Rexorcist's Forum Replies

Shit, those kids can't lose their mom so early.

OKAAAY, so here are mt current Caravan rankings.

1. If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You: 92

2. In the Land of Grey and Pink: 91

3. For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night: 90

4. Caravan: 90

I don't think I've ever heard a more 9/10 band.

Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink (1971)

Genres: Canterbury Prog Rock, Psych Rock

As I mentioned in my previous review for Caravan's debut, this album's reverence eludes me, especially due to immediate comparison to Soft Machine's works.  Hell, I even listened to Fourth yesterday and gave it a 95.  But if I'm going to re-evaluate this album, immediately comparing it to another on of their classic albums is as good of a time as any.  If I'm going to get myself invested in and educated concerning the Canterbury scene, then I need to re-evaluate this ASAP.

Three tracks in, I was already strongly considering a higher position.  This isn't as blatantly psychedelic as the debut album, and it doesn't drown it out like the second album.  This album is five tracks and fixes a couple of noticeable flaws in the debut that were created by its own strengths: the variety factor is further balanced and not as busy, allowing for the necessary breathing room.  As far as instrumentation goes, it's fine enough, but not brilliant.  The real reason to listen to this album is for its careful, breezy, chamomile tea-time vibe.  Know many rock albums that are perfect for chamomile tea?  Well, here you go, right on a pale salmon platter. All the little tricks used for the prog and psychedelia are expertly placed, from minor bursts of piano to flute midtros to keyboards.  And I'm quite admiring the decision to go into cutesy and folksy prog pop.  Love to Love You may not be prime songwriting, but it's infectiously charming, acting like a midway point between Beatles and Jethro Tull.  The chill factor almost reaches Steely Dan heights.  As far as the 20-minute epic for the second half goes, a genre fan would naturally like it well enough.  The thing is, it stays more fun and finely-tuned throughout and never really amazes me.  I'd even take off a couple points for how inferior it sounds to the first half because of that.  So it's a fine album with some obvious improvements, but for its lack on imagination in the second half, I'm only giving it one more point.

91

Caravan - Caravan (1969)

Genres: Canterbury Prog Rock, Psych Rock

After having put together a good chart of my top 100 post-bop albums (which I chose to do because I struggle to get into post-bop), I decided my next venture would be one I've quite likes so far, but have largely neglected in favor of other education ventures: Canterbury prog rock.  Now I've heard a grand total of TWO Caravan albums.  If I Could Do It All Over Again was a great album with a beautifully chill vibe, but felt slightly empty when compared to Soft Machine albums.  In the Land of Grey and Pink felt a bit emptier, but still managed to play up the band's strengths more.  Retrospectively, the albums are ranked 92/100 and 86/100.

Because the stereo is apparently satanic to upload to YouTube, I'm listening to the mono on Archive.org.  This debut is doing a good job entertaining the psychedelic genre fan in me.  There's a very careful balance between psychedelic, jazzy, hard, trippy and calm.  As a result, this feels a bit busier than the other two albums I've heard.  Of the majority of psychedelic prog I've heard so far, this is the most aware and tame.  This does not necessarily mean it breaks new ground, and the compositions, while fun and quite spirited, are essentially made of pieces that were already done similarly and beaten by the others, so while the album has a wonderfully 60's vibe to it, there isn't much about the album that I can say I "love."  Maybe this is because the album is so active in its mild switches from genre to genre (mild and tame, I repeat), that it doesn't have any breathing room to let the structures feel longer and more balanced?  In other words, it needs a little breathing room.  But the album maintains its strengths all the way through.

So this is a great genre album for fans of 60's rock, showcasing a lot of cool tricks that were popular at the time with spirit being the best trait.  Lots going on, but in need of some breathing room for most tracks except for the 9-minute closer, Where But for Caravan Would.  Skillful debut.

90/100

If you like atmospheric stuff, definitely check out Blut aus Nord.  They helped pioneer early atmospheric black metal.  If you like Sabbath, maybe start with their most psychedelic piece, Hallucinogen.  They also do industrial stuff and creepy stuff very well.

Au5 - Divinorum Remixed (2022)

Genres: Brostep, Melodic Dubstep

As much as I love exploring EDM, and am happy to have found a total love for TFoL, Shpongle, The Prodigy, Juno Reactor, Justice and many more, dubstep has always been a weak point.  Ironically, its overly-edgy subgenre, brostep, was my major gateway into exploring EDM.  I can't even remember my first brostep album, but at the top of this list was Au5 and Fractal's Secret Weapon EP.  I've heard a decent deal of Au5's extended plays, but not many of his albums.  Now most people would've headed towards the original before the remix, but there was this weird, unspeakable gut feeling just aching to check out the remix first.  I don't know why.  Maybe because I've never done it that way before?  Maybe because in my experience, the shorter album, as the remix is, tends to be the one that feels less stretched out, and there's a heavier genre batch in the tags?  Either way, I checked it out.

Now Au5 has a total taste for the atmospheric yet melodically active.  You're not going to find any of that Marauda-style working its noisy, deeply vile metallic fingers into albums like this.  And right from the getgo, the melodic dubstep colour bass combo is flaunted with a sense of organized chaos on the vein of a consistent experimental album.  There's lots of room for playfulness in every song, yet there's always one or two major focal points which greatly differentiate it from the rest of the songs.  Some of these tracks here are total dance jams that challenge the constructs of layout with a plethora of unpredictable sound effects, and yet feels more like personality rather than pretnetiousness and overdoing, which is typically the case for the bulk of brostep releases.  One of the better examples of this is the perfect balance between mellow volume and energetic beats on Dragonfly, which take care to maintain the randomness of brostep without ever going too far into one idea or switching vibes too quickly for its own good.  And sometimes it's deeply contemplative, like the title track or Mesmerize.  Even the worst track, the electro house track Beautiful Sky, has plenty to say in only a surprising runtime of two minutes.  Even the song Divine has its own presence by introducing a vibe like early 2000's late 90's pop rock, somehow maintaining an identity without being out of place.  And I have to tell you... Drink Me is just one of my favorite things.  That was just a gorgeous reconstruction of the wide-ranging universe-spanning behavior, fully polished into a gem-like take on the Alice in Wonderland surreality that the title suggests.  And how fitting is it for this album to end with a deep, slow, IDM track that ends our journey on such a strange note?

