Mordy's Metal Listening Club - New Albums Every Monday

As discussed on the rolling metal thread.
It's the same kinda thing as a book club but with Metal records instead obviously. Mordy, for some reason , wanted me to do it, but there should be no-one in charge. However I am happy to start things off with 3 albums (no more than 1 album per sub-genre I suppose is fair?)
Links to illegal d/ls should not be posted here, but if you dont own them then do as you need to. Spotify links will be provided if they are available for those who have it (for north american ilx0rs, i believe there's a way round it which someone will provide info when asked)

So how about

Album #1: Stoner Rock/Metal
Kyuss - Blues For The Red Sun (1992)
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_oTIl59RWQ6M/Sm39rJgm-bI/AAAAAAAAABw/DNSUAleqpkM/s320/kyuss.jpg
Spotify Link

Album #2:: Death Metal
Entombed - Wolverine Blues (1993)
http://freemindrecords.com.br/lojaonline/images/entombed_wolverine.jpg
Spotify Link

Album #3: Sludge proggy metal?
Mastodon - Remission (2002)
http://www.burningworldrecords.com/typo3temp/pics/0dfe9ccfa5.jpg
(not on Spotify)

And I guess we all meet here next week and discuss it?

Any form of rules or whatever can be discussed here.

Have fun, fiends!

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/uncyclopedia/images/b/b4/Fiends.png

Awesome. This is gonna be great (I hope!)

I went with the Kyuss because I thought it might be an easier way in for a lot of people a bit wary of "metal", but chose this album because (apart from being a classic) it's probably not as well known as Welcome To Sky Valley , but this is their heaviest album. Brant Bjork and Nick Oliveri were still in the band then along with Josh Homme & John Garcia.

Entombed I chose so j0hn wouldn't accuse me of ignoring Death Metal and Mastodon cuz It's their best album.

In my experience, there isn't an easy way into metal that just skips over what can often be frustrating/dissonant/opaque -- mostly because those emotions are at the heart of the experience. It's not supposed to be pleasant to listen to -- which is one of the things I tend to love most about really black metal. It doesn't try to meet you half-way as a listener.

thx for starting this mordy! i'm psyched, because sometimes i need a "reason" to listen to old stuff and so this is pretty much the perfect imperative.

I have two Kyuss albums, but not that one! Nor do I have the Entombed, have to do some digging.

i'm gonna do entombed. getting it now.

hey forks herman asked me to fix the tags in the first post here and i have realized i am too stupid and post bar to do so, so if you want to take a crack at it, be my guest.

If you may be so inclined, the Kyuss is only $7.99 on iTunes.

all fixed.

oh man, great idea guys. looking forward to this

jeez. apparently, I sold my copy of wolverine blues. that was dumb.

still have the other two.

this is a good idea, too bad i can't get into metal no matter how hard i try.

Bee OK: Have you tried Baroness (Blue Record) or Mastodon (Crack the Skye)?

nope, but i have heard Mastodon in the past and they really didn't do anything for me.

give belphegor a shot, they are kind of an easy entrance point

Either that or abruptum, they have kind of an indie sensibility and some great dance beats

nope, but i have heard Mastodon in the past and they really didn't do anything for me.

― Bee OK, Tuesday, April 13, 2010 12:08 AM

not sure what Mastodon you heard, but both of the records i listed above crossed over to the indie crowd last year, so if you're ever interested in listening to a little metal, you may want to check them out

OK will try them out, i just think i'm into pop type of songs and metal really don't have a lot of those. that being said i'm much more of an album guy than a singles guy, so a good album will always win me over.

that was xpost to jjjusten post.

ksh thanks for the recommendations.

no problem!

ok now i feel bad and need to clearly state that my suggestions should not be trusted

baroness blue record (esp steel that sleeps the eye) seriously recommended to bee oks that feel curious about these things - much more so than recent mastodon

plus thanks you pfunkboy for having this great idea - wolverine blues doesn't get anywhere near enough attention these days

Wow, thanks. This is exactly the sort of thing I always think I should be part of but do nothing about, so will try much harder this time.

contenderizer OTM re "Steel That Sleeps the Eye"

Giving the Entombed a spin now. It's not really death metal now, is it? When I think death metal I think of the usual stuff, The Bleeding and whatnot. It's alright, though.

