Sonny's Forum Replies

As there is a bit of a difference in opinion between the two of you on this subject, is there any chance of a definitive directive, or shall I just include or exclude suggestions as I see fit at the risk of upsetting the submitter of any questionable tracks.

By the way, if anyone feels that I have included tracks that don't belong on a Fallen playlist, please speak up, so that I know what people expect to hear.

Yeah, I've got to agree Daniel. I only listened to it myself for the first time earlier this year and I think it is a top tier metal live album, perfectly capturing the band's best era.

It's an interesting question Sonny. Personally, I see no problem with selecting one-off tracks that I feel fall comfortably into different clans than the album they're drawn from. In this case I feel that our The Fallen members are the most likely to enjoy them so it makes sense to me. I mean, what's the point of including them in a The Guardians playlist when they'll sound a bit out of place & are better suited to another clan? If you disagree that these tracks are traditional doom metal & stoner metal respectively then you're free to omit them. I've always left it up to the playlist owners to make the final call uncontested on these things.

For the record though, I firmly believe that the "Black Sabbath" album is better suited to The Fallen than The Guardians anyway. There's currently a Hall of Judgement poll running for it.

OK fair enough. I just thought it was a point worth making.

Here are my submissions for the December playlist Sonny:

Black Sabbath - "Black Sabbath" (from "Black Sabbath", 1970)

Plateau Sigma - "Maira & the Archangel" (from "White Wings of Nightmares", 2013)

Sir Lord Baltimore - "Kingdom Come" (from "Kingdom Come", 1970)

As neither Sabbath's debut nor  Kingdom Come are actually in The Fallen, do you think they are suitable for inclusion in a playlist designed to showcase that clan's output, Daniel.  If so, then fine, but I myself have doubts about that being the way forward for the playlist.

November 2023

1. Orodruin - "Forsaken" (from "Ruins of Eternity", 2019)

2. Corrosion of Conformity - "Wolf Named Crow" (from "No Cross No Crown", 2018) 

3. Orphans of Dusk - "Wasted Hero" (from "Spleen", 2023) 

4. Nile - "Ruins" (from "In Their Darkened Shrines", 2002) 

5. Boris - "Hama" (from "Amplifier Worship", 1998) 

6. Hail the Void - "Goldwater" (from "Memento mori", 2023)

7. Godthrymm - "We Are the Dead" (from "Reflections", 2020) 

8. Stoned Jesus - "Stormy Monday" (from "Seven Thunders Roar", 2012)

9. October Noir - "Burn" (from "Thirteen", 2019) 

10. Solstice - "The Sleeping Tyrant" (from "New Dark Age", 1998)

11. 16 - " Tocohara" (from "Drop Out", 1996) 

12. Iron Void - "Living on the Earth" (from "IV", 2023)

13. Solitude Aeternus - "Only This (And Nothing More)" (from "Downfall", 1996) 

14. Kowloon Walled City - "The Pressure Keeps Me Alive" (from "Container Ships", 2012) 

15. Winter - "Eternal Frost" (from "Into Darkness", 1990) 

16. The Obsessed - "Red Disaster" (from "The Obsessed", 1990)

17. Bong - "Trees, Grass and Stones" (from "Mana-Yood-Sushai", 2012)

Good luck for tomorrow, Daniel.

Do you know if there are any plans for the Neuropath album to get a vinyl release?

Thanks Vinny. Nice one!

I can still see a list called "A Top 100 Metal Albums List" created by you Rexorcist. Is that not it? Did you perhaps recreate it?

Yes, I can see it too, Rex.

Great news Xephyr. Welcome back!!

It wasn't quite cut and dried for me, as I got into metal in the mid-seventies when it was still a very fluid thing. I had always been a rock fan, growing up on The Beatles and Stones, but seeing Alice Cooper with his python on Top of the Pops playing School's Out as a ten-year-old in '72 triggered something in me that I was never able to shake. Got into Queen, then Pink Floyd were the first band I saw live and Zeppelin records became regulars.

