Rexorcist's Forum Replies

OK, new contender - Hell II.  Heavier and slower than Dopesmoker, but just as diverse and metallic as Burnt Offerings.

I'll be honest.  Thos is more of an icebreakerthread so I can see what the people here consider heavy through album examples.  There aren't many people here, andco versation is rpetty minimal, especially since most of the conversations go on while I'm asleep.

Obviously don't list "Heroes of Mighty Magic" by Twilight Force.  That so-called "metal" is lighter than 70's metal.

Good list, Rexorcist! I actually made my own list of clan challenges a long while back for the metal subgenres that don't have them, which I can send to you soon via PMs.

Sweet.

If anyone's interested, I just spend the last half-hour compiling a viking metal list challenge.  I made sure I was thorough and didn't include anything crazy obscure.  Minimum ratings amount on RYM was 100 for this list, and as far as I've checked, none of these albums appear on any current list challenges.  I understand that viking metal is a bit of a niche genre, but it was fun to put together.

VIKING METAL LIST:
1. Bathory – Hammerheart (arguably the most famous viking metal album)
2. Moonsorrow – Kivenkantaja (one of the most notable Moonsorrow releases)
3. Enslaved – Frost (Enslaved were a key figure in this scene)
4. Falkenbach - Ok nefka tysvar ty (one of the most active viking bands)
5. Ensiferum – Iron (how can you do this without Ensiferum?)
6. Tyr – By the Light of the Northern Star (Tyr are a very diverse band with a few viking metal albums)
7. Vintersorg – Till fjälls
8. Thyrfing – Vansinnesvisor
9. Einherjer – Blot
10. Graveland – Immortal Pride (may or may not keep for being tagged as an NSBM band)
11. Månegarm – Dödsfärd (the first of the viking era of Manegarm)
12. Borknagar – Borknagar
13. Mithotyn – King of the Distant Forest
14. Finsterforst – Weltenkraft
15. Ereb Altor – By Honour
16. Helheim – Heiðindómr ok mótgang
17. Heidevolk – De Strijdlust Is Geboren
18. Skálmöld – Skálmöld
19. Svartsot – Ravnenes Saga
20. Galar – De gjenlevende
21. Heathen Foray – The Passage
22. Menhir – Thuringia
23. King of Asgard – Fi'mbulvintr
24. Folkearth – By the Sword of My Father
25. Dark Forest – Land of the Evening Star

Megadeth - Rust in Peace

I think the only problem with stenchcore is that there isn't enough of it to form a proper list challenge without duplicating bands.  But other than that, it seems like it's definitely a Pit genre.

I don't know very many people who put Dragonforce in their big four, but I do admit that Inhuman Rampage is an underrated album.  Most power metal fanatics tend to see it as a change of pace from the more melodic sound just so they can say they're the fastest metal band on Earth.  Personally, I think there's still plenty of melody in that album.

Crap.  I meant to say Infinite, but I spend a lot of time doing guardians stuff. :P.  That and I was doing three things at once.  Fixing that now.

Also, good idea, but I think we should start from Aenima upward.  That and Lateralus are the bigger ones.

Honestly, I found Kold to be less diverse than Svartir Sandar or Otta.  I think what it was that killed the diversity was how much more straightforward of a metal album this was in comparison.

After listening to a couple of Solstafir demos, I'm gonna play this.

I just finished La masquerade infernale, and I'm gonna continue on with Arcturus from that point onward.  Up until now the only Arcturus album I had heard was the debut, and I hadn't gotten around to the rest because at the time I was diving into more black metal.  But right now I'm in a shifting mood between post, black and avant-garde.  Probably gonna check out more Thy Catafalque later.

I figured the answer would be something along those lines.

Out of curiosity, what's MA's stance on trancecore?

Solstafir - Kold

I've been listening to a lot of the slower, atmospheric kinds of metal recently, and I just got out of a short Esoteric marathon.  I'm already familiar with a few Solstafir albums and I've always considered them kind of genius.  Truth be told, this album seems less like atmospheric metal and more like straightforward metal, so I'm not into this the same way I was into Otta and Svartir Sandar, but this is still a very moody and surprising album.

It's been a while since I've heard Falconer, but they are definitely responsible for the some of best power metal that Sweden has to offer.  I favor Among Beggars and Thieves and Black Moon Rising for how varied they can get.  But on that subject, I'll always be at least a little pissed that Lost Horizon only had two albums.