That Entombed disc is my second favorite by them. Clandestine is my absolute favorite; I never really loved Left Hand Path, canonical though it may be.

Contenderizer dont thank me, thank mordy, the listening club is his idea.

Kyuss: This is exactly why I generally steer away from anything labeled "Stoner". Dull, slow, dull, unfocused, dull. Come to think of it, I rarely like anything called "Blues for" anything, either. Stoner blues: not my genre. Hate the moany singing, hate the long-song/short-thing album structure. Basically, I like nothing about this. I started track-skipping after about track 4, and gave up completely with 3 or 4 songs still to go. Moving on.

First thought re: Kyuss -- barely even sounds like metal. Really just hard rock.

you guys are nuts

Well Mordy's not exactly wrong. And glenn just doesn't got for this type of thing, fair enough. Can't say I agree with him though.

Had never heard this Entombed album, although I'm familiar with them from later stuff. Never liked their singer at all, and never liked their music enough to be too sad about not liking their singer. Rarely like the whole strained-macho-yelling school of Death Metal vocals, although certainly there's nothing inherently worse about it than other extreme styles I do like. I like the faster bits of the music more than the lurching, grinding bits; perhaps this is the "blues" thing striking again. I'm perfectly willing to believe that this is an examplar of Death Metal, and I don't dislike the subgenre on principle, but I think it's one of the lower-yield subgenres of Metal for me, personally.

Btw, I'm not saying I dislike it. It's a lot of fun to listen to and has some great moments (I wanna listen to it a couple more times at least). It just doesn't scream metal at me -- at least not any more than like Queens of the Stone Age, Velvet Revolver, etc. (lol Velvet Revolver, I know.) The Mastodon so far is really interesting. I'm used to their more recent material. This is a lot less groovier and a lot more -- wild? uncontrolled? esp on a song like "Workhouse" where is sounds like the band is lit playing themselves to death. It's totally wild (which I love).

"Ol'e Nessie" is more the Mastodon I'm used to.

It never gets better than Crusher/Destroyer

and Kyuss - 60 Million Year Trip is one of my top 10 tracks ever. From an all time classic album. I LOVE KYUSS! Getting into Kyuss in the mid 90s was the best thing I ever did. I then worked my way into Vitus and doom metal from there (along with a whole load of fantastic stoner rock before the genre went stale)

Actually, I think I bought Blues For The Red Sun because it was #2 to Alice In Chains - Dirt (my fave album that year) in raw or kerrangs albums of the year (back when those lists were great)

50 Million Year Trip! My copy has 10 million less years than yours apparently???

Dirt! That's what I was thinking it reminded me a lot of.

haha typo

Dirt if it was written in a desert minus the heroin addiction with a singer who had never really been into metal whose fave band was EW&F.
I dont believe they had never heard Sabbath at the time though. Josh homme claimed all they listened to was SST bands and the local desert rock bands like Yawning Man.

lol, I guess it makes sense that Kyuss sounds like QOTSA.

5 songs into kyuss. it's basically just hard rock in a vein that doesn't really do it for me. too much classic-rock-derived riffing, and the singer is pretty uninspiring.

50 mil year trip was the first song that did anything for me on this--i like the woozy desert solo jam as it closes out.

apothecaries' weight is pretty good too. stop singing, stop recycling old riffs, just jam endlessly.

when you say stop recycling old riffs, do you mean from before that record was made? Because the fact that every stoner band has copied Kyuss since shouldn't take away from how awesome and unique Kyuss were at the time.

no i mean the 70s hard rock they were lifting from.

