Rexorcist's Forum Replies

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

Jean Michel Jarre - Oxygene (1976)

Even though I not really into prog electronic, this is a strong contender to become one of my favorite albums.  Its sense of mood, melody and variety is perfect.  If I had to fault it for anything, I guess it is a little cheesy, but it still sounds beautiful.

I agree that this would fall into a category of hard rock/metal. Not the biggest listener of stoner, so I won't comment on that either way.

This exercise was interesting, because were this any other band, I'd think right now we'd say this is hard rock. This album, outside of the first song, really dances around genre. But, because it's Black Sabbath, we're trying to find ways to justify it back onto metal. (not accusing anyone of anything I'm not doing myself) Between the songs agreed to be metal and the non-metal songs with metal bits, we have enough, but it is interesting how close things got.

No you're right, I made a very clear post about justifying Warning, and now looking back it sounds like I was spouting bullshit.  Of course it only got that close because we decided to do this with an edition that includes Wicked World.  But I don't think we'll have any problems with Paranoid at all.

Mm, it is pretty druggy at times, but the problem here is that only a quarter of the songs would be stoner metal.  This seems like a conversation more fit for RYM considering that they have a plain metal tag, and in the instance where 40% of it relies on two variants of metal, that tag actually feels appropriate.  But here, I'm not so sure.  The truth is it's so difficult to classify.  But because it's so difficult, why not just consider it the earliest form of "heavy metal" because this was basically a practice run for better things?

Now I already removed the metal tag on my log and took the album of my top 100 heavy metal albums list in progress.  It's not really going to affect the group's relevancy as a metal band for me.

Just a reminder: the clans can choose each next album to review if they want.  Next week is the Gateway's turn.

Bluesy and jazzy for the first fifty seconds, but its major rhythm and delivery is pretty heavy, especially for its time.  Not the heaviest song on the album, but certainly heavier than all the hard rock songs that came before it.  It's a little difficult to classify this song under one tag since it shifts so much, but I'm gonna chalk this one up as hard rock / heavy metal.

I'm posting my review today, so I'm gonna need someone's help bringing this in the charts.  Since I've been working on all the previous Evoken albums to prep for this, I've been able to get the Antithesis of Light in the charts as well, totally intentionally, too.

Each Evoken album is a little different, and each time it gets different, it also gets stronger.  But how could you possibly get any stronger than the third album with its perfect atmosphere, evershifting sense of anger and despair as well as its perfect consistency?

Evoken had to step it up to compare this time, and while I don't feel that they did that with the titular opener, I still greatly enjoyed what I heard.  The production was cleaner and less dense, so it was more accessible.  But it didn't lose any of the structural strengths and emotional core of any of the songs from Antithesis.  I could only hope that the other songs wouldn't sound exactly the same.  Thankfully, Mare Erythraeum didn't.  I've gone on about how Antithesis has some gothic touches, but this is more than just touches.  This is the kind of heavily gothic doom you'd expect from My Dying Bride, and it's just as good as you'd expect from MDB.  There are few changes in the main riff, but thankfully everything in the background is there to change things up and either get more melancholy, more artistic or even more melodic.  It all depends on the section.  This beautifully instrumental epic also goes into an amazing metal solo which is quite out of place for Evoken's catalogue, but also perfectly fitting for this album.  That tells me that they're innovating once again.

We re-enter the death doom with a heavy dose on Of Purest Absolution.  Despite that, it's surprisingly more melodic as well, and throughout the middle section, the doom is placed behind an aquatic guitar riff that carefully layers over the doom without drowning it out.  The third section relies on none of that and goes right for tribal drumming and placing the vocals in the foreground to really bring out that deathly vibe.  Astray in Eternal Light is dense in its production, but not so baritone.  It's a very noisy track built on the same guitar sound as the middle section of the previous song.  We also get clearer vocals to bring in more of a depressing tone as opposed to the deep-seeded hatred we've been subjected to before.  But there's also something very sensual about the vocals, although this guy can't beat Peter Steele at this game.  And I also feel that the monotone nature of the album isn't quite as strong as before, as much of it is simply going "up down up down" between two notes.  So while it's a bit unique to the album for shifting focuses of similar elements in the same way that every song in Antithesis did, I can't help but feel it's a bit weaker than the previous songs.

