Rexorcist's Reviews

After turning this album on, immediately after concluding One Hour by the Concrete Lake, I certainly wasn't expecting the verses to be orchestrated in NU METAL. But that didn't tell me this was gonna end up a nu metal album, just that this album was gonna end up wild and varied just like the previous efforts. Honestly, there's really no way to tell with these guys. But it's pretty obvious from the slow melodic structures and the nu metal influence that they were trying to appeal to the modern alternative crowd without being an alternative band. You can easily tell from the way our singer occasionally shouts in a very similar manner to Wayne Static. Despite this, post-metal also reigns pretty strong in the background, having a larger say than any other kind of influence in the album. This creates a strong sense of ballad-based serenity throughout a good chunk of it. These are good tracks with a strong sense of progession and some fine melodies, but in comparison to the wide range they went with on the debut and managed to balance out beautifully on the second, this seems a bit less inventive. For example, the first half of Her Voices is made up of this until it takes an immediate shift into speedy Arabic influence, as if they suddenly became The Tea Party. But there are songs that are practically entirely made up of the post-metal influence, like the titular closer. And unfortunately, the songs, while quite enjoyable, are a bit too similar too each other in moods, and the melodies are often a bit light. So in short, this was a GOOD album for me, but not brilliant.

82

Septicflesh has become my new favorite death metal band.  They understand proper application of symphonic and neoclassical theatrics, and it all started with their debut, which was built for expressing.  This is an album that switches from brutal death to gothic to death doom to symphonic black like it's absolutely nothing, and this kind of behavior is a major risk in the metal community as it can lead many to believe there's no focus.  So does this behavior pan out?

The opening title track has heavier guitars rather than drums, which feels appropriate considering the song's sense of despair.  It also showcase extremely sludgy vocals which remind you that you're listening to a genre called "death metal."  Out next song is Pale Beauty of the Past, which switches between melodic gothic synth-oriented sadness and raw extremities with occasional black touches.  It's a more "epic" track with a very different guitar style and a healthy progressive outlook on the constant changes that death metal songs go through.  This one song gives you every area of Septicflesh's love of variety.  It's almost like a Meat Loaf song.  Track 3, Return to Carthage doesn't hesitate with brutality, going close to slam and grind levels while boasting black metal tremelos that may be backed up by a gothic chorus.  There are even power solos that sound fresh out of an F-Zero soundtrack.  Crescent Moon is a much slower ballad, going into death doom territory with the kind of post-metal emotion you'd expect from Solstafir.  There's a simplistic side here that relies on the listener to be drowned in the reverb and melody in order for any theatrics to appear in the mind.  This song might be overlong, but it's a fantastic experience.

Chasing the Chimera starts out with a slower approach as well, but is more reliant on the deeper and more evil aesthetics of death metal.  There's also more room for melody, and this melody feels adventurous and intriguing, like something thrilling is about to happen to you in the real world.  Because of the stylistic and tonal choices, it feels like a spiritual sequel and even epilogue to the previous epic track.  The Underwater Garden continues this as well, leading me to hope for speed and aggression very soon.  It carries much stronger gothic elements this time around, using gothic guitars and heavy synths the like of which may stem from Emperor's sophomore album, Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk.  Thankfully, nearly two minutes in, there's a ferocious black metal section, leading me to believe the point of this seven-minute song is to be a magical journey into classical metal's various applications.  In fact, the middle section is just mocking you when it switches from death metal speed to neoclassical pianos and then combines the bass guitars with gothic melody.

Behind the mask is a three-minute symphonic black album which feels like something right out of Emperor's debut, if not for Spiros Antoniou's impressively guttural voice.  I definitely approve of this, having chosen Emperor as my favorite black metal band.  The fact that these guys maintained the Emperor approach while being themselves is impressive, especially since they effortlessly go into a death metal jam for most of the third act without losing the grip, before going back into the symphonic black metal but heavier than before.  Next comes a slow and heavy intro into Morpheus, which brings us some Therion violins to give us an ancient feel, a staple of several later albums.  This gothic / symphonic death song is all about that vibe, and doesn't waste any of the magic from previous gothic touches shown on this debut.  If the last track was Septicflesh's homage to Emperor, this is their homage to Therion, who used to be a death metal act before switching to symphonic metal, also with gothic tones.  We end with Mythos, an epic that first dives right into Prince of Egypt territory and continues into a classical world of war, magic, loss and victory.  Even though it's an entirely different genre, it keeps the best qualities of the album strong and healthy.  Great ending.

It would be unfair to say that Septicflesh were still developing their style, because they made it clear that they were fully aware of what they wanted their image and their music to be.  This album switches around more than a game of musical chairs.  I suppose the band took a massive risk when writing several songs that switched from every point between soft gothica to black death aggression in a whimsical way, but this album's identity keeps this aspect magical, and the album might diversify, but it risks losing the magic in that second act when it was being slow-paced for too long.  This is a bold debut challenging consistency by applying the right emotions and sensations to a plehora of metal genres, finally challenging the listener's dedication to the behavior of the band with a classical piece similarly composed to the most outrageous songs here.  Not quite perfect, but a masterwork in metal.

Although I don't think I'll be joining the Revolution, I have to admit that I love punk.  Right now the only punk genre I represent in a clan is crossover thrash, which is a problematic genre that rarely ever amazes me.  Metalcore, IMO, is the superior genre thanks to the presence of more excellent bands.  Unfortunately, the genre also gets very tiring thanks to the countless emulators of bands like Born of Osiris, so when someone in metalcore mixes it up, like Zao does with their own strong presence, I tend to feel a sigh of relief so powerful that it's almost like a weight is finally off my shoulders, as if finding creative metalcore has become a literal chore.

This is their most popular work: Where Blood and Fire Bring Rest.  At first it starts off pretty typically, even though it's clear that mood and delivery is taken more seriously than punk energy, which is a sigh of relief.  The same seems to be true even as it switches from calm acoustic james to slow punk screams in the beginning of the second song.  Unsurprisingly, there are faint traces of proggieness and djent in the behavior of the riffage, but not enough to even warrant a sub-tag.  This also feels like a smart decision to me because it's very tamed and used specifically for mood.  In otherwords, this is the kind of metalcore album that keeps you on your toes, guessing what's going to happen next even as it rarely breaks its genre.  There are quite a few instances of slow-paced growling and droning, which seems to me is an atmospheric choice that the band likes to take advantage of.  In other words, speed is of little importance, even for a punk album.  Very interesting choice, especially considering that there seems to be some sort of Neurosis influence.

But there's also some time taken for melody whether or not speed is a part of the picture.  Listen to the openings of March and Ember, and then finish the songs to see where things go, even if certain sections may easily be dragged on too long.  Another interesting choice the band made was writing some songs about hypocrisy in the churches, despite being a Christian band.  They're tackling a wide range of themes involving personal struggles, even avoiding the preachy side of Christian lyricism.  In other words, the band tried to make a Christian album that raw metalheads could relate to.  Again, a smart move.  But concerning the lyricism and quirky song structures, practically throwing pop structures in the trash, I'm wondering if each section symbolizes something, which would make this album more conceptual than advertised.

I can see why this is considered a metalcore classic.  It's a SMART album.  So overall, I kinda like this.  Zao have gone far beyond what the Christian rock tag might've indicated for the music browser in terms of both style and quality.  I can say, however, that I'd prefer a LITTLE more punk energy in certain sections, and that some sections whether fast or slow be shortened to maintain a further punk presence and less of a Neurosis one.  Zao did something very artistic here, and they had their bumps but they were still very smart about this.

Kamelot's rocky history has practically come to a close with Karma, the album where they master all of the essentials of power metal and create something iconic.  It becomes clear that Kamelot recognized their mistakes from the previous album yet again, despite the fact that there was only one mistake on the brilliant Fourth Legacy: it wasn't very heavy.  Well after the intro, you're just plain blasted with heaviness.  Kamelot improved their technique in that respct, but the music itself is just as brilliant as The Fourth Legacy, if not more so.  And Kahn feels much more comfortable in the music he's singing for, so the lack of metal in his voice is adjust slightly to fit the melody so that he no longer has to struggle to go hand-in-hand with his softer voice in comparison to the vocal giants of metal.  And the rest of Kamelot didn't even have to adjust their playing for that purpose at all, just the heaviness.  Songs like "Wings of Despair" might feel standard, but the instrumentation makes up for that.  The ONE flaw of the album is that the music still feels standard for power metal, and it's noticeable.  But it's not enough to detract from the quality of the album and the noteworthy improvements the band went through.  Kamelot's Karma is a perfect album for power metal bands to draw inspiration from.

