Xephyr's Forum Replies

Not going to lie, before this I normally shunned live albums. I never really understood the appeal personally, but Leprous's is definitely something special. With the style that Leprous has their studio albums can sound a bit sterile and lacking in a bit of energy regardless of what you think of Coal, Bilateral, or The Congregation. I personally love Leprous and even I can admit that they fall into the Progressive Metal trap of sounding dull and unenthusiastic sometimes in the midst of being technically impressive. This live set solves that problem though since there is so much feeling put into this entire setlist that it's kind of mind-blowing. 

This recording is simply immaculate for being a live set. Their sound is completely intact but has an extra punch with sharper drums and an insane vocal performance that outdoes the studio version on almost all accounts, which is the exact boost that Leprous needed to go from a strange-ish, somewhat thinking-man's Prog Metal act to something that absolutely crushes the stage. 

I find it really interesting that this album is so highly regarded by the niche base that has rated it and they ended up playing almost all of The Congregation, which is the album where the vocal minority seems to say that Leprous goes downhill. While I do agree that The Congregation is a bit stale compared to their previous 3 releases, I still really enjoy it, but this performance puts that album in such a different light. It's just so well done. You'd think that a highly regarded live album from Leprous would include a ton of tracks from Tall Poppy Syndrome and Bilateral, but it's almost the opposite, with most of the tracks coming from The Congregation or Coal. I really do wonder if Leprous no longer plays anything off of Tall Poppy Syndrome just because Einar isn't able to do the harsher vocals he did in the past. 

Great find Daniel, and it gave me an excuse to go back and actually rate all the Leprous albums I listened to long ago but never jotted down. My heart says to agree with you on the 5/5 just because it's such an outlier for a live album, so that's what it's gonna be for now. 

Going to post my review for BABYMETAL'S Metal Galaxy here since it echos a lot of the short points I'll make about this one.

https://metal.academy/reviews/14061/14278

Surprisingly, Metal Galaxy is much better put together than this debut, with a lot of the songs on here being EXTREMELY erratic and silly, with most of the choruses being completely different songs than the verses. There's a surprising amount of harsh vocals in this one too and even though they're not the greatest thing ever, the fact that they stick around for a pretty long time does speak volumes for BABYMETAL'S attempt to really bring as much Metal as they could into their performance. 

At the end of the day though, BABYMETAL is very much just a performance, with their history being rooted in some Japanese idol group manager who happened to love Metal deciding to take the chance on a new act. It obviously went over very well, with them becoming a household name just because of how strange and different it was. I'm not going to lie, I absolutely rolled my eyes whenever someone told me that "BABYMETAL goes hard af" or anything like that since I was already starting to dive into the more extreme sides of Metal in 2013/2014. Like Saxy said, they certainly have a place in the mainstream Metal community to try and ease people into harsh vocals and Death Metal riffage. It was always eerily similar to Rammstein when "Du Hast" made its rounds thanks to Rock Band 3. Everyone knew the weird German song with the "NEIN" shouts and the heavy as hell riff, and it was the same sort of story with BABYMETAL'S "Gimme Chocolate!!" and "Megitsune".  

I think the newer albums do a way better job of incorporating the girls' voices and general wackiness that they have, but this debut certainly had a lot of...ideas. A lot of them aren't very good, but a few do work. The crazy rhythm game synths and Eurobeat are pretty good in some tracks, some of the solos rip pretty hard, and there's a ton of variety, but there are just way too many things that make me roll my eyes. It's just all over the place, with "Megitsune" being the only track that I legitimately think is pretty great. It does have its place in the Alternative Metal scene and I'd love to hear more bands experiment with this sort of sound without being so pandering and off-the-wall, like an even more Metal version of Wagakki Band. Look them up, their songs "Tengaku" and "Senbozakura" are massively popular (127m views? Jeez I didn't know they were THAT popular) and I'd love to see a middle ground between that and BABYMETAL. It probably exists somewhere out there, especially since we have that Vengeful Spectre release from this year. 

2/5

The more I listen to Sólstafir, the more I'm realizing just how hit or miss Post-Metal really is for me. My thoughts from Köld haven't necessarily changed, since I still really love their style but can't necessarily point out exactly why. Maybe it's the warming reverb? The calming and meandering songwriting that never really goes anywhere but never exactly gets boring for me? Needless to say they've had me extremely conflicted on what to write for this entire month, so this one is going to be way more off-the-cuff than normal as I try and find some bearings on how exactly to explain anything here. 

