Metal

Well, time to push Gatekeeper off of the AOTY slot.

It's still gotta square up against Lago, Of Feather and Bone, Tomb Mold, and Skeletal Remains, but it is well-equipped.

Honestly Tomb Mold was honestly the only one of those I cared about. Lago are in the "interesting but give them another album or EP before they really get it", Skeletal Remains sound like they're on autopilot on the new one after an amazing sophomore, and Of Feather and Bone is at best likely slightly better war metal/grind/Incantation fare.

Obliteration just dropped a preview track by the way. Drummer Kristian Valbo's dissonant textures from his Void Eater side project are making their way into Obliteration's sound and it works really well.

Edited by StillbornMachine on Sep 25th 2018 at 8:13:33 AM

Blind Guardian have a new live album coming out soon, recorded at Rock Hard 2016, complete with a new song, 'The Tides of War'.

Wasn't this a track that simply didn't make it to Nightfall in Middle Earth?

I think I've found a review that pretty much sums up my opinion of Amorphis' Eclipse album: Sweet CHEESE!!!

To be completely fair, for all its poppiness, what you can't take away from the Joutsen-era Amorphis in general and Eclipse in particular is the inherent sense of stupid fun. The way the band revels in their own rather gaudy flair of metal (which is completely deliberate) is contagious and strangely invigorating. In hindsight, I think that the album is also a great entry point for modern heavy metal along with its extreme subgenres. They've got growls! They've got Epic Riffs! Hooks that stay with you forever! Fronted by a burly tattooed Finn with dreadlocks! What is there for a newcomer not to like?

I kind of regret not learning about the album at the time of its release, but back in the late 00's Amorphis weren't exported to us (were they actually considered mainstream back then? Are they mainstream now?). So the first two bands that introduced me to metal were Rammstein and Linkin Park. I wonder how my musical tastes would evolve if I had Eclipse as a Gateway Series.

I also wonder which band's material was that first hooked you guys on Metal.

Testament's Souls of Black, and Megadeth's Rust in Peace. The former was from Rock Band, which I still play.

Wound up giving the Malthusian full-length a listen based on word-of-mouth (from people who know of my general dislike for Portal and caverncore as a whole), and I can't say I dislike it. It definitely reminds me of Portal, but with a more structured and less meandering approach, more meat to it in general, and a more "urban" (for lack of a better term) feel that I honestly enjoy way more than Portal's Lovecraftian musings. It's not trying to feel esoteric or alien and manages to avoid feeling contrived as a result.

So, I'm looking for melodic, ornate, technically proficient doom to listen to. Preferably funeral doom, though other subgenres are fine, too. As usual, folk influences and operatic female vocals are appreciated, though not required.

Any recommendations?

In terms of majestic funeral doom with faintly operatic but not overbearing or excessively flashy lead female vocals, The Slow Death's album Ark springs to mind.

On a *very* different note, anyone know any war/bestial black metal with strong noise or power electronics influences? I think that the combination would be quite compelling.

Lycus are pretty tight for funeral doom from their nuanced guitar work down to their surprisingly complex drumming. Quercus are practically proggy by the subgenre's standards and their last two albums feature a pipe organ joining the fray. Evoken also have a more active, involved take on the genre most notably on their first two albums though they lean more closely to death/doom of an aggressive and riffy variety than pretty much every other funeral doom band. Mournful Congregation have some very elaborate, drawn out lead guitar harmonies.

Edited by StillbornMachine on Feb 17th 2019 at 9:16:27 AM

Even though most of the posters on this thread seem to be fans of extreme metal, what are some of your favorite Traditional Metal (ie, stuff in the vein of Priest, Maiden, Dio, etc.) albums? I'd especially like to see some lesser-known ones come up

Mega Colossus - Hyperglaive

Der Kaiser - La Griffe de l'Empire

Dantesco - Pagano

Vault - No More Escape

Saber Tiger - Invasion

Trial - The Primordial Temple

Angel Witch - S/T

Mercyful Fate - Melissa

I'm not huge on traditional heavy metal but Manilla Road are a fun time; I am a fan of heavy psychedelic rock, though, which is adjacent if not really the same thing. I also feel it would be disingenuous to pretend I don't enjoy Priest or Sabbath, although in the former case I prefer their harder, faster material.

