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Hammerfestus

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This week's featured metal album:

Aghora- Formless

 

 

When Cynic went on hiatus after their first album(which has been featured by Reed in this thread and is a total classic. Check it out!) The Sean's joined up with Santiago Dobles to form this crazy middle eastern technical jazz fusion metal hybrid featuring clean female vocals. It ranges from super aggressive at parts, to very chill, to super groovy and back again. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

This week's featured metal album:

Nightwish- Oceanborn

 

 

 

NIghtwish really set the standard for Symphonic Power Metal with this one. Nightwish tends to be a very polarizing band in metal circles, but I would certainly say that they are among the best, especially with their early Tarja Turunen albums. With all due respect to Floor, Tuomas Holopainen was simply composing superior music back when Tarja was with the band. Reading their bio, it seems they had quite a bit of romantic tension that fell apart when she married outside the band(How dare she?!?) and eventually led to her dismissal. Seems to me, he wrote a lot of amazing love songs for her while he she had him firmly planted in the old friend zone. It made for some great albums with Oceanborn being their overall best. Maybe some people think having a legit soprano fronting a metal band is weird, but I think the sheer talent wins out. Great music is found here.

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In tribute to the recently dismissed Martin Axenrot, this week's featured album is...

 

Opeth- The Roundhouse Tapes

 

Is it a cop out to feature a live album? Maybe, but this was a great concert, along with the first recording of Axenrot with the band. I wish every concert I went to was a well executed greatest hits session(that is, if I actually went to more concerts.) I was disappointed to hear Axenrot was dismissed, I looked forward to potentially going to their most recent show a couple days ago at the Wang in Boston. I love watching concerts where Mike Akerfeldt will randomly make fun of the drummer when telling a story. Or when the drummer will interrupt him when his story is taking too long to get to the point by hammering some blast beats. 

Seriously though, this was an amazing concert. I give it a listen in it's entirety at least every year. Grab yourselves a few cold ones, relax, and give it a listen.

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His departure was certainly strange.  The FIRST DAY of the tour, all of a sudden they're parting ways and have a drummer already ready to play an hours worth of intricate material?  I guess he just wanted to play death metal or something again.  

Anyway, Opeth will always be one of my favorites, but only between the Still Life - Watershed era.  Some of those tunes are incredible and will always stand the test of time.

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8 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

His departure was certainly strange.  The FIRST DAY of the tour, all of a sudden they're parting ways and have a drummer already ready to play an hours worth of intricate material?  I guess he just wanted to play death metal or something again.  

Anyway, Opeth will always be one of my favorites, but only between the Still Life - Watershed era.  Some of those tunes are incredible and will always stand the test of time.

I mean the guy they have touring is no slouch. I'm a fan of Therion.  But he's probably just jobbing and playing the set for the tour. I know it happens all the time, but it's usually when a member has an emergency, injury, or a once in a lifetime commitment, something like that. Or the drum tech will fill in temporarily. The circumstance of right before a tour is strange indeed, I'm sure there is an underlying story none of us will ever hear.

I'm with you though. That era of Opeth is my favorite too. It might help that those were the albums that came out in my high school years and young adulthood giving them some nostalgic value to me as well. But the music stands out in its own right. 

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On 11/22/2021 at 5:48 AM, Kguillemette said:

I mean the guy they have touring is no slouch. I'm a fan of Therion.  But he's probably just jobbing and playing the set for the tour. I know it happens all the time, but it's usually when a member has an emergency, injury, or a once in a lifetime commitment, something like that. Or the drum tech will fill in temporarily. The circumstance of right before a tour is strange indeed, I'm sure there is an underlying story none of us will ever hear.

I'm with you though. That era of Opeth is my favorite too. It might help that those were the albums that came out in my high school years and young adulthood giving them some nostalgic value to me as well. But the music stands out in its own right. 

Im a bit of a music geek (like theory, harmony etc) and I thought the older stuff had a perfect balance.  The newer stuff that Mikael is going on, I think personally, he might need to know a bit more about that stuff in order to make it work because most of it sounds very forced to me.  The newest album thought had moments I liked, so I feel the next album I could really enjoy.  Where as the older stuff was metal with a little intelligence, was a perfect blend.  This stuff you really need to know your music stuff, like the bands/artists he's inspired by (70s prog)

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22 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

Im a bit of a music geek (like theory, harmony etc) and I thought the older stuff had a perfect balance.  The newer stuff that Mikael is going on, I think personally, he might need to know a bit more about that stuff in order to make it work because most of it sounds very forced to me.  The newest album thought had moments I liked, so I feel the next album I could really enjoy.  Where as the older stuff was metal with a little intelligence, was a perfect blend.  This stuff you really need to know you're music stuff, like the bands/artists he's inspired by (70s prog)

Interesting. Thanks for your input. I was thinking those albums just had that "je ne sais quoi". 

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32 minutes ago, Kguillemette said:

Oh man that was so groovy. Like a darker ELO. How have I never heard of Goblin before?!?