Although they share the same sort of sound style, Köld and Svartir Sandar are very, very different albums. Köld is dark, brooding, even menacing at times. This one is just as atmospheric but more riff and melody driven, with most of the tracks sounding strangely uplifting in their own Post-Metal kind of way. It's more dreamy and almost ethereal at times. The fact that Svartir Sandar is a double album is a bit much though, since it packs even less punch overall than Köld did. The percussion is reverbed to hell, with most of the cymbals sounding like a white noise radio most of the time. The riffing is good enough and the Icelandic lyrics give it a homely feel since it's the band's native language, but it certainly drags over its runtime. At the end of the day I think I prefer the darker, more dismal atmosphere of Köld over Svartir Sandar, even though this album has more content to sink your teeth into. If you're a huge Post-Metal fan, this album is probably a slice of heaven for you, and while I still love Sólstafir's overall sound, I can't give this one too high of a score. I could definitely see this album being a grower though, I think I have to give Post-Metal in general some more time to sink in compared to other genres. 

3.5/5

I'll counter the Trivium request with their track "In Waves" if we're doing Revolution requests, which I think is a pretty underrepresented Clan here in the Academy. If anything, after checking out "Becoming the Dragon", it means that I have to check out Trivium a bit more since I didn't know they were a thrashy band before leaning into a more Death/Metalcore angle. 

Hence why I think I'd be neat to have a "playlist request" system, I think this would help to supplement the "Track of the Day" thread like Andi previously said. 

At the same time is it necessary? If someone asks me what Eluveitie sounds like, I'd say a softer Melodic Death Metal with a lot of Folk influences. Sure they really lean into Celtic/Scottish folk themes, but is that really something that needs to be distinguished up front? I find it to be similar to Ben's point regarding NWOBHM, Folk music is going to sound different depending on where it's from, but at the end of the day it's still Folk. It's just that Folk in general has such a long history that there are many, many ideas of what can be explored, but since those Folk elements, no matter where they're from, take a backseat to the Metal aspects of most albums, I don't think the distinction is necessary. 

Also, according to RYM, there have been 5 Medieval Folk Metal albums released in 2020, 3 of them being In Extremo, and Celtic Metal having 4 released in 2020, 3 of them being a band called Saurom. It's just not necessary. 

Surely any more specific genre indicators are better as part of a review.

I think this is the most important aspect personally, having less sub-genres at the entry point allows for wider discussion topics on how certain elements are used in that base Metal genre, rather than instantly pinpointing what it's generally considered as. I'd rather be part of a community that spends its time actually discussing the music as part of the album/song experience and not what it's "objectively" labelled as. 

I think the Academy should focus more on the distinction of sub-genres that exist in multiple Clans just to avoid confusion moving forward, though. Ben's example of Symphonic Death and Sonny's example of Blackened Doom are perfect since they, by definition of the current Clan system, will always be a hybrid of two clans no matter how the band performs it. Whether that's a good or a bad thing, I'm not sure to be honest.

Unleash The Archers - Abyss

I was really stoked about this new one from Unleash The Archers, which dropped today. I absolutely loved Apex back in 2017 and was really interested to see if the band would keep improving. After the first spin I'm a bit lukewarm on it, it feels like they've lost that sense of urgency and energy that Apex had and their lead female vocalist lost some power due to differences in songwriting, but there are still some stellar moments in here. Going to keep digging into it, since it seems to be getting a decent reception from Power Metal fans? It sounds a bit generic and dull a bit too often in my opinion, but we'll see if that opinion will change. 

Necromantia - Scarlet Evil Witching Black

This extremely strange 1995 Symphonic Black Metal release came to my attention when taking a look at the 1995 charts while writing my review for In The Woods..., and wow is it strange. The group plays with two basses, which actually works wonderfully to create some killer Black Metal riffs, but goes completely off the deep end (in kind of a good way) with overblown symphonic elements including an extended sax and woodwind solo and an intermission which includes the full beginning of "The Flight of the Valkyries" thrown in for no reason whatsoever. It's a very unique one to come out of the explosion of Black Metal in the mid-90's, and if I had the power I'd love to see it in the Clan Challenge for the beginning of Black Metal just because it's so strange and off the wall. It's almost like an alternate dimension Enslaved/Emperor but less solid overall. Weird stuff. 

4/5

Hi, younger fan here.

