queensryche - walk in the shadows

mandatory daily listening

The Amen Corner - Opeth

My Arms, Your Hearse is probably my favourite from Opeth, but each and every album is a masterpiece. Can anyone tell me why people shit on their prog rock stuff so much? I don't get it.

Tribulation: Strains of Horror

Easily my favorite album so far this year, and probably of the past couple years.

Slayer- War Ensemble

It's often the same when a band abandons a large part of their sound in favour of experimenting or taking one aspect further. I'm of the school that argues that the latest two Opeth albums are vibrant and excellent works that fit very well in their catalogue (I'd take them over an album like Watershed that felt less than the sum of its parts somehow).

A Forest of Stars - Hive Mindless

This band really came into their own with Beware the Sword You Cannot See. It's absolutely one of my favourite albums of the year so far. Glorious theatrical progressive black metal experimentation with a quintessentially British sensibility.

Wardruna-Helvegen

I f*cking love this song, I could spend the rest of the day listening to it. It gives me a deep feeling of peace and now that I own the album I can understand the lyrics which are beautiful.

Bathory - Twilight of the Gods

I've always liked Bathory's viking metal albums more than their black metal albums. Don't get me wrong, Under the Sign... is great. But their viking stuff is just phenomenal. This is a top-15 album for me, and Hammerheart, both Nordlands and Blood On Ice are all top-10.

Yeah, the Viking material is better than the black metal one to me as well.

NP: My Dying Bride - The Fever Sea

Crushing song, excellent riffing and pace!

Vanhelgd - Where All Flesh is Soil

Always an extremely entertaining blast of Swedeath-styled mayhem. Good riffs and some black metal rolling tremolo style riffing mixes things up.

Theatre (US) - Demo 1990

I downloaded this recently and this is some excellent melodic metal. Stuff like this makes me appreciate the internet so much because now we have an opportunity to hear all these treasures from the past.

Abigor - As Astral Images Darken Reality

I've always had a sort of love / hate relationship with this act in general for as long as I have been listening to them. I really enjoy their way of layering elements within the context of their compositions but can't help but feeling as if a lot of times they miss more than hit. The utilization of female vocals in a few of the tracks off of Nachthymnen (From the Twilight Kingdom), for example, usually leaves me feeling pretty cold. Regardless, the band (and this track) are interesting enough to warrant revisiting frequently.

Sulphur Aeon - Devotion to the Cosmic Chaos, off Gateway to the Antisphere

Liking this quite a bit better than the debut, which I remember being good, if nothing to write home about. Digging the massive scope and intense, yet intelligible vocals.

Man, I love that album and that's my favorite song on it.

Urzeit - Der Zweite Drei

if anyone is curious to know what Ash Borer playing death metal would sound like, check this out. It's very good.

Have to be "Sirens of Lampedusa" or the title track for me, but they're all pretty consistent in quality.

Nile - Keftiu Asar Butchiu

Blasting, melodic, epic tech death - kick ass...

Fates Warning - Shades of Heavenly Death

If this album was full of demanding thrash riffs all the time it would have been a lot better. Ah well, hopefully my review that's in the working would express my feelings on this one quite well.

Raise Hell - Not dead yet

The riffs may be highly derivative and the lyrics very silly.. but damn, those vocals slay! they remind me the savagery of morbid saint, especially from 0.50 onwards!

Zero Nine - Baby Don't Stop

Listening Finnish shit again. Voodoo You is there with White Lines and Intrigue, and this is one of the best songs on it. Quality hard rock with good vocals.

Kampfar - Swarm Norvegicus

Very immersive atmosphere. RATS!!! Plague spreading, rats feeding!

Morbid Saint - "Beyond the Gates of Hell"

The breakdown in this tune kicks SO much ass. Basically coming to the conclusion that Morbid Saint, Sadus, Merciless, early Kreator and Sodom make the world's greatest thrash.

Erraunt - The Portent

Strange, bass-heavy black metal. It's kinda like what you might think Necromantia would sound like if they had gone experimental.

Thousand Excaliver - Sailing Your Dream

Continuing to attack my CD backlog. This ain't bad - some of the vox are a bit iffy and I could live without the drum machine though (I should be used to those by now).

