley Christensen Black Sabbath – Paranoid Record Label: Vertigo Release Date: September 18 1970

You might have read a lot about Black Sabbath’s second album, 1970’s Paranoid, when I talked about their debut self-titled LP, also released in 1970, but I felt like I had to two things with that review – talk about the history of heavy metal, and how that LP was influential to the genre (arguably being the first metal album ever made), and my personal history with the band. Black Sabbath has always been a band that I have a rather “complicated” relationship with, because I respect them more than I like them. I’ve always felt like that. I talked a lot about Paranoid in that review, simply because that’s the first album from them I’ve ever heard, as well as the first metal album I’ve ever heard. I was super into classic rock at the time when I heard the album, and I thought it would be neat to venture into heavy metal. I chose Paranoid, because it’s an album that’s often considered by critics to be a landmark metal album, and it truly is, but when I first heard it, it wasn’t an album that resonated with me too much. I mentioned a bit why in my review of the self-titled, but let’s go over it again. The first thing that didn’t do a lot for me at the time was its sound. I was hugely into metalcore, deathcore, and post-hardcore at the time, and that’s the heaviest that I’ve gone. Later on that year, I’d get into metal through death metal, which made much more sense than listening to Black Sabbath’s second album that’s very slow, menacing, and dark (although I love it for those reasons now). It made more sense to introduce me to metal through something that I was more familiar with, but the last year or two has been spent getting into styles of metal that I haven’t gotten much into, such as thrash and death metal. The second biggest reason that I never got into Paranoid as much as I wanted to, even after knowing it was a classic album is that I just didn’t care for vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. That might be the main reason, actually, because I just didn’t care for his voice much.

Like I mentioned in my review of the self-titled, later on in that same year, I actually picked up some albums from the Ronnie James Dio era of Black Sabbath, Dio, if you’re not familiar with metal, is a big deal in the metal world. He was the vocalist of Rainbow, started by Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, and after fronting Black Sabbath for a few years, he started his eponymous band, which went on to be a pioneering band for power metal and neoclassical metal. I’m a big fan of the Dio era of Sabbath, even more so than the Ozzy era, just because Dio is a better vocalist. You can’t really argue that, either, Dio just has the better voice. Who was more of an influence, though, that’s where you can debate it. I would lean towards Ozzy, just because of Black Sabbath, but Dio did a lot for metal, too, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. Regardless, though, I got much more into Dio’s era of Black Sabbath, because Dio’s vocals were more interesting, and he managed to take Black Sabbath’s doom-laden and dark sound and put a new spin on it, so I really enjoyed his first two albums with the group, 1980’s Heaven And Hell, as well as 1981’s Mob Rules. I’ve wanted to come back to Paranoid for the longest time, because I’ve gotten more into metal over the years, especially 1970s / 1980s metal, and Black Sabbath is one of the forefathers of metal. Before I could do that, however, I picked up 1973’s Sabbath Bloody Sabbath at FYE, because I was there one day with my girlfriend, because I saw the album for only $5 there, so I thought, “Why not?” I didn’t get too huge into that one, either, but something made me go back to it. I got more into doom metal recently, and I thought that I should listen to some Sabbath-esque metal, so along with a ton of newer albums, I picked up a few more Sabbath albums, as well as decided to revisit Paranoid. My thoughts on this LP have changed immensely over the last few years, and it’s because of a change in perspective, as well as tastes.

The reasons that I didn’t care for the album in the past are reasons that I love it now, and one of the most interesting things about this LP is that it’s a lot more refined than the self-titled. When people think of Black Sabbath, they think of this type of sound – dark, doomy, menacing, strange, and slow-moving, all the while Ozzy Osboure wailing over everything. This is their most iconic album, and for good reason, because it features a couple of their signature songs – “War Pigs,” which opens up the album, and “Iron Man.” People know the latter song as being in the movie of the same name, but the former song is one of those songs that people know, they just may not know it is as Black Sabbath. What’s interesting about Black Sabbath is that their sound is quite basic. There’s not much to it. These guys came up when metal was just becoming a thing, and it’s got a relatively basic sound to it, it’s just that everything is very well done on it. The instrumentation is tremendous, just as the sound is great, especially now that I’m warming up to this slower brand of heavy metal, but there’s not a whole lot to it. This thing isn’t insanely complex, but at the same time, it’s groundbreaking. Not all groundbreaking albums need to be complex, insane, and intense, because this album came out when metal was just forming. Honestly, this would be a great album to recommend to rock fans that want to get into metal, because metal had a lot in common with blues rock, psychedelic rock, and hard rock of the late 60s and early 70s. It wasn’t until bands like Judas Priest and Iron Maiden came along that removed the bluesy elements from metal, but I feel like rock fans could get into this album a bit more than someone like myself, who was more into metalcore, deathcore, and post-hardcore, genres that were heavier by nature, so listening to blues rock-influenced heavy metal from the early 1970s wasn’t a good idea.

