Morpheus Kitami's Forum Replies

Sounds kind of psychedelic to my not very psychedelic ears, so I'm going to go with the probably specifically wrong, but broadly correct psychedelic rock with heavy metal as a secondary.

I uh...don't really know. Metal, certainly, but I'm going to go with a lazy but safe doom metal.

This one clearly needs no discussion because it's...soft rock. Clearly soft rock and not doom metal. ;p

EDIT: As I either missed Andy's post or he posted it just before I posted mine, there was some reason on my part to be sarcastic.

While working on my goth metal chart, I'm also gonna be working on my goth rock chart.  I've only heard about 45 albums for each genre, and practically no deathrock, so now's as good a time as any to get through some Christian Death albums.  Thing is, I find them overhyped.  Most of their songs sound the same, and I don't like how the singer limits himself to only one style of half-talk half-sing crooning.  The first two albums were pretty good, but Ashes is getting a bit boring in comparison.  Shame, I was looking forward to that "dark cabaret" influence RYM tagged it with.  Obviously, Tom Waits does it better.

Christian Death is a really weird band because arguably most of their career has basically just been living up to the fame of their first three albums, even just the first, for however long they've been going on, and barely anyone on those albums was still around even in the '90s IIRC. Considering how long they've been at it, you'd think more of their albums would have something interesting. The other long-lived goth band I can think of, Inkubus Sukkubus, even if they don't set the world on fire, at least make one song that's interesting per album.

If you're still listening to goth rock, might I suggest Human Drama and Autumn?

"Hard Lovin' Man" has a galloping triplet groove, which is close to metal ("The Trooper", "Raining Blood", etc.), but Heart's "Barracuda" uses it too; it isn't exclusive. 

I would suggest that "Barracuda" is an example of a rock band utilizing a metal tool. I don't think it means that palm-muted, bottom-string triplets should automatically be added to the rock kit bag just because a rock band is using it as a one-off creative tool.

I will note that I've seen people describe that track (and just that track from them) as metal before.

As to the next album, I kind of want to see Lucifer's Friend and I kind of don't. It's sort of weaseled itself into any conversation about early heavy metal and it feels like even if I don't think it's metal, it should still be discussed. Just the debut, since I don't think any of the later albums are much in the running AFAIK.

(I don't have any thoughts on Planet Caravan beyond not metal)

It's from their 2019 album, Thirteen.

What if Mercyful Fate were Brazillian and Christian? Its uncanny hearing Dark Night because of how exactly it nails that sound, right down to vocalist Roberto Castro's perfect imitation of King Diamond falsetto and clean vocals. It comes off as the good version of the band from some mirror universe or another.
While there are those obvious Mercyful Fate influences, it's not quite as strong as the rest of the music. Dark Night tries to maintain some of the dynamicism, they lack the prog influences. They try to make up for this with sheer aggression. It does work, but between the noticeably different songwriting and the cheap-sounding midi keyboard, it's an odd effect. As three members of the band are also in a few death and black metal bands, this explains the vast change.
There's this Doom-esque usage of lyrics, which seems unintentional, where the lyrics are repeated like some kind of strange pattern, less like conveying something to the listener and more surrealistic insanity. So called because the Japanese band Doom used this almost constantly in their songs. I'm not so sure that's intentional here as much as accidental. More like they took 9's overuse of choruses to it's logical extent, add in songs with lyrics that often sound similar to one from King Diamond, and they accidentally created some fever dream of music.
Despite their problems, I found myself enjoying the album. Most of it, anyway. Gotta say the last track, In the Dark Side so strange and questionable on so many levels it boggles belief. It starts with a bizarre intro reminding me of Scarborough Fair, before alternating between out of place blast beats and then a musical cover of Temple of Love by Sisters of Mercy. No part of which is done competently. It'd be a demo track if it weren't as high quality a production as everything else.
This is very much just an album for people who feel disappointed in the lack of new material from King Diamond or just want such an album that isn't childishly edgy. If you're satisfied with what exists or didn't care for their inspiration, you'll hardly find much worth listening to here. Unless you always felt sheer aggression was what was lacking.