But it was hearing Sabbath's Paranoid LP at a school friend's house that was the final piece falling into place. The first Sabbath album I bought was Technical Ecstacy, which is why I rate it much higher than most and I still maintain Gypsy and Dirty Woman, along with You Won't Change Me are quality tracks, the solo on Dirty Women being one of Iommi's best and it still sets the hairs on the back of my neck on end to this day.

I was also massively into Hawkwind by this stage and my next big find was Motörhead, featuring the irreppresible singer of Silver Machine - Lemmy. I gobbled up the debut, which I know is controversial as to it's metal credentials and saw them live in a the local venue sometime in early '78 where, as a sixteen-year-old in a hall full of bikers and speed fiends, it felt like something truly dangerous and rebellious. They also played insanely loudly! Overkill came the following year with it's absolutely iconic title track and cemented a lifelong devotion to Lemmy and the boys.

Next up was Judas Priest and again a school mate played Stained Class for me, which resulted in me heading straight down to Woolies and buying Sad Wings of Destiny which I absolutely hammered. Tyrant, Genocide, Victim of Changes, The Ripper - killers all. Another visit to the local hall to catch Rob & co for the '78 Stained Class tour was another memorable night.

I guess the next actual metal "biggie" would have to have been Maiden's debut. I used to get Sounds which was a weekly UK music paper and they were all abuzz with this band of cockneys blowing the bollocks off every other band. Running Free was getting a bit of play on late night radio and sounded pretty cool, so off we went to see what all the fuss was about when they played in Stoke. They were awesome, full of energy and fire, playing five encores no less. We hung about outside the venue after and even got to meet them. They were exceedingly cool, signing an empty Park Drive cigarette packet for me (which I have since lost). Obviously Iron Maiden was pretty soon added to my record collection.

I guess the other big metal album for me after Maiden was the Angel Witch debut. I had seen them supporting Motörhead a couple of times and loved them, so was stoked when they finally got their album out - which is still a firm favourite of mine.

It was a long tiime ago and my memory ain't what it used to be, but I don't think I missed any, so I guess my 5 would be Technical Ecstacy, Sad Wings of Destiny, Motörhead, Iron Maiden and Angel Witch, all five of which I still have those original albums after 40-odd years. Ironically they all belong to an Academy clan of which I am not a member!

Hi Ben, could you please add US stoner doom trio Trillion Ton Beryllium Ships.

Meshuggah - Chaosphere (1998)

I had never knowingly listened to Meshuggah before hearing their track, Paralyzing Innocence, on this month's Pit playlist, but was sufficiently intrigued by that track to check out their 1998 album, Chaosphere. It seems that I had misconstrued Meshuggah, as they are neither as willfully challenging or disjointed as I expected. In fact the sound here seems to be of a kind of technical groove metal with industrial undertones that sounds to me like a technically advanced spin on a hybrid of Fear Factory and Machine Head. I'm not going to claim that it's changed my life and is exactly what I have been looking for, but I can hear why the band are so well-regarded and I can definitely respect what they are trying to achieve. I would have no problem throwing this on occasionally as a change from my usual listening habits and if I fancy something a bit more technical but that isn't so much so that I find it alienating. I'm pleasantly surprised to discover that a band I thought would have nothing at all for me actually gave me a pretty enjoyable experience.

3.5/5

Great work again this month, Vinny. A really killer playlist - I enjoyed it immensely. In fact I've already listened to it twice!

Of the bands I know little to nothing of, Slaughter Messiah were tops, followed closely by Graveripper, Lucifuge, Kill The Pharoah, Assault and Besieged. Also, I finally got to listen to Meshuggah for the first time and was pleasantly surprised by what I heard - I didn't expect to enjoy them at all, but “Paralyzing Ignorance” was pretty damn good.

