FrostOfTheBlack wrote:
Surprised nobody brought up Katatonia and Paradise Lost.
Katatonia doesn't even play any of their pre-2000s stuff live anymore. At least they didn't when I saw them 10 years ago, and judging by their most recent live album it seems they left that part of their career behind. And yet Dance of December Souls and Brave Murder Day are classics of the genre. For awhile, BMD was in my top 5 albums ever.
Paradise Lost is a bit different beast. They started doom/death went heavy metal, then gothic rock, then doom/heavy, and are now back to doom/death. They play a lot of stuff live throughout all their eras but it seems like they're most known for their newer stuff. Draconian Times is one of my favorites. It's the doom/gothic metal equivalent of the Black Album.
Yeah, I was going to mention these.
I think everything Katatonia has done in the last 15 years or so is way better than the classic death/doom stuff, and that's reflected in what the fans are interested in. Although I still think maybe The Great Cold Distance is the absolute peak in terms of fan favourites. Sorry, not sorry.
Paradise Lost, honestly same. The classics like Icon and Draconian Times are still great and seem like they're always popular live picks, but I don't know if I have any interest in returning to the first two albums, they just don't fit in much with their modern sound. I also kinda get the vibe that One Second might be the most popular album among the majority of listeners, though their newer material has been almost universally great too and probably brought on a ton of new fans.
I guess it's not quite "newer" anymore but I'd also say that Opeth is probably far more well known for Ghost Reveries and Watershed than anything else from their earlier catalog.
At this point I'd also say modern Amorphis has far eclipsed their early material's popularity, though I'm not sure if there's any one album I'd point at as being the biggest. It's almost hard for me to remember that at one point Tomi was the "new" vocalist and people felt like he had big shoes to fill after Pasi left... these days it feels like he's
always been in the band and it'd be hard to recognize without him.
Amorphis is definitely known better for their modern stuff. Queen of Time and Red Cloud really solidified that. Karelian Isthmus and Thousand Lakes are amazing albums, but unfortunately they're just better at the progressive folk metal sound.
The one thing I will disagree with you on though is that Katatonia's new stuff is better. I love Great Cold Distance and some of their recent albums are pretty unique but I think they went too soft. That part about 3 min into Brave is one of the most haunting, heaviest bits of doom/death I've ever heard...and then they release things like Winter of Our Passing and it's basically pop rock.