3.5/5

Btw, did you know this was intended to be a filler track and was recorded in 20 minutes?

Isn't that one of the most famous bits of metal trivia? Like the various bits of black metal infamy and how And Justice for All has no bass as a joke?

Something that might not be as common. The cover art was picked back when the title was still supposed to be War Pigs, and that's supposed to be a war pig. The band felt the cover didn't fit the new title, with Ozzy going as far as to say it now looked like "a gay fencer", with Bill Ward replying, "a paranoid gay fencer."

No real differences of opinion on the last three songs. Stoner metal sounds like an interesting way to describe War Pigs, but it fits. I thought ahead of time I would have disagreed on Paranoid, since my memory was more hard rock than metal, but yeah, metal.

In Rock was always going to be controversial, since in the end even if some of us think it's metal, it's also one of those albums your dad thinks is metal. I bring that up not because I think anyone said no because of it, merely that it's the kind of aura that hangs around an album like this one. I'm curious if that kind of aura is still going to show up when we do Lucifer's Friend or, I guess Bow Wow?

Side note, Daniel, do you have a plan should Youtube do to embeds what it's doing to stuff on the main site?

How about October Noir - Burn?

I don't know how much influence it had on the sound overall, but Twilight Project's EP is very much an early example of power metal.

Yeah, there's no question that Living Wreck's hard rock.

I don't disagree on Child in Time, it wouldn't be out of place on a metal record, but it's not necessarily a metal song. Gets a bit metal in places, but mostly just prog rock.

Flight of the Rat sounds borderline to me. It's got a nice amount of aggression and the pre-chorus (or perhaps pre-verse) riff is metal, but the rest is distinctly rock. A mix.

Into the Fire sounds like a KISS song, but one of their metal ones. I didn't think this one would be so controversial. Rock/metal.

I'll go with the grain and say hard rock/heavy metal.

This exercise was interesting, because were this any other band, I'd think right now we'd say this is hard rock. This album, outside of the first song, really dances around genre. But, because it's Black Sabbath, we're trying to find ways to justify it back onto metal. (not accusing anyone of anything I'm not doing myself)

I actually remained completely impartial throughout the exercise & tagged each song as I would a release from an anonymous modern-day band. I have no skin in the game as such as there are several other Black Sabbath releases that I don't believe to qualify as metal (see "Technical Ecstasy", "Never Say Die!" & "Seventh Star"). I was just looking for a unanimous site position on the matter so that everyone was comfortable with the direction.

I would point out that believing the other three not being metal doesn't necessarily affect one's thoughts on this one. Those three are not very fondly looked and are not important, so to speak. This one is, and that 40% rule is not a luxury that would be afforded to many albums.

Anyway, Speed King. Metal. I don't think in this case the techniques it lacks disqualifies it. The energy and riffs are very much metal.

I agree that this would fall into a category of hard rock/metal. Not the biggest listener of stoner, so I won't comment on that either way.

This exercise was interesting, because were this any other band, I'd think right now we'd say this is hard rock. This album, outside of the first song, really dances around genre. But, because it's Black Sabbath, we're trying to find ways to justify it back onto metal. (not accusing anyone of anything I'm not doing myself) Between the songs agreed to be metal and the non-metal songs with metal bits, we have enough, but it is interesting how close things got.

I think this one's not really metal, pure blues rock with some hard rock bits. Akin to one of Zeppelin's long songs, nice, but not really metal.

Outside of the intro, it's more rockish than metal. The metal bits don't quite seem heavy.

Wouldn't the traditional doom metal tag cover the 1:40 of heavy metal & psychedelia at the end of "Black Sabbath" given that it's essentially a diluted form of doom?

Eh, I'm not quite sure, since that does sound quite different to what I think of as psych.

Also, Jesus, Evil Woman sounds completely out of place, no wonder they removed it from the US release. That song would be on the soft side on a KISS album. Maybe just barely edging into hard rock.

Sorry, I was busy the past couple of days and didn't have much time for on-line stuff.

