SilentScream213's Reviews

Around the Fur is hailed as the first truly great Nu Metal album and considered one of (if not) the best in the genre. It was also Deftones’ breakthrough success, and a telling sign of the Metal trend in the late 90’s.

To me, it’s a really plain Nu/Alternative Metal album. Honestly, the production is probably the best part of this, the guitars having a fantastic tone and a perfect amount of reverb and effect on them to create a strong wave of slightly dissonant chords. The music though, is really average. There aren’t many riffs, progressions or leads that stand out, as the best part of the guitars are when they’re used more atmospheric like in “Be Quiet and Drive.” The rhythm section is quite standard, never doing anything too fast or complex. The vocals are at least unique, and I can see an appeal to them, but they don’t do a whole lot for me personally; the lyrics are similarly boring and border on cryptic. For a genre that excels at self-expression, there’s just not a lot of that here, and it hurts the whole thing. Nu Metal should either be full of catchy charisma or painfully emotional vulnerability, and this release doesn’t pack either one.

It’s the same quality as their debut for me. Average Nu Metal. Not bad, but nothing special.

The sophomore album by Strapping Young Lad is a much more concise piece of music with a clear direction. There were many aspects I liked about this album:

- The rhythm section is fantastic. Drums are energetic and aggressive just as I prefer.

- Production is pristine. Every instrument is audible and some interesting Industrial sound effects add layers to the compositions.

- Devin’s voice is awesome. His range is incredible, usually hitting somewhere between melodic singing and screaming, but going every which way up and down that spectrum, and doing it all very well.

Unfortunately, this album has a lot of weakness that really stifle the enjoyment for me.

- The riffs are boring. They are mostly rhythmic, with very little lead guitarwork and nothing at all memorable being crafted with the guitars.

- The lyrics are mostly bad, with too much unnecessary vulgarity that just doesn’t work.

- Devin adopts a “tough guy” persona on the album and whether it’s a joke or not doesn’t matter, it’s really annoying and really cringy.

- Devin is known for being a musical chameleon, but this album is (among his work) quite samey front to back, with most songs being Thrashy/Groovy Industrial Metal. That wouldn’t be a problem, but they all suffer from the same exact weaknesses, which makes the samey-ness that much more offensive.

That leaves this album a really mixed bag for me. It’s a good album, but it has way more potential than it ever reaches, and too many weaknesses that hold it back.

Arcturus went from cold, compelling Symphonic Black Metal soundscapes to… bizarro twisted circus Metal.

This thing is loaded with different influences; the most prominent styles are Symphonic, Progressive, and Avant-Garde Metal, but there are flavors of Dark Cabaret, Symphonic Black Metal, Drum n Bass, Modern Classical, and probably some other stuff. Interestingly, it reminds me of Sigh from Japan stylistically.

Incredibly interesting and ever changing, but at the end of the day, much less enjoyable than their old style. Some of the songs here are quite great, but even those don’t leave any sense of memorability because this album is not focused on riffs or melody. Rather, you’re more likely to remember a song as “the one that has that circus march theme in it for a minute” or “the one where he does those really goofy operatic vocals.” Just doesn’t suit me much, but I respect the innovation and uniqueness.

You put two genres like Drone Metal and Sludge Metal together, you gotta expect something pretty rancid. Dissonant, noisy, repetitive, lethargic… those were some traits that come to mind, and they are also traits I tend not to like when combined.

The short of it is, the album sounds exactly as you might expect (at least, exactly as I did), and it’s just not my thing.

The longer story though, is there were some great details to this album I did appreciate. The density of numerous guitars in the background creating a twisted cacophony with feedback and bent notes was quite great. The atmosphere here is destructive; there’s no real emotion to it, but there is a terrifying emptiness, like the heart of a cold killer, long since surrendered to insanity.

I’m not sure what the lore behind this Japanese band is, but writing the whole album in Spanish is a very odd choice. Google translating it doesn’t make a lick of sense.

Boring, repetitive, boring, heavy, boring, fuzzy, boring, noisy, and boring. Insulting how this is considered a great release in Doom Metal when it is not Doom Metal at all. Droning, Stoner “riffs” caked in enough fuzz that you’re tricked into thinking this is some kind of atmospheric soundscape. Played slow with insane lethargy, not for the sake of emphasizing mood or feeling, but because the band members were probably too burnt to be bothered to play anything else.

I do usually like to see the value in something even if it isn’t for me, but the mass praise this thing gets means I don’t need to cut it any breaks. It doesn’t do anything except layer on guitar fuzz, and I don’t understand what the appeal to that is supposed to be. Rather, I can see how inebriated people are fooled into liking this, but for the album to be so widely beloved and acclaimed? What is going on? How is this appealing to so many people? Albums like this truly make me feel like I’ve lost touch with the world.

There’s so much I could say about this incredible album, and I could never do enough to sing its praises, so instead I’ll relay a personal story.

Many, many years ago now, I lost a very dear friend. Not that they died, no; they chose to go down a dark path I could not follow. And that was almost worse, because there was no closure, no finality to it, and it all ended in a very sad, painful way.

My life after that event was quite dark for quite some time. Hopelessness and lack of trust clouded my view of everything, and once solid goals started to appear meaningless. I continued moving forward simply because.