There are a lot of bands I need to go through in order to get my top 100 right, many of which pertain to the slower genres I don't normally explore.  Having said that, I have many fond memories of a long-term sludge binge I had throughout 2019 and 2020, and I've explored some brilliant artists in that time.  One I haven't explored, however, is Hell, not because I'm Christian and I think I'll get possessed, but because it was also a doom and drone album, two genres I haven't ever obsessed over.  So, the Hell debut it is.

But the album was quite good.  Right from the opener, "Lethe," the music was crushing and monstrous, refusing to succumb to the lightning speed of typical metal and allowing the growls of the guitar to do all of the talking.  Sometimes the sludgy music rang truer to Candlemass and sometimes it had the experimental vibes of Nadja  I found myself almost hypnotized by its epic finale, "Maeror," which starts out with the almost industrial sounding "dark ambient" influences and continues on into an ever progressing wail of agony coming from the wild, and yet there's a musicality behind it much like an old record player delivering a requiem mass but drowned out by reverb.  In this instance the album Soundtracks for the Blind by Swans came to mind.

Despite its heaviness and its authentic faithfulness to the many genres it combines, I feel that the album itself doesn't really do anything that unique for the veins of metal it tackles.  Just that it's a good enough performance to recommend.  But for anyone looking to get into the slower genres, the Hell but makes for a very good start.  Chances are it may not amaze you, but it will likely entertain you if you like these genres.  I know this album makes me happy that I decided to explore more drone metal.  I'd say it's better thanthe last drone album I reviewed: Thaumogenesis by Nadja, and that was a pretty good album.

If you had read my previous review of the 105-minute long Esoteric album, The Maniacal Vale, you're probably familiar with my one criticism of the album: the length made it repetitive.  So you'd probably think the five-star rating for Metamorphogenesis comes from the fact that it's only 40 minutes long, and is there shortest album, especially since repetition is a staple of funeral doom.  Um, no.  That honestly has so little to do with it that it's not even worth mentioning.  It's true that Esoteric have a tendency to draw out their albums to an extent that harms the release itself.  This has been true since their second album, The Pernicious Enigma, which was a one-trick pony in every single way.  But the real glory of Metamorphosis comes from the fact that it's so jam-packed with new ideas, twists and musical influences that some have even described the album as "batshit insane."  Considering what we typically get for doom metal, we need an album or two that gets batshit insane.  I'd have loved for the album to be longer, but we still got 40 minutes of brilliance.  It's no longer a repetitive shift from funeral doom to death doom to psychedelic doom.  What we have hear is an eternally progressing 40-minute work that throws in random moments of drone metal, post-metal, straight-up death metal and more.  And each piece of the puzzle delivers a loud blast of rage that's trying hard to fight its own melancholy but always succumbs like a normal human does.  The best combination of musicianship and production that doom can have is the very reason this album exists: a production-oriented 40-minute epic of atmosphere and emotion, giving us something that Esoteric have never replicated.

If there's one thing I admire in music, it's a band out to set out they can do anything.  We had a band like that for a couple of albums, before a nasty accident lead to a break-up" Acid Bath.  And get this: they hate it when their music is online.  But if you can pick it up or find it, I strongly suggest it because this is one of the most fun and eclectic sludge albums in the world.

Acid Bath's debut album is a legendary album for a mutlitude of reasons, the most important one being just how much this band is able to do with sludge metal.  We have a few Melvins-style jammers that go back to the roots, slow doomy songs that make a man wanna get as high as possible, a couple of death metal songs and a folk song for crying out fucking loud, and some raw psychedelia to keep things quirky and fun.  The same goes for our vocals which can go into raw screams, doomy growls and a more melodic alternative sound.  But the best thing about this album is how unpredictable it is while still feeling like "Acid Bath."  There isn't a moment wasted where the band doesn't put their personality into the music.  This is all about a love of metal, and what can be achieved through it.  Superstrong recommendation from my part.

Seeing the RYM ratings between Deathrow's iconic Deception Ignored and their follow-up, Life Beyond, drop from 3.7 to 3.4, the latter of which is the same rating as their divisive debut, I was a little worried that the album would miss out on the key factors that made them such an icon in the thrash world in the first place.  But I started to doubt those very doubts upon finishing that opening title track.  If it proves anything, it's that Deathrow had not lost their sense of fun, or their ability to be technical.  Of course, it should be said that this is a somewhat less technical album than Deception Ignored, and that's probably the reason it gets so much slack.  But if they wanna have more fun and try to write a bunch of different types of songs again, then let them, because I was having a good deal of fun myself.  This might not be a TECHNICAL album, but it sure is wild.  The thing is, these tracks might share SOME similarities overtime, but they're really too different from each other to call it a monotonous album.  Staying in the tech thrash constraints, it maximizes what the genre's capable of like South of Heaven did, even if the combination of rhythms, production and vocals doesn't meet that same greatness.  Some tracks are edgy and a little groovy, some are wild and just plain fun, some are angry and even kinda evil, etc.  Deathrow proves themselves to be artists three times in a row as far as I'm concerned.

91

Deathrow made some major improvements to their general sound between the thrashy but fuzzy debut, Riders of Doom and their more epic and glossy Raging Steel, but they still had some improvements to make. This is where they decided, "Let's go crazy, let's get nuts," and turned into a freakin' prog band. And boy did they rock prog in ways most thrash bands couldn't at the time. I mean, some of these ideas sound like they were basically being Chuck Schuldiner before Chuck Schuldiner turned his band Death into a tech band. And sometimes they just get thrown in your face. That randomized piano playing at the beginning of Triocton kinda smacked my brown around like "What the hell just happened?" And they prove again that they're quite good at layering guitar riffs together. Of course, this also means there's a little less of the Teutonic side of things, being a bit more melodic and wild much like And Justice for All or Rust in Peace. Hell, you know they nailed it when a nine-minute song like Narcotic manages to flood you with a barrage of consistent riffs and progression that never gets too wild for its own good or overstays its welcome, AND THEN FOLLOW IT WITH A SEVEN-MINUTE EPIC. This was a major winner for the band, yet another improvement and a damn good reason to check out thrash.  This is the kind of album where the band proves they know how to both have fun with their chosen artform and treat it as an artform to grow and learn from.

92

Immediately after the intro, it becomes apparent that Deathrow had fixed the production problems that got in the way of their debut album's ability to entertain (most of the time).  This is the kind of album where a band is basically showing off how much they've improved without overdoing it.  Although the stay comfortably within the thrash vein for the most part (such as having our first song, Raging Steel, stay within the vein everyone's familiar with), not only does the speed metal come back, but we even get some real instances that feel more like epic storytelling rather than general thrash.  The track Dragon's Blood alone should tell you that.  This was also the chance to show off their progressive side, allowing songs to switch tempos at rapid speed, even to the point of flipping through channels.  And unlike much of the six minute stuff from the last band I binged, Destruction, songs like The Thing Within are able to keep going.  However, while its riffage stays great and its production fine, it DOES tend to get a bit traditional and samey by the end.  Nevertheless, I'm very happy that Deathrow grew up and rwwrote themselves so much soonere than Destruction did.

88

The album starts with the instrumental Winds of Death, which is simple, epic, heavy, but not the most original.  At one point, the intro sounded a lot like For Whom the Bell Tolls, which came out two years earlier.  After the intro, it takes no time at all for the band to head right into the powerful thrash that defined the genre, crossover undertones, King Diamond screams and all.  But it's already much more powerful and effective than any of the early works by Destruction, so this was a bit easier to enjoy.  In fact, the solos in Riders of Doom worked wonders.  It was obvious that this album had a much better idea of what thrash sounded like, even if the production's a little fuzzy for my liking.  Although, this helps the tremolo-picking heavily present on Hell's Ascent, basically adding black metal to the mix.  The riffs on this one are absolutely crazy.  But it doesn't take long for the album to get back to standardly powerful thrashing without much else on their minds.  In fact, some of the actual verses are pretty lame when it comes to writing, and sometimes all I could think of was when they were going to get to the solo.  No metal album should be like that.  So while this is extraordinarily heavy for thrash, even for the time, the riffs and the incredible power are enough to enjoy most of the album throughout while acknowledging the lack of thought put into art and writing, even though the longer songs at the end have a stronger sense of creativity.