I have to admit it's a bit strange as someone who is "newer" to the genre to hear all the discourse between what is and what isn't when it comes to sub-genres of older, classic bands. I wasn't around during the birth of Thrash or Black Metal, let alone Heavy Metal, so it's a jarring argument when someone like me comes in asking "Where did Death/Black/Thrash/Avant-Garde Metal start?" and the answer is becoming "Well it started with these guys but they're not actually Death/Black/Thrash...". It just gets messy in a way that doesn't really benefit anyone, in my opinion. If the goalposts are constantly shifting then sure it makes for interesting conversation topics, but I'd rather have some concrete tags and distinctions when it comes to writing reviews or having opinions about a certain release. 

It seems like a lot of the arguments follows the pattern of something not having "enough" of whatever thing that genre normally looks for. I'm strawman-ing this really hard but like Sonny said, for the sake of debate, if Into The Pandemonium isn't "Avant-Garde enough" to be Avant-Garde, then isn't it still Avant-Garde in some capacity? I just think it's unhelpful to be constantly re-evaluating, since there will come a point where things will get muddied up to the point of no return. I'd personally rather hear "Celtic Frost is a cornerstone Thrash Metal band that experimented with Avant-Garde and Gothic Metal later in their career" since that properly describes it, rather than "Well the standards of Avant-Garde are constantly changing so it wasn't actually that Avant-Garde", which is so much more confusing for someone who may not be familiar with Celtic Frost's discography. I guess I just like objectivity in these kinds of cases.

I was really surprised I enjoyed Frizzle Fry as much as I did, and the Primus experience might stop there because Sailing the Seas of Cheese just didn't do it for me, even though it's still an impressively wacky record. Claypool really starts to go off the deep end with this one, with the complex jams still there but not as tight or interesting as they were in Frizzle Fry. A lot of it feels like meandering shock factor, with songs having extended monologues from Les that range from a bit silly to a bit creepy at times. "Jerry Was A Racecar Driver" still remains my favorite Primus song through the thick of it all, but the other notable track "Tommy the Cat" ended up not aging that well for me. It just feels strange for the sake of being strange and it didn't really hook me into what it was trying to do. The musicianship is still top notch, if not a bit more straightforward than Frizzle Fry, and it's still certainly a one-of-a-kind product that only Primus could make thanks to its funky bass playing and use of crazy time signatures, but I fail to see the charm in it this time around. 

3.5/5

As is the trend with me, I really didn't like Leviathan when I first heard it. I was really early into discovering Metal and I couldn't figure out what the heck was going on, and the vocalist really rubbed me the wrong way. After becoming more initiated I went back to it and ended up agreeing with all of you that it's a fantastic themed record that has a ton going for it. The drum fills throughout the album are absolutely wicked, with each measure seeming to have some sort of fill stuck in there somewhere. The twists and turns that the album takes are effortlessly integrated, like the strange but endearing guitar lick in the middle of "Megalodon" before it absolutely explodes into a massive chugfest. It's an easily approachable and digested slab of chaos that doesn't cut corners but manages to stay on the less extreme side of things, even though the guitar tone and some of the vocals would lead you to believe otherwise. 

Crack The Skye is Mastodon's most complete album, but Leviathan shows them mastering the sludgy but complex style in really creative ways. Comparing Leviathan to Emperor of Sand, like Saxy was alluding to, this earlier Mastodon record simply has more interesting riffs that lean into being difficult to fully understand but never being overly pretentious. As Mastodon have latched onto a more straightforward sound over the years, a lot of the excitement and rawness that this album had just faded away a bit. 

4/5

I agree with all of Ben's suggestions, definitely place the rating box somewhere else on the page, since it's more of a secondary rating to begin with. As long as there's search functionality and the ability to sort/organize the ratings like the normal ratings I'll be happy. 

Could Firewind's new self-titled album be added please? 

Gulch - Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress

This short and sweet 15 minute metal-grind-core...thing...was interesting to me, since it has a ton of Grind qualities presented in a Metalcore fashion. Even though it's a bit too short-winded for me, there are some chunky riffs and impressive vocals in this one, pretty exciting stuff for the more hardcore Metalcore scene. Honestly I'd like to see what Daniel thinks of this one as he's the resident Grind-head, if The Horde monthly features are any indication.

Even though Reise Reise has become a singles Rammstein album for me, I still really enjoy it since I prefer Rammstein leaving the heavily EDM-focused bits from Sehnsucht behind. I always give Mutter the slight edge because it always felt like a more complete package and has slightly better riff quality overall, but that doesn't mean that Reise Reise has a lot of things going for it. "Reise, Reise", "Mein Teil", "Moskau", "Stein um Stein", and "Ohne dich" are the highlights for me, with the rest of the tracks either falling a bit short or being more forgettable. There are a few experiments like "Los" that really fell flat for me, but the riffs and catchy songwriting are top notch for Rammstein. This would be the last big album for them since Rosenrot has even less memorable tracks and their 2019 self-titled is a bit too safe to really hold up to this, Mutter, or Sehnsucht. Still love the heavy, booming riffs, still love the EDM flairs here and there, still love the deep German vocals, still a great album. 