There wasn't a single track I disliked, a couple were just OK (Cosmic Jaguar, Draghoria) but this was generally a high quality list, despite having very few big names on it. Great stuff!!

Do you mind adding Canadian black metallers Bludgeon Oath  please, Ben?

Sorta Magora - Nič (2019)

Sorta Magora is yet another project from our prolific old friend, Belgian multi-instrumentalist Déhà who, aside from the many releases he has put out under his own name, also issues material as Imber Luminis, Slow, Aurora Borealis, Yhdarl and Clouds to name but a few of the many aliases, side projects and bands he is involved with. Sorta Magora sees him team up with Slovakian vocalist Veronika Madžová, aka Dryáda, who contributed vocals to Imber Luminis' 2019 Same Old Silences album. To date, Nič, also released in 2019, is the only material released under the project's own banner.

The album takes the form of a single, forty-minute track that melds together those most comfortable of bedfellows, funeral doom and atmospheric black metal. I think these two styles of extreme metal are perfect complements to each other at the best of times, and here Déhà expertly weaves them together into a cohesive and encompassing piece that is overflowing with atmosphere and mood. Now, I have never been the biggest fan of ambient music, for some reason it usually, bar a few rare instances, fails to connect with me. Yet, whilst listening to Nič, I suddenly made that connection, despite the fact that this isn't an ambient release. The genius of it is that it uses the dual-barrelled extreme metal approach to achieve a very similar effect to the best that ambient music can offer. Within this single piece of music you can be bouyed-up by a heaving swell of sound, only to later be dragged down by the irresistible tug of murky undercurrents and smothered by a cloying tsunami of crushing, doom-laden chords. Of course, these changes don't occur quickly or jarringly, but are generally glacial in their transition from one to the other, as if luxuriating and revelling in their sheer physical presence and shedding or gaining energy in a deliberate and organic manner.

The swelling tsunami of instrumentation is complimented and contrasted effectively by Dryáda's furious howls of anguish that pour forth in an almost cathartic litany of distress. Déhà himself also contributes vocals, his being a deeper, more nether-demon sounding performance. The lyrics, written by Dryáda in her native Slovak, are dour and grim, heralding the final days of a dying world and the protagonist's longing for that ultimate darkness. This is a release whose music is shorn of hope and is relentlessly bleak, the music intended to be as overwhelming and irresistibly bleak as the final unavoidable fate of a world devoid even of light, let alone life and is a prime example of blackened funeral doom that deserves much more attention than it has so far received.

4.5/5

Another new list added. This one is for Felipe Machado Franco whose distinctive art adorns many power metal album covers:

https://metal.academy/lists/single/255

It's from their 2019 album, Thirteen.

Cheers.

How about October Noir - Burn?

Can you provide the album and year for any suggestions please Morpheus.

I'll say no this month Sonny. Will be back next month for sure.

OK. Thanks, Ben.

Austin Lunn (aka Panopticon) has released a single from his upcoming album, The Rime Of Memory, due out at the end of November. Sixteen minutes of atmospheric black metal wonder called Cedar Skeletons, Lunn shows that he is still producing great quality, nature-themed black metal that puts most of the competition in the shade.

Ben, will you be contributing any suggestions for November's playlist?

Naked City - Leng Tch'e (1992)

Naked City's Leng Tch'e has a reputation for being one of the most disturbing and affecting metal releases of all time. Comprising a single 30+ minute drone metal track and taking it's title from the torturous chinese method of execution whereby the condemned slowly has parts of their body sliced off and with a cover consisting of a photo of a victim undergoing said execution method, I was certainly expecting a tough listen as I approached this for the first time.