76

Here it is, the major comeback for Destruction and their last testament to talent, as well as the end of my Destruction marathon.  I walked barefoot into this, expecting either one of their best and most creative albums, or another overrated display of thrash simplicity with production and energy as the headliners.  Maybe a little of both.  But it didn't really start out that way.  The intro was just a variation on things they had already done before, and the first two tracks, while well-played, sound like basic Destruction in the end.  Now the balance between energy and speed was perfect, but I'd once again be disappointed if they didn't even bother to try and write something new.  SOMETHING new, Bullets from Hell, went the speed metal route, and managed to keep itself up for the five-minute runtime with a pretty strong sense of fun.  But at the point of track 7, Meet Your Destiny, I realized after so long, I was getting bored with Destruction.  This is because the minor improvements in melody, production and heaviness overtime don't really change the fact that it's just another Destruction album, even though I would say this is one of the better ones in this format.  I suppose it's even better than the whole classic three, but not by a grand extent.  So, this is and isn't ending on a high note.

71.5

Well, it looks like longtime thrash act turned groove act Destruction learned their lesson.  Two EP's and one album into the groove scene, and it was obvious to them that groove was just not what the classic Destruction fans wanted.  They needed to get back to the pure Teutonic thrash that made them one of the big three in that scene.  And this, the pure return to form named All Hell Breaks Loose was formed.  Of course, I never thought the early sounds of Destruction were that clever, and thus, this return to form is just about as good as what we got before.  In fact, it sounds so much the same that even the fans of this band's earlier works admit that, while the Destruction fanbase gave a big fat "thank you" to the group for doing so, it's not like this album was anything new either.  This is largely due to the fact that the group got the classic members back together.  It kind of reminds me of Metallica's shift from radio stuff back to thrash during the switch from alt-metal album St. Anger to Death Magnetic.  I mean, yeah it sounds cool enough.  In a way, the extra heaviness and better production values give it some form of an edge in this vein, but there's the originality department that needs to be considered.  So while this is a much more fun album that what we've been getting before, and further proof of their ability to produce and mix well enough for their raw power, it's also pretty obvious that the raw power takes the helm while thick writing still needs some work.  Thankfully, there are a COUPLE interesting tracks, like the more proggy World Domination of Pain, but that happens halfway through (again).  But in the second half, the five-minute tracks tend to get overlong (again).  So in other words, this is a Destruction album (again).  So I'll put this in the same league as the first two albums.

68

Despite being in the Pit for my love of Metallica, can't say I'm very in tune with groove metal. I give it chances on and off, but have little interest in a deep exploration at this time. This is partially because so many classic thrash bands made the switch to at as quickly as the European prog giants of the 70's switched to AOR and pop rock, and the results were about the same: middling and generic. Of course, I can't deny that a part of me absolutely loves the album Invisible Touch by Genesis more than my technical rating states (which is already sitting pretty at 93). But how can I complete my Destruction marathon without getting through an album so bad it might as well be Lulu? It's a key part of their history just like Risk is for Megadeth, and I plan on stopping at their comeback album, The Antichrist. So, here we go.

Aside from a half-cocked album cover that looks less like a thrash album and more like a screenshot of a Monty Python animation with a quickly placed cheap font for a logo because "money's tight," I found it easy not to hate the album, shall we put it. Now I encourage change and variety so that a band can prove they're capable of many other things, thus potentially improving greatness by virtue of multiple talents. But how does this groove album stack up against the others? Well, with the groove aspect and slower tempos maintaining SOME of the thrash genre that defined them, this newfound love of the 90's sound fails to stand out. Catchiness is spotty and riffs are pretty done before. On top of which, it's pretty obvious how much of their previous identity they forsook for this new route. I'm sure if they had bothered to diversify their earliest albums more so that stuff like this feels a little more natural, this wouldn't have happened. I mean, the vast majority of these groove songs do more or less the same thing, which in itself is hardly a surprise considering that it's a Destruction album. There's a rare exeption in Brother of Cain which goes into some major thrash power. Otherwise, it hardly gets interesting at all, and mostly just worries about getting on 90's radio. So this really doesn't do Destruction, or the groove world, any favors. Having said that, it's still a bit better than those two groove EP's they did in the eight years between this album and their last, Cracked Brain, so it's not terrible, just not promising.

57

I guess I'll just have to give up on the idea of Teutonic thrash act Destruction going for the artistic route again for a few releases.  I mean, this 1994 EPreally offers nothing new in anyway, shape or form save one tiny little insignificant detail: they decided to jump on the groove metal hype train, as if that would make their music any better.  They were already devolving back into the generic thrash band that ironically made them a key figure of the small Teutonic thrash act before they started focusing on real songwriting with Mad Butcher.  This groove metal album is a short little 21 minutes, so it doesn't have the disadvantage of overlength that even a 40 minute album like their previous venture, Cracked Brain, did.  But now with the groove aspect so deeply implemented, they spend less time on rhythm and writing and more time on breakdowns and repetition just because they figured it to be the "cool thing."  In other words, they sold out and lost their depth.  The last track is the best one for being a bit weird and creepy, but it's still repetitive in this way even for three minutes.  What an unbelievable disappointment...

48

You'd think after such a grand venture into creativity (or at least grand for Destruction's standards) such as Release from Agony, they'd continue with this newfound love of writing and try something bolder and bigger next time.  Instead, what we have is a degeneration back into primordial soup.  And even though that sounds pretty metal, it's not a compliment.  Cracked Brain, release #7 and studio album #4, shows them going back to the same repetitive writing and tempo that they spammed to freakin death on their first three releases and their live album.  The only thing that can be said that's favoriable against the first three is that the production's better.  We've been getting good production from them since Mad Butcher.  But the problem here is that things are significantly less interesting.  Nothing interesting happens until Rippin' You Off Blind, not only takes place after a standard cover of My Sharona of all songs, but goes back to the same old same old again while lessening the effect of the rhythm and atmosphere.  And the most interesting song is the eighth of nine, No Need to Justify, which is only interesting because of a mellow intro and a different tempo.  All of these songs are decent and aggressive alone, but put together it's an incredinly samey experience that I wouldn't be quick to recommend when so many better albums out there exist.

63

Right from the start, Destruction boasts of of their most well-produced and best sounding albums so far.  If I had to rank them, I'd say this is second-best, with the first being Release from Agony, the one that got me thinking, "these guys CAN be a great band," especially after starting with so many samey and generic pieces.  The production captures the full extent of the raw power in which they're able to ply.  Not a single not is left to drown in the arena.  I honestly didn't think Destruction would be even able to afford that.  Thing is, even though the studio album right before that, the aforementioned Release from Agony, greatly impressed, I was a bit worried about them taking so many tracks from the samey era and lumping them together.  And unfortunately, that's what I got.  While the production adds a lot more power to each song, it's a pretty damn samey album.  They likely only took the title track from my favorite of their albums because it was one of the closest to sounding like all the rest.  They're largely all sharing the same BPM which really pisses me off.  So while the energy and production are fantastic, they rely on their generic sound through and through, neglecting the improvements in writing that they so obviously intentionally made throughout the last couple releases.

73

After three decently energetic but artistically disappointing albums and one big improvement on writing in a four-track EP called Mad Butcher, I was really hoping the next track in this major thrash venture, Destruction, would show some real class and sophistication.  After a surprisingly moody and atmospheric intro, I'm assaulted with their heaviest thrash so far: Release from Agony.  But there's more unpredictability and rhythm involved in all the speed.  God was I hoping this would be a consistent thin, especially considering that this is the last of the classic Destruction era before the initial quality drop until four albums later with their comeback, The Antichrist (unless you count the live album, Live Without Sense).  The next track goes more or less the same way, but still boasts the improvements with ease.  But I found myself once again worried when track four, Sign of Fear, clocked in at nearly seven minutes.  It starts off with some doom metal before going into some straightforward heavy metal incorporating some thrashiness, but a slow enough pace to completely differentiate itself from the bulk of the generic Destruction catalogue.  This song gets dark and even creepy at times, so in a way it became my favorite Destruction track.

