Xephyr's Forum Replies

There are some strange picks that seem like pandering for clicks but at least the list is extremely varied. 

Rivers of Nihil seems to have a typo with the year, I wonder if they mean Where Owls Know My Name from 2018 or The Conscious Seed Of Light from 2013. Either or, they seem to be placed a BIT too high considering we're talking about an entire decade here. I loved Where Owls Know My Name, but it's definitely fallen off the more I listened to it. Power Trip being at #6 is an awesome inclusion, that album is fantastic.

Of all the metal subgenres I don't frequent, Industrial Metal is the easily the most wild-west-like one for me. I know absolutely zero about this genre apart from Rammstein. Much like a ton of others, I heard "Du Hast" when it became strangely popular in the mid and late 2000's over in the United States. I've explored much of Rammstein's discography since, but never went any farther. The only notable step into the Industrial genre I've taken is Author & Punisher's Beastland after watching a YouTube video showing how he created his mechanically engineered instruments and how his music is made. I thought it was extremely cool, checked out the album, enjoyed it, but it still didn't get me into Industrial Metal as a genre. 

Metalcore: Hoo boy. Good old Metalcore. Two of my best friends back in high school were HUGE Metalcore fans so I got to hear all about these bands and how they were coming to Warped Tour and how BRUTAL this breakdown was and yada yada. The biggest three that I remember from them were A Day To Remember, Chelsea Grin, and August Burns Red. There were many, many other, especially listening and laughing to the likes of Sleeping With Sirens and Atilla, but I was never converted over to the Metalcore side. The breakdowns were never interesting to me, the songwriting was samey and uninspired, and the vocals were filled some of the whiniest teenage angst I've ever heard. I even went to Warped Tour one year and the only bands I even remotely enjoyed were August Burns Red and Reel Big Fish. And one of those isn't even Metalcore. 

As for Melodic Metalcore and Trance, I can't say I've ever specifically looked for any. I've also never woken up in the morning feeling like I needed some pumping EDM beats in my metal. Apparently Amaranthe is Trance Metal, and they're passable? I guess? Everything else that I've listened to that I feel like would go into this genre has been complete garbage, so that's that I suppose. 

Thrash/Groove/Speed: All of these subgenres were nonexistent to me for a very long time. I never sought out Thrash Metal or was exposed to Pantera or Sepultura until much later. Through rhythm games, radio, and some friends I knew who Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth, and Metallica were, but I never listened to full albums or even deep cuts for years. I remember thinking "Raining Blood" and "Master of Puppets" were awesome songs, but it never went much further than that. The first Thrash band I remember being instantly attracted to was Megadeth after hearing Rust In Peace in its entirety, but that was well after being exposed to multiple other Thrash bands. 

Black and Folk Metal: When I started doing my radio show in college I finally branched out into the lesser known genres of metal and came across Dimu Borgir, which gave me my first look at Black Metal without really knowing what it was. I distinctly remember not enjoying Death Cult Armageddon whatsoever, plus it was too heavy to put on my radio show at the time, so I didn't put too much stock in Black Metal at first. 

A few months later, however, I came across Moonsorrow and their recently released album Jumalten aika and I was completely hooked. It was an entirely new experience and suited me more than Dimmu Borgir's style. Månegarm and Saor would come afterwards as my personal heavy hitters of Black/Folk metal. It took quite a while for me to delve into more classic Black Metal albums and bands, since I didn't start with the likes of Burzum or Bathory. I've absolutely come to appreciate those bands, especially Bathory, but my heart still lies in the Moonsorrow and Saor style of folky-atmospheric-black metal.

Viking Metal: Ensiferum's Victory Songs and From Afar got me into more traditional Viking Metal after hearing a few songs by them on a Twitch stream during college. I knew I had to put them on my radio show so I asked the guy what song he recommended, and he said "One More Magic Potion", which I played on-air the next weekend. I found Månegarm shortly after and haven't exactly sought out too much Viking Metal since. I just come across it here and there while going through Folk and Black metal releases. 

Progressive Metal: Since I was a huge Rush fan when I was younger, ITunes kept recommending me Dream Theater and I eventually cracked and downloaded some. It was the first time I had heard truly technical and expansive music played at that scale and skill level, and I loved every second of it. I listened to Octavarium, Change of Seasons, Metropolis Part 2, and Images and Words for a very, very long time, with tracks like "Dance of Eternity" making my jaw drop every time I heard it.

Sadly I can't say I enjoy Dream Theater that much anymore, I've definitely grown out of it and found other Progressive Metal bands I enjoy much more, but I can't deny that their old stuff is still fantastic. I'm sure that DT has been a huge influence on many more people besides me when it comes to The Infinite's genres. 

I didn't have any notable experiences with Avant-Garde or Post-Metal until very recently, so sadly I can't say too much on those. 

Heavy Metal: This is a difficult one since most of my scattered listening when I was younger was either through video games or classic rock radio. Iron Maiden attracted me the most and I had a few songs by them including "Number of the Beast", "The Trooper", and "Hallowed Be Thy Name" that I remember having on repeat for quite a while. Everything else in terms of classic heavy metal came after them I believe. 