A few years later, though, I can definitely see this LP is a classic, and frankly, I love it. It’s my favorite Sabbath album that I’ve heard, maybe even including the Dio era, because it’s such a groundbreaking release. I still don’t really love Osbourne’s vocals, as I’m not a huge fan of his style, since he’s not really a technically good singer, but I feel like the vocals aren’t the focus with albums like this. It’s on the instrumentation, atmosphere, and overall sound. That’s the only real nitpick I have with this LP nowadays, but it’s a nitpick, since the rest of the album is amazing. For Christmas this year, I sent my best friend a copy of this LP, actually, and he said it was great. I mean, he knew it was a classic, too, but he really enjoyed it. He’s more of a rock fan, too, and that tells you something. This is a perfect gateway album for rock fans to get into metal, but I can understand someone being hesitant to check this out. Personally, though, I love diving into the past, because you could understand where your favorite bands and genres came from. With the case of Black Sabbath, they helped to pioneer heavy metal, because their first two albums are two of the first heavy metal albums ever made. Heavy metal itself came from blues rock, psychedelic, and hard rock from the late 1960s, so in that case, you might like bands such as Cream, Led Zeppelin, and Iron Butterfly, too, but we’re talking about heavy metal here. I’m glad that I decided to revisit Paranoid, and I know that I have quite a lot to say about it, but why wouldn’t I? This LP changed everything as we know it. Without this LP, metal wouldn’t be the same. It would still most likely exist, but not in the same degree that we know it. If you’re a metal fan, and you haven’t listened to this, no matter the kind that you like, you’re missing out. For a long time, I respected this band more than I liked it, but now that a few years have passed, I love this LP and I respect it.

#black sabbath #paranoid #ozzy osbourne #geezer butler #tony iommi #war pigs #iron man #heavy metal #metal #rock #hard rock

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armandj · 4 years

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CoinGecko’s Bobby Ong on BTC: ‘Something That Will get Measured Will get Manipulated’

Whether or not pushed by enterprise, manipulation, geopolitical turmoil, or the unfold of a pandemic, the winds of change have swiftly swept throughout each nook of the globe; Bitcoin has been no exception.

Over the previous 12 months, Bitcoin’s picture and presence on the planet has modified: because the cryptocurrency area has continued to mature, there’s extra dependable knowledge than ever earlier than; market manipulation–whereas it hasn’t disappeared–has loosened its grip on crypto; it doesn’t matter what aspect of the argument you have been on, the Bitcoin-as-a-safe-haven narrative has been flipped on its head.

Now that Bitcoin is again over $10,000, the world is on its toes–will BTC handle to remain above the $10,000 mark? Maybe. Nonetheless, the crypto world is simply as sturdy as its weakest hyperlinks.

Traditionally, gathering correct buying and selling knowledge has been a little bit of a ache level throughout the trade. With market manipulation and wash buying and selling rampant within the area, 1000’s of merchants have fallen sufferer to the traps laid by false representations of the reality.

Lately, Finance Magnates spoke to Bobby Ong, co-founder and chief working officer at cryptocurrency knowledge aggregator CoinGecko, about the way forward for Bitcoin and different cryptocurrencies, in addition to how his firm is working to seek out and report the reality within the cryptocurrency world.

The next is an excerpt of an interview that was performed on June 2nd, 2020. It has been edited for readability and size. To listen to Finance Magnates’ full dialog with Bobby Ong, go to us on Soundcloud or Youtube.

Finance Magnates · Blockchain Podcast #126 — Bobby Ong, COO of CoinGecko

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MZiH0XyRSY

Bitcoin’s motion over $10,000 is “most likely a mix” of myriad components

“I’ve heard a number of completely different explanation why Bitcoin could have gone up,” Bobby mentioned. “One of many crazier issues that I’ve heard is ‘oh, there’s riots in America, so purchase Bitcoin,’” which appears to counsel that doable political instability within the states might weaken the greenback and lift the worth of BTC.