4/5

I wrote my review for this album a while ago and it shows, since it has a very different style than what I write now. I obviously knew about Pantera and songs like "Cowboys From Hell" and "Walk", but never checked them out until I decided I was going to school myself on old school Thrash Metal by going through Slayer's, Metallica's, and Megadeth's full discographies (give or take) one week. One thing led to another and I checked out Pantera's Cowboys From Hell and while I think it's their best album by a long shot, I still agree with my old review for the most part. Pantera is all about the riffs and while there are some seriously good ones, I can only handle so much of their style over the course of this album. Anything else other than the syncopated groovy riffing comes across as pretty weak, so Cowboys From Hell becomes a chore to listen to all the way through for me. 

I might re-write my review in order to modernize it a bit, but I think my main point remains the same, looking back. Not a bad album by any means, but hardly a classic for me. 

3.5/5

Alphaville - Imperial Triumphant

Imperial Triumphant made a pretty big splash in the more progressive Extreme Metal community with their 2018 release Vile Luxury and they're back with an art-deco inspired release here in 2020. I wasn't as huge of a fan as others when it came to Vile Luxury, and I'm glad I came into this release unbiased because it improves on their sound in almost every single way. I think this album requires quite a bit of time to sink in, and I plan on giving it quite a few more spins to figure it out. With this release and Oranssi Pazuzu's Mestarin kynsi, 2020 is proving to be a massive year for avant-garde inspired Black Metal.

4/5 (for now)

I was always surprised that Machine Head was so popular, I really didn't care for The Blackening even though it was hyped up for me pretty hard. Catharsis, their 2018 album, was on another level of awful. If you wanna see how terrible Machine Head's style can really get if you think these lyrics are slanderous, test out that one to even out your rating curve. 

I've been getting into vinyl now that I know that I'm not leaving the Metal community anytime soon, it's nice to know that you supported the artists you listen to in some sort of monetary way apart from going to concerts. I'm also a sucker for big album art, so vinyls were my preference over CD's. I still have everything digitally, but I dunno, it's just a nice feeling to have nicely packaged music with all kinds of art and inserts that might give you a better idea of what the guys who made it were trying to convey, if anything at all. 

The recent commercial success of vinyl has made places really double down on their insane amount of "limited edition" versions, with all the colors of the rainbow available, and it feels like it makes it a bit less limited than what they want you to believe. I don't blame them for wanting to push more units in a market where people like us are the minority, but it does feel like some of the charm is lost sometimes. My vinyl collection has some stuff I really love having and it's grown pretty fast now that Bandcamp was doing its "all proceeds go to artists", which definitely made me impulse buy some stuff that I wasn't extremely thrilled about but I'm still glad I have it looking back. 

I had an itch to check out some more Primordial today for some reason, and after checking out their debut album Imrama I have to agree with Ben's old review saying that this one is extremely underrated and forgotten. Primordial are a consistent band, with their smooth, folky, but still Black Metal tinged performance not really changing too much over the years, but Imrama has a bit more character to it than their other releases. I'm still making my way through their discography and even though I'll have to revisit some of these albums to really allow them to sink in due to them being so similar, I think this one will end up sticking out in the end. I slapped a 4/5 on it for now, but I'm really enjoying Primordial so who knows where it will end up after a while. More people need to give this one a chance though. 

2,800 words later, it's finished. I hope I never have to write another review as long as this one. Thanks for giving me the motivation to finally pen something like this out.

https://metal.academy/reviews/17294/155

I'm sure Daniel loves seeing my name pop up in these Horde Feature Releases by now, and this classic Goregrind album will be no exception. I will say though that guys do have a killer tone and killer riffs, at least occasionally when I can pick out any differences between the songs. The drumming was impressive as well, with it being surprisingly clear without losing any of the aggression. Personally I end up thinking of the less than 2 minute grind song structures as "riff exhibits", and there are definitely some good ones in here. It didn't even really feel like 38 minutes had passed when I was done, which is a testament to...something, considering that's pretty long for something like a Goregrind release. The aspects that make up the Goregrind genre still strike me with a feeling of complete indifference though, with extremely heavy and vulgar Metal like this only causing me to think "that's cool I guess". 

