It's awful on so many damn levels. Anders' singing sounds like -parody-, it's so flat and unenthusiastic. THYME AND THYME AND THYME I can't listen to it without hearing the original delivery, which had so much more pop and energy to it. And the mixing is just... the vocals sound like they're in a completely separate room from the instrumentals, and they're being very polite until it's time for the big, swelling climax of the song. Except the guitars sound so... weak and flimsy, the drums (cymbals especially) feel at the wrong place in the overall mix, and there's a hilariously awkward little reverb on Anders' voice because it's clear he completely lacks presence.
So Absu have reformed as Apsu with a new album coming out. Not sure if it's the original scrapped album or something new, but the fact that it features an appearance by Ross the Boss like the original was supposed to suggests that he may have found a way around the legal nonsense with the tranny. Either way I'm hoping for some tranny salt when this drops.
Any recommendations on where to start for someone who's a general music lover, but probably knows next to fucking nothing about metal outside of the meme bands?
Any recommendations on where to start for someone who's a general music lover, but probably knows next to fucking nothing about metal outside of the meme bands?
That's a really tough proposition because any metal sperg will spout out about a 1000 albums he wants you to listen to in order to get you to just even begin with metal and all of its subgenres. I think you should start with some classic heavy metal, so I've curated 10 albums in alphabetical order of the band names for this purpose. A lot of this came down to personal opinion, so if there's other people in this thread who think there's better places to start or if there are chart spergs with their big pictures of charts, I'd heed their advice as well.
Accept - Balls to the Wall
Angel Witch - Angel Witch
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Diamond Head - Lightning to the Nations
Dio - Holy Diver
Iron Maiden - Powerslave
Judas Priest - Screaming for Vengeance
Manilla Road - Crystal Logic
Mötörhead - Overkill
Saint Vitus - Saint Vitus
Any recommendations on where to start for someone who's a general music lover, but probably knows next to fucking nothing about metal outside of the meme bands?
Motorhead - you can either go with Overkill or Ace of Spades
Judas Priest - you can either go with Screaming For Vengenance or Defenders of the Faith. Warning for DotF though. The last three songs are dull, but the high points on it are better than SFV.
Danzig - Danzig II: Lucifuge
Black Sabbath - Gonna give you an album from all three multi-album singers. For Ozzy, it's Paranoid. For Dio, it's Heaven and Hell. For Tony Martin, it's Headless Cross
Iron Maiden - Powerslave. If you want a pick from either Paul Di'anno albums, go with Killers. Avoid The X Factor and Virtual XI like the blights that they are!
Deep Purple - you can go with either Machine Head or Burn!
Dio - Holy Diver
W.A.S.P. - W.A.S.P.
Dokken - Under Lock and Key
Rush - Rush
Saxon - Strong Arm of the Law. If you're going to give this a listen, go out on a long drive. Saxon makes great driving/riding music
Thrash metal was such a big part of the 80's/early 90's, so fuck it. Let's give them their own list
Metallica - Ride the Lightning
Megadeth - you can either go with Rust In Peace or Countdown to Extinction
Anthrax - For stuff with Joey Belladonna on the mic, Among the Living. For the John Bush years, The Sound of White Noise
Slayer - you can either go with Seasons of the Abyss or Reign In Blood
Sodom - Agent Orange
Kreator - With this band, they have some classic albums early on, but their new stuff since the 90's has been great too. For each era, I recommend Extreme Aggression and Enemy of God
Sepultura - Arise
Morbid Saint - Spectrum of Death
Exodus - Bonded by Blood or Let There Be Blood (the later is a re-recording of the former with their then singer Rob Dukes. The band admitted that they just wanted to give it the quality polish it deserves and would have loved to have done it with the original singer, Paul Baloff, but he passed away in 2002)
Testament - The New Order
Overkill - Ironbound
Razor - Evil Invaders
Annihilator - Alice In Hell
Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power
If you want to try the more hardcore stuff, here's some choices. I don't recommend diving headfirst to this stuff as it's far more subjective. But once you get a feel for metal, you might be able to appreciate it more
Venom - Black Metal
Death - you cannot go wrong with any album by this band at all, but I'll recommend my introduction to the band, Symbolic
Cannibal Corpse - With their original singer Chris Barnes, go with The Bleeding. With Corpsegrinder and his neck, The Wretched Spawn is my favourite album
Deicide - To Hell With God
Immortal - Sons of Northern Darkness
Dissection - The Somberlain
Gorgoroth - Quantos Possunt ad Satanitatem. If you want to check this album out, just type in "gorgoroth quan" and you're search engine will immediately know what album you're after
Bathory - A Fine Day To Die
Dark Funeral - Angelus Exuro pro Eternus
Obituary - Slowly We Rot
Arch Enemy - Anthems of Rebellion
Emperor - IX Equilibrium
Satyricon - Now, Diabolical
Cradle of Filth - Nymphetamine
Vader - Welcome to the Morbid Reich
Darkthrone - either A Blaze in the Northern Sky or Hate Them
Here, we have stuff that aren't classic, thrash, or extreme, but I want to mention anyways because I've wasted enough time already.