So I now have acquired all three of these, will probably start with the Entombed as that is the one I am least familiar with.

please tell me the songs they stole riffs from

::sigh:: you know when you hear something and it just kind of reminds you of a lot of other stuff, not in a specific way, but in a way that makes it feel like well-trod territory? that is what this sounds like to me.

i didnt mean to sound snarky btw

i mean if u wanna go early, vitus were actually more derivative but were so desperate and weird that it worked for them. if u wanna go contemporary, sleep's holy mountain came out in 92/93 and is also pretty derivative but in a way that i like.

I'm having trouble revisiting this Kyuss record. Haven't heard it in about fifteen years, and though I like some of the bands that they inspired I find this a slog. Feels much longer than 50 minutes or so. Looked up the credits to see who wrote what, and the Brant Bjork tracks (Green Machine, 50 Million Year Trip & Caterpillar March) I like much more than the rest, even the ones he co-wrote. I'm not surprised by my reaction; I don't like Garcia's vocals on anything, and, though I think Homme is a talented guitarist, I haven't liked any of his bands either.

OK, just to demonstrate that I'm actually into this Listening Club idea, I made it through the whole Mastodon album, even the pointless gap-and-static at the end. I didn't like Mastodon before, and I don't like them any better after this. It's an apt triad, I think, as even when Mastodon is sprinting through their spazz-metal bits, there's a kind of leathery braying tone to their riffs that sounds of a piece, to me, with Kyuss and Entombed. To vastly oversimplify, I feel like there are kind of three major temperamental wellsprings of metal: overthought alienation, underthought aggression and pretensions to divinity. It's possible to combine these in various balances, but alienation gave us Black Sabbath and Celtic Frost and today gives us black metal, aggression gave us AC/DC and Motorhead and various -cores and now what's left of death metal, pretension gave us Kiss and Iron Maiden power/progressive/gothic metal. Me, I'm into alienation and ambition, particularly when they can be combined. Not so much into aggression for its own sake. I'm as dedicated a metal fan as you'll find, but I'm also a 43-year-old software designer with a 3-year-old daughter and a Scrabble obsession, and even as a 17-year-old I was the kind of 17-year-old who was bound to grow up to be a software designer with a daughter and a head full of anagrams for RETINAS. So there we are. The week I pick the three albums, some of you will hate them all, too!

About halfway through the Entombed so far and this is really not at all what I expected to hear, given the date of release and the general description of Entombed as a death metal band. Of course further research shows me this was during their "death n' roll" phase, which I guess seems like a better description. I hear a little bit of bands like Pantera in this, in that I feel a sort of similar "groove" (for lack of a better word) in some of these songs. Normally hearing Pantera as a comparison would turn me off, but I'm finding myself enjoying it so far.

And yeah, this is my first ever exposure to Entombed. I know!

i listened to remission on the way to work today as it's the only one of these i own on cd. stone-cold classic imo--it's so funny that they're consistently noted as/accused of getting "proggier" when there's plenty of that to be found on remission. the songs are very parts-y but they're played with such grace and flow so well. dailor was on fire here, obviously--i think the dumbing-down of his drumming is the worst thing that happened to this band. tracks 1-4 in particular are unbelievable, and "workhorse" is just jaw-droppingly good.

glenn, i don't think i understand your three wellsprings at all, but i nominate you to pick next week.

I second that, I'm curious to see what three glenn would pick.

The Entombed is working much better for me than Kyuss did. I've never really cared for Death metal, but this doesn't really hold to what I understood as death metal. Death n' Roll does make more sense, as Jon said. Vocals like this usually rub me the wrong way, though this guys spittle-laced tirades aren't really putting me off. Not adding anything, but I'm not gritting my teeth. Some great chugging guitars, but as I type the solo on "Full Of Hell" made me laugh. Not a strong point. Intrigued, and much better groove than the Kyuss.

I am not looking forward to the Mastodon, even though I like it more than the rest of their catalog.

Just wrapped up the Entombed, liked it a lot more than I expected and will be digging deeper into their catalog when I get a chance. As opposed to EZ, I really liked the vocals on this record, this is the type of growl I can really go for.

snap, thats why i love entombed yet never cared for most DM

I'm approaching the end of the Entombed as well; would have loved to see these guys back in the day. Growlers annoy me less in person than on record. When they up the tempo and thrash out for a few moments now and again I could love these guys. Thanks for picking this!