Enter Brave Murder Day. I had previously heard Katatonia’s debut and their 2 prior EP’s, and while I thought they were good, they were far from incredible releases. I thus put on Brave Murder Day as I was going to sleep one night with no expectations.

Brave immediately captured my attention – no, it would be more appropriate to say that it stole my breath and held it for all 10 of its forlorn minutes. Not only was this nothing like Katatonia’s previous work, it wasn’t like anything I’d heard before (nor have I since). This was the purest form of auditorial depression I’d ever heard. It actually frightened me, as vulnerable as I was at the time. Safe to say my chances of sleep had been murdered.

I kept listening to the album day after day, and it felt awful, in a way. It took me to the darkest depths of the low I was already in and forced me to sit in pitch black. There was no running and no numbing that could escape that dreadful feeling once these twisted chords created that inescapable rainroom.

And yet… comfort. Genuine comfort. Someone else understands this. Someone else captured this feeling. Someone else took this horrible darkness and created art. Someone else felt this and kept going.

And that is why I love Metal, but more importantly why I adore Doom Metal. The genuine darkness and melancholia behind it is so comforting when you just need to know you aren’t alone, and you can survive, and you can make beauty even with your darkness.

Anyway, time passed and I shelved this album for over half of 12 years, simply because it remained incredibly effective at bringing me right back to that place. I’d listen to a track every once in a while when the mood fit, but it had been so long since I have listened to the album in full. Until now, that is, listening as I write this… I can handle it now, but lord, does it remain very effective. One of the greatest albums of all time, or should I say… of Endtime.

Eternity is somewhat of a transitional album in Anathema’s discography (though what isn’t, with how often they changed sounds). This one is quite a big shock though, coming from the Death Doom of The Silent Enigma. Here, Anathema have completely fused Doom and Gothic Metal, and added in liberal amounts of Progressive Rock and ethereal ambience. And that last bit is very important; in stark contrast to The Silent Enigma’s deathly, ominous shadow of despair, Eternity is an ethereal, atmospheric, bittersweet cry of passion.

Although still very doomy and quite heavy in places, Eternity is elegant and airy. This is so well displayed in the intro and following track Angelica. Familiar, plodding Doom drumming and chords back an otherwise heavenly, melodic piece of music, as a slow lead guitar melody weaves through its golden air. The vocals are another important part; so poignant, full of passion, grief, and love. The rest of the album follows a similar pattern, combing the familiar Doomy drumming, guitar chords and general atmosphere of melancholia with nearly the polar opposite in graceful synths and gentle lead melodies, always contrasting this bitter sense of loss with unending love and hope. This was really a landmark release in the more melodic strains of Doom and Gothic Metal.

This one doesn’t get as much love as either the album before nor the many after, and I will never understand why. It was such a unique, unforeseen progression of the Gothic Doom genre and remains a unique and beautiful release. The album sounds super dated, especially because of those cheesy synths, and I LOVE it that much more for it. Even the album cover. It just screams this 90’s aesthetic. Wonderful, wonderful album.

Pummeling, unrelenting force, brutal and chaotic to the untrained ear, but held together by immense technical prowess. The album that both Brutal Death and Tech Death are now compared against, Cryptopsy set the bar unreachably high with only their second album. None So Vile is a nonstop riff fest that absolutely assaults the listener with dense, twisted guitarwork and some of the wildest drumming I’ve yet heard.

Cryptopsy didn’t exactly name the game here – taking big influence from bands like Death, Suffcation, and a bit of Nespithe perhaps – but they just did it so well. Brutal Death Metal is among my less-liked Death Metal subgenres because of its tendency to forgo focusing on crafting good riffs to instead create a wall of punishment in auditory form. Similarly, Tech Death, while often very good, can lose points in songwriting when getting too stuck on showing off the musician’s technical prowess. Well, this music is certainly every bit as punishing and impressive, but not for one second did the band forget how write an awesome riff. Every song is jam packed with some of the best, and backed by aggressive drumming that never falls into “constant blast beat” boredom. Its loaded with creative fills and different drumming patterns, even slowing down every so often for some added weight. Wonderfully crafted music!

There is a huge issue for me, and that’s the vocals. They don’t sound terrible, but even when reading along to the lyrics, they are indecipherable, they don’t even attempt to speak or follow along. It’s pathetic, embarrassing really. The vocalist just got in the booth and growled without trying? It’s polar opposite to the incredible hard work and dedication shown by every musician on the record. You would think when all you are contributing to an album filled with such incredible songwriting and musicianship is growled vocals, you would make absolutely sure that you nailed that performance and crafted some lyrical quality to boot. The lyrics unfortunately are just okay usually, sometimes similarly bad. These points ensure the album will never be a masterpiece to me.

A single 40-minute track, that manages to weave through almost every style Edge of Sanity has toyed with thus far. Primarily there is Melodeath and Prog Metal, but also OSDM, Gothic Metal, some Doomy parts, of course acoustics and cleans… It’s the full package. It contains a sprawling concept story about the end of mankind revolving around the inability to breed and a god-born crimson queen who provides the last hope for mankind’s preservation. This is one of those tracks that is wildly entertaining to follow along to, as the lyrics provide a visual spectacle of dark suspense, befitting the music.