Devin Townsend - Danzig is my favourite band, but Devin Townsend is my favourite musician and he goes all over the place in terms of sound. Want to have a laugh? Give Ziltoid the Omniscient a whirl. Want to appreciate his skill? Try Ocean Machine: Biomech or Infinity. Want to try his Devin Townsend Project years? Go with Addicted. Want to see him at his heaviest with Strapping Young Lad? City will give you fucking whiplash.
Ministry - Psalm 69: The Way to Succeed and the Way to Suck Eggs
Static X - Shadow Zone
Mushroomhead - Beautiful Stories for Ugly Children
King Diamond - The Puppet Master
Avatar - The Black Waltz. Skip the last song though. It's a mess of sound and is the only bad track on the album IMHO
Any recommendations on where to start for someone who's a general music lover, but probably knows next to fucking nothing about metal outside of the meme bands?
Any recommendations on where to start for someone who's a general music lover, but probably knows next to fucking nothing about metal outside of the meme bands?
What kind of music you like? A lot of people into indie/shoegaze/art rock type stuff kinda get into metal "backwards" through stuff like Alcest, Deathspell Omega, etc, really late stage evolutions of metal where metal started to draw in heavy non-metal influences--I don't recommend that though because people tend to keep carrying this set of expectations about what metal should sound like that 99% of the time, the genre doesn't satisfy or try to satisfy.
Really I'd just suggest fast tracking through some key canon trad metal & thrash releases, and then either looking back or branching off from there. Any of Black Sabbath's first 4 albums, Rainbow - Rising, Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny, any of Iron Maiden's first 7 albums, Mercyful Fate's first 2, Metallica - Ride the Lightning, Megadeth - Peace Sells, Slayer - RiB, Sepultura - Beneath the Remains, Venom - Welcome to Hell/Black Metal, etc. and many glaring omissions.
some branchoff paths:
You really liked Black Sabbath? -->
Saint Vitus, Witchfinder General's first album, Cathedral - Forest of Equilibrium, Pentagram, Candlemass
You liked Priest/Maiden but wish they were more weird/indulgent/DIY/basement sounding?
Manilla Road - Crystal Logic, Cirith Ungol - King of the Dead, Brocas Helm - Black Death, Manowar - Into Glory Ride, Jag Panzer - Ample Destruction
You liked Priest/Maiden but wish they were more fun and happy sounding?
Helloween's first 3 albums, Running Wild, Blind Guardian. If this is your thing continue exploring the depths of European power metal at your peril
Did Metallica and Slayer sound too much like easy listening? -->
Hellhammer - Satanic Rites, Kreator = Pleasure to Kill, Carcass - Symphonies of Sickness, Sarcofago - INRI, Possessed - Seven Churches, Autopsy - Mental Funeral, Death - Scream Bloody Gore. If you want it more extreme than those, look into brutal death metal and grindcore
Hard to generalize about black metal, but you'll get what it's about after a while. Here are some decent BM gateways -->
Master's Hammer - Ritual, Bathory's first few albums, Immortal - Pure Holocaust, Burzum's first few albums, Mayhem - DMDS, Darkthrone - Under a Funeral Moon, Rotting Christ - Thy Mighty Contract
Some modernish BM that's okay-to-good: Peste Noire - La Sanie des siècles, Grand Belial's Key - Judeobeast Assassination, Absurd - Totenlieder, Drudkh - Blood in Our Wells
So Absu have reformed as Apsu with a new album coming out. Not sure if it's the original scrapped album or something new, but the fact that it features an appearance by Ross the Boss like the original was supposed to suggests that he may have found a way around the legal nonsense with the tranny. Either way I'm hoping for some tranny salt when this drops.
Stunning and brave of them to soldier on like this. They kick the tranny out, yet the rest of the band has to transition to a new identity. Ironic, no?
Any recommendations on where to start for someone who's a general music lover, but probably knows next to fucking nothing about metal outside of the meme bands?
