Rexorcist's Forum Replies

Maybe it's just me, but if I'm going to tag something as a specific form of metal, then at least half the songs have to meet that specific requirement.  I mean, I'm pretty much convinced that the original album is a hard rock album before a metal one.  I removed the metal tag from the album on my log because of it.  Basically, the stoner metal thing is more of a secondary to me, considering that only two songs really fit the bill and I largely agree with the tagging displayed here.  So as usual, I'm gonna stay true to my standards and vote no on this one.

There's about as much folk to me as jazz, otherwise it's mostly just acoustic to me.  Basically, if there was a song I'd tag with a "psych" primary as opposed to "psych rock" or anything, this would be it.

Hint for tomorrow's Guardians album:

Tristania - Ashes (2005)

Genres: Goth Metal

So while I can't say I'm a Tristania "fan," I certainly appreciate how they've more or less become the kind of band I was looking for by the third album: a band that was willing to try a bunch of new things and differentiate songs.  The way I see it, a band good at multiple genres is a band with multiple talents, and I prefer a band with multiple talents over a band with one talent.  And of course, I'd like for it to show on a full album time and time again.  Although struggling with this on their first two albums, Tristania mastered this personality aspect on their third, and continued it on Ashes.

Ashes sees a dramatic shift from the symphonic sound in the long run.  The entire purpose of this album is to morph songs from genre to genre by using mood to keep the flow intact.  This album succeeds at this in every aspect, and may even be better at this than the previous album where they finally nailed the craft.  We have instances of symphonic blending with atmpsheric ethereal wave to bring out Tristania's strong gothic presence while still maintaining a metal edge as we see influences ranging from death metal to metalcore.  And it all fits the sadness and anger of this work.

However, while a part of me would like to give an album like that five stars, there are two major problems getting in the way of that.  First of all, one of the strongest aspects of World of Glass, the previous album, was that the vocal melodies and the instrument's melodies paired together beautifully despite being so different.  There is much less melody here in the vocals, leaving the instruments to deliver many beautiful melodies.  On top of that, the production is a little fuzzier, slightly drowning the vocals.

I think this is a well made album for its strengths, and it continues exactly what I wanted to see from Tristania in a diversity aspect.  But its flaws are pretty obvious.  Otherwise, this is an album where Tristania rely on their personality, and it makes for a good release in need of remastering.

81/100

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

Hard rock, heavy metal, proto-punk.

Tristania - World of Glass (2001)

Genre: Symphonic Goth Metal

After having finished the Type O Negative catalog, my next goth metal band to go through would be one I checked out a couple albums by years ago but wasn't fully into save one album: Tristania, and the album was Beyond the Veil.  After a revisit to the band, my opinions on their debut were exactly the same: same song ten times, beautiful and melodic but kind of generic.  I liked the next one slightly more, though; varied and experimental, even though every song is covering each influence in small doses, technically meaning that the variety aspect is hypocritically handled IMO by not bothering to differentiate the songs.  After checking out the genre tagging of their third album, World of Glass, I was interested in what these other sounds were supposed to be.

We get all of the familiar elements of the previous album with more of an idea of differentiating focal points on a track-by-track basis as opposed to combining them all in every track.  This is the best possible decision due to the extra influences that came aboard, notably the ethereal wave and the industrial metal.  There was so much to their identity, that they had to think about writing DIFFERENT TYPES of songs.  It might've been the only way to stay relevant to the goth scene.  And I'd say it worked.  Songs like The Shining Path and Crushed Dreams are all about that beautiful symphonic vibe, but there are even weirder, unique moments like the industrial Modern End which features heavy usage of repetitive riffs and a carefully placed symphonic layer to make it unique to the industrial vibe.  And considering how slow and dark Wormwood was, I'd say it was basically an epic doom metal track hiding under the symphonic tag and Tristania's signature aura.  There will be plenty of room for doom and death to make careful appearances depending on the pre-established vibes of each song, and each one has its own strong presence.  But there are a couple morphers which carry a few influences, progressively organized to keep the flow going and the Tristania feel strong.