I'm gonna take a little bit of time away from updating my top 100 metal albums to explore Amebix.  But I need to conserve time if I'm gonna get it done quickly.  I've got a lot of long albums I plan on listening to this week and I'm not sure what I'll have to do to update my chart next.  The users on another metal site are getting anxious to see my top 100.

Still, I'm gonna be a part of this discussion as much as I can.  If stench is going to the Pit, I'll be happy that one of my clans will represent a punk genre other than crossover thrash.  I just heard three Amebix ep's and I just started Arise.

Since there aren't many posters, I'll tell you what I had in mind for the Horde: rats.  They brought the black plague, and a group of rats IS called a horde.

Plus, rats are fucking rad.

Listening to Images and Words.  Am I the only one who notices how it occasionally sounds like 80's pop music?  I mean, Another Day has a sax solo that sounds exactly like Kenny G, and Take the Time's first verse has a funky bass solo and the 80's synths you'd get in all those later disco albums or even Prince songs.  And let's be honest, the guitar tones of Surrounded belong in an AOR song.

Haha, I've heard of RuneScape but not played it. In fact, I tend to stay away from MMORPGs due to my obsessive personality (I prefer to devote my obsessive tendencies to Metal Academy). I think the clan and clan symbols we've created could be applied to lots of games, including Warhammer. Undead would be The North. Demons The Horde. Robots The Sphere. etc. Although you could argue that the Elves and the Undead should both belong to The North.

Actually, I've not told anyone this yet, but I based a lot of my design for this site on the Magic the Gathering card game. I started by trying to attach metal genres to the five colors of magic (below), but soon realised that it was impossible to snugly fit them into five clumps. I even dabbled with the idea of having clans and sub-clans, but that quickly became too complicated. You have no idea how long it took Daniel and I to agree on the clans the way they are. I'm pretty happy with them, particularly as no-one has questioned our decisions. The only thing that bothers me is that The Gateway, The Sphere and The Revolution are extremely difficult to attract new members for. There are a few obvious reasons for that, but I don't think the site would have worked if we just started throwing the likes of Metalcore, Industrial Metal and Alternative Metal into other clans. Hopefully we find some passionate fans of those styles of music.

I thought about the idea of assigning magic elements to the clans last night.  I'm kinda of a graphic design nerd myself, and much of that was influenced by the Pokemon type symbols in the card game.

The Fallen: Darkness

The Gateway: Water (mostly thinking along the color)

The Guardians: Light

The Horde: Earth

The Infinite: Space

The North: Forest

The Pit: Fire

The Revolution: Wind

The Sphere: Thunder

I deliberately left out a "metal" element for obvious reasons.  Besides, this is a second draft and I'm not sure I'm happy with it, but that's a whole different discussion.

As for my non-metal album: Will the Circle Be Unbroken by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, 105 minutes of bluegrass music.

I'm pretty sure the so-called "Big Four" was a music press creation more than a label executive's. Kerrang! journalist Malcolm Dome originally coined the term thrash metal, so I wouldn't bet against him or another metal journo coming up with the B4 epithet. Either way, you are right Morpheus, no actual thrash fans at the time called them collectively by that name. I'm surprised it's stuck around as a label to be honest because all four bands (yes, Slayer included) had their issues as metal moved into the nineties. I guess it's just because they are the most recognisable names to Joe Public and probably was jumped on as a convenient marketing tool.

Nevertheless, conversations like this are all around the internet, so it became a really common discussion point even when marketing the term isn't popular.

But I am a goat, and the greatest of all time.  You suggest I wouldn't know by now?

I agree that Testament has a lot of similarities to Metallica.  The New Order falls right in line with Master of Puppets.  But this suggests that Anthrax's legacy is built on being more commercial, which makes some sense.

 think stenchcore, if accepted, should go to The Horde, and if not the Horde, The Pit would be the closest second.

I'm already skeptical about inclusion in The Horde as the very first Stenchcore release I've explored (which is arguably the most well-known example of the subgenre too) has nothing whatsoever to do with death metal or grindcore. The Pit is a definite possibility though. I just have to figure out if the Stenchcore genre is even required or if the majority of its releases can fit under an existing subgenre easily enough. It'll be interesting to see.

Now that I think about it, The Pit COULD use a punk genre other than crossover thrash...

After finishing the Post Malone catalogue just for fucks, I'm heading straight into more Nadja.  Btw, if anyone can find the original 2003 version of Skin Turns to Glass, not the reworked version, please let me know.

I had a wolf in mind for the North, too.