Okay, no way am I making it through this Mastodon. Herman, you know my dislike - who am I kidding? loathing - and it isn't going to change. Sorry.

Remission is pretty great, but its a slog to get through, by the end of it you feel like you've been pummelled or something. I like their later stuff, especially the one from last year

but feeling like you've been pummeled is why it's such a good record!

Bill's a softie , you know that.

hahah

I like to be menaced and emotionally abused more than beaten.

The first bit of "March of the Fire Ants" is the greatest Mastodon riff ever. When they do that live, the crowd just explodes.

I'm a bit of a lurker on the Metal thread. Can I still join in on this?

of course, everyone can join in at anytime

cool, thanks. I love Mastodon, but I don't think I've ever heard Remission, so this is good for me to give it a listen. Never really heard of the other two, but I'm looking forward to them.

awesome, would be great if lots of non metal thread regulars joined in, im sure mordy will be glad of that.

I second that, the more the merrier!

I'm going to give that Mastodon a listen tomorrow if I can; never gave them the time of day before, even though I was working in a big-ass music store when that one came out (I was into the Hydra Head thing then, didn't branch out to much else).

As for that Entombed... didn't work for me, sorry. A pleasant enough listen, but I can't recall a single riff or tune. Nothing about it stands out to me. But to be fair, I didn't like the sound of To Ride... when that came out either.

once this finishes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqCKr5AeKpc&feature=player_embedded#at=11

...I'm q'ing up the entombed for my first listen in... probably over a decade? I think "full of hell" was my fave cut back then.

hellraiser sample? good start.

up to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8ViTp9uur8";>titular</a> track now. really enjoying this one so far! for better or worse, the arrangements are a bit twistier and more convoluted than I was expecting from my hazy memories. (though this track is definitely not a great example of this observation!) this isn't remission but it hits some of the same buttons for me.

ugh, forgot to swap in the bbcode. one more time:

up to the titular track now. really enjoying this one so far! for better or worse, the arrangements are a bit twistier and more convoluted than I was expecting from my hazy memories. (though this track is definitely not a great example of this observation!) this isn't remission but it hits some of the same buttons for me.

just finished. fave track was "hollowman".

though the album is short, it gets a little tiring by the end. I think this is due to the downtuned, super-distorto guitars being so high in the mix more than anything.

but overall, this was fun and I had some good lols during "blood song".

(and feel free to delete my botched post if you have the ability to do so. sorry about that!)

glad you enjoyed it!

I was thinking, maybe in future run, this as a poll so everyone can vote for what they think was the best album?

damn commas in wrong place

or just run a poll as a companion and just post the albums for that week in this thread each time?

you need help.

Or we could just have a conversation without a "winner".

No need to be rude, I was just putting a suggestion out there to see what people thought.

I'm with EZ, I'd rather just have a discussion about these albums without it turning into any sort of "competition".

yeah agreed

Listening to the Kyuss right now, I already knew I loved "50 Million Year Trip", but was not prepared for how much I would love the quiet/loud dynamic of "Thong Song". The trick is really overused, but this is one example of how perfectly it can work.

Okay "Apothecaries' Weight" is awesome too, but I've mentioned before that I am pretty much a sucker for this vibe. Promise I won't liveblog the whole album like this.

please do!

Heh, I don't want to be that annoying, but right now the guitar tone on "Freedom Run" is absolutely slaying me. I almost feel dirty for being such an obvious mark for this sound. Really wondering why I hadn't worked my way back to this album yet, considering I already had the final two albums and the comp.

It's great to see someone on this thread actually enjoying it!

Wrapping it up with "Mondo Generator" right now, which I'd probably like much much better without the vocals all over the place. Not surprised that I love this, I mean pretty much straight up my alley.

i never really listened to entombed before, but i'm here to say it's great work music. cranking it for a second time through.