The first half of the track is indeed a great slab of drone metal with massive chords drenched in feedback, sparse, yet ominous percussion and a generally disturbing atmosphere prevailing, setting us up for the reputedly horrifying second half which features the tortured screams of japanese vocalist Yamatsuka Eye and the wailing freeform saxophone of John Zorn. So when this supposedly blood-curdling, spine-tingling tsunami actually hit, I was completely blindesided by just how much of a disappointment it was. The actual howling and screaming of Yamatsuka Eye is less disturbing and more irritating, sounding like a hysterical B-movie scream queen, which completely destroyed all the good work done on the build-up until then. In fact, when Zorn's manic sax playing joins the fray, I couldn't help but think that it would have been much more effective to let the sax alone express the horror of the situation.

I honestly cannot see where Leng Tch'e has gained such a notorious reputation. I have heard much more disturbing vocalisations in extreme doom and drone from the likes of Khanate and Thorr's Hammer, even Burning Witch's Edgy 59 is more disturbing than what we have here. And you know what, that is a crying shame because without those annoying screams this would actually be fucking brilliant, but for me they make it almost unlistenable and not in a good way, whereas without them this would have edged very close to a 5/5 for me.

3/5 (despite how much I hate the screaming)

Another update to my  Top 20 Drone Metal releases:

1. Hell - Hell III (2012)

2. Earth - Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version (1993)

3. Bismuth - The Slow Dying of the Great Barrier Reef (2018)

4. Khanate - To Be Cruel (2023)

5. Trees - Light's Bane (2008)

6. Boris - Boris at Last -Feedbacker- (2003)

7. Bong - Mana-Yood-Sushai (2012)

8. Monarch! - Omens (2012)

9. Neptunian Maximalism - Éons (2020)

10. Wolvserpent - Aporia:Kāla:Ananta (2016)

11. Khanate - Khanate (2001)

12. FVNERALS - Let the Earth Be Silent (2023)

13. Sunn O))) - Life Metal (2019)

14. Crawl - Damned (2023)

15. Big Brave - Vital (2021)

16. Sunn O))) - Black One (2005)

17. Nadja - Radiance of Shadows (2007)

18. Father Sky Mother Earth - Across the River of Time (2017)

19. Endless Floods - Circle the Gold (2019)

20. A Storm of Light / Nadja - Primitive North (2009)

Sunn O)))'s "Monoliths & Dimensions" and The Body's "No One Deserves Happiness" fall out to make way for Bong and FVNERALS.

Bong - Mana-Yood-Sushai (2012)

I have only really been interested in drone metal for about a decade now and only started exploring it in earnest two or three years ago, but it has become one of my favourite genres and a lot of my highest scores of recent times have gone to drone metal releases. I guess that because I am quite an anxious person by nature, I find the monolithic droning of this style of metal to be inherently calming. Bong are a new name to me, despite them having been around for close to twenty years now and hailing from these British Isles I call home. They are prolific releasers of material with nine studio albums, a plethora of splits and EPs and thirty-plus live albums.

Mana-Yood-Sushai is the four-piece's third album, released in 2012, and is a sublime mix of drone metal and psychedelia that gives it a heavy eastern, mystical flavour, a sound I really love to hear brought into the sphere of metal. The album consists of only two tracks with the 27 minutes of the first track, Dreams of Mana-Yood-Sushai, being the one that really hooked me in. One of the members of Bong is sitar player, Benjamin Freeth, and his jangling strings combine perfectly with the droning chords of guitarist Mike Vest on Dreams... that seems to conjures up vistas of setting suns over mystical eastern temples that I found to be an inordinately meditative and restful piece. The track also features bassist/vocalist Dave Terry with some really nice throat singing that further enhances the eastern flavour with it's ritualistic chanting style favoured by eastern mystics.

Second track, Trees, Grass and Stone, is just shy of twenty minutes in length and is an instrumental, making it a bit more jam-like than the opener with the percussion of drummer Mike Smith driving the track and taking a more prominent role. It is also a heavier-sounding track than Dreams... the droning chords carrying increased weight and settling over the listener like a heavy blanket. As is true of an awful lot of drone metal, it is most effective when listened to at higher volumes, at the point when the experience can become almost physical and it's simple structure can fully infiltrate the listener's senses and become a transcendental sensation.

