Gorguts - From Wisdom To Hate

Huh, I'm hearing a lot of Immolation, Suffocation, and doomy Morbid Angel riffs. This album is a bit all over the place, and I can see why it's so polarizing. I will say that the steely snare sound sucks. If this is obscure, then what is Obscura?

Obscura is far more bombastic and off-the-walls. It's good if you like music with a lot of dissonance.

Helloween - As Long As I Fall

Gambling With the Devil is a nice little gem. Definitely my favorite modern Helloween album.

Nightbringer - Ego Dominus Tuus

Black metal with an occult, almost ceremonial feel. Feels like the listener is peeking in on some twisted ritual that no sane person should see. Didn't really click for me until the second listen but now I want to hear more from Nightbringer.

Hanoi Rocks - Back to Mystery City

Good, but not as good as Two Steps.... Well, that album has all their biggest songs. Until I Get You is a very cool song though.

Queensryche - Hear in the Now Frontier

Good god, 90s Queensryche is awful. I'd heard about its awfulness but it really has to be heard to be believed. The kind of music that will be laughed at in 50 years time. Empire was the least bad, but still... what a trainwreck after their promising start in the early 80s.

Queensrÿche is awful. Period.

100 album covers, and a cool song by 1000 MODS

Sodom - Tapping the Vein

Needs more brutality. \m/

Earth - Old Black

Deadly hot outside, and I feel this song works very well on days like this.

Tom Waits - Shore Leave

Really love the minimal, folky chords of the verses and then the surprising melodic chorus that comes up. Very cool song. This is an extremely atmospheric album, as are all the ones I've heard from him.

probably the best thing death metal has to offer

NP: Pharoah Sanders - Thembi

floaty

Obscura? It is the sonic representation of insanity.

Malthusian - Below The Hengiform

The production isn't as good as that of the first one which accentuated the brutality, but the music is still killer.

Sean Malone - Hand Full of Earth
Holy shit, what will convince Malone to do another jazz fusion album, because this is some totally bad-ass music with none of the stiffness you often get when rock and metal musicians attempt this style.

Put down the crack pipe bruh. 80's era Queensryche was epic af! Their first 4 releases are some of the best metal ever created. They sucked massive donkey dick in the 90's and for most of the 00's but their last 2 efforts are pretty decent.


NP: Wrathchild America - Climbin' the Walls

It's been collecting dust so i figure i'd throw it on. Just like i remember it, nothing too spectacular but still enjoyable.

Aghora - Satya

The music is very nice, but the singer does not have anywhere near the chops to hang with these musicians. Her inflection is extremely plain and flat. It reminds me of the live concert Joni Mitchell recorded with Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, but with a much less talented singer.

Arcturus - The Sham Mirrors

Finally, some prog metal that I like!

Obscura is unbelievably spectacular at sucking. I get what it wants to do, but it sounds awful and is a total chore to listen to. FWtH is the same idea but less out there intentionally unlistenable, so I don't love it but it's not the worst thing out there.

Revocation - Great Is Our Sin
This band has always bored me to death for reasons I could never explain, and surprisingly this album... well, does nothing to change that. I remember giving Empire of the Obscene a chance because the album art looked like Midgar, and I'm a massive dork and anything that makes me think of Final Fantasy will get at least a cursory listen (*waves at Jenovavirus and whichever terrible metalcore band had a song named AVALANCHE*) but after a few spins I had to throw in the towel. I've sampled a few tracks whenever a new album would come out but they all just went in one ear and out the other. I think Revocation has the same problem Battlecross has, where their brand of tech thrash/death provides a huge burst of energy on stage and they're always a great time live, but in the studio none of it ever seems to transfer over. I tend to prefer Battlecross simply because they're less techy and therefore have more riffs that have any chance of catching my ear, whereas Revocation spends so much time dazzling listeners with how complex and complicated every section of music is that it ends up being a blur of unrelated notes. It seems like they've focused more on the death metal portion of their sound as time has gone on for the most part (I guess the previous album took that idea to it's logical extreme?) but it's still not really doing much for me. Individually, every element at play and every trick they employ are all things that I like, and I like the attempt to inject some more proggy stuff just for the sake of dynamics and variety, but it feels sorta like there are too many cooks in the kitchen. There are a lot of things happening and by all means they're all impressive, but they're implemented in such a cruddy way that none of it matters. The whole album feels like a first draft, like they recorded a bunch of jam sessions and recorded all of their favorite moments without crafting any real songs around those portions.

Major props to them for covering one of the best Slayer songs ever at the end though.

Voivod - The Unknown Knows

The more music I listen to, the more I value stuff that truly takes a unique path. This fucking nails that criteria.

Metalcore band with a song called 'Avalanche'? I guess you mean The Ghost Inside.