Nonetheless, “it doesn’t make a lot sense to me,” Bobby mentioned.

However, “some say that [the price] reveals a correlation with the S&P500 inventory value going up…some persons are saying that on a technical indicator degree, Bitcoin had a really excessive month-to-month shut on the finish of Could, which is a bullish sign, and [therefore], Bitcoin goes up.”

“However I feel it’s most likely a mix of all [these factors],” he continued, including that the current halving is also a contributing issue. “There’s most likely nobody actual cause why issues are going up.”

Nonetheless, “[…] personally, I feel that we are going to dip again down–we’ll check one other low. How low it will likely be–I feel there are a couple of assist ranges as much as $4,000-$6,000; I can’t inform precisely.”

“Then, we’ll most likely shake out lots of people one final time, after which we’ll prime ourselves for an actual growth in 2021. That’s my private take, however I’ve been within the area lengthy sufficient to know that it’s very onerous to make predictions. I might say something, however the market has its personal thoughts.”

A part of the rationale for Bitcoin’s rise over the previous 12 months might be the truth that the cryptocurrency area is maturing in numerous alternative ways, together with the truth that market manipulation–whereas it’s nonetheless an issue within the cryptocurrency area–is extra extensively mentioned; it may be argued that there’s far more consciousness of market manipulation (and how one can keep away from falling into the traps that such manipulation can lay) than previously.

”A variety of [crypto] exchanges have a really sturdy incentive to control their knowledge.”

A lot of this has to do with Bitwise Asset Administration’s presentation to the SEC early in 2019: in an try and get the SEC to permit Bitwise to create a Bitcoin ETF, the corporate successfully introduced an exposé of widespread wash buying and selling within the cryptocurrency trade.

Bobby mentioned that earlier than Bitwise Asset Administration made its legendary presentation earlier than the SEC final 12 months on market manipulation, wash buying and selling within the Bitcoin area was type of an open secret.

This Bitwise report is wonderful pic.twitter.com/2TLMpHcsJ4

— Frank Chaparro (@fintechfrank) Could 26, 2019

“I feel that earlier than they launched the report, lots of people within the trade type of already [knew about it]; it was one thing that we noticed at CoinGecko as nicely.”

For instance, a lot of the exchanges that report the best Bitcoin buying and selling volumes “are a few of these bizarre, small-name exchanges, largely originating from China,” Bobby defined.

Nonetheless, it was clear from the start that these exchanges have been reporting “clearly manipulated knowledge.”

“They’re placing out faux buying and selling knowledge to inflate their quantity, as a result of they need it to seem that they’ve bigger liquidity,” he continued. Finally, “we got here to the conclusion–particularly for non-regulated exchanges–that any metric that may be tracked will likely be manipulated.”

“Buying and selling quantity is tracked as an essential metric in evaluating exchanges, so a whole lot of exchanges have a really sturdy incentive to control their knowledge,” Bobby defined.

”Buying and selling volumes are now not a great way of figuring out an trade’s actual liquidity.”

Nonetheless, “it’s come to the stage the place buying and selling volumes are now not a great way of figuring out an trade’s actual liquidity, actual quantity, actual depth; we determined that we have now to do one thing completely different, and that we have now to make use of different various metrics in figuring out the true volumes of those exchanges.”

Subsequently, Bobby defined that final 12 months, CoinGecko started giving every of the exchanges it lists a “belief rating” primarily based on a blended algorithm that mixes numerous various factors.

BLOCKTV spoke with @coingecko founder @bobbyong about their Q1 2020 report together with #Bitcoin shedding dominance, $BSV the large winner, Learn how to DeFi, Coingecko Earn, & extra.

Watch the complete interview at: https://t.co/l3WTtcmlsw pic.twitter.com/BsdDe4e2dp

— BLOCKTV (@BLOCKTVnews) April 19, 2020

One among these components has to do with inspecting the bid-ask unfold for every of the trade’s buying and selling pairs. “We noticed sure exchanges having a 50% to 80% bid-ask unfold–it’s fairly ridiculous, since you make one bid, you make one purchase order, you make one promote order, and also you just about lose 60% or 80% of your cash, as a result of the unfold is simply enormous.”

“And in between this 50% bid-ask unfold, there have been 100 million {dollars} of trades occurring between the unfold; it was clearly wash buying and selling. I noticed it in entrance of my eyes, and I used to be shocked.”