Then you're in for a treat!  It might not be obvious but they did the soundtrack to Dawn of the Dead and a lot of other Italian movies.  They're quite an 'underground' treasure.  Mostly doing movie scores but its fantastic.  Seeing them live was one of the greatest experiences I ever had because I never thought it would happen.

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This week's featured album:

Amorphis- Elegy

 

Amorphis's album progression has really come full circle. They started off as a kind of run of the mill Scandinavia death metal band and slowly cleaned up their sounds and grooves and added lots of folk influences. In fact, all of their lyrics from the Elegy album are traditional folk poems taken from the Finish book The Kanteletar. Between this and their previous album, Tales from the Thousand Lakes, they really found a sound unlike anything else before or since. And it's too bad because they completely moved away from that sound on their next 3 albums, which got progressively worse until their "clean" singer finally left the band. Since then, they made a return to the folk inspired doom-death metal I was originally all in on and made much better music. But despite the improvement, nothing has come close capturing the mood and magic of Elegy since. If you aren't familiar with Amorphis, this album definitely deserves a listen.

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5 hours ago, guitarzombie said:

Amorophis.  I think we opened for them when they played around here in 2015 or so.  We fit in kinda well with them.  It was a great show even though I wasn't a big fan.

That's pretty cool! Like I said though, I'm a huge fan of those early albums. It's not the flashiest fistbangiest of stuff, but I do think it's great music. Plus Im a sucker for any metal band that sneaks a Sitar in there.

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2 hours ago, Kguillemette said:

That's pretty cool! Like I said though, I'm a huge fan of those early albums. It's not the flashiest fistbangiest of stuff, but I do think it's great music. Plus Im a sucker for any metal band that sneaks a Sitar in there.

Our singer/guitar player is a big fan, so its the only pay to play gig we've done.  But we ended up making more money from that and selling merch than any other show we've played.  Funny because people just thought we were part of the tour and bought our stuff, where as when we play our normal dumpy shows people dont care.  Perception is reality haha.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I know I'm a bit late. Moving will do that to you.

 

This week's featured album:

Judas Priest- Painkiller

 

Judas Priest is one of those bands that always updates their sound with the times and put their own spin on whatever the big trend is in metal. But as the GOAT of metal, they can do that. They moved away from the anthem driven albums of the 80s and put a really cool spin on the aggressive thrash scene that was at its peak at the time and of course they absolutely crushed it. We aren't just livin' after midnight and breaking the law anymore. Beware the beast in black.

 

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Graphics Team · Posted
4 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Oh my, should have looked into this earlier.  Silver Scream 1 and 2 both ordered. 🤟🏾

 

1 hour ago, MrWunderful said:

Some great cameos from other artists too

I love Ice Nine's music, but I don't like horror movies. I wish they would release new non-homage stuff, but at the same time I can respect the route they're taking from a business lens.

Do you guys find the Silver Scream albums gimmicky or seasonally-restrictive? Or am I just yelling at the clouds?

-CasualCart

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Editorials Team · Posted

I find that the work gimmick is used a lot because it's easier to be reductive and negative.  Not saying you're doing it, but it's an overlying trend in the metal community.  Is Mercyful Fate a falsetto gimmick?  Is Killswitch a pinch gimmick?  Is Death a growling gimmick?  Is Eluveitie a hurdy gurdy gimmick?

I say bring on the themed albums if the bands can have fun doing them, and can execute on them.  The next album could be about Charlie Chaplin films, as long as they find a way to pull it off I'm all for it.

Of course it doesn't hurt that I love horror films 😅

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10 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

I find that the work gimmick is used a lot because it's easier to be reductive and negative.  Is Mercyful Fate a falsetto gimmick?  Is Killswitch a pinch gimmick?  Is Death a growling gimmick? 

I say bring on the themed albums if the bands can have fun doing them, and can execute on them.  

I agree. I like their other non homage stuff, But might be so bold to say that I like the gimmicky stuff more. And for the record, I haven’t even seen most of the movies they are singing about other than knowledge of them from pop culture – I am not a horror movie guy either. 
 

I think I like the Silver scream because the lyrics are really well written and clever, and they use the classical scores from those movies in interesting ways within the song.  For example, in “rocking the boat”, using the famous ominous half step E-F from Jaws In the breakdown is heavy as fuck. It basically forces me to head bang every time I hear it, I can’t fight it. 
 

And thanks for giving me the heads up about the second one, I didn’t even know it came out I just download it for my ride home I am hella stoked!

 

Merry Axemas is my other favorite track too. A metal song about a murdering Santa? Sign me up

Edited by MrWunderful
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Editorials Team · Posted
1 minute ago, MrWunderful said:

And thanks for giving me the heads up about the second one, I didn’t even know it came out I just download it for my ride home I am hella stoked!

It's definitely more... varied.  I guess you'll see with the American Psycho and Resident Evil songs.

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