As I'd naturally expect, Unconscious Ruins goes right into the wild and insane hyperspeed thrash that we should come to expect from a band like Destruction.  This ups the ante on their previous heaviness yet again.  Being a fun-filled four-minute thrash track, it only really seems generic when compared to giants like later Kreator albums.  Otherwise, it's pretty fun.  Incriminated starts off with a slower, groovier approach before going into more hyperactivity, and like the previous track, remains fun.  But it seems that breaking new ground wasn't a focus anymore.  Still, it one again rocks all the improvements they made on their production, stylistic and rhythmic choices.  The rest of the album plays out very similarly, and maintains both its newfound improvements and standard behavior at the same time.

Boy did these guys rock the concept of a largely single-genre album.  Of course, this album's also a bit frontloaded because the second half doesn't really take any experimental directions like the first half did.  Still, this was a wild album and a huge improvement, a final testament to their golden age and IMO the best they had to offer at that point.

87

It was pretty obvious from the way Mad Butcher started out that I was in for a bit more of the same Destruction music I was getting since their debut EP.  I mean, is Destruction really known for mixing things up a bit?  Thankfully, and I mean thankfully, the titular opener took a few different directions that are all expected to be part of a Destruction song every now and then, but not necessarily all together.  Quite unpredictable.  That fake fadout and the Pink Panther ending were quite the surprise.  Then the album goes into a little of a Gothic ballad vibe with The Damned... appropriately named.  I'd have like a little more of that on the previous releases.  Of course, it did go into an uptempo as I expected, but it kept up the vibes pretty well.  It does this for about a minute and a half before completely changing the tempo while still carrying a sense of drama rather than demon-fueled anger, a little like a power metal track.  Can;'t say I'm a fan of how singer Mike Sifringer kept trying to raise his pitch at the end of most of the sentences like he was King Diamond or something, which he's not.  Now Reject Emotions is a seven-minute song, so I was a bit nervous about this at first, considering how many of these seven-minute Destruction songs were totally drawn out.  But with a decent-sized mellow opening and some proggy thrash moments following, I once again got the idea that this song would be an example of total art.  Thing is, when I start to get that vibe, it's usually betrayed.  BUT, the first two albums showed some decency in that department, so I held onto the hope with only minimal expectations.  And thankfully, I got quite a few interesting turns.  It even became a prog track for a bit.  The album ends with a decent three-minute piece going into speedy guitars and an epic metal vibe.  This is the kind of way to end it.  Honestly, this is exactly what I've been waiting for from Destruction.  I'm not sure the next album will reflect this growth, but I'm largely happy with the way it went.

81

Big three of Teutonic thrash?  I was starting to question such a decision made by 80's society with Destruction's debut EP and debut studio album failing to meet my standards for greatness.  I was really hoping for something more artistic this time.  judging from the way Curse the Gods put up a couple more tricks, making six minutes feel like four at the same time, I thought to myself I might finally get that are I was lookin6 for.  I mean, sure, they fall in the same tempo and stylistic tropes for the most part, but it seemed like they were really trying to get something historical out there.  Or so I thought at first.  Unfortunately, there are still times where things feel too drawn out yet again.  It's obvious that the five-to-six minute edge doesn't generally work for them.What really bothers me about this album is the way the percussion sounds.  It's not heavy enough, being almost entirely drowned out by the lead and rhythm guitars.  Now the unpredictable sense of art comes back for the shorter songs on Side B, making things interesting again.  The drums can even be heard properly.  The last track is even a much better example of the aggression and technique that the band's been largely relying on, being much heavier and more powerful than ever.  So while this managed to be a slight improvement in writing, it also fixed its production problem in the first half.

71

It's obvious that the band was trying a little harder in the art department to keep things a little more sophisticated, especially from such a progressive intro track.  Much more interesting things are done with the hardcore-style riffs, finding clever ways to combine multiple repetitive riffs together for some grand new idea.  A very goo example of that is the middle-section to The Ritual, which found ways to be unpredictable despite its lacking progression of, ahem, different notes.  But this usually isn't the case.  There's still the filler aspect in which production and speed are the major factors.  For example, Death Trap just goes on for far too long.  It's got some damn good riffs, but it's a bit easy for these guys to draw out five minutes when their biggest concerns are speed and atmosphere.  And Tormentor sounds like a broken record until you get to the guitar solo.  Hell, the eight-minute closer, Black Death, is basically switching between the same two riffs throughout the run, managing to do less imaginitive things than the four-minute opener.  So in a way, it feels like they didn't really care about the fans enough to really write their own Stairway.  There are noticeable improvements in the production and a few of the riffs, so there's that, but the fact that they went from the three-minute songs to five minuts with little change in most instances is a little of an insult.

69

I never hear anyone talk about the band Destruction these days, but they still get really good reviews.  I guess they're one of those bands you just check out if you like thrash history or have a soft spot for the Teutonic stuff.  Since I need to review one of their albums for the list challenges on Metal Academy, I started with their debut extended play, Sentence of Death.  The apocalyptic spoken intro was cheesy enough as I expect, but even though there's some pretty good riffage here, at this point, I've just heard so much thrash like this, even though this is the really early stuff.  Having been released about four months after Metallica's game-changing Ride the Lightning, this sounds pretty generic in comparison and many other thrash albums, even better ones, would sound just like this.  I suppose all the dark and thunderous sound effects are their attempt at a sense of art, which is fine, but I'd prefer if their riffs more greatly reflected that.  Now for early thrash, this relies on darkened screams, general speed, and decent riffs.  They go for a speed metal route that comes off a bit punkish, and can even be seen as a small factor in the early development of black metal.  But other than that, there's nothing here that Metallica, or even Venom, didn't do better.  It's obvious that writing was of least concern as long as they could be fast and edgy, and they kind of succeed at that.  But since it's only a debut EP, it';s obviously not the most well-produced thing on Earth.  These guys were obviously young and just wanted to rock the basics of a new world and grab a piece of that Metallica action.  Decent, but only really necessary if you're a thrash history buff.

68

Here it is, the final of the four Pain of Salvation albums for my marathon, and the final album before I complete my Prog Metal Challenge List. To recap, my ratings for the first three albums fluctuated drastically from the general consensus. People say that Entropia was a great metal debut, but to me it was a bit imbalanced and not heavy enough. I almost adored Concrete Lake, and I thought the much-beloved Perfect Element was a good but somewhat overdrawn album with too much fixation on post-metal influence that seemed to take away from the identity of the first two albums. And now, here I am, at the general opus.

While I loved the instrumental direction the short opener took, the next track, ironically named Ending Theme, so was I in for more of the typical prog metal sound that I was so weary of when my marathon began with the debut's first couple tracks? Fandango seemed to answer my question: not entirely. Fandango's general sense of rhythm is totally xylophonic, not built in metal energy while the backing effects and percussion deliver a strong sense of surrealism. This is basically an experimental track, and I mean almost Residents level, even though it clearly uses the same instruments as previous efforts, so that was a damn good sign. But unfortunately, the next two tracks, while great and beautifully melodic, only provide faint ventures from the standard to other areas, so I'm not so sure what'll happen next. The eight minute Trace of Blood has some nice piano melodies scattered around, but remains high-level typical. The next track, This Heart of Mine, seems to have some Gabriel-era Genesis influence in the vibes, but not very strongly. Undertow was kinda lame in comparison. It just repeate the same slow melody over and over again and only differentiated itself by being more quiet.

Things got pretty proggy again on the more active track, Rope Ends, which knows how to put together a decent rhythm while maintaining the very reason I listen to prog in the first place. This one didn't stop being catchy, even when it was going wild. I get a nice follow-up with some Latin folk influence on Chain Sling, which showcases the best of the band's previously established strengths. Easily a winner of a song. Dryad of the woods continues the folk rock focus and is a nice and soft tune on its own, but even slow songs have more pizazz, and while this was nice and emotional, it was also missing that special something. After the title track, which is a largely prog electronic two-minute segue with a tamed but epic approach, the next track is immediately shamed as it falls into only decent melody and standard behavior for the band. Purely palatable, not remarkable. Same with the track after that, but then the ending, Beyond the Pale, gets back on track with a proper ending that takes the overall vibe of the band to a good strength, ending with one of their more emotional and rhythmically healthy takes of the modern prog sound.

Well, I didn't get the magnum opus everyone was bragging about, but it has plenty of strengths among the traditional sound. This was a very enjoyable album overall, but I'd say that instead of it being one of the greatest I've heard, it's more on the level of Dream Theater's underrated debut.