Attending to the underside of faux buying and selling quantity

CoinGecko’s algorithm additionally examines order guide depth: “we take the mid-price of the commerce, after which we take a two p.c decrease vary and a two p.c higher vary, after which we sum up all the orders inside that two p.c vary and see all what number of orders you’ll be able to promote inside that two p.c vary.”

So, for instance, if there are $50,000 in order-book depth, what we discovered was that some exchanges–regardless that they declare to have $100 million of day by day buying and selling quantity, they solely have $1000 of their [2%-range] order guide, which isn’t good, as a result of if you wish to promote $10,000 of a selected coin, you [would] have a considerable amount of slippage.”

“This actually reveals that there is no such thing as a liquidity on [those] exchanges,” Bobby mentioned.

Net site visitors evaluation can present that “one thing is off”

One other issue that the algorithm takes into consideration is net site visitors evaluation.

When CoinGecko started inspecting net site visitors on exchanges in 2019, “what we noticed was that for those who suppose that an trade that information a excessive quantity of actual buying and selling quantity, they might most definitely have lots of people accessing their web site; for instance, Binance.com, Coinbase.com, Bitfinex.com, and so forth.”

“In fact, this makes the belief that each one exchanges have the identical quantity of retail and API customers, and makes the belief that exchanges have the identical quantity of net versus app customers; however assuming these are equal (which is a really tough approximation, it’s not excellent), what we noticed is that among the exchanges that claimed do to a whole bunch of 1000’s of hundreds of thousands in day by day buying and selling quantity–they didn’t have any net site visitors.”

Any measure that will get measured, will get manipulated.

We now have began noticing exchanges shopping for faux site visitors a couple of months again and now depend on net site visitors high quality too (not simply net site visitors estimate per say). https://t.co/ybXzNkMD14

— Bobby Ong (@bobbyong) Could 15, 2020

As an alternative, “they solely acquired possibly 10,000 or 15,000 month-to-month web page views.”

“This doesn’t make any sense, as a result of for those who declare to have the identical quantity of buying and selling quantity as Binance or Coinbase, then you definately most likely have the identical quantity of site visitors–or on the very least 50% or 70% of their net site visitors.”

Nonetheless, “having a 95% discrepancy in net site visitors? That clearly reveals that one thing is off.”

“Something that will get measured will get manipulated.”

CoinGecko’s algorithm examines these metrics, in addition to others, and produces a rating for every trade: “we give a rating from one to 10 for every of those exchanges, after which for every buying and selling pair, we give a inexperienced, yellow, or crimson site visitors mild to find out [if the volumes are legitimate.]”

Have these “belief scores” been efficient in deterring customers from suspect exchanges? “Appears to be working nicely up to now,” Bobby mentioned. “In the event you go to CoinGecko, you’ll most likely see the checklist of exchanges [topped by] Binance, Coinbase, Bitfinex, Kraken–these are the exchanges that it’s best to anticipate to see.”

Nonetheless, among the small, scheming exchanges are working to sport the system, though many have discovered that they will’t simply flub the numbers anymore: “I’ve been telling them, look: if you wish to get a greater rating on CoinGecko, it’s simple–simply cease faking issues and simply do the best factor and develop [your user base].”

Nonetheless, “something that will get measured will get manipulated,” Bobby repeated.

“These guys simply have a dishonest mindset, they usually need to discover a method to cheat: they attempt to cheat all of those completely different metrics. It’s type of a cat-and-mouse sport.”

For instance, when CoinGecko began monitoring web site site visitors, “we began noticing some exchanges shopping for faux site visitors.”

Consequently, “we needed to begin placing in some metrics to start out taking a look at site visitors high quality, for instance,” as an alternative of web page views alone.

“It will get tougher and tougher, however you need to do what must be performed” Bobby mentioned. “It’s type of like an search engine marketing sport the place everyone seems to be attempting to control their method to rating #1 on Google–it’s the identical factor with all these exchanges. They only need to discover a method to be #1 on aggregator websites.”

Nonetheless, “one factor’s for positive–shoppers are conscious of this problem; they’re extra discerning. I feel it’s tougher for shoppers to take no matter is displayed on websites like CoinGecko at face worth; they are going to do extra analysis and study and discover out if there’s actual buying and selling quantity.”

source https://www.financeary.com/cryptocurrency/coingeckos-bobby-ong-on-btc-something-that-will-get-measured-will-get-manipulated.html

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