Sonny's Forum Replies

Xephyr, did you really do a college thesis on Blackwater Park? That's awesome! Academia sure must have changed from when I was at school. Makes me very self-conscious about my reviewing "style" now.

The clan challenges are indeed a hefty undertaking. I have been chipping away at The North: Black Metal The Modern Age for some time now and only have about three or four left to review. Of the three challenges I've undertaken so far this has been my favourite because I've discovered some really excellent albums I'd never heard previously and, perversely, I've even enjoyed the process of reviewing the ones I didn't especially love. I think the fact I've taken my time with it rather than charging at it like a bull at a gate has made it more enjoyable. In fact, I may even take on an extra  challenge or two just for the hell of it. Maybe I'll be ultra-perverse and do a Gothic Metal or Metalcore challenge (or maybe not).

Another prolific releaser of material is Belgian black metaller and doomster Déhà who has released 19 albums and 6 eps since 2018 under his own name as well as other stuff in projects like Slow, Imber Luminis, Clouds, Yhdarl and Aurora Borealis, to name but five! I haven't listened to them all, but he has released some good stuff, particularly as funeral doom project Slow, black/doom project Imber Luminis and his four album A fleur de peau series under his own name. Highest number of ratings on RYM - 58. Respect to these guys who do it for love not money.

I've not looked into it in any depth, but would guess this is a relatively recent phenomenon. With the availability of home recording software and internet distribution, such as Bandcamp, it is possible for anyone with the knowledge and skill to issue albums virtually at will. I have seen more than enough evidence of this in the black metal community where some acts treat Bandcamp like some kind of Twitter feed, spewing out their every musical thought no matter the quality.

A band I actually quite enjoy who have released 23 albums in fifteen years, with the highest number of ratings on RYM being 16, is a fellow countryman of yours Ben, who goes by the unfortunate name of The Horn. His weird black metal is all based around the Egyptian Book of the Dead and his is certainly an original voice. What keeps him going is sheer enthusiasm, I'm guessing because he can't make much money from it, although I have bought a CD or two!

Blackened Doom Metal seems to have entered a bit of a purple patch just lately.

Old Forest's latest album, Mournfall, is another great example of the style.

Heavy and imperious metal with an inherent sorrowfullness:

GM were definitely doom metal on their first couple of releases, but moved away from doom to a trad metal sound certainly by the time of 2008's Iron Will album.

The Flight of Sleipnir's latest, Eventide, is a great example of blackened doom metal and this is the best track on it:

As far as the Epic Doom Metal tag goes, I liken it's relationship to Traditional Doom Metal similar to Power Metal's relationship to Traditional Heavy Metal. Maybe a better genre tag would be Power Doom?

"Epicus Doomicus Metallicus" was actually my introduction to doom metal back in the late 1980's. I couldn't get into it initially (which was likely because due to the vocal style & my obsessive taste for extreme metal) however it majorly grew on me over time & I ended up really digging it. I think it was a genuine landmark for the genre because it nailed that doom metal atmosphere better than anyone had done previously. Come to think of it, I'm wearing my old "Epicus Doomicus Metallicus" t-shirt right now actually. Their sophomore album "Nightfall" is my favourite Candlemass record these days but it's not that far in front of this one.

Likewise Daniel, initially I enjoyed the music but struggled with the vocal style, in the same way I did with Cirith Ungol. Also Epicus came out at a time when I was probably most heavily into thrash and the slow and gloomy stuff was on the back  burner for me. Ultimately however, true class will always prevail, hence Candlemass being rightly revered as one of, if not the, prime movers in the development of doom metal (which wasn't even a thing back then).

I found my way into doom via Sabbath's doomier tracks like Into the Void and Black Sabbath, Witchfinder General's Death Penalty and later Saint Vitus and Cathedral. I remember well that Candlemass were very much derided by the music press originally (as were Venom) which just goes to show how much the music writers know! Epicus is still my favourite Candlemass release, but recently I have been playing the self-titled 2005 album a lot as it really does kick all kinds of ass. I notice very few Academicians have rated it, so I strongly suggest checking it out if you haven't already. If you're not hooked after opener Black Dwarf then I guess we can never be friends and I wish you well for the future!

I have to admit that I'm getting a little frustrated at the insinuation that Metal Academy should blindly follow the direction of a competitor that is in no way the authority on metal. We're trying to set a new standard for a metal website here & I have zero concern for what RYM, Metal Archives or anyone else are doing with their subgenres. In fact, long-term I'd like to think that Metal Academy will become the sole point of call for all metalheads seeking new music. I can also tell you that it is our intent to make some changes to the subgenres over time (in fact we're currently looking at a change now & you should see that play out over the next week or so) but those changes will be made purely on the informed opinions of ourselves & our senior clan members. Not what other sites are doing.

