Rexorcist's Forum Replies

Another good example is how The Moody Blues were another pop rock band in 1965 before Days of Future Passed.

I was more impressed with than album than most people.  Even though they're better at hard rock, Deep Purple proved that they can really bring out the fantasy vibes through rock long before symphonic prog or any fantasy genres of rock and metal ever existed.  It was a very "vibes" album from what I remember.  And yeah, the prog wasn't always the MOST creative as it had been done more well before, but I kinda believe that the first two real prog bands were Moody Blues and Deep Purple, and this was one of those albums that helped cement it before King Crimson came into the picture (and coined the term).

If they did plagiarize it, they did that song a favor.  The production doesn't do anything good about that Ritual song any justice...

I don't remember Woman from Tokyo very well, but I'm more or less going with Daniel's description on this one.

Today's HORDE album:

Behemoth - Demigod (2004)

Genre: Death

Votes: 1

Reason: Behemoth is an understated essential in modern death.

Review:

I'm nowhere near into solo Ozzy as I am into Black Sabbath, and I know I'm not alone in this.  Because of this, I've spent very little time in Ozzy's solo career.  Up until today, I had only heard his first two albums.  I really think it's about time I stopped putting both solo Ozzy and solo Dio off and gotten to a couple of their albums.  But I'll keep this brief.

I was glad that each song felt a little different at times.  Some were pretty speedy like the title track and (ironically) "Slow Down," some were more about the beat and biker attitude like "Waiting for Darkness," and songs like "So Tired" added a more symphonic and melodic side, steering itself away from typical power ballads by keeping the gothic vibes of the album intact.  There's also some time for raw creepiness a la Alice Cooper, like on the song "Spiders."  But I think what really made the album so enjoyable is that all the melodies are very strong.  It seems to be a major focus on the album where everything else, including the variety factor, seems to work around the melodies.  And this leads up to the album's only flaw: stylistically and structurally, it's a pretty typical 80's heavy metal album.  None of the songs are bad, but thanks to this, it comes nowhere near Paranoid as a whole.  In fact, its typical structure is also why I'm keeping this brief, because there really isn't a lot stylistically that's unique enough to talk about.

Well, I'm largely impressed with this album.  From what I can remember, this seems more focused on doing different things with typical heavy metal songs than Blizzard of Ozz.  This is a great continuation of a solo career built on two great albums, and I highly recommend it for any metal fan that wants darkness in their music, even for extreme metalheads.

91/100

Budgie debut maybe?

Forgot to post the hint for today's Horde album.  I'll do that, and then I'll post the review for Bark at the Moon.

Less heavy than before.  Hard rock.

Especially since my mouse is acting up a little.

Looks like your list is restored with a different name: https://metal.academy/lists/single/261

Whew! An epic list like this shall not be lost.

I had to remake it due to the late reply.  Can we implement a notification that says, "Are you sure you want to delete it?"  It serves as a good warning before the accident actually happens.

I think this track is at least hard rock heavy metal for its edge, but most of the songs on the album really aren't QUITE as heavy so it might require a second listen.

Damn, I don't even remember the first five.  They were probably Scorpions albums as they were the first metal band I really got into.  One of them might've been, as is my opinion, Appetite for Destruction, and another might've been Dirt.  At first I was into heavy metal, and thrash took some time, but after checking out Helloween and Blind Guardian, I wanted more power metal pretty quickly.  Basically, my journey into metal started with hard rock, and I forced myself into more extreme genres overtime.  Black was the last one if I recall correctly.  I remember the first three death metal albums I've ever heard: Symbolic, Unquestionable Presence and Focus.  I don't even remember how grind started, but my first two black metal albums were At the Heart of Winter and Bergtatt.

Maybe, but there are some albums that would attract multiple people.  Not saying Paranoid is necessarily one of them, but in the end the decisions won't cause a massive riot one way or another.  I mysel largely don't care which clan we put it under.

Besides, it's obvious that the people who attribute "prog" to different genre tags have different meanings

They shouldn't though in my opinion.

I agree.  Unfortunately, they do.  So I reserve those tags.

But Empire feels to radio-friendly for me, that's the thing.  And I repeat: it doesn't need to be overly technical, but I'd appreciate a little more in Empire.  There's some, but most of the album gave me radio-rock vibes.

Besides, it's obvious that the people who attribute "prog" to different genre tags have different meanings, and I don't tag a prog electronic album that way unless it feels less radio friendly and conventional.  New and proggy are also two different things.