I think we're all agreed on the first 4 minutes of Black Sabbath, but I'd say the last two lean into heavy metal.

The Wizard, eh, I think you could say it's leaning between hard rock and heavy metal. Yeah, some Zeppelin sounds like it, but arguably those tracks are borderline too. Guitar tone is also an important factor and Sabbath's heavier tone carries it a bit into metal for me.

Behind the Wall of Sleep, hard rock/prog. I could see Van Der Graaf Generator or someone similar making a song like this.

N.I.B., heavy psych/metal, possibly even just heavy psych. The only part of this song that feels unambiguously metal to be is the first solo. The intro is pure psychedelic rock and the verses just feel like a metalified version of those.

I wanted to like this album, there's basically no reason for me to not like this album. I like NWOTHM bands, and I like the sort of epic concept they've got going here. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it...but there's nothing I actually like about it. Nothing that I could call in any way, bad. It just found a way not to appeal to me.

I did notice a funny comparison though. The mystical and dark lyrics along with the heavily electronic voice effects on the lead singer made me think of Idle Hands/Unto Others. But whereas Idle Hands has some very cringey lows and some very amazing highs, this just sort of didn't make that same mark that Idle Hands did.

3/5

In Rock definitely deserves some talk. It very definitely has a metal sound to it, but because they're more of a hard rock band overall, that tends to get dismissed. It has an unusual sound, but hey, so does Black Sabbath's debut.

Lucifer's Friend's debut is cited as an example sometimes, but outside of their song Ride the Sky I don't really see it. It should probably be added for completionist's sake if nothing else. Looking at my list of chronological metal albums from M-A, I see Buffalo, Night Sun, Tarkus and Bang. No idea about any of those yet, I haven't been listening to much this past month because I got sick.

As to the demo question, I'd just like to point out that even back in the day, you had some bands like Hellhammer who never released an actual album who were more well known than those who did.

Most of the really good artists don't seem to do much in the way of album art. Boris Vallejo, Frank Frazetta, Ken Kelly and Giger don't really have many cover art credits and most of them seem to be in eastern Europe for some strange, unfathomable reason.

That said, Necrolord? He's one of the first people to come to mind who do metal covers, outside of maybe Repka, and his work isn't just "old man screaming as weird shit happens".

You've listed some of the best artists from the 70s and 80s, all of whom I have collected volumes of their work. Vallejo is the only one that's still alive (he's 82), so it's not surprising they never created metal cover intended artwork. That said, Giger's work appears on a lot of albums, including Celtic Frost, Danzig, Atrocity, Sacrosanct, and even Carcass' Heartwork.

I hope you didn't spend too much on Giger's books, last time I checked those were a tad overpriced. Or maybe not, since I don't really know how much "real" art books go for. It's mostly just Heavy Metal (the magazine) and the occasional weeb book I pay attention to. But I note that you actually did mention everything metal Giger worked on, outside of Triptykon. I think that's maybe 10-15 albums in total?

And yes, Rex, that Heartwork cover feels kind of lame. I think it's some kind of weird sculpture. It's funny because unlike a lot of artists he was actually a pretty good sculptor by all accounts. I think the lead singer of Korn has a Giger made microphone stand and it looks pretty great. The one he did on the Heartwork cover just looks like it half-finished.

Most of the really good artists don't seem to do much in the way of album art. Boris Vallejo, Frank Frazetta, Ken Kelly and Giger don't really have many cover art credits and most of them seem to be in eastern Europe for some strange, unfathomable reason.

That said, Necrolord? He's one of the first people to come to mind who do metal covers, outside of maybe Repka, and his work isn't just "old man screaming as weird shit happens".

Yeah, it's always perplexed me that people don't care for it since it's a great piece of Fates Warning-inspired prog metal. Guess it's just because it's not quite the sound they would become.