There's been those who love this album, and those disappointed in the new directions.  Some ever say that this is a less "melodic" album.  But I think the melodies for both the instrumentation and the vocalists, though noticeably very different from each other, go hand in hand to keep the vibes strong.  I can honestly say that I prefer this Tristania album over the first two, and I hope to see more new ideas in the other albums.

It's another mixer, but it's mostly psych metal and doom metal with blues rock and a dash of prog attached.  This is dirtier and doomier than anything off the debut.  So if stoner metal's the tag we want, I guess it fits.

After years of puting this off after losing interest in the band, I'm finally checking this out for the first time.

The Cure - Faith (1981)

Genres: Post-Punk, Goth Rock

I'm really glad I'm on a gothic binge right now.  I've been getting a massive jump on a goth rock chart while slowly working on the metal one.  After checking this album out, I think I'll revisit Tristania now that I'm gotten through all the Type O negative albums.  But, I've had different feelings about The Cure from most people.  I mean, I'll admit that their albums Disintegration and Pornography are very well made, but The Cure just doesn't do the kind of goth rock I like.  it feels more rockish and pretty rather than gothic to me, and I was hoping Faith would give me something new, but it really doesn't.

So track one, The Holy Hour, was already a huge improvement over the last goth album I heard before this: Sex and Drugs and Jesus Christ by Christian Death.  It was so dull that it made my morning headache worse right after I took aspirin, and I heard it was better than The Scriptures.  It really wasn't.  The Holy Hour was at least a breath of fresh air in that regard.  However, as a rock album, I really don't think this album delivered anything that Seventeen Seconds hadn't already given me.  But the album does have its pros, more so than cons.  For example, this saccharine vibe is done lightly, letting reverb do the work while the band takes it easy.  So while this isn't really a complex album, that easy going behavior is easy to get behind at least.  And while the album is reverb-heavy, it never feels like its too much, so the atmosphere stays pure.  And many of the songs are doing different things.  The Holy Hour is weird and tribal, The Funeral Party is serene and dense and somewhat romantic, All Cats Are Grey is deep and mysterious, Other Voices is fun but simple and the titular closer kind of brings a few of these things together for a real groovy song.

Anyway, I can't say that Faith feels like the legendary goth album I've heard so much about, but I really don't blame a person for being attracted to the strengths of Faith, because those strengths are pretty powerful.  Fans of gothic atmosphere will get a damn good time out of this, but an overthinker like me needs more than that.

81/100

So it would be safer to see the hall for In Rock end before we actually make the list.  Good.  I was hoping there would be a more consistent outcome.

Sooo... do we get a say in the article list or not?

I ended up being offered that new job & accepted it. I start on Tuesday 31st October. I'll have plenty of metal time on the drive there & back every day.

Noice.  Let us know how the job goes.

That main riff has a metal progression to it, and the Jon Lord's pulling off some major soloing with those keyboards.  IMO, this is the most metal song on the album.

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

 My family's finally cleaning out the garage.  We have countless antiques, furniture and household appliances taking up space in there, as well as a bunch of other crap.  I mean, do we really need those vinyl recordings of musicals?  It'll be good to see all that stuff finally leave.

OK, even if Morpheus voted metal, which I don't think he will, we still have a 3/4 lead.  So this track's officially hard rock.

Speed King (5:54): Non-Metal - 1, Metal - 3 = Metal

Bloodsucker (4:16): Non-Metal - 0, Metal - 4 = Metal

Child in Time (10:20): Non-Metal - 4, Metal - 0 = Non-Metal

Flight of the Rat (7:57): Non-Metal - 1, Metal - 3 = Metal

Into the Fire (3:30): Non-Metal - 2, Metal - 2 = Half-Metal

Living Wreck: (4:34) - Non-Metal - 3, Metal - 0 (to update after Morpheus votes) = Non-Metal

Metal: 19:52

Non-Metal: 16:39

Metal percentage: 54.44%

Adding Hard Lovin' Man (7:11) to metal would make the times 27:03 vs. 16:39, but adding it to non-metal would make the times 19:52 vs. 23:46.

