Morpheus Kitami's Forum Replies

Deep Purple - Deep Purple
Oh, hey, Deep Purple again. Three in a row. And the last album with Rod whatever his last name is. I'll be sad to see him go even if the band has matured. I don't have anything to say about this one, it's basically just a generic lump of rock I have no thoughts or real feelings on.

Flower Travellin' Band - Anywhere
I'm somewhat perplexed by Flower Travellin' Band's apparent metal status, they really sound more like generic jam band from what I've heard. Really, if you want to hear something good from Japan at this time you'd probably be better off watching the Stray Cat Rock film series, or uh...Hausu. Yeah, watch Hausu, that'll give you some dreams. Stray Cat Rock is probably better for getting a grasp of what music they liked back then since that was popular, for a year or so. Has a nice wideth of music, unfortunately the only ones I remember were some Deep Purple-esque band and a group that for some reason the lead actress was singing for in the movie.
Anyway, Anywhere isn't terribly interesting musically. I mean the actual cover parts are okay, but for example let's use the song you probably haven't heard of as an example, Louisiana Blues by Muddy Waters. The original is according to a quick Youtube search, 2:55. This cover? 15:46. Basically the actual song, 12 minutes of decent but not great jamming, then the song again. They're not terribly special as covers, so there's not much to actually talk about.

Hi Ben, could you add

Albert Bell's Sacro Sanctus

Elephant (USA)

Grey Wolf (the one with Cimmerian Hordes)

Heimdall (Italy)

鐵槌 AKA Tettsui (Japan)

Excellent choice Xephyr, these days I don't quite feel like it's the strongest '90s release of the band, The Reaper and Tunes of War definitely beat it, but it's a good third choice. Not helped by the Hollywood take on history at times and the sudden shift back to Scottish history again. The way these guys sing about Scotland sometimes you'd swear they were American.

I'd point out that some people think the heavy psych bands Daniel mentioned are ambiguous too, some people consider the '70s albums from those bands to be metal, some don't.

Rome - The Lone Furrow, helped by being very uptempo for neofolk.

Some individual songs from Mahavishnu Orchestra, which despite being a jazz band, when it's aggressive doesn't feel too far off from some of the more technical solos. Or perhaps some of the more experimental stuff I've listened to just sounds like Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Nick Cave, even when he's at his softest has a tendency to capture the same kind of atmosphere a metal band does.

I've been hosting a war movies ballot on Movieforums for a couple months, so I've watched a lot of war movies in prep for it.

I'm curious, any interesting pre-20th century films on any of that stuff you watched? Like American Revolutionary War, Napoleonic War type stuff, since once you get further back from that it tends to just be historical dramas with some swordfighting thrown in (not that I wouldn't mind that) and later is generally just a western. I think of the the three that I can recall, The Patriot was best, though with the usual historical treatment of the English you come to expect from a Mel Gibson film, who apparently hates the English for some reason. I remember being disappointed in Barry Lyndon and John Paul Jones was dreadful thanks to Robert Stack's awful acting debasing a great American war hero.

Good luck, and if that robotics class is any indication of what you're going to college for, extra good luck, I hear engineering is a difficult degree to learn.

USPM from the '00s.

Glad to see someone new here. This is a nice little site, I'm sure you'll like it.

I don't think that front cover is all that bad Daniel. I've certainly seen a LOT worse.

I feel like this statement is cheating somehow.

For the record, before I just now got a good look at the cover, I assumed it was a Twisted Sister kind of thing.

Here's my review.

Darkmoon Blade is a band trying to really imitate that first wave of black metal spirit, with mixed success. There's all the stuff you'd expect from that description, crappy production, not really growling but not clean vocals. This influence includes Mercyful Fate, a band with which doesn't quite fit in with those other first wave BM bands. Indeed, at moments they try to channel that Mercyful Fate spirit, it doesn't work, which unfortunately culminates in a Fate-eqsue romantic ballad.
I'm not really sure the band captures the right production for what they're going for. There's less an outright raw production in the black metal sense and more a raw production in a modern demo kind of sense. There are parts where I expected a song to build up more than it did, or vocal lines not quite meshing with the rest of the music. Something that you would expect to be fixed on a commercial album as opposed to a demo, yet aren't.
Which isn't to say it's a bad album. When the album works, it really works. The guitarist, when he isn't being lazy, has a really nice style. It's got the obvious black metal trappings, but it feels all over the place in terms of influences. In short, succeeding at their intentions, but with a more wistful, mysterious style characteristic of later bands. This is no clearer than in the solos, not some technical masterwork, but feels beautiful and melodic within the confines of the band's style.
I have mixed feelings on the vocals, he's trying to go somewhere between a not quite growling vocalist and a Warrior-style, but doesn't quite commit to either. It never really felt like he was all that special, but I didn't dislike it. His attempts at clean vocals badly imitate King Diamond, in that ballad I immensely dislike. It just reminds me how King Diamond gets away with all the shit he does because he just has that good a range, and this guy just doesn't.
I look forward to seeing what these guys do in the future. Whenever they aren't just rerecording the same album again. As I wrote this they released a new version of this album. They're new versions of these songs, they sound different, but I'm not really sure I'd say they sound worse or better.

Didn't really have enough time this month to this to this more than a couple of times, but Persuader is definitely a great band. One of the better ones once you get into that "regular PM isn't so great, but having a twisted edge" phase. In retrospect I think there's just enough on this album dragging it away from the sort of perfection I feel Evolution Purgatory once embodied to me. The last two songs on the album in particular kind of just feel like they're there, but the rest is killer.

No, I didn't forget about this, had a whole bunch of unpleasant shit going on between the last release and this one. Still, one year in one month is pretty good time. :)

Deep Purple - The Book of Taliesyn
A much more proggy album from the same lineup as the last album. Feels a lot more interesting to see Deep Purple doing this rather than the bizarre selection of covers from last time. That said, this album doesn't really feel much like a Deep Purple album a good deal of the time. It's just really that Hammond organ giving that distinct Deep Purple flavor and even then it isn't always the tone setter it should be.
The whole epic fantasy premise the cover promises doesn't quite land. The opening track, which I've linked, does, doing a very nice energetic and dynamic song that the rest of the album just fails to live up to. A lot of this just feels like some generic rock music you'd use in a movie or a game because you couldn't get a real song. It's not outright awful, but I can't really remember most of it after the album finishes playing. Except Kentucky Woman. I hate Kentucky Woman, but that's less because it's necessarily bad but more because I remember when people overplayed the absolute hell out of that song, other covers don't give me that same viscera hatred.

Would Starless (JPN) be able to be added? Some places list it as metal and some don't, dunno what it currently is on RYM.

Also Darkmoon Blade, as that seems to be somewhat obscure, if there's no genre for it (please let there be a genre for it) heavy/thrash I guess.

I think some Deathrock falls into that category, I know Christian Death (at least the first three/four albums) tends to fit that description. Getting more into regular goth rock, but there's also The Danse Society, especially VI, and The Chameleons.

For June could you add:

Ningen Isu - りんごの泪 (it's on two different albums, but it doesn't matter which one you pick)