Rexorcist's Forum Replies

So the world's going crazy over this new K-pop album called Dall by ARTMS.  I don't discriminate, and they've only got the one album, so what the hell, right?  As far as K-Pop goes, its exact genre is more than standard.  It's made up of all the same elements of thopse before them: dance-pop and con-R&B switching, synthpop, electropop, alt-pop and future bass.  Nothing special, right?

Wrong.  These ladies' voices go fantastically together.  Their harmonics are out of this world.  On top of that, the songs are uber catchy, have memorable melodies and each song feels a little different.  I'd even go as fare as to say that Candy Crush feel's like a very artistic take on your average vaporwave EP, and it fits.  Some of these songs just make you wanna jump up while others are smoother than raspberry chocolate mousse.  If it weren't for the fact that the genre choices are uber-standard, I'd give it a ten.  But right now, I'm having difficulty deciding if it's a 9.0 like Last in Line or a 9.5 like Holy Diver.

Beyonce - Renaissance (2022)

Genres: Dance-Pop, House, Contemporary R&B

it's so weird how much she's grown as an artist since her Destiny's Child days.  it's like The Flaming Lips in the sense that their heyday came way later.  Beyonce knows how to stay relevant and how to grow as an artist.  Renaissance is basically a testament to everything she's tackled before but with a freakishly consistent vibe.  The album takes little bits of various genres and maintains a very cool presence by allowing the instruments in each song to be both complex and yet not so melodic.  The melody is handled by Beyonce and the backing vocalists 80% of the time, and it always works well-enough.  Although, if you're addicted to melody, you might find an occasionally empty feeling if the technicality doesn't impress you.  But boy does the presence of this album assault you.   In fact, I'd even say that All Up in Your Mind, in its two-minute fifty-second runtime, is one of the best things Beyonce has ever done, and it wasn't even a single.

So far, this is Beyonce's strongest studio album, still falling second to her live album, Homecoming.  The unexpected switch to house allowed her to maximize her experience, even if this is a little overlong, I found myself placing it in the high 97's on my chart.

My Top 100 Heavy Metal Albums

Thanks a bunch to Ben for putting up Scorpions' World Wide Live so I could complete this accurately.  And yes, I included the four Metallica albums I tagged as "heavy metal," including RtL and MoP.  But that barely represents the whole of my feelings here.  I'm also very happy to say that my newfound love for Priest has allowed SEVEN of their albums here.

Try reading some other people's reviews to get an idea of the terminology and overall structure used.

I hear you on that, but my approach is this; why spend a 1,000 words to say what can be said in 10? As far as pacing, I've been listening to metal for a LONG time, and like the description says; the clan lists deliberately use a lot of the bigger albums. The result being that I've already heard most of them, some of them many many times. The most common rating I give is a 2.5 which signifies average, most things are average, that's why it's the average. Along with that comes the idea that about half of the stuff is below average. 

If a piece of music is just average to me, I don't have feelings for it that warrant a lengthy response. There are only so many ways to say "This was OK."

If the music is below average to my ears, I don't think it's a cool thing to write a lengthily tirade and tear it apart. To someone else it might be very cherished. Additionally I am a bassist, and I know how difficult, time consuming, and expensive it is just to get something recorded. I don't feel right bashing another artists art simply because I don't resonate with it. 

If I had my druthers I wouldn't write a review at all for anything scoring below a 4 (If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything). However, as it stands that is the only path I'm aware of to lock in your starting clans, and make additional ones available at this time, so I try to keep my reviews of 0-3 stars fairly brief. Once I get the homework done and can freely choose what I review you will see more fleshed out takes.

The other issue is when an album has a legacy status. We are all on a metal forum, do I really need to tell you that Black Sabbath's Master of Reality is a good album? What could I possibly say about such an icon that hasn't been said since it's release 53 Years ago?

These are the questions? scenarios? I wrestle with when I write reviews. Believe me, I don't like coming away from an hour long listen (which can be a REALLY long hour if we are talking about early funeral doom) with little to say, but I can't manufacture words for words sake. 

What's more ill-conceived, a short concise statement that does the job, or a rambling for rambling sake? Especially when we all have access to the medium itself a few short mouse clicks away?

I've been thinking about all of this a lot the last couple of days. What do you think? How do you approach writing your reviews?

Thanks for the reply, but this is predominantly a "review" site. It's not a "short concise statement on some music I heard once" site.  Also, you are missing the point of a review.  A review is to tell us why you enjoy an album, not necessarily why we would because you couldn't possibly know.  Your post here shows you are an articulate guy, whereas your reviews come across as a click bait, smash and grab, social media style expression which I don't think necessarily does you justice.

Accepting the point about limited time but we have all managed to lock in our clans by going into at least some detail, which does take more than one listen over a few days (hell even weeks) around jobs, family and other commitments.  

I am not being a dick here and apologies if it comes across that way.  I am not representing the views of the site either.  As a musician I just sense there's more depth and experience you could get into your reviews to share with us.  Entirely your choice though.

Agreed on most of this, although the only disagreement is really more of a preference than an actual contradiction: I rarely feel the need to listen to an album more than once to form my opinions, but since some people here do, it's not something I'd ever choose to gripe about.  It's probably because I write a review and edit it as I'm listening to the album in most cases, but lots of people tend to collect their emotions before writing.  For the sake of example, I decided to check out one of yours on your profile, and read the first paragraph of your previous review for Thergothon:

"Exploring early funeral doom is fast becoming my favourite way to relax.  It really is testimony to the knowledge of the creator of this clan challenge (The Fallen: Doom Metal - The Early Days) as to how good an introduction to the clan this list of releases is."

I didn't finish the review since I haven't heard the album, but that's not the point.  To Zero: This is the kind of intro that establishes a personal connection between the viewer and the reader, calling to mind the conception and familiarity of relaxation to keep in mind for the rest of the review, kind of like good character development in a novel.  So whatever's needed to make things more personal is an absolute necessity, even if it takes more than one play of the album.  Hell, that's why Kid A exists.

On top of that, aren't reviews verified and unaccepted if they don't meet certain standards?  I mean, I can't be alone in this: I took one look at the standards and decided I'd try to meet them the best I could when I first got here.

When I say "like albums" I meant the genre or the behavior of the album rather than the quality.

Personally, I love going into detail.  But when I need to write a review for a clan challenge's average album, I often use the more average albums and compare them to like albums in order to fully explain it.  This helps out with an extra five sentences or so and makes the review acceptable enough to complete a clan challenge.

I agree that funeral doom is quite literally doomed to constant repetition.  It's been a bit difficult to find an album in the genre I that really amazed me, considering I need constant invention and consistency balanced to give something a great rating.  There are only two funeral doom albums that ever made it to my top 100 metal albums: Antithesis of Light by Evoken and Metamorphosis by Esoteric.

But I really do admire doom's diversity overall.  Some metal genres only have so much they can work with, but doom's all over the spectrum with its own variants like trad and funeral as well as how it easily incorporates itself into death, stoner, gothic and even black sometimes.

Nice to meetcha.  Eager to see some of your reviews.

Pizzamachine - Sorry Haterz

Genre: Crunkcore

I decided to go all the way back to this guy's debut (like four albums but one year ago) right after being astounded by his album Pizza ex Machina.

This is obviously a parody of this specific type of music, not the kind of thing you listen to on a regular basis.  The comedic lyrics are simply just talking about wanting ice cream.  It might be an innuendo, but nothing "sexy" seems to happen other than just the title, Ice Cream Slut, which means the guy's just making fun of crunkcore.  The next track: crunkcore revival, showcases a use of synthwave beats and blasts of noise to create an actual atmosphere, and it's actually a decent jam.  Not a lot of swear words, either, which means Pizzamachine is aware that the overuse of vulgarities killed the genre.  That's why he makes fun of the overuse of the f-word by making that the focus of the next song, while still having a slick and groovy electronic beat behind him.

Unfortunately, the fact that these songs attack crunkcore simplicity by commenting on it is also part of its downfall.  The album might be "using" the flaws artistically, but that still means the flaws are there to a noticeable extent.  The beats might be well done, but the rhythms and lyrics never once amaze me.  On top of that, unlike the album I just reviewed, most of these songs are the same tempo and sometimes the same vibe.  Eventually the album bored me.

Well, better than standard stuff, but still kinda lame.

51/100

I'm gonna review a really weird album today.  And I'll explain why in the first paragraph.

Pizzamachine - Pizza Ex Machina

Genres: Trap Rap, Crunkcore, Electronic

Secondaries: Industrial Hip Hop, Trap Metal, Abstract Hip Hop, Electroclash, Techno

I do not like crunkcore, I do not like trap rap, I do not like cloud rap, and I do not like electroclash.  I like industrial, I like hardcore hip hop and to an extent I like abstract hip hop and techno.  Bits and pieces of all of these make up this surprisingly beat-driven experiment in arguably the worst music genre in existence (based on common ratings): crunkcore.  I mean, it's hard to take a guy called "Pizzamachine" seriously, right?  But I was curious about the modern state of crunkcore and decided to check if anyone was doing it in 2024.  RYM chart, 2024, crunkcore, found his albums had a few five-star ratings.  So my first thought is, "That's probably because the artist or artists rated it themselves.  But, there's a chance it'll be good."  With the exception of drugs, I don't knock things until I try them.

But yeah, I checked the raters, and pizzamachine's been giving his own stuff five-stars.  I didn't even publicly rate my own novel when I published it.  I consider that cheating.

These beats actually make me FEEL.  There's a deeper core here than what's expected from 99% of crunk, and with this robotic and industrial sound getting into some properly clunky and unexpected places, it gives me the feeling of a robot desperate to know if it has a soul.  Even when it goes into weird, somewhat humorous lyrics such as on its title track, the rhythms work and the instrumentation is legit amazing.  I found myself deeply intrigued by what this guy was doing.  Maybe he's just making fun of pizza, and maybe it's a deep metaphor for something.  Wouldn't doubt if it was both at once, considering how amazing the beats were.  Even more simple songs which are largely made up of a noisy beat and lyrics have a tendency to progress the emotional core of the song.  And even the screams feel professional.  Screams in hip hop generally don't work in the long run, but the screams here came the same devastation you'd find in an extreme metal album, and they're mostly used as an atmospheric background instrument rather than a prime focus, allowing the soul to bear the same level of focus as the instrumentation.

