Rexorcist's Forum Replies

This morning's track is Scorpions' "We Burn The Sky" which I regard as being hard rock:

This is my favorite Scorps song, largely because despite being closer to hard rock, its epic vibes are very metal ballad central.

Avenged Sevenfold - City of Evil

Genres: Heavy Metal

I'm glad I'm finally on this Avenged Sevenfold kick.  I've put them off for years out of lack of interest for metalcore and alternative metal.  I was extremely eager to see where the band's mutation would take them, putting their crappy debut on exactly the same level (and directly above on my list of all albums I've heard ranked from best to worst) as The Unspoken King by Cryptopsy, and having been fairly satisfied with the increase in melodic and emotional focus on the second.  But now comes the monster of metal: City of Evil, one of the most controversially diverse albums in both genre-bending and online ratings.

The album kicks off with their iconic song, Beast and the Harlot.  I heard this song a couple times years ago out of curiosity, but I wasn't inspired to go into the whole album yet despite liking it.  But I had VERY little recollection of it, so the Judas Priest shift into thrashy power metal territory took me a little by surprise.  One guy on RYM said it sounds like something you'd hear from the Sonic 2 soundtrack.  Now I've played enough Sonic games to know what that means (not Sonic 2, though), but this is NOT Crush 40 here.  I'd rather sing along with "Her plagues will come all at once as her mourners watch her burn" than "I can feel your every rage, step aside I'll turn the page."  The difference here is THIS SONG IS NOT THROWN TOGETHER.  Although, the shift between thrashy metal and Helloween melodies feels a little out of place sometimes, despite being a lot of fun.

That was just for the first song.  Next is Burn It Down, which is more F-Zero-rooted than Sonic-rooted, and the thrash factor is pretty high.  You can tell these guys are Metallica fans, but it feels more like influence than straight out copying.  The melodic factor works beautifully with the singer's melodic vocals despite the high thrash factor.  It looks like they finally found the balance between melody and energy that they struggled with on the debut and improved on with Waking the Fallen.

There's a metalcore drum kick that starts Blinded in Chains.  Like a few songs from WtF (oh), it combines elements of melodic metalcore with power metal, but this was easily the best metalcore effort I had heard.  There's obvious vocal overlapping in the production, but the experience it creates is purely badass and never lets go of the melodic touches.  In fact, this song boasts some of their best melodies.  The song also has an out-of-whack and creepy fade-out segment which lasts about a minute and a half, but does a great job with the dramatic flair without ever overdoing it.  I guess this is another favorite AVS song of mine.  But no matter how hard I tried, I didn't get the Samson reference I was expected because of that obvious title.  Huh.

"He who makes a beast out of himself..."Here it comes, their potential magnum opus.  Melodically their best song so far, does an excellent job shifting from energetic metal to slow ballady alt-rock like it's nothing, and does an excellent job bringing standard hardcore punk into the alt-metal world.  On top of that, it's got an incredibly catchy guitar riff.  Even if it's not a very extreme one, it's an empowering one.  I've gotten aching arms and fingers doing air guitar to this.  Probably the best thing that ever came out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the movie was already good.

Trashed and Scattered blasted me into the "powercore" of the last album, but it wasn't so jarring as the shift between ballads and almost-deathcore like on WtF.  It felt so natural because the previous songs set a standard of diversity and aura that feels difficult to break.  Once again we get some extremely catchy rhythms.  Or maybe it's just me because I'm a power metal sucker, and I've been waiting for a band to really pull of the combination of metalcore and power metal.  This is what I expect.

Next, Seize the Day... OK, maybe I should've expected this, but a piano-rooted alt-rock ballad threw me off.  It didn't fuck with the vibe or anything, but it was a really pleasant surprise.  There's an easy comparison many have made to GNR, which may detract from the originality of the song itself, but at least it's a totally different singer.  Anyway, it's pretty cute and it's a welcome addition.  I think the vocal melodies outshine the instrumentation, though.

Sidewinder is next.  Here we have another energetic ballad that steers into some fairly progressive melodic territory.  It hits all the right notes for a proper alchemic reaction, balancing the rhythms, moods and hard rock / heavy metal vibes. The song goes on with this surprisingly soothing energy for two-thirds of the song before kicking into a latin rock solo, never breaking the vibes.  That's pretty smart of them.  Not really overlong for seven minutes.

There's a welcome return to racecar metalcore and thrash metal with The Wicked End, featuring a wonkier lead riff with a little bit of djent attached.  But the song slowly mutates overtime, playing with varying levels of energy before somehow naturally working its way into a slow, symphonic chorus during the middle section and helping to overlap the third act until it kicks back into the thrash.  Is this the band's Stairway to Heaven?  Or is it just lacking focus?  No.  No way it's lacking focus.  It felt natural, and that's what makes it work.  The entire first album was loaded with metalcore tropes that didn't work together, so I'm going to approve this song and anyone can fight me on that if they want.  I'm a bit surprised this isn't the closer.  Maybe the album would be fine if it ended here, but I was gonna give the other three tracks a go and finish the album anyway.