If it's added to metal, the metal percentage is: 61.89.

If it's added to non-metal, the percentage is: 45.46.

So either way, the album makes it.

Parts of it feel kinda AC/DC-esque.  Going hard rock on this one.

There was already a Hall entry before this, and we'll see if that turns out to be the eventual change when non-forum regulars get around to it.

I started that.  Although, I do agree that the meta article and the halls should be consistent, but let's tackle that issue when it actually raises, because right now it's still non-metal.

Thanks.  Just let me know when it's my turn on this thread, please.

I've taken a tally of our votes.  To keep it simple, I didn't bother with every vote that said "hard rock" and "heavy metal" at once, so I counted our votes to tally which of up think of each song as "metal" or "non-metal."

Speed King (5:54): Non-Metal - 1, Metal - 3
Bloodsucker (4:16): Non-Metal - 0, Metal - 4
Child in Time (10:20): Non-Metal - 4, Metal - 0
Flight of the Rat (7:57): Non-Metal - 1, Metal - 3
Into the Fire (3:30): Non-Metal - 2, Metal - 2

We're all agreed on two songs, two groups overtake one person favoring metal and we're currently tied on one.

Not counting Into the Fire for its clear tie, the times match up as follows:

Metal: 18:07

Non-Metal: 10:20

I think since Into the Fire is a tie, I think I should half it, giving 1:45 to each side, which would make the times 19:52 and 12:05.  This makes our total amount of metal 62.18%.

Type O Negative - The origin of the Feces (1992)

Genres: Gothic Doom Metal

I've officially become a fan of Type O Negative upon my revisits of Bloody Kisses and October Rust, as well as my exposure to World Coming Down and The Least Worst of Type O Negative.  I'm in love with their reliance on presence and personality over sticking with a scene, because they didn't really have much of a "scene" to stick to when they came out.  They helped invent goth metal, so they were very unique.  They also became controversial for their gruesome lyrical content, which showed heavily on their debut, Slow Deep and Hard, which mingled goth metal, doom metal and even bits of crossover thrash.  Now it seemed a little awkward but good at first, so they took the personality aspect to the next level and recorded a fake live album to show off that they were a black comedy band in a sense.

Basically, Type O negative's debut was when they were introducing their style, but The Origin of the Feces is the album where they were introducing their personality, and it didn't really get in the way of the music because the parody aspects were still handled in a serious manner to help the album.  Peter Steele feels like a real rocker and a metalhead when speaking out to the fake audience.  There's less of a drifting doom effect in this 40-minute album than the hour-long debut, and the production technique was replaced with a noisier and punkish sound that perfectly fused the doom and gothic elements with the crossover thrash bits that felt awkward on the debut.  Because of this, every great song from the original album is made more consistent, less awkward and easier to get behind.  This really isn't an album for diehard doom fans because of the noise; no, it's an album for fans of Type O Negative's personality as well as their music.  And if you have the extended edition at your disposal, you at least have to listen to the GORGEOUS doom metal cover of Black Sabbath's Paranoid.  It's more haunting and surreal than the fast-paced heavy metal original.  I honestly prefer it.

I finally have an ACTUAL controversial opinion: this is one of Type O negative's best albums.  This is boldness with a beautiful noise-production style and excellent flow, making this an improved variant of their debut if you ask me.  The joke might be unfunny or even pointless to some, but this sophomore work isn't so drawn out, each song has its own identity, and the noisier sound and mixing makes everything about the past album feel more natural, as if they finally found a proper ground to work with, removing some smoothness of the doom metal for this sound.  Once the joke wears off, there's personality, because this album really does feel like a live album with a very comedic side, like the cricket sounds at the end.  If only the original version included that incredible Paranoid cover, then I might've given it a 100.

