Awesome piece of straightforward, traditional-ish, mildly epic, totally dreamy heavy metal. The vocalist has this type of classy, slightly and naturally abrasive, mid-range to bassy, deep, full voice which evokes the likes of Dio, Jørn Lande or Messiah Marcollin, with a timber perhaps ideally suited for grandiose classic heavy rock. He rules. Style wise, this is sitting somewhere between Tony Martin era Sabbath and classic period Candlemass, although this has a sound of its own. The (electric) guitar riffs are very simple and discreet and serve more as atmosphere than meat, but that's okay: the eerie oriental-sounding arpeggio and the harmonized lead guitars (in unisson) and humble but warm and generous solos steal the show. The rhythm section is heavy and loud, and dishes out this almost hypnotic near mid-paced pattern to great effect. The melodies are brilliant and flow naturally throughout the song, and the subtle but very efficient choir layers enhance the experience as well. This is superb stuff. I've been meaning to give Grand Magus a try for a while, but didn't get around to doing it. Will do now. Thanks!

Yeah, I see what you did there Your review was a cool interpretation, and I honestly suggest hearing further material.

It's awesome to see so much love for Grand Magus here! And yeah, you should definitely check 'em out LegendMaker; that particular album, and it's sequel, Hammer Of The North, are sweet as hell pieces of epic heavy/doom metal, and totally worth your time. Cheers!

Yeah those two GM albums are very good, but their new one left me cold. Big nosedive in quality.

hahahaha. Well mate, I was expecting that reaction by posting slam (I think this is the first time in this thread. I like it because it's fun and groovy (also, impossible for me to not headbang to. And yeah, most of these bands have really choppy structure, it's love or hate.

You in a bad mood today mate? That was shitty YT upload, and the sound quality is quite grimy on the cd, but not anywhere near as lack luster as that vid was. Wouldn't help it much at all.

Well yeah, like I said above, I was a tidbit pissed off after having just spent a solid couple of hours typing comments for y'all, only to realize I closed the tab before submitting them, and lost them forever. Well, I could always re-type it all and re-research the links I had included and all, but damn... It's frustrating. Nobody's fault but mine, though.

Okay, duly noted about the shitty quality being mostly due to the YT poster's incompetency. I guess it only proves my "always double-check a link yourself before posting it" policy right. Trust me, I've had many, many songs I meant to post here but didn't because no decent sounding link was available. You're better off picking something else than setting someone up for a crappy first impression of a song/band you like. So I take it this is closer to the CD's actual sound? It's not bad at all, and I hear a whole lot more early Venom in their sound than I did before, now.

Hey, don't let that keep you from reviewing the one I posted, bro!

I'm going in chronological order as is my habit, so I've now given its first listen to their debut. It's really good and not too far removed from the awesome later song posted here, but it's a bit more in the happy bluesy mood inspiration wise, and it also very clearly takes direct cues from early Sabbath riffing style wise (something they apparently outgrew later on, which is promising). I'm eager to explore the rest and really thankful for this find.

I'm glad I could be of service, dude. I'm surprised you had never even heard of Mania despite being into 80s German power/speed. Didn't think of those guys as that obscure nowadays. They had a bunch of different singers in their (awesome) demo days, all competent, and then Klauke for their EP and album, the both of which are mixed bags with some gems and some not so great tracks as well. I really like Klauke's vocals, actually; you might come around after a few more listens. For the record and to give a bit of context, these guys were a promising rising force in the underground scene quite early on, and despite what some think, they're far from just a minor band who jumped on the Helloclone bandwagon in the late 80's. Weikath actually thanked them explictly in the liner notes of either 'Helloween' or 'Walls of Jericho' for a riff he "borrowed" from one of their demos (he even cited both songs for reference, something he'll never do again, sadly — giving credit where it's due, that is, not ripping off riffs and ideas). Anyways, "Turn Towards the Light" is, IMHO, one of their definitive standout tracks, so if that one doesn't impress you, I suppose you won't become a great fan of that band.

For starters, I'm glad Crushed took that one for the team, as I could barely endure about a minute of the Pulverize track Necro posted before I angrily closed the YT tab. I managed to listen to it in full eventually, but that's really not something I want to reiterate.

Beyond that, I was really surprised by the use of the term "slam" to classify this stuff. If I recall correctly, there already was a tiny subgenre coined "slam" in the late 80s and early 90s, and that was slightly groovy and technical thrash. You know, the genre Gothic Slam named itself after? Anyways, after noticing that *no* band has the term "slam" in their genre tag here at MA, I did a bit of research and came up, mostly, with this metalsucks article.. Now, I'm interested to know if the info there is to be trusted, and by that I don't mean what the guy says, which is laughable (more on that below), but just whether what he points out as belonging to this new "slam" genre is generally called so or not. The thing is that the guy spends a whole lot of energy "proving" that, basically, "slam" should not be confused with shitty generic, unmetal deathcore, because that's insulting... Except that every time he offers 2 links back to back and goes "see? this shit sounds nothing like that shit! told you!", I actually think both shits sound, not just like shit, but very similar to one another, at that.