I don't mind a good article or interview but (as you allude to Daniel) with barely enough time to keep on top of playlists and feature releases, not sure where the time to do engage on this would come from.  I think we are skirting around the elephant in the room in that forums in general are a dying artform - now that's not to say we should let them die - so with all the best will in the world, as forums continue to shutdown (MetalFi being one I am more recently aware of) there will only ever be small numbers of members of these niche communities looking for a new home.  In my experience this means about four or five regulars becoming new members somewhere else when forced to do so. I just do not buy into this notion that there is any halfway substantial quantity of people out there waiting to join a metal forum/site.  Not trying to sound negative, just being honest.

To pick up on Sonny's point about resources, I only use any website as one of many resources if I am researching anything, just to make sure I get consistent information usually.  So I don't personally feel there is any hinderance here on MA from a resource perspective.

I sort of covered that by mentioning lurkers, but I guess not enough.

The problem, it seems even moreso with the modern internet is that people tend to just look at content rather than make their own. (in this context, forum posts and reviews) They'll read, they might even rate things, but they'll only rarely post, and only if something really ticks them off. Look but don't touch, as it were.

Even Discord seems to have this problem in my experience, there's the illusion of more people, but most of the time you have a very small group of people with seemingly no life outside of Discord on every server, and you're practically intruding on someone else's private conversations by joining in. (no, seriously, every server I've seen seems to have a problem of TMI)

I'd note that popular sites on the internet seem to only exist because in spite of the fact that everyone who uses them seems to hate them, they're also the only places people are. From my limited understanding of the way things happen, you just need to have a good enough site to theoretically replace one that already exists whenever that one does something that makes everyone on that website pack up and leave, and that they have a path to yours. But on the other hand, seeing as how most of the places that would be the source of that exodus seem to have a not particularly positive userbase, that exodus seems like it would only ever really happen if one of those websites went kaput. Which isn't getting into how most people are lurkers and not contributors, so to speak. (in terms of using the site much and not just reading stuff)

(but I admit, I'm only talking about ones I know that Ben has mentioned)

I'm pretty sure if Ben was just interested in popularity he'd add a Discord or something. Even though those inevitably seem to attract drama by the boatload.

Also, don't feel too bad about not getting too many people in your reviewer's club, Rex, after all, there are feature releases that just have one rating.

Hi Ben, could you add the Brazilian band Dark Night?

Deep Purple - In Rock

Now we get to Deep Purple with Ian Gillian, the vocalist that's all anyone knows. Where Deep Purple is usually considered to be a metal band. I don't know about other albums, but this ones strikes me as something metal enough to get a metal/hard rock label so many lesser bands end up with. A lot of bands wish they had the energy these guys have. This isn't like a lot of their radio hits where it feels like a lot of the band is phoning it in. I don't think this would be nearly as controversial if it weren't for the band's status as more of a classic rock band.
The weirdest thing about this album to me is how good Ian Gillian sounds to me. I've hear a lot of stuff on the radio and despite what you might think, I kind of loathe hearing Deep Purple. There's a very phoned in quality to his voice. Like some exaggerated method of how a "rocker" should sound; barely following along and barely singing in tune.
Which makes it feel strange that the whole album has more of a rawer quality than I'd expect. And there's this weird contrast between epic organ intros and solos with the raw regular stuff. Practically like two different albums at some points. I suspect a lot of people were influenced by the harsh jump between the intro and the first time Gillian opens his mouth on Speed King. This all implies it doesn't work, but it does. Certainly, the songs which maintain a more consistent tone like Flight of the Rat or radio favorite Child in Time are better, the more varied ones still feel connected despite their deep contrast.
I liked this one. We'll see how the band does in the future because a lot of those albums are kind of meh and not really metal.
4/5

Could we get Cultic, the doom/death band from the US? Both albums and the EP, please.