Now allow me to overreact a little.  The songs don't all share the same damn tempo and vibe.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to find trap albums that don't do that?  Even good ones?  Trap rap is a genre I use to fill my "worst album" lists.  This album is all about creativity, and this album replicates that, especially when songs next to each other having the same tempo feel like two very different siblings in the same family.  I mean, we get vibes of Denzel Curry and Kraftwerk here.  There's even a straight-up techno song 20 minutes in.

This is the first time I've ever been flat-out intrigued by crunk of any kind.  I normally listen to crunkcore to fill up worst lists just like trap, but this album is justification for both of those genres.  This experiment could've been an absolute mess of the worst influences ever, and it ended up being soulful, consistent and addicting.  Kinda like when I tried Alani's Cosmic Stardust, I thought it would either be a sugarfest like the crappy Space Coca-Cola or surprisingly good.  Like Alani, Pizza ex Machina is no sugarfest.  It's all taste.  I don't think I want to just slap a perfect rating on it yet, though.  I need to hear some other albums by this guy first.  But it's safe to say that this album meets a great deal of my standards for perfection.

I always knew somebody might end up making a great crunkcore album someday, I just didn't know it had been done yet.

I never really thought much of them before checking out those remaining ones.  As far as modern radio's concerned, those albums are deeper cuts. :P  But at least I have a newfound appreciation for them.

Can we add Scorpions' World Wide Live, please?  I honestly have no idea why RYM doesn't tag it as metal since the album covers so many of their metal-era songs, being right at the end of it.

While I certainly quite like "Sin After Sin" & "Screaming For Vengeance" & have had a very long relationship with both, I've always felt that they were heavily overrated with neither being essential Judas Priest releases for me personally.

I can say the same for "Stained Class" actually. I guess my sweet spots for Priest are a little different to the norm.

No, I'm in the minority, too.  I checked some ranked lists around the internet, and it's rare to find Sin After Sin in the top 4.  Typically the battle for numbers 1-4 between Painkiller, Sad Wings, Vengeance and Defenders, with British Steel, Stained Class and even the two recent ones.  The latter two are a bit straightforward for me, especially Defenders.  That was the first of the various Priest albums I got through in the last 24 hours, and I really can't even say it holds a candle to the others, let alone to Invincible Shield or even British Steel which is more hard rock than anything.  Sad Wings is pretty diverse but not amazing.  About the same as Invincible Shield in quality.

Judas Priest - Stained Class (1978)

Genres: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock

Sin After Sin was an album that only made me so much more confident in the love the world shows Judas Priest.  Unfortunately, this is typically more for the radio singles and whatnot.  Albums like Sin After Sin proved to me that these guys were capable of so much more.  It's obvious that they steered away from blues rock, prog and fantasy because their image was working out for them.  Nevertheless, Screaming for Vengeance was surprisingly diverse for a strictly hard rock and heavy metal album.  So I got pretty excited to finish off the remained of the most classic of the Priest albums with Stained Class, which I started but quit so that I could compare it more easily to Sin After Sin.

This is the album where Priest truly became Priest.  I predicted a lack of the variety displayed and owned on Sin After Sin, which to me is Sad Wings 2.0.  Exciter and White Heat Red Hot begin this album with a good amount of energy for heavy metal, bringing influence to the later speed metal genre the way Dissident Aggressor did.  Great heavy metal tracks right here.  Of course, even though I predicted the third song would steer closer to hard rock, I never would've predicted it's main riff was an earlier, better version of the riff to My Own Worst Enemy by Lit.  Now this album's all funky fresh attitude here, which adds to the album's variety.  But the best thing about this song is the dense and atmospheric guitar bridge.  Strangely enough, this is the first song on the album that came so close to amazing me, as the first two were simply great and new for the time rather than phenomenal to me.  "Better by You Better Than Me" is now another favorite Priest song for me.  Next is the title track, which is speedy but bluesy at the same time.  I found my body going up and down in my chair rather than just performing standard headbanging.  I didn't find Halford's lyrical rhythms to be a proper one to mold with the fantastic instrumentation, though.  Maybe that'll change on another playthrough.

Now Invader and Saints in Hell both had some excellent instrumentation for the hard rock heavy metal bridge.  The lyrical rhythms by Halford were better than the title track's as well.  Unfortunately, I felt that both songs were too similar to each other, giving off a temporary feeling of lack of originality that was a bit to strong.  It might've had less effect if the two weren't next to each other, although I really did enjoy both songs.  Saints in Hell was an instrumental high point.  Thankfully, Savage goes right into the bluesier sounds and feels so much more original and badass as a result.  This is the kind of 70's song a man wants as his theme song when walking into the wrestling ring.  After that is the seven-minute Beyond the Realms of Death, which takes the slower side of metal that Sabbath's known for and applies it the the  newfound Priest personality, delivering something original, exciting and even atmospheric without relying on dense production.  This is probably the best song on the album.  The album ends with Heroes End.  I don't have a lot to say about this one.  It's catchy and fit for the album, but I think it's noticeably inferior to the previous track.  This should've come earlier on the album so that Stained Class could end with a proper bang.

Well, listening to both Sin After Sin and Stained Class has taught me something important: Priest's true greatness lies deeper than the radio's willing to go, because we have so many "bigger" hits by so many "bigger" bands that many of Priest's greatest songs are left to rot in a sack by radio while songs from British Steel are allowed to overtake Stained Class, Sad Wings of Destiny and Sin After Sin in popularity.  This album has a little more originality than Screaming for Vengeance and just as much metal fury.  So I think it's right to say that this album is slightly better than Screaming for Vengeance.  Stained Class rightfully showcases Priest's true evolution into Priesthood with a lot of classic metal attitude songs.  No wonder these guys are credited with helping to invent metal.  Sabbath had the slower side for most of their songs, but Priest made speedier songs cool, taking Deep Purple's skills to the next extreme, finally becoming a real metal band.

97/100

Judas Priest - Sin After Sin (1977)

Genres: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal

I'm going through all the most classic Priest albums I can right now to really educate myself in them.  I might be a Guardian but I've covered why I'm not a big Priest fan before.  But the 70's era does intrigue me as the 70's are my favorite decade in music.  Since I'm a guardian here and I've heard over 2500 metal albums, it's time I stopped putting them off.  Sin After Sin is next, followed by Stained Class.

Now this is considered early metal, but maybe not proto-metal.  Stylistically and chronologically, it exists right between the fantasy worlds of Sad Wings of Tragedy and the heavy metal energy of Stained Class, the latter of which I've only heard part of and decided to head to this first.  I found that there's a really good balance of melodies between each song.  The Judas Priest attitude is cemented on this album, so they're able to sing about fantasy topics again but with a whole new personality which would soon evolve into the biker-band we all know.  Songs like Starbreaker are all about that balance between hard rock and heavy metal.  This might even be a favorite Priest song of mine.  I find this balance tested pretty often, being neutral to Sinner and having rejected the tag for Diamonds and Rust.  Because these guys are still early at the time of this album, they're still prone to the softer and even folksier side of 70's rock, which is perfectly fine and even very cool for me.  Did you know my favorite Scorpions song is We'll Burn the Sky?  it's not even a song I grew up with considering the radio never played it and it wasn't on my "best of" copy.  Of course, this rock ballad obviously gets in the way of whether or not I'd call this a metal album, but it's really entertaining and even relaxing me despite the fact that I'm in a metal mood.  And as I hoped and even predicted, the album kicks right back into metal with an artistic 180, and goes into some progressive territory.  And all the while it remains cool, well-written and consistent with both its diversity and persona.

Sin After Sin is that glorious type of album that proudly circles all over the hard rock spectrum of the period.  The various moods of hard rock, heavy metal, blues rock, prog and a little room for ballads shows the band at some of their most diverse and surprising.  I have to really appreciate that the album showcases the band's growing understanding of structures, moods and melodies.  They pull of a lot of great things here whether they're being soft or hard.  There's a little more metal here than on most hard rock albums of the period, but the album clearly has a hard rock focus overtaking the metal vibes.  So the metal tag I'm offering should be more controversial than the internet forgives.  This is the first time that Judas met all of my standards for a five-star rating, even though the songs themselves aren't QUITE as amazing as Painkiller.  But still, there's no way I can't give this a 100.  This is currently my second favorite Judas album, and I'm going to put this in my current top 100.

Loving the variety here.  You got stuff that fits almost every clan here, even the Revolution with that Lamb of God album.  Type O Negative is also my favorite gothic band.  If you haven't heard "The Least Worst of Type O Negative," you should.  Pretty amazing demos album.

Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance (1982)

Genres: Hard Rock, Heavy Metal

I am so disappointed in Metal Academy right now.  New reviews are posted everyday, this website is old enough for many Priest fans to flock here, and yet their isn't a single review for Screaming for Vengeance.  We have three reviews for Sin After Sin but none for this!  Well, if it's up to me to write the first official review for this quintessential metal album, I will.

Of course, it should be noted that I'm not the biggest Priest fan.  My introduction to real metal is all thanks to Ozzy/Sabbath, Metallica and especially Scorpions.  Because of this, I am a Guardian first and foremost here.  But compared to Metallica, Ozzy and Scorpions who all felt a bit different in their own way, Judas felt a little standard for the time.  Maybe this is because they had been emulated so often that they came off as less original to me?  But overtime I've come to accept them much more.  Painkiller was my first Priest outing.  Absolutely incredible metal energy that I was CERTAINLY not prepared for thanks to the radio centering around the 70's and 80's stuff.  Screaming for Vengeance was my second, and as you can see, at first I could NOT favorably compare the two.  And today I still don't.  But I totally get why this is a metal classic.  Like I really do GET it.

Now the first thing I should mention is the varying levels of heaviness between songs.  Sometimes we have songs steering a bit towards the hard rock side like Devil's child, and a few of these songs are just teetering on the thin tightrope separating the air above the rope from the net below, with the air being metal and the net being rock.  Some studio production is noticeable here, so that does as much of a job amplifying the metal as much as it potentially hinders the album with its vague similarities to AOR and other arena rock genres.  of course, this was right before hair metal was cemented, so this album easily avoided the comparison for the time.  You've Got Another Thing Coming and other like songs have a certain metal personality about them, cementing them in the big leagues, but despite this quintessential biker-boy persona, it's still hard rock.  But then you have some serious metal bangers like the title track, which is easily the heaviest song on the album, and Riding on the Wind, which works in tandem with Electric Eye to give you everything you can expect from this album.