So once more a new drone metal discovery has me reaching for my higher scores and takes it's place in my list of metal favourites.

4.5/5

Jag Panzer - The Fourth Judgement (1997)

I enjoyed Jag Panzer's debut, Ample Destruction, but it's follow-up, Dissident Alliance, seems to have been universally panned, so I went into The Fourth Judgement unsure what to expect. What I got was a fairly mundane USPM album. There are some decent riffs on here, hell a couple are even genuinely killer and the solos aren't too shoddy either, but everything else screams mediocrity. I don't like the vocals much. Sure, there are plenty of power metal singers I dislike more, but Harry Conklin's style, whilst not grating as much as some, does very little for me either. The production robs the rhythm section of any authority and contributes heavily to the mundanity of the release as a whole.

The Fourth Judgement is a release that feels like it lacks any passion, aggression or exhilharation that is the cornerstone of heavy and power metal. There isn't even very much pomp and circumstance, that I'm not personally a big fan of, but which would at least lend it some fist-pumping energy. A damp squib for me overall, to be honest, but the guitar work, particularly a few of the riffs, is good enough to allow me to bump it up to a more respectable score.

3/5

Nice list again Ben. Of the stuff I was unfamiliar with, Tsjuder and Profane Order chimed with me the most. I haven't ever listened to Rebel Extravaganza before and enjoyed the track from it a fair bit. I also enjoyed the Gespenst and Ifernach tracks.

I'm not sure about the last track by Bríi, I think I will have to check out a bit more from them, but it did pique my interest. Of the stuff I know, Ancient, Deathspell and Altar of Plagues were big yesses. Marduk sounded just how I expected them to and Trhä and Mgla didn't really set my world on fire.

All in all though, an enjoyable couple of hours whilst decorating the living room. How about a new tagline, "The Metal Academy Playlist - makes household chores almost bearable!"

That's great news Daniel. Glad to hear that things are moving forward for you.

Thanks, Ben. I am really enjoying putting them together. Hopefully they will serve nicely as a reference source for cover artists. Next I am working on one for Felipe Machado Franco who does a lot of power metal covers for the likes of Rhapsody of Fire, Blind Guardian and Iced Earth.

I have added a new list. This one is for Adam Burke, aka Nightjar Illustration. You may have seen his covers on Vektor's "Terminal Redux" or Temple of Void's "The World That Was". He has a very distinctive and recognizable style.

https://metal.academy/lists/single/250

Torture Rack - Primeval Onslaught (2023)

Primeval Onslaught is an unpretentious old-school death metal assault. Whilst not implying that Torture Rack operate on the same level as previous death metal titans, the album summons up the foetid rankness of Autopsy, combining it with the vitality and intensity of prime Morbid Angel and the brutality of Suffocation to produce a release I found to be both exhilharating and supremely satisfying. I would be the first to admit that, when it comes to extreme metal, be it death, black or even thrash, my tastes are quite conservative and I would much prefer an album of uncomplicated, old-school, brutal beastliness to the more modern focus on experimentation and diversification that has flooded the extreme scene over the last twenty-odd years. Luckily (for me anyway) that is exactly what Torture Rack deliver - and they deliver it in spades. Primeval Onslaught is a glorious celebration of old-school death metal that is well and truly up my particular death metal alley.

The riffs are thick and muscular, hitting like a jackhammer to the temple, with the rank production seeming to hang everything with strips of torn flesh, making the album sound like a veritable bloodstorm. The soloing, such as it is, consists of short, sharp shocks that are thrust at the listener like a stiletto between the ribs. Bass and drums thunder and batter away, driving the quicker material along whilst imbuing the slower sections with a dark ominousness that looms over the listener like gathering thunderheads. The vocals are suitably deep and gutteral growls guaranteed to set the hairs on your neck on end as they vomit out their gross-out lyrics of death, torture and cannibalism, the very creed upon which death metal lyricism was built. There is sufficient variation in the tracks with some mightily memorable riffs, "Impalement Storm" and "Forced From the Pit" being cases in point, to guard against accusations of saminess.

