Quartz - Fear No Evil

From Heavy Load to this. Guaranteed Quartz. As good as their "classic" records IMO.

Witchskull - Coven’s Will

Heavy metal with stoner influences. I would prefer the vocals higher in the mix. 65%

The Regime - U.G.L.Y.

Holy shit! So gooood! Power/speed metal with a "street" edge and whiskey-soaked vocals!

Suffocation - Mass Obliteration

This band has always eluded me despite owning two of their classics, the debut and Pierced. Maybe this is starting to click now...

Dying Fetus- Descend into Depravity.

I'm not the biggest fan of brutal death metal around, but for some reason these guys really click with me in a way I can't really explain proper. John Gallagher's super-deep but lively and invigorated vocals? The psychotically fast drumming? The super-catchy and technical without being self-indulgent riffs? Maybe all of the above, but what I do know is that this album and Wrong One to Fuck With totally rock.

Slough Feg - Tiger! Tiger!

I've been pulling myself out of the muck after a tough couple years and trying to reignite my interest in the things I enjoyed before my downward spiral.

One of those things is metal, or music in general, and I came across these guys by chance (from a 'similar artists' list), and I'm really digging it. A refreshing departure from the usual grind/death/punk I normally listen to. These guys were being talked about a lot around these parts for the first few years I was posting here but I never got around to checking them out. Should definitely have given them a try much sooner. Great band with a good bit of material to explore.

Kamelot - The Proud & the Broken

This album was pretty underwhelming, but this song is legit. Especially that final section with the blast beats preceding the last chorus--masterfully done and impressively dramatic, and sums up what the album should've been more like.

Slayer - Ghosts of War

Needed some Lombardo this morning. Sick drums on this tune.

If you want a GREAT Slough Feg album aim for "Traveller". That one is probably the most consistent in quality. In general the band is frickin' amazing and well worth your time.

While I enjoy their other material, the later stuff is a bit more mellow IMO, that record is what got me into them and still their peak.

I had the same reaction to "The Shadow Theory" as I had to "Poetry for the Poisoned" - wasn't bad, but I didn't love it either, and it came off as rote at times. I liked this one (and that "I am you/You are me" bit reminds me of the Persona games...), though my favorite on the album is probably "Vespertine (My Crimson Bride)". That one reminds me of their older stuff (it almost sounded like it could have been on "Epica").

Type O Negative - Haunted
Slowly coming to the realization that "October Rust" has replaced "Bloody Kisses" as my favorite Type O album. Whoops!

Coil - The Ape of Naples

Celtic Frost - Monotheist
Their best.

X Japan - Art of Life

Dordeduh - Dar de Duh

Spitfire - Evil thoughts around

Very unique vocals, a simple but catchy riff on the guitar and memorable keyboard melodies before the solo. Glorious heavy metal from Hellas!

The Traveller album is amazing. A user here on metallis recommended it to me. Perfect sci-fi concept album based on an RPG PC game. The lyrics are my favorite part as they explain how the story unravels.

Abhor - Occulta ReligiO

Excellent 2nd wave BM from Italy. This is their 7th album and I need to get more.

To my knowledge, Traveller is based on a tabletop RPG, but either way it's still one of the better concept albums in metal.

Slough Feg as a whole was pretty well untouchable from 99-07, with only Atavism being less than stellar and even then it's still loaded with excellent songs. Nowadays I've been pretty consistently putting Hardworlder at the top spot, but it's also their least heavy album so it might not gel with everybody. Traveller is still only like one or two percentage points behind it (and only one or two ahead of Down Among the Deadmen and Twilight of the Idols) if I were to review them all today and they'd all rank in the 90s. They just had a completely unreal streak of creativity at that time.


Thanatos - Return from the Netherworlds
I've been toying around with doing a Top 13 of 1990 for my blog just to do something different and that's the year I was born (and the year two of my all time favorite albums ever came out), so I've been just looking for highly rated metal albums from that year and giving the ones I don't already know/love a quick spin to see if I'm missing any obvious ass kickers. Thanatos is standing out so far because fuck this is brutal. This slots nicely into that era of primordial OSDM when the tropes and general parameters of the style were still being fleshed out and everybody was still pushing the envelope instead of taking cues from classics. The creativity was off the charts and Thanatos is another excellent example. The opening track has those really simple chugs behind the vocals in the first verse and the first time I heard it was one of the few times I legitimately started headbanging involuntarily. This is fucking awesome and I totally slept on these guys.

Hardworlder is easily as good as Traveller. Most of their best albums (DATD, Twilight of the Idols, etc) are just crazy good and I like all of them without caveats except Atavism and some of Ape Uprising which sounded slightly half-assed for them. They're supposed to have new stuff soon, finally.