Really, you might get a more interesting answer out of me if you asked about my feelings on heavy and extreme music that *isn't* metal.

Just listened to DT's latest output Distance Over Time. Definitely an improvement over the snoozefest that was The Astonishing, in a very "back to the basics" sense. It's certainly one of their less proggy albums, but that works fine with me − the riffs hit hard, Petrucci's solos are top-notch, Labrie stays in a more manageable vocal range (albeit with a lot of reverb and presumably some autotune) and Rudess' keyboards aren't as obnoxious as usual. Even Mangini's drumming feels like it has more personality this time around. "Out of Reach" is also one of the most enjoyable ballads I've heard from DT. Though my favorite track would be either "Fall into the Light" or "Pale Blue Dot", the latter of which kinda reminded me of "Exist" in some parts. But really, there wasn't a track I outright disliked in this, it's a very smooth listen.

Now I might be in the minority here as this thread doesn't seem very DT-friendly, but it was a rather pleasant surprise.

I know I don't seem like it but I've had a soft spot for Dream Theater ever since I heard "Stream of Consciousness" back in the earlier half of the 2000's. Granted I don't listen to them a lot but a bunch of their 90's material has stuck with me and they played a pretty big part in shaping my tastes early on.

Yeah, I'm probably the one truly dedicated prog-metal hater here, and even that's conditional and somewhat affected. I mean, I really don't care for much of what I've heard by Dream Theater—I think that they would be a fairly interesting prog-thrash band if they sped up their tempos and added a little bite to their delivery, but their insistence on middling tempos and dated alt-rock-inflected guitar tones makes them a fairly tedious listen for me—but I'm willing to at least give them props for pioneering that sound and having significant chops. If anyone is truly to blame for the bad taste this style leaves in my mouth, it would be their many inferior imitators.

Dream Theater make a lot more sense if you view them as part of the 90's progressive rock revival, in particular the neo-prog style that had already began in the 80's and continues on strong to this day. A lot of their sound, especially from the classic era, hearkens back to that than the genre's earliest originators but sprinkled with a lot of relatively bigger name mainstream friendly metal tendencies. If you listen to the progressive metal that predated them whether it's Watchtower, Fates Warning, Voivod, Queensryche, Mekong Delta, Tegen Hart, or Crimson Glory they sound almost completely alien to it beyond a few passing similarities. This is even in spite of them technically having gotten their start in that time period.

And see, that's exactly what puts me off. I have never been a '90s prog revival fan, and while I am willing to give some of the more creative bands of that period the benefit of a doubt, the prospect of listening to metal rooted in that particular style and era of progressive rock wedded to once-trendy sounds from one of mainstream metal's gravest fallow periods by no means tickles my fancy.

Just, let me have Voivod and Watchtower and all those wonky tech-thrash bands from the tail end of the '80s. That I can get on board with. I cannot get on board with this marriage of squeaky-clean machinery and thudding self-importance.

(I can also roll with whatever Toby Driver is doing at any given time, but the last two Kayo Dot albums were by no means metal, great though they were. And the more unconventionally technical and extravagantly progressive ends of black and death metal are of course rich, but I see that as an entirely different musical domain.)

Edited by JHM on Mar 11th 2019 at 1:00:55 PM

I can enjoy that era even though I feel it's where a lot of the worst practices associated with prog metal (or any sort of brainy "thinking man's" metal [I hate that term so much now] so avant garde and tech variants too). began to take shape. I blame Meshuggah for this more than I do Dream Theater overall tbh though the worst parts of what both were associated with would essentially congeal into djent (barf) many years later. Though even in the 90's there were a number of bands that hadn't exactly abandoned the original ideas of progressive metal. I'd say it's not until maybe the mid to late 90's that the neo-prog-metal style really started taking off and even then it's not until the earlier half of the 2000's when it joins with the European power metal movement and more or less reshapes the melodic metal landscape.