I don't give a rat's ass if that last line was too hammy.

This was a strange yet polished mix of contemplative structures, surreal beauty, catchy beats and bleeding personality.  Maybe this is because dubstep is difficult for me to get into, but this was exactly the kind of album I look for in practically any genre.  Not a single disappointment, lots of beauty and some amazement along the way.

For some mysterious reason I just decided to binge their catalogue out of the blue.  This came in as my #2 by the band, followed by "We're an American Band."

Blut aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons (2025)

Genres: Atmo-Black Metal, Psych Metal

I've been eagerly awaiting the ability to review this, because I've got some things I wanna get off my chest.  Now, I often play Hallucinogen to drown out noise when I need it.  It's one of my go-to albums for that purpose, especially for its dense, mind-warping and just nearly Lynchian psychedelia.  So I was pretty happy that Ethereal Horizons was a return to the Hallucinogen sound.  But as fun as it was, as epic in its approach and as beautifully produced as one would expect from an atmo-black metal band with this much experience, the psychedelia felt a bit nerfed in comparison.  There were some proggier elements scattered around as well, as I often note in reviews for good albums, and many of these were the better parts.  But as epic as they kept things, melodies and vibes were also a little typical.  It was dreadfully easy to compare this negatively to Hallucinogen, although I acknowledged the strengths of the album as well and believe this will satisfy those who like the more sci-fi-oriented sound of this beautifully multi-faceted band.  Hell, it's decisions like that which makes Blut Aus Nord my second favorite black metal band.

77

Deftones - Private Music (2025)

Genre: Alt-Metal

I actually tried to get through Koi no yokan today after starting Private Music and quitting, deciding that my goal was to further profile the band before heading to their new release.  I chose Koi no yokan because it's basically ranked as the third best Deftones album out of their impressive catalog, but the first three songs sounded totally the same even with that obnoxious secondary tagging on RYM: Shoegaze, Alternative Rock, Dream Pop, Post-Metal, Post-Hardcore.  That really pissed me off, So I just went back to their new album.  Besides, after having been underwhelmed by my Sadus exploration, which was necessary for the Metal Academy list challenges, I needed some kind of good album to complete some kind of relevant list I'm working on.  In this case, it's 2025.

Now the first two songs are very short, and despite the transitioning being flawless, the two still manage to change directions and sound a bit different from Koi no yokan.  The third one is weirder, much less reliant on the general Deftones noise at first.  It starts with an industrial beat and sonar-bleep guitar playing.  The atmosphere feels more attributed to standard alternative metal rather than the overused Deftones noise backdrop.  And while track 4, Infinite Source, goes back to the noise, it feels a bit more like the melodic punk-infused alt-rock of the 2000's, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  Quite a few of the songs are very short, and sometimes they justify their length with a proper usage of simplicity.  But at other times, the songs may feel undercooked.  And as I expected, despite the occasional change of pace, many of the songs go for the same emotional core and basic sound.  In other words, this is a Deftones album for fans that plague places like RYM.

But you wanna know the most impressive thing?  I cannot believe this singer, Stephen Carpenter, STILL SOUNDS LIKE A FUCKING TEENAGER.  His voice doesn't age.  His voice aging would obviously be a sing of the apocalypse.  This bad is thirty years old, and this founding member is 55.  This is actually something that kept the album going for me, even when it started to get monotonous.  I suppose this is actually my favorite thing about the band.  But as far as the album goes, I REALLY REALLY wish they would focus on the diversity factor more like they did on White Pony.  I mean, what's the goddamn problem?  Most people say it's their best album.  It's the only Deftones album I gave above a 91/100, and by that I mean I gave it a 99.

Overall, this was a fun and surprisingly brisk time for more of the same Deftones.  There was just enough melodic and lyrical imagination to work.  I was never that much of an alt-metal guy, let alone a Deftones guy, but this was fun.  Deftones once again carries the aquatic noise factor of albums like Biomech very well and with a good sense of pacing and slow melodies.

85

Buck Owens & His Buckaroos - Ruby (1971)

Genres: Bluegrass

I found myself in a bluegrass mood of all things, stemming from a craving to find that perfect bluegrass album.  But the RYM charts weren't helping much as many of the albums sounded samey, so I went to Reddit.  I found many recs and have a lot to go through, but then I found out this Buck Owens album was only 24 minutes.  I didn't even know he had a bluegrass album; he's mostly known as a Bakersfield sound pioneer.  What the hell, I'll just get through it, I thought to myself.  And I am so glad I had enough time for another short album.  There's a lot of spirit to be had in this album.  The band's having a lot of fun, so it's easy to have fun with them.  Now the songs follow a select few basic bluegrass formats, but the energy and production makes this album sound, even for lack of a better word to describe this album, GORGEOUS.  The mixing is gorgeous, and the country spirit is diamond purified, like they freakin' went to Jared.  Rollin' in my Sweet Baby's Arms put me in a perfect equilibrium between my body jamming and my mind and soul absorbing the essence of the music.  Honestly, there's very little country that does that, as much as I love exploring it.  Now I will criticize this album for technically being quite samey, but damn if this isn't some of the most head-bobbin country I've ever heard.