87

I don't feel like doing another track-by-track review today, so I'll just cover the most important stuff. Hearing the actual music kickstart with a beautiful piano metal intro already told me there was a Symphony X similarity that might end up going through the whole album. As a huge fan of Symphony X, I adored the neoclassical piano focus. While I can't say this was "groundbreaking," I was certainly impressed with the healthy upgrade in balance between melody and progression, as well as a totally new sound for the band. On top of which, metallic moments seem to be a bit heavier and more layered, which was an issue for the more metal-oriented songs of the debut. The occasional industrial backdrops also help with that, as well as with more robotic guitar tones and riffs. And of course, there's always a little room for a softer and more contemplative song with some violin attached. But these elements don't often overpower the standard dramatic prog metal aspects, but rather add light influences for the most part. In fact, it's enough to make sure most of these songs feel different enough from each other to almost be different subgenres of prog metal. Handful of Nothing, for example, is quite mechanical in its handling of hardcore punk influence, never really steering into "metalcore," though.

I gotta say, though. Only about half the time the melodies manage to really impress me. For example, a wonderful collective of rhythms takes up the bulk of Home, but in comparison, a track like Water feels a bit empty. Thankfully, the former happens a bit more often. A track like Home is followed by an incredibly proggy yet catchy track like Black Hills, making for an excellent pairing. Hell, I'd say Black Hills even astounded me, managing to be better than the already grand Home. On top of all that, the various sounds and feelings connect well with the emotional focus of the theme, centering around the dystopian devastation and pollution of the world due to man's lack of sympathy for the world around them. The theme isn't very story-based, but it does an excellent job sharing the lead character's feelings of despair. Of course, it goes without saying that it takes a while for that hidden track to really pick up, about four out of six minutes. But once it does, it really does, going into some beautiful avant-garde that perfectly covers what the album went through in a very quick time.

Major improvement over the last. This is considered the weakest of the first four Pain of Salvation albums? I might not agree with people's general consensus on the debut, but the improvement here seems like a very good sign for what's coming next.

93

Today is the day I finally finish my second list challenge: the Prog Metal 2nd Decade Challenge, and it'll happen on my Pain of Salvation marathon. I'll be getting through at least the first four PaS albums, potentially ending at the album I need for the final review on this challenge list: Remedy Lane, the fourth album. I never really got interested in Pain of Salvation for some reason, but I'll gladly check them out for the challenge.

Entropia is a concept album about a struggling family in a fictional titular world, and the main characters are basically detailed in a pretty poetic collection of lyrics that are also standardly "prog concept album." I an't say there was anything here that made me feel too heavily. Now I'm not saying that I didn't have any good expectations for Pain of Salvation's debut, but with the genre-tagging on RYM simple saying Prog Metal for primary and Prog Rock for secondary, I had a pretty good idea of what this album would sound like: standard guitar tones for prog metal and catchy mid-level progression that's only proggy enough not to stay off the radio. The opener and the next song (not counting the pretty lame trip hop segue in between) are so standardly 1990's prog metal that it's not even funny. Dream Theater obviously ended up manifesting a lot of emulators, such as Shadow Gallery and Evergrey. Is it catchy? Yeah, but I've totally heard this before. In fact, I need it to be a little proggier. Save the radio prog for Rush, guys.

Now I was pretty thrown off by the funk aspects that kicked off the nine-minute People Passing By. That's considered to be one of their better songs on this album. The song has a tendency to switch between these and blackened riffs in the same percussion tone like they naturally go together. I wouldn't say that, but at least the prog improves here. But it just isn't catchy enough or even heavy enough to really support my prog metal needs until the end when it pretty much just goes back into the standard behavior of the album. After a totally standard ballad, the album takes a much catchier and outlandish turn with Stress, boasting instrumentation that even goes into Cardiacs territory with its hyper-melodic nature. Unfortunately, while the instrumentation's awesome, singer Daniel Gildenlow's melodies are just lame and don't pair well with the song much.

Things get largely standard again on Revival, which tries to capture the same spirit as Stress but only really succeeds in one aspect: matching the singer's melodies to the instrumentation. Now for the most part, To the End is the best the album had to offer. Everything was energetic, in perfect harmony, and catchy while maintaining that intriguing unpredictability of People Passing By, even though its style is standard. Next comes Nightmist, which is much less melodic and more built on maintaining an ever shifting atmosphere between fast and funky, slow and dramitic, and surprisingly hyperactive for a couple seconds, but I don't feel like banging my head to this one, even as the funk returns in small bits. It seems more like a display of how proggy they can be without setting up the experience as a "song." Plains of Dawn feels like it's going for more of a tonal balance as a slightly-symphonic prog rock song, and it kind of works, but also just tells me that they should've done some more about balance and behavior from previous songs on the album. And finally, there's that ending segue (the segues have been largely unremarkable, by the way), Leaving Entropia.

A lot of people were very impressed with this debut, but it seemed generic at times, proggy but imbalanced at times, and showed a lot of compositional strengths that weren't always lived up to.

73

Even though I believe in God, I've made a point of forgiving people for sins that don't really affect me. Now matter how much I bitch and whine, there will be people who disagree with me on philosophy, so might as well accept it as a part of the natural world while acknowledging the difference in philosophy. So I've heard all the Slayer albums, a good deal of Bathory, and am of the opinion that the best death metal band is Septicflesh.  But Behemoth really made their point of hatred towards religion a million times over, so do we really need it again?

Considering how familiar this album is, I'm going to have to say "not this time." Behemoth's "The Shit ov God" is obviously built specifically to get anti-religious people to buy the album, as if they're relying on edge factor. Newsflash: that's how people LOSE interest. Hell, Wes Craven used to think being edgy was what mattered most, and his early career was pretty downhill once he hated and disowned his own porn flick, and switched right to THEMES, which made his movies much better overtime. But Behemoth took the opposite route.

Now the two good things that can be said about this album are that the production is absolutely perfect. The crystal clarity is some of the finest in metal, but that's to be expected from veterans. As well, half the riffs are quite catchy, which really does help. I found myself really enjoying the bits that got quite proggy, like the midtro of O Venvs, Come. So there's a strong metal energy here that can help everything be at least fairly enjoyable to some, but this is also an extremely typical album for them. I said half the riffs were catchy, but the other half are so standard that you can pull them off of any obscure crap lost in the RYM charts. So only half the time does the production justify these performances. As well, taking a look at the lyrics, they feel thrown together and basic. The overabundance of old-timey / medieval phrasing seems to distract from that aggressive, angry nature that they're trying to promote so brutally, so the ancient vibes and the religious anger kind of contradict each other like matter and antimatter.

So this most recent entry in the Behemoth catalogue was an attempt at bringing back the vibes of their most beloved work, The Satanist, but the quality steers a bit closer to their middling debut, Sventevith. Fun moments and boring moments are heald together with a strong metallic presence and pure diamond production, so while it's perfectly listenable, it has its problems.

I'm on several metal communities, sometimes more active on others that some, and I never really see anybody talking about Indukti.  I was honestly under the assumption that they were just thrown in the Metal Academy Prog Metal List Challenge to fill up the 25 entries.  I didn't really have the highest hopes getting into this, but I had quite a bit of fun.  The seven minute opener, Freder, has a loosely industrial repetition about that maintains some originality and catchiness with a good, heavy attitude, so it was a good opener.  But then an acoustic ballad takes over on Cold Inside, and it's just gorgeous.  This one progressed perfectly, rivaling some of the folksier or symphonic stuff I heard when I was going through classic prog on Progarchives.  The acoustics transcend into track 3, titled No. 11812, which goes back into the metal weirdness and maintains a keen unpredictability, balancing out acoustic melodies with layers of electric monotony that exude futurism.  Track 4, Shade, begins with a heavily tribal ambiance, emerging into a meaningful combo of violin and heavy metal energy overtime.  Then comes Uluru, which is just freakin' maniacal.  It has everything from violin to Paranoid Android sound effects to robotic growls that sound like burps to a didgeridoo opening and doesn't spare a second without going into mindwarp overload.  Now track 6, titled No. 11811, is where some similar ideas get tossed around, potentially meaning they used up the majority of their ideas and decided to finish up with clever instrumentation to fill up the album.  It's still quite good, but for such a creative album, a little more spark would be appreciated.  The nine minute closer does this as well, but it manages to keep things cool and refreshing.  This album is a lot like a Devin Townsend album, and I really do recommend it.