The perfect way to start a song after that ambitious monster is with a slow pairing of acoustic guitar and violins recreating the wild west.  This is the beginning of Strength of the World.  Alright, after everything I've heard, I'll give them a spaghetti western beginning.  What does anyone have to lose?  It's not fucking with the flow.  After the minute-and-twenty-second intro, we get back into the electric guitars and build up into a thrash riff and goes into a fairly heavy and meaningful song that doesn't try very hard to go into more drama and relies on high-pitched guitars and the singer's voice to do all the work.  Personally, I think for nine minutes this should've had more focus, but it's not bad.  Besides, the song does mix it up again by bringing back the acoustic guitars and going into western ballad territory, and eventually into energetic riffs again and finally a cinematic violin outro.  It's another ambitious track, but it doesn't really have the same oomph or balance as The Wicked End.

The second-to-last track is Betrayed, and I feel like this one's a little melodically challenged.  The riffs and verses feel a little wonky and don't flow very well.  It's obvious they were trying a little too hard with this song, and that it was basically filler for a seventy-minute album.  Bad move, really.

This monolith ends with M.I.A.  It begins how I expect, with a softer intro before forcing itself back into energetic territory.  Thankfully, the band chose the right genre to go back to: metalcore, their roots.  But this time, the melodies work and the unpredictability is balanced. I mean, the melodies aren't amazing, but they drive this eight minute song from beginning to end and never loses its grip.

Alright, I'm extremely happy to say that I've given their iconic third album a spin.  And now to goad half the metal community into pointing their guns at me: I ate the majority of this album up.  It may be overly ambitious, but it's good to see they were trying a bunch of new things, despite the fact that the overambition leads the album to be frontloaded, especially due to the shorter lengths in the first half.  They seem to have largely forsaken metalcore, but they kept the personality traits and made something pretty fun.  This album might not always have the best songs, but it fits all of my standards for a good album.  The biggest reason I liked this album is that it handles genres and melodies exactly how I would if I were in a metal band (although I'd be heavier, and less reliant on epics).  Overall, great album by a band finding their ground, even if they have some toning down to do.

92/100

What out Rex! You don't want the band seeking revenge on you seven times, do you?

Take a look at my self-made avatar and tell me I'd ever be scared.

Anyway, round two.

Avenged Sevenfold: Waking the Fallen

Genres: Melodic Metalcore

OK, nobody liked the Avenged Sevenfold debut album, and neither did I.  They say this one's pretty good for the fans, though, so I've got big hopes for this.  Finally getting around to these guys, I'm eagerly awaiting the moment I get to turn on City of Evil for the first time, but I don't want to do that until I get a really good idea of how the band evolved within the first three albums.

Like the first album, this starts out with a decent intro which gets up right into the darker vibes the band is going for.  Unholy Confessions felt dull, under-produced and dreary in its tropes.  It pains me that it became a music video.  But I found that Chapter Four was much more packed, keeping a consistent melodic vibe with its overlapping vocals and slight Gothic touch, and even had a lead riff vaguely reminiscent of the energy of my favorite franchise to compare metal songs to: F-Zero.  There's definitely a poppier thing going on here, but that's an improvement from the chaos of the debut album.  This definitely deserved to be the lead single for this album.  Remenissions starts out with the unspoken combo that I call "powercore," a genre I would totally kickstart if I were in a metal band.  Unfortunately, this is where it becomes clear that the band is steering too close to the "similar tempos" trope that many genres fall victim to.  I wasn't expecting the Latin acoustic segment, though.  Weirdly added, but somehow nice.  Desecration Through Reverence shows a bit more focus on mood-building and justifies the existence of the shifting tropes in a single song in the follow-up to their debut.  It feels so much more natural than everything the debut features.

I didn't expect many differences out of Side B, but I was hoping.  Turns out, my hopes were satisfied even for a little while.  As soon as this slower, alternative metalcore album with a deeper emotional vibe ends, the album steers RIGHT INTO POWER METAL like it was nothing.  This side ends with a basic combination of the temp tricks of the last two songs, and I can't really say this decision does anything for the album.  Despite the progressive nature and melodic prowess, it's a filler song.  Radiant Eclipse is slower, more alternative and rooted in traditional metal ballad behavior while maintaining the signature edge.  This six minute track really was a breath of fresh air that, unlike the pop rock track in the debut, Warmness of the Soul, which felt like a relief of fresh air from the crappy metalcore, is a perfectly fitting alternative song that completely continues the darker vibes of the album while building on previously established influences on this album to become its own thing.  Next was I Won't See You Tonight, Pt. 1.  One look at the length and I thought to myself, "What kind of song on a metalcore album like this lasts nine minutes!?"  My first thought was a fairly proggy ballad which probably builds on the gothic elements suggested by the secondary genre tag on this album's RYM page.  It gained a very slight heaviness from its standard ballad energy at the start, but it lasts that way throughout the whole nine minutes, so I only got about two thirds of it right.  It's really just an overlong ballad.

So now that that was over with, right back into the screechy metalcore like it's not a jarring difference.  This is Part 2.  They could've at least built into the conflict rather than making it instantaneous.  And of course, this song goes right into djenty weirdness to add another trope to the mix... although, this is the first song in this overlong album to do so, so I'm not too bothered by the trope.  Ironically, Clairvoyant Disease goes right back into alternative ballad territory, once again creating a jarring effect on the flow.  And finally, there's And All Things will End, which starts off with a riff similar to many Iced Earth songs, vaguely reminiscing thrash and power, but feeling right for the album here.  It's got much of the same drama as well, but the melodies are only decent and it doesn't hold a candle to any Iced Earth classics.

