Rexorcist's Forum Replies

Ironically I came back for this just to check because I lost interest in metal right now, largely because I'm focusing on three different games on Movieforums about noir movies.  But I have to say, I always found Sweet Leaf to be metal, and is probably my favorite Sabbath song.  Thanks, Beastie Boys.  Very proud to have this album on vinyl.

Another album I've been meaning to revisit. You're on a roll, Rex, thanks!

Thanks a bunch!

Today's NORTH album:

Arcturus - Aspera Hiems Symfonia

Genre: Symphonic Black Metal

Votes: 4

Reason: Arcturus is a classic experimental band, but this provides an interesting look at what they used to be, like Amorphis.

When I first heard this album, I chose it on a whim, never once considering that it was an album about sci-fi movies until I recognized the plot of Stargate in track 6, The Eye of Ra.  Most of these sci-fi topics weren't things I was familiar with, and I totally missed The Empire Strikes Back references in Master of Darkness the first time since there are many dark lords in this world and none of them should be taken lightly.

Star One is effectively an understated supergroup.  I was about to compare the vocalist to Symphony X's Russell Allen until I realized... is that him?  Turns out, this album has two members of Ayreon, a touring member of Ayreon, Dan Swano the founder of Edge of Sanity, and the replacement for Nightwish's Tarja, Floor Jansen.  It goes as no surprise that these people are taking turns being lead singers.  Much of the instrumentation was done by Arjen Anthony Lucassen, while the others helped out.

 After our sci-fi synth opener, track 1, Set Your Controls, is all about Doctor Who.  Now there are too many doctors for me to get into this series, and even episode 2 of the reboot couldn't keep my interest.  I'm a Farscape guy.  But I like the song.  It seems to be a neoclassical organ side with hard rock undertones in the vein of pre-Highway Star Deep Purple, which is a welcome and unique addition to 2000's metal.  It's a jammer.  But track two, High Moon (Outland) is different.  it's slow, deep, menacing and repetitive.  Now I can't really relate to Outland either, but the real problem for me is that there's practically no melody in the overpowering backing bass, and the melodies are a bit weaker than Set Your Controls, despite the new direction.  Next is Songs of the Ocean, which recounts Star Trek IV, a movie I know nothing about except that it has whales.  I appreciate the synthier backdrops for its aquatic vibe, recalling other aquatic albums, notably electronic ones like Sirens of the Sea of Behind the Sun.  We also see the organs from track one used in a more atmospheric way and finally hear Floor Jansen singing.  But it's hardly a progressive song, mostly just decent heavy metal.  Master of Darkness is out Empire Strikes Back song, and gets right into a metalcore riff to up the modern-day progginess of the album, but otherwise it's still built on a heavy metal vibe with simplicity attached, leading the lyrics to do all the "dark atmosphere" work.  But the second half of the song pumps things up to a neoclassical power metal level without ever letting go of the space vibe, at least, which is a good surprise.

The Eye of Ra is where I originally picked up of the themes.  I couldn't actually believe I recognized it since it had been years since I had watched that movie, but I remembered enough of it after the second watch to recognize it years later.  Maybe it was the "seventh sign" line.  As far as the song goes, the band used the slower pacing in metal along with heavy atmo-synths to not only bring out science fiction, but fantasy as well, as the movie had to do with Egyptian mythology.  Next is Sandrider (Dune), which immediately takes a very energetic approach with upgraded progginess.  It's a pretty catchy tune for the longrun, but it doesn't really progress after a while.  Next comes Perfect Survivor, which is a darker and creepier song, perfect for a song about the movie Alien.  Our next song has a title that doesn't shy away from the honesty about their themes: Intergalactic Space Crusaders.  Unfortunately, the source material doesn't share this name.  It's Blake's 7, a British space TV show from the late-70's and early 80's.  So, yeah, never had any experience with this, nope.  And I gotta admit, I am NOT into the rhytmhs or melodies of this song.  It feels like pointless filler that should've been left off.  Our final track is a nine-minute epic called Starchild, written about the movies 2001 and 2010.  Now I never saw the latter, but it's on my to-do list.  I've seen the original three times (and gave it the exact same rating each time), so I couldn't fully relate to this, but took in as much as I could.  I liked the more melodic approach taken after the slow synthy intro was over.  But this lasts throughout the whole song, which means this prog epic isn't as proggy as it should be.

Well, I love the general concept.  All these well-recieved prog players banded together to make an album for nerds, and they did a pretty decent job of it.  They mostly focus on atmosphere and lyrical content, and do a bang up job.  But I feel that the progginess and melodies sometimes suffered.  Overall, pretty good album.

76/100

Once I get back into music I'll check out some funk metal.

Yes, I agree but none of the Primus albums I’ve heard contain anything much in the way of metal.

It feels pretty alt-metal to me.  Not extreme but heavy enough.

Lemme just say that I've heard several Primus albums and all of then, save their Wonka album, are very funky to me. 

Stereotypical hard rock

This week's INFINITE album:

Star One - Space Metal (2002)

Genre: Prog Metal

Votes: 1

Reason: this is an understated classic which I've been meaning to revisit.

Hard rock

I'm not the biggest Behemoth fan myself, but I'm not gonna lie: I was really looking forward to this one.  After a busy day of work and some heavier shopping than usual, I needed to rest.  Somehow, their brand of death metal really did the job for me.  Something about the quality of their music put a part of me at ease.  I checked out a few Behemoth works before just because I wanted to get some blackened death under my belt, even though these guys are largely pure death, and even though they didn't live up to the legend I had heard about, I was eager to check out more and more, but didn't get to this album until months after I put them aside to focus on a bunch of other acts.  I chose this one specifically because I felt an obligation to them after hearing all their early works.

