Is gobbledygook a genre? It should be, Seepia can be the definitive gobbledygook album. It is gobbledygook at its finest, with metallic guitars and sexually repressed grunting vocals layered under a wall of fuzz, thick fuzz, thicker than the chest hair of a really hairy fat guy.

Damn, the complaints in this thread are becoming more and more trivial. Most aren't really "what the Christ", as much as "Hmm, that's kinda weird."

Not to mention that the CV of this guy is destined to forge my impression that he is doing the music as a very non-involving business. Working in pervert porn business does not qualify him as a mastermind for me. Have you ever heard The Raven from Moonblood? Well, such a painful and sublime melody would be hard to conceive for someone who already has his thang and does black metal only for its own sake or from some convictions of his that would relate it to liberalism, the freedom of speech, freedom of melancholy, freedom of porn and fucking and stuff. It takes more than simple determination in order to make something memorable, something that really speaks and does not pale in comparison to the classics.

While I'm on the subject, I would like to thank RedMisanthrope for his Portal reviews. He really gets the band and it was his insightful reviews that peeked my curiosity in the band and made me investigate them, initially.

The guitar work on this album, I found, was fairly sub-par. The riffs were boring and a little too melodic for my black metal tastes. Every time they came close to achieving black metal awesomeness in the riffs, they totally ruin it by throwing some crappy power metal riffs, destroying the bit instead of using a good black metal riff so that it can be good.

There is about as much emotion in this as a plain piece of bread. I can’t think of any emotion you would use to describe it because it doesn’t instill any sort of feeling of anger, depression etc, emotions commonly found in black metal. I guess, I could say the emotion is epic?

And finally the production is fine; it’s clean and shinny like a Killers album. But it’s black metal, so in my eyes that is a negative because it sort of takes out the raw energy of the entire genre. Great work guys, you created a super nerdy Dimmu Borgir album that raped Dragonforce and produced this bastard child!

The operative word I would use to describe this album would be 'penisy'. It's like a big, floppy, flaccid penis. I mean, it's big- if it could get hard it might be able to satisfy, but unfortunately Six Feet Under suffers from musical erectile dysfunction and can't do anything but try and pack their big soft member into a hole that demands some rigidity. No matter how many times they claim that this is the first time such a thing has ever happened, we all know the truth: the band is in a permanent state of flop, and even if they managed to somehow get their way through 'Haunted' with a good amount of fingering and dirty talk, they only get softer from here.

awful rock ballads as Rock You Like a Hurricane and No One Like You

This is formulaic, rock and roll drivel at its worst. The songs are formulaic and so is the whole damn album. It's the formula that made the glam bands of the eighties so nauseating. Rock anthem, ballad, rock anthem, ballad, occassional speed metal track sprinkled in between and the band proclaims, "We've made an art!"

awful rock ballads as Rock You Like a Hurricane and No One Like You

This is formulaic, rock and roll drivel at its worst. The songs are formulaic and so is the whole damn album. It's the formula that made the glam bands of the eighties so nauseating."

So basically anything less heavier than your average Sabbath song is a ballad.



No wait. Scorpions = Glam formula?
And having rapped vocals and proto thrash songs in your albums makes you formulaic. To top that, how can someone call UJR's playing formulaic?

I had actually expected it to be a good negative review when I read the first para but oh well...

I recommend that you encase your balls in titanium lest you want them utterly flattened by this mammoth of a death metal album. Ever been strapped on your back to a flat surface with your neck arched backwards, head upside down then facefucked into oblivion? No!? Prepare for pain.

I don't think it can be done. It's impossible to hate 70s Scorpions for sensible reasons.

Certainly they have been stepping down in heaviness long ago and as far as that hitting the drums harder might be related to Satan, the other guy does not make any sense at all, thus it will be a flaw review but anyhow, this one is to be fair to the album itself and not just a ventilation of the frustration with Christianity that could be left for forums or follow Deicide if that bothers that much.

it will be a flaw review

or as purely great as Priest's, in my opinion, and hopefully the opinions of everyone with genuine intelligence.