What I REALLY like about Screaming for Vengeance is that Judas Priest create a variety of attitudes, personalities and tones within their one specific persona: biker rock and metal.  They had greatly evolved from the days of dorky medieval robes and fantasy lyrics that defined their Sad Wings of Destiny days and had gained the nickname "metal gods" with this.  Some songs focus more on the drama, especially where the short intro track is concerned.  Some songs are just about having fun, and others are all about the energy.  Thanks to tonal and tempo changes, no two songs sound exactly the same, which I can't even say for Painkiller as All Guns Blazing feels similar to the title opener there.  But with things changing every song, there are a lot of ways to have fun here.

The consistency of the quality is high.  There are absolutely no skips.  I would even go as far as to say every song is great if not close to brilliance.  None of these songs really reach "brilliance" to me, but they're way catchier and more melodically healthy than so many other heavy metal albums I've heard over the years.  I guess this is really what makes Screaming for Vengeance a classic.  You could play this whole album when riding in your convertible and just let the atmosphere take you away as easily as electronic fans like Tangerine Dream's Rubycon.  In fact, those two are only four spaces away on my list of every album I've ever heard ranked from best to worst.  I can't consider this a favorite as none of the songs took me to heaven and back, but it's a lot of fun and perfectly healthy and diverse where the album's main focus is hard rock and heavy metal.

96/100

Yellerp.  Can't wait to see your top 20 page.

The Ruins of Beverast - Exuvia

Genres: Black Doom, Atmo-Black

Note: There's barely any "death" influence in this so-called "death doom" album, as it's all built on black textures, so I'm calling it black doom.

This is the one moment I've been waiting for, the beloved 2017 Exuvia.  I'll have heard the last of RoB's rawest classics after this.  It really bit me in the ass yesterday when my internet was conking out and I couldn't listen to either Exuvia or the previous EP.  I really wanna know where this man decided to go after everything that's been going down and all the surreal craziness and evil that built his last three studio albums.

The title track out with a new direction for the tribal behavior of the previous EP, Takitum Tootem, applying the chanting spiritual vocals to a funeral doom sound that evolves into black.  The next couple minutesa are taking small but effective shifts into different black metal sounds to keep things original, drawing the listener into a dark netherworld after the chanting ends.  It seems to me that the black metal here is being used for more like a repeating ambient track rather than a melodic track.  Despite the fact that melody has worked out perfectly for RoB in the past, this decision is a perfectly fine one since it WORKS.  The repetitive hypnotism keeps dragging the listener from one surreal plain of reality to another.  By the end of this track, there's a very faint guitar melody drowned out by the repeating riff.  I'd have liked for it to be a little louder as the ending draws itself out a bit.

Surtur Barbaar Martime begins with one of RoB's signature funeral riffs, taking a direct turn into the black metal pretty quickly, relying on more energy than the opener.  The song typically switches between the two for aural effect, oftentimes being instantaneous but eventually being combined with meximum effect during the middle section.  This song is esentially a reorganization of the behavior of the first track with less of the tribal ambient and more of the funeral backdrops.  But since it shares so many similarities with the first track, I was really hoping for something different with Maere.  Starts out more or less the same way with a blacker energy to it.  Any ambient aspects are attributed to ghostly wails, usued for a mysterious Lovecraftian effect.  They're quite cool, but a little drowned out by the black guitars.  At least, this is true for the first half, which cranks up the volume on the vocals.  It seems that despite the shifts in these songs, the exact tone is much moe consistent.  The line between black and doom is much thinner here.

The Pythia's Pale Wolves starts up the second half with bagpipes faintly added to another typical black doom intro, but the percussion is tamer, less active and more focused on a specific slow rhythm.  The vocals are also more fit for doom as they're clear and harmonic.  This helps bring out another spiritual vibe that's much more relaxing.  I didn't expect this to last forever, though, as it eventually combines the funereal guitar tone with this, somehow making both the ambiance of the blackened guitars and the funereal sound much more energetic together rather than separate.  Even when the crystal clear female vocalizing comes into play, it revs the listener up.  The tempo and percussion eventually replicate the energy, pushing it even further as the power becomes too much to handle, leaving the harmonizing to balance it out.  This is a shift I can really appreciate as it keeps making something better out of a sound that, while still great, we've heard before.  This is the densest segment of the album so far.  This track really likes to challenge the perceptions of relaxation and extremities, as it's really the heaviest track on the album at that point but also has some very serene atmospheric moments created through these extremities.  But at this point, I also really need something different no matter how extreme it gets.

Towards Malaika only has about thirty seconds of weird tribal chanting, and I was pretty disappointment that it didn't continue for even longer.  So the most I could do was wait for something totally new to happen.  Although the beginning had a typical sound, the vibes are much more dramatic than the tracks before, thanks to a higher pitched sound-effect driving the background and amplifying the weird rhythm in the front.  After the dramatic intro, there's a switch into pure, uncensored doom, and this doom keeps us going for a while.  This to me qualifies as a difference because it's slow, stomping guitars are more true to doom's roots than anything that's been present so far, relying more on atmospheres such as tribalism or mysticism before.  The third act, starts with the chanting, and I was once again hoping that it would last a while, but instead it goes right back to the black metal, which kind of pissed me off.  This guy makes a tribal ambient EP, releases another album the next year and barely does anything with it.  It begged the question, why bother featuring it on this track at all???  The song ends with it again, but it doesn't have as strong of an effect as it should for me.  I was thinking to myself, this last track had better be phenomenal.

This final track, Takitum Tootem (Trance), goes right into the noisiest black metal guitars present so far.  This doesn't stop a melody from being made out, largely because the percussion is more rooted in dramatic effect and not speed. In this way, I'm given an effective black ambient track performed with metal instruments, like some black noise albums I can name.  This slower, doomier and noiser take on the Exuvia sound has increased the heaviness while still finding that perfect serenity through it.

This is a different type of album for Ruins of Beverast.  The songs each have their differences and their similarities, and because the songs are so long, the similarities kind of tested my faith in his ability to put out other songs.  Maybe this is the best course of action, as black metal and doom metal fans want many more atmospheres.  This is the perfect RoB album for those who favor atmospheres akin to his debut over the wild ever-shifting behavior of his second through fourth albums.  This album is ALL ABOUT the atmospheres.  Unfortunately, this fixation on metal atmos also wanes down the potential of the tribal aspects shown on the Takitum Tootem EP from the year before, even though it still makes short and effective.  So this is another fantastic release by one of Germany's best black metal artists, but also features a slightly missed opportunity that's not quite enough to knock a half-star down, but is enough for me to confirm that IMO this doesn't hold a candle to Sheltered Elite.

95/100

The Ruins of Bevarast - Takitum Tootem! (EP)

Genres: Tribal Ambient, Atmo-Black

The Ruins of Beverast marathon #7 - Takitum Tootem!

OK, so I'm reading about this album on RYM, and it tags the EP as "tribal ambient" and "black metal."  So here I am thinking, "OK, this is gonna be one of the coolest fucking things ever, or a mess."  The ratings don't look so good on RYM, but that didn't stop me from checking out their demo.  I had a few theories as to what this album would sound like, but I didn't care which one was right.  I just wanted to jump right into it after I had gotten that chronologically far in RoB's discography.

Track one of two: Takitum Tootem! (Wardance).  It starts out with a dark ambient intro with mild tribalism that evolves into a long black metal riff.  The riff itself has a very metal energy about it that isn't so much "evil" as it is "cool" and "dark."  Tribal drumming rides the whole rest of the track.  Unfortunately, it stays that way for 75% of the song with very few meaningful shifts.  I'm surprised at RoB for doing that.

Track two: Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun: This one gets right into the weird tribal atmospheres and instrumentation.  It's practically invoking images of fighting zombies in an ancient temple.  The atmosphere and instrumentation are PERFECT.  Around three minutes in, we start to see occasional ghostly vocals like something out of a Metroid game.  Black metal guitars are also used sparingly at first for build-up.  It speeds up at the four minute mark, turning into pure tribal black metal as guitars overlap each other level upon level like the ending act of Nine Inch Nails' Closer.  It stays that way for a moment before drowning down to a dungeon ambient tune that carries over the Metroid mysticism, going through various Lovecraftian sound effects before returning to the main riff of the beginning, but with more "technological" aspects.  Genius moves on their part.  Now it sounds EXACTLY like something out of a Metroid game.  It ends with two more segments: one final blast of black tribalism, and a weirdass outro with what sounds like some awkward animal noises for a surreal effect.

I certainly wasn't disappointed with this one.  This otherworldly EP carries the surreal vibes of Metroid, Cthulhu and even some Juno Reactor songs.  The first track was decent on its own, but the second track is one of the coolest ambient tracks I've heard.  This is easily a keeper.

83/100.

The Ruins of Beverast - The Furious Waves of Damnation (2003)

Genres: Black

OK, so way late into my exploration of The Ruins of Beverast, I found out about this demo release that I totally glossed over on the RYM page.  It was only a half-hour, so why not blow through it?  Who knows what's gonna happen?  it could be a wild ride like many other RoB albums, right?

TOTALLY wrong.  When they said "demo," they meant "demo."  This really isn't anything more than a standard practice album that says absolutely nothing about this guy's future potential.  I've heard early Solstafir demos that did the exact same thing, but were still better.  This is largely because the fuzzy production only allows for so much to really be heard.  Throughout the half hour there were really no surprises of any kind.  Sure, we got some decent and some OK riffs, but I really don't see any reason for this album to exist otherwise.

The Ruins of Beverast - Blood Vaults: The Blazing Gospels of Heinrich Kramer

Genres: Death Doom, Black Doom

I knew this was going to be a turning point for The Ruins of Beverast.  From what I understand, much of the black metal sound has been degraded to an amplifier for other doomier projects, but I really wanted to see where this was going to go.  Considering RoB's love of the random, I would either love this or hate this.  I currently consider The Ruins of Beverast one of the greatest black metal acts of all time, but I'm not as familiar with his doom music.  Let's see where this goes...

So the spoken word intro wasn't anything special to me.  I mean, I fell like anyone can put together basic synths and a creepy poem together and open an album that way.  The fact that his segues on his debut album were so brilliant only make this worse.  Thankfully, the first song, Daemon, is there to fill in the emptiness.  It starts out as a black doom song but evolves into some oddly appropriate but totally new traditional doom metal for a minute before returning to blackened doom.  Daemon is yet another creepy, paced and cinematic whirlwind of organized chaos, and is a perfect opener to this album.

