Good on hells_unicorn for reviewing those Lunarsea albums. One of many obscure bands deserving some more attention.

I'm actually quite excited this morning by Re4XN's Lady Killer review as I just may gleaned my latest fetish band/album (ribald hormone pumpin' emoj!)

In regards to autothrall's Judas Priest_Firepower review, does anyone know what his cryptic title, "\m/" stand for? This has been bugging me for the last few days...btw I loved the "professional pageantry" line!

I'm torn between thinking that you are joking and actually wanting to answer this. You know when you make the goat horns with your hand (like Ronnie J. was wont to do), the two fingers on end stick up and the two in the middle point down... \m/ Horns up.

Can you hear the sound of me smacking my forehead right now?!

Haha! It's like that time I didn't catch what TBH stood for...

Great fuckin' review of Nevermore's 'Politics...' by Writhingchaos. I couldn't agree more with his opening statements; this is a heavy music fan's dream...crushing riffs, technical solos, passionate vocals. And exactly as he says, I wasn't moved by Dane's vocals at the time, but the music kept me coming back for more and now he's my favorite clean vocalist [R.I.P.].

First line and I already got a six pack from laughing so hard A+ man, really enjoyed that review.

Cheers man, been meaning to hit those for a little while now, actually discovered them back when I reviewed the Fractal Gates albums but just never got around to hitting them. I'll hopefully get the third album polished off in the next day or so, got kind sidetracked from my groove with another session at the recording studio trying to get my own album finished.

Thank you!

Nonplussed and utterly disenfranchised by GBs short and friggin' un-elaborate Lechery review...you can't buy class I guess.
*Gasmask_C! Please come to the review and sandwich this one, like we did for Wolf's The Black Flame! (he.he!).

Ezra title for The Black Album reads "Admit it, you like it".

I remember the album when it came out but had no awareness of all of the "Sell-out" rhetoric, which I'm not going to comment on because it meant nothing to me then. All I know is that when it came out it was as boring as hell and it's still so bloody boring! I'd agree that it does get too much shit though.

Off the top of my head: Rust In Peace, Seasons in the Abyss, Horroscope, Persistence of Time, Countdown to Extinction, Twisted into Form, and Arise... All about at the same time as The Boring Album.

In regards (again!) to GrizzlyButts' humdrum take on Lechery, now that I've untwisted my knickers and had a good night's sleep, I can appreciate how some might not lose their shit over the Swedes raucously pounding, stadium sized anthems. Looking back, We Are All Born Evil is the kind of album which, even though it may wear thin after several gleeful listens, still powerfully knocks one about on the first few spins. That said, I always rate albums by my initial impression, and rarely lower them once the novelty wears off. For the record though, I still find 50% rather crusty and low; maybe a 70-75% at worst would have sufficed?! Ah, there! I've said my piece...I can relax now!

On a more jovial note, kudos to MA newcomer Frank Malone for sinuously swatting one out of the park with his first review, for Budgie's Power Supply.
I wasn't even aware of it until now!

I think people should hold off on the Firepower reviews for now. I get it, it sounds like classic Priest, blah blah blah. I think albums should be allowed to sink in deeply over a long period of time before an honest review can be written.

I can pretty much determine what I think about an album after a few listens. It isn't a hard rule that you have to spend months forming an opinion.

True, but it's nice to do some leisurely wool-gathering before hitting the keyboard. For instance, the web-master at grande-rock has been pulling my coat tails to review the new Thaurorod for some time now (it's been duly done justice already btw!) but I feel the need to further cram it into my cake hole prior to giving it a go. Then again, sometimes an album punches you so hard in the crotch it warrant an express right up now!
Oh, and I dug Bayern's latest for Penance...nice to see the PA doom act finally getting some coverage (looking forward to a Spiritual Natural review - I'd write it up myself but haven't managed to glean a copy yet...).

My day-of or immediately after release reviews are mostly albums that I've had a promo for at least a month or two, but there are also albums that are straight up "what you see is what you get" affairs. Personal highlights may change and letter grades may fluctuate a half step, but I've never had a dramatic about face on any album I've ever reviewed.