But of course, on to the music itself. Crimson strikes the perfect balance between including recurring motifs and jam-packing the thing with as many apocalyptic riffs as possible. The song just never gets boring. It paces itself wonderfully, the infrequent but always pleasant soft sections giving reprieve after many minutes of unrelenting Metal, and the pummeling sections of aggressive speed checked by slower dirges. Every member is in top form.

As far as concept albums go, it’s up there with the best. As far as single track albums go, it’s also up there with the best. Plainly speaking, a legendary moment of Progressive Melodeath that most Extreme Metal epics are now compared to.

Helloween’s last album, Master of the Rings, was a comeback album returning to pure Power Metal, featuring line up changes after the maligned yet underrated Pink Bubbles and Chameleon. On The Time of the Oath, Helloween double down on this and deliver (in my opinion) an amazing album that easily rivals the Keeper of the Seven Keys albums.

We Burn is a blistering album opener that is perhaps the best song of their entire career up to that point, and plainly one of the best Power Metal songs period. The guitars are wild, twisting like melodic lightning as the nonstop double bass drumming lays down some intense power. The soaring, layered vocals are not without edge, and the bass has some truly funky noodling of its own. Plainly said, the song is a masterpiece.

Now, every following song doesn’t quite match that astounding opener, but almost all of them feature fantastic work from each member. I know people hold the Seven Keys albums in a very special place as some of the earliest great works in Power Metal, but the fact is that the band have never sounded as good as they do here. This album is the peak of their ability and songwriting so far, and the production is super clear, fantastically mixed so that you can hear those wonderful basslines and each layer of melodic guitar, without sounding overproduced or modern in any way.

My relationship with Type O Negative has always been troubled. Doom and Gothic Metal are some of my favorite genres, and Type O Negative practically invented the later (despite what people say, I am firmly of the opinion they have NEVER played the former). The thing about these genres is that they are known for being moody, melancholic, sombre, etc. Type O Negative, rather than representing these traits, are more so a parody of them.

Most of their songs are filled with tongue in cheek humor, sarcasm, overly vulgar sexuality, and Peter Steele’s ever so annoying “sensual tough guy” persona. It’s like if gym jocks tried making Gothic Metal. The joke interludes found on many of their albums send a pretty clear message they don’t really take anything too seriously.

Anyway, as for this album… Most of the music is pretty good. Red Water is great, even, with some actually melancholic and doomy atmosphere. Far too often, these songs are overlong and filled with all the annoying tropes of the band I mentioned before. The gothic guitar melodies and echo effects are usually quite nice, and Peter sounds good for the most part, but he still falls into parody territory too often.

It’s just a band that doesn’t sit well with me.

I don’t hate Tool or anything, and they absolutely have some fantastic tracks under their belt (Sober, Schism, etc.) but I find them to be one of the most overrated bands out there. Ænima is a perfect example of everything wrong with Tool in my opinion.

Firstly, there are NO standout tracks. Zero. Nothing on here has a chorus or a riff or anything that is going to stick with you. None of the songs have any strong moods, emotions, atmosphere, etc. It’s all very gray… Just the band playing some technical stuff while Maynard rambles on and on about something. Pretentious doesn’t begin to cover it.

Then there’s the fact that this thing is littered with useless interludes. It’s another shot at being “clever.” And damn they fooled a lot of people. The only time this many interlude tracks are acceptable is on a concept album where the interludes move along the story or connect the themes in some way. Here, we’ve got 6 interlude tracks, about 11 minutes of pointless nonsense that the most rabid Tool fans would defend as showcasing how we make assumptions based on the sound of things, even if the meaning is totally different… The thing is, I don’t care. I don’t care about whatever inside jokes or rabid drug induced revelations compelled them to make over a third of the tracks gimmicks. All I care about is how good the album sounds, and the album sounds like a mess.

The meat of the album is decent, but again, there’s no staying power, no reason to come back to it. The lyrics tread an odd line between humorous sarcasm and total existential pretention… neither of which I enjoy. I’ll stick to their hits, but Tool albums are not well crafted and this is perhaps their worst offender.

Therion finally found the sound they’ve been chasing for a long time and ended up with a full on Symphonic Metal classic with tons of Gothic, Progressive and extreme Metal influence. Tons of guests here, it’s lush with different instruments, vocal styles, and overall styles.

As one of the earliest examples of the genre, Therion were pioneering a sound that would later be super influential in the strain of Symphonic Death Metal bands and the darker, more Gothic tinged side of the genre as well. Most of the guitars are rhythmic in nature, with lead melodies usually being carried by vocals, string instruments and keys. It’s a wildly fun album that just has so much going for it.

Weak points include the aforementioned guitars (about 2 memorable guitar leads here) and an over relying on operatic vocals, which can get grating pretty quickly. Other than that though, it’s a great quality album way ahead of its time.

P.S. The Metal portion of Siren of the Woods is phenomenal, but the song is scalped by having a four minute intro.

Sabbat is a band who have been at the grind for a long time – never breaking through despite being at the forefront of the first wave of Black Metal. Part of this is probably because they were stuck in Japan, where their raw, Satanic, simple first-wave style never really took hold. They put out many unique, solid albums, but The Dwelling was a bit of a leap in terms of quality and musical depth.