So, what I'm trying to say is that Primeval Onslaught is built on the solid foundations of old-school death metal brutality, to a tried and tested blueprint, that won't surprise anyone with more than a passing interest in death metal, yet is of very high quality. If the purpose is to reproduce the peak nineties death metal sound, then Torture Rack are to be commended for a job well done and to bemoan it's lack of experimentation and criticise it for what it isn't would be more than a little disingenuous and unfair to a band that, to my ears at least, deserve better.

4/5

Ebony Pendant - "Ebony Pendant" (2023)

Ebony Pendant is a solo project of S.C. (Simon Coseboom) and this self-titled release is his sophomore full-length, following 2020's "Incantation of Eschatological Mysticism" debut, a couple of splits and an EP (2021's "The Garden of Strangling Roots". He plays version of melodic black metal, but with quite a raw production which gives it a bit more of an edge (and air of underground authenticity) than your usual melo-black outfit. It doesn't exactly possess the thin sound you would usually associate with the rawest black metal, with enough bass presence to boost the muscularity of the riffs, but the production somehow gives the impression that it is a lot rawer and thinner-sounding than it actually is. Vocally, S.C. has a nice line in evil, demonic croaking, similar to Immortal's Abbath, which suits the material really well. Surprisingly, for a guy who is a drummer himself with both Seattle death metallers Degraved and black metal act Griefspell, S.C. has recruited his pal K.M. as skinsman for this album from the death doom band Cavurn of which they are both members (S.C. on guitar in that mob). K.M.'s drumming is decent, being pretty frantic, yet well-controlled and helps drive the riffs and maintain the breakneck pacing.

A couple of nice, gentle acoustic passages aside, S.C. makes no attempt to court the black metal intelligentsia who want black metal to constantly be pushing boundaries with experimentation, dissonance and genre-splicing. No, despite the melodicism of some of the riffs, this is pure black metal - adrenaline-fuelled, old-school, ripping with icy claws at the listener's sensibilities. The raw production gives Ebony Pendant's melodicism a cold and frigid edge that is the cornerstone of all truly awesome black metal and this frostiness gives tracks such as the more melancholic-sounding "Whispers of a Nameless Fear" or "Sentiment for a Time Long Forgotten" a cutting edge that it may have lacked with a fuller production. Ebony Pendant are new to me, but despite the fact that they will probably never raise their heads over the parapets of the USBM underground, they deserve much praise for flying a flag for unashamed old-school black metal blasting and have the potential to become firm favourites of mine.

4.5/5

Hi Daniel, my suggestions for November are:

Cryptopsy - "Pathological Frolic" (from "Blasphemy Made Flesh", 1994)

Deicide - "They Are the Children of the Underworld" (from "Once Upon the Cross", 1995)

Exhumed - "Clawing" (from "Horror", 2019)

Immolation - "Burn With Jesus" (from "Here in After", 1996)

Necrophobic - "Nailing the Holy One" (from "Darkside", 1997)

Oni - "Creature of Chaos" (from "Incantation Superstition", 2023)

Torture Rack - "Forced From the Pit" (from "Primeval Onslaught", 2023)

Vader - "Blood of Kingu" (from "De Profundis", 1995)

My suggestions for November Vinny:

Testament - "Last Stand for Independence" (from "Dark Roots of Earth", 2012)

Hi Sonny,

Daniel has already nominated a Testament track for the upcoming month, would you like to submit an alternative?

Ah, sorry Vinny. No, I'm fine with just the others.