Descend the Lifeless Womb is louder, deeper and slower, once again pushing the soul past its limits.  And boy, does it feel epic.  The general idea of funeral doom is extremely strong on this track.  Unfortunately, because it's so standard, it feels like it's missing something in comparison to the first three songs.  This is remedied during the third act, where things get more atmospheric and clear, as opposed to rough and dirty, and it features an ambient guitar drone which feels very astral.  Suffer a Martyr's Trial begins very quietly and carefully steers into some droning sludge and doom.  Throughout the thirteen minutes, it changes its monotone riffs and the back-layers of the density constantly, bringing back the overall high quality of the first three tracks as well as the previous two albums.  And because of this, the longest song on the album goes by more speedily, even when much of it is snails pushing their way through heavy mounds of dirt.  And finally, we have a single riff played with an orchestra of variation in the back, Orogeny, which has this post-metal vibe about it.

I have to say, I really like how straight-forward and accessible this is, not because a weird-ass like me who enjoyed Grand Declaration of War needs accessibility, but because it represents an incredibly healthy and high-grade kind of album which can be a very good introduction for noobs to get into both death doom and funeral doom, maybe even doom in general.  I honestly don't know why these guys aren't more popular in the doom community.  Is it the surrealism of esoteric?  The traditional behavior of Skepticism?  Either way, these guys are way underappreciated.  Unfortunately, this also sometimes gets in the way of the emotional core, which didn't always feel so varied.

Well I can safely say that at this point, my favorite funeral doom band is definitely Evoken for their ability to deliver seriously heavy music.  Even though this wasn't quite as creative as the last two albums, it more or less got the job done and would make a great introduction into doom, one that's very heavy but never too dense.  So I'd say this is another success for the band.

91

Klaus Schulze - Mirage (1977)

Genres: Berlin School

X is actually in my top 100, although X still doesn't come close to the Blade Runner soundtrack, but it's finally time for me to get through more Klaus Schulze and further my prog electronic experience.  I'm adoring the new age ambiance of this.  It's simple and right at home in a winter cottage fashion, but it's the kind of album where you still have to look at the sky and wonder about the universe.  It's both sci-fi and fantasy in a heavily atmospheric format.  It's simple and not complex, but varied and imaginative.

Then it's settled: the European edition isn't a metal album.  It would be safer to assume that the album was in fact responsible for the creation, but was more of a practice run for the future genre.  So all we have to worry about now is the US edition.

Now the RY chart tags two more albums as metal: Paranoid which came out in December, and Sir Lord Baltimore's Kingdom Come in December.  And of course, there was my nomination Deep Purple in Rock which I feel goes between both more so than being purely hard rock or heavy metal.

This also means that since I'm still not fully sure about Warning, I might as well just say it's not metal, and that means 2/7 songs aren't metal and only twelve minutes total make it.  So I'll have to remove the tag from my log since I only catalog the original edition.

I certainly think of the bass and drum combo as heavy enough to qualify as early metal, but the blues rock kinda gets in the way of it until we're 3 minutes in where it becomes all about heaviness until going back to blues.  But as part of me really does feel like it's "early metal" as opposed to hard rock because its mood, bass and drumming are just so deep and dark.  It's like my instincts are telling me, "this really is metal, and you just don't see it."  It's kinda Zeppelinish, but Zeppelin has a few metal songs among the first four albums.

Evoken - Antithesis of Light (2005)

Genres: Funeral Doom, Death Doom

What with doom metal being my new primary focus, I'm becoming more determined than ever to perfect a proper chart of it all because my overall knowledge and experience of its various subgenres is actually minimal.  I've only heard 17 death doom albums and 11 funeral doom, including only three Evoken albums.  Thankfully, Evoken can add to both to help, so I have a foundation for either genre.  I already reviewed two other Evoken albums over the past couple of days, and I was more impressed with the atmospheric focus of their second in comparison to their good but generic debut.  I had no idea of knowing what was going to happen.

