Chair: I agree!

Also, that Born Again review was an interesting read, I actually didn't know some of the facts in there, such as the pop singer audition, and that "Trashed" was about an accident Gillan was actually in. And as usual, I love when other people love underappreciated albums. Now I just await for someone else to like Turbo as much as I do, haha.

Yes, although "Spectre" may not be the "best" track on Firepower, it's certainly the "coolest"...

I also dug Tuvok's Born Again review, notably the part of "Digital Bitch" representing the band's pot shot towards Sharon Osbourne (for the longest time I took as a harbinger of twisted and unhealthy visual media to come - i.e. porn & web cams! haha!)...

Superchard's Type O_October Rust review was thoroughly introspective as well, although I was hoping for more comments on the sardonic "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend, a long-standing gem and personal favourite).

Pretty good writeup on October Rust though I personally feel like it is definitely an autumn listen. Red Water definitely has that winter vibe but the dark, warm sound in combination with the pagan aesthetic makes me more of a Halloween staple for me. Bloody Kisses and World Coming Down are definitely winter albums though.

Totally! That's exactly what I was thinking!

Now, I was hesitant to put this out there but figure there's no harm in sharing this wacky, utterly random and off the well anecdote...
Last night, I had a crazy dream where I worked in an office writing reviews (a real job if you will) and sat down to read a review for a (non-existent) band from (a likely non-existent) town called Frere, Ohio written by BastardHead - the weirdest part is it was written completely in perfect french (about 400 words). How fucked up is that?!

btw there's a new album out by Bullet titled Dust to Gold (the official release date is tomorrow!!)...

Pretty good write up on Melissa, Superchard. I find it funny how his feelings on Black Funeral more or less correspond to my feelings on At the Sound of the Demon Bell.

Yeah, I'll second that; a really good, super-charged review. Long live the queen... sorry, witch of Denmark! Now I don't have to come "cleaning" after my friend Gas.

The Face Your Fear dude who states that the sacking of Rod Evens led to his artistic downfall in that Deep Purple s/t review needs to check out the Captain Beyond debut pronto.

I guess Superchard smelled his chance to get a positive "revenge" review in. Maybe the only time that's going to be possible for 'Melissa'.

Although he sounds a little less enthusiastic than his scoring would suggest. Maybe he's hoping for some of those Heineken and women that Bayern promised...

You know it's time to take a break from writing when start to excessively bloviate...

Seconded so hard. I'd hardly call it a downfall when your follow-up band to Deep Purple debuts with one of the greatest prog albums of all time.

New Sleep album, and quick reminders of why I despise the aesthetic of bands like them quickly surface:

GREAT review by Chair of the new Stryper. I'll admit, I don't venture beyond their earliest work, and wasn't sure when I was gonna get to God Damn Evil, but that review was so good that I definitely want to check it out now.

On the other hand, this Mailman dude... what is with his shit reviews of Megadeth albums? That Rust In Peace review said practically nothing beyond "it's good but the riffs aren't as good as the first two", and subtle mentioning of how *insert song* is good and that the bass is good. Almost zero description and a completely boring read. I don't know how that got accepted.

Thanks SweetLeaf! It sort of wrote itself, as when I first heard it yesterday just knew it had to be reviewed! It's as if the G man himself struck me with his lightning staff!

Haha...I sent a link as "homework" to an elderly gentleman friend who always yammers on about politics and religion...Can hardly wait to hear his response...

Great enthused albeit sardonically titled take on the Anthrax EP by the way.

No problem, and thank you! That was actually very much an "impulse review", haha. Usually I try to stray away from that style of writing, but every now and then I can't help it.

Just when I thought that Countdown to Extinction review couldn’t get any more cringe, he makes a joke about Dio’s corpse.

Yeah, what I said about his Rust In Peace review, I share the same opinion about his Countdown review, except it's even worse. That pretty much sealed the deal for any hope of anything good coming from Mailman.

Seeing his name is mailman, I'm picturing Newman from Seinfeld.

Hmmph! That Countdown To Extinction review is indeed quite terrible and tasteless...I'm usually not one to admonish like this but really?!

At least now I know to stay clear of World Void press or whatever it's called...

Hopefully though, Mailman can take this as constructive criticism...

Ah, I feel bad now! OK, to put a positive spin on things, I dug the High Speed Dirt twangy solo mention, so at least there's that.
It's really the tactless Dio corpse reference which got my goat. In any case, he's entitled to his opinion (although how can anybody that fully dig "Skin 'O My Teeth!?).