Maleficia starts out dominated by weird repeating vocal effects set to a slow and sparse gothic doom instrumentation, and even lets some effects take over the lead, almost like he's underwater.  The song gets a little heavier and black to blackness before taking a direct shift into high-pitched synths and post-metal slowness.  This flow is both calming and empowering at the same time, creating something completely new for RoB: a post-metal song, one that I honestly like more than most post-metal albums I've heard.  However, the genre-shifting is much more blatant, which can actually fuck with the flow for some.  I mean, this song REALLY challenges your dedication to Ruins of Beverast.  So the fatal flaw is that the serenity of it all is given very little room to breathe.  We have black doom, death doom and even organs near the end overtaking this, so it's a good song but a wasted opportunity for an incredible post-metal song.

We go back to roots here with Ornaments on Malice, which frankly has been done before: a black-death-doom hybrid song again, and it takes three minutes for it to really change pace.  But this time, it's a simple, monotone ring with more angelic synths and deep chanting.  Eventually the two distinct sounds mold together for something truly epic, if not under-explored.  This combination, however, is also bringing to mind the metal artist Hell, also known as MSW.  After that is Spires, which spends a good deal of time in the same old death doom territory that we already expect of him with very little to say for the melody, which means this fairly rhythmic track is mostly relying on a familiar atmosphere.  There are some weird and quirky moments, but nowhere near enough to drive the song for its 13-minute runtime.

So now I'm hoping A Failed Exorcism gives me something new, even if it ends up being a mess  I mean, 15 minutes wouldn't have been a daunting task back in Sheltered Elite.  The combination of gothic doom and death doom maximizes the effect of both aspects put together, even to the point where it sounds like THE SONG ITSELF IS ACTUALLY GONNA KILL ME.  There's even a touch of prog in the percussions during the breaks.  Three and a half minutes in, it takes a totally different persona as the funereal sounds drive a ritualistic drum pattern through another chanted poetic lyrics with some beautiful singing before returning to the original format again, only with the black doom aspects enhanced.  The next few minutes go back to balancing the two brands of doom with just as strong of an effect as before, allowing it to feel fresh after its many shifts, and ends with a purely death doom outro that ties all the shifts together in a simple, easy to follow way.  Excellent effort.

Next is the three-minute trial, which is all about monotone instrumentation backing up a whole choir.  It gets creepier as it goes along, adding new sounds in the background and slowly changing the drum riff to something more active and heavier overtime.  Following is another three-minute track, Ordeal, which is a pretty cool black metal track on its own but doesn't hold a candle to the best stuff on the album.  Finally we end things with Monumentum, which kicks us off as a with a symphonic funeral piece It switches to a purely doom sound pretty often, which means there are very few surprises left in store by this point.

Well this was a much more mixed bag of ups and downs than I expected.  The quality of songs took big rises and drops constantly, and some are just totally forgettable while others are flat-out amazing.  It says to me that the current incarnation of The Ruins of Beverast is done and shouldn't be pressed any further, so while there are some songs I'd definitely put on a greatest hits comp, I don't really feel like I have any reason to listen to this again.  So I think I'll give it the bare maximum for 3.5 stars: 74/100, as 75 would round to 4 stars.

The Ruins of Beverast - Emchanted by Gravemold

Genres: Atmo-Black Metal, Black Doom Metal

Wasn't really expecting a demos album, but I had to know what the rejects from the first three albums sounded like.  Ruins of Beverast is a project that's shown me a whole new world of black metal, one that I hope is much more thoroughly explored by the masses.  I REALLY do think it's possible.  Did you know that you can get 1000 new black metal studio albums every year?  I checked the RYM charts and multiple year charts for this.  It's fucking true.  On top of that, Darkthrone's updating the doom influence in their modern albums, so I really hope this becomes a thing: blackened doom metal, and not just a small time blanket term for a select few bands like "Philly Club Rap."  So I'm going to keep exploring Beverast and the world he created, and that includes demos and rejects like this.

Desert Lair does show some kind of a difference.  Maybe the occasional slightly higher timbres don't allow it to feel as dark as what was called for on the albums at first?  Maybe the production was wrong because it's a bit more clear?  I have no idea, but otherwise, I don't find anything wrong with in.  The variations in rhythm, tempo and instrumentation are abundant, but they all flow together perfectly.  If anything, this is one of his finest performances.  In fact, I checked some reviews to see what people thought, and apparently I'm not off the mark here: this is basically a highlight of RoB's career.  It kinda pains me that he left this off his official albums.

The Moselle Enigma goes right into the noisier black metal production, and is a bit off.  The noise-factor of the instrumentation is properly messy, but it gets in the way of hearing the vocals properly.  Real shame because the rhythms are fantastic.  Despite how maniacal this song is, it's surprisingly catchy and intriguing.  The second half starts off with rain recordings and more choral vocals, giving us a very bleak imagery that's just PERFECT for the vibe of the song.  Part of me wanted this segment to last the remainder of the song, but when it ended I still had a minute left, and it was used on the format of the first half, which I think is perfectly fine this time considering its short length in comparison to the average length of an RoB song.

Hours of the Aequinox is next, and we go into it with a black noise focus and a slower, doomier violin intro just totally chilling me out.  A serene song was the perfect way to follow up the last one, and the black noise is the perfect way to follow up the rainy effects.  We don't have very many slow-going atmo-black songs that mirror the winter aesthetic, as up to this point, the tones and timbres were a bit deeper.

Those were the originals.  Apparently, the last three songs are all covers, starting with Enigma of the Absolute, originally present on Dead Can Dance's Spleen and Ideal.  Now Spleen and Ideal is one of the best darkwave albums in the world, so covering it is a daunting task.  You'd think a master of black metal would pull it off, and it might've been done had the production been better.  The rhythms of the guitars can barely be made out, the percussion's week, and the effects are almost entirely drowned out.  It's a real shame.  This could've stood with the original.

Next, believe it or not, is a cover of To Have and to Hold off of Music for the Masses, as in DEPECHE MODE.  I guess it can be done, as Depeche Mode have dabbled with darkwave instrumentation before.  It's a pretty creepy track with its own personality, and I guess it's a slight improvement because the atmosphere and production are improved.  But this song doesn't even reach the creative heights of Unlock the Shrine's segues.

The final cover is Symphonaire Infernus et Spera Empyrium by My Dying Bride.  Now I've never heard the original EP with this song, but I'm more than aware of what MDB sounds like.  I've got several of their albums under my belt.  This version uses neoclassical synths to help with the atmospheres, steering into symphonic black metal akin to Summoning.  And it really does capture the epic vibes very well, but the problem is that a 16-minute Ruins of Beverast song needs to keep evolving.  Thankfully this gets around to that at around the five-minute mark, but I think the pitch of the synths is a bit too high for the deeper timbres of the black metal instrumentation, so I can't really say that RoB rocks symphonic black as well as he does atmo-black, despite this being a pretty cover.

OK, the first three tracks work perfectly well on their own, and even in order, whether or not they were intended that way.  The three covers in the second half, however, felt lacking and in need of polishing in order to be great.  So if you're a Beverast fan already, I really do recommend this album if not only for the first half.  But if you're not, you'll probably hate the covers.

80/100.  About a 9.5 for the first half, about a 6.5 for the second.

The Ruins of Beverast - Foulest Semen of a Sheltered Shrine

Genres: Atmo-Black, Death Doom, Black Doom

OK, it felt a little weird typing that title, but whatever.  From what I've heard and read, there's kind of a battle between various Beverest albums for "best one."  Obligatory Beatles comparison.  Now this guy only has six albums, but four of them are contenders: Unlock the Shrine, Rain Upon the Impure, Sheltered Elite and Exuvia.  I'm on the third of these, and I can't wait to see what happens next.  While the first album was great, the sophomore showed a noticeable improvement in quality, being less repetitive and just as weird.  I'm a bit surprised that I'm the first one here to review it, though, considering how big these guys are in the metal community.

This is the album that represents the beginning of RoB's shift from a black metal focus to a doom one.  As a result, the opener, I Raised This Stone as a Ghastly Memorial has a less black production level which is less busy and noisy. This is an excellent example of RoB's ability to produce epic tracks while changing things around.  As far as switching it up with various variations in a single song goes, this is likely his most consistent song in that regard.  Despite the variations in the first act, the backing blackened guitars and the psychedelic / funereal slow-paced solors test the patience slighty.  But a little patience during a vocal segment, and we're back to the sounds of the first act, appropriately so, as that first melody was so epic in its tame approach that it absolutely MUST NOT be forsaken to one act alone.  Our next track slams us with total black metal: God's Ensanguined Bestiaries.  Now this started out as a purely black metal track with very clear production, one that used melody to draw me in again.  So it remains catchy and dark, but doesn't do anything different until the third act, in which the instruments take a step back for clearer vocals to sing for a minute.  And then it goes back to what it was doing. In all respects, the instrumentation's fine.  But when you stand this album next to Ghastly Memorial or anything from the sophomore, it looks and feels kinda like a standard atmo-black track at first.  Thankfully there's at least a change in tempo during the midsection.  This one once again takes advantage of slow compositions during the solos to bring out the epic approach of the album rather than thrashing the fuck out of everything.  And as a guy who generally prefers thrashing the fuck out of everything, it's a very welcome change of pace.  I guess after all the craziness in the sophomore, the fans need something a little more simple.  So this may be the worst track on the album, but it totally works.

This is the point of the album where things were getting weirder.  Mount Sinai Moloch was up next.  I can appreciate the industrial black ambient intro.  Chances were the song wasn't gonna do that for its 12.5 minute runtime.  The intro lasts about a minute and a half before going into some straight up death doom with a slight funereal touch, relying on the sparseness of the instrumentation to deliver the goods until blackened riffs overtake the background, going back to the "blackened doom: that Wikipedia likes to tag this band with, and then back to the funeral doom.  So while the first two songs were a bit more tame than this, I finally get the song I've been waiting for: a multi-faceted and consistent adventure of unpredictability that acts as a testament to RoB's talents.  Right after that is more funereal behavior with Transcending Saturnine Iericho Skies,  Its approach is certainly metallic, but very soothing to the metal soul.  The song evolves into straightforward doom after the intro, just rocking its Sabbathian vibes for a couple verses before taking a 180 into black metal like it's nothing.  And this eventually evolves into the atmospheric side as synths bring out an almost heavenly backdrop for about twenty seconds before we instantly sink right back into the funereal guitars of the intro.  There is obviously nothing this song won't try, which means any suspicions of the album being made of overlong and repetitive songs is practically gone now.  In fact, the changes of pace get more and more frequent the more you dive into this song.