95

The debut album of Green Carnation, Journey to the End of Night, was a conceptual beauty but a rhythmic near-disaster, recycling simple riffs and surreal concepts between overdrawn epics while maintaining a strong sense of atmosphere and mystique.  So these guys had their work cut out for them on the second album, especially considering that it's entirely composes of a single hour-long song.  This was either going to be a monolith or a botched work.  It ended up being the former.  We finally have that total harmony between the instruments that allows them to flow from one genre to the other seamlessly, matching the intrigue and mystique of the debut with much better production, just as clear as before but balanced in volume and impact between each player.  Its grandiose behavior isn't quite so overtly melodic and epic in the way that a Mozart piece would be.  It's a slow walk in the woods during a blood orange sunset, covering all your emotions on the journey, much like the cover appears as.  Now rhythmically, it's easily an improvement over the first.  Throughout, good rhythms evolve into each other, once again, seamlessly.  However, I would still go as far as the say that melody is the worst aspect about the album, as it rarely ever reaches out to astound.  Otherwise, the album does everything it can to maintain this Autumn evening atmos, even when the technical Pt. II takes over right into a dive of new age vocals, acoustic guitar and smoot sax.  Because you need to know: this isn't a "metal" album... this is an ALBUM.

Green Carnation, a prog band formed by ex-Emperor bassist Tchort, is a band I've put off for a long time so I can focus on other kinds of metal and other genres in general, but I finally have the freedom to check out one of the three bands I need left for one of the Metal Academy prog metal list challenges.  Even though I only need to review one of their albums, I wanted to go back to the beginning, as I believe a real student should expand further than just one album per band as the lists are exclusively formed.

So starting with the debut, I was quickly introduced to a psychedelic atmosphere that I had never heard before.  The thirteen minute opener, In the Realm of the Midnight Sun, was an obvious effort in putting together various styles in a way that fit and could justify the length of 13 minutes.  Now I'd say as far as progressing the various genres in one song goes, there wasn't any problem with that.  But there's something that really needs to be addressed: some of the rhythms outshine other parts of the song by country miles, so the song still feels inconsistent in that way.  I thought to myself, "I supposed that's where the leading criticism comes from?"  I had other epics to check out before I could be certain of that.  Another product of the inconsistency is how some metal moments are much heavier than others.  I suppose the drums were improperly mixed, feeling a little faint for what they were striving to achieve.  But by the third epic, which totals tracks 2-4 into 45 minutes, it kind of becomes a cycle of reused tricks in different epics, creating a sense of overlength.  Even the fact that several shorter songs take up the end doesn't really detract from this.

For a first attempt, there's some good genre balance and ambition here, but the lack of original rhythmic ideas tells me that this was merely the band tackling too much at once and only fairly succeeding more at the intrigue rather than the music.  It's a fine first attempt in that way, but more or less decent in other ways.

I can always get behind the idea of changing your sound a bit.  Fates Warning have slowly done that over the course of several albums, but typically, they will remain a metal band.  It's not so apparent in A Pleasant Shade of Grey, in fact I'd go as far as to say it's not a full-on metal album, but rather rock with a couple metal influences.  And I'm totally cool with that.  I was hoping this album would be one of the absolute berst of its type, but Fates Warning has only impressed me once in that vein out of several albums, so my expectations were closer to the 9/10 vein.

From what I've studied, Fates Warning are basically a top 10 in prog metal as far as popularity and influence goes.  Of course, when you're going to tackle prog, you have to be careful that your technical melodies and the harmony of the instruments don't come off as wonky.  Part II was fairly guilty of that during the verses, so the first two parts didn't really do much for me musically, despite setting a good preconceived standard for the rest of the album.  But it took way too long for me to get to a spot to where I could feel like absorbing an atmosphere, bobbing my head, getting intrigued, etc.  Part 5 had a good level of psychedelic intrigue to it, but it simply wasn't strong enough to stand out amongst the masses of prog rock or metal IMO and it didn't justify the wonkiness in the other parts of the song.  Things started to feel more fleshed out and make more sense in the second half, featuring better examples of prog that took a few key directions that cemented the second half as superior to the first.  But when the band was trying out some metal in the fix, the softer focus of the album got in the way of heaviness, making it feel more like general rock, so while they have every right to make a rockier album, any metal should actually be metal.

it shows this vintage group of prog metal pioneers somehow struggling to maintain proper atmosphere, being more focused on maintaining a softer presence that they only occasionally succeed at.  This is also to say that when it was trying to be metal, it wasn't heavy enough.  They have every right to change their sound, and this was a pretty good attempt with a few good songs, some interesting technical ideas and a little bit of experimentation that never broke the flow.  But sometimes it feels a little empty, and sometimes the rythms are a bit wonky, so the album feels incomplete.

Do I even have to write a review of this?  Now this album is listed as a metalcore and sludge release on various websites, and I'm a bit into both, not enough to join the clans, though.  I really liked the idea of sludge metalcore, and even use the tag "sludgecore" in my charts to describe the combo.  You'd think Xibalba would be a shoe-in for a favorite band, but I wouldn't know it from this debut.  The same overused guitar tone, the same decent level of heaviness, the same shouty vocals and the same type of songwriting take up the majority of this fairly boring self-released debut.  I found myself wondering why any of these songs even bothered to go into the five minute range.  I'm really not sure how this band got such good reviews with this debut, but I really believe that so much more could've been done with this album.  I would even go as far as to say I prefer the End So Far by Slipknot.

Believe it or not, during my original Septicflesh marathon, I didn't get through this.  I was more interested in the directly symphonic stuff.  And even though Iv'e been trying to cut back on metal, this is one of those times where I just got impatient with putting this off and decided that one metal album wouldn't hurt my charts much.  Plus, if I'm a Septicflesh fan, I should've already heard this.

This is true to form Septicflesh in every possible way, and may be the single MOST Septicflesh album of the catalogue.  They were always a wild act, merging various styles together in a weird whole, until they focues almost strictly on symphonic death metal.  This album is a careful mesh of the symphonic stuff, the straightforward stuff, the gothic metal of the classic era and the melodic death.  The results are generally, if I may, "mystic."  There's a careful cinematic presence in their beautifully produced music that only Septicflesh can truly provide.  Some of these songs are just legendary, like the title track, Viruses of the Beast, etc.  It almost sounds like it came out of a Therion album sometimes, and at other times it reaches FSoL levels of surreality, especially in the closer.  But none of these aspects ever get in the way of each other.

A few songs, however, lose some of the melodic prowess that this experimentation demands.  Now songs like Magic Loves Infinity are just gorgeously put together, carefully treading a fine line between atmosphere and melody.  But a song like Dark River relies mostly on the backing effects to handle the magic of the album.  That's my only complaint.  Otherwise, this is absolutely georgeous death metal, four words that probably shouldn't go together.

It's about time I went back on those Morbid Angel albums and saw if my current rankings hold up.  For a very short period of time, Morbid Angel was my choice for best death metal band, right before my venture into Septicflesh.  Now this review is for the original audio rather than the Full Dynamic Range master.  Now it goes without saying that I prefer albums that bring out many noticeable variations between songs, and this is the kind of album that pulls out so many different time signatures every twenty seconds or so that it's no surprise that many of the songs have a few too many similarities.  But this remains an incredible album for two reasons: 1. some of the best production values of the 1980's, clear and crystalline without going into arena reverb, and 2. many of the best riffs you may ever hear in death metal.  Similarities aside, the compositions can oftentimes be absolutely stunning.  The intense power of the album's combination of production and composition can even shine through a set of bad headphones.  Morbid Angel made an instant name for themselves with this album.

97

I find it difficult to believe that Ufomammut isn't a much more well known sludge band, especially considering that they're absolutely perfect for the popular Fallen clan on Metal Academy.  Idolum was the first Ufomammut album I ever heard, if I recall correctly, and it's one of those few albums that sent my mental and metal spirits through a surprisingly comforting black hole of soul-destroying euphoria.  Everything is in total harmony, even the lenghty drone track at the end, which IMO succeeds in its attempts at bringing out atmosphere with length where the final track of Filosofem failed.  The best example of its incredible mind-warping powers is the gorgeous Ammonia, which reaches spiritual hieights of doom and psychedelia.  This Now the group was already as force to be reckoned with as early as the incredible Snailking, but this album ripped Snailking in half.  I'm glad this album at least made it to a Clan Challenge List.