I would never seek to try to tell others what their standards should be and I only started this thread to try to stimulate a little debate as genre definitions always seems to be a good subject for member interaction, rightly or wrongly. Mainly it was to draw attention to the anniversary of Candlemass' debut, but RYM's introduction of the Epic Doom genre had stuck in my mind and seemed like a reasonable connection to such a landmark release in the (valid or not) genre. Sorry if my post has trod on any toes and I am not trying to infer that there is any problem with how Metal Academy does things. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the way Daniel & Ben run the site and the time and effort they put into it. Again, apologies if that's how it came across because that was never my intention.

Hi Ben, could you please add Alastor's latest album Onwards and Downwards.

What the hell has stoner metal got to do with southern rock or metal? Why would you move stoner out of the Fallen when one of it's principle offshoots is stoner doom? I assume people have heard of Electric Wizard, Cathedral, Saint Vitus and Sleep. Are we seriously suggesting we move these bands from out of the Fallen? I'm afraid you've lost me here. There seems to be a misapprehension developing amongst some that only gothic-tinged doom is real doom metal, severely narrowing the scope of what The Fallen stands for and to which I must retort, as doom metal is far more than whining goths pretending they're living in an Anne Rice novel or a Twilight movie.

A better solution would be to put anything stoner- or psych-related together in a clan, call it The Bong or The Crack House and sign me up!!

Most of you seem to echo my own thoughts that what is being proposed as epic doom metal does not constitute a significant enough departure from standard doom to justify a whole new genre tag. I think epic as more of of a descriptor than a genre, something RYM already had, thus rendering the genre tag even more redundant. I'm certainly not in favour of including it here, I merely brought it up to engender a discussion and to mark an anniversary milestone of one of my favourite albums!

Daniel, if you are enamoured with IE's Alive in Athens I would strongly recommend the double disc set, Days of Purgatory (my particular favourite Iced Earth release). It features re-recorded versions of previous IE tracks with vocalist Matt Barlow who sings on Alive in Athens and it's songs  makes up most of the playlist of AiE.

I'm not as clued up on death metal as some of you guys, but here's my list for what it's worth:

#1 Possessed - Seven Churches
#2 Terrorizer - World Downfall
#3 Autopsy - Severed Survival
#4 Morbid Angel - Altars of Madness
#5 Sempiternal Deathreign - The Spooky Gloom
#6 Poison - Into the Abyss
#7 Bolt Thrower - In Battle There Is No Law!
#8 Pestilence - Consuming Impulse
#9 Death - Leprosy
#10 Vulcano - Bloody Vengeance

Early death metal is much more up my street than the later, more defined and brutal sound. I know the Poison album was originally a demo, but it sounds fine all the same and I love it.

I've never heard the Incubus album from Ben's list or the Macabre album from Vinny's so I must check them out.

Glad to hear Sojourner are back on form. Like you, Xephyr, I was decidedly underwhelmed by Premonitions, despite being a fan of their first two albums. I'll try to give it a spin later.

The best track from Cirith Ungol's new Half Past Human EP is the epic title track that closes the release:

Cirith Ungol have released a four-track EP of re-recorded old tracks that have never really seen a proper release.
This isn't a shoddy cash-in however, but is a really solid release, although it won't change your view of the band either way.

Epic heavy metal from time-served veteran metal craftsmen:

Just got my CD copy a couple of days ago. Love this album, Vinny and thanks for putting me onto it. But have you seen the large number of snarky comments on it's RYM page? I fucking swear, I don't know what some people expect from an album sometimes. Can't they just accept it as a good/great black metal album that doesn't threaten to change the face of black metal but is just a damn entertaining listen? Or does one person state a dislike for it and then others feel compelled to jump on the bandwagon? That's one of my main beefs with RYM I guess, the pile-on bully mode that sometimes takes the place of considered thought. Luckily that's not an issue here at the Academy and another reason I prefer to engage in civilised discussions here - I virtually never post on RYM forums, but as you can tell it's hard to shut me up on the MA ones!