@M_O_T I agree, Queensryche is awful. Period. I decided to borrow my parents old Operation Mindcrime CD just to see if it was any good, and I now know why they used to make fun of that band.

Buckethead - Sunken Parlor

HOLY SHIT

Took a bit of searching, but no, it was Still Remains.

You could absolutely make a song about AVALANCHE, they're a ragtag group of eco-terrorists who take on the globe spanning corporation that's using the planet's lifeforce as a source of energy and in doing so unwittingly unleash like twelve different forms of the apocalypse. But no, we get this shit instead.

Why would that be then? I think O:M is up there with the best metal records ever. Everything about that album is pretty much flawless, from songwriting to performances. The Queensryche self-titled EP and The Warning are also almost as good if not equally as good.

Voivod - X Ray Mirror

Anomaly - Iconoclast

OK guys, I can dig your music, but please, please, please dispense with the spoken word bits, especially the ones about Jesus. They're killing me. Stop. Stop. Stop!

I've been listening to various things Sean Malone has played on and they seem almost all united by bad vocals over good music--the Cynic robot vocals and shitty alt-rock falsettos, the flat "your mom singing at somebody's wedding" lady from Aghora, and here he and Sean Reinert finally found a great singer who calls to mind James LaBrie in his prime--so they have to add the spoken word bits to meet their bad-things-done-with-voices quota.

E: The regressions into generic rock music don't help Anomaly either. There is way too much pedestrian hard rock in the world.

The Stone - Sunovrat (from Nekroza album)

This is some seriously heavy (yup, heavy) black metal with some outstanding guitarwork and dynamic, involved songwriting. Loving the production. Crystal clear and crisp, but not overly processed.

Definitely an underlooked gem of 2014.

"Where Ironcrosses Grow" -
Dismember

This album title comes from some old wwii movie I saw a few weeks back which I can't remember the name of. Otherwise I'll be revisiting their discography, I haven't listened to Dismember nearly as much as I should have.

Buckethead and Travis Dickerson - Dragons of Eden

Pretty much my favorite collaboration between Big B and Travis D. Their stuff together is usually awesome, but this one kills it. Draco in particular remains one of my favorite Buckethead related tracks. That opening is just awesome. I wonder what more they could've done with Brain on drums.

This is literally everyone that defends Queensrÿche; "but... Operation: Mindcrime...". I won't deny that it has some killer songs, but in the end, the album is full of fluff and just sounds overblown in terms of the concept and so-called epicness. Other than this album, I hate everything this band has done, even their new album.

Raven Dark - Berustet av kriegsdronnet

Man what's a stinky band like Drudkh doing at the top of Burzum's similar artists' tab while this has no votes? I cannot remain passive in situations like these *clicks upvote button*

The correct defense of Queensryche is "but The Warning".

Cynic - Sentiment

OK their first album hooks me even with the weird robot vocals. They seem way less intrusive than on Traced in Air, perhaps because they're not using standard rock progressions.

^That's some cool stuff right there. Very, very cool album.

Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odinii

Hmm... nice.

1. Don't lump me in with "literally everyone" in some kind of perjorative way. He was talking about O:M so I replied talking about that album. Not sure what your point is.

2. It's perfectly valid to like only one or a few of a band's albums and still say you like them.

And I disagree that it's full of fluff. Every song completely kills.

It just seems like the consensus among the fans is that Operation: Mindcrime is their most popular and best album. I don't know what makes you think I labeled you personally in a negative way. I was just addressing this to a broad group of people.

Secondly, I only like "Speak", "The Mission", "Eyes Of A Stranger", and "Spreading The Disease". Liking four songs is not enough for me to say I like a band when the rest of their discography is mediocre to worse than turds.

I haven't heard a lot of their 90s albums, but I like their first two releases and O:M a lot, and even Rage for Order and Empire have a lot of good stuff in them. I also used to think the same way as you about O:M but now that I've listened to so much more music and changed what I value about songwriting, I like every single song on that album. Not a weak spot. It's about as perfect, composition-wise, as a metal album can get.

The White Stripes - Ball & Biscuit

Dark Tranquillity - FreeCard

One of the last DT albums I truly loved. This one and Damage Done is kinda where I fell off.

What is wrong with THE WARNING, in your opinion?

I'm just not a fan of this USPM/heavy metal style with Geoff Tate's disgusting voice. "Warning" and "No Sanctuary" are okay, but I cannot stand this band whatsoever.

I'm afraid you are acutely psychotic and we're going to have to start you on Haldol for your own good.

Larry Coryell & Eleventh House - Yin
This is a seriously blistering jam--it's fusion performed with the speed and ferocity of Helstar, and it never relents even for a microsecond until the song is over.

"What Should Not Be Unearthed" -
Nile

I can't remember if this came out while I was locked up or not, but I missed it like a lot of albums in 2015. It's good.