Judas Priest are and always will be more purely and truly heavy metal than Iron Maiden could ever be.

This is a problem I've always had with Maiden, that frequently makes me question their metal status - if they are the best example of true heavy metal, then why does even one of their classic albums sound more like hard rock than heavy fucking metal?

And despite the fact that Maiden supposedly never sold out during this period(which is a lie anyway), I bet they liked the idea of extra cash, so they thought "fuck it, who cares...we'll be richer. If it's a little less metal, we can just tell the fans that ol' Martin was drunk when he produced it or something! Yeah, that'll work! No one will figure out the real truth!" Sorry, Maiden, but you didn't fool this metalhead.

It really does scream "single", though, which is hardly a very metal quality and one more likely to be seen on a very commercial hard rock or pop album than a metal one.

The most interesting aspect of this song is the history behind its conception and inception. Apparently Steve Harris asked Frank Herbert for permission to title the song "Dune". However, Mr. Herbert's agent apparently said something back along the lines of: "No. Because Frank Herbert doesn't like rock bands, particularly heavy rock bands, and especially rock bands like Iron Maiden". Hilarious. Another example of the "older generation" pooh-poohing metal, supposedly at least. In actuality they probably all love it but just pretend to hate it because it's how they are perceived. Thankfully this didn't become a big controversy like the idiotic "Maiden are Satanists" hype that took off in the US because of Number Of The Beast. Funny nonetheless.

Maiden planted their sickeningly commercial flowery melodies all over the place, but because they covered it up with "amazing songwriting" and "progressive tendencies", they got away with it and weren't called sellouts and pop-metal wannabes when they rightly should have been. Meanwhile, Priest laboured on producing real heavy fucking metal, and releases such as Defenders Of The Faith, a masterwork of heavy metal if there ever was one, were largely ignored in favour of the likes of Powerslave. It's disgusting, and just goes to show how the majority of people are too stupid to look past mediocrity for genuinely good music, and would sooner accept the former than the latter.

3 Power Metal

if one is really pushing it, then their work from 84 to 88 may come somewhat close.

No it really isn't at all. Maiden were far closer to a power/prog band in that era than Venom are to legitimate black metal who really share nothing substantial in common with the genre.

Cynic, Meshuggah, Orthrelm and all you others of that ilk, take notes here: It doesn't matter how fast you can play, how odd your time signatures are, how well you can do jazzy improvisations or what bizarre polyrhythms your drummer can pull off, if the riffs aren't there, the album is worthless shit.

Well if you are going to force parallels then almost all of the heavy metal bands from the era can be considered power metal, even the likes of Priest. I dont deny that their were a few elements in Maiden's work at the time that certain PM bands also displayed but I ll repeat that Maiden could in no way be outrightly called power metal.

I ll agree about the presence of prog though. They were indeed more progressive than Venom were black metal.

The saddest part of the album is how the excellent moments shine through the tripe, Dio’s vocals and occasional old-Sabbath moments shine in spite of the hard rock influences. Not that those influences are bad but they just mesh the songs into one long filler campaign. If you are a die-hard Sabbath fan pick it up but Master of Reality this is not, and for the metalhead just download “Neon Knights” and the title track and forget about this album. I don’t recommend this album at all when you can just go out and buy their older material.

Ok, I get that someone can think that Heaven and Hell is overrated or don't do any thing for them, but suggest that people shouldn't bother with this album just because you as one single individual don't like it is stupid. Are all the other people who reviewed this album just fucking with the readers when they call it an classic?
I hate when reviewers act like this.

Everyone has a view of some classic album or another that would make them a pariah when discussing it. Let's just all accept this reality and never bring it up in conversation out of mutual shame.

It's not about if his views make him an pariah or not, it's his claim that no one but die-hard Sabbath fans should pick up Heaven and Hell. I've seen this type of thing in other reviews as well. It's ok to disagree with positive reviews on albums you don't like, but pretending that they don't exists is retarded. I'm not saying that's what he did, but it feels like it in the way he expressed him self.