2/5

City is Devin Townsend at his most unhinged, and its so absurdly aggressive and heavy that it's hard not to like at least some parts of this album. The strange but somehow endearing lyrics on "AAA", the pure insanity of "Oh My Fucking God", and the distortion drenched "Spirituality" all come together in this strange package that somehow works out in the end. I feel like on paper this album has no chance of working, with its flurry of random chug riffs alongside Devin's unsystematic vocals and corny sound effects, but it creates such a unique package that shows that extreme metal can take on many different forms, even if that different form is a strangely sung ballad-type thing with piano and pounding industrial drums on "Room 429". Devin's eccentricity is one of this things that always draws me back to him, and while I agree with Daniel and Chris in that I'm unsure about the "classic" status of this album, it certainly represents something sincerely different and something that only Devin could feasibly pull off. It certainly has its weak points and has a ton of issues in terms of structure and just overall strangeness, especially when it's trying so hard to be heavy and angry, but I still think that City is a must for Devin Townsend fans and an interesting excursion for anyone looking for something different in their extreme and angry Metal. 

4/5

Thanks for the heads up Saxy, I really enjoyed this. Some parts were really amazing, some parts not so much. I think they tried to push the spoken word narrative and certain themes on the album a bit too hard, but that barely takes anything away from the rest of the record. I'll be coming back to this one in the coming weeks to see if I can push my rating up even higher, I think it maybe has the potential? 

4/5

Great review too, nice on actually elaborating on the production! It feels like good or bad "production" is such a meaningless buzzword to many nowadays. 

I love shred albums, and this one was no exception. This one struck me a bit differently though, since many of these neoclassical jam sessions are more or less the same once you get down to the nitty-gritty of what they really are. Maximum Security felt like it had a bit more meaning and substance to it apart from the shred, more movement and feeling. It's most likely because the shredding is used more sparingly, but there's also some great choices of melody and extra bits and pieces like the piano interlude that make this feel like a fleshed out album rather than just notes crammed onto a late 80's disk. I found this collection of instrumentals to be immediately more recognizable and memorable than the likes of Malmsteen, but maybe not as much as someone like Joe Satriani. The piano interlude is great as it really plays into the neo-classical style that these 80's shredders worshiped, and the synth aspects are smoothly incorporated, not sounding too forced whatsoever. 

I found Maximum Security a pleasure just to have on in the background, which is a huge testament to Tony Macalpine's smooth and more subdued songwriting. While not the most adventurous record, I definitely prefer the likes of this over the 1,000 notes per second scales that have been played one too many times before. Maximum Security also succeeds in keeping the song length lower, with only a few tracks reaching the 4 and a half minute mark, which I think is fair for guitar noodling like this. Just a classy instrumental shred album through and through. 

4/5

I'm really glad that Deftones grew out of this initial style. They managed to pick out the strongest elements and expand upon those, leaving the choppy Nu-Metal songwriting and terrible production behind for Around The Fur. While sufficiently aggressive, the guitar tone is pretty atrocious and each song feels haphazard and pointless, mirroring my thoughts on other early Nu-Metal groups like Korn. The smooth, ever-present vocals don't mesh too well with the style of riffs they chose, making the whole thing a pretty confusing affair. I also find a lot of early Nu-Metal like this to be incredibly awkward with all of the whispering and free-form vocals like in "Nosebleed". I guess these are supposed to be emotional and angsty? Whatever the intent was, it definitely doesn't work on me. There are some good riffs in here and it's definitely a piece of Nu-Metal history, but I couldn't help but get more and more annoyed the longer I listened. I'm really grateful that they smoothed out their sound to something way more unique and interesting in such a short period of time after Adrenaline. 

2.5/5

Vektor in general just absolutely rips. They've been a favorite of mine from the more progressive but still aggressive Thrash scene for quite some time now and even though they don't make it onto my normal listening rotations very often, it's always a treat when they do. I only listened to snippets of their first two albums so getting to check out Black Future in full was a fantastic, albeit drawn out experience. For me, these guys just do everything right when it comes to Progressive and Technical Thrash with only a few minor gripes getting in the way of giving this album perfect marks. The high-pitched squeals are an important element to Vektor's sound, but they're a bit too random and overused on this one compared to their next two albums which use them a bit more tastefully. The length is also an issue, with certain songs and the album itself feeling a bit too drug out at times since Vektor hardly ever give you any room to breathe. 

I would have to really buckle down and listen to all three of their albums to pick favorites and compare, but as for now both Black Future and Outer Isolation live up to Terminal Redux, the first Vektor album I heard, in terms of raw Progressive Thrash power. This band seriously hasn't missed a beat yet. 