However, despite all these interesting turns, I've heard most of these tricks on the previous album.  I really needed one.  Thankfully, higher timbres of The Restless Mills did just that, going into the highest pitches of tremolo that RoB has picked this far.  This one's far more rooted in the slow atmospheres of metal than anything beforehand.  Unfortunately, the tremolo trick hadn't returned for a long time, but I had a strong atmosphere with some interesting effects in the background to make up for that.  It might not mix it up much until the last third, and I suppose that's fine after the last two tracks, but it doesn't quite have enough melody to go around, either, leaving an empty feeling despite the strengths.  Now Theriak - Baal - Theriak is where we REALLY get something new.  It starts with some maniacal laughing as an unintelligible growl is speaking, leaving me to believe the voice is saying something disgusting and funny while the voices laugh (On a side note, I know all four of Kenny's verses in each version of the South park theme).  Once the laughing is done, the percussions go headfirst into hardcore punk territory!  That's completely new for RoB.  The song switches between focus on atmosphere and melody while switching between growls and singing during this segment, but switches to a more dramatic monotone beat with its own mystic and ritualistic vibe before returning.  Once again, all these changes feel completely natural.  Right before the end of this track, we go into a much cooler and astral Sabbathian vibe, one that would likely make the stoners crazy.  Excellent inclusion before ending before going back into the speedy black guitars.

Alright, now after all the craziness I went through in RoB's catalog to get this far, it's time to talk about the final track of his third album.  Cool deep space synths and an audio sample, nice but been there.  Instances of a 60 BPM blackened rhythm accompanying it.  Improvement.  Evolves into its own focus for the synthesizers to empower, draws itself out while focusing on melody.  Clear vocals and vocal effects taking turns.  In its first two minutes it took several mutations on a very natural level.  This is an extremely psychedelic tune where RoB does a masterful job of just drawing people into its drug-induced black metal world, like the best tracks by Oranssi Pazuzu.  Almost halfway there, a stoner riff cuts out the astral vibes and goes right for pure metal solo for a couple of minutes before returning to some slow but intriguing blackened doom riff before ending in the same psychedelia that began it.  This is a whole new level of wild for RoB.

This album shows RoB at the top of his game, recycling older elements from the past album while increasing the doom influence and improving the production values.  This album is much more than the black doom album RYM has the audacity to tag it with.  This is a journey across the world that the combination of these two genres can explore without losing their identities.  I guess if I had to fault the album for anything, it would be that I heard some of these tricks on the last album, but I think I should forgive that since the primary focus of the album and the production quality are both very different.

100/100

The Ruins of Beverast - Rain Upon the Impure (2006)

Genres: Atmo-Black

Our opener is the 13.5 minute epic 50 Forts Alone the Rhine.  This would be his longest song released, so the chances of being totally monotonous were pretty high, unless BoR managed to keep it creative throughout.  I noticed variations in production quality between clear sound effects and slightly fuzzy production for the guitars, while the vocals are right in the middle of the two.  Nothing, however, gets in the way of each other, allowing these multiple elements to work in harmony while the unpredictability of The Mine is combined with the melodic charms of the earlier tracks on Unlock the Shrine, which makes this his best song so far.  I had been curious for a couple years about the combination of fuzzy and clear production and how to properly utilize it.  RoB answered my question, and I'm perfectly satisfied with the answer.  Add the fact that this is probably the creepiest song of his so far, then I would even go as far as to say that this is one of the greatest metal songs I've ever heard.

Next is a SIXTEEN minute track: Soliloquy of the Stigmatized Shepherd.  Damn... The song begins with a dirge of black doom that's more than eager to stomp you flat into the earth.  The doom switches between the death and funeral brands, allowing Frohn to add sparce moments of black growls and guitar effects.  These sparse moments aren't quite enough to make up for the otherwise lack in shifting behavior that the track is guilty of, as it has to compete with the previous song's astounding creativity.  But at the halfway point, our percussion largely ceases for a moment, and the guitar effects become alien and otherworldly, playing at a rapid pace.  The track then evolves into a war metal riff and blast.  The percussions are a little drowned by the riff, but the atmosphere is hypnotic.  We have a couple of minutes of this before the doom takes over again with a couple higher pitches and a more astronomical approach, and then goes back to black again with a slower but still energetic approach, which means our super-slow track is finally utilizing the creativity of the previous track despite its slightly overlong first half.  What a way to save it.  Now we just let the chanting and the psychedelic guitars take us away through the end.  Kick back, enjoy the atmos.

Track 3 is 16 minutes as well, and I've got some pretty high hopes for this one as track two came back with some punches.  Track two evolves into Blood Vaults with more weird sound effects, overtaking the guitars in both volume and focus.  Now things are getting multi-dimensional, like I've been pulled into a Stephen King shadow world.  This intro evolves into a very focused and melodic atmo-black track with the kind of aggression the album's been largely missing.  It even takes a moment to give us the obligatory nerdy Vincent Price sample.  For a while, the drums are hurt by the bad production, but after the sample they seem to be fixed, going at a perfect volume with the riff and some deep masculine choir singing.  Now this change in production wasn't really an "artistic decision" that needed to be there, as the worse production on the first act of this song did more harm than good.  But it's nice to have more balance back, and the melodies keep shifting with perfect consistency.  So Once again we have a flaw in a track's beginning while the song gets better as it goes along.

And now for the THIRD sixteen minute track in a row: Soil of the Incentuous.

...

SOILED IT!  SOILED IT!  SOILED IT!

Ahem, excuse me.  Now for this track.  It starts off with a standard black doom rhythm and riff, not really impressing me at first.  But I had already decided to wait and see what it was going to do next.  Once it upped the blackness, the rapid speed aggression brought more of its general evil out.  it remains standard until another vocal sample leads us to a gothic section with industrial noises to bring us a totally new sound and direction that the album hasn't explored yet, and it feels perfectly fitting.  But once again we're back to the plastic black metal after a couple minutes.  This track shows RoB being much more serious about the black metal aspects than he was on the previous tracks.

After a creepy dark ambient track that does its job but fails to hold a candle to its brothers from Unlock the Shrine.  This track shows RoB doing everything he can to make it an epic ending.  Even anything vaguely related to doom is relying on bombast here, which has largely been missing from the album so far.  Even when the industrial percussions return, everything is epic, loud and cinematic.  A plethora of different vocal styles comes in to aid in every piece of this album from mutant chanting to choirs to demonic growls.  I'd even say this is the second best song that I've heard him record so far.

I'm more than pleased with this sophomore effort.  There are a couple small decisions that shouldn't have been made, and there are a lot of seriously artistic moments that draws me into every angle of the individual worlds each track explores.  Rain Upon the Impure is proper black metal, but also acts as both a slow and fast cinematic exploration of what the darkness of black metal is capable of.  No wonder this is RoB's most popular album, it's a tornado of perfectly evil melodies and vibes.

96/100

The Ruins of Beverast: Unlock the Shrine (2004)

Genres: Atmo-Black

Today I'm going on a marathon for a modern black metal artist with an apparent sense of creativity: Alexander Frohn, also known as Meilenwald, and most popularly known as The Ruins of Beverast.  Like other band marathons I've taken on, such as Evoken, I'll be starting from the ground up.  It's been a while since I just had a long metal kick, and I want to get into more doom metal by listening to their more recent doom efforts.  But I don't think I'd be treating them fairly if I didn't go back to their roots first, so a trip to the atmo-black world of Unlock the Shrine it is.

First, lemme mention that atmo-black metal really isn't one of my favorite forms of it.  So many "atmo" genres favor length for the sake of build-up but neglect composition.  I'm not really getting that right here, though.  We start this album off with a good composition and a slow but effective melodic rhythm that manages to last 8.5 minutes, and I'd even give it around 8.5 for how well it was able to keep itself going despite the lack of general activity.  Other songs tend to do this with varying lengths, usually short.  Now Skeleton Coast was a good piece of dark ambient with an almost swamp-like vibe, but I was mostly taken in by Euphoria When the Bombs Fell.  It's a great combination of atmo-black and death doom that once again puts slow melodies first and atmosphere following closely behind.  Afterwards comes God Sent No Sign, which starts off with weird, almost cartoonish alien effects posing as dungeon synthesizers, but ends up backed up by a noisy black metal riff with no percussion.  I addressed the randomness of the decision as feeling somewhat out of place with the first three tracks, but it was still nice while it lasted.

OK, so now there's an 11-minute epic: The Clockhand's Groaning Circles.  I didn't really have any idea what to expect, but ONCE AGAIN, melody came first.  A slightly proggy touch is just enough to separate this song from the others while carrying the same atmospheres, I think at this point, the perfect recreation of past vibes gets in the way of the variety of it all, but the composition still makes it much more create than any Wolves in the Throne Room album.  And once again there's a switch to weird repeating effects.  Procession of Pawns takes an industrial look at dark cabaret, looking at it in that creepy carnival way while keeping it quiet enough for the darker wind effects to take equal focus.  Visually, all I see are dark red skies, winds blowing dark brown dirt in the air and a broken down carousel.

Appropriately, we get a blast of utter black noise on Summer Decapitation Ritual.  You can barely make out any melody, which is perfectly fine for noise fans who want atmosphere, but is also a little disappointing considering that the strongest point for this band so far has been slow and catchy melodies with dark atmospheres backing them up, rather than vise-versa.  I can't really say the decision here was the best course of action.  But they really do nail the menacing vibes, and it also showcases their variety without losing touch of the darkness.  This ends after about three minutes before getting to those same symphonic trumpets the Summoning fans love so much, but there's hardly anything else symphonic about this as a super-noisy melody backs it up, betraying the atmospheric focus for pure melody.  It's a bit hard to gauge how much of a shift this was as a change was necessary, but may have been too bombastic.  The third act of this song goes back to the structure of the first, but the percussions and effects make it louder and more maniacal than before, but also use the room they had for the melody of the trumpets to be recreated by guitars at a faster pace.  So despite the trumpets being a little bombastic for this type of song, I commend the band for their creative and artistic attempts, notably since they mostly succeed.

The next "effects" track, Cellartunes, is by far the creepiest.  Field recordings and slow and deep synths work with dripping water and heavy breathing to create the creepiest atmosphere these guys have done on the album so far, but it only lasts two minutes.  For a dark ambient track on a black metal album, this might be the best track so far.  These effects mold right into the title track without wavering, ready to turn the effects into an actual song. And after about a minute, we get a sluggish industrial melody with matching percussion to slowly but surely carry these effects into black metal territory.  As it should be, it's purely frightening and mesmerizing for the first two acts before using the last three minutes on a perfectly fitting ride into the stormy noise seen in the first and third acts of Summer Decapitation Ritual.  The next effects track is Subterranean Homicide Lamentation, which takes a black ambient industrial noise and puts it to tribal chanting and a faint wind instrument that I think is a clarinet.  This combination is perfectly balanced and gets its effect out of the way well enough, although I would've liked for this concept to emerge into its own song.  The percussions and guitars of the 12-minute epic, The Mine, follow suite.  The changes are largely in the thickness of the guitar atmosphere and the switching between weird vocal effects and darker growls.  Every couple minutes there's a change in either the effects or the rhythm, but it never breaks its heavy emotional core.  The effects and structure become only more and more unpredictable and even progressive, keeping me on my toes and making me eager to hear even more.  The album ends with the shortest track: White Abyss, which is all about high-pitched winds, screams and weird effects whirling about your head.