96/100

I never got speed metal from that album myself, so while I agree there's a similar appeal in many other ways, the speed is really where the "power" comes from.  As much as I adore power metal, gonna vote against this one.

It could easily have been taken from a Beatles record in my opinion but has a slightly more muscular blues rock vibe. There's no metal there as far as I can see.

Yeah, I refrained from saying that the chorus reminded me of I Am the Walrus, guess I wasn't off.

It certainly pounds in its slow way, but metal feels like a stretch.  Hard rock.

Scorpions has had metal aggression as early as their 1975 album In Trance, which they've barely had any of after the second half of the 1970s:

I'd suggest that 1982's "Blackout" album is more metal than anything Scorpions released in the second half of the 1970's. In fact, it's the only Scorpions album I've heard that I'd tag as a metal record. It's still kinda 50/50 though.

I'd tag the following as metal: Taken By Force, Blackout, Love at First Sting and maybe Lovedrive.  It's been a while since I heard Lovedrive.  In Trance is a bit lighter than those, so I wouldn't go In Trance.

I had to see October Noir's RYM page after hearing so many Type O Negative albums.  Turns out I was right: they're way influenced by TON.  You can tell by their album covers.

I never said it wasn't hard rock, I just never said it wasn't metal, either.  The point I'm illustrating is that heaviness is a major aspect of this song, and it follows in a similar vein as songs like Speed King.  Really, the overall atmosphere of this song might be closer to hard rock, but its delivery to me is similar to the heavy metal songs of its time, at least the speedier ones and not the doomy Sabbath ones.  I mean, the whole time I was getting Motorhead vibes.

"Flight of the Rat" has nothing to do with metal whatsoever in my opinion. It's about as hard rock as hard rock gets with those strummy open-string chords, the jovial atmosphere & a bouncy rock beat.

I listen to power metal, so the last thing I'm worried about is jovial and bouncy.  I really don't see a reason why jovial and bouncy metal shouldn't exist, what with so many types of metal we have.

Thanks to the vocal effects, there's at least a metal approach to this.  The noisy guitars can be seen as an influence on bands like Motorhead.  This song is practically the reason noisy metal songs exists.  So I'm calling this a hard rock heavy metal hybrid, one that might have louder guitar tones, but that has nothing to do with the composition.

Getting through some more Jarre today.  I'm gonna finish his earliest albums first and go chronologically to help me keep track.

I think it pushes the boundaries but still barely makes it.  But for Deftones it's always been questionable.  There was maybe a tiny bit of it on White Pony, which was extremely diverse.

"Sad Wings of Destiny" certainly isn't a total metalfest. It's still a band in transition but I've always thought there was comfortably enough metal to qualify. Perhaps I'll get a chance to review that position a little later in this exercise.

I think it's an essential to cover given its rep as a metal staple.  It's everywhere on those online lists of classic metal albums.

I have come to yet another unconventional decision regarding my ratings: Korn's Issues drags on at the end, but there is another Korn album that gives me everything I look for in an album.  So, taking Issues' place as my top nu metal album is See You on he Other Side.  Why?  Yes, it's not always as dark and disturbing.  But it's extremely catchy, musically diverse and coherent, consistent in song quality and collects most of Korn's previous ventures into a consistent whole while sounding completely futuristic.

That's the same rating I gave it.  It's a very cool 70's hard rock album, but at the time I heard it, I considered it light even for 70's metal standards.  Hell I don't even think of British Steel as that much metal.

Metal enough for you?

This week's GATEWAY album

Jerry Cantrell - Degradation Trip (2002)

Genres: Alt-Metal, Grunge

Votes: 1

Reason: Since he's part of Alice in Chains, I figured we might as well give this album a go.