My suggestions for November Vinny:

Aura Noir - "Black Thrash Attack" (from "Black Thrash Attack", 1996)
Bewitched - "Born of Flames" (from "Diabolical Desecration", 1996)
Enforced - "The Quickening" (from "War Remains", 2023)
Exumer - "Rising From the Sea" (from "Rising From the Sea", 1987)
Mutilator - "Tormented Soul" (from "Immortal Force", 1987)
Pentagram Chile - "La Fiura" (from "The Malefice", 2013)
Testament - "Last Stand for Independence" (from "Dark Roots of Earth", 2012)

Hi again, Ben. Could you add Eremit's latest album "Wearer of Numerous Forms" please.

Hi Ben, could you please add Finnish black metal act Vinnfrost - their sole album "Initiation" has brilliant cover art by Gorgoroth vocalist Atterigner.

October 2023

1. Averon - "An Echo From Beyond" (from "An Echo From Beyond", 1999)

2. Acid Bath - "Bleed Me an Ocean" (from "Paegan Terrorism Tactics", 1996) [submitted by Sonny]

3. Conan - "Amidst the Infinite" (from "Existential Void Guardian", 2018) [submitted by Vinny]

4. Tribulation - "Hemoclysm" (from "Hamartia EP", 2023)

5. Full of Hell - "Armory of Obsidian Glass" (from "Weeping Choir", 2019) [submitted by Daniel]

6. Hellish Form - "Texas Is Sinking" (from "Deathless", 2023) [submitted by Sonny]

7. Warning - "Bridges" (from "Watching from A Distance", 2006) [submitted by Ben]

8. Paradise Lost - "No Forgiveness" (from "Shades of God", 1992) [submitted by Daniel]

9. Noctum - "Resurrected in Evil" (from "Final Sacrifice", 2013)

10. Sourvein - "Urchins" (from "Aquatic Occult", 2016) [submitted by Vinny]

11. Jesu - "We All Faulter" (from "Jesu", 2004)

12. Baroness - "Beneath the Rose" (from "STONE", 2023)

13. Black Tusk - "Fatal Kiss" (from "Passage Through Purgatory", 2008) [submitted by Vinny]

14. Candlemass - "Incarnation of Evil" (from "Ancient Dreams", 1988) [submitted by Daniel]

15. Runemagick - "Archaic Magick (After the Red Sun)" (from "Beyond the Cenotaph of Mankind", 2023)

16. Esoteric - "Quickening" (from "The Maniacal Veil", 2008) [submitted by Ben]

Hey Ben, could you please add a couple of releases for US blackened doom band, Gaul:

Lustrous in Death EP (2020)

Taken by the Twilight Tide album (2022)

Just one suggestion from me this month Ben, but it is 16 minutes, so there is that!

Alda - "A Distant Fire" (from "A Distant Fire", 2021)

I am a massive Michael Moorcock fan and have a ton of his paperbacks that I bought in the late 70s and early 80s, quite a few of which have Whelan's paintings on the covers. I have always loved his Elric paintings used by Cirith Ungol and his Smoulder covers are excellent too. 

Verwimp does have a very distinctive style, Ben. He seems to use a technique that gives his paintings a "soft focus". I always liked the Absu covers and never realised that he was so prolific a cover artist.

By the way, Ben, does the site mechanics have a limit to the number of entries we can have on a list?

Feel free to request bands for whatever reason you like Sonny. If they have good artwork, it's more enjoyable for me anyway. 

OK, thanks, Ben. Will do.

Hi Ben, could you please add Destroyer of Light (US).

Hey Ben, could you please add:

Beorn's Hall (US)

Blood of Serpents (Sweden)

Dewfall (Italy) [they are listed on RYM as Dew Fall, but I believe it should all be one word as per Metal Archives]

Temple of Evil (Cyprus)

Also could you add the 2019 album "Hex" from Finnish black metal band Wyrd.

Admittedly these are all for a cover art list I am working on, but I am familiar with albums from all these bands and have rated at least one release from each.