Before I realized this was Darkthrone, I at first assumed this was some weird-ass Venom-style black/speed outfit, then a This is Spinal Tap-style parody of black metal. That's the kind of album cover a parody band would use. Then I noticed the band name.
Well, like politics, black metal is impossible to lampoon.
This is a very weird album. Were atmospheric black metal not taken for stuff like The Summoning, this feels like it would fit that name well. Black metal production and techniques used at a much slower pace. Where tremolo picking would be used, one single note is used instead. This makes it very noticeable when the album does use tremolo picking. At no point does the drumming go above a walking pace. The growling has an almost ethereal quality to it, unlike any kind I've heard before.
The writing is kind of bland. It seems aimless, possibly by intention. It starts off okay, with the kind of atmosphere you'd expect, but then we get the first solo of the album. I don't know who played it, but it's not good. A half-hearted attempt at regaining the kvlt faction, perhaps with it's strange aggressiveness. Then after another long verse, close enough in sound to the first as to make no difference, there's another solo, closer in tone to what you'd expect, but at this point feels meandering. The song finally ends with what can only be described as a very slow series of tremolos. While the album has more interesting songs on it, like Impeccable Caverns of Satan, most seem to follow this template.
I found this didn't really appeal to me, much in the same reason a lot of melodeath doesn't. If you're going to combine extreme metal with heavy or power metal, it's better to do something like Satan's Host where far less hostile sounding music with clean vocals gets hostile sounding music. Mundane sounding music makes growly vocals goofy.

3/5

I did try to make a review of the Crimson Glory album in time, but alas, it turns out I'm not terribly good as describing an album I love as much as their debut in that little time.

Here's my review:

You have to admire the balls of a band to straight up just go for what kind of music they're going to go, no build-up of any possible confusion. Deep breath, then out comes the J-pop-esque singress of which I'm sure many reviews would describe as nails on a blackboard and full power metal sound. Sort of Nightwish, but with the keyboardist as the unquestionably second most important part of the sound.
It honestly should be something I hate, because this kind of saccharine power metal isn't my speed. Maybe it's the combination of overtly cutsy vocals and happy nostalgic, ethereal synths that work where a normal combo wouldn't. At least that's how I interpret it. I've heard some synth lines used here that I suspect it's some kind of Japanese folk song that landed outside of the Land of the Rising Sun with all the meaningful impact of a jelly donut.
The drums sound quite strange, not in a good way. For some reason it sounds like a real drum kit somehow altered to sound like something out of an Adlib sound card. It doesn't always sound like that. and there is an actual drummer here, but I just have to wonder if the keyboard player didn't do some of these. A lot of the synths sound straight off a PSX, which is funny because I'm pretty sure that's a real piano.
Which does get away from how the band is pretty good at constructing a song. There are bands who wish they could do as much in one album that these guys do in one song. Just not necessarily in a metal way, singer guitarist and keyboardist in perfect harmony.
If I were to nitpick, Rain, which is a genuinely nice song except for the parts she's trying to be Tarja Turunen. She's genuinely trying, but she just can't do it right. Far too high for her voice. There are also a lot of songs with weird-sounding backing singers. It's a bit too varied at times practically half the songs are some kind of ballad.
Unlike the band's hairstyles, Tales of Almanac is and timeless and unique piece of power metal, and well worth a listen.

4.5/5

Frankly, if they're letting you go while the work still needs to be done, it's a blessing in disguise. Better to get out with a nice bonus then get out because they're planning on making you commit karoshi. Companies with a habit of cutting their better employees have a nasty habit of becoming awful places to work.

Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion (1985)

I don't understand how Warrior, having been good friends with the late great H.R. Giger, somehow managed to get his worst painting as the interior and second worst as the exterior. He'd have been better off with that weird cat drawing. It's just so goofy, as Giger's artwork doesn't work here outside of pure shock value, of which there is none in 2023. It's like saying you're pro-Napoleon, nobody cares.
To Mega Therion is a very weird album, unique in sound and spirit. For instance, The Usurper is on a surface level just a fairly typical proto-black metal song. Yet, beyond that surface it's structured like a new wave song, has a triumphant feeling that black metal rarely captures. Yet, despite nominally being thrash, it feels unlike any real thrash song it's hard to believe it's part of the genre.
Now of course there are the straightforward bits. That aggressive, even in the slow bits, guitar creating the kind of atmosphere that would be every black metallers dream. Despite an arguable lack of talent, Smoothly gliding to where it needs to be, only stopping when a stop is absolutely needed. Even solos that should rightly be absolutely terrible, work. Beyond the North Winds is basically the bare minimum of what a solo is, yet works incredibly in the context of the song.
Vocalist Tom G. Warrior is also something that shouldn't work, because he has a voice that brings to mind Sylvester Stallone; a voice that could never be confused for something harmonious and lovely. The mystical lyrics that are pretty interesting just come out as gibberish, sometimes even falestto gibberish. Still, as that comparison implies, there's a charm to him, and his little grunts he does. Something so distinct that it only works for him, and everyone else using it is so obviously imitating him as to be hard to take seriously.
It's mind-boggling that an album that seems to be so completely amateurish and devoid of any qualities that should be positive is as good as it is. Yet, I and many others think of this very fondly, and sometimes it even transcends it's niche as one of the first black metal albums.