The near hour long, single track of the album has their usual Blackened Thrash with tons of Heavy Metal influence, but it’s also loaded with a bunch of shifts and changes, both in tempo, instruments, and even vocal styles. The only consistency is the evil, occult obsession that permeates all of their material.

The Dwelling is a great collection of what makes Sabbat a strong band. They aren’t the most skilled, nor the fastest or heaviest, hell this is the first time I’d even call them good songwriters, but they just always had so much passion for this style of music. Almost every other band that started in the first-wave scene moved on with the times, but not Sabbat. They continued playing it until they felt comfortable creating what is essentially the only first-wave “epic” that pushes the boundaries of one of the most simple Metal styles into a progressive and multi-dimensional piece.

The Great Southern Trendkill. What the heck does that even mean? Pantera had a penchant for album names that almost made sense, and this was the wackiest. Similarly, the music within is some of their most extreme and eclectic. It’s got easily their heaviest song ever in Suicide Note Pt. 2, whereas Pt. 1 is a calm, slow rocker. Floods is one of their longest songs, almost Progressive in nature and containing one of the greatest guitar solos of all time. The album is surprisingly consistent given the varying styles present here.

That being said, there is still a fair amount of “generic 90’s Groove Metal” here that doesn’t really stand out. Not exactly filler, but songs we’ve all heard many times that don’t offer much to people who aren’t die hard Pantera or Groove Metal fans.

The album has a dark, manic quality to it that probably mirrors the alleged turmoil within the band member’s lives at the time. It sounds like a death throe, and nothing against the underrated Reinventing the Steel, but it would have been a perfect swansong to end their career.

Ever busy and always experimenting with different musical avenues, Dan Swano’s most avant-garde group Pan.Thy.Monium finally released their magnum opus and swansong in Khaooohs & Kon-Fus-Ion. At around half an hour, this is quite short for a Progressive Avant-Garde Metal epic, and even then, the run time is padded with quite a bit of fluff. The last two tracks aren’t metal at all, and while one offers some nice atmosphere, the other is just silence.

Thankfully, the main tracks on this album make up for the short amount of good material by offering – quite plainly – VERY GOOD Avant-Garde Metal. As someone who is simply not into most of the genre, I can say with total confidence the music on display here is simply so good it transcends genres. Hell, this album makes Avant-Garde Jazz sound listenable… it’s incredible. It’s got a good amount a melody – bordering on melodeath riffage at times – some great atmospheres, and of course classic Death Metal riffing. The vocals are useless gibberish unfortunately, and there’s no real meaning to any of the music here aside from “let’s experiment and create some batshit crazy extreme metal.”

If this were a more straightforward delivery of music found on the main tracks, and had real vocals/lyrics, it would be a monstrous masterpiece. But it’s not and it doesn’t. It loses a lot of points on the many glaring weaknesses.

This is an interesting transition from their USPM sound. The Politics of Ecstasy is by far the heaviest album the crew had released at that point, adopting a much chuggier and more rhythmic approach. It’s kind of hard to classify this; while the technicality on show is close to Progressive Metal, it also has a very Tech-Thrash-Lite feel to it. Despite being labeled as Thrash, it sounds quite different from what most people associate with the genre, almost playing like speedy Groove Metal instead, with rhythmic riffs and mid-tempo double bass playing in semi-complex polyrhythms.

Admittedly, I feel mixed about this new direction, as rhythmic riffing usually doesn’t sit well with me as opposed to more melodic Heavy Metal or sharp, twisting conventional Thrash, but the music is still very high quality. The album also has a few great surprises as well; Passenger is a Doom Metal song with a monstrous main riff and great vocals, and 42147 has more conventional Thrashing and near-Melodeath riffing that adds some much needed energy and aggression to the flow of the album.

Overall I can’t say I prefer this to their older Thrash influenced USPM sound, but it’s still great stuff, surprisingly heavy for the band and carrying a decent amount of variety in the approaches to songwriting.

To my dismay, Neurosis decided to continue the more Industrial, tribal direction they explored on Enemy of the Sun. Gone are the Doomy leads and emotive atmospheres from Souls at Zero and the songs here employ overly repetitive, sample and industrial based soundscapes that end up boring and numb more than anything. The base rock music is bare and simple, and industrial noises are overlayed to give it the illusion of density and complexity, but a slightly focused mind will notice these same noises repeating over and over and over, gnawing away at one’s patience as they fail to build anything epic or moving.

Each transition basically switches one repeating industrial noise/sample for another, alternating between way-too-boring plodding drums or tribal beats. The guitars do little aside from add fuzzy ambiance in many places, what riffs remain are usually boring and uninspired.

The album is also filled with boring song sections or interludes of just samples and noise, breaking up the boring music with even more boring sections of people talking.

For how long and “varied” the songs are, they never seem to go anymore. What’s more, while it is arguably a very negative and oppressive album, it doesn’t really build any mood or convey emotion very well. It’s just a lot of plodding around, fuzz, and tribal madness that mashes together and comes out a dull gray on the other end.

An amalgamation of Black, Folk, Viking, and even some Symphonic Metal, Falkenbach’s debut is a unique piece of art that spans many fields. The eclectic collection of music is well written, produced and preformed, making it a very solid if varied package.