Neoclassical Metal: Rhapsody/Rhapsody of Fire through rhythm games. I remember playing "Black Dragon" and "Ancient Forest of Elves" on Stepmania and thinking the songs sounded hilariously fun and super technical. It would be a very long time until I listened to a full album by them though. I actually listened to Luca Turilli's King of the Nordic Twilight way more than any of Rhapsody's albums when I was younger.

Power Metal: Without a doubt this was Avantasia's The Scarecrow. The song "The Scarecrow" absolutely blew my mind as to what heavy music could actually sound like. I've been a pretty avid Power Metal fan since. This might be classified as more Symphonic than Power Metal, but I'm gonna count it.

Symphonic Metal: Nightwish's The Poet and the Pendulum album was another massively important album for what I would come to enjoy in metal. Since I started without Tarja I never got as attached to the "Old Nightwish" as other fans did, and looking back that was for the better, since I still really enjoy the band as a whole. Symphonic Metal as well as Power Metal would really captivate me for years to come, even though good Symphonic Metal bands are hard to come by sometimes. 

Opeth's Blackwater Park was the album that threw a wrench in my listening habits and eventually got me to appreciate harsh vocals. While Opeth was hardly "true Death Metal", something I would learn later, going through Blackwater Park, Ghost Reveries, and Watershed was an exciting time for me. 

My first true test of Death Metal was with The Faceless. I downloaded Planetary Duality and thought it was laughable and, at the time, never wanted to listen to anything like it ever again. It took me quite a while to warm up to the super heavy stuff. 

Eventually I found Gojira, In Flames, and Fallujah's Dreamless, which would give me a niche of Death Metal that I really enjoyed. 

If it wasn't already apparent, I've never been a fan of anything with "Grind" in the genre name. Cattle Decapitation's The Anthropocene Extinction was my first big leap into the brutal stuff and while I didn't think it was too bad it didn't click with me. 

I've come a long way in terms of stomaching the many Death Metal sub-genres, but it's still the genre where I draw the most lines in the sand for what I'll immediately like or dislike. 

Definitely Tool. I heard about them through word of mouth and picked up Lateralus, Undertow, Ænima, and eventually 10,000 Days at my local FYE (music and movie store) to play in my car. 

Doom Metal: With continuing the trend of not counting Sabbath, the first Doom album I sought out to specifically check out the genre was Esoteric's Epistemological Despondency, and I remember not liking it all that much. It was an hour and a half of boredom as I worked on an assignment in the library at college. What ended up converting me was Mirror Reaper from Bell Witch. That album still stands as one of my favorite of all time and made me appreciate Doom and Funeral Doom much more. Pallbearer's Heartless was another one that gave me an appreciation for the more classic style of Doom Metal. 

Drone Metal: I've never been a fan of the Drone style, so I never sought it out. I did get a recommendation from a guy for The Angelic Process, so I checked out Weighing Souls With Sand, which is apparently a pretty massive release for the genre. While I understand the appeal and enjoyed the experience, I doubt I'll be returning to Drone too often. 

Gothic Metal: It took me a while to remember this, but it was Lacuna Coil's Comalies that was a big part of my early listening rotation on the way to school. And it's still the only Lacuna Coil album I actually like. 

Sludge Metal: Mastodon and Ghost Brigade were my two favorites. I remember thinking I hated Mastodon after hearing "Colony of Birchmen" and the Leviathan album, and my turning point was hearing Once More 'Round the Sun. Obviously I enjoy Leviathan much more now, but it took a while. 

Stoner Metal: Kyuss - Welcome to Sky Valley. I remember finding this on Itunes and blasted it on my good old Ipod Nano on the bus to school. I don't know how it came up in my Itunes recommended, but man am I glad it did. Such a good album. 

A Pale Horse Named Death

Quercus

Seer

Shroud Eater

Siberian

Vanha

The Vision Bleak

Yatra

Kuolemanlaakso

That's it for my Fallen stuff, thanks in advance!

Exposing my average ratings on classic Slayer/Bathory, I see how it is. 

Looks great, way more useful info at a glance. Awesome that you got this added so quickly!

Cân Bardd

Harakiri for the Sky 

Nocturnal Graves (2018 release)

Pillorian

Rosk

Skálmöld

Sojourner

Sons of Crom

Stormlord

Svartsyn

Thank you!

They've apparently been "working" on this since the Nightfall in Middle-Earth days (1998), so hopefully it's good! The single "Point of No Return" is out and it sounds good but not great? I wish it was a bit more dynamic, everything feels super loud, but maybe that's the YouTube quality talking. 

Speaking of latest replies, in your profile page under "Forum Replies" there's no such option to jump to your post or the latest post. All the things you can click on takes you to the original post. 

