Being involved with the choral and instrumental areas of our school, ive somehow really enjoyed some of the large peices our school did. If you have some time you oughta listen to em. Just like the first minute will get you hooked.
Band did this and a couple other great ones but this one i think is just incredible. Its called Fantasy on a Japanese Folk Song.
For chorus, we did a massively large peice called mass of the children, by john rutter. Im usually not into the whole latin long choral peices, id give them a listen they are all amazing and ingeniousness imo. My fav movements are the first three. Especially second and third.
I'd personally rather not bump a topic this old but I'd considerably prefer it over making a pointless new thread.
Anyway, I've been checking out the heavier side of the death metal spectrum. Shame over half the bands around that area of music are clones, but whatever. Some highlights of my discoveries:
This one avoids flagrant sweeped arpeggios so I like it quite a bit. Much more unique than a lot of Brutal DM these days too.
While I prefer Immolation's older material this is still a decent and fairly technical listen which actually uses pinched harmonics effectively. Best of all, the EP is free on Scion records.
Suffocation is pretty well known around death metal fans and this is probably one of their most famous songs. I like it; slows down very nicely when necessary.
Band is way better than Necrophagist. Technical but not to the extent of full blown musical wankery (although the band's second record is pretty bad in that respect).