The opening track is a blistering assault of pure Black Metal, and it might give you the wrong impression opening with such fast aggression. In stark contrast, the second track is folky, slow, mostly clean-sung and full of medieval, traditional instrumentation. You never quite know what you’re gonna get after that, with every track falling somewhere in between here. It keeps the entire listen interesting and ever changing, full of possibility. Each style is quite well done too.

Personally, I prefer the more Black-Metal styled songs here. The “epic” Viking/Folk tracks too often fall into goofy territory. I’ve no problem with cheese, in fact I usually adore it, but some of the flutes and vocals here and there sound like silly cartoon castle music, and since I don’t believe they were going for that, it’s a bit of a miss. Still innovative and impressive by all means.

I respect this, and I am glad even Metalheads can appreciate it, but I unfortunately don’t really enjoy it. Also… this is not a Metal album. There is some electric guitar, yes, but the Neoclassical label is a misnomer and likely only attached due to Becker’s past.

What we have instead is a New Age Modern Classical album, full of synthed instruments that still sound a bit cheap, but are composed nicely. I do actually like myself some nice New Age, but only when it is emotionally provocative. This is more like… putting notes together for the sake of it. It doesn’t achieve any nice moods or atmospheres. Which was exactly like his guitar playing, and I wasn’t a fan for the same reason. I like the song Blue, but that’s it.

It's at least consistent in quality, there aren’t any bad tracks per say, it’s just a style that doesn't much appeal to me. Props to its development though.

Converge’s debut album was a rough, underwhelming and poorly mixed mess that had some good ideas on display, but just wasn’t executed well. The sophomore Petitioning the Empty Sky is much more favorably received and fixes some of the issues from before, namely the terrible production.

The album is much more concise and consistent, and delivers a great show of energy found both in the rhythm section and the dissonant riffs. It’s got an odd mix of short Punk-length songs and Prog-length compositions, and displays a good amount of variation and growth throughout. The vocals unfortunately remain terrible and I can’t make out a word here.

It’s fine, but it doesn’t grip me as much as others I’m afraid. No memorable riffs on top of a gruelingly bad vocal performance makes the relisten factor very low.

Stoner Metal remains one of the least compelling Metal subgenres to me. The slower stuff lacks the emotion and atmosphere of Doom, for example, while the more energetic takes can’t match the riffs of tried-and-true Heavy Metal. And far too often, it just sounds like Hard Rock/Grunge with just a bit of extra heaviness. The vocals are uncompelling, though not nearly as much as the lyrics, and the instrumentation ranges from boring to serviceable.

Corrosion of Conformity fall into the statement I’d have to make “good, for a Stoner band.” They’ve got good energy and decent riffs… for a Stoner band. Wiseblood is pretty by the numbers for them. A large number of tracks that could easily be found on a Grunge album or heard on Classic Rock radio and no one would think anything of it. Every track good enough, but never standing out or packing anything memorable.

I guess the demographic is… people driving trucks, lifting weights, or getting turnt on the substance of the day. Not me.

This may be a bit brash, but I expected a lauded album made by a once nazi, church burning murderer to be a bit more exciting.

I wasn’t a big fan of Burzum’s other albums, but some tracks sat very well with me, and I could see the evolution of the heavily Ambient/Dungeon Synth-leaning Atmoblack developing. The problem was, the styles weren’t being mixed very well, we’d more so get one and then the other. I was expecting Filosofem – considered Burzum’s masterpiece and one of the greatest Atmospheric Black Metal albums of all time – to finally nail that style he’d been developing.

Aaaand no, he drops the ball for me. The tracks are incredibly boring and repetitive, no riffs to speak of, the guitar fuzz being so abrasive and poorly mixed that actual notes are mostly indiscernible. The ambient part has barely been incorporated into the music, with minimal, repetitive synthed notes playing a very minor background role. Once again, the only track that fully incorporates Ambient is devoid of any Metal at all, making this another failure to truly integrate both styles full and well into a single song.

The vocals, are atrocious, in fact the mixing on every front is so bad that nothing really sounds good, and this coming from someone who can enjoy artists like Bathory with no issue. This is considered depressive, melancholic, music… doesn’t really sound that way to me, it’s mostly just droning on and on without evoking much at all.

However, that’s not to say it’s truly a bad album, it’s just immensely disappointing. The compositions are decent, and the Ambient melodies that can be heard are quite nice. The repetitiveness is not so much an issue and does work well with the atmospheric soundscapes created. It’s decent background music if the horrible production isn’t enough to ruin the experience. But that’s where my compliments end.

Godflesh remains one of those bands I just don’t “get.” Each song is more or less one rhythmic pattern repeated nonstop and a handful of boring, repetitive riffs. Back on their debut, at least this style was novel, though I liked it no more then than I do now. By Songs of Love and Hate, there were already a few other Industrial Metal bands offering a lot more than Godflesh, and I still fail to see the acclaim given here. Honestly, I actually dug this more on the first listen, not paying too much attention to it and enjoying the rhythmic aggression. Unfortunately, more focused listened revealed just how boring it is, with almost no memorable moments whatsoever.

That aside, there is one accolade I will give this album. The track Frail is legitimately good musically, it sounds quite different from the rest, with a bit more energy, melody and emotion.