91

Btw, I found that PERFECT bluegrass album pretty early on, but I'm not in the mood for reviewing a 75 minute album right now.  That album is Highway Prayers by Billy Strings, but don't get into him until you've heard some of his earlier albums.

I agree with all that. What a combination of internet, Covid and corporate marketing has done is consign the concept of definable sub-cultures to the dustbin of history, the Baggies of the 90s being the last really definitive movement (in the UK that is). That said, anyone who thinks these subcultures were primarily about what you wore, understandably, has no idea what they were about. To those inhabiting those spaces it was more than a fashion choice, it was a way of life that informed everything you did, who you hung around with and provided a sense of community, belonging and especially freedom, particularly within poorer communities. 

It still makes me laugh to see middle-class twats paying £100 for a pair of ripped jeans. I regularly wore ripped jeans back in the day, but only because I couldn't afford new ones. This was back when you used band patches to actually cover holes in denim jackets and  jeans eaten away by battery acid, not merely to profess your fandom. What we would have given for a new pair of Levis back then!I

Today the cult of the individual is king, which is weird because it seems to me like everybody looks the same!

This was also back in the day when the bands themselves were simply trying to look edgy and the fans wanted to emulate the spirit by looking and acting like the "rebels" they worshiped.  Of course, when one of our leading ladies in said industry is wearing a dress made of meat, that kind of kills the internal necessity.  It then transitions to: if I become famous, I'll dress in whatever I want.  But... they can't.

Look, I think there's something in the idea that metal continues to gain & lose popularity in a cyclic fashion but I don't think there's any reason to believe that it's a regular cycle of seven years. Personally, I don't think it's a repeatable pattern. It's simply about when the next big commercial metal subgenre or band pops up in my opinion & you can't really put a timeline on that.

As for where all the metalheads have gone, I think it's easy to take a shallow view & say that we don't see as many of the traditional long-haired, black-band-shirt-wearing metalheads in society today but I think there's a reason for that. I've recently discovered that there are quite a few metalheads at my workplace for example but only two of them outwardly show off their musical passion & they are both of a similar ilk to myself. The others all got into metal through nu metal or later & we've seen that fans of post-2000 metal fads no longer feel the need to display their passion through long-hair & black band t-shirts so it's harder to identify them. They do however have a tendency towards tattoos but that's not strictly a metal trait any more with a larger & larger percentage of the population showing off significant amounts of permanent body art. So, what I'm saying is that there may be more metalheads around than people realise because it's not always obvious any more which is a little sad in my opinion.

All this.  Hell, the only person I know outside the web who listens to Mayhem was a small teen girl who only boasted earrings.

Combined with the economy and the rise of streaming, there's been less of the need to appear to be a metalhead beyond maybe buying a t-shirt.  Streaming and Covid, paired with collab-rating sites, have done more for King Crimson in the US than the actual albums themselves.  These people have already been made fun of well enough in pop media that to dress like them is basically like wearing a halloween costume.  Can you even afford the fashion these days, anyway, when entertainment companies are charging 80+ for viudeo games and separate prices for the Amiibo's that unlock what you already paid for?  Our right to be entertained and still pay the bills is basically being abused, so YouTube is socially the best thing that can happen to the music community.  Even Letterboxd wants to get into streaming rentable films, which I like.  I'd give my money to Letterboxd.  Never disappointed me (save the time it's taking to filter out concert films from narrative films).

Fashion is basically unnecessary now.  The time of dressing the part is over unless you live in Beverly Hills or some economical equivalent.  All anyone has to do to get into the extreme genres, for example, is get introduced to Born of Osiris and check out someplace like Metal Academy, RYM, last.fm, and these websites will ensure that it's not long before they've at least checked out the song Crystal Mountain from sheer curiosity.  And hopefully so, since that clearer production and voice makes for an excellent gateway into a genre known for being more brutal than that, even by that same band.  But the idea of the visual subculture isn't as normalized unless you're living in one of those high end places with the clubs.  Rock or metal, it don't matter.  The online community is practically ensuring this love of nostalgic exploration.  Hell, the Walmart near work is now boasting a healthy vinyl section with the artsier stuff mingled in with new releases, and even had an entire shelf dedicated to the A24 release of Stop Making Sense.  The fashion of the modern scene is basically just headphones, and not necessarily in public.

Back when I went to see Swans, we had people wearing shirts ranging from Death to Slint.  And even the middle-agers and elders who go to the metal concerts these days are almost exclusively "rock t-shirt," little to no jewelry, and a non-existent third component :P.  The most obscure band tee I've seen in a metal concert is Joy Division.  And at work, I occasionally get a customer coming in with an extreme metal shirt.  Amon Amarth, Blood Incantation, Cannibal Corpse, and whatever the fuck D is because I haven't seen a Death shirt at work yet. There were even some obscure ones I've never heard of, and at one point I got to recommend Claustrophobic Dysentery by Cabinet to a guy who came in with one of the obscure band tees.

I just checked out the new album by a band that's typically very underwhelimng: Everyone's a Star by 5 Seconds of Summer.  I don't like these guys very much, but this... this was kinda bangin'.  Among typical songwriting structures and lyrics came some very clever production, mixing and percussion techniques that brought an art to the electronic saturation.  Every song was very different, yet the instruments used kept a consistent flow.  Through this, these guys were able to channel a wide array of pop influences and remain quite catchy, which seem to include Radiohead, Gorillaz, better Coldplay and a little Weeknd on the side.  This is the first of their albums I legitimately liked.

76/100

Finally getting to watch the new Frankenstein.  The book is one of my all time favorites, and I believe Del Toro's been getting better as a director in recent years.  His Pinocchio is my pick for the best Pinocchio movie.

This one hits hard for me.  RIP John Lodge, pivotal member of Moody Blues.