That Dio joke immediately catapulted this guy into my "get fucked, your writing is garbage" list. Not only are you a shit, immature writer, but you also feel the need to unnecessarily throw unfunny, tasteless jabs at a dead metal icon that doesn't even have anything to do with the album being reviewed?

Yeah, no, this guy has some serious self-searching to do if he ever wants to be worth anything as a writer. He's already starting at a disadvantage.

I've been back on a Bullet kick of late but since it's still a tad early to get my hands on their new album, Dust to Gold, released a couple days ago, I've been tiding and wringing myself over with their commendable Full Pull...this particular review duly nailed everything there is to know about the hard-stomping, AC/DCish Swedes:

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ese/314631

I also verily dug hells_unicorn's recent Alcatrazz_No Parole for Rock N' Roll review and although the '83 classic sort of caught me off guard at first, have come to fully appreciate its eclectic albeit hot rocking old school flair...

Much obliged for the plug my good man, Alcatrazz is an acquired taste given that it leans pretty heavy on the AOR tendencies of Rainbow's post-Dio period of the early 80s, but Yngwie's guitar playing gives it far more edge than said Rainbow albums and almost puts it into the same stylistic category of the early Rainbow and Deep Purple offerings of the 70s. Yngwie fans who particularly liked what he was doing between 1988 and 1992 will particularly like that one as the songwriting approach is very similar, though Malmsteen's guitar heroics are a bit less overt as Graham Bonnet wasn't allowing him to fully cut loose (the principle reason why Yngwie jumped ship after only one album and tour).

I'm off to go give Alcatrazz a more serious listen now (the first time around, I was fully immersed in a friendly game of Bubble Witch), notably after gleaning this hilarious line off Braided Blinky's review, in regards to the singer, Graham Bonnet:

It doesn't sound all that pleasant, believe me, it's like some pro-wrestler at someone's bachelor party trying to impersonate Tina Turner while drunk. All of this is coming from the T-1000 in a white suit and a nice pair of shades, not a very good combination,

I'll admit, the opening track initially had me gobsmacked but it's certainly retro in the best possible way...

Graham gets a ton of flack for being the guy who played vocal mercenary for Ritchie Blackmore when he wanted to go more commercial, and to be fair, Alcatrazz did play "Since You've Been Gone" regularly live throughout their existence, I'm pretty sure that was the inspiration for Blinky's jab. I've actually been musing over what it would sound like if Alcatrazz had ever attempted to cover either "Stargazer" or "Gates Of Babylon", given how radically different Graham sounds to Dio.

One thing I will agree with Blinky on, and that is that Bonnet's image is about as opposite of a metal one as you can get, he looks more like the guy who got Vince Neil off a vehicular homicide wrap rather than someone who'd be rocking out.

At the risk of sounding glib, at times it sounds like Graham has a bee in his bonnet! I'd have to listen to No Parole from Rock N' Roll (what a great title!) several times in a row to get a good handle/scope on it but off the top of my head I really like "Hiroshima Mon Amour" - classic 80s cheek while still solemn enough to be taken seriously...good stuff!

I swear to god if Ed feels the need to veer off track in the middle of a review to complain about how metal in America sucked in the 90s and Europower should've been popular instead one more time I'm going to walk to his house and personally cut him with a Cannibal Corpse record.

Right? I just read his Time of the Oath review. The 90s have been over for almost 20 years now...time to move along.

It was one sentence that was more about how Helloween never really recovered because of a vocalist change and two spectacularly bad albums. If I said "because America was obsessed with (insert grunge or groove metal band here)" then I'd understand the criticism.

If you're talking about the Load comparison, well you could apply that to any old album. "[Roots] is the album everyone should have gone running to after the bloody semen slap in the face to the metal collective that was Load."

Edit 2: Both albums were released in 1996, so it's not that random.

Yeah, makes total sense to take random potshots at Metallica for their bad 90s albums in the middle of a Helloween review. Totally not a running theme in your reviews to do this exact sort of thing with alarming frequency or anything.

In Ed's defense, while bringing Metallica into a Helloween review is reaching a tad bit, he is basically right. Also, Cannibal Corpse's later 90s output was kinda shitty while we're on the subject. And not to further split hairs, but some of us were in high school when grunge, Pantera and Metallica were the only acceptable forms of heavier music that were allowed without being labeled queer, so I can sympathize with him making said point. I got a ton of shit for liking Dio-era Black Sabbath in high school by a bunch of meatheads who couldn't shut up about their desire to suck off Metallica back stage over how awesome they thought Load was.