I would love to see them explore more sounds like on their Cold World EP, or like the track Frail here, but alas…

You can get an idea for what this album is about based on the name and album cover. Well, probably, I don’t actually know – the lyrics are impossible to find and entirely indiscernible, but the track titles all check out. The electronic drums give this thing a unique flavor (for its time) and the guitars are actually pretty slow and groovy despite the blast beating drums.

This release is definitely influenced by the Japanese Ero Guro Nansensu movement (erotic grotesque nonsense), which is a really interesting artistic phenomenon that was about exactly as it says. It started back in the first half of the 20th century and for some reason has endured in Japanese art and pop culture up to the modern day (that’s why you see so much gratuitous violence in even mainstream anime). You can bet when Japan caught wind of goregrind and pornogrind, this immediately fit the bill, and was taken to more bizarre extremes with innovative bands like this one pushing the genre further.

Other than all that though, it’s not that great of an album. The vocals are horrible, and the guitars are quite mundane. It’s more fun for the novelty of it. It’s not Cybergrind in itself either, but likely had an influence on the development of the genre, especially seeing as this was easily the biggest Grindcore album to come from Asia at the time.

Boris is actually one of the most notable Metal bands to come out of Japan, and one of the biggest names in Drone Metal overall. Their debut is, maybe unsurprisingly for a still rather new and unexplored genre, underwhelming. The single hour-long track is just guitar fuzz and feedback for the majority of it. Nothing resembling riffs or even rhythms – really, it’s just feedback noise (in my opinion, this doesn’t qualify as Metal, but, that’s neither here nor there). There is a midsection where drumming and vocals come in, and that’s really the only Metal part of it, hell it’s the only part that resembles music at all, but it still ain’t good. And it’s over soon enough, back to just noise.

Drone Metal – at least THIS type of Drone Metal, with no mood or rhythm or anything resembling a melody – is like a niche fetish. One that disgusts me, that I cannot and will not ever be into. But for anyone who enjoys it – I’m happy for you, get your rocks off to some wack fuzz.

Much like it took some time for Death Metal to shed its Thrash roots, and Doom Metal to evolve out of Trad Doom, so too did Death Doom undergo a lengthy transitional phase. In the late 80’s into the early 90’s, Death Doom was, more or less, slow Death Metal, and many of the early releases no longer represent what the genre would become. In time, Death Doom added its signature focus on atmosphere and melancholia, and became something completely separate from Death Metal, named more so for the inclusion of harsh vocals and other extreme metal tropes.

The Silent Enigma is one of the earliest examples of Death Doom in its fully fleshed out form, completely forgoing any hint of Death Metal stylistically and taking a full focus on crafting melodic yet crushing pieces of dark atmosphere and morose despair. A surprising amount of energy is found here, with the opening track aggressively assaulting you with poetic shrapnel of hopelessness. A great deal of variety is found in the following tracks, with classic plodding Doom full of panic-attack inducing atmospheres, gentle gothic style interludes, and a few that sit somewhere in between. The penultimate track, A Dying Wish, remains a crowning achievement of Death Doom, the 8-minute track delivering an uncompromising death throe of mourning and regret.

Symbolic is considered to be not only the magnum opus of Death, but perhaps the greatest Death Metal record of all time, and by extension among the best releases in extreme music. Death not only managed to up their game and change styles ever so slightly between albums, but also consistently release nothing but the highest quality material.

Symbolic is an album I have been anticipating for some time now, knowing its reputation well, and it managed to meet every expectation. The songs here are probably the most identifiable in Death’s catalogue, each having insanely memorable guitar leads and mind blowing solos that do not sacrifice a strong melody for technical prowess. Musically, it is near-perfect as far as Tech-Death goes, placing the emphasis on brilliant songwriting and fantastic riffage first and foremost, and weaving their intricate technical abilities within the songs rather than using the songs as a means to show off. Production is great, rhythm section is great, vocals are intelligible… it’s the total package.

One weakness to me; the lyrics go a bit too far. By that, I mean at this point in his career, it seems Chuck was obsessed with the spiritual and abstract, and honestly half the songs don’t even sound like they are about anything, just philosophical ramblings without explicit meaning. Not for me, in any case…

Barring that, it’s about as great as Tech Death gets, which is kind of a sad thought in itself. To think that the genre would never pass a release from its early inception is a pity, but you would be incredibly hard pressed to find anything better than this in its entirety. Deservedly reigns as possibly the best Extreme Metal record of all time.

On their 5th album, Blind Guardian released what I consider to be their best work up to that point. I’m one of the few who preferred their aggressive Thrash/Speed days on their first two albums to the more polished and melodic albums that followed (though this is mostly because they always had useless interludes bloating them). Well, Imaginations still has one of those in the way of acoustic ballad “A Past and Future Secret,” but the rest of the material is just about as perfect as Power Metal gets.

Blind Guardian stated themselves that the new producer for this album took them to new levels, and it shows here. The choruses are insane, the vocal performance in general just sends shivers down your spine in a perfect mix of gruff yell-singing and epic, multilayered cleans. The guitar melodies sound a bit darker than before, which is always welcome, but of course they remain just as catchy. The rhythm section is just superb, so much speed and aggression on display here, definitely matching their Thrash days in that department.