I had surgery today to repair a hernia and I will never underestimate how lucky I am to have private medical insurance.  The care I received today was outstanding.  Predicting a rough day tomorrow but at least I am back in my own bed tonight.

Ouch.  Well, at least you got some amazing care.  Kick that hernia's ass.

RIP to Lo Borges, legend of Brazilian pop.

My phone died from "complications during a fall."  So did freaking Ace Frehley.  Except we can't pay nearly 200 to bring him back.  Gonna miss him.

Anybody check out the new Coroner yet?  if that's what they sound like when they're out of practice, what kind of insane monster of total thrash energy will we get when they get back on track?

Going on a Thy Art Is Murder marathon right now.  "The Adversary?"  Uber generic in practically every way.  Almost everything is totally middling.  52/100.  Going on Hate right now, and I'm quite impressed with the upgrades in the riffs and the usage of the second vocal style.  It's a bit more thrashy but loses none of its death metal edge.

My mother just gave me a stack of Aldous Hunxley books to read through, even though I just bought Mystic River, Timeline and The Stand at Goodreads with a birthday giftcard.  So I'm gonna speedread one Huxley a day if I can and then send each one back to her.  She wants to get through them once I'm done.

Mystic River has fantastic prose and excellent characterization.  But the first act is a very slow drag that the movie thankfully fixed.  Might've been perfect if it had a better soundtrack.

I loved The Stand, but I haven't read it in donkey's years. Maybe it's getting time for a revisit. I do like the Mystic River movie but I haven't read the book. Is Timeline a Michael Crichton book?

Yeah, but not one of his best.  Every villain in the medieval ages is pretty much the same character: "I freak out and accuse you of lying because I can't handle that I'm someone in power who's being told he's wrong."  Honestly, I'd rather have lunch with Trump.  Yeah, these guys are more annoying that Mr. You're Fired.

Dario Argento marathon for the time being, while working on the second part of my Wings of Nialoca series and speedreading The Stand at roughly 200 pages a day, on top of one shorter novella to help with the speedreading challenge I've been slacking off on.  Once I'm done with Argento, I think I'll move onto Lars Von Trier.

WHOA.

https://m.soundcloud.com/david-chavers/evil-dead-666

JUST WHOA.

I met these guys at a Swans concert.  I'be heard a lot of demos and ep's by small time metal and punk bands, and I got into a conversation with them before the show started.  I mean, the place was loaded with post+rock t-shirts and potential RYMers, so when these guys told me about their band and said they wanna diversify, I figured I'd check these guys out.  Now that I have, I repeat... WHOA.

Now lyrically, the overly violent stuffs been done a million times.  Evil Dead worship is cool, though.  But that ability to shift and mutate like it's nothing is impressive.  Good riffage, good voices, these guys deserve some credit.  Hope they get an album out.

Bro, treading some reviews in an effort to grasp an inkling of why this album gets any kind of slack, I found that Sodom fans consider this a disjointed work in comparison to the classics.  And to that, I say, "Check out Thembi and call me in the morning."  If you ask me, this whole albums feels the way I've been asking it to feel, a largely consistent vibe that shows the band trying to expand.  I came into this expecting anything from 60-80 / 100, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm in the rare came again, the Prometheus / Tauhid / Fulfillingness' First Finale / no better EDM than FSoL camp: this is better than Agent Orange.  They're doing what they can to put out another real Sodom album while trying to expand their horizons, and they largely succeed.  This album has tricks up its sleeve that I wished Agent Orange would even simply try to attempt.

At the time of writing this, I've given this album its highest rating on Metal Academy: 92/100 = 4.5 stars.

You're the first person I've ever seen agreeing with my position that "Better Off Dead" was the best Sodom release to the time.

Damn, we're all alone.  Freakin' Tom Hanks and Wilson.

Sodom - Tapping the Vein (1992)

Genres: Teutonic Thrash

Okay, I really wasn't expecting such an awesome blast of deathened thrash.  Instantly, I'm punched in the face harder than anything Pantera's capable of.  The production, energy and sound are freaking incredible!  But upon this first track also came concerns that this album would be a one-trick pony.  Of course, track 2, Skinned Alive, is by all respects a death metal song, which is fine, but not exactly diversification.  While the album was exceptional in the heaviness department, I was really hoping the third track, being five minutes, wouldn't rely on it, and I got what I wanted for the most part.  Its slower rhythm still has that simple monotone sound you'd expect from a typical Sodom song with the extra heaviness to back it up, but things pick up once the solo kicks in. For the most part, the album switches between different levels of heaviness, and usually, the heavier they are, the less rhythm and melody will be involved.  Some songs switch between tempos and levels of heaviness, like the title track, but that's the artisiest the album gets.  SO while the heaviness certainly does give it some big points, the lacking songwriting ability still needs to be addressed.

77

Sodom - Better Off Dead (1990)

Genres: Teutonic Thrash

Prepared for a fun album rather than a great one, I think I ended up getting both.  This has plenty of thrashing, but above anything else, it's multiple kinds of fun, the spirited kind that defines the album like a Zappa one, rather than the general kind that tries to justify the existence of an otherwise undercooked movie, like Kung Pow.  Now one thing that disappointed me about Agent Orange was the glaring inferiority of the band's attempts at straightforward heavy metal in comparison to their thrash works.  But here on Better Off Dead, songs like their cover of Thin Lizzy's Cold Sweat prove that they finally got a grip on this.  They're making fun, catchy songs of various kinds, leaving room for some raw thrash material such as Shellfire Defense and Bloodtrails.  Thing is, in place of the occasional blackened influence of previous efforts, they included some more obvious attempts at melody, and this helps differentiate the album from previous efforts while still managing the Sodom spirit.  I mean, hell, Shellfire Defense is Agent Orange material, and if you're a classic fan then you'll definitely get a big kick out of the title track.  I even went back and listened to Shellfish again.  Might be my favorite Sodom track up to this point; it left me wide-eyed, something that even the best Sodom albums haven't achieved yet.  It also takes time to be a little weird more often than not.  Gotta say I'm kinda lovin' that two-part intro to Bloodtrails.  Though I WOULD say Healing Wounds is basically speed metal filler.