5/5

There's this stereotype in my head of Sodom whose playing style is to fire off a bunch of dark songs machine gun-style. This worked well in the '80s and the early '90s, but then the rest of the '90s happened and unless you were playing to 5 people in Hungary, you stopped playing thrash. Sodom were not a band who could do anything but thrash well, and thus everyone pretends that the '90s never happened. M-16 is a return to form for all those people who missed Code Red.
Modern production does Sodom no favors, I've gotten a couple of headaches while listening to this album. It's not the worst such album, but the guy's voice along with the guitar tone and the driving sound of the drums does not make for a good mix. Which is funny, because the obvious comparison is to the soundtrack of Doom. It basically sounds like a hi-res version of those classic midis. A nice, dark sound that should be punctuated by the rhythmatic sound of a shotgun blasting away hundreds of pinkies.
So, the album lives or dies by the quality of the riffs. It's not terrible by any means, but it isn't exciting either. None of these songs are memorable, and if played in isolation, one would assume it was a nice imitator of Sodom rather than the real deal. Perhaps it is that nice in context bit that makes Sodom Sodom, and I just never noticed it until now.
I do find the choice to end the album on the incredibly annoying Bird is the Word annoying. Why a completely serious band would all of a sudden include a novelty song on one of their albums is beyond me.

3/5

I have to admit until I saw that the band was Darkthrone I assumed someone picked out a black metal parody album. Just close enough to feel like an actual black metal album, just goofy enough to feel like a Spinal Tap-esque parody cover.

My favorite last time I listened to it is Hell - Curse and Chapter, while something that reflects more of what I listen to is Doom - Human Noise. Well-crafted technical, often veering into controlled chaos is more my forte than something that's just a perfectly crafted album of metal.

Hi Ben, could you kindly add Dark Mirror ov Tragedy?

Mustaine got kicked out of Metallica because of his drinking. (well, more his attitude when drunk, because everyone was drunk in Metallica...they even had a documentary covering it IIRC) It now occurs to me that the only band of the big four to not be raging alcoholics at one point is Slayer, unless there's some bit of gossip I missed...

Anyway, seeing as I recently relistened to Anthrax myself, I'd say they're the kind of band that you either think work or not. They lack the technicality of even Metallica, the aggression of a Slayer or Kreator, yet they're not quite pure thrash nor are they mixed [with another genre] well. They're just sort of vaguely thrash, just sort of there. Hence why they're frequently the punching bag of the big four.

Wouldn't this kind of just be a weirder feature of the month thing?  I don't know if I'd be much into this since I don't seem to be able to do much beyond about an album review a week anyway and certain clans are only very rarely interesting to me.

Lucifer's Friend - Lucifer's Friend

I remember reading at the time this band got on M-A that there was a big debate beforehand, before eventually deciding to do it. I'm not really sure why, to be honest. Ride the Sky is why everyone argues that these guys are metal, and honestly, it doesn't really feel metal. Sure, a lot of symphonic metal bands could stand to learn a lesson from Lucifer's Friend, but that doesn't necessarily mean the song is metal.
It's a very nice album, but it's very clearly a Deep Purple-esque hard rock album. It's all pretty nice, but not exactly metal. Let's pick on Toxic Shadows, the longest track on the album. Nice, bluesy rock, but nothing more.