The album isn’t a true concept album, but themes of lost innocence run rampant throughout the album. Letting go of better imaginary worlds, living under a suppressive political system, and learning to cope with inner demons and even childhood trauma are all alluded to in ways that still sound fantastical. I absolutely have to mention the track “Bright Eyes” as the best thing they have done yet, and by god it will be hard for them to surpass it. The chorus in the song is one of the most immense I’ve ever heard, and the riffs are passionate and dark. It’s quite a moody song for the band, and supposedly about a child struggling with abuse from his parents. It’s as powerful thematically as it is musically, an instant standout from the moment I heard it and only growing stronger the more I listened to it.

On their third album, My Dying Bride pretty much perfected the Gothic Doom style, leaving all of their Death Doom roots behind for a melodic and mournful masterpiece. Seeing as how the growls are gone, vocalist Aaron had to really find his cleans here, and they are pleasantly somber and melodramatic throughout.

The opening track is an easy highlight, with a roaring wall of guitar lead by marching piano scales that add a great urgency to the song, while Aaron’s vocals on the other hand sound entirely devoid of life. The album remains quality throughout, with more standard Gothic Doom songs making up the meat of the album. It ends on another fantastic note, “Your Shameful Heaven,” easily the most energetic and aggressive song here. The band goes from depressive to disturbing as both riffs and lyricism take on a more evil atmosphere, finishing the album off in triumphant darkness.

This thing became the standard against which Gothic Doom was measured, and for good reason. Every track here is of great quality, but there’s still decent variation running throughout. A fantastic run through negative emotion in a mature and poetic package.

Virgin Steele’s last album (Pt. 1) was a huge triumph and where they finally found their signature sound. It was also miles ahead of anything they’d done prior. Pt. 2 is amazingly on par with Pt. 1 and jam packed with some of the best USPM that has ever graced the globe. Virgin Steele have a generous amount of true/euro Power Metal and Symphonic Metal in their sound, and the album is laden with synthed strings, horns, and general fanfare.

Really, this thing just doesn’t miss. 13 tracks and almost all of them rip, even the interlude/outro tracks are still good. The drumming here is definitely better than anything prior, showcased well on Crown of Glory, and everything else is the same peak quality as the prior album. Each track does a great job distinguishing itself, be it by a razor sharp riff, some epic key melodies, or memorable vocals (or all of the above on a few!). The album is just amazing fun.

I’ve got no complaints on this one. I don’t know how USPM could get any better than this in terms of a full hour long album. Also, Strawgirl is beautiful, the haters can get clapped.

The legendary Storm of the Light’s Bane is considered perhaps the greatest Meloblack album ever put to record, and for good reason. Every track is chock full of dark and icy riffs, thanks in part to its heavy Melodeath influence. You see that beautiful cover art with the reaper on horseback amongst a nocturnal tundra mountain scape? Yeah, this album just sounds like that. The beauty of cold, night, and death are all emanating from the electrifying songwriting here.

Black Metal tends to be a bit one note, and Meloblack is a much more purposeful aversion of that, but even among Meloblack, Dissection give us progressive, complicated, ever changing songwriting with weaves and turns up and down the mountains and through the evergreens. Even some acoustic passages give reprieve from that arctic assault. The vocals are fantastic, quite intelligible and death-touched shrieks. Drumming is lightning quick, but flows like a stream, full of smooth transitions and interesting fills, liberal use of double bass, a perfect mix of interesting and challenging. I need not go on about the guitars; awe-inspiring.

Dissection seem to love sandwiching their masterpiece compositions between useless intros and outros, so unfortunately bookending the album with the weakest and most boring tracks damages its listenability. Other than that, no flaws.

Might be controversial, but I’m of the opinion that Ved Buens Ende…’s best material was on their EP, Those Who Caress the Pale, and the tracks from there that made it here are the best. I’m usually not a huge fan of overly Avant-Garde stuff, but that EP was pretty much a perfect mix of Blackened Prog Metal with insanely quirky and disturbing Avant-Garde touches.

As to be expected, this album goes further into the Avant-Garde, focusing more on incredibly ominous and bizarre atmospheres, and the Black Metal plays second fiddle to the Avant-Garde Prog Metal. Songs change around in style, and interestingly there’s a lot of vocal variation here as well. The atmosphere is pretty great, a culmination of all things bad and ugly, captured very well in that unnerving album art. Don’t let my opening statement fool you; this is still an awesome record, and one of the best Avant-Garde releases of its time. However, it’s not as consistent as the EP, and the softer moments (like track 7) just don’t work as well as the heavy, ominous oppression. The hidden track is a weak way to end the album as well, though no weaker than the overlong outro on penultimate Remembrance of Things Past would have been.

The album did manage to give me actual chills and make me think I was hearing things on track 3 (when that human dog howl noise echoes in the background…) so they get credit for making some legitimately creepy, ominous music that still IS music. This is another one of those one album wonders where a band came in, did something rather incredible, and peaced out. Even if the album isn’t an absolute favorite for me, it’s still an impressive and magnificent piece of work.

“The Silent Whales of Lunar Sea” marks the 4th album in a row Skyclad have taken the spot for best Folk Metal album. Despite creating the genre on their sophomore album years prior, not many other bands really contributed much to the scene! And so Skyclad are still reigning at the top with their tried-and-true Thrash-influenced Folky Heavy Metal.