Final round for Infinite Requests:

Beyond the Bridge

Igorrr

Imminent Sonic Destruction

Kaura

The Ocean (aka The Ocean Collective)

Oceans of Slumber

Tronos

With Our Arms to the Sun

Man, remember when Sonata Arctica were somewhat good? Well the decline continues with their newest one Talviyö, which just dropped today. This is the most dead this band has ever sounded and some of the songwriting is almost laughable. I don't think Sonata Arctica are coming back at this point, they've worn themselves out. 

This may seem random, but you guys heard of the MMORPG RuneScape? I've circled all the different locations in the RuneScape map to fit them in their appropriate Metal Academy clans. I call it, "MetalScape" or "RuneScape locations and their Metal Academy clans"! What do you guys think?

The Fallen = Morytania

The Gateway = Tirannwn and the Lost Grove

The Guardians = Asgarnia

The Horde = Wilderness

The Infinite = Kandarin and Entrana

The North = Troll Country, Fremennik Province, Northern Islands, and Daemonheim

The Pit = Feldip Hills and Soul Wars

The Revolution = Misthalin

The Sphere = Kharidian Desert, Mos Le'Harmless and Harmony Island

The Others = Southern Islands and Dragontooth Island

Man this brings back some memories. I was a big RS player way back when. This seems pretty good from what I can remember! I'd maybe rope Lunar Isle into The Infinite? Possibly Seers into The Sphere due to the Elemental Workshop? The first part of Karamja into The Pit because of the Tz'Haar? It's insane that I even remember half of this stuff lol

One nitpick I've found is that avatar shapes aren't consistent throughout the site. They show up as circles on album pages for reviews or ratings, but squares everywhere else. It might make sense to go for all circles since the clan icons are already circular. 

I think the big thing is adding more features to the user's profile. Right now there's no way to properly navigate through your own data. I can't search mine or anyone else's ratings to see if they rated/reviewed something, I can't see any data on how many ratings/reviews I have per clan, or even what my rating distribution is. I do want this site to have a fresh take on some features rather than copying everything over from RYM, but the ability to interact more with your own or other peoples' collections of ratings is a must. 

Just as an example, if I looked into some of your reviews it seems like you're way more into Death Metal than I am. If I was on RYM, I could go to your page, click the "5 Stars" button and see what Death Metal albums you rated as 5's to see what I might want to check out if I'm new to the genre. On this site, I would have to go through every single one of your ratings in chronological order with no way of sorting. The clan tags for albums don't show up in user profile ratings/reviews either, so I would have to know that Morbid Angel is a Death Metal band if that's what I was searching your ratings/reviews for. 

If I had to make a wishlist it would probably be: 

• Ability to search by own ratings/reviews
• Ability to sort my own ratings/reviews by clan
• Ability to see clan tags on my ratings/reviews in my/others profile. 
• Possibly rating distribution graphs or another way to show how many albums you've rated or on a clan-by-clan basis

These missing features are what keep me going back to RYM to look at my own profile and rating collection instead of here. 

Cellar Darling

Chaos Divine

Eumeria

Intervals

Pomegranate Tiger

Votum

Witherfall

Xanthochroid 

Thank you!

Thanks man. I'm still in the process of moving and rewriting old RYM reviews over so the quality is all over the place. I don't have too many but it's a start. 

Last round, then I'm all caught up on my Guardians requests! 

Kryptos

Lords of Black 

Lyra's Legacy 

Niviane

Riot V

Syu

Turilli / Lione Rhapsody 

Unshine

Turilli / Lione Rhapsody - Zero Gravity (Rebirth and Revolution)

Luca Turilli (Guitarist for the original Rhapsody) and Fabio Lione (Vocalist for the original Rhapsody) are back together for a release under the Rhapsody subtitle that is actually worth listening to after many blunders from Luca Turilli's Rhapsody and Rhapsody of Fire. Everything you would want from a Rhapsody release is in here, and it's great to hear these two back together doing what they do best with their grand, fantastical, and more classical style of Symphonic Metal. 

I really wish that Turilli would give the word "Rhapsody" a rest moving forward with all of these projects. Trying to unravel the story behind the Rhapsody name is getting harder and harder and Turilli just keeps adding random projects to the Rhapsody name, which I think is going to hurt this album in particular in the long run. Who is going to find this album other than current Rhapsody or Turilli fans with a name like Turilli / Lione Rhapsody? It's currently seems like it's not getting a whole lot of traction but I'm interested to see how it shakes out, given how good it is. 

Thank you, here's another round: 

Frozen Crown

Katana

Kobra and the Lotus

Leaves' Eyes

Lyriel

Skull Fist

Smoulder

Tanith

Unleash The Archers

Xandria

I'll be doing the same as DippoMagoo, here's the first wave of bands that were missing as I was moving my ratings over: 

Avantasia

       -  Wicked Symphony

        - Angel of Babylon

Damnation Angels

Delain

DGM

Dionysus

Dragony 

Ex Deo 

Icarus Witch 

Iron Fire 

Iron Savior 

Jorn (Solo Albums)