This is it, the conclusion of my Blood Incantation marathon.  This is the album that gave me reason to check them out, and I finally have room for them on my albums log as my need to explore other genres made me late to this party.  A death metal album taking influence from the 70's German rock and electronic scene?  For a wacko like me, that's a dream to good to be true.  But what with all the dick-sucking going around for this album, one can't help but wonder, does it live up to the legend, or is it overhyped?

Immediately the prog rock and prog electronic influences are used as key ingredients in the hyperactive death metal, but the album also makes a point of switching genres mid-song from death metal to prog rock two minutes into Stargate Pt. 1.  I have to admit, while the instrumentation was beyond magnificent, rivaling the best aspects of their incredible debut, the sudden genre switch was a little jarring.  I would've preferred a little more buildup and a little more death in the beginning.  Was this a bad omen, or would I learn to accept that after hearing the rest of the album?  Stargate Pt. 2 was an intriguing and powerful prog electronic track that recalled all the best aspects of Tangerine Dream and Vangelis while remaining a Blood Incantation song, proving that they've mastered the art of electronics after having struggled so much with it on their previous ambient EP, Timewave Zero.  In the last two minutes, it carefully turns into a prog rock song with some beautiful Tullian flute.  Even the last bit of death metal feels pretty naturally handled.  Pt. 3 makes for some fantastic death metal in both technique and production.  There's this middle section of acoustic guitars mimicking the worldbeat vibes of The Tea Party, but it doesn't last long enough, unfortunately.  And some of the electronics that make the album so unique are present at the end, but not for long.

The next epic, the three part Message, begins with a more upbeat, melodic and almost alternative take on death metal, one that recalls the noisy but anthemic and somewhat aquatic atmospheres of Biomech.  But after 50 seconds, they switch back to the same old death metal.  Thankfully, the extremities are met at a capacity I have only ever dreamed about!  They go back to the original format after another 50 seconds or so, which is an interesting take and makes me glad there's more of that new sound involved. But once again, the standard but impressive death metal sound overtakes the balance.  I mean, they're playing some excellent riffs that make me wanna rip my shirt off and fly into the sun with a bottle of whiskey, but shouldn't they take the time to really expand on the new tricks?  Part 2 goes right into the prog rock, pulled right out of the 70's British scene with surprisingly authentic melodies that blend with the death sound on occasion.  It even has vocals that sound way too much like Roger Waters.  But if they could do that all along, then they SHOULD'VE used them a little more in previous tracks to expand on the various tricks they were trying to play.  Still, this one revived both the Pink Floyd prog and the more conventional kind of prog in one go while maintaining the atmospheric strengths of previous Blood Incantation albums.

And then... Part 3 took me by 100% surprise by introducing itself with a power metal riff of all things.  It has a tendency to switch things around though, as, once again, the power metal was not lived up to.  But it DID do an excellent job of maintaining many of the past sounds and tricks at a reasonable balance beyond that while delivering on of their best epics since Vitrification.  This one is easily the most epic-feeling song on the album, recalling the whole spirit of the band and its improved sense of effects and reverberations, as well as Faulk's wonderful drumming.  This song is also an excellent example of how our two guitarists have impeccable synchronization.  All is a relatively perfect harmony until in fades into aquatic sound effects, bringing our epic to a close.

This also closes my epic adventure in the Blood Incantation catalog.  What with this genre-tagging including space rock and Berlin school, I was stunned that a death metal album was finally attempting these things.  It's been 30 years since Emperor put synths in black metal, so an album like this is way late.  However, was it perfect?  While I admire a band for trying to reinvent the genre, there were some areas where the unique tricks and extra genre choices needed a little more balance.  If they fix that on the next album, you may end up having the greatest death metal album in the world.

97

Although I've heard largely raw praise for this sophomore album by Blood Incantation, there's an ongoing debate as to whether or not this is an improvement over Starspawn.  My immediate thought was that it was due to a change in pace.  Normally, I like changes in pace, but only if the artist keeps the established identity as well.  I had no way of knowing which would reign supreme on this album.

Its opener, Slave Species of the Gods, is absolutely brutal and a little sludgy.  This was obviously going to be a deeper album that before, and I appreciated the stronger focus on heaviness and progression, especially since this means they're attempting a new direction.  However, despite all the skill they put into it, this is a more generic song on the whole.  On Starspawn, the band took all familiar traits of death and maximized the full potential.  There seems to be less trickery on this opener, so hopefully that would be remedied on later tracks.  I had an 18-minute closer to look forward to, after all.  The Giza Power Plant was seven minutes, which would normally leave a lot of room for some new tricks.  But the most it did was switch from a brutal song to a slower and more ambient one for four minutes before ending on the brutal note.  Now this had incredible moments about it, but it was largely boasting things that were done with more creativity on Starspawn.  Track 3, Inner Paths (To Outer Space), goes into a very deep and sombre opening before slowly emerging as a prog metal track in a similar vein to the folk track on Star Spawn, Meticulous Soul Devourment.  Taking MSD's place as the "vibe" track, this one also includes drowned dialogues like in the cut ambient track from Live Vetrification before fully crossing the bridge into prog death metal, and then finally into brutal death, never once losing sight of the balance, pacing or atmosphere, feeling right at home with Giza Power Plant and artistically contradicting Slave Species of the Gods.  Obviously, the intro song is totally outshined, and would've been more properly placed as the second track.

Now it was time for the majesty.  I had full faith that Blood Incantation would amaze me with another nearly 20-minute epic of raw art, but kept the idea of monotony in mind due to the poorly placed intro song's generic behavior.  It was obvious from the start that the heaviness had been improved on.  This is probably their heaviest and most thunderous track, or at least it starts that way.  And let me tell you, it's very good.  They put together something that remains brutal and challenging throughout.  A few surprises wait throughout the eighteen minutes, but that's only a few.  Otherwise, this is simply a great effort technically and production-wise, but I was hoping for something mindblowing.

This sophomore, in my opinion, is a little more generic.  It carries some of the Starspawn weirdness and a few little traces of what's to come on their legendary third album, but otherwise, I'll say it's simply a great way to introduce death metal to someone.  Another great effort on their part, but not five-stars.  Honestly, I wonder if they were simply trying to sell or to get noticed?  They didn't betray their talents, but much of the identity was gone.

93, just like Live Vitrification.

After having fallen in love with Starspawn, especially its thirteen minute openerand six minute sequel that serves as the namesake for this album, I was excited for this live piece.  Both pieces are played in one whole on this album.  I was really hoping for something incredible after the disappointment of their attempt at putting a live B-side on one of their earlier demos, so I was slightly weary of another life album that early in their career.  But as soon as I turn this on and the cheering stops, I'm practically shot in the head by death metal extremes with a giant-ass Remington.  Not only are the extremes on this live rendition of my favorite death metal song improved on, but I hear everything among the blackened noise.  Everything from the spoace-like ambiance to the blastbeats outperforms the studio comparison, so already half of the album is one of the greatest life performances I've ever heard.  Cloud 99, and you read that right.

But I listened to the ORIGINAL edition with the second track, which takes a dark / black ambient approach.  A real fan would check that out.  As well, I don't like the idea of cutting an album in half for future releases, so I'm sticking with this edition.  Now my first thought was that they could easily make it work, considering the inclusion of that effects-oriented folk song on side B of Starspawn.  The moment it turns on it sounds lo-fi, which isn't necessarily bad, but is usually bad.  A number of problems can associate from including a side B of a totally different genre, including loss of flow, loss of interest and an obvious inferiority from one genre to another.  But this is BLOOD INCANTATION.  We'll see how it goes.

Now even though I have given 100's to some special ambient pieces, I still often struggle with ten-minute plus ambient songs.  Even two minutes in, while I liked the direction it was going in well enough, it took a while for that wild personality the band cemented on their first EP to really show its colors.  Blodd Incantation had developed a habit of forcing the point on your in a quick yet lovable way, and although the dark ambient aspects are properly chilling throughout and do a damn good job relaxing me in tandem with my cinnamon coffee, this is also their first time in ambient.  They didn't manage to bring all the charm of their skills in reverb to this otherwise nice and calming track.  There are vocals in the background that give you some interesting dialogue on the natural world, life on other planets, and other sci-fi topics that work well for the vibe they're going for.  This is the kind of ambient track that successfully plants images in your head throughout the whole run.