This was a satisfying debut that proved that early on in his career, Mr. Meilenwald already had a clear idea of what makes art worth exploring.  While this breaks absolutely no new ground, it gives us multiple variations of the standard black metal song and keeps things unpredictable.  This debut definitely gets my seal of approval, and it makes me more eager for the sophomore that everyone seems to love.

91/100

This is one of those cases where multiple primary tags can be applied to the two genres taking turns in an artistic fashion rather than being combined.

One can't deny Blue Cheer's status as a proto-metal act, but I think it just slightly missed the mark.

Alright.  Thanks.  Then I hope both our definitions will come in handy when comparing notes over the songs and albums gone over on the thread.

Thanks for clarifying Rex but I've already defined the differences above & you're kinda hijacking the intended direction of the thread here so I'm just gonna move on.

What the hell is that supposed to mean?  You posted it, I'm gonna discuss it.  Bottom line.  If you don't want me here just say so.

I just looked up Bound for Glory in RYM, and it appears they're one of those "Nazi/National Socialist" bands. I'm never a fan nor supporter of any of those openly Nazi bands, but Ben can add them to the site as long as the band has at least one official non-demo/single release that is considered metal. Bound for Glory has almost a dozen thrash metal releases, so they're all set to be added in, Pelle.

Shame about the Nazi thing, because I'm curious about thrash meeting Oi.

My idea of standard doom metal:

My idea of standard stoner metal:

Notice how the distortion is more effective as an aural tool in the latter, and the solo is clearly rooted in Jimi Hendrix influence.

This is the best way I can describe it.

And now for some subgenres: to compare stoner to traditional doom, traditional doom is a genre built for bands like Candlemass, and there's clearly a stronger level of psychedelia in bands like Orange Goblin and Ad Astra.  And yes, stoner metal can be a slower-paced genre with the right influences, but depending on how you attribute that, it can steer closer into doom territory or even heavy psych.  If it's built in space-like or drug like moods, then I'll keep it as a stoner song.  But if the tone and composition are less psychedelic and more on the horror or drama side, then I'll call it doom.

Now to connect it with traditional doom: since the earliest examples (the first three Black Sabbath albums) blur the lines, it's no surprise the genre-tagging is wild.  Here's how I would tag the album on RYM:

Heavy Metal, Hard Rock

Traditional Doom Metal, Stoner Rock, Psychedelic Rock

So I'm not really going to count Black Sabbath as the clear definition as the point of music genres is to mold into their own sound.  So what is really the difference?  Well, take an album like Psalm 9, and its opener, The Tempter.  It starts out with guitar and sound effects that create a dungeon-like approach, one that even treats its own guitar riffs as ghostly wails.  45 seconds in, we get to our lead riff, which carries a tone that can easily be compared to Sabbath, but can it be compared to Kyuss or Down?  About another 45 seconds later, we get into a much faster pace, which is where the "traditional" part comes in, but despite the change in pace, the guitar tone doesn't change.  Then we get back to the slowness pacing again, and back to the speed, and so on.  In other words, this song is essentially switching between being "doom metal" and "heavy metal."  We do, however, come across a fairly bluesy guitar solo after the second round, but despite it's 3/4 timing it barely rings of Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughn beyond that.

Now for the almost thrash-powered follow-up, Assassin.  There's a noticeable level of blues influence in the riffs, but not so much psychedelia.  And immediately after that, in Victim of the Insane, we're drawn right back into the dramatic tribal drumming and another slow, horror-rooted, demon choir Neil Gaiman on adderall piece of epica.  And another thing that separates this song from "purer" doom is the singer.  Eric Wagner is a fucking underrated monster who's higher pitch and metallic distortion are everything Axl Rose wants to keep for himself.  The most psychedelic thing about this song is the existence of an organ in the background.

The real classification of traditional doom to me is the bridge between both doom and heavy, whereas stoner has little to do with that.  This combination of genres allows for the darker side of the fantasy themes of Judas Priest to fully emerge, whereas stoner is more interested in the "Sweet Leaf" stuff and capitalizes on the blues and psychedelia that ruled the 60's rock scene, like everyone wants to make their own variation on "Born to Be Wild."

Lss: the difference between traditional doom metal and stoner metal is that traditional doom focuses more on the typical darker fantasy themes of heavy metal while maintain a darker dramatic presence, and stoner metal is reviving and amplifiying the classic genres that helped to invent metal in the first place for y'all stoners and leather-spouting cueballs.

Alright maybe this is my fault since I was tired at the time of posting, but I should mention that I never said the length of the track.  The length pertained to the pacing, which should've been obvious.  So pacing is the better word.

And I've yet to find a stoner band that didn't feel like their sound was grounded in noise.  Even if you have the clearest production, if it's not noisy and a little druggy, it's not stoner.  Maybe aural examples would suffice.

Bram Stoker's Dracula - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (1992)

This was a birthday gift from my appropriately named cats Vlad and Mina.  Each year , my wife challenges herself to buy me one vinyl record that she thinks I will like. Before now I have ended up with Asphyx records, ambient Nordic albums and now a movie soundtrack.  She has been spot on with each release and this one keeps her golden run going.  Dramatic and theatrical with a constant sense of underlying tension and darkness.  Might get round to watching the movie at some point.

Just now saw this post.  Have you seen the movie yet?  It's one of my personal favorites, Reeves aside.

For the record, "In A Silent Way" is my favourite release of all time for any genre... period.

DAMN, boy!  I never thought it would "have to be a metal album" or anything, since my number one isn't metal either, but I'm happy to hear it's In a Silent Way.

OK, considering that the lines can in fact be blurred by essential bands like Electric Wizard and Sleep for the two best examples, I'm just going to throw my two cents in here via the most simple and childish definition of each possible:

1. Doom to me must be longer and drawn out than standard metal genres, and doesn't necessarily need psychedelia attacked.  The overlap with heavy metal is where the "traditional" variant comes in, separating albums like Turn Loose the Swans (pay more attention to the less death-influenced songs) from pretty much anything from Tales of Creation or Saint Vitus's debut.  The further evidence of the necessity for long, creepy atmospheres is evidenced by its subgenres funeral and death, and if you'd count it: gothic.  The "traditional" label for metal genres says to me that it's a closer variant of the genre to heavy metal before these genres' own standards were fleshed out: traditional doom, traditional black, etc.

2. Stoner metal doesn't need to be drawn out, but it MUST rely on fuzz with a touch of psychedelia, like the original equivalent.  The slower sounds can be called doom by other people and I wouldn't blame anyone who did.  But I won't call a fuzzy metal album stoner without that touch of psychedelia a la Kyuss, Spiritual Beggars, Orange Goblin etc.  Because of this, stoner metal also has a slightly more "jammer" approach to me via the first stoner metal bands I checked out.  Yes, the atmospheric stuff is possible, but that's usually where I handle other genre tags.  Due to stoner's history and similarities to standard heavy metal, it doesn't need a "traditional" variant.  To be honest, I've heard plenty of stoner metal that wasn't very "doomy" and completely "jammy," so I think the specific "doom elements" on RYM need way more clarification.  If they're talking about low guitar tones and fuzz, that's one thing, but tempo and personality play huge roles in the difference as far as I'm concerned.

Basically, one is more atmospheric and slow, and the other is more rhythm and lacking in strict pacing restrictions.

When the two are paired together, which is at least FAIRLY common, I just call this "stoner doom metal" for the sake of ease, which again is where bands like Electric Wizard and Sleep come in.

Kamasi Washington - Fearless Movement (2024)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Spiritual Jazz

What in every fuck is happening?  Why is this year so insanely good?  Over the last week I found three albums from this year alone that completely bewildered me in their inventiveness, consistency and personality.  First was the new St. Vincent, which saw her going into alternative industrial and leaving behind the noisy indie pop for her first five-star, then Full of Hell reinvented grindcore for a testament to their already mighty abilities.  Then this bad motherfucker shows up in his magnificent garb and lowly bellows, "Stand aside, Butch."

Spiritual jazz and jazz fusion are my two favorite jazz forms, so I'm already convinced I'm gonna enjoy this.  The 85-minute runtime originally made me think it might be a little overong, but that only affected the two-and-a-half hour The Epic by a little bit.  This album overcame it by going into incredible new territory for spiritual jazz players and making it feel so natural through one strict and strong rule: Afro-Americana.  There are spiritual pieces with JAZZ RAP going on here, and it's not only surprising but fitting.  The whole album is like this, drawing me into different kinds off worlds with moods blasting from every corner, be them smooth soul-influenced slow walks down the urban streets, complex but catchy ascensions to heaven or even somewhat folksy journeys into space.

2024 is a crazy year.  Everybody's putting out albums that are all over the genre spectrum, which seriously risks a broken flow, and I'm aware of this an acknowledge it when it happens.  But the output this year is incredible so far, and right now Kamasi Washington's Fearless Movement has replaced the new St. Vincent for my AOTY.  God, this album did things to me with both modern and classic sounds that came together in the freshest and coolest ways.  Maybe if it were a little shorter (not that it wasn't already perfect), it would've dethroned Karma as my top spiritual jazz album, or even In a Silent Way for my top jazz album period.  I'm actually hoping Kamasi does this someday, although making an album more fresh and spiritual than this is going to be an intimiating challenge.

Gonna finish off the albuming tonight wwith another KW: Harmony of Difference.

Full of Hell - Coagulated Bliss (2024

Genres: Grindcore, Metal

You read the genre-tagging right.  I'm calling this "metal" on top of calling it a grindcore album because for a good portion of the album, it is so diversified and out-there that it's a difficult one to really peg down.  I'm getting switches between some thought-provoking noise rock, drawn out and brutal doom metal with noisy metalcore backdrops, black and death working in tandem and even a little sludgy stuff here and there.  This is Full of Hell going batshit insane, but with catchiness and accessibility covering it all so it never goes too far like Naked City's Torture Garden.  Full of Hell have always been one of the most artistic bands of the modern age.  They helped to justify the existence of the otherwise passable Merzbow with their collabs, Sister Fawn and the self-titled collab, the former of which was my number 1 FoH and the latter of which was my number 3.  The album goes for more straightforward grindcore on a more consistent level after the seven-minute doomy epic Bleeding Horizon ends side A, but the first half is organized chaos, justifying its directionless genre-bending with the bandmates's personas dominating the album's brutal presence.