After our creepy intro of noise and wails, In Solitary Ruin covers a freakishly heavy blackened death background molding with structural and atmospheric aspects of the previous album, Quietus.  The band wasn't afraid to teeter-totter between slow, middle and fast paces in order to keep the song's specific mood original and to keep the layout challenging.  This one song is an incredible combination of doom, death, post and even black, aurally turning hell itself into a cold and desolate winter world with a few instances of hypnotic gothic guitars.

Now that I've written a good paragraph about the 10-minute intro and the first epic, let's head to the next song: Accursed Premonition, which sets up a slightly more classical vibe with hypnotic, aquatic dripping of noise and some choral vocals.  It starts out much clearer than In Solitary Ruin, and the atmosphere is more gothic and funeral, and slightly less death to make room for a little more black.  This song doesn't take a lot of time to speed up, either, even going into some much lighter moments and switching to heavily blackened ones without ever losing its hypnotic presence.

The Mournful Refusal is deathlier in its backgrounds, but includes clearer and higher-pitched guitars digging into some more melodic territory, bringing back the hypnotic gothic picking as well, and including the speedy and tamed drumming of In Solitary Ruin.  Every bit of slower or faster pacing is used sparingly, and normally only by one instrument at a time to help the middle-pacing of the song's primary focus.  Even for the longest song on the track, the atmospheres are always shifting in consistent ways, relying on the occassional metal solo, molding perfectly with the vibe and giving us another unique track to the album.

Pavor Nocturnus throws us right into the middle of neoclassical darkwave paired with loud guitars, increasing the melody factor.  The synths give us a strangely heavenly approach, like the lamentation of seeing a spirit of a beloved one rise to the sun shining beyond silver clouds and entering Heaven.  Pavor Nocturnus shows a perfect layout where each and every shift is carefully built up to and flows with incredible consistency.  Eventually it evolves into a storm of black riffage with flawless atmospheric riffage, but even that devolves into another doomy outro.

And now we enter the title track.  We have quiet synths leading us into the gloom of gothic doom metal, slightly romantic but just as scary as before.  But this song also gradually gets more extreme and less gothic overtime until it returns to the gothic behavior during the outro.  What we have here is a patient and sometimes progressive outlook on many of the elements that made previous songs so special, using length in unpredictable manners.

The final track is The last of Vitality, and it doesn't hesitate to start us off with a snailish stoner riff bereft of any of the black and death influences the album boasted about for so long.  And we get our most haunting dungeon synth backdrops to go with it, acting much more upfront.  But we soon get into a ferocious blast of bestial black speed and fury, almost creating a feeling of riding a motorcycle through a massive graveyard.  But we return to the gothic synths and our singer's growls turn into whispers.  This song is taking us all the way across the world of death: above the graveyard, six feet under all the bloodied dirt, and straight into heaven with no regard for sanity.  Our most haunting synths and backing vocals are featured here, creating what I believe is a perfect ending.

It is so true that these songs are very long, but for once in my life I came across a doom album that managed to keep these lengths generally inventive and creative.  A large part of it was the fact that this is one of the most deathly and metallic atmospheres I have ever heard, relying on a number of metallic elements like black and goth as well as non-metallic elements like dungeon synth and darkwave to get a very strong hypnotic vibe.  This is the kind of album where many of the songs will switch out the same elements every so often, justifying such a move by applying different levels of focus to both different moods and different genres, so it's an incredible challenge to predict what's going to happen.

I have never heard a doom metal album like this.  Antithesis of Light gave me more than what I ask for from a good album.  This is the first funeral doom album that passed the fifty minute mark and didn't feel too long, because its atmosphere, emotional core and presentation are all superbly well thought out.  Each brand of hypnosis is similar yet shifting.  Very diverse and intense, depending on my future moods this could very well be the best doom metal album I've ever heard.