Bro, treading some reviews in an effort to grasp an inkling of why this album gets any kind of slack, I found that Sodom fans consider this a disjointed work in comparison to the classics.  And to that, I say, "Check out Thembi and call me in the morning."  If you ask me, this whole albums feels the way I've been asking it to feel, a largely consistent vibe that shows the band trying to expand.  I came into this expecting anything from 60-80 / 100, but I'm not gonna lie, I'm in the rare came again, the Prometheus / Tauhid / Fulfillingness' First Finale / no better EDM than FSoL camp: this is better than Agent Orange.  They're doing what they can to put out another real Sodom album while trying to expand their horizons, and they largely succeed.  This album has tricks up its sleeve that I wished Agent Orange would even simply try to attempt.

At the time of writing this, I've given this album its highest rating on Metal Academy: 92/100 = 4.5 stars.

My mother just gave me a stack of Aldous Hunxley books to read through, even though I just bought Mystic River, Timeline and The Stand at Goodreads with a birthday giftcard.  So I'm gonna speedread one Huxley a day if I can and then send each one back to her.  She wants to get through them once I'm done.

Mystic River has fantastic prose and excellent characterization.  But the first act is a very slow drag that the movie thankfully fixed.  Might've been perfect if it had a better soundtrack.

I'd place the rawer "Persecution Mania" slightly ahead of "Agent Orange" personally but they're both very solid releases. The six-year period from 1987-1992 was Sodom's peak in my opinion but I do have to admit that I've never thought of them as a tier one thrash metal act. I don't think they're in the same class as Kreator & have never awarded them one of my more elite scores.

Oh, definitely not.  Kreator's got a couple 9.5's on my scale, and one of them came close.  Ironically, none of these are Pleasure to Kill.  The three I chose are Coma of Souls, Extreme Aggression and Terrible Certainty.  Of course, it's been some time since I checked out any Kreator, and with all the thrash I've been listening to lately, I may have to give these guys another go later.

As I said in my recent review of Sodom's new album, I don't think that they get as much credit as they deserve. I will admit that Kreator are the benchmark for german thrash, but I would definitely place Sodom over Destruction whose claim to legendary status is much more dubious than Sodom's own. Both "Persecution Mania" and "Agent Orange" have five-star status in my own metal world and easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anything european thrash produced, except maybe "To Mega Therion".

I found Destruction quite overrated myself.

Sodom - Agent Orange (1989)

Genres: Teutonic Thrash Metal

Having got through the EP's and albums before this one, including their first live album, I'm happy I'm finally checking this out.  Their second album and second extended play showed a major upgrade in musical quality, both on a songwriting and heaviness factor, so I wasn't sure exactly what to expect except for a good time.  The titular opener showcases a new ability to go from careful melodies to proper thrashing instantly while keeping the essence strong.  Some may miss the fuzz factor that defined their blacker albums, but the clearer production gives them a chance to really show off their thrashing abilities, especially in regards to their guitarists.  We also get some more excellent drumming from the always wonderful drummer, Chris Witchhunter, who's consistently been my favorite member.  Hell, even Tired and Red is able to showcase just how far they're willing to take thrash by going from the blackened riffs to a softer ballad solo to some easier, chiller thrashing akin to Jump in the Fire.  This is the most any Sodom song had done so far.  If you're a fan of the really early Sodom stuff, then you might get a huge kick out of Incest (I want you to pay very close attention to the capital I).  Its first half is entirely made up of the extra-strength muscle rub that slathered the earlier blackened stuff, heavier than anything on Agent Orange thus far.  The second half is slower and a little more "epic" in that vein, before ending with a return to the first verse's form, as expected.  This first side ends with Remember the Fallen, which starts as more of a heavy metal song than thrash.  I'll be honest, they obviously didn't learn how to make a great heavy metal track yet.  It was alright, palatable, but had nothing really amazing about it.  At least they gave heavy metal a shot.

Side B kicks off with Magic Dragon (no relation to Gloryhammer or Puff).  The heavy metal intro and first verse carry on the heavy metal sound of the last track with a slight improvement in quality, but it only made me want the thrash to come back because there's a difference between "pretty good" and "great."  Thankfully, the second act kicked off just like that.  Nothing new but it had much more personality and ability.  But I certainly don't want the album RELYING on the thrash.  I'm an "expand your horizons" guy, so I was a bit disappointed that Exhibition Bout started out the same thrashy way we've been getting for the previous few releases.  Thankully the song took a softer thrash route after the first minute, and it really wasn't that bad.  It was catchy and operable, but it only lasted for the middle section.  The saving grace upon returning to typical form was one of their best solos overtaking the third act, a grand one that makes this one of the best songs on the album.  Track 7, Ausgebombt, is practically a crossover thrash song that retools the Sodom sound, and adds a little something to the album that honestly should've been done ages ago (Slayer were doing it pretty often), so it's nice to hear that.  And finally, yet another grand thrash, Baptism of Fire, shoves the black metal influence and the Teutonic majesty in your face as it should.

So this wasn't the most diversified album, as expected being a Sodom album, but it was another upgrade in quality, albiet a small one from their sophomore release.  This is one of the harder thrashers in the Teutonic scene based on what I've heard so far, and I can get behind it being a thrash classic.  Still, give me Metallica any day.