I really appreciate you bringing this up. Everyone forgets that Dio in particular used to be the epitome of uncool in metal 20 something years ago. I think even when South Park had him on it was taking the piss. Lord knows I made a few cracks at his expense. Another one of my wacky theories that everyone here will think I'm nuts for, is that the only reason he started being fashionable again is everyone hated The Osbournes so much they decided to give his back catalog a second chance purely out of spite.

I did notice a resurgence of Dio's popularity outside of hardcore traditional heavy metal circles at around 2002, which does dovetail both with The Osbournes show and also with Ozzy's worst fucking album ever "Down To Earth" being on regular radio rotation. Rolling Stone and several other popular outlets spent most of the 90s shitting all over Dio's catalog, I think they actually gave Holy Diver 2 out of 5 stars on a retrospective review back in 1997. I was in a cover band back then that did primarily Black Sabbath material (we did a little Type O Negative also) and when I floated the idea of playing something off "Heaven And Hell" everybody else in the band jumped down my throat and told me to shut the fuck up and play my guitar.

I'm probably the only person who grew up in the 90s who never ripped on Dio once and even got into a few heated arguments with friends over his 80s albums. I made a point of blasting out The Last In Line for several weeks when driving home from school back in '98 and would always get looks of bewilderment from anyone who overheard it.

Boy, people really hate Down To Earth. I actually love Facing Hell but the rest of that album.... I remember putting on Gets Me Through after not listening to it for years and holy shit is that riff dumb.

I wouldn't look upon Facing Hell as an object of love myself, but it was the least terrible thing on the album, basically a Black Label Society song with Ozzy doing vocals, which is essentially what much of the Black Rain album was. I was never really 100% stoked on Zakk Wylde's work with Ozzy following No More Tears, his guitar playing always struck me as lazy in the riff department and overdone in the soloing department. This may sound strange coming from a fan of Dio's 80s output, but Zakk really went overboard with the pinch harmonics.

And yes, Gets Me Through was an absolute abomination, I actually procured a copy of that single from a friend for free because he hated it and didn't quite have the heart to destroy it with his own two hands given that he still considered Ozzy his singer/band. Between 1997 and 2005 I actually came by a lot of physical copies of stuff that I ended up hating that way.

a) It was my junior high jam. Don't judge me.

b) Wait does 80s Dio have a bunch of pinch harmonics?

c) I haven't quite gotten the urge to destroy Down To Earth with my own two hands for similar reasons, but the motivating factor is more laziness/completionism than anything else.

a) Not judging bro, if you're going to love anything off that album, it may as well be that song.

b) Yes, particularly the Vivian Campbell material. He backed off on them a little bit on "Sacred Heart", but both "The Last In Line" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtEw8JLQBgg ) and "Holy Diver" ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vDjoLOAA6k ) are peppered pretty heavy with them, almost to the point that you could accuse Zakk Wylde of ripping off parts of Vivian's style. But even Craig Goldie's work on "Dream Evil" went pretty heavy on the pinch harmonics.

c) I'm a completionist myself and have a whole wall of terrible stuff (I rescued a fair bit of it from friends who were flirting with destroying it), a lot of it stuff from Anthrax and Metallica from the 90s and early 2000s. It never gets played, but I do dust the stuff off from time to time. I actually bought the "Down To Earth" LP used for $2 a couple years after it came out, I was referring to the "Gets Me Through" single, which I am actually looking over right now.

Wow, that's really funny to me. I never would have guessed, as I'm not a guitar player, though I do tend to notice them in more modern recordings than 80s ones.

I've played most of the songs off the Vivian Campbell era with a tribute band years back, it's actually uncanny how similar Vivian's usage of pinch harmonics is to Zakk Wylde's. I edited my previous post to include a link to "Straight Through The Heart" off the Holy Diver album, Vivian literally apes Zakk Wylde a full 5 years before Wylde recorded anything with Ozzy. lol

Funny how people here got ripped for being Dio fans in high school. I became a fan of Dio's work in Sabbath almost immediately after becoming a fan of Ozzy's work in Sabbath in 1996 (my first Sabbath album was Paranoid, my second was Live Evil). Did I get crap for liking Dio Sabbath? Not only did pretty much none of my peers even know who Dio was, pretty much none of them knew who Sabbath was either. All throughout junior high and high school (1996 - 2002), I only knew a few other kids who liked any metal that wasn't Metallica, Pantera, or nu-metal. Stuff like Sabbath (even Ozzy era) and Dio, almost none of my peers were even aware of.

I remember getting into Dio as a high school freshman in 2004 and still getting a lot of "who's Dio?" comments. I think the Heaven & Hell reunion was where your average metalhead really started paying tribute to him though there probably was some buildup to that.