Considering that they were working their way up to that, I wouldn't be against the tag.  I'll give it a spin today, as I've been meaning to.

I don't need them to be SUPER technical, but a little more than that.

Heh, I just realized, your hard rock vs. heavy metal opinions are like my prog opinions, and vise-versa. :P

In the case of our closer, it really pushes that line between hard rock and heavy metal, but I think I'd go 60% hard rock, 40% heavy metal.  There's definitely some heavy psych in parts, but I'm not really convinced it's a primary.  But when I think about it, stoner metal seems a little like a direct subgenre of heavy metal when you count bands like Spiritual Beggars.

This is another case of too many subgenres of metal to really judge.  We have three kinds of metal on your tags, even though I would add heavy metal to Iron Man.  In other words, the most accurate way to do it would simply be to call it a "metal" album again, which we can't really do on Metal Academy, so it's another screwy situation.

Btw, you said "Electric Wizard," not "Electric Funeral."

It's hardly prog, either.  Honestly, Queensryche genre tags seem to be the result of fanboys who love lumping things in with cooler tags for credibility.

I was a pretty big fan of Draconian's 2020 album, but never made the jump back to their earlier stuff. Seems like I might have to remedy that as it looks like they're incredibly consistent straight from the start. I only have a few go-to Gothic Metal bands so it'd probably be worth branching out a bit. 

I remember a little of a buzz around that album when it came out, but I never got around to a lot of goth metal back then.

Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell (2005)

Genres: Gothic Doom Metal

The gothic doom sound pioneered by My Dying Bride and Type O Negative would be replicated by a large portion of the gothic scene, including Draconian, who mastered the basics of the genre on the debut without much creativity attached.  Doom and gothic fans seem to love their second album, Arcane Rain Fell, so I guess this was the most exciting part of exploring their catalogue.  When I turned this on, I was hoping for a serious improvement over the original and a stone-cold classic.

It's obvious that the band is becoming more poetic with their lyricism.  There seems to be a stronger focus on the imagery of the scene they're a part of.  And thanks to a stronger idea of using faint foregrounds as atmospheric tools, such as the choral backing vocals on The Apostacy Castle, the album has a stronger effect on the listener than before.  Because of this, the emotional core of the band is a little stronger here.  The elements that made the debut album good to begin with have a stronger harmony and balance.  This also means that certain aspects are going to shine at certain times even more than they did on the last album.  It was easy for certain focal points to shine when there was less harmony, but with a stronger sense of harmony from everything and stronger skill from the band, the focal points (when given extra strength), such as the bombastic gothica of Heaven Laid in Tears or the intro's slow sludge, feel more impressive.  In other words, the band is able to recreate the last album and all of its strengths with one difference: they've become a BAND.

Having said this, there are two problems I have with this album.  First, in following completely in the vein of the last album, it also recreates the sameyness problem.  While all of the songs are enjoyable, we know what we're getting.  And the second problem is that the lady singer is severely underused.  The male is given total priority, and it's kind of a shame.  I mean, as absolutely beautiful as our ending 15-minute track is, it's same old Draconian.  So the end all be all is that this is a slight improvement over a pretty good debut, and Draconian know who they want to be which from a moral perspective is perfectly fine, but from a musician's perspective it hurts their creative prowess.

76/100

Planet Hemp - A invasão do sagaz homem fumaça (2000)

Genres: Rap Rock, Conscious Hip Hop

Looking through my log, I noticed: I don't have very many rap rock albums up there.  I've never had a rap rock binge, likely because few people seem to take it very seriously.  Well, since I'm back on a hip hop binge, and since the RYM charts have recorded over 1200 rap rock albums, mixtapes and EP's, I decided now was a good time as any to check out the genre.  However, I am NOT into RATM, so I didn't head to them.  I wanted to try somebody totally new to me.  Looking through each album's genre tags to see what I might like, I came to this Brazilian band which apparently included punk, dub and samba into their mix.  That sounded like a WILD ride, so

I have to say, for a consistently attitudinal album loaded with catchy and maybe poppy beats, this was one of the most varied albums I've ever heard. Each song has its own strong identity with different levels of attitude, different kinds of beats and genres, and some variations in rapping styles between the two MC's.  There was practically no way to tell what was going to happen next.  I mean, beat-wise, it took creative genius to keep it this catchy and experimental at the same time.  They made room for a couple of punk songs (one of which is constantly changing in its two minute runtime without ever losing its aura), and they even start off one song with a very psychedelic samba chorus before switching into hip hop with those same instruments playing.  They found a way to surprise me with a hip hop verse IN a hip hop album.  Damn.