90

Sodom - In the Sign of Evil (1985)

Genres: Teutonic Thrash, Blackened Thrash

Today is a Sodom day for me.  Having gotten done with some Bathory binging during my chores, today was a good day for some more blackened thrash.  Sodom came around in 1985, following in Venom's footsteps while taking some of the thrash sound of Ride the Lightrning, and before being known more as a thrash band they put out this brutal little piece of blackened muscle.  I gotta say that the general sound is pretty cool.  The density of the guitar riffs and the production style work quite well for a debut extended play.  Hell, this album is much harder than the majority of metal albums of the 80's if you ask me.  The one doing most of the creative work, however, is the drummer.  Every one of the bandmates knows how to be heavier than Hell itself, but most of the melodic structure is simple riffing at incredible speed with production to back it up.  Aside from the highly impressive heaviness which never overstays its welcome due to the short length of the EP.  But there really isn't anything truly unique about this album other than beating Bathory at the game he started with his debut album.

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I consider In utero to be the perfected grunge sound, but it's not a pefect album for one reason: Rape Me, a simplistic rehash of better Nirvana songs with better lyricism and delivery of themes, effectively being the Midnight Sun to Polly's Twilight.

Yeah, I said it.

Bro, I absolutely adore Siouxsie and the Banshees.  I've had an unconventional choice of theirs, Peepshow, in my top 100 for years, but I also fell in love with Tinderbox, A Kiss in the Dreamhouse, Juju, Hyaena and Kaleidoscope.  Easily one of the best things to come out of goth rock.  Even lesser known songs of theirs such as Ornaments of Gold are among favorites, as well as their hit from the dark ages before the breakup, Kiss Them for Me.

While checking out Vio-Lence AND some post-bop, I'm also using minor bits of free time to check out the extremely short albums of this trap artist named Dave Blunts, known for his complex beats and his large weight.  I read that he's going to work hard to try and lose that weight for personal reasons.  His beats are quite fine, but when it comes to his lyrical rhythms and rhymes, the humor doesn't change the fact that he's basically another run-of-the-mill trap artist.  Hopefully he makes his beats more unique while working on his health.  He obviously has some smarts in some respects, and I'd like to see those expand.

The Mothers of Invention - "Absolutely Free" (1967)

The Mothers' 1966 debut album "Freak Out!" did very little for me & the same can be said for their follow-up from the next year "Absolutely Free". I simply need much more from my music than artsy humour & there really aren't any examples of classic, timeless song-writing here. Admittedly, some of the lyrics are quite witty (perhaps more so than on "Freak Out!" which I had a touch less time for than this sophomore effort) but that's unfortunately not all that I require to make for engaging music. There are a few decent numbers included (see my personal favourite "The Duke of Prunes", the jazzy "Invocation & Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin" & closer "America Drinks & Goes Home") but the majority of this material just washes straight over my head without much sticking from a musical perspective, even after several listens.

For fans of Captain Beefheart, Soft Machine & Gong.

2.5/5

Thanks for reminding me of this one.  TUrns out, when I first heard it months ago, I didn't add it to my log.  Anyway, as a fan of Zappa, it's a shame that I have to address some problems here.  Now the tunes and rhythms themselves are perfectly done products of the time.  It's a very catchy album in that regard.  But, the focus seems off.  The attempt at being an experimental rock band don't really mingle with the attempted storytelling and the jokes IMO.  These three aspects would work well on their own otherwise.  So while it's enjoyable, the multiple angles somehow manage to make a Zappa album's randomness cave in on itself.  You'd think after the debut, that wouldn't be the case, not for me at least, since Freak Out was one of my first albums as an albumer and I ended up adoring it.

78/100, one of the lowest ratings I've given to a Zappa album.  So, pretty good, but not the game changer that's the norm for Zappa.

Vio-Lence - Eternal Nightmare

Genres: Thrash Metal

After hearing the band's two early demos, I still didn't have much of an inkling as to their true abilities because the recording quality, demo or not, was terrible for the first demo and slightly better for the second.  With this one, they got a real producer to handle the sound quality, which maximizes everything they're capable of.  Thing is, while these guys are still stylistically generic, not really standing out with a style of their own, theycan sure jam like fuck and play at Star Trek levels of warp speed.  Much of the frontal work is done by later Machine Head guitarist Robb Flynn, who totally understand what thrash power and riffage needs to sound like.  For the most part, the rest of the instrumentalists aren't really struggling to keep up with him at all.  They match his power pretty easily, which is incredible considering that the single hiring of one different person would almost send this album toppling.  Of course, that's as far as the instrumentation goes.  Although this is a perfectly produced album with song great songwriting, I'm really not digging Sean Killian's vocals.  Not only is he joining the chained-to-a-wall kink train of thinking shouting the same way through a whole album is somehow the coolest thing you can do, but it sounds like he's in the wrong genre.  He sounds like he belongs in a power metal band or a Queensryche knockoff, like he's adjusting his voice for thrash to hide this and failing.  As well, with half these songs sharing very similar tempos and practically all of them bearing the same vibe, they don't really push any boundaries beyond raw instrumentality.  As well, some of the songs drag on much longer than they likely need to, largely because the album's mostly an exercize in showing off both instrumental and production techniques rather than an example of depth.  So I think it's right that I give this a good rating for some incredible strengths, but from a broader perspective, it's not the most enlightening... just addictingly thrashy.

83

Yellow Magic Orchestra - "Yellow Magic Orchestra" (1979)

The 1979 sophomore release from Tokyo synthpop act Yellow Magic Orchestra is a complete remake of their self-titled debut from the previous year, this time being achieved with a greater level of clarity & crispness in the production. I hated the original if I'm being honest &, interestingly, I've found myself going a little against the grain by hating the remake even more. This shit is as cheesy as absolute fuck & I really struggle with the vast majority of the material with only the annoyingly catchy "La femme chinoise" managing to break through my defenses. I'm quite simply not the intended audience for these early YMO records & will be giving them a wide birth in future.