OK, I'm not gonna call this one of my favorite metalcore albums, but I'd say this album made AVS an easy band to LIKE, as opposed to an easy band to LOVE.  Their songs are poppy enough, maybe too poppy for metalcore and never displaying high points of creativity, but they try as much as they can with the genre they chose for themselves at the time and managed to keep things fairly entertaining with some sense of variety and a much better sense of emotion.

66/100

Avenged Sevenfold: Sounding the Seventh Trumpet

Genres: Melodic Metalcore

I've been putting off these guys for forever and I don't know why.  Maybe it's because I'm not really into alternative metal or related genres like multiple.  Now I've always liked Bat Country ever since I heard it on SSX On Tour for Gamecube, and it was one of many songs I kept on the custom playlist with classics like Stand Up and Shout by Dio, Dynamite by Scorpions and Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden.  There were others, but I quickly associated myself with the song.

I understand that the band is a very flavorful one, and has reinvented themselves multiple times, even after just one or two albums.  As an Arctic Monkeys and Led Zeppelin fan, I have absolutely no problem with this.  In fact, from what I understand, these guys are supposed to have sucked as a metalcore band, so in my curiosity I'll likely get through all of their albums soon.  But despite the fact that I've put them off for far too long (Bilbo Baggins, 2001), the biggest reason I'm checking them out right now is so I can have an opinion on them.  This was likely influenced not only by my recent curiosity pertaining to their other songs and the knowledge of their diverse history, but out of a Reddit conversation involving the qualifications of a metal band on Metallum.  So I'm gonna check them out from the start.

The somewhat symphonic and cinematic intro is nice, but as soon as these guys dig right into the metalcore, they lose all sense of atmospheric building, and stem into a random and yet surprisingly predictable and tropy metalcore band.  I really did NOT like "Turn the Other Way."  Its lack of organization was so amateurish that it might as well have stemmed from a poorly-recorded black metal pre-debut album garage demo.  There are only slight improvements over the next two songs, with a welcome edition of the Bad Religion-style melodic skate sound making its way into a little bit of The Art of Subconscious Illusion with the unpredictability feeling a little more organized, almost like a metalcore variant of NoMeansNo, not that they hold a candle to NoMeansNo, who are probably the greatest hardcore band on Earth.  It even gets pretty creepy near the end, which I have to appreciate for a band who just named themselves Avenged Sevenfold at the time.  But immediately after, the album gets samey, and the tropes just take turns with no direction other than to display the popular tropes, which means the real reason the last track worked was simply because it was a better variant of an otherwise chaotic mess all restricting itself into one genre.

It gets to the point where the piano rock song Warmness of the Soul is a breath of fresh air as opposed to a sore thumb situation because its simple and catchy sound is like a pillow in comparison to the tiring metalcore tropes.  And the album practically stays that way until we get their attempt at a Stairway to Heaven of their own with it going into softer melodic territory before going back into edgy metalcore tropes.  This means that the album only proves that Avenged Sevenfold had not grapsed creativity yet and tried to take an easy way into metal fame.  Obviously, it didn't work out yet.

42/100

Kali Uchis marathon today.  Isolation is blowing me away.  It's like a modern, atmospheric mix of Amy WInehouse and Caroline Polachek.

For anyone who's not part of the NUWRLD Mix Club, Deaths Dynamic Shroud has American Candy on YT right now.  I don't think it's gonna stay, so grab it before it goes away.

Beautiful stuff.  The whole thing is about slow, catchy atmospheres.  It's great music for relaxing and reading, or in my case writing.  Kinda like a mix between Tim Hecker and Flaming Lips.

Sentries - Snow as a Metaphor for Death (2024)

Genres: Noise Rock, Post-Hardcore

I listened to their previous two EP's and their debut album before getting to this one.  So far, this is their best effort.  2024 has been a good year for new efforts by improving bands.  I also checked out works by Brittany Howard and Mannequin Pussy, and they're joining the collective here.  Even though these guys aren't making a super hardcore album, and it's kind of light in that regard, there's still an excess amount of ferocity here, like these guys overdosed on methylene blue.  There isn't a lot of genre diversity here in comparison to their last two albums, as the switches between punk, post-punk and rock are very tame.  But this is also an improvement over previous albums as the weirdness and inventiveness no longer messes with the flow, allowing the more creative aspect to be focused solely in the layouts.  So the overall effect is pretty solid, if not ever reaching great heights.

Judas Priest - Invincible Shield (2024)

Genres: Heavy Metal

Six years later, right?  Seems a bit long to wait for another Judas Priest album after they've had a SECOND comeback.  But maybe that length was taken for the band to really hone their skills again and try to improve.  If that's the case, they succeeded, because their new album is some purified metal with a nostalgic feel that also acts as a step forward from the overly-80's Firepower, being its own thing and having been seen as the next essential in the Priest catalog.