Even on our third-to-last track, Quarta De Cinzas shos the band's fascinating ability to balance out hip hop vibes with the folksier instruments of their native home.  The beats and melodies are constantly operating at full power, and so every song is catchy in its own way.  But if I had to pick one song to take with me, it would be that beautiful song I just mentioned.  And the best part?  They follow it up with a hardcore punk song, and then with a reggae hip hop track as a closer, and it feels so right because they already used stronger hip hop influences in the earlier tracks to set up the atmosphere for the controlled chaos that makes the album so enigmatic.  In other words, this is almost an experimental album in the sense that the band has incredible passion for the whole world of music and not just for hip hop, and that's the kind of passion I find rare in modern hip hop.  Only a few highly diverse artists like Tyler the Creator and Death Grips have that special brand of musical passion.

No skips, no bad songs, all surprises and hip hop attitude.  This 2000 album is practically a tribute to all those 90's genres that the radio burnt out, but also justifying what was so beloved about each one.  I honestly can't believe what I've heard.  This is the kind of rap rock album I would've done, although I might've chosen different genres.  Plant Hemp needs to make more albums, they really do.  This album alone proves that they had a creative capacity on par with the future artist Tyler the Creator.  I'm thinking this is a top ten hip hop album for me.  In fact, I'm seriously considering putting this in my top 100.

100/100

Kinda Allman Brothers-ish.  I'm going pure hard rock, unless you want to label a 2.5 minute song jam band.

Draconian - Where Lovers Mourn (2003)

Genres: Gothic Doom Metal

This is a pretty special day for me.  I have officially marked my 13,000th music album heard.  And for that position I chose Kanye's live album, Late Orchestration.  I'm really happy with the outcome of recent musical ventures, but there's more to it.  Apparently, as this is smackdab in the middle of my goth metal phase, today just so happens to be the 20th anniversary of the debut album by one of the goth metal bands I was considering exploring: Draconian.  Since I was struggling with which band to check out next, the revelation made my decision.  Thanks a bunch to Shadowdoom9 for discovering this!

So Draconian are pretty much what you want from a gothic doom metal act: this slow droning and gothic sound have a strong potency, and this sound of theirs is so well done and good that it pretty much has a lot of staying power.  Even though this means the album's pretty samey, the sound really doesn't get tiring thanks to perfect production and a good balance between timing and melody, whether slow or fast.  These are all aspects that musicians can easily screw up, and so far Draconian don't seem to be doing that.  The fact that they were able to accomplish that much at least on the debut seems to be what makes this album a well-received classic among fans of the niche appeal.  However, as far as creating an album goes, I feel that I should only give the album extra points for its monotony while still acknowledging that they could've done more if they got the general idea right on their first try.  They could've even only taken one extra step forward in the creative department and improved this album quickly.  Despite this, I loved the inclusion of that very short folk song near the end.  It really brought some Celtic vibes to the album, which were out of place stylistically but perfectly suitable emotionally.

So while it's perfectly clear that Draconian had a strong grip on their style and identity with this album, a couple other things are very obvious: they were a less creative My Dying Bride with all of Tristania's vocal tricks, and featuring less potency on both sides of this delivery.  I mean, I like JUST finished the Tristania catalog a couple days ago, and I love The Dreadful Hours so the comparisons are pretty easy.  So unfortunately, I'd have to say that despite the clear strengths and staying power, this is a generic debut by technicality.  Still, it fit the vibe I was looking for, gives a fan what a fan wants, is good for fans of My Dying Bride, Type O Negative and Tristania and personally really helped me with the vibe of a novel I'm working on.  So I'll recommend this easy but well-produced album if not just to check out another gothic doom act.

74.

I've finally gotten around to The Life of Pablo.  Some of it's brilliant, and some of the shorter tracks are too short and some of the longer tracks drag a little, so it had a lot of potential and lived up to most of it.  Better than Graduation.  94/100.

And now... my 13,000th album.

Wait, that's their debut, so today's the perfect day to start Draconian.  Gonna do that after my next two albums are done.

MIKE - Burning Desire (2023)

Genres: Abstract Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop

Gonna catch up on my 2023 some by listening to some new albums RYM seems to love.  I find MIKE to be a bit overhyped, but I want to get into more hip hop anyway.  So far I like each individual piece, and the progression of its concept is going fairly well.  But the problem with this is that repeating the same simple beat doesn't give any piece to progress, so the switch from one type of song to another is a little bit jarring.  It's like modern hip hop is taking way too much influence off of side B of Abbey Road, which was more consistent and melodic.