For fans of Kraftwerk, Isao Tomita & Yukihiro Takahashi.

1.5/5

As I've said before, I tend to like cheesy music when it's done right.  Back when I was first starting on music forums, I was a bit of a nut for Meat Loaf.  These are the kinds of guys that can rock Japanese electronic cheese like tuxedos IMO.  Honestly, I consider YMO one of the top synthpop acts, and this remix album is a part of the reason why.

Art Pepper - The Trip

Genres: Post-Bop

It appears that Art pepper isn't very popular on Jazz Music Archives. That feels a little awkward since I've seen some darn good praise for his works on other websites. This album in particular, The Trip, is part of what looks to be a comeback period after a ten-year hiatus from 1963 - 1973. But I've heard quite a few Art Pepper albums before this one, and I have to say, I'm not terribly impressed. Out of the seven I've heard, this is the second worst.

And why? Now the moods are alright, nothing that hasn't been done before but nothing that doesn't at least get to the back of your neck. But the real issue is that only half of the six tracks have any engaging melodies or sax solos, so it's only really enjoyable half the time. Three tracks are pretty boring, two are only pretty good, and the only track worth bobbing your head to is Sweet Love of Mine due to its slight Latin flair. So suffice it to say, even though some people seem to love this one, I really can't see myself going back to this anytime soon. It's got some finely-tuned aspects, but the melodies can get quite dull. 

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New addition to my top 100 albums of all-time, not just jazz.

Charles Mingus - Town Hall Concert 1964

Genres: Post-Bop, Avant-Garde Jazz

I struggle with finding post-bop albums that really amaze me.  This has the same evershifting consistency and wide-ranging delivery of Black Saint and the Sinner Lady and almost all of the melodic prowess.  But of course, when you put Mingus with Eric Dolphy, amazing things are likely to happen.  I mean, So Long Eric is flawless jazz on its own, but Playing With Eric is just otherworldly.  I felt lifted into space with this one, especially during the first nine minute section.  There wasn't anything like this before.  This basically did the same favor for jazz that Shpongle would do for EDM with their debut.  Currently, Town Hall Concert 1964 is my number 1 post-bop album, and a much needed addition to my top 10 jazz albums considering the plethora of jazz fusion and spiritual jazz that rules it.

I agree, 7/10.  This sophomore had a better metal-energy sound to it, but it came in lieu of the songwriting strengths of the debut, and later albums, notably Follow the Leader and Issues.

Some of the best melodic progressive metal occurs in one of my favorite tracks by this band, filled with neoclassical madness:

Playing Symphony X music was extremely important in setting up the moods for my debut novel.  This is one of the specific songs I put on repeat for that reason, along with Evolution, Egypt, Set the World on Fire and Paradise Lost.

Taking a small break from post-bop to re0-evaluate a couple of avant-garde jazz albums.  I'm going back on Tauhid right now, and if things continue to go the way they do, it might become my new #1 avant-garde jazz album.  It has some of the wild behavior of Black Saint but with a much more spiritual presence, and plenty of room for soft meditation as opposed to filling it with catchy hyperactivity, which is either charming and meditative or dark and surreal depending on how the flow goes.  There's a much more astral presence to it, and I'll even consider this a healthier album than Karma if the second half is just as good as the first.  Hell, three minutes in, the guitar tricks sound almost exactly like a proto-Merzbow piece or something.  So I think this'll make it.

THE DALE COOPER QUARTET.  And as I predicted, not a single Dale Cooper.  Thanks for letting me know that exists; they're totally on my to-do list when I get around to dark jazz.

Today is a Roland Kirk day.  I just finished I Talk With the Spirits.  I like its childlike approach, almost like a bedtime story told through music.  The jingles of the first half greatly outweigh the second half.  83.  Now I'm starting Volunteered Slavery and it's starting off great.

Here's my new jazz fusion top 100.  Ratings go from 100-89.

In saying that, I don't believe that metal is less conducive to absolute garbage than other genres. In fact, the bottom end of my ratings database if littered with metal filth, most of it being far worse than Justin Bieber. 

Me as well.   I've got quite a few metal albums ranked at 0/100, including Attila's Fallacy and the two Thrash Queen albums.  Metal's some incredible stuff, but sometimes somebody puts out something that only manages to be an embarrassment to it's genre.  Hell, that's the only reason to check out Psycho Synner or Keydragon.

Merzbow - Metalvelodrome

Genres: Harsh Noise

On my noise ventures I found myself mostly driven by the challenge of finding truly artistic music from the more extreme variants: harsh noise and harsh noise wall. And I've found some that I've liked, but mostly when it plays with other genres like a Uboa album. But this 4-hour Merzbow album is at the top of the RYM harsh noise charts. Was that a good sign, or is this an album that only the ones who would listen to four hours would finish anyway, thus allowing less people who see problems with it to even rate it in the first place? Since I have the capacity to enjoy noise music and am mostly a rocker, I felt I had to say something.

And this is what I have to say: it's definitely the latter. If Merzbow, a man who had been doing noise albums for 15 years up to that point, wanted to make a 4-hour behemoth of ugly sound, then he should've done more to play with the sound. By this point, the vast majority of noise tricks pulled in these four hours can be done by literally anybody if you ask me. I've heard imitators that were much more intriguing. It starts out cool, but the entire first half is just generic noise music at this point. Now a lot of wacky and cool ideas are played in the 45-minute track, Another Crash for High Tide. The weird sounds, the vocal effects, it's all pretty cool. But there's so much packed into it that most of these ideas only get about 20 seconds of album time. And the worst part? THIS SONG STARTS AFTER THE FIRST TWO HOURS ARE OVER. In other words, it's two hours of generic noise before creativity has a say. Why the hell didn't Merzbow flesh all of these ideas out into better songs throughout the whole? That's pretty infuriating, especially since it goes back to generic noise for the rest of it, mostly.