So many modern Metallica full-length reviews are tainted by Boris-isms, whether or not the reviewer even realises it or not. It has sort of germinated over the last ~15 years, the hyperbolic adherence to very specific argument cruxes... the feigned anger... many beginners fall for this trap.

You know, I listened to their entire discography last week, and then had a look here, and saw just a couple of reviews across the board, the majority written by the same person... yeah, you're right. Anyway, thumbs up in advance for whenever you decide to grace "Spiritualnatural"; should be an eulogy... or thereabouts.

Ha, I didn't realize Penance already a wide swath of reviews, albeit dating back to 2010. I had The Road Less Travelled on CD way back, along with Electric's Wizard's Dopethrone and Orange Goblin's Coup de Grace, when I first started taking a (gloomy) shine to doom metal, so your review brought back fond memories. As for Spiritual Natural, I only heard one track off of it, The Innocent, on bugabootube, and was readily reeled in by the singer's disenfranchised yet soaring vocal delivery as well as stoic bad-ass hard-driving guitar riff! Its cover is pretty neat too...

I just read UltraBoris's MoP review again. A lot of these criticisms come across more like the ravings of a conspiracy theorist.

At any rate, he doesn't deserve to be idolized by the noobs here. I love how he randomly makes this thread and there's responses like these:

https://www.metal-archives.com/board/vi ... 1&t=119089



And then he's gone again. Ho hum.

When you write any sort of review, especially negative, you really need to talk about the actual music instead of directionless banter. Here's a good (albeit long-winded) negative review that I like.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... real/88990

Man those quotes are so cringy. He knows better than to come back and stay, because then it destroys his "mystique." Remember, he tried a concerted comeback around 2007 and even by then his reviews were being rejected. In theory, nearly all of his reviews are track-by-track and unacceptable nowadays.

Can you spell "Ribald"?!

Dig some of these raunchy, lascivious lines from Cosmic Mystery's Lescherum_Shadow review:

"What is most striking about the album are the vocals; they sound very sexually driven. She answers Iron Maiden's question clearly; "Can I play with madness?" with a resounding screech and a scrotum snatching snare" -- (best cover it up with a merkin!)

"This crepuscular ceremony she plays out surely will captivate and include the listener as a willing participant of unholy astral penetration." (egad!)

and the piece de resistance!:

"I struggle to find words to describe this exquisite extravaganza; this bewildering bouquet of benevolence and boner breaking brutality."

Ah, good times!

"

Am I wrong in thinking that Wilytank's review of Forest Poetry is a not so subtle jab in response to droneriot's negative Windir reviews, particularly the title?

Dammit, he always shows up at some ungodly hour! I just want to ask him if he thinks there's a difference between For All Kings and We've Come For You All.

Don't mind it. I had sent him a private message about his opinion on some albums when he had made a thread and he didn't respond to it.

Dug Kluseba's redeeming Jygax review whilst Trooper Ed did a fine job of elevating JP's Ram It Down...(in case you're interested, Lady Beast does a swell cover of the title track on its debut). Don't quite remember "Blood Red Skies" (also a Monument song btw) but admit I'm a sucker for "Heavy Metal", as cheesy as it is. Dig it:

"When the power chords come crashing down
Go tearing through my senses
It's for the strong, not for the weak
In light and dark dimensions

It stimulates, regenerates
It's therapeutic healing
It lifts our feet up off the ground
and blasts us through the ceiling! (Haha!)

Speaking of Priest enjoyment, I've been duly digging Detroit's Wulfhook_The Impaler of late as it possesses a similar hard-driven and caustic edge as the Brits' glory years!

My old guitarist is in Wulfhook. They are pretty good!

Awesome!

Good old similar artists feature; I was gleaning those for Wulfhook and "discovered" Overlorde and Seven Witches...sweet!