Of course, it's safe to say that half the tracks are grindcore, warranting the tag, but with that seven minute epic steering closer to that joke of a genre tag RYM calls "downtempo deathcore" than anything, it's safe to say that this album covers the multitude of bases within the realms of extreme metal and metal punk hybrids, with thrash and crossover thrash being absent, and leaving room for some Orchid-style powerviolence.  It's highly accessible despite its plethora of metallic flavors, so I think the best tag for this album would either be "metal" or "extreme metal" as opposed to choosing any one specific genre.  I think to do otherwise might be a little insulting to this testament to FoH's metal cabapilities.  Although next time, I'd like to see them do this and incorporate some of the industrial sounds of Sister Fawn. Otherwise, this album is basically FoH's "When the Kite String Pops."

100/100

This morning's track is Scorpions' "We Burn The Sky" which I regard as being hard rock:

This is my favorite Scorps song, largely because despite being closer to hard rock, its epic vibes are very metal ballad central.

Avenged Sevenfold - City of Evil

Genres: Heavy Metal

I'm glad I'm finally on this Avenged Sevenfold kick.  I've put them off for years out of lack of interest for metalcore and alternative metal.  I was extremely eager to see where the band's mutation would take them, putting their crappy debut on exactly the same level (and directly above on my list of all albums I've heard ranked from best to worst) as The Unspoken King by Cryptopsy, and having been fairly satisfied with the increase in melodic and emotional focus on the second.  But now comes the monster of metal: City of Evil, one of the most controversially diverse albums in both genre-bending and online ratings.

The album kicks off with their iconic song, Beast and the Harlot.  I heard this song a couple times years ago out of curiosity, but I wasn't inspired to go into the whole album yet despite liking it.  But I had VERY little recollection of it, so the Judas Priest shift into thrashy power metal territory took me a little by surprise.  One guy on RYM said it sounds like something you'd hear from the Sonic 2 soundtrack.  Now I've played enough Sonic games to know what that means (not Sonic 2, though), but this is NOT Crush 40 here.  I'd rather sing along with "Her plagues will come all at once as her mourners watch her burn" than "I can feel your every rage, step aside I'll turn the page."  The difference here is THIS SONG IS NOT THROWN TOGETHER.  Although, the shift between thrashy metal and Helloween melodies feels a little out of place sometimes, despite being a lot of fun.

That was just for the first song.  Next is Burn It Down, which is more F-Zero-rooted than Sonic-rooted, and the thrash factor is pretty high.  You can tell these guys are Metallica fans, but it feels more like influence than straight out copying.  The melodic factor works beautifully with the singer's melodic vocals despite the high thrash factor.  It looks like they finally found the balance between melody and energy that they struggled with on the debut and improved on with Waking the Fallen.

There's a metalcore drum kick that starts Blinded in Chains.  Like a few songs from WtF (oh), it combines elements of melodic metalcore with power metal, but this was easily the best metalcore effort I had heard.  There's obvious vocal overlapping in the production, but the experience it creates is purely badass and never lets go of the melodic touches.  In fact, this song boasts some of their best melodies.  The song also has an out-of-whack and creepy fade-out segment which lasts about a minute and a half, but does a great job with the dramatic flair without ever overdoing it.  I guess this is another favorite AVS song of mine.  But no matter how hard I tried, I didn't get the Samson reference I was expected because of that obvious title.  Huh.

"He who makes a beast out of himself..."Here it comes, their potential magnum opus.  Melodically their best song so far, does an excellent job shifting from energetic metal to slow ballady alt-rock like it's nothing, and does an excellent job bringing standard hardcore punk into the alt-metal world.  On top of that, it's got an incredibly catchy guitar riff.  Even if it's not a very extreme one, it's an empowering one.  I've gotten aching arms and fingers doing air guitar to this.  Probably the best thing that ever came out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the movie was already good.

Trashed and Scattered blasted me into the "powercore" of the last album, but it wasn't so jarring as the shift between ballads and almost-deathcore like on WtF.  It felt so natural because the previous songs set a standard of diversity and aura that feels difficult to break.  Once again we get some extremely catchy rhythms.  Or maybe it's just me because I'm a power metal sucker, and I've been waiting for a band to really pull of the combination of metalcore and power metal.  This is what I expect.

Next, Seize the Day... OK, maybe I should've expected this, but a piano-rooted alt-rock ballad threw me off.  It didn't fuck with the vibe or anything, but it was a really pleasant surprise.  There's an easy comparison many have made to GNR, which may detract from the originality of the song itself, but at least it's a totally different singer.  Anyway, it's pretty cute and it's a welcome addition.  I think the vocal melodies outshine the instrumentation, though.

Sidewinder is next.  Here we have another energetic ballad that steers into some fairly progressive melodic territory.  It hits all the right notes for a proper alchemic reaction, balancing the rhythms, moods and hard rock / heavy metal vibes. The song goes on with this surprisingly soothing energy for two-thirds of the song before kicking into a latin rock solo, never breaking the vibes.  That's pretty smart of them.  Not really overlong for seven minutes.

There's a welcome return to racecar metalcore and thrash metal with The Wicked End, featuring a wonkier lead riff with a little bit of djent attached.  But the song slowly mutates overtime, playing with varying levels of energy before somehow naturally working its way into a slow, symphonic chorus during the middle section and helping to overlap the third act until it kicks back into the thrash.  Is this the band's Stairway to Heaven?  Or is it just lacking focus?  No.  No way it's lacking focus.  It felt natural, and that's what makes it work.  The entire first album was loaded with metalcore tropes that didn't work together, so I'm going to approve this song and anyone can fight me on that if they want.  I'm a bit surprised this isn't the closer.  Maybe the album would be fine if it ended here, but I was gonna give the other three tracks a go and finish the album anyway.

The perfect way to start a song after that ambitious monster is with a slow pairing of acoustic guitar and violins recreating the wild west.  This is the beginning of Strength of the World.  Alright, after everything I've heard, I'll give them a spaghetti western beginning.  What does anyone have to lose?  It's not fucking with the flow.  After the minute-and-twenty-second intro, we get back into the electric guitars and build up into a thrash riff and goes into a fairly heavy and meaningful song that doesn't try very hard to go into more drama and relies on high-pitched guitars and the singer's voice to do all the work.  Personally, I think for nine minutes this should've had more focus, but it's not bad.  Besides, the song does mix it up again by bringing back the acoustic guitars and going into western ballad territory, and eventually into energetic riffs again and finally a cinematic violin outro.  It's another ambitious track, but it doesn't really have the same oomph or balance as The Wicked End.

The second-to-last track is Betrayed, and I feel like this one's a little melodically challenged.  The riffs and verses feel a little wonky and don't flow very well.  It's obvious they were trying a little too hard with this song, and that it was basically filler for a seventy-minute album.  Bad move, really.

This monolith ends with M.I.A.  It begins how I expect, with a softer intro before forcing itself back into energetic territory.  Thankfully, the band chose the right genre to go back to: metalcore, their roots.  But this time, the melodies work and the unpredictability is balanced. I mean, the melodies aren't amazing, but they drive this eight minute song from beginning to end and never loses its grip.

Alright, I'm extremely happy to say that I've given their iconic third album a spin.  And now to goad half the metal community into pointing their guns at me: I ate the majority of this album up.  It may be overly ambitious, but it's good to see they were trying a bunch of new things, despite the fact that the overambition leads the album to be frontloaded, especially due to the shorter lengths in the first half.  They seem to have largely forsaken metalcore, but they kept the personality traits and made something pretty fun.  This album might not always have the best songs, but it fits all of my standards for a good album.  The biggest reason I liked this album is that it handles genres and melodies exactly how I would if I were in a metal band (although I'd be heavier, and less reliant on epics).  Overall, great album by a band finding their ground, even if they have some toning down to do.

92/100

What out Rex! You don't want the band seeking revenge on you seven times, do you?

Take a look at my self-made avatar and tell me I'd ever be scared.

Anyway, round two.

Avenged Sevenfold: Waking the Fallen

Genres: Melodic Metalcore

OK, nobody liked the Avenged Sevenfold debut album, and neither did I.  They say this one's pretty good for the fans, though, so I've got big hopes for this.  Finally getting around to these guys, I'm eagerly awaiting the moment I get to turn on City of Evil for the first time, but I don't want to do that until I get a really good idea of how the band evolved within the first three albums.

Like the first album, this starts out with a decent intro which gets up right into the darker vibes the band is going for.  Unholy Confessions felt dull, under-produced and dreary in its tropes.  It pains me that it became a music video.  But I found that Chapter Four was much more packed, keeping a consistent melodic vibe with its overlapping vocals and slight Gothic touch, and even had a lead riff vaguely reminiscent of the energy of my favorite franchise to compare metal songs to: F-Zero.  There's definitely a poppier thing going on here, but that's an improvement from the chaos of the debut album.  This definitely deserved to be the lead single for this album.  Remenissions starts out with the unspoken combo that I call "powercore," a genre I would totally kickstart if I were in a metal band.  Unfortunately, this is where it becomes clear that the band is steering too close to the "similar tempos" trope that many genres fall victim to.  I wasn't expecting the Latin acoustic segment, though.  Weirdly added, but somehow nice.  Desecration Through Reverence shows a bit more focus on mood-building and justifies the existence of the shifting tropes in a single song in the follow-up to their debut.  It feels so much more natural than everything the debut features.

I didn't expect many differences out of Side B, but I was hoping.  Turns out, my hopes were satisfied even for a little while.  As soon as this slower, alternative metalcore album with a deeper emotional vibe ends, the album steers RIGHT INTO POWER METAL like it was nothing.  This side ends with a basic combination of the temp tricks of the last two songs, and I can't really say this decision does anything for the album.  Despite the progressive nature and melodic prowess, it's a filler song.  Radiant Eclipse is slower, more alternative and rooted in traditional metal ballad behavior while maintaining the signature edge.  This six minute track really was a breath of fresh air that, unlike the pop rock track in the debut, Warmness of the Soul, which felt like a relief of fresh air from the crappy metalcore, is a perfectly fitting alternative song that completely continues the darker vibes of the album while building on previously established influences on this album to become its own thing.  Next was I Won't See You Tonight, Pt. 1.  One look at the length and I thought to myself, "What kind of song on a metalcore album like this lasts nine minutes!?"  My first thought was a fairly proggy ballad which probably builds on the gothic elements suggested by the secondary genre tag on this album's RYM page.  It gained a very slight heaviness from its standard ballad energy at the start, but it lasts that way throughout the whole nine minutes, so I only got about two thirds of it right.  It's really just an overlong ballad.