Suggestions for July's playlist:

Panopticon - The Embers at Dawn (12:40) from ...And Again Into the Light (2021)
Kanonenfieber - Grabenlieder (5:25) from Menschenmühle (2021)
Emperor - Ye Entrancemperium (5:14) from Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk (1997)
Total runtime: 23:19

Another great playlist this month,  although for me, it got off to a slow start. My own selection of the Evile track was just one I put out there because I had been listening to the new album and that was the best of a so-so bunch. Lamb of God was the worst track, the vocals are like fingernails down a blackboard to my ears and I've never had any time for the band at all. Great to hear Anthrax's blatant Saxon worship on Metal Thrashing Mad but Exciter have never got me that er... excited! Finally when we get to Nuclear Assault we get into top gear and it's pretty much all gravy from hereon in - Slayer with one of the best metal intros ever, The Exploited sticking it to Thatcher once more and general all-round thrash metal kick-assery. The only real disappointed after track 4 was the Cryptosis track. I'd heard everyone raving about what a great album Bionic Swarm is, but Game of Souls didn't really do it for me. Still, a few new discoveries I'm looking forward to delving into, such as Speedwolf's Motorhead-loving speed metal, Inculter, Evoke and Paranorm. Well done us!!

Suggestions for July:

Olde - The Dead Hand (5:10) from Pilgrimage (2021)
Leechfeast - Cold Flow (15:01) from Village Creep EP (2019)
Rifflord - Transcendental Medication (3:46) from 7 Cremation Ground / Meditation (2018)
Total runtime: 23:57

I have to shamefacedly confess to never having listened to Mütiilation. Now I guess I'll have to just to discover if they are overrated or not!!

One release Austin doesn't touch on in this piece is last year's split album with Nechochwen, his contribution to which was the almost twenty minute track Rune's Heart which is about his son's (Rune) major heart surgery and his feelings around it. A fantastic and lesser known track that I would definitely urge you to check out.

Daniel, are we still on 30 minutes each for July?

Just out of interest, when you buy an album is it digital, CD or vinyl?

Hey Sonny we share a lot in common with our growth into music!  These days I tend to buy digital versions and I always want FLAC.  Occasionally, I will want the physical album (as in days of yore) and usually I buy CD.  I no longer have the means to play vinyl and sold off my vinyl collection a few years ago :( 

I too sold off a lot of vinyl in the early 2000s which I have come to regret, but at the time it seemed like vinyl had run it's course. I bought a new turntable though two or three years ago and have since become an avid collector again. I tend to focus on limited editions for vinyl purchases and still buy quite a few CDs - physical music is one habit I've never been able to break! I do buy digital sometimes, but usually for stuff I'm not too fussed about or where postage costs make a physical purchase prohibitively expensive - the number of times postage charges are more than the cost of the record is getting ridiculous, from the US to the UK is particularly insane!

Hi Makntak and welcome to the Metal Academy. You're of a similar vintage to myself - I remember being 58 like it was only last year (it was). I grew up a Beatles fan as a young kid then graduated to the glam rock scene - Queen, Bowie, T-Rex, Slade and Alice Cooper were particular faves of mine. Around '75 I started to get into Pink Floyd and some time in '76 I came upon Paranoid and that was it - I was hooked on metal. Just out of interest, when you buy an album is it digital, CD or vinyl?

I completely agree that the metal scene has never been more diverse or interesting. There's fantastic stuff coming out seemingly every week . Metal sure has come a long way since those early days of the 1970's.

Looking forward to an exchange of views.

Thanks Daniel, glad you liked them. AoS are one of doom's great underrated bands in my opinion and Sepulcros are a fine new talent in the world of deathly funeral doom.

I am familiar with it Vinny, but I haven't heard it for a while (at least a couple of years). Just spun it up again to refresh my memory and yes, this is as caustic a bit of blackened sludge as I remember it being. That old blackened doom vibe really takes a lot of beating in the nihilistic hopelessness stakes doesn't it?

Sorry Ben, could you also add UK/German doom band Thronehammer and Argentinian psychedelic doomsters Nostone please.

...and Canadian doomsters Olde. Thanks.

Hi Ben, could you please add Italian doom duo 1782.

I think three months is sufficient time between repeat listings. It all depends how dogmatic you want to be about it really, if it becomes too much so then I think people will just stop bothering. You would need to first check If  your chosen track was available on Spotify and then If it had been used before on an earlier playlist. Frankly I haven't the time to sit in front of a computer screen all day so would probably not bother some months. What about tracks that span multiple clans? Does inclusion in one playlist preclude it being in another? If the purpose of the playlists is to reflect what members have actually been listening to then repeats are always going to be a possibility.

OK, so I've got to be honest there was a number of tracks on this month's playlist that didn't really do it for me - Acid, Pantera, Five Finger Death Punch, Nervosa, Angelus Apatrida and DRAIN all failed to raise my pulse much. There were a few tracks I was unfamiliar with that piqued my interest however - Witchery, CoC, Warpath and Hypnosia, but most of all, Cryptosis from this year's Bionic Swarm which is an album I really need to check out.