Apart from WR95's new Maiden review being a shockingly Engrish-laden piece with very little musical description (pray tell me what the hell it means if you think "they're neither the panacea of musical excellence nor the supreme originality of it. That is." because I'm fuckin stumped), there's one part that I just have to refute with anecdotal evidence, that being the portion:



I saw that tour (Chicago date, if it matters), and the crowd was noticeably bored shitless by about the halfway point. It started off great like any other Maiden show (partly because Bullet for My Valentine opened and nobody wanted to see them), but after about three songs the enthusiasm really started to die down. Bruce announced after Brighter Than a Thousand Suns that "Unless you've been living under a fucking stone, you know we'll be playing the whole album tonight!!" and it was met with very modest cheers. When Out of the Shadows wrapped up, the dude next to me shouted to his buddy "I never realized how boring this album is until I had to listen to it all in one shot". There was a bit of a spike for Benjamin Breeg but once it was done you probably could have felt the entire venue deflate as everybody simultaneously realized that there was about a half hour left to go. During the outro of For the Greater Good of God I got frustrated and shouted "JUST END THE FUCKING SONG ALREADY", to which one guy turned around and yelled at me for not being a true Maiden fan but like fifteen other people high fived me.

And the capstone on the whole experience is that, if I can borrow a wrestling term, I have never in my life heard, much less experienced firsthand, a pop quite like when the opening notes of Fear of the Dark rang out in the arena. People were not only excited to hear a classic song, they were relieved.

I realize the writer is from South America, and once you cross over to the southern side of the equator Maiden fans become the most religiously devoted diehard motherfuckers on the planet, but trust me when I say that fan reaction was split at best, and to date it's the only time I've ever seen anybody leave a Maiden show disappointed.

I'm not entirely sure how the title "Eh" and a 99% go together either.

As a Canadian, I feel qualified to point out he probably meant "Eh", as in "Fuckin's A! Man, Give 'er!", as opposed to something pejoratively inquisitive i.e. WTF yo!?

Except he made it quite clear he lives nowhere near the north.

Yes, that's true but apparently, South American metal heads, notably in Brazil, fawn over "NWOCHM" such as Cauldron, Striker and Skull Fist, so maybe - and I'm going off on a limb here - it was his way of ingratiating himself?!

I was going to post, as well, who else is stirred into a blind rage when rushed through their editing process (which often takes longer than writing the draft itself)?! I was hemmed in like crazy this morning and had to go back to my review just now and make numerous as well as frustrating grammatical corrections! #$%@%!

I read that, and it's both, righteous and infamous... A lot of the points are valid. The point about it destroying or leading to the death of thrash metal, is stretching it; actually, that's just wrong! The points about the music and the character assassinations, are valid.

TrooperEd - gonna do Turbo after doing Ram it Down and Painkiller?

=TrooperEd - Only gave Alice in Chains (old review) Facelift a +70% ... that's an awesome debut!

Turbo= I mean I have it as a draft. I have a lot of things in a draft, but most of them only have one sentence and I can't figure a way to expand on it. Just so you guys know, my Turbo review probably isn't going to be very venomous. It's not Priest's worst album in my book. Sure I'll say it's gay and overly poppy but I can't particularly see a classic insult spawning from it. Hell even when I try to make a classic insult it falls flat sometimes (see: My Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure reference in my failed Imaginations From The Other Side draft.)


As for Facelift: a 70 rank from me very much lands on the good side of my spectrum.

Nice takes on Painkiller and Turbo, Ed! Especially dug this line as it duly nailed's Turbo's downfall:

"The worst thing you can say about this album is that perhaps it's a little too pandering to feminine sensibilities and junior high troubles." HA!

I still can't make out if you were slambashing "Reckless", for which I've a soft side for, but either way, jolly well done!

As a recompense, I think you might dig this Ontario heavy thrash band, One Minute Shy, who just recently released its debut full-length; here's a slewtube sampler:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5UZiaEcyKE

It's a fucking great album, very taut and melodic whilst the vocals smack of a range of compelling, classic influences. Every song rocks; if you don't like it, I'll frigging shave my head and go give away flowers at the airport...

I don't hate Reckless but it's not exactly something I'm going to sneak away to listen to, out of vision from the watchful eyes of the true metal mafia.