The impression I got is that this "slam" genre is essentially just an attempt at going more extreme and sounding tougher by those same deathcore kiddies who've been raping death metal and melodeath for years, and that they very clearly have no genuine metal reference points in their influences, only the deathcore stuff itself. So they end up with a barrage of useless, samey sounding, boring as holy fuck groovy chug fest with comical asthmatic pig squeals on top, but without the Nickelback ballad moments. Good for them, I guess, as it at least shows some willingness to innovate or evolve from what they might perceive as the beaten path... But this feels a bit like watching a completely isolated savage tribe, clueless to what humanity at large has been up to so far, accidentally stumbling upon a bottle of long-turned-bad ketchup and trying to "invent" the tomato from there.

Do you actually mean Olaf Bilic, or are you specifically referring to their early demo with Major Knoblich of 'Hypertrace' fame on it? Because that's not him singing on this (I actually much prefer Olaf's Kiske-ish vocals to Michael's, and prefer SL Coe to both).

Other than that, fair enough on Veto, I guess. They're by no means a must-have band, but they have a bunch of songs I find really great on their couple of albums. Also some borderline AOR/glam hard/heavy fillers, not unlike some of their more prominent peers like GraveStone or StormWitch. Jester's March is really cool too, and more consistently power metal overall (then again, they're second generation, and had plenty of hints to take from bands like Helloween, BG or... say, Veto).

Intrüder - "Give Me Metal"
Well, well, what do we have here? Damn, I never suspected there was another American Intruder (well, with än ümläüt) before the legendary 'Psycho Savant' one! I see, a 2 song "EP", then gone forever (what? that's called a single, guys), this must be why. Anyways, this is some pretty straightforward, NWoBHM-spirited, rocking hard/heavy/speed. That's a fine song for this typical mid-80s style, albeit pretty by-the-numbers songwriting wise. The riff is pretty basic but efficient, the rhythm section is unspectacular but solid, and the high-pitched raspy shrieks are pretty good, they evoke bands like Chateaux, Grim Reaper or Wild Dogs in spirit and style alike. Not a fan of the flashy but unfocused soloing, and the sound quality isn't too good here, but it's clearly a vinyl rip and on YT, so I'm guessing the actual production must have been okay. Nothing much to write home about, unless perhaps the A-side of this long lost single is of a higher caliber? Can't seem to find it on YT, though. Well, thanks for the oddity, still. Always nice to dig up new obscure stuff.

That's one way to put it. It doesn't really have many supporters around here. But it's much closer to brutal death metal than deathcore (if you look up most slam bands, that's what they're classified under over here). I never ever take metalsucks seriously, but he describes slam pretty well (while his comparisons to deatchore are poorly worded) Slam very rarely uses what you think of when you think of deathcore "breakdowns" and most of the bands aren't deathcore influenced at all. It's mostly about taking the morbidity of death metal to a ridiculous and silly extreme. For example, Cephalotripsy is probably the stereotypical slam band, as they play almost nothing but slams, but their music is some of the most incredibly retarded stuff out there.

Thanks for the honest answer. I still find the 2 pretty closely related in terms of how sterile and similar they sound to me, but it's not impossible this is coincidental. One thing's for sure, this stuff doesn't float my boat. It has at the very least that in common with deathcore. Don't want to spoil the fun for you, though, even if by describing it yourself as silly and ridiculous and retarded, you don't come across as such a huge fan yourself.

I've gotten pretty into it recently, but it's not even close to being my favourite genre that's the funny thing though, all those seemingly negative qualities apply, but they just serve to make it more awesome. It's like the stupider it is, the more I enjoy it. Probably the only music I can say about.

Damn, beaten by a placeholder. Anyway, if anyone's interested, here's my review:

Nile - Defiling the Gates of Ishtar

I've tried to get into this band multiple times, all of which weren't very successful. This track off Black Seeds of Vengeance isn't going to motivate me to look again, though. The first thing I notice is that the drums are the most prominent in the mix, which I can't say I like all that much. I'd rather have the guitars be the most prominent, but it's not a huge loss because Derek Roddy does a pretty decent job blasting away behind the kit. The guitar riffs are pretty standard fare for death metal, though a bit more old-school in nature than most tech/brutal death metal bands are keen on using. The vocals, just like everything else here, are well-done, but there will be no earth-shattering revelations here. However, the best parts of this song come when Nile isn't blasting away at full-speed. The solo starting at about 0:48 is a pretty cool one, and the first part of it is just a little atmospheric, bringing me into the tombs of pharaohs in Egypt far better than blast beats can. And even more atmosphere, and the chanting that Nile has a tendency to do around 2:24 is just great. Both of those things offer up a nice change of pace from Nile's... dare I say sometimes boring ways. Again, this is far from bad, there are just better places to get brutal/tech death fillings. Like Those Whom the Gods Detest, which I might give another shot when I'm done here.

For Leviathan, I wholeheartedly recommend all of Wrest's material from the splits as it's all excellent. As for albums though it's kind of hard not to recommend both The Tenth Sub-Level Of Suicide and the acerbic, sprawling, monstrously wicked Tentacles Of Whorror. The title track of the debut is splendidly evil and menacing, as is much of Tentacles.... Happy listening.

Wow, 5 days without a mini-review, really? And 4 without a post. Well, I'm one to talk, considering I basically deserted the thread for months on out. Okay, let's see what's so fearsome none of you brave metal hearts took it on yet...