First off, lemme say that this is my favorite song off of this album.  The progginess of past DP albums takes a more tame less-is-more approach to the drama aspects.  And I'll admit that Gillan marked the b eginning of the heavy metal wail on this album.  This slow breezy melody that takes the first third of the song devolves into a massive riff that certainly has metal roots.  However, since it's still not as heavy of a song as the previous two tracks, even though the riff itelf is VERY heavy for its time, I'm gonna label it RYM style:

Primary: Hard Rock, Prog Rock

Secondaries: Heavy Metal

So my final consensus is simple: it's an obvious influence in the world of prog metal, but I'd say it's more of a hard rock song that belongs on a metal album, unless you want to count this as metal's first ballad.

You’ve clearly never pulled a cone to “Planet Caravan” Andi. That track is life-changing & one of the highlights for mine.

I've never even done drugs before and I love it.

But now my secondary username is Conepullio.  And I need TP (tea party) for my bonghole.

That's one of my favorite tracks from the album.  It might not be metal, but it carries the darkness of War Pigs over beautifully.

Type O Negative - Bloody Kisses (1993)

Genres: Goth Metal

Secondaries: Doom Metal, Alt-Rock, Hardcore Punk

Goth metal is one of my least explored genres, which I think is extremely hypocritical of me considering that I adore gothic and dark touches in things.  You have Jim Steinman and Meat Loaf to thank for that one.  As such, I've only heard a couple of Type O Negative albums, namely their most famous two: Bloody Kisses and October Rust.  I'm literally working on a couple of vampire novel ideas, and my debut novel was partly about zombies.  Ever since I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas as a kid, I realized how much I like dark and gothic stuff.  The desire for it became stronger and stronger, and the best album I can think of that replicates my current love of darkness is Bloody Kisses.

Bloody Kisses is an album all about the balance of everything that makes music what it is.  For example, the wide variety of the album brings gothic metal and rock into the world of doom, alternative, psych, hardcore punk, shoegaze and industrial in random places, despite the fact that we still have a primarily gothic sound.  The album's shorter songs have a tendency to morph into other genres while never breaking form, whereas the slower songs are all about the atmospheric gothic doom sound that fans of darker and slower music tend to love.  Yes, the songs still morph occasionally and the atmosphere is a gorgeously produced blend of the two genres with Steele's voice poetically chanting Nick Cave style topics with flawless delivery, which brings me to the next form of balance: deep gothic whispers and growls as well as higher pitched singing.  Everything in between is there.  This variety also has a bit of a humorous side, as we get a serious parody of hippie pop rock and a couple hardcore punk intros and outros for certain gloomy gothic doom songs.  And they still remain catchy as well as heavy.

On top of this Beatles-style exploration of the metal and rock worlds, there is a balance of the slower droning that the niche fanbase loves as well as some serious accessibility.  I mean, even the slower songs have SOME catchiness about them, because Type O Negative is one of the best bands you can get when looking for a melodic act.  This never gets in the way of whatever moods the band is trying to go for, and unlike a similarly handled album, say the overly-ambitious self-titled Beatles album, there are NO weak tracks.  In fact, the segues and skits have so much atmospheric power in them that I can't possibly even enjoy the idea of listening to this album without them.  I'm really glad Type O Negative made that choice, considering their back-to-back jokes tracks from their next album, October Rust, did nothing to set up the mood for that album.  On Bloody Kisses, it's different; they're all about setting up sexual and gothic tones.

I enjoyed every atmosphere, every note played and every word sung.  The whole album shows the band mastering the advanced tricks of music in a perfectly balanced way, and its presence glows green with gothic power and lust.  I'm having trouble deciding whether this is my favorite goth album instead of Let Love In.  It's an extremely close call.  On the second listen, October Rust has made it to my top 50 albums of all time, and I can even say I enjoy this album more than Paranoid, an honor I've given to only four other albums at this point.