The first section feels freakishly on the border for me.  But the midsection does get much more hard rock with a simple metal edge where the energy is concerned.  So I'll tag it hard rock with heavy metal being a very close secondary, as the stoner aspect seems weaker than the previous songs off Paranoid as well as the stoner songs from the debut.

RYM STYLE

Hard Rock

Heavy Metal, Doom Metal, Prog Rock

According to this website and RY, Symphony of the Enchanted Lands turns 25 today.

Well I use the psych metal tag myself, although I admit it's been difficult to find a psych metal album that doesn't fit under another tag, but there's no way in hell I'm called Mestarin Kynsi psych ROCK.  The first and last thirds of this song fit perfectly under my psych metal tag, and of course, we get a hard rock heavy metal midsection with some easy Deep Purple influence in the vein of the speedier stuff on In Rock which we went over.  This is the song that practically covers every side of the album, and the reason I love this type of album so much.

I just got my new glasses, and damn are they great.  They fit on my nose perfectly without adjustment and don't slide off.  The adjustment period is practically gone, but that might only be because there were only minor changes in my eyesight when I took the exam.  The only real concern is getting used to the different way they fit on my ears, which really isn't a bad thing.

Candlemass only exists because they took songs like this as an influence.  If someone wants to call it traditional doom or proto-doom or whatever, I'm not gonna blame anybody.  In fact, I would probably go as far as to blame anyone who would criticize the notion.  So we scored three songs out of four to be metal.

And suffice it to say, this album has been a major point in comparing hard rock AND metal albums for me since I first heard it, especially by the time I made good top 100's for each.  There are only four metal albums that beat it, and only one hard rock album, ironically my number one album of all time: Led Zeppelin IV.  In other words, this album helped set the standard of how I judge albums overall, being one of the major sources for my expressed love of variety.

I like the obscure stuff.  Thanks.

My Christian Death exploration is currently in the middle of Prophecies, their tenth of fifteen albums.  Gotta say, I like this more atmospheric touch.  Even though they're still drawing out songs to an unforgivable extent, their surreal compositions capture insanity well enough, sometimes beautifully.  Of course, the songwriting still needs help, so this may just be a spark of creativity.

This week's GUARDIANS album:

Ozzy Osbourne - Bark at the Moon (1983)

Genres: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock

Votes: 4

Reason: I wanted a real classic this time, plus I needed to get around to it.

I'd rather wait and see what this one says before raising a heall, and it also depends on whether or not people include Wicked World.

As for the tagging, you forget: stoner rock and heavy psych are subgenres of hard rock.  Here's how I'd make it look RYM style.

Hard Rock

Metal, Stoner Rock, Heavy Psych, Blues Rock

This tagging is kinda condensing things, though.

Review:

I'm quite the Alice in Chains fan.  Way back when I was first getting into regular album exploration, one of my first ever binges was grunge, and that binge would be on and off for years before I felt I had exhausted all the albums worth listening to.  Of course, I kind of avoided solo Cantrell because I didn't want to explore a solo act just for a relation to Alice in Chains.  But the way I see it, a grunge junkie who actually started a wiki on it has an obligation, even if he's not working on the wiki anymore.

I heard the decent but unimpressive debut, Boggy Depot, before heading to this, and it's easy to see that Cantrell belongs in the metal world.  Right from the start, Cantrell makes a point of telling you that this is an Alice in Chains solo act by recounting that same dark and sludgy sound on the first track.  But the album doesn't stay that way; it goes from harder to softer on a beautiful balance, sometimes progressively.  Songs like Angel Eyes which bridge that poppy lightweight alternative with the noisiness of grunge riffs mingle well with softer and more acoustic bits with a slight emphasis on psychedelic country.  It made me realize that I wished there was a slight more alt-rock and psychedelic in Dirt, then it might've risen on my overall log.

However, there are a couple problems with this album.  First of all, the writing certainly isn't as unique or inspired as Alice in Chains.  It seems more predictable this time, despite all its efforts to both remind one of Alice in Chains and separate itself from the band.  The second problem is that the emotional aspect is not recounted much.  It's occasionally there, but it's lightweight.  This especially hurts if you know that Cantrell was with Alice in Chains, which means this overlong album is poppier.  So the variety eventually gets samey.

Well, I can't say this is my favorite grunge metal album.  I was hoping to love it for its connection to Alice in Chains, but I knew it was a bit much to ask for.  It's a pretty fun album with some cool songs, but totally passable.

73.5/100

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?