Though from 1990 to 2000, we have quite a few examples of progressive metal not following that lineage.

Psychotic Waltz - A Social Grace, Into the Everflow

Brother's Grimm - Helm's Deep

Confessor - Condemned

Megace - Human Errors

Northern Empire - Make Believe, Jessup's Farm

Donor (Nld) - Triangle of the Lost

Ningen-Isu - The Golden Dawn

Revelation (Maryland) - Never Comes Silence, Yet So Far

Dark Quarterer - War Tears

Dross - The Oracle

Vauxdvhil - To Dimension Logic

Lost Century - Complex Microcosm

Throes of Sanity - The Upheaval

Manitou - Entrance

Heaven's Cry - Food For Thought Substitute

Tragedy Divine - Visions of Power

Fatima Hill - Valhalla

Ancient Curse - The Landing

Power of Omens - Eyes of the Oracle

Inward Path - Oracle

Sore Plexus - Haptephobic

Vigilante (Jpn) - Chaos-Pilgrimage, Edge of Time

Spirit Web - S/T

Oversoul - Seven Days in November...

Edited by StillbornMachine on Mar 11th 2019 at 12:20:25 PM

Adding these to my consideration. I was already aware of Ningen-Isu and Confessor but most of those names are new to me and I'm hype. Which would you say are among the most diverse, idiosyncratic and/or intense of those records? Not looking for anything gimmicky, just *original.*

Psychotic Waltz, Megace, Donor, Vauxdvhil, Sore Plexus, Lost Century, and Inward Path.

Edited by StillbornMachine on Mar 11th 2019 at 4:17:43 AM

Thank you! ^w^

On an entirely unrelated note, I really enjoyed Brocken Moon's Mondfinsternis recently. It's far from the most original depressive-leaning second-wave-styled black metal record I've ever heard, nor is it anything resembling an absolute triumph of compostional and technical acumen, but I can't pretend that moments like the introduction of the ghoulish vocals and ultimate slamming in of the full band on "Schattenwelt" aren't wonderfully effective. Sometimes you just need that pure, icy sound injected directly into your veins. Really fun record.

(I really am getting more and more into DSBM of late, incidentally, albeit maybe in a bit of a sideways direction with utter demented ragers like Sortsind, whose More Days is just *so* fucking nasty, I love it.)

Edited by JHM on Mar 13th 2019 at 4:55:32 AM

I haven't been keeping up with new releases much, but I have a soft spot for pizza thrash and I'd just like to shout out Misconception by Critical Defiance as a fine album. I find the vocals a bit underwhelming but otherwise it's just a really solid old school thrash record. Also has one of the best album covers I've seen in a while. Carnivore would be proud.

So, I've been trying the funeral doom bands' material that were suggested earlier, though I've already tried The Slow Death's Ark long before (along with some Sunn O))) songs). My preconceptions about the genre based on what I've listened so far were as follows:

• It's slow as fuck.
• The songs are loooong.
• Depressing.
• Not very varied.

So obviously I didn't really expect Lycus' Tempest to be as meaty as it turned out to be. Obviously, there's some heavy flirting with death metal present. The titular track has outright black metal sections. And in general the band's sound is a lot fiercer, ominous and at the same time intricate than my aforementioned stereotypes about the genre.

Which cannot be said about Quercus' Verferum album. It is very proggy, but it doesn't have prog's ambitiousness when it comes to songwriting. I was, frankly, bored while listening through the album. The usage of pipe organ was atmospheric and appropriate, but in general, I didn't find the album very engaging.

So, next are a couple of albums from Evoken's discography and Mournful Congregation's latest album. I also need something similar to Lycus' sound, because, by Jove, I liked Tempest very much.