4.5/5

This is a VERY strange one since Folk Metal normally isn't paired with modern style riffs and ideas, hence the Korn comparison. Tracks like "Krummavisur" and "Nature Nous Semont" REALLY caught me off guard as they just don't sound right with the modern style of riffing, no matter how hard they try. I want to give them kudos for the attempt, but at the same time I really kind of question what they were thinking. This one just rubs me the wrong way, so I'm going to be harsher on it than even you, Daniel. My personal short answer would be no, this is not a very good representation of what Medieval Folk Metal is, even though I haven't checked out too much of it just because there isn't much of it flying around. 

Medieval Folk Metal to me is just a distinction rather than a genre. It means that the kind of folk the band tends to use is Renaissance era instruments, melody, and performance ideas, meaning things like hurdy-gurdy, harpsichord, a very plucking oriented style of acoustic guitar, etc.. It's just a helpful tag to let the person know what kind of Folk Metal they're getting into, rather than its own genre with its own unique ideas, because from what I've heard there isn't exactly anything too exceptional apart from the instrument choice. You can say that the genre makes you "think of Medieval times", but that's so subjective that it's hardly worth pinning a genre on those feelings. 

As for an example of Medieval Folk Metal, I was personally impressed by last year's The Palms of Sorrowed Kings by Obsequiae, a primarily Atmospheric Black Metal album with beautiful Medieval style interludes and flourishes. It's absolutely a Black Metal album first and foremost, but they do a great job of carrying the atmosphere created by the Folk portions into the shimmering Black Metal tracks that it creates that "Medieval Times" atmosphere that I alluded to before. 

Also I'm curious Daniel, and this isn't meant to be a jab since I'm genuinely curious, are all folk melodies cheesy for people who don't care for Folk Metal? I ask because I saw a few comments about Nokturnal Mortum's Голос сталі saying it was the cheesiest thing they've ever heard, and I honestly don't get where they're coming from. It can get a bit over the top, sure, but I try not to instantly equate that to "cheesiness". 

2/5 (The more I listened and thought about this album the more it just rubbed me the completely wrong way with what it was trying to do)

I'm glad that I gave this EP a second chance as I bumped my score up a bit afterwards. I've checked out my fair share of modern and electronic focused Metalcore and personally I don't think this is anything particularly special. It's not egregiously bad, "Radiant" is the obvious highlight on here as "The Paddington Frisk" and "Rat Race" seem to just be experiments rather than anything polished. I think the mainstream Pop Rock influence is what rubs me the wrong way with "Radiant", with the constant "Woahs" going on in the background, but it's not all bad. The track is varied with Metalcore buildups, rewarding Trance/EDM elements and a pretty killer Metalcore riff here and there, with an "emotional" soft portion that actually doesn't sound half bad. 

Since I try to keep up with modern releases and there are quite a few Metalcore names that I constantly recognize and check out. Most of them are moving towards this very poppy modern Rock mixed with EDM influences kind of sound, so I'm personally worn out on it since it doesn't bring too many new or exciting things to the table for me. The final remix of "Radiant" was pretty nice, while it doesn't take any risks whatsoever that's kind of what Trance is all about, at least on the EDM side of things. Getting into a melody or rhythm and just kind of riding it until it decides to end. I think this album would have made more sense if I was ever an Enter Shikari fan, as from what I can gather this was a short return to form for them. Overall not the worst example of modern Pop Metalcore I've heard. 

2.5/5

I checked out Nepunian Maximalism last week and it's a journey. I'm going to have to give it another shot to see if it holds up to my initial reactions, which were really, really positive. This is such a unique album that anyone who keeps up with modern music shouldn't miss. 

Weighing Souls With Sand is a heavy album. Heavy in emotion, heavy in distortion, heavy in feel and style. Even though it feels like I'm echoing Daniel's exact thoughts here, it's definitely a one-trick album with a solid premise but not that much exploration. It appeals to a very niche audience that can milk its style for all its worth, finding some sort of deeper meaning and, in the process, evoking some sort of crushing primal emotion. I'm not one of those people either, so this record falls pretty flat after the first track. It's beautiful, it's certainly unique in the way that it uses abrasively loud distortion to layer in other sounds to create something admittedly beautiful, but it all just sounds the same after the first ten minutes. Even the more minimalist percussion sections get played out by the end, despite sounding amazingly echo-y and vast. This is just one of those albums where I can admit that I see why some think it's a masterpiece, but I certainly think it's overrated as well. 