Muse - Invincible

The production, the performances, the melodies - everything on this album is exquisite.

Ripped to Shreds - Talisman to Seal the Hopping Corpse Before It Steals Your Qi

By far my favorite death metal release of the year so far. Absolutely filthy.

Lou Reed & Metallica - Dragon

Oh, i GET why people hate it. I totally do. By the last two songs on this record are very, very worth it, to me.

Before:

Van der Graaf Generator - Still Life

Now:

Peccatum - Lost in Reverie


Lofty.

Detente - Recognize No Authority

Simple, punky, full of fury and riffs. Love it.

Anathema - Judgement

...that cresendo!!! ughhh!!

Lately had the urge to re-re-re-re-re-revisit South of Heaven and now it has finally clicked. It's such a gloomy record - there's a real sense of dread floating around.

NP: Vader - Blood of Kingu

First time I'm listening to this band despite having heard of them a long time ago.

Listening to Wicca's Mystifier. I'm very obsessed with the Brazilian metal scene for some reason at the moment.

^^^ I think you mean Mystifier's Wicca. That one rules, so does Goetia.

NP: Manilla Road "Out of the Abyss".

Amazing album. It's epic, it's thrashy, it's 100% MR. This past weekend I did a full chronological listen of all their albums. A few stuck out to me that I didn't fully appreciate before, this one chief among them. It's almost like every album of theirs is a different acquired taste. I wonder if I will ever become one with the 'Road...

Necrophobic- The Nocturnal Silence


Happy 25th anniversary to this transcendent slab!

Godflesh - Selfless

Always registered Streetcleaner as a great album, but not that familiar with their other stuff. I've maybe played this once or twice in total. The first song sounds good to me.

EDIT: Some serious Celtic Frost influences in the fourth song. Always good.

What if Slayer went death metal? The answer is Vader. Too bad the one time I got to see them they were IMO having an off night.

Klaus Schulze - Silhouettes (2018)

Nice chill out electronic music from one of the masters who has made over a hundred albums.

Onslaught - The Force

Forgot how much this absolutely smokes. Everything from the riffs, the guitar tone, the vocals, were what I always wanted in thrash. "Flame of the Antichrist" in particular, an absolute barn-burner of a song.

Man, I love that album too! Actually sorta forgot about it until I saw this. Thanks for helping me choose what to listen to.

Probably the best UK thrash record (next to Sabbat's "Dreamweaver"). Like you said - everything works here and the vocals really deserve high praise - absolutely amazing!

Nokturnal Mortum - Goat Horns

My favorite NM for sure, epic fairytale BM!

Kreator - Material World Paranoia

One of the gems in a brilliant album called 'Coma of Souls'.

Manowar - Fighting the World album

Been on a Manowar kick lately, really fucking loving the first 4 albums. Despite some inconsistency in pacing and riffage, everything they did in the early 80s is pretty stellar with a ton of replay value. Definitely a "more than the sum of it's parts" kinda scenario, especially Into Glory Ride. I noticed they had a bit of a hiatus between Sign of the Hammer and this album so I'm checking out this record for the first time.

Tbh, not really into it at all. People complain about Battle Hymns having a "classic rock" vibe (which I would only partially agree with), but holy fuck Fighting the World definitely sounds like bad buttrock. Major AOR/MTV metal vibes, with very little of either classic American metal/USPM bangers, or their more epic and dramatic side. The first three songs sounded like a parody of metal that would appear in an 80s cartoon, or the weakest 80s Priest moments (United, You Say Yes, etc). "Violence and Bloodshed" is a bit heavier with some speed metal vibes but wouldn't you know it, also happens to be a weak song in general. Speaking of 80s Priest, this is apparently the second digitally recorded metal record after Turbo, and it shows... Manowar always had wacky production, what with the bass overpowering the guitar consistently, but here they sound weaker than ever, like a shitty glam band. The first riff on a Manowar album should not sound like a fucking paper thin AC/DC track...

I guess the new version of "Defender" is cool, but then again, the original is readily available in this modern internet age... "Holy War" and "Black Wind, Fire and Steel" are not bad but certainly don't save the album, just feel like retreading "Sign of the Hammer" and "The Oath".

Onslaught's- The Force is a damn fine slab of thrash. If you love thrash, it should be in your collection


Down- Losing All

Black Sabbath- A Hard Road

Bill Ward is so good on this album you forget how bland he was Heaven & Hell.

Naglfar - Vittra album

perfectly crafted music!! simply perfect!

Immortal - Northern Chaos Gods

Very happy to have the new album which has a few great tracks and no bad ones. Best from them in years and so much better than I was expecting.

The Black Dahlia Murder - In Hell is where she waits for me

The opening scream makes me think that Trevor Strnad stepped on a lego.