Profetus - A Reverie (Midsummer's Dying Throes)

I'm listening to the whole album for the first time. There is some HEAVY Skepticism worship with this song so far, and I'm very okay with that! It seriously sounds as if I'm listening to Stormcrowfleet all over again.

Luna (Nightmare Mode) by Eurobeat Brony - if you don't like it, there's some metal at about 3:55
Spectrum by AcousticBrony - rock/metal. Kind of dreamy, like the other song.
I'll Fly Higher (Scootaloo's Theme) by (^ the guy who did Spectrum), and MandoPony - This song is amazing. You'd never expect music like this to be inspired by a cartoon. 4:47 on... Emotional, epic...

I listened to my first couple brony songs when a friend showed them to me around 2012, and I hated the show (and just about everything else on planet Earth) but had to admit there was some talent there. Funny how back then, I could listen to a Nazi band or two in spite of their ideologies "because of their talent" and listen to tons of occult bands "because of their talent", but I never bothered to investigate brony music further because of its subject matter. Anyway, in late 2014 when I actually got into the show (and went through a bunch of other non-musical and non-MLP-related changes in my life around the same time) I started listening to it again, and it helped move things along with putting a lot of past stuff behind me. Kind of like when I discovered how deep the unblack (aka Christian black metal) scene went, and how much of a community there actually was and the positive impact it was having (I remember seeing something about charity work some South American unblack guys were doing, for instance - collecting food or clothes for local families in need), it was something similar (albeit a little less profound) with brony music and the community surrounding it. And no, I'm not actually expecting people to read this.

A Christian brony death metal track.

This is the truth: there is a God who loves you
This is the truth: you're not alone
You might be high but there is one above you
And all this pain doesn't have to be your own

Faith No More - Evidence

Well, the new album was great but nothing lives up to this classic material. The Real Thing, Angel Dust & King For a Day form a triptych of damn near perfect albums as far as I'm concerned. There's something about the amazing vibe Faith No More used to create that is just incomparable to any other.

That description sounds like what nightmares are made of

Symphony X - Kiss of Fire, off Underworld

Holy shit, why didn't they go for this instead of Nevermore for a preview track? This stuff crushes. I still have like half the album left, but between this and the titletrack, I'm starting to feel much better about it.

Teardrop (Featuring Elizabeth Fraser) from (1998) Massive Attack - Mezzanine.
AMAZING vocals, track and album!

Fates Warning - Valley of the Dolls

"Run with the pack, illegitimate child!" Great track from one of my favourite albums...

Sounds exactly like everything else they do. Groovy.

Dodheimsgard - Monumental Possession

Black metal/thrash done the right way, a la Aura Noir, Darkthrone, Bathory, Sodom, et al

Isengard - In the Halls and Chambers of Stardust, the Crystallic Heavens Open

An gem from the Vinterskugge album. Very beautiful and short.

MX - The Carrion of Religion Demo 1986

Nasty raw as fuck thrash delivered by this legendary Brazilian thrash band. Their debut LP Simoniacal is one of my favorite thrash albums of all time.

Led Zeppelin – Going to California

This band sucks. Even Christian brony death metal sounds better

Warlord "Deliver Us"

This is essentially expanded to a full-length now. Not sure whether I prefer this or "Cannons...".

Satyricon - Forhekset

Too bad they dropped this symphonic/folk approach to black metal. I think they pretty much perfected it on this (3rd) album.

Wodensthrone - First Light

A really good track here - sweeping, vast and wonderfully atmospheric black metal. The acoustic break near the middle is well done, so it takes nothing away from the power this song has. Amazing stuff.

Darkthrone - Cult of Goliath

I think Nocturno Culto is one of the best black metal vocalists in the business. I love his raw aggressive sound and to me this entire release is solid.

Paradise Lost - No Hope in Sight

The new album is incredible. Amazing songs from start to finish with a crushing guitar tone. I think The Plague Within is their best effort ever.

Deep Purple - Living Wreck

Been a while since I heard In Rock - what a weird, primordial ooze-like album much like the Sabbath debut, though perhaps a bit more focused. It's fascinating stuff.

Blind Guardian – Time What Is Time

Excellent opener, full of great riffs and leads

I can't believe I just read this!

Amon Amarth - Bleed for Ancient Gods
This song, and album, just slays! I still enjoy their recent stuff but it's can't touch this.