3.5/5

That's a LOT of reviews man, I'll just come out and say it. As someone who does write reviews semi-frequently, my review style doesn't fit the bill for churning out 100 reviews in any reasonable amount of time, which is the current amount in order to achieve a 4th clan. Under your idea that would DOUBLE if someone wanted to be inducted into The North, which hardly seems fair and is way too daunting for others with review styles like mine. 

I think I agreed with your original point though, with certain subgenres needing a little bit more distinction and love somehow without getting too complicated. Daniel's Horde point makes sense for certain genres and Clans, like The Pit or The Guardians, but the biggest offenders for the way the subgenres are broken down are The Fallen and The North. The North especially. Black Metal has such a breadth of material and, more often than not, differs from Folk Metal so heavily that it's really not out of the question that a member of The North could be all about certain Folk Metal and not care for Black Metal. Forcing subgenres onto Clan members doesn't seem like the way to go. 

As long as the Clan Challenges list has challenges for all of the subgenres listed on the main Clans page, I don't really see the issue. 

Cult of Luna - Somewhere Along the Highway

Cult of Luna became one of my favorite bands with A Dawn To Fear in 2019 plus hearing songs here and there from Vertikal and Mariner, so I thought it was about time I went back in their discography to their popular 2006 release Somewhere Along the Highway and man was I disappointed. For me, this was an extremely boring and repetitive Post-Metal album that was a lot softer than I thought Cult of Luna would be. Not that soft automatically equates to bad, but there was almost no impact in this album for me whatsoever, I can't believe how overrated I think this album is. This doesn't even come close to A Dawn to Fear for my tastes.

Please add Aerial Ruin (US) as well as their 2020 split with Bell Witch, Stygian Bough Volume I. Thank you!

Please add Gravity (US), thank you!

Please add VoidCeremony, thank you!

Speaking of Cynic, I found a fairly obscure release that reminded me of them due to the bass tone and more complex Death Metal songwriting. It's absolutely not as progressive as Focus but I think it's still worth a listen as its a very unique one for 2020, it's a pretty short listen too. 

VoidCeremony - Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel

Insomnium - "Winter's Gate" (Is this cheating?)

Bell Witch - "Mirror Reaper" (I think this is cheating.)

Dream Theater - "A Change Of Seasons" (This is definitely cheating.)

Opeth - "Blackwater Park"

Blind Guardian - "Another Holy War"

Moonsorrow - "Pimeä"

Gojira - "Flying Whales"

In Flames - "The Jester Race"

Inter Arma - "Citadel"

Wilderun - "Far From Where Dreams Unfurl"

Favorite songs have always been impossible for me to personally nail down, but I figured I'd throw something in here anyway. 

You've forced my hand Daniel, Blackwater Park is my favorite album of all time and I've been too afraid to write a real review for it since it's sometimes difficult to put into words how important certain albums are. I've been a massive Opeth fan for quite some time now, even with their modern Progressive Rock style, and surprisingly no other album by them has dethroned Blackwater Park. I love Still Life, Ghost Reveries, Orchid, Deliverance, all of them, but Blackwater Park still sticks out to me as their most polished and interesting even after all these years. Expect a very, very long review by the end of the month. 

5/5 (the best)

What a strange album. I can safely say that I wasn't able to unpack most of this in one listen, but I think that would apply to most people. The Black Metal really took me off guard since I came into this album completely blind, and it's definitely hit or miss. The tremolo riffs still have that progressive edge to them, with the chord progressions being longer and more fleshed out than most Black Metal, but it's not necessarily groundbreaking. It definitely has a shock factor though, with the Black Metal not fully coming in until the end of "Den Saakaldte", a full 23 or so minutes into the album. There are teases of heavier Black Metal before that, but the band skirts around the influence and doesn't fully commit. 

Written In Waters really does have to be broken down piece by piece, since each transition offers something completely different than what came before it, and it's up to the listener to piece it all together. I've listened to a few influence-salad releases but none sound as alien as this one. The release date of 1995 is also impressive, putting this right smack in the middle of the more experimental wave of Black Metal, which makes a lot of sense looking back. On a first-listen basis though, this album failed to come together in any capacity for me, with the different tones they attempted to merge not making any sense whatsoever. The weaker Black Metal sections didn't hold up to the more progressive sections, and the progressive sections didn't fit together with the atmospheric or avant-garde sections. I'll have to take some time to really delve into this release if I want to re-score it. 