Just a quick note on one of my own selections, SSS and 3:06 - as an ex-Liverpool FC season ticket holder this song has a lot of poignancy for me as it is about the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster where 96 LFC fans lost their lives at an FA Cup semi-final at Sheffield Wednesday's Hillsborough, in a crush against the fencing that was erected around English football grounds back in those days. 3:06 is the time specified as the cut-off point for the enquiry into the disaster to investigate, even though many of the deceased died after that time. The government and police covered up their mishandling of this event for 30 years, blaming the fans for the deaths, even though it was the stewards and police directing people into the already packed pens and then opening the turnstiles to let even more in. Only recently have the families of the deceased received any justice with verdicts that their loved ones were unlawfully killed only being passed down quite recently.

To the 96 - You'll Never Walk Alone.

I have posted my review. Grand Magus are absolutely one of my favourite bands, I have physical copies of all nine of their albums and I will probably buy their next before I've even heard it I'm that confident it'll be great. Their run of albums from 2008-12 - Iron Will, Hammer of the North and The Hunt - stack up against any three album run for my money. I'm stoked that everyone else seems to have enjoyed Hammer of the North and a metal website is finally acknowleding their brilliance - well done Metal Academy, once more proving to be ahead of the curve! If any of you haven't, I honestly think you would also enjoy the aforementioned Iron Will and The Hunt and should probably give them a spin too. Thanks for nominating this Vinny.

A savage and aggressive new album of Norwegian thrash courtesy of three-piece Nekromantheon:

Daniel, Vinny you may both find this of some interest.

Hi Ben, please add Norway's Nekromantheon.

"I'm comfortable in the knowledge that one day my body will tell me that I need to give this metal things away once & for all but I'm gonna keep indulging myself until that time comes."

Hey Daniel, I'm almost 60 now and metal is still a huge part of my life, so there's probably no need to give it up at any stage. It's like anything else in today's self-obsessed world, people think if they wrap themselves up in cotton wool then they'll live forever (**Spoiler Alert** they won't). Drink, drugs, motorcycles and metal were once the whole world to me (metal being the only one I still indulge in), all of which exact a price - and I wouldn't change any of it. Live fast.. etc!!

My June suggestion (if non-clan members are still allowed one):

Drain STH - Crack the Liar's Smile from Horror Wrestling (1996).

This one isn't available on Spotify Sonny.

That's weird - it was when I suggested it. I check any suggestions are available before posting them.

OK, how about Mushroomhead and Sun Doesn't Rise from XIII (2003).

Ah, I get it now! To be honest I sometimes miss details like that if I'm not realy concentrating due to my annoying tinnitus - not just metal music caused, I used to work in a metal rolling mill back in the eighties when health and safety wasn't quite as robust as it is nowadays and so I'm stuck with a continuous hissing in the ears that can block out more subtle sounds. Perhaps one reason I like extreme metal music as it drowns all that shit out!

I've posted a review, but to summarise:

This is not a case of Slayer's Dave Lombardo's Band of Musical Extras by any means, this is a cohesive and extremely tight metal band playing great tunes and impressing the shit out of this old bastard who had never even heard of them prior to this feature. I really enjoyed this and have had it on hard rotation for the last week. If this is groove metal then this is much more up my street than any Pantera clone which comprise the bulk of groove metal I've heard to date. Nice choice Ben - an underrated album of superior quality.

Hey Daniel, I would like to replace Sacred Reich's Death Squad with a track from this month's feature - Grip Inc's track Scream at the Sky from Nemesis (4:46) which I calculate takes my runtime to exactly 30:00 minutes!

I've noticed a number of reviews refer to the use of cowbell on this album and my hearing is not the best, but aren't the bells heard here predominantly tubular bells? I may be wrong, but that's what they sound like to me.

Computer software eh. What a fickle damn thing it can be sometimes!

That's all I usually do Vinny. I guess Ben will need to look into it.

Will do - I'll get back to you on that. Sorry, I should have paid more attention!

My picks for June's Pit playlist:

Hydra Vein - Rabid (4:39) from Rather Death Than False of Faith (1988)
Indestroy - U.S.S.A. (3:41) from Indestroy (1988)
Sacred Reich - Death Squad (4:21) from Ignorance (1987)
Num Skull - Turn of a Screw (4:13) from Ritually Abused (1988)
Evile - The Thing (1982) (4:54) from Hell Unleashed (2021)
Lich King - Combat Mosh (4:39) from Born of the Bomb (2012)
Skeletonwitch - Vengeance Will Be Mine (3:08) from Beyond the Permafrost (2007)

Total runtime: 29:35

My suggestions for June's playlist:

Wolves in the Throne Room - I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots (18:16) from Two Hunters (2007)
Yith - Risen (5:30) from Passage (2021)

Total runtime: 23:46