Pretty cool read.  Though I don't "agree" with the rabbit, I understand why you felt that way.

I thought of a raven being used as well, but for The Fallen for its inclusion of Gothic metal and doom metal.  With that in mind, my brain was screaming "Edgar Allen Poe."  But that's really all I wanna say about my choices for the other clans.  I wanna see what the other academics say, first.

I know that Bolt Thrower started out with a strong stenchcore sound in their early debuts.  I recently heard them going through the albums I hadn't heard yet just last week.  It seems from the stenchcore charts that most of the albums voted stenchcore were already part of another metal primary, typically either thrash or death.  There are also instances of sludge.  I can't really decide if it should belong to The Horde or The Pit, but with stenchcore being a punk genre, it's interesting that none of the albums there are tagged as crossover thrash save one album boasting it as a secondary and not a primary, which means the thrash instances are just another combination.  The same could be said for the albums voted death metal, but stench's extremities are closer to death because it typically focuses more on pure brutality than thrash which is a little more rhythm-oriented.  I think stenchcore, if accepted, should go to The Horde, and if not the Horde, The Pit would be the closest second.

And I've heard enough noise albums to confirm that black noise can totally be its own thing.

So , new album next month for a quintessential Guardians band, and nobody posts it?  This forum is a cemetery...

This has got to be one of their best songs since A Night at the Opera.

Anthrax aren't from California though.

Really?

Yet ANOTHER reason they should be kicked off!

I think Ben's point is that he adds every release to Metal Academy himself.

... I did not know that.  Lemme know when you get a second guy on board so I can bug someone else about all my favorite indie bands. :P

It figures the metalheads there go for the most extreme music they can find.  In fact, if you search black metal on the recent year charts and only filter in studio albums, you'll occasionally get 25 pages of albums.  What's 25 times 40?

We're getting at least 1,000 new black metal albums every year.  That feels... obsessive.

Imagine being someone that has to add all of those 1000 black metal albums to a website. You'd have to be crazy right?! 

Thankfully there's enough metalheads there that they probably only have to add one each.

I disagree. I'd take "Spreading The Disease", "Among The Living" & even "Armed & Dangerous" over anything Testament has released. I've never considered Testament to be a tier one thrash band to be honest.

I'd have Sepultura in my Big Four ahead of Anthrax, Testament or Megadeth.

Adding non-U.S. bands is blatantly cheating and you know it! 

Even though Sepultura are better than Anthrax and Megadeth, I did in fact leave out bands outside of CA.

My homeland at heart.

Skyliner, please.  I know one of the bandmates online and he sent me the debut album.  Don't worry.  Three albums, two EP's, the first of which of which is rare.  Progressive power metal, so two of my clans: the Guardians and the Infinite.

Welcome, Rexorcist! Awesome avatar!

Thanks!

Welcome! Glad to see someone else new in The Guardians, its felt a bit empty here in the short time I've been on-site myself. Hope you'll enjoy the monthly feature albums too.

Actually, I heard it was pretty slow here.  Normally I wouldn't join a slow forum, but I'm really digging the clan system and the list challenges.  It's gonna motivate the inner metalhead in me a lot more.

It figures the metalheads there go for the most extreme music they can find.  In fact, if you search black metal on the recent year charts and only filter in studio albums, you'll occasionally get 25 pages of albums.  What's 25 times 40?

We're getting at least 1,000 new black metal albums every year.  That feels... obsessive.

Cool to see so many Testament albums reviewed here.  Way better than Anthrax ever were, nd it gets on my nerves that they made it to thrash's big four and Testament didn't.

Blind Guardian - "Imaginations From The Other Side" (1995)

I've never been much of a fan of European power metal but Blind Guardian are the exception.

4/5

BG is my favorite German band and my fave power metal act.

I'm for this.  Through the Never handles most of Metallica's history, and by the time this album was recorded they had practically stopped being a thrash band for more than 20 years.

Can't say I agree.  It's not as speed-oriented as Metallica, but it's certainly heavier and more thrash-oriented than any album Pantera ever released.  Some of it straight up fucking jams in that same way.

Welcome to the Academy Rexorcist. It's great to have you here. I think you'll find a lot to enjoy as there's a whole bunch of cool ideas & functionality hidden away within the different tabs of the Academy site just waiting for you to discover them. Let me know if I can help you with anything as that's what I'm here for. Get amongst it!

Fucking cool avatar too! Well done!

Thanks a bunch, especially for the compliment.

Really looking forward to seeing how the site works.