Kind of surprised this one's considered death/doom metal, for my money it was mostly death metal. That's not an insult, just an observation after hearing an album in which songs are constantly fast and aggressive, with doom being limited to maybe a few short sections. It's resoundingly okay otherwise.

Following up the first of many Scottish albums, Knights of the Cross is about the Crusades. Kind of, because Grave Digger manages to sneak in a reference to Scotland again. It's not the most accurate portrayal of the conflicts, but that's not surprising. It's rather heavy towards the post-war inquisition stuff which suggests to me they originally thought they would make something about that.
Knights is a broadly typical Grave Digger album. Aggressive power metal. Definitely not like your Sonata Arcticas and Rhapsodys, but still distinctly within the realm of power metal. On the whole not quite typical. There are riffs under the vocal lines and sometimes you can hear the bassist! While there are your typical power metal material lying around, Grave Digger primarily does either very heavy stuff or very moody, not really ballad type of stuff.
Chris Boltendahl has a very distinct, hard to get used to vocal style. At first you have a very gruff, 10 pack a day vocal style, which aren't really growls, and sort of defy comparisons. On the other, you have a very clean, very melodic style which one would be surprised came from the same person. Boltendahl doesn't really do much of the latter here, at best doing a quiet version of his usual shtick. Choruses are often done in a very thrashy shout style.
The problem with how Knights of the Cross does this is that it kind of flows awkwardly. Grave Digger has this really unfortunate habit of having two songs on an album that sound very samey, here, Monks of War is that to the title track, and they're the first two tracks. Followed by Heroes of this Time, which isn't a great song to begin with, it has a very awkward transition between the verses and the chorus, but worst of all, Monks of War uses "Heroes of this Time" as one of it's lyrics. Could we not have had, instead, say, a song about some minor Muslim commander whom even the Christians respected instead of one of these two? After all he was one of the few people everyone respected at the time. While Fanatic Assassins is a fantastic song, it does feel somewhat strange as the only Arab-centered song.
Like all Grave Digger albums, it takes a while to get used to, and despite the awkward flow, has more than enough good material on the album to make up for it.

4/5

Hi, Ben, could you add Rawhead Rexx?

While it could hardly be said I'm the biggest fan of death/black metal, I find that my distaste these days stems less from the vocals and more how everyone seems to have this habit of going full one note aggression. It irks me less in black metal since that tends to be the whole point, and thus bands tend to work it to their advantage, but death metal seems to have it bad. I have especially come to loathe any song in which the drummer just hammers the drumkit, regardless of genre. Funny thing, I wouldn't describe this endless aggression as exclusive to metal or punk, I heard some Mexican music not too long ago as I was in a Mexican fast food place, which basically just consisted of a dude singing fast over some fast acoustic guitar. Basically, have some variety.

Vocalists trying to sink outside of their range hits me pretty big too. I'm not talking like King Diamond, I'm talking like someone singing at the top of their range and you can hear their voice, and possibly your windows, cracking.

Blood Tsunami, to me, seems to personify pretty much every reason why thrash is generally considered dead after the '90s and throws in one I hadn't even considered before. On the surface, there's nothing wrong with the album, it's...fine. There's nothing about it that screams bad in of itself. It's just, here's another "definitely not death metal" thrash album, in which the musicians blaze through a bunch of songs and five minutes later it's forgotten, doing nothing to really distinguish itself from the half of '00s thrash bands that wish they could be in Kreator circa '85.
Now that's not entirely a fair comparison, because sometimes the band tries to do something more musically interesting, but it's just that...it sort of shows why they do what they do. Their typical material, while not terribly interesting, feels like something they're good at. The two longer songs just feel like they're trying to ape Metallica's instrumentals, and not doing a good job.
It could be that I've come to loathe the kind of thrash metal that seems to be missing a death or black tag, and while that is true, I think it's also true that this sort of thing is done by bands who know that if they go outside of that comfort zone of theirs, they just completely fall flat on their face.

4/10