I was totally taken by surprise with those totally-synthed up Def Leppard drums and guitar sounds for the intro, which eventually becomes a flat-out power metal song on par with the works of Gamma Ray.  Halford's voice and the backing voices work together with a pure and shining harmony that to me is like a metal version of Simon and Garfunkel.  Halford's gotten a stronger hold on his voice, which can be clearly heard on this album, even while the production assaults you with a wild range of metal noises and effects.  Two songs in and this is already a huge improvement over Firepower.  Of course, by the time the title-track came along, I was afraid the album was going to be quite samey, which is something that Firepower largely avoided until the last third, as it was too long of an album not to fall victim to it.  Thankfully, the title track had levels of metal energy that rival the Arrange Edition of the F-Zero X soundtrack.

The entire first half was a bit samey with difference largely just going to the tempos, so whatever weirdness came from the intro wasn't going to be common.  Thankfully, side B starts with a ballad: Crown of Horns, so there change in pace is powerful without damaging the flow, as this song is quite a good ballad that shows that Halford still has vocal range.  And despite its ballad status, this doesn't stop the instrumentation from being thick and featuring a dense metal atmosphere.  Of course, the album goes right back into thrash territory immediately afterwards, but this is still good because nothing on Side A was as heavy lightning-speed-driven as the song As God as My Witness.  So I interpret this as the album doing two new things on Side B to compensate for a samey side A.  This sounds familiar: Hounds of Love? Trial By Fire even experiments with the rhythm some while teetering on the balance between heavy metal and metal ballad.  So By this point I'm fine with another song sounding like something from the first half.  The tunes take a little of a drop in rhythmic quality once they go back to the normality of the first half, but are still enjoyable.

Invincible Shield shows a noticeable improvement over Firepower and is a greater testament to what Judas Priest is capable of.  Through denser metal atmospheres and instrumentation, as well as a willingness to push even further than Painkiller, Invincible Shield overcome the 80's nostalgic vibe that could be interpreted as "being done before," and stands as a modern classic.

Judas Priest - Firepower (2018)

Genres: Heavy Metal

Judas Priest were lighter than what metal should be interpreted as for many of their early albums, and that all chanced with the surprise comeback album Painkiller, which perfected the metal tropes that the same band's earlier albums helped to influence.  They had steered into Metal Church and Metallica territory and reinvented themselves.  Unfortunately, nobody liked what came after that until almost 30 years later, when these 70-year-olds put out Firepower, their second comeback album.  Now Judas Priest are once again the talk of the metal world.  However, does this even come close to Painkiller?

As far as attacking the entire heavy metal genre goes, most of these songs are exercises in one or another typical stle of heavy metal.  The album dives into speed, power, thrash and even arena rock territory without ever fully crossing those borders, allowing Judas Priest to both stay true to their Painkiller sound while addressing the variety of the genre they influenced.  And boy, does this trope fest give you ALL the goods.  Each melody and riff is quite catchy and packed with energy that almost reaches Painkiller heights.  Right from the get-go, you know what your getting as its opening title track punches you in the face with its own energy.  And even though it's obvious that Halford's voice aged, he's still able to hold the metallic sound of it very well, perfectly fitting into Priest's style yet again.  And lyrically, the album's loaded with all the metal themes of the classic age: the warnings against Satanism and the horror stories that come from it, the machine guns blasting over the battlefield, comparing your sex appeal to weather like you're suddenly a Norse god, etc. etc.  And these lyrics are all pretty good and easy to sing along with.

So basically, you kind of have to say that this is the kind of album that's been done before, not only by Priest before but by other bands.  I occasionally even got a WASP feel.  The real clincher here is that none of these tropes are poorly delivered.  So the fact that these guys can stay this good after a series of failures between Painkiller and this shows that they're becoming more aware of what they must be, and it looks like the success stemming from their awareness carries on into Invincible Shield.  Firepower is one of the most spirited metal albums of the 2010's.  If you don't like heavy metal at all, you might find this generic.  If you do, you really should check this out.  If it was released around the time British Steel was, it would be one of their original classics.  On the other hand, you could say it bears a strong nostalgic touch thanks to its spirit, as is the justification for "pizza thrash,"  I mean, let's be honest.  Priest weren't quite this metallic and loud in the 80's, and this sounds just like an 80's album by another band that was heavier at the time, so the weird thing is that while this is a generic but good album, it's also an album that the band HASN'T DONE BEFORE.

86 / 100

Gonna end my lengthy music binge today by checking out a few of the works of Roc Marciano, starting with his debut.  I'm not really into this one as much as RYM seems to be.  He's got decent beats with a strong urban vibe, but the songs don't really progress and kind of drag on.  On top of that, I don't think much of Roc's rhymes.

Couple of punk bands have new albums this year: Alkaline Trio and Strung Out, so I'm gonna check them out before heading to the new Vampire Weekend.  They say this might be their best.

After hearing the new cabinet and the Hoplites catalog, I've edited my top 100 black metal albums again, but I'm going through Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia since I already kicked Enthrone Darkness Triumphant out.

When I get back into metal, I've got to find one or two more symphonic black acts that will absolutely blow me away.  Why?  Here's my top 10

1. Emperor - Prometheus

2. Emperor - Emperial Live Ceremony

3. Emperor - Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk

4. Summoning - Stronghold

5. Emperor - In the Nightside Eclipse

6. Limbonic Art - Moon in the Scorpio

7. Antestor - The Forsaken

8. Cradle of Filth - Dusk and Her Embrace

9. Emperor - IX Equilibrium

10. Abigail Williams - In the Shadow of a Thousand Suns

So five of my top 10 are Emperor, and four of those are in my top 5.  Now you know why I need a couple others.