It's pretty cute that Blood Incantation thinks they can just cut out a whole half.  I say, DEAL WITH IT.  You dug your own grave just as easily as you released practice EP's.  Besides, I believe every artist has the right to expand their horizons and practice.  If not for tracks like this, they wouldn't have ever made an album like their beloved Absolute Everywhere, so that second half is a piece of history, and I will judge the album with it in mind.  SO while the live track is easily one of the finest metal performances I've ever heard, this otherwise good ambient track doesn't fit perfectly well.  I still highly recommend this album for metalheads, though.

93

I'm extraordinarily happy that I finally get to catch up on Blood Incantation.  Checking out all of their earlier demos and EP's that I could find, I was flat-out excited for their debut album, Starspawn, which was the album that put them on the metal map.  At first I didn't pay a lot of attention to them, as death isn't necessarily my favorite metal subgenre and RYM year chart ratings are practically dominated by metalheads.  Hell, right now the number one album for 2025 is the new Deafheaven.  However, to be able to say that I am the first to write a Metal Academy review for this album after having been released for almost ten years seems almost impossible to me, so I'll just roll with it and accept the honor.  But before I review it, lemme fill you in on something the band confirmed about this debut album: "Everything was done live with tubes, tape, etc – there are no triggers, click-tracks or quantized anything on the recording, no cut & paste and very few punch-ins."

A minute and a half in and I was already wide-eyed.  Blood Incantation struggled to find their sound and the proper structural techniques needed to really standout for a while, but this album seemed to make a point of harmony in the whole band pretty damn early on.  This one is CREEPY.  Right on the opening 13-minute epic (super bold move for a 35-minute album with five tracks), the band makes their their darkest release so far, ripping the very idea of riffs in half with some incredible and very disturbing tricks that suck you right into a psychedelic black hole and then, as Sarris would say, "tears through it like tissue paper."  It's not even a new step forward in death metal by any means whatsoever.  This is the standard, straightforward death metal sound with masterful progressive behavior.  The build-up issues and unpredictability of their previous EP, Interdimensional Extinction, are fixed to perfection, made seemingly effortless, like if Fix-It Felix just lightly struck his golden magic hammer to it.  The outstanding production works in tandem with Reidl's and Kolontyrsky's guitars.  Although everyone is working at max power, the show stealers are the two guitarists.  There's a beautiful presence their just forged from dark matter, driving the amazing, disturbing and sometimes psychedelic guitar work through the production's incredible ambiance.  I may even go as far as to say that this became my new favorite death metal track.

Next was Choaplasm, and I began it immediately thinking to myself, "There's no way they're going to top that first track, right?  But they can at least come close with the upcoming songs."  This one's more metronomical, and a bit more brutal and effectively primitive because of it.  It's also much more vocal, allowing our singer Riedl to make the most of the verses he sings and the ambient textures created through the production.  At a short five minutes, this song did a great job of continuing the presence of the previous song with a more primitive approach.  The real challenge was how to put a spin on things with track three, Hidden Species (ViB Pt. II).  Now as it's a part two, does that mean the wild balance of varying elements becomes the determining factor in yet another song, hinting at repetition?  Yes and no.  This song shoves astral ambiance down your throat without getting in the way of the rest of the band doing its job while giving Riegl plenty of time to sing.  It appears that the dark ambient genre had a say in the atmospheric choices of this song, allowing drawn out reverb to take over the atmosphere and leaving drummer Isaac Faulk to take over with his incredible jazz timing.

Track four kicks off with dark ambient noise backgrounds, combining noise with winds in a familiar yet skillful and chilling way.  I was a bit nervous about this song due to RYM tagging it a dark folk song, but the way they introduce the song and the sound effect choices they made work perfectly with the darker, sombre tones.  It was the right thing to do to include such a creepy yet somewhat metallic folk track on an album that occasionally played with sound effects and death doom.  And appropriately after the winds have died down, the final track, the title track, slams you with extreme death metal like you're a contestant on Takeshi's Castle.  Right in the face.  When I think about it, going for this type of extreme may have been done before as early as the earliest, but stylistically, it's the proper way to end the album: raw, unhinged, unadulterated extreme metal.  It's the same way Metallica began Ride the Lightning.  This doesn't stop the band from being Blood Incantation.  This song goes into unconventional riffs and repetitive progression in a way that says, "you've seen the weirder side of us.  Now that you know who and what we are, have some traditional death, on the house."

My metal fanboyism considered the possibility that this would be a flawless debut, but I didn't think it was actually going to happen.  It has been a long time since I've had this much fun with a death metal album.  The band masters all the familiar essentials like they're bringing them to the stage for the first time in human history.  Starspawn serves as a focused yet beautifully unhinged reminder that traditional death metal is not dead, and can still be among the best of the best even 40 years after its inception.

This is the first of their releases to get great ratings online.  Starting this short EP with The Vth Tablet, I found that the song's production was practically perfect, but as far as a progressive metal song goes, I'm not quite sure I haven't heard this before.  It's great to hear them expanding their horizons, and finding very careful ways to include synths, but this track didn't greatly interest me until 3-minutes in when the guitar solo started, and that's when things got rough.  Unfortunatley, the song ended like 30 seconds later... Not the best way to introduce the new production.  Thankfully, Obfuscating the Linear Threshold showed a major improvement in how the "convoluted" (as one Bandcamp reviewer mentioned) percussions and riffs came together.  This one was a much more unpredictable song that often jolted into different vibes so quickly that they may have been different songs.  So while all of these parts are cool, this song feels more like a disjointed collective rather than a perfectly fleshed out piece of art.  But don't get me wrong, there are easily some 9/10 bits in this otherwise 8/10 song.  I'd just prefer less "Look what I can do" and more "listen to the song."

Hovering Lifeless kicks off side B with a quieter guitar tone but a complex and somewhat jazzy drum session.  This song, once again, is done before, but maintains the both the intrigue and the structural flaws of the previous track.  These guys are incredible at blast beats, but the constant jolts into totally different vibes with no sense of build up kind of goes against itself.  Death's Symbolic had a damn good sense of build up and maintained the technical aspects they invented on Human quite flawlessly.  It was nice, however, to get a synth solo, even though it was short as hell, and even ends the damn song.  Finally, there's Subterranean Eon.  This one starts out with a stronger sense of balance between complexity, melody and the switches between different levels of heaviness.  This maintained a straightforward yet ever-shifting composition that remained interesting throughout most of its length.  Easily the best track, IMO.

So if I had to describe this album quickly, I'd say it's "much cooler than it is good."  It's a largely riff-oriented album that shows the band sometimes confusing unpredictability with "prog metal."  The general vibes are great and the production is almost perfect, but there needs to be more death metal vocals and more time to flesh all these ideas into other songs.  Still, this is easily the best of the three so far.  Kinda glad this isn't getting on the 80-100 chart and taking up space, which means I may have room for the new Deafheaven.

78/100

Going over some older spins to flesh out my lists, it occurred to me that my re-evaluations of several Dark Tranquillity albums should've brought me to re-evaluations of Amon Amarth as well, considering that I am now bothered by samey albums more than ever.  To be fair, I wasn't sure if I'd still like this one or not.  From the beginning, however, Amon Amarth have been a "good but not quite great" act for me, as everything (or maybe both things) they try, being done with some obvious skill and beautiful production, have been done to literal, no-pun-intended death by this point.  Now Amon Amarth seem to be one of the more popular melo-death bands (I've seen a few customers wear the shirts when I was at work), but on this debut, for every good song there's a decent one following it.  Without Fear is a wonderful peace which captures both the traditional spirit of extreme metal while being conventional and even poppy enough to balance the two extreme out.  But there are only a couple of ideas boasted on side A, and side B is mostly just doing the same: basic prog instrumentation at times, black metal undertones, reliance on lyrics and production.  Don't get me wrong, though.  I could almost get lost in that metal production.  Everything comes out crystal clear. So if you like melo-death, this is a standard fun time with some major strengths that manage to overcome any generic or familiar traits.  Sometimes things progress very well, sometimes it's pretty good, and sometimes it's drawn out.  I don't feel a need to return to this one,