The good news is that due to metal's inherent superiority to other forms of music, just about any metal album that you try is bound to be by far one of the best you have ever heard. If the meme bands are stuff like Metallica and Black Sabbath, it's as good a place to start as any. Nevertheless it is a complex field of study with regards to personal taste and interests: a fan of early 90s Finnish death metal might despise late 90s Polish death metal. Follow your heart!
I'm usually a doom metal or folk/power/pagan sort of person. Heck, I also have a soft spot for pirate metal. But recently a thought occurred to me. Is there any good "western metal" bands? Not like country but metal-fied. Like cowboys and outlaws and gunfights.
Or is that just so cringy I shouldn't even try looking?
I'm usually a doom metal or folk/power/pagan sort of person. Heck, I also have a soft spot for pirate metal. But recently a thought occurred to me. Is there any good "western metal" bands? Not like country but metal-fied. Like cowboys and outlaws and gunfights.
Or is that just so cringy I shouldn't even try looking?
Baise Ma Hache dabbled with the outlaw/country themes on their The Pale Riders album. The majority of it is in disgusting French though, with some guest singer providing some clean English vocals.
Any recommendations on where to start for someone who's a general music lover, but probably knows next to fucking nothing about metal outside of the meme bands?
So the rest of the clayman re-recorded tracks are out and they are so bad im tempted to an-hero myself in disgust.
For something decent tho,Sojourners new album is quite enjoyable,the debut was strong,the second one was ok,but this one they just figured out their style/sound.
What I don't understand about the re-recordings is the guitar tone. Clayman is to this day hailed as having one of the best guitar tones out there and bands have been trying to replicate it for over a decade. And you decide to completely shit on your own legacy by releasing something that sounds like it was recorded directly through a Line6 pocketpod. I can get a better sound just running my guitar through a Kemper, what the fuck.
If Jesper were dead, he'd be rolling in his grave.
1. Between the Buried and Me- Parrallax 2: Future Sequence
(I've yet to find a single other band to hit me like these guys. They're fucking geniuses.)
2. Native Construct- Quiet World
(Basically a Prog Metal Broadway Musical. I once saw a comment on a video of their album that described them as Between the Buried and Queen Theater. That's pretty spot on IMO.)
3. Soilwork- Natural Born Chaos
(This album is sick. These guys know how to write some catchy choruses and tasteful leads.)
4. Megadeth- Holy Wars
(It's a timeless classic)
5. Killswitch Engage- Self Titled
(I love the old Boston Metalcore scene, as you can tell by my next pick)
6. All That Remains- Fall of Ideals
(Indictment was one of the heaviest songs I've ever heard when I was in middleschool. Not to mention it fit in with my edgy atheist attitude.)
7. Darkest Hour- Deliver Us
(This vocalist kills it, the guitarists have great riffage, and this album is nothing but bangerz.)
8. Three- The End is Begun
(Joey Eppard is a musical genius and you all need to listen to every Three song that exists, even the Woodchuck one.)
9. Children of Bodom- Follow the Reaper
(Epic dual Keyboard/Guitar solos. Need I say more?)
10. Slipknot- Self Titled
(THE WHOLE THING I THINK IS (SIC))
****Special shout outs to Shadows Fall and Anthrax****
In retrospect I think Iowa is better, but when it came out I don't know but maybe my speakers had the same resonant peak as the mastering or something because it was nauseating at high volume and anemic anywhere under that. Now it sounds good AND has less dj scribbles than S/T.
Surfing Bandcamp for new death metal certainly is demoralizing... almost everything is either a gay communist version of Incantation or an ironic OSDM tribute signed to a bigger label. What's up with these people who have like 7,000 items in their collections? Is it like Steam sale addiction?
Well, this horror-themed speed metal band turned up:
And some pretty interesting slam death metal:
And this fusion/zeuhl/krautrock/???? thing that is signed to a metal label and probably has no audience outside of metalheads:
Gay commie Incantation must be that new Thou album. I checked out the teaser track on that one. Embarrassingly bad.
Bandcamp has been increasingly letting me down. Most of the stuff that gets pushed to the top of the list is generic throwback bullshit or whatever crap 20 Buck Spin is pushing these days. I'm finding myself really having to dig to come across something genuinely interesting on there these days.
Last stuff I grabbed off Bandcamp were Tok Yathraa. A weird Singaporean Death SS influenced project with songs based on Asian folklore/ghosts.
And Grevlar. Recent band from one of the dudes that played guitar in Timeghoul.