Chelsea Wolfe - She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She

Genres: Darkwave, Post-Industrial

The album is like a combination of Portishead and Lingua Ignota, but the lack of a backing rhythm makes it feel emptier than a great album should, so 8/10.

Currently going through the Hoplites albums.  Might check out the other Liu Zhenyang projects later.

The Grateful Dead - Live Dead (1969)

Genres: Psych Rock, Jam Band

Years ago I spent three days in a row listening the the 2005 compilation album Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings.  Some of the songs on Live Dead were there with a different mix and different track times, but I figured since I already heard five of the seven songs by technicality on Fillmore West 1969, it would be weird to technically go back to these tracks on a different album.  Nevertheless, as a music buff, it's the first live jam album by the world's foremost jam band, and the truth of the matter is that it's still a very different album for having a different mix and a different tracklist, so I'll get through it.  After this, I'll check out Grateful Dead's Europe 72.

Btw, while listening to that live Can album, I read a good third of a gift that my grandmother got me: Song of Kali by Dan Simmons.  I'm begging any metalheads here to make a psychedelic doom album out of it.

ONE MWOOOR THING!  I made my decision about that Moody Blues album.  98.5.  While I admire the balance between simplicity and complexity with slight teeters into each other, I felt like the more simple songs were still a little too simple, being a couple verses and choruses without a lot of imagination.  Even MJ had imagination.

Time to go back to some krautrock.

0 votes for no.  Now I know for certain: everyone here has taste when it comes to death.

Moody Blues - To Our Children's Children's Children (1969)

Genres: Prog Pop, Prog Rock

This is an oddball for me.  In its foreground of poppy (and maybe even syrupy) simplicity and lushness, it's an unpredictable and astral collection of care and complexity masquerading as another pop rock album.  The atmosphere are obviously the focal point here, which allows the compositions to achieve a careful and slightly teetering balance between conventional and inventive, as if it's that ONE album that can appeal to both the radio and experimental markets.  It's so weird because every TECHNICAL flaw I can think of is justified by its opposer: the conventionality is justified by the experimentation and vice-versa.  Despite its love of poems and ballads, these ballads connect perfectly with faster-paced rockers, but it's so lush that it almost feels about as "rock" as a dream pop album.  The technical apsects of my brain are locked in place, trying to sort out what I just heard.  Every time I want to complain about something that doesn't feel fleshed out, I find a way to justify it.  Moody Blues may have created the perfect example of how to do a "pop" album right, how to keep it simple and complex at the same time with the finest balance between the two I've ever seen.  But before I assign a numerical rating, I'm gonna compare this to In Search of the Lost Chord.  I just need some time to flesh out my opinion and I'll need another example from Moody Blues to help.  The only thing I'm sure about is that it's not as good as Days of Future Passed.

Autechre - Chiastic Slide (1997)

Genres: IDM

I was taking inventory of my highest-rated artists on my log and found that I had only heard three Autechre albums, and one of them was pretty underhwelming.  It's time I got through some of the others.  Confield was a bit repetitive for my liking, and LP5 needed a little more mutation, so I'm really hoping one of these other albums gives me that creative burst I found with Tri Repetae.  The first song was a very glitchy and proggy piece which built itself on a balance between consistent vibe and mutation.  And this second track is a noisy drone two-minute piece that bears a similar effect to MBV's Touched when going through Loveless.  And this third track keeps the weird glitchy behavior going, but despite its speedy activity its BPM is slow and its backdrop is tame.  I'm heavily reminded of that awe-inspiring handling of electronic in OPN's Replica, but with a slight Kid A touch.

I'm gonna spend the day checking out 2024 albums and a few from Adrianne Lenker.  I've already checked out a few albums by her band Big Thief, so I might as well, considering RYM's going nuts over her new solo album.  Problem is, I'm not really fond of the genre tagging of her solos albums:

Contemporary Folk, Singer-Songwriter

Indie Folk

I've heard a million albums with this kind of genre tagging before, and the only two who ever amazed me with such a simple and east concept as a person with his/her guitar are Leonard Cohen and Michael Chapman.  Even Johnny Cash had to go into a little alternative rock territory with American IV to spice it up.  Even the Mountain Goats struggle to amaze me.  So I'm gonna check out a few of her albums first and then head to her 2024 album and EP and see if they live up to the hype.

Rush is never gonna be metal.  The closest thing to Rush metal is Dream Theater.

I've had quite the busy day for albums.

Joni Mitchell - Hejira: 90

McCoy Tyner - Enlightenment: 96

Tim Buckley - Goodbye and Hello: 99

Revisted Testament - The Legacy: 96

And now to end the musical day with a long-needed replay of Trans Europe Express by Kraftwerk.

I would put Confessor's self-titled 1992 E.P. into this category & would recommend it to anyone that wonders what progressive stoner doom might sound like.

I like the sound of that.

For y'all Revolution and Horde junkies, who wants Lovecraftisn slam death with metal core and electronic?