And now for the obligatory "Rest in peace, Peter Steele."

100/100

Unlike "Speed King" which simply amped hard rock riffs up to eleven, "Bloodsucker" is built on a riff that I'd describe as being the prototype for heavy metal & was enormously influential on bands like Judas Priest. In fact, check out the main riff from Priest's "Victim of Changes" which would appear to simply be a variation on the "Bloodsucker" riff. The rest of this track sits more in the hard rock space but that main riff is the basis for the song so I'm happy for "Bloodsucker" to qualify as heavy metal.

You've got a strong point there.  On top of that, the drumming is much heavier than most things that came out before then.  I change my vote to hard rock and heavy metal, so now I'm even further convinced of my stance.

Less heavy than Speed King.  Totally hard rock with a bluesy backdrop and a slight metal heaviness for its time.

Hint for tomorrow's Gateway album: the last album had hands, but this one has an ARM.

I'll always use the original cover for any release I'm adding to the site. While I understand your opinion, I refuse to censor the artwork here at Metal Academy.

Thanks for this, censoring of any art is awful. I mean, especially in metal, you start censoring a few covers, it's a slippery slope before there are hundreds of extreme metal covers that could be censored. Same goes for the musical content within. 

Now normally I'd suggest a content filter function for unregistered guests, but considering that this is a metal specific forum, I doubt many people under the age of 13 will show up.

On the contrary, that 40% rule is the rule I have afforded to literally every metal album on the site.

While my final opinion of the song is on Morpheus's side, I think 40% is a fair assessment, especially since I'm less merciful with my general 50% rule.

Oh really? Great minds think alike. I shall make a point of reading your review today.

Thank you, good sir.

A lot of this is the same as I wrote in my review for this a couple weeks ago.  Same rating, too.

I was banging my head just fine, and I usually tap anyway.

Lemme start by pointing out that the opening to this song is practically the heaviest thing that ever came out by that point.  All the noise, riffage and loud energy is there.  it doesn't even sound like Zeppelin.  The whole song is built on a hard rock riff with extra speed and energy, as well as Ian Gillan being more accepting of the "heavy metal wail" than on previous albums.  And yes, it has keyboards, but so does Highway Star and the single's tagged on RYM as heavy metal primary.  This song was the next step in heaviness, following Sabbath and Zeppelin in their footsteps and upping the ante.  Sure it has softer moments, but so does asstons of metal these days.  The artsier stuff has it all the time, look at power and symphonic.

Carnifex - Necromanteum (2023)

Genres: Deathcore

So I'm seeing people on the reddit Metal for the Masses, as well as a couple suggestions from my reddit page for other metal reddits, claiming that Necromanteum might be the best Carnifex album thus far.  I'm not really into Carnifex, as they were one of those bands I just got through the catalogue of to complete a discography and put some more deathcore under my belt, as well as balance out the overly positive ratings on my log with (hopefully) lesser quality albums.  But since I completed their studio catalog, I decided to keep it that way.

But damned if I say that I didn't wish Carnifex would try SOMETHING, ANYTHING new.  And my wish was ignored.  What is with deathcore bands and that same 360-beat tempo (doubling because "speed speed speed") as if it's a religion?  These are the kind of deathcore artists who treat variety like a Jewish priest treats bacon grease.  While there's an incredible amount of energy that keeps the album tolerable, the symphonic black elements are so undeutilized that they pretty much don't matter.  If something's going to be "blackened," I'd like a stronger dose, please.  There are only faint moments of prog metal which are only placed there to keep things edgy.

Anyway, this is all I can really say about such a generic album.  I can't even give this a 60/100 because I can pick any other Carnifex album and still get all of this.  Carnifex is lost in the so-called art of keeping up a one-trick image for street cred from overly edgy dudebros who's idea of a fine red wine is Code Red Dew.

57/100

Please add the new Carnifex - Necromanteum