Gonna post three Evoken reviews here.  Third one will come after these two shortly.

Evoken - Embrace the Emptiness (1998)

Genres: Funeral Doom, Death Doom

Evoken seems to be considered as essential to funeral doom metal as Esoteric.  They're one of those bands that many say has never made a bad album.  The debut left an impact on the metal world for helping to cement a darker side of funeral by combining it with the death doom of bands like My Dying Bride and Katatonia.  So when you combine the two, I would expect the result to be something even darker than the norm.  But for a debut, how well could it go the first time?

From front to back, atmosphere was their strongest point, and in the context of the funeral sound, that's exactly what they needed.  This careful balance between the sombre classical sound of funeral death and that malevolent sense of fear and anger that death doom is known for is carefully handled.  One of the biggest pros of the album is the variety of vocals, going from low growls to despairing cries to black metal pitches.  So we get the a very healthy doom experience that covers a lot of ground for the fans of the sombre world of doom, and not the psychedelic Sabbath lovers.  The guitar tone has a fairly gothic touch to it to bring out more of the funereal vibes  Of course, this is a funeral doom metal album.  There's a general flaw that's apparent in so much doom metal, especially the funeral brand: the length and sameyness of the songs.  A couple of these would be five-star songs if I couldn't tell what was gonna happen next.

For a debut it was nice.  The atmosphere was more than what I asked for and much more impressive than what a debut album generally says about the act.  But as far as structuring a song goes, these guys are pretty standard.  They got the mood just right and left the idea of variety and uniqueness out the window, but at least they nailed what they focused on.

81

Evoken - Quietus (2001)

Genres: Funeral Doom, Death Doom

Now that I'm more serious about exploring doom metal, Evoken has become a top priority for their high reputation in my least favorite doom genre: funeral.  Evoken bridged the gap between death doom and funeral doom on their debut, already making a name for themselves as one of the darkest bands on Earth since the debut's atmosphere was perfect, although the variety was low.  Let's see what they can do with death and funeral this time.

There's a stronger structural touch which is a bit more unpredictable and organized at the same time.  That drumming in Burning really added another layer of depth to an already deep and seriously atmospheric song.  Thanks to an thin-layer of general creepiness akin to a Blut Aus Nord album, there's a unique touch to this album without losing the deathly vibes of their debut, which makes the vibe of the first two tracks more ghostly than anything.  After having heard and loved In Their Darkened Shrines after the second playthrough, I've been itching for more "ghostly" metal.  The vibe of Withering Indignation, however, is totally different.  The snailish doom has a serious rasp to it akin to stoner metal or a good Boris song.  The droning creates a perfect vibe as dungeon-synth backdrops occasionally make their way into the mix.  It's a great combination of psychedelic noise and neoclassical ambiance.  Tending the Dire Hatred starts by following the same vein as before, but when it switches to a faster tempo, we get a raw heavy metal vibe that switches to tribal drumming like in a Neurosis album.  But eventually it calms down into a very dungeon-grounded song when the metal becomes equal to or second to the synth via atmospheric focus.  And Where Ghosts Fall Silent seems to switch through several of the previously established vibes in a manner similar to My Dying Bride until settling on a slower death doom sound.  The title track builds itself on louder drums and synths for a more menacing approach to its own reverb.  But Embrace the Emptiness is pretty much a shameless rehash, even more so than Quietus, even though it was still a good doom song.  Thankfully, the final track goes into softer alternative territory while maintaining that reverb-based sadness of the album.

I think this album really showcases the band's willingness to push forward everything that made the first album so good.  And while there is still a little sameyness attached, for the most part this highly hypnotic sophomore album proves that Evoken are more than willing to grow so that they can be seen as one of the best in doom.  For the most part, I was very pleased with the band's sense of atmosphere, experimentation, emotion and improved variety.  This is easily much better than the debut.

95