This album has a little progress and change from their last effort, mostly in the fact that each song has a bit of a distinctive style, with different instruments contributing to them, albeit minimally. Opening track “Still Spinning Shrapnel” has one of their catchiest choruses yet, and the violin is quite prominent here. I was hoping most of the album would follow that style, but unfortunately this album kicks off with what is easily the best song. Still, there are fascinating lyrics all over this thing, almost every track has some unique identifiers, and it’s a bit more varied than their previous releases.

The stronger variation here leaves room for lower lows than their more consistent material. Slightly Ambient “A Stranger in the Garden” is a really unique song, but doesn’t do much for me and ends up being kind of boring, and closer “The Dance of the Dandy Hound” is a goofy bluegrass number that ends the album as weakly as possible. “Desperanto” is a great nod to their thrashier roots, but overall the lows of this album make it possibly their weakest so far in my opinion.

A blast of an album, a very early example of the Sympho Neoclassical style of Metal. This is the band’s third album, and it’s got a very professional sheen to it. Despite Royal Hunt never gaining much popularity, they were at the forefront of catchy, poppy, bombastic Metal, a scene that eventually became the main style in Japan.

This album has a ton of stylistic influences that keep it varied and interesting. There’s enough Power Metal speed to pack a proper punch to the more energetic tracks, and plenty of AOR cheese adding poppy melodies and hooks all over the place. Of course the Neoclassical lead work is evident in both the guitars and keys, and tons of great melodies are scattered throughout. It sounds a bit too much like Malmsteen’s lesser works at times, but I think this band is overall much more consistent than Malmsteen.

As someone who generally loves cheesy Metal ballads, “Far Away” is not the best one, and the band made a mistake including this song twice on the album (an acoustic version as the last track). Otherwise the album is quite consistent and great fun front to back.

So this is where Dave Lombardo went after leaving Slayer, huh? It certainly shows, as the drumming here is bar none the best I’ve heard on anything that could be called Groove Metal. Dave is still thrashing like a maniac here and thankfully it ensures the album is always in the energetic, aggressive realm of Grove even when it does slow down, and never stuck in dull, one-note repetitive rhythms.

The amount of Thrash riffage on this album is another pleasant surprise, with Polish guitarist Waldemar Sorychta churning out melodic yet ripping Thrash riffs one after another. The soloing also leaves nothing to be desired, again being somewhat melodic for Thrash/Groove but still with a twisted chaotic edge. Bass is surprisingly good as well, doing a fair amount of riffing itself instead of pure rhythm. Vocals are strong, aggressive, and full of social disgust lyrically.

The album unfortunately opens with an unbearable intro featuring what sound like monkey noises repeated over tribal drums. I will never understand why bands feel the need to put offensively bad intros/interludes/outros on their albums but you can bet this one loses points for that. Otherwise, fantastic, one of the best Groove album I’ve heard as of yet thanks to its generous amount of Thrash.

This one was a little goofy to me. The riffs and vocals attempted to emulate the “epic” feel as captured by Bathory’s Viking Metal material, but unfortunately, they didn’t pull it off. Doesn’t sound dark, instead a bit silly. The music is alright in most places, but nothing really gripping or memorable.

To make matters worse, it has overlong vocal interlude tracks that again, are trying to be epic or whatever, and they just don’t work. It’s not that the vocalist is bad, just that execution is hammy and cartoonlike and I really don’t think that’s what they were going for.

The tracks that go for straight Black Metal like Thornspawn Chalice are better, but nothing mind-blowing. Overall I find it overrated and forgettable.

Less doomy and more energetic than the last album, Time Heals Nothing is full of aggressive negativity. It falls closer into true, pure Sludge, but there’s a stronger leaning towards Hardcore Punk and Metalcore than before. For me personally, I prefer the doomier, more melancholic approach of the previous album, but this is still a very solid slab of Sludge. The vocals in particular sound great, but they always have been from this band.

Other than that, there’s not much to say. Every song here is high quality and consistent, and Crowbar have never deviated much in their sound or structure since their debut. It you like classic Sludge, this is a great spin.

Rhythmically, very energetic and engaging. The album culminates extreme metal drumming and frequent double bass with almost danceable rhythms in between. The patterns are djent style focusing on polyrhythmic patterns and pure aggression. Almost every song has a clean-sung chorus that gives it some identity beyond the constant pummeling. The choruses aren’t catchy, but more atmospheric, using the clean vocals as a sustained melody rather than a hook.

Worst part of this album is the monotonous guitar. Again, very djent in nature, hitting a lot of rhythmic 0’s and featuring no memorable riffs. However, the energy and fantastic drumming help to cover this weakness.

The album is dark and mechanic, but in a fun way, and is quite consistent all the way through, unfortunately ending on the most boring track; the near 10 minute “A Therapy for Pain.”

Deadguy’s one and only album “Fixation on a Coworker” has been given semi-legend status among Metalcore and considered one of the earliest Mathcore records around. The record’s got some mean vocals and guitar work to match, emanating a misanthropic attitude and some baseline human negativity, packaged up with some filthy noise.

Unfortunately, the coolest thing about this album to me is the title, which is both hilarious and batshit insane. The music is good, but even after repeated listens, I can’t recall a god dammed song on it. I also didn’t hear anything particularly “mathy” about this, most of it was mid-tempo and not unlike other Metalcore of the time technically and rhythmically. In one ear out the other, though it was a pleasant ride.