Nah he's writing them on the spot. He has a lot to say about certain genres (prog) and others seem really phoned in. I am trying to hammer him into going into greater depth, though.

i dont think TSOP is all that prog at all and yeah the painkiller cover is the best thing on the album.

It isn't prog? What is it then?!

I think "A Moment of Clarity" is the best thing on the album, especially when you consider how incredible the guitar solo is.

I actually like TSoP purely for the fact it's completely retarded. The songwriting is virtually nonexistent, everything is pretentious beyond normal logic, it's wanky, full of itself, but somehow it manages to be a fun experience for me everytime I hear it.

But yeah, that cover is kinda crappy.

I mean it just every song on the album pretty much repeats itself most of the riffs are just the same riffs as Death had before infact prob less prog than on ITP and symbolic. It got prog elements but one could argue that formulas fatal to the flesh is a more prog album if you talk about actual progressiveness/experimentalism. Its got a lot of heavy/power elements too. The control denied album is a logical improvement on it and its more of the same but not really all that prog.

I get where you're going with your reasoning in terms of the riffs having more or less the same style, I really do. But the point is that by the time TSOP arrived the band's sound was already far removed from death metal, even though there's an obvious similarity in terms of its "thrashiness" if I may call it that. Hell, I have a lot of trouble even considering Symbolic a death metal album due not to how it's written but how the music is actually presented, so it's even harder for me to not go one step further with TSOP.

It's strange when I put it this way, but there comes a point in Death's career where despite having a similar style, the presentation of the riffs trumps it and they get too far removed from death metal to actually sounding like it. And sure, the Control Denied album is the logical evolution of TSOP. And yet in their apparent similarities they still sound massively different don't they?! I guess that's my point with post-ITP albums.

In my eyes its a weird amalgation of power metal with thrash and death metal with some superficial prog elements but i will never call it a prog metal album.

Tsop has enough progressive/technical elements to be tagged as such. The tempos are hardly all 4/4 and harmonically/melodically speaking the album does progresses from section to section.

I can understand people not liking it but the fact is that the album is at least from a musical theory- perspective is well constructed; the riffs and transitions are smart; the solos fit on the context; every instrument adds a different ingredient while not imposing over each other. It's an intelligent album.

I'm kinda amazed how people can see Tsop so far removed from ITP and Symbolic when the 3 are pretty similar in nature. Tsop has the same song construction of Symbolic (and Vital Remains' last albums) of repeating the first half again after a sort of bridge (usually more melodic/slower/proggy). Drums are also intrincate, some long solo sections and the riffs are mostly the same Chuck wrote after Human. The main difference btw Tsop and the rest of the Death discography is the more melodically layered approach; there are more guitars, more dual leads and more intrincate melodic sections; more akin to prog, thrash and even power metal. There is also a more 'upbeat' feeling in some songs, since Chuck incorporated more major key arrangements, but still the bulk of the album is just the logical continuation of Symbolic, which also had thrash, prog and power metal elements on it.

If Control Denied's debut had ITP-styled vocals, it could have passed as a Death album without a problem, right? The fast sections are identical to Death's after Human. It's just that Chuck has leaving the standard death metal sound, ever since Human. Nothing to be surprised after 3 albums and 7 years of experimentation and progression.

Yeah, like I said there are plenty of similarities, but what changed from album to album was the way the same elements were presented.

The best thing about TSoP is the lyrics, which make it likeable. We don't listen to the rest of the music, because it isn't a progressive album. TO FORGIVE IS TO SUFFER \m/ \m/ \m/ (I've forgotten which Metal.gr Archives thread this is at this point.)

Every time I see Ozzy's review of "Penis Metal" I lose it.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/H ... yApu/84033

English->Spanish->English Supremacy!

Should that even still be here?

Nope, and now it isn't anymore.

Noooooooooooo, Azmodes is destroying the Penis Metal legacy!

I was wondering when it was going to be deleted. Should have only existed for that one day and sent to the black hole. Thanks, Az.

I hope someone took a screen shot of that...

Well, I didn't nuke it into oblivion. I sent it back to Ozzy.

... and then I deleted it. I didn't even go through with reviewing it at first. Jotted some notes down, then the day came and I had no interest until Antoine and someone else (can't remember who, sorry dude) just said to toss it in a translator and double it back from Spanish. So I did. I always have stuff saved on a word doc, so here's a screenshot after I loaded it back into MA's review box.

Good thing my Penis Metal review is extremely in-depth and informative. It'd be a shame if people were deprived of its greatness.

Aaaaaaaand another negative Waking The Cadaver review.

Soooooo original!!

LeMis speaks of originality while the bulk of his reviews are for Kreator, Sepultura, Death or Suffocation. Yep.

Well, yeah. Because giving WtC's debut below 20% isn't original. I've given it 88%. So I feel I have some right to speak up.

But yeah, I expected someone to turn this crap around...ah well.

Just because you happen to hold a dissenting opinion doesn't give you any more of a right to speak than anybody else.

Fair enough.

I kinda feel like another review challenge... when was the last one?

It's been a long while. Someone brought up the idea of resurrecting it last February or so, but it never gained traction.

Wasn't Penis Metal actually the last review "challenge"?

Penis Metal was really more of an April Fools joke that kind of gained an unofficial goal of becoming the most reviewed album on the site after it became apparent that it had really taken off. We haven't had a proper challenge since the middle of last year, so it's been a good while. It's not always the easiest thing to set up so the staff isn't always clamoring to make it happen anymore (especially since Sean16 has stopped keeping track of those things for us), but it's always fun so you're not gonna see me protesting it if it wants to happen again.

I would be so down for a review challenge, provided it wasn't during exam season this time. Could use some motivation to start writing again.

I'll do it too, even though nobody ever reads my reviews. I could use some inspiration.

What's a review challenge?

We pick an album to mass review. Simple, like this:



Btw, I'm up if there's gonna be one.

also in.

What? No.

Usually the challenges are Virgin Review Challenges, where the goal is to generate reviews for releases that do not have any.

Yeah, then we get a bunch of crappy reviews for singles that people have listened to on youtube twice. It's a proud MA tradition.

The negativity is strong with this one.

I'd be all for another virgin review challenge. Instead of a carte blanche approach like before, perhaps we could limit to a certain theme or certain genres? Maybe we could even cut out singles and have the focus be on full lengths and splits or something similar. That would cut down on people trying to review the entire Sloth singles discography.

I am not at all against a more specific challenge. Ranging from theme, to scene or style or even just whatever.

Are we really that far out of the golden era that nobody knows how to do a proper review challenge anymore? We perfected it years ago: virgin albums, singles don't count, end of. I said I would be down but I was under the impression that we weren't gonna throw out a bunch of shitty ways to fix something that wasn't broken. Nobody cares about theme challenges and reviewing one album in particular is dumb. The entire spirit of these things was simply to populate the site with more reviews for albums and bands with no visibility. Yeah it eventually turned into a quantity contest but once we stopped counting singles that basically stopped. I'm getting old, you kids are all terrible and have no permission to be on my lawn.