I'm not convinced of the metal pedigree of these few suggestions, but they are probably worth discussing:

Sir Lord Baltimore - Kingdom Come

Flower Travellin' Band - Satori

Budgie - S/T

Ursa Major - S/T

Icecross - S/T

Although Sabbath were knocking true metal albums out left right and centre while all these were being released, so most of the first ten true metal albums will be from the Brummie foursome I reckon.

However, this leads to another question: if it was all released later, how much does it contribute to the genre back then, assuming it was ever heard at all?

That's entirely my point actually. The intention behind this exercise is to give people a road map of the releases that built the scene. I don't think you can say that archival releases have had much of an impact in the majority of cases. This also leads into the question of when a release is popular enough to be relevant too but I don't think that'll be an issue for some time yet so it's a conversation for another day.

I raised this particular release as a case in point because, although it wasn't released until much later, the material was the basis for the evolution of Death Row and Pentagram and was also available as a bootleg long before it's official 2005 release  and is often name-checked by many other doom metal practitioners as an early influence.

I guess that's not really relevant to a project to discover the earliest actual releases, but I think it is interesting as a discussion point regarding the development of metal, and especially doom metal, nonetheless.

Thanks Ben. The main reason for starting this exercise was that I was picking up on certain stylistic consistencies on covers as I was rating them, whilst not really being that familiar with specific artists, other than Lewandowski and Repka. So, I thought that compiling lists of the artists whose work I admired most would allow a deeper exploration of each artist's style and development as well as providing a reference guide for other interested members.

Oloffson actually has many more covers to his credit, but many are for lesser-known acts who haven't been added to the site yet and I don't want to flood you with requests for bands whose actual music I may not even get round to rating!

There's only one place to start for me and that is Black Sabbath. The S/T was released almost four months earlier than In Rock, on 13th Feb 1970, so that is my nomination for the first true metal album. Side one especially is where it's really at. I'm guessing Tony Iommi's forced downtuning helped, but that's where I first hear heavy psych morphing into true metal.

Blue Cheer's Vincebus Eruptum is often quoted by some, but I don't buy it. That one is still heavy psych for me. High Tide's Sea Shanties is another, but again, I don't hear enough true metal there.

I just mean to nominate it as a bare minimum standard for what heavy metal was back then and may be now.  The Sabbath debut is definitely the beginning of metal, but it's so heavy even by today's standards that it's not much of a bare minimum, but more like the fine line between heavy metal and traditional doom.

Other albums we should EXCLUDE include the whole Zeppelin catalog.  They are easily my favorite band, but they only had a handful of songs that to me would qualify as early metal, and those handfuls are rarely even on the same album.  In other words, we have to be careful about which early albums qualify as "heavy metal" and "proto-metal."

I agree Rex. Much as I love Zeppelin (not as much as I did back in the day, admittedly), they certainly aren't a metal act, the odd track such as Communication Breakdown and Immigrant Song aside. That bassline to Dazed & Confused sounds awfully doomy to me, though.

Just a thought, although it wasn't released until 2005 I think, would members count Bedemon's Child of Darkness as an early (if not the earliest) trad doom album? The oldest material was recorded in '73. They later went on to become Death Row and then Pentagram, for anyone not familiar with the album.

There's only one place to start for me and that is Black Sabbath. The S/T was released almost four months earlier than In Rock, on 13th Feb 1970, so that is my nomination for the first true metal album. Side one especially is where it's really at. I'm guessing Tony Iommi's forced downtuning helped, but that's where I first hear heavy psych morphing into true metal.

Blue Cheer's Vincebus Eruptum is often quoted by some, but I don't buy it. That one is still heavy psych for me. High Tide's Sea Shanties is another, but again, I don't hear enough true metal there.

I've just added a list for death metal cover artist Pär Olofsson:

https://metal.academy/lists/single/248

Next up I am going to cover Adam Burke (aka Nightjar Illustration). I'm a big fan and he has quite a few well-placed entries in the Academy Gallery.