This four hour behemoth needs a serious re-evaluation on RYM by more serious and diversified explorers. This is a pretty standard noise album for most of it with some creativity attached, going into unholy lengths to get 1 job done for three out of the four hours. Merzbow would do much better in the close-by following years, so while this album shouldn't need to be heard, historically speaking, it doesn't deserve to be the highest rated harsh noise album on RYM at all, let alone any website that covers noise music. If you wanna hear REAL Merzbow music, try Electric Salad.

52

Jeff Buckley - Grace (1994)

Genres: Alt-Rock, Singer/Songwriter, Art Rock

I'm looking forward to an opportunity to catch the new Jeff Buckley documentary on Prime, but it's been way too long since I checked out any Jeff Buckley.  Truth is, I had been so bent on checking out and discovering albums since I first heard this in my first year of album logging that I haven't heard this in 13 years.  Poor guy only met his dad Tim once, but that made all the difference.  This guy clearly listened hard and smartly, not only to the works of his father, but to all the classical and rock artists that influenced him.  You can hear mild bits of the Mozart and even Siouxsie influence in his singing and his melodies.  But in the end, the many ingredients that make this album all become the Jeff Buckley identity, nothing short.  Hell, even when Dream Brother practically sounds like a cover of a Siouxsie song, it's still a Buckley song.  This is rock at some of its most gorgeous and heartfelt.  His singing has a falsetto range even beating Thom Yorke, and his ability to go from soft and folksy to rough and noisy is some of the most carefully constructed and carefully flowing transitioning I've ever heard.  Hell, he's the only one who can sing Hallelujah and make me think "Buckley" instead of "Shrek."  God, I wish he didn't drown.  One album into his career, he proved that he was a musical genius.

I've made the move to Florida and I am immediately a much happier man. Sunshine everyday is nice after 10months per year of darkness up north. People are friendlier too and my wife is happier at her new school so far. I just have to get my own ball rolling. All in due time. 

I haven't felt inspired to write reviews for a while.

I got to see Crowbar live down here, and that was amazing, Kirk's wife was working merch, so I know he got the hallmark card from my wife and I.  Life is good  down in dixie.

Awesome that you're happier down there.  My sister lives in Florida, but we haven't been speaking much.  She's had an awkward history with my family, even though we always tried to be friends.  But she seems to be making a lot of things private.  I've always wanted to go to Florida myself, though.

Ground-Zero - Consume Red (1997)

Genres: Drone, Exp. Rock, Noise

On my noise ventures I had been putting off an album I've been needing to get to for a while, Ground-Zero's Consume Red.  Now I've heard one of their albums before, Revolutionary Pekinese Opera Ver.1.28, and despite giving it a perfect score, I didn't go back to any of their other albums because it seems that each album goes for a different collective of genres.  And I also put this one off during my noise studies because I wasn't sure from the genre-tagging that it would start out with the noise I needed to drown out certain outside work.  But just look at the RYM tagging for the secondaries: Turntable Music, Free Improvisation, Noise, Korean Folk Music, Fusion Gugak, Sound Collage, Sanjo, Totalism.  All of that in an experimental hour?  Sounds like heaven to a Zappa fan like me!

At least the idea did.  The first twenty five minutes are dominated by the abuse of the same few jazz notes over and over and over again with only slight instances of noise building up overtime.  It got so utterly infuriating.  And then finally, almost halfway through the album's single-track hour, it finally brings in a lot more noise and some rock drumming.  Now at first they're welcome additions, but them the combination of the three practically refuses to change pace once the three are in place, so once again I'm stuck with a drawn-out work that completely fails to utilize the best of Ground-Zero's proven experimental prowess.  You can barely even hear the fourth major component, the shamisen.  For twenty minutes this goes on until around the 45-minute mark, where it mostly becomes a noise album.

I was really hoping for something much more insane and much less repetitive, but I didn't get that.  This feels like pussy when compared to Ver. 1.28.  How did this get nearly a 4.00 score with almost 7,000 on RYM?  I certainly don't know, but it failed to be an atmospheric experience and only got to the mania in the last 12 minutes, so I left largely dissatisfied that the genre-tagging caves in on itself via the repetition and annoyance.

58

Drudkh - Shadow Play (2025)

Genres: Atmo-Black Metal

Now we all know that Drudkh had a leading say in the development of nature-themed black metal.  They were basically THE band for the job.  They had a bit of a rocky road after their 2009 album Microcosmos, as the people say, but there seemed to be, ahem, light in the forest, during recent years.  So while I came into 2025's Shadow Play with some good expectations, I remained aware that those expectations wouldn't be met.  So while the album's getting great reviews, I have to say that they've once again become a passable and generic black metal band.  This whole album is all about relying on, and drawing out, half of the basics they had already mastered in the 2000's from Forgotten Legends to Blood in Our Wells.  The album's going for finely-tuned production above everything else, so black metal riffs and melodies come off as unoriginal.  As well, the production doesn't always balance out the ambient backgrounds and the riffs in the foreground, occasionally coming off as muddily-handled despite the ambiance.  I mean, Drudkh influenced so many bands that have done this album so many times that it's not a joke.  Did you know, if you just check the RYM charts and filter it by year and with only black metal, you'll get 25 pages of 40 black metal albums?  And 25 is the maximum they show in custom charts.  That means every year, we get over 1000 black metal albums.  These days, thanks to other nature-themed atmo-black bands like Panopticon and Ashenspire, I can guarantee you a good portion of those albums is nature-themed.  That means Drudkh has gone from influencing a classic form of metal to producing the same tripe that their own imitators make every year, just with better studio production that sometimes gets in the way.  What an overrated disappointment.  Production will keep it tolerable throughout, but otherwise this is kinda bogus.

52