Disfiguring the Goddess - Deprive

Gil Scott-Heron - Relfections

Genres: Soul, Soul Jazz

I need some more soul and jazz in my top 1000.  A fifth of it is metal, so I've been looking for albums that are gonna blow me away.  I already tried a jazz album by Andrew Hil and the fourth DIM release and neither made the cut.  In fact, 8/10 is very underwhelming when I'm looking to improve a top 1000 of 9.6's or higher.  Finally I was getting impatient and started a couple of albums that were dragging on until I came across this.  Storm Music is a pop reggae soul hybrid with a lot of authenticity and spirit, but Grandma's Hands is just owning the intro with its unique and spiritual atmospheres that are unlike anything soul's given me.  Right now I'm on the third track, Is That Jazz.  The evolution of this album's "sound" is challenging and never fully consistent, but Gil's persona brings it together as he's known for being extremely eclectic.  I've already given perfect ratings to Pieces of a Man and his live album with Brian Johnson.  I guess this is Gil's attempt at saying "I can do anything," and for the most part, he's succeeding.  Even if the sons aren't always brilliant, he's making up for it in successful variety.  After this I think I'll head towards more Terry Callier.

Ouch.  That's horrible.  Here's wishing you well, Vinny.

Armand Hammer - We Buy Diabetic Test Strips (2023)

Genres: Experimental Hip Hop, Abstract Hip Hop

This has got to be the most intriguing hip hop album I've ever heard so far, and I'm only six tracks in.  if this keeps up, it'll be a shoe-in for my list of 500 perfect albums.  Having said that, I still wouldn't put it anywhere near as high as Exmilitary, but maybe in the same league as The Money Store.  The weird thing is that despite having the same general song lengths as the Harem, the songs on this album don't feel too short, probably because there's more to this songs in their short runtimes whereas Harem should've been stretched out some more for the atmospheres to live up to their full potential.  I guess the songs here are just generally living up to that potential in such short times.  Not always, but mostly.  Trauma Mic deserves another minute.

Thanks for trying to keep this thread alive, but you gotta choose only one album every week, switching out clans.

My grandmother passed away last month.  Due to the circumstances of it all, I went through a depressive state.  But now I'm forcing myself to stand up tall.  I'm on a strict "write two pages a day" rule.  Other than that, there's no water in my house right now, and since I live on a well, the neighbors are having the same problem.  I'm back on albums, and I'm currently blowing through the earlier stuff of Acidgvrl before I get to Armand Hammer.

I've never been able to get into Shpongle, despite having quite an appetite for Psybient & the darker end of Psytrance during my 2000's electronic music heyday. They were simply too quirky for my taste.

Quirky is exactly what I love... as long as it doesn't mess with the flow.

Speaking of quirky...

Exuma - Penny Sausage

Genre: Caribbean Folk

After this album, I'll be only one album away from hearing the full Exuma catalog.  His late-career albums have been way harder to find over the last few years, but now the only one I need is From Africa to America to Junkanoo to Armageddon, which I only found the opening track for.

I'm back, fellow cuntfuckers.  And what better way for me to celebrate being back than to review the newest album by my favorite bestial band.

Cabinet - Hydrolysated Ordination

Genres: Bestial Black Metal, Blackened Death Metal

Cabinet, also known as Sxuperion since 2014 and member of Oreamnos since 2023, is garnering favor among underground metal fans as one of the most unsettling metal musicians of all time due to a perfectly healthy sense of texture.  His album Claustrophobic Dysentery is my current pick for the best war metal album of all time for its masterful use of noise and ambient as frightening textural instruments while the black and death metal guitars reached extremities unheard of before.  I wasn't going to listen to a lot of metal albums for a while sine I want to get some more albums of other genres in my top 1000, but for Cabinet I will maliciously and gleefully break that rule like a Kitkat bar.

On "Masticated Inurnment of Dysphagiactic Soils," We start with an oddly dissonant death take on black noise which intentionally varies in production quality going from too noisy to proper to totally atmospheric, and we see the shifts just like this through the entire album.  it's like a fucking Neurosis track.  This is the typical genre-shifting behavior I expect from Cabinet, but they're clearly more focused on the black noise atmosphere taking a stronger, fuzzier charge than what was seen on previous albums.  The four minutes here masterfully shift from one place to another, while its noise also creates an industrial atmosphere that gives it an almost science fiction approach.  The way I see it, this has to be classified as an avant-garde metal album, as its experimentation is heavy and unrelenting.  Just listen to track 9, Worms Squirming Into Your Occiput / Turning To Mush, and tell me this does not qualify as an experimental album.

For the best example, the title track shows no hesitation in delivering weird and wild collections of black noise and dark ambient teaming together to create unsettling Blut Aus Nord style atmospheres.  This is the slowest track so far, and definitely the most disturbing, as there is less of a mechanic feel to it and is more traditional in the vein of general extreme metal.  This welcome addition to both the diversity and flow of this ever so unpredictable with a singular strong persence throughout really displays Cabinet's unwavering willingness to fuck around and just creep you out to the point of vomiting.