3/5

Although Falkenbach sounds extremely clean when it comes to Black Metal tinged Folk Metal, I found this one to be a pretty dull slog for the most part. There were definitely some standout sections, especially when the harsh vocals started coming into play, but I felt like a lot of similar riffs and ideas were overused throughout the album. Heralding hits its stride in the middle of the album with "Roman Land", "Heralder", and "Laekmishendr", but the rest of it has a very sluggish triplet or 6/8 feel that didn't really interest me. It's still a very pretty album with great dynamics on the folk elements, don't get me wrong, but I wish there was a bit more to it. I'll have to check out some more Falkenbach to see if any of their other stuff interests me, or maybe I need to come back to this one for another round. 

3/5

Well, this was horrendous for me. Let's break this down I guess:

Delusional Parasitosis

• "Ping snare", or open snare as I know it, was something new to me in this genre so it was initially somewhat exciting. 
• Drums are EXTREMELY high in the mix, I can't focus on anything else. 
• The vocal effects are atrocious. 
• Why are tracks 3 and 4 the exact same song? 

Ecchymosis

• Drums are thankfully less pronounced except for the kick.
• Vocals are even worse since they have this annoying warble to them. 
• Breakdowns and riffs are pretty awful and mostly unintelligible. 

Dissevered

• Vocals aren't that bad compared to Ecchymosis.
• Better guitar mixing, the riffs are actually interesting! 
• The open snare effect/gimmick is really starting to get old, even though it's less pronounced than Delusional Parasitosis.

Bleeding

• What even are these vocals, they sound like a half-formed flesh demon arising from steaming goo pits, to spin it positively. Or a squeaky door creaking open. 
• The guitar tone is much more grindy, at least it sounds different.
• The extra cymbals and percussion composition is much more interesting than the other 3 bands. 

Brutal/Slam Death Metal is just not for me and even though there were some distinct differences between this and something like Disembowlment, I can't find anything positive to say. So I'll just end it there. 

1/5

I've never been too much of a Gothic Metal fan, with most of it either trying way too hard to be serious or being generally uninteresting to me. That being said I really enjoyed October Rust; it shows that I have some holes in my knowledge of the genre and it's more or less what I'm looking for when the Gothic Metal tag shows up. It's a genuinely emotional record that does a great job of selling its somber atmosphere while only being a little bit silly here and there, which is offset slightly by the fact that the band is in on the joke to begin with. The singer has a fantastic voice for this style and really sells the style they're going for and the guitar is surprisingly percussive with how the tone sounds and how the riffs are set up. 

I've been enjoying this album even more the second time around, so I'll have to invest some more time to see if I can throw up an actual review at a later date. I do agree with Saxy's observation that each song appears to be cut short, which is a shame. i think the abrupt transitions work occasionally, like between "Green Man" and "Red Water (Christmas Mourning)", but I would have liked to hear many of these songs reach their logical conclusions rather than just end where they do. Incredible record that is extremely accessible and has become the cornerstone for the Gothic Metal sub-genre for me. 

4/5

I feel like you should check out the new Witches Hammer Daniel, they are a Canadian band formed in 1984 who reemerged to release their first full album here in 2020. Old school production, heavy as hell Thrash with some other extreme metal influences thrown in there. 

After writing out my review and listening to both Theli and Secret of the Runes many, many times as well as checking out Vovin (What happened there guys, god that was boring), I have to say I prefer Secret of the Runes even though it's very close. Theli is the classic Symphonic Metal experience with galloping riffs and bombastic strings, but Secret of the Runes really brings a progressive thematic element to Therion that I really enjoy. I love the premise behind this album of being about the nine realms of Norse Mythology and even though it can get repetitive I think the tracks are meant to share some similarities to really sell the theme. It's a totally unique Symphonic Metal album that, in my opinion, goes hand in hand with Theli to show how classical music influences can work extremely well with darker and more mysterious themes. 

I do like speedy Neoclassical and shredding albums quite a bit, but this one didn't live up to the hype. I think Macabre put it best when they said it was clunky, there's a flow that's missing and it makes everything not terribly exciting. I didn't dislike it, there were some great instrumental parts and certain choruses and vocals were nice, but it didn't leave any lasting impressions on me at all. It just made me want to go and listen to more energetic power metal with the same sort of shreddy-Neoclassical leanings. I wanted to write its apparent popularity off as it being an older classic, but this was released in 1989, well into the life cycle of Speed/Power Metal, and I can't say I like it near as much as all the other big names of the 80's.

3/5

Protest The Hero - Palimpsest

Protest The Hero are back with their first new album since 2013. I'm going to be putting quite a bit of time into this one, I like what I hear. I've really warmed up to Protest over the years, so this should be exciting.