So now that that was over with, right back into the screechy metalcore like it's not a jarring difference.  This is Part 2.  They could've at least built into the conflict rather than making it instantaneous.  And of course, this song goes right into djenty weirdness to add another trope to the mix... although, this is the first song in this overlong album to do so, so I'm not too bothered by the trope.  Ironically, Clairvoyant Disease goes right back into alternative ballad territory, once again creating a jarring effect on the flow.  And finally, there's And All Things will End, which starts off with a riff similar to many Iced Earth songs, vaguely reminiscing thrash and power, but feeling right for the album here.  It's got much of the same drama as well, but the melodies are only decent and it doesn't hold a candle to any Iced Earth classics.

OK, I'm not gonna call this one of my favorite metalcore albums, but I'd say this album made AVS an easy band to LIKE, as opposed to an easy band to LOVE.  Their songs are poppy enough, maybe too poppy for metalcore and never displaying high points of creativity, but they try as much as they can with the genre they chose for themselves at the time and managed to keep things fairly entertaining with some sense of variety and a much better sense of emotion.

66/100

Avenged Sevenfold: Sounding the Seventh Trumpet

Genres: Melodic Metalcore

I've been putting off these guys for forever and I don't know why.  Maybe it's because I'm not really into alternative metal or related genres like multiple.  Now I've always liked Bat Country ever since I heard it on SSX On Tour for Gamecube, and it was one of many songs I kept on the custom playlist with classics like Stand Up and Shout by Dio, Dynamite by Scorpions and Run to the Hills by Iron Maiden.  There were others, but I quickly associated myself with the song.

I understand that the band is a very flavorful one, and has reinvented themselves multiple times, even after just one or two albums.  As an Arctic Monkeys and Led Zeppelin fan, I have absolutely no problem with this.  In fact, from what I understand, these guys are supposed to have sucked as a metalcore band, so in my curiosity I'll likely get through all of their albums soon.  But despite the fact that I've put them off for far too long (Bilbo Baggins, 2001), the biggest reason I'm checking them out right now is so I can have an opinion on them.  This was likely influenced not only by my recent curiosity pertaining to their other songs and the knowledge of their diverse history, but out of a Reddit conversation involving the qualifications of a metal band on Metallum.  So I'm gonna check them out from the start.

The somewhat symphonic and cinematic intro is nice, but as soon as these guys dig right into the metalcore, they lose all sense of atmospheric building, and stem into a random and yet surprisingly predictable and tropy metalcore band.  I really did NOT like "Turn the Other Way."  Its lack of organization was so amateurish that it might as well have stemmed from a poorly-recorded black metal pre-debut album garage demo.  There are only slight improvements over the next two songs, with a welcome edition of the Bad Religion-style melodic skate sound making its way into a little bit of The Art of Subconscious Illusion with the unpredictability feeling a little more organized, almost like a metalcore variant of NoMeansNo, not that they hold a candle to NoMeansNo, who are probably the greatest hardcore band on Earth.  It even gets pretty creepy near the end, which I have to appreciate for a band who just named themselves Avenged Sevenfold at the time.  But immediately after, the album gets samey, and the tropes just take turns with no direction other than to display the popular tropes, which means the real reason the last track worked was simply because it was a better variant of an otherwise chaotic mess all restricting itself into one genre.

It gets to the point where the piano rock song Warmness of the Soul is a breath of fresh air as opposed to a sore thumb situation because its simple and catchy sound is like a pillow in comparison to the tiring metalcore tropes.  And the album practically stays that way until we get their attempt at a Stairway to Heaven of their own with it going into softer melodic territory before going back into edgy metalcore tropes.  This means that the album only proves that Avenged Sevenfold had not grapsed creativity yet and tried to take an easy way into metal fame.  Obviously, it didn't work out yet.

42/100

Kali Uchis marathon today.  Isolation is blowing me away.  It's like a modern, atmospheric mix of Amy WInehouse and Caroline Polachek.

For anyone who's not part of the NUWRLD Mix Club, Deaths Dynamic Shroud has American Candy on YT right now.  I don't think it's gonna stay, so grab it before it goes away.

Beautiful stuff.  The whole thing is about slow, catchy atmospheres.  It's great music for relaxing and reading, or in my case writing.  Kinda like a mix between Tim Hecker and Flaming Lips.

Sentries - Snow as a Metaphor for Death (2024)

Genres: Noise Rock, Post-Hardcore

I listened to their previous two EP's and their debut album before getting to this one.  So far, this is their best effort.  2024 has been a good year for new efforts by improving bands.  I also checked out works by Brittany Howard and Mannequin Pussy, and they're joining the collective here.  Even though these guys aren't making a super hardcore album, and it's kind of light in that regard, there's still an excess amount of ferocity here, like these guys overdosed on methylene blue.  There isn't a lot of genre diversity here in comparison to their last two albums, as the switches between punk, post-punk and rock are very tame.  But this is also an improvement over previous albums as the weirdness and inventiveness no longer messes with the flow, allowing the more creative aspect to be focused solely in the layouts.  So the overall effect is pretty solid, if not ever reaching great heights.

Judas Priest - Invincible Shield (2024)

Genres: Heavy Metal

Six years later, right?  Seems a bit long to wait for another Judas Priest album after they've had a SECOND comeback.  But maybe that length was taken for the band to really hone their skills again and try to improve.  If that's the case, they succeeded, because their new album is some purified metal with a nostalgic feel that also acts as a step forward from the overly-80's Firepower, being its own thing and having been seen as the next essential in the Priest catalog.

I was totally taken by surprise with those totally-synthed up Def Leppard drums and guitar sounds for the intro, which eventually becomes a flat-out power metal song on par with the works of Gamma Ray.  Halford's voice and the backing voices work together with a pure and shining harmony that to me is like a metal version of Simon and Garfunkel.  Halford's gotten a stronger hold on his voice, which can be clearly heard on this album, even while the production assaults you with a wild range of metal noises and effects.  Two songs in and this is already a huge improvement over Firepower.  Of course, by the time the title-track came along, I was afraid the album was going to be quite samey, which is something that Firepower largely avoided until the last third, as it was too long of an album not to fall victim to it.  Thankfully, the title track had levels of metal energy that rival the Arrange Edition of the F-Zero X soundtrack.

The entire first half was a bit samey with difference largely just going to the tempos, so whatever weirdness came from the intro wasn't going to be common.  Thankfully, side B starts with a ballad: Crown of Horns, so there change in pace is powerful without damaging the flow, as this song is quite a good ballad that shows that Halford still has vocal range.  And despite its ballad status, this doesn't stop the instrumentation from being thick and featuring a dense metal atmosphere.  Of course, the album goes right back into thrash territory immediately afterwards, but this is still good because nothing on Side A was as heavy lightning-speed-driven as the song As God as My Witness.  So I interpret this as the album doing two new things on Side B to compensate for a samey side A.  This sounds familiar: Hounds of Love? Trial By Fire even experiments with the rhythm some while teetering on the balance between heavy metal and metal ballad.  So By this point I'm fine with another song sounding like something from the first half.  The tunes take a little of a drop in rhythmic quality once they go back to the normality of the first half, but are still enjoyable.

Invincible Shield shows a noticeable improvement over Firepower and is a greater testament to what Judas Priest is capable of.  Through denser metal atmospheres and instrumentation, as well as a willingness to push even further than Painkiller, Invincible Shield overcome the 80's nostalgic vibe that could be interpreted as "being done before," and stands as a modern classic.

Judas Priest - Firepower (2018)

Genres: Heavy Metal

Judas Priest were lighter than what metal should be interpreted as for many of their early albums, and that all chanced with the surprise comeback album Painkiller, which perfected the metal tropes that the same band's earlier albums helped to influence.  They had steered into Metal Church and Metallica territory and reinvented themselves.  Unfortunately, nobody liked what came after that until almost 30 years later, when these 70-year-olds put out Firepower, their second comeback album.  Now Judas Priest are once again the talk of the metal world.  However, does this even come close to Painkiller?

As far as attacking the entire heavy metal genre goes, most of these songs are exercises in one or another typical stle of heavy metal.  The album dives into speed, power, thrash and even arena rock territory without ever fully crossing those borders, allowing Judas Priest to both stay true to their Painkiller sound while addressing the variety of the genre they influenced.  And boy, does this trope fest give you ALL the goods.  Each melody and riff is quite catchy and packed with energy that almost reaches Painkiller heights.  Right from the get-go, you know what your getting as its opening title track punches you in the face with its own energy.  And even though it's obvious that Halford's voice aged, he's still able to hold the metallic sound of it very well, perfectly fitting into Priest's style yet again.  And lyrically, the album's loaded with all the metal themes of the classic age: the warnings against Satanism and the horror stories that come from it, the machine guns blasting over the battlefield, comparing your sex appeal to weather like you're suddenly a Norse god, etc. etc.  And these lyrics are all pretty good and easy to sing along with.

So basically, you kind of have to say that this is the kind of album that's been done before, not only by Priest before but by other bands.  I occasionally even got a WASP feel.  The real clincher here is that none of these tropes are poorly delivered.  So the fact that these guys can stay this good after a series of failures between Painkiller and this shows that they're becoming more aware of what they must be, and it looks like the success stemming from their awareness carries on into Invincible Shield.  Firepower is one of the most spirited metal albums of the 2010's.  If you don't like heavy metal at all, you might find this generic.  If you do, you really should check this out.  If it was released around the time British Steel was, it would be one of their original classics.  On the other hand, you could say it bears a strong nostalgic touch thanks to its spirit, as is the justification for "pizza thrash,"  I mean, let's be honest.  Priest weren't quite this metallic and loud in the 80's, and this sounds just like an 80's album by another band that was heavier at the time, so the weird thing is that while this is a generic but good album, it's also an album that the band HASN'T DONE BEFORE.

86 / 100

Gonna end my lengthy music binge today by checking out a few of the works of Roc Marciano, starting with his debut.  I'm not really into this one as much as RYM seems to be.  He's got decent beats with a strong urban vibe, but the songs don't really progress and kind of drag on.  On top of that, I don't think much of Roc's rhymes.