Some of these songs, however, are pure experiments in texture.  While these two minute songs will be packed with shifts from one general sound to another, these songs still feel too short in the end, especially since four of these songs take up the entire middle section.  This is a similar criticism I give to several songs on Low by David freakin' Bowie.  Although, the progression of these songs was nice, and almost akin to the variety of the so-called "melody" that took up much of side B of Abbey Road.  The nature recordings at the end of track 7 were especially welcome.  Even within the two minute songs, we never know what robotic or ghostly sirens will overtake any noisy, industrial guitar rhythms or when the next tidal wave of pure black noise will assault us.  However, it should be said that, while "Worms Squirming Into Your Occiput / Turning To Mush" is a fine example of this experimentation, its second half is too long and a little unwelcome.

Well, I'm once again very happy with the direction Cabinet took.  I've been eagerly awaiting another Cabinet ever since I discovered them, and I was hoping this would end up just as experimental as ever.  This is a finer example of what trying to be creative with an otherwise lacking genre can do.  Bestial black metal needs more bands like Cabinet, and along with Claustrophobic Dysentery, this is proof.  Even though this album has some flaws stemming from lengths, this is a weird and unique black metal album and one that I highly recommend.

96/100

Now Rising deserves a slot. Hard rock heavy metal perfection.

I don't really care if it's stoner or heavy or what.  I have a top 100 of genres spanning from metal to ambient to pop to experimental.  I will literally compare an apple to an orange at the snap of a finger.  The real secret is to compare the two items to their like items first, and then compare the scores.  In terms of heaviness, neither fit the bill.  But if we have to get technical, I'd say it's all about the spirit.  I feel like Sabbath's brooding atmosphere is more in tune with what metal should be than Judas's pre-Meat Loaf fantasy style.  And even then, Rainbow did that better.  You could say that Black Sabbath had a better idea of what metal should feel like, and their delivery of "stoner heaviness" in comparison to other stoner bands outweights Judas's heavy metal delivery in comparison to other hard rock bands.

Daniel's comment initially made me wonder whether he'd finally gone insane, but I just listened to the track and there really is very little in the way of metal. If this is metal, then yes, AC/DC is too.

And don't worry Sonny, Slayer at the very least will always be fucking metal!

One of the first songs I think of when I think about "metal riffs" is Silent Scream.

I'm just gonna say it: Black Sabbath were already heavier than tSad Wings on their barely-metal debut album.

I hope it's something a little new.  MDB have been essentially doing the same thing every album for the last few releases.

In other words, you'd make an average deathcore album :P

Ambient: Imagine if King Crimson and Tangerine Dream got together.  It would be a little jazzy, occasionally folksy, throw in an emotional rollercoaster with some chamber and black ambient, and maybe include a Philip Glass cover.

How would you make a folk pop album?

A war metal variant of Disharmonium Nahab with some Mico-style metalcore and grind.  But I'd leave some room for Lovecraftisn vibes.

How would you make a cyber metal album?

Shpongle - Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland

Genres: Psybient, Psytrance

Trance is loaded with many generic, repetitive and overlong albums.  This is not the case here.  This is proper psybient, with many unpredictable and constantly progressing songs.  I admit it's difficult to take a band named "Shpongle" seriously, despite the fact that they invented a relevant and influential genre in the EDM scene.  But this is an album of pure intelligence, having shown that the style they've been supposedly forming since their debut is now at full force.  The genre-tagging on RYM is way off.  There's not just psytance / psybient, here; this is a very experimental album with a perfect flow.  I don't even know what genre I'd call this song.

I'd call it "In Heat" and use growling dog vocals with some faint, atmospheric female moaning.  Of course, it will be fifteen tracks and only last 7 minutes.

How would you make a new age album?

how would you make a prog rock album?

The atmospherics of Pink Floyd, the structural complexity of Yes, the rhythmic technicality of Rush & the production of Porcupine Tree.

Next question?

Very nice.

I'd suggest that Bal-Sagoth would probably fall into this camp, wouldn't they?

That is fucking prime.  I've heard one of there albums before and this is perfect.

Although I get the rationale behind RYM being a guide for adding releases, I had thought (may be incorrectly) that the point of MA was to breed a little common sense on these frankly irritating, constant waves of new tags and subgenres that are clearly out of control over there.  Bizarre then that RYM seems to get so much press here really.

Probably because they're being so active in attempting to be a database of all "possible genres."  Of course I never would've mentioned it if we didn't have a good share of genres being carefully dissected in a series of forum reviews.  Reading Daniel's reviews is an integral part of the forum activity here, and I admit I posted this genre here under the impression that there may be merit here.

Of course, considering his response, I should've chosen noisegrind instead.  As a fan of grind and noise rock, I wanna check this out pretty badly.

Well based on past metal discussions and reviews I've read over the years, I find there are those who avoid "fantasy metal" as they like to slur symphonic power metal with and listen to "more serious" power metal like Scanner, and there are those who easily prefer the symphonic sound more because they're fantasy nerds.  I think once we get enough Guardians talking things over here, this discussion will in fact come up later.

Of course, this is all based on my experiences with other power metal fans on more active websites, and I can't speak for everyone else's experiences.  Also, I have a habit of trying to get these little details out of the way as soon as possible on the chance that it's necessary, or just to keep things organized, which is a habit stemming from my early days editing wikias / fandoms.  Or maybe I'm just Huey Ducking it and trying to get it as accurate as possible because I'm also the type who differs "traditional power metal" from "melodic power metal."  Having said that, I have more than enough awareness to know that THAT discussion would be overdoing it.