There seems to be the occasional switch between melodeath and typical death.  There are moments that are more focused in the blastbeats and moments more focused in the rhythm.  Other than style, there really aren't very many similarities between these songs.  Each song is about maintaining a presence that never really wavers while adding a little something new to each entry, although originality does wane a little by the end.  But among the weaker, less fleshed out moments are some serious bangers like the extremely melodic intro and the more blastbeat-focused Mysterium, constantly maintaining that menacing atmosphere and never losing strength.  I have to wonder how much methylene blue these guys put in their coffee before recording this album.  But I'd say the real star of this show belongs to Inferno Prominski, whose creativity on the percussions is displayed at incredible force.  Demigod shows several of his best performances so far.  The guy's a whirlwind that keeps switching from one drum to the other and even overshadows the rest of the band.

I think people who are more into Behemoth will get a stronger kick out of this album, but I'm still really happy with the results here.  Demigod shows excellent growth from their early days and shows real promise for their future which is later lived up to on The Satanist.  That drummer is a wild wild menace in his field, and he makes what could've been just another decent death album much better by leading the bands as the melodies work around him.

83

Hint for tomorrow's INFINITE album:

I didn't tag it metal when I put it on my chart.  Skip it.

As for this song, just plain heavy psych to me.

There seems to be an early "taditional heavy metal" backdrop in the production in some places, but it can be easily compared to the metallic backdrop of 80's metal into hair metal, so I'm not gonna call this metal.  But it sure kicks some fuckin' ass.

Maybe.  But there are very few "post" subgenres of metal that I really take seriously.  But as I've said before, if they're missing the sludge then I just won't call it atmo-sludge.  Biggest example is Rosetta.  Too atmo, not sludgy enough.  There needs to be more "truth" to the "post" tag for post-metal as well, which is where bands like Solstafir come in.

Feel like it's pertinent to put this here rather than anywhere else, just found out that my old college radio station has moved away from music for the most part and is just another NPR station that spouts pre-recorded talking shows and such. Dunno how I feel really, other than sad. As someone who enjoys music and sharing it, I'm just glad that I was able to take advantage of that opportunity when I could. It really shaped how I look at music, and especially Metal music, when I was able to share it with so many people that would legitimately call in and cared about what they were listening to on some random college station in their hometown. As things move forward I can only see it getting worse for these kinds of stations, so I can only be thankful what what I was able to do in my 3 years there. 

The pain of cancellation of something you love.  It's kinda like a part of your soul was disrespected. 

There's definitely early doom influence here, but as a full on song, it's mostly typical 70's hard rock.

I'm not Fallen, but I really do see a clear distinction between atmo-sludge and post-metal, and refuse to call one the subgenre of the other.  There's a little overlap, and that's it as far as I'm concerned.  Post-metal shouldn't just be long atmospheric metal.  Take bands like GYBE, Sans and Tortoise in post-rock.  There's more to it on a structural spectrum, and most atmo-sludge doesn't meet that standard.  They're just slow and atmospheric, big woop, like atmo-black.

So my final point is: I wouldn't mind if atmo-sludge returned as a separate entity, but I have little to do with the Fallen save voting on alls that the Fallen happen to be on, so whatevs.

Bluesy and proggy, but not heavy enough for a metal tag.

Forgot about the album this week.  It'll continue next Tuesday.

I think the horn is distracting people on this one. Hard rock.

I listen to power metal.  Horn doesn't bother me.

Ride the Sky was also a single, and since singles are usually released before the album, but Zeppelin also performed the song for the first time t the 1970 Bath Festival of Blues and Progressive Music in June.

Major Rainbow vibes here.  Heavy metal.

I found about a third of it to be "traditional heavy metal" and that's about it.

Fixed.

Hard rock in every sense of the term.

Kinda psych but mostly blues rock.

Turns out the edition I heard when I made my first comment had sides A and B reversed, so my comment on the first track was from muscle memory on the wrong tracklist.  So I switch my commentary on the first track to this rym standard:

Hard Rock, Blues Rock

Heavy Metal

I feel like it's more inspiration than anything.  The Planets is too popular of a classical piece to credit as your own.

Yeah, I'm going stoner metal and traditional heavy metal on this one.

It’s the added complexity in the arrangements & song-structures as well as the cold, angry atmosphere. It also helps that it’s a thrash riff masterclass with all four band members at the absolute peak of their powers from a performance & musicianship perspective.

Gonna have to give it a replay today.

After I'm done with Draconian, I guess I'll put together private doom and goth lists and see where they're going.  Unfortunately, I'm still in a position to where I'm safe with the way I want my log if I listen to one metal album a day, assuming I listen to enough albums in that day to make up for it.  Today I finished the Poppy catalog and heard the new Duran Duran as well as their debut.  But I'm definitely not into them as much as I'd like to be considering their status in the new wave scene.

My day's likely going to be spent with DJ Shadow.  He's got a new one out and I've only heard his debut and a singles compilation.

I think I'm gonna go hard rock heavy metal on this one because it's got a lot of energy that makes me want to bang my head despite its obvious blues rock elements.

Lotsa thrash there.  Hard to avoid it in that decade.  Out of curiosity, what sets And Justice for All above Master of Poppets and Ride the Lightning IYO?

I don't care what folk we put it under as long as it's not metal.

I seem to remember that as well, but I think that was a good move for them because the two sides compliment each other well.

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.