Random but serious question: Are all of these new subgenres coming from the basis of Electronic genres? 

I only ask because the label "Downtempo Deathcore" seems to only differentiate based on tempo, not actually what style of music is being played. I've only seen tempo be so monitored on certain Electronic genres, saying stuff like "140-150 bpm" acting like there are different categorizations for each subgenre based on beats per minute. Which I guess is a useful categorization but it seems absurd to me looking in from the outside? 

I'm aware that if you, say, slow down a Thrash riff to a certain BPM it eventually isn't a Thrash riff anymore, but I can't say I'm a fan of people (obviously not the folks here at MA) wanting "Fast" and "Slow" versions of the same genre.

That's a pretty good point, and it ties in with my own annoyance of doing just that with various EDM genres.

HEY ASTRAL PROJECTION!  Listen to some JUNO REACTOR and call me in the morning!

At the same time, this feels more like an atmospheric choice, like the difference between black metal and atmo-black metal.  I mean, some bands like to use slowness to drag out an atmosphere, even if they're still using a slow beat with repetition of the same note.  Hence black metal, or even songs like The Glowing Man.  And if this decision can have a very different appeal from standard deathcore, which gets very samey and overdone, I'll give this a shot.  Proving how much you can do with one notable difference is the benchmark of making new genres.  So once the RYM chart comes out, I'll give it a go and see if I can make something of it.  I heard "Sex With a Stranger" by Admiral Angry and think it MIGHT have some meat.  Emphasis on "might."

OK, to answer these questions.

1. YES.  There is a vast difference between a typically symphonic band like Therion and a symphonic power metal band like Rhapsody.  The vast majority of symphonic power metal is capitalizing off of the influential sound of Emerald Sword for the most part.  They can also be highly differentiated from other standard power acts like Helloween, Scanner, Gamma Ray, Running Wild, Iron Savior, etc.  Basically, it's all about that fantasy aesthetic.  Most symphonic metal is largely focused on taking the epic sound of movies and applying it to metal, regardless of things like high-energy melodies and guitar driven solos.  Take Therion, later-stage Nightwish, Lacrimosa, and even many Tristania songs.  These are songs focused more on the pretty or even dramatic atmospheres of cinema, regardless of whatever genres may come along, such as Tristania's gothic sound or Arcturus's avant-garde compositions.  Bands like Rhapsody combine it with the compositional traits, extreme riffage and catchy melodies of power metal constantly.  Hell, many of these songs are blatantly ripping off Emerald Sword.

2. The way I see it, symphonics are applied to different metals depending on the instrumentation that's necessary.  For example, bands like Emperor and Summoning use the fantasy LOTR influence in less hyperactive ways like Rhapsody and Twilight Force due, largely because the genre isn't quite as reliant on high-energy melody as much as it is on the border between dark aesthetics and epica.  There weren't a lot of violins or trumpets in the first two Emperor albums, and many of Summoning's songs are more reliant on the same type of dungeon synth electronics as Emperor's first two albums.  Now to me, "symphonic death metal" represents a bit of a middle point between the darker aesthetics of symphonic black and the high energy of symphonic power, and because there's less of it, there doesn't seem to be as defined of a ruleset beyond "death metal with symphonic instruments."

This is not to say there won't ever be albums that fit both symphonic metal and symphonic black / death / power metal, as that's entirely possible.  The way I'd handle that is simply to see how often one genre outweighs the other unless both the original format and the influenced sub-brand are balanced out perfectly.

3. Any metalhead worth his salt could identify the differences between symphonic power metal and traditional power metal.  I've seen these discussions all over the place.  There will always be similarities between a parent and the child, but it's no different than identifying blues from blues rocks.  Of course, there may end up being some debate between power metal albums that occasionally steer into the border, such as the mid-to-late-90's albums of Blind Guardian.  So I usually determine this by how much the orchestral aspects are shoved in yo' face.  A band like Rhapsody is blatant, but a band like Blind Guardian is a bit too diverse to really say beyond their 2010's albums.  It's also vital not to get either confused with neoclassical metal.

4. If it doesn't have to be RYM, we can simply handle any albums that are tagged as both here.  The idea is that it's a hybrid of two connected and often combined genres in the same clan, then simply using either RYM or Metal Academy's own database would keep things simple, and any questionable releases could simply be put in a Hall. But once again, there's a level of subjectivity there.  The only way I can see us doing it is if we take any releases tagged as both here and give them the tag.  The only problem with putting this into play is Metal Academy's current limitation in the Releases search of not being able to filter albums with both albums from albums with only one.

One thing I forgot to mention is that we have symphonic black metal and symphonic death metal. I think it would feel right if that subgenre were also included in the more appropriate clan.

Glass Beach - Plastic Death (2024)

Genres: Indie Rock, Art Rock

At the risk of sounding like Diane Chambers, I have to say, this is the most innovative albums I've heard in the vein of balancing melody with genre experimentation.  It's incredibly balanced and consistent, yet surprises me constantly.  The only flaw is a simple one: while the lyrics are charmingly cryptic, they don't have that personal grip that other cryptic artists like Paul Simon do.  It's a little "too" cryptic and random at times.  Of course, I'm only halfway through.  There has to be a major screwup for me not to give this five stars by this point, and they just pulled out the violin for an indie ballad.