I hate. Slow songsssssssssssss.

Mordy has no patience!

I'm just channeling Kyuss' impatience!

actually this kinda reminds me of a post i saw on a metal board once (may have been the Relapse board, I forget) where a whole bunch of people said the only real metal was if it was FAST (and probably non-clean vocals iirc)
If it wasn't extremely fast it wasn't metal or good. Which is just stupid obviously.

Not that mordy is saying any of that.

Mordy you know that thing you like to do sometimes at home? Try that then listen to Kyuss? (not that I have ever needed to smoke anything but I guess some do)

kerr, you're misunderstanding me. I love the Kyuss album. My slow songs comment was a quote from it.

oh, hahaha

I was so moved by the song that I was inspired to transcribe the lyrics that I was really digging to the message board. I wasn't complaining or anything.

I just got too used to people on this thread slagging Kyuss off for not being metal so I thought you were moaning! sorry!

I don't think they're metal tbh -- or metal in the same sense that last year's Eluviete album is metal, which is to say: you can hear the affinities and relationships to metal, but it's equally drawing on other stuff (in this case, hard rock, blues, etc).

"If it wasn't extremely fast it wasn't metal or good."

This is clearly one of the dumbest opinions ever expressed. The song "Black Sabbath" is one of the slowest things ever recorded, and if those losers dont think that's metal or good....

they were probably kids who had never heard any music before 1990,Bill. There's a lot of that around , not just in metal either.

If I'm really digging this Kyuss album (and obv love QotSA), what other Palm Desert stuff should I check out? Are the Desert Sessions worth listening to? Are there other classic albums that emerged from that group?

yes they are

All of them?

Also
Unida
Fatso Jetson
Yawning Man
Brant Bjork (esp Jalamanta)

1st 6 desert sessions are awesome, but the others are great too

There's no bad Kyuss spin-offs really

And you gotta listen to Saint Vitus and late period sludgy Black Flag as that is what influenced Kyuss

Kyuss/QOTSA/Unida/Hermano/Che/Desert Sessions/Brant Bjork (and any other Kyuss spin-off + Stoner Rock in general) Search & Destroy , Classic Or Dud?

Sweet.

I definitely prefer Kyuss to QOTSA, especially recent QOTSA stuff. Anybody curious about things like Kyuss should check out Trouble too.

Maybe Mordy will let you choose next weeks albums. I'm sure noone will want me to do it again :)

These were three really good albums.

I used to hear Fatso Jetson's 'Bored Stiff' a lot on Screw Radio back in the day. Finally got around to downloading it a couple of years ago!

Thanks Mordy, I tried to do 2 from the 90s and 1 from the 00s that weren't all of the same genre. Obviously I have shitloads of albums I'd like to mention. But i could easily have done a 80s 90s 00s or whatever.

Should i get another shot in the future, I can pick many from 70s - 00s in plenty of sub-genres. But if you want expert picks in death metal or folk metal or thrash (outside the obvious classics) or power metal (shudder) etc then its up to others to join in! before my time comes round again.

Once a month, I think it would be a great idea to perhaps do a sub-genre theme pick. 3 (or more?) BM or DM or Doom or whatever classics. If anyone's up for that but the rest of the time we do 1-per-genre so that there's always a chance of something that someone will like.

Anyone agree/disagree or have better suggestions?

i think someone should just volunteer for a week and pick whatever three albums they want

but wont ppl complain if they choose 3 albums of the same genre they dont like?

no

it's not really that hard to be like "hey this isn't my thing" and just wait for the next week

i just think people should have their say and get a chance to choose how it all works rather than just making a rule that suits 1 person but forces the others to like it or lump it but might put off others

i mean it'd probably be easier if ppl picked a variety most of the time but you know what makes stuff less fun, is lots of rules

You're getting your say now so why not others.

am i preventing ppl from posting here? i am just expressing my opinion iirc

Like the idea & revisited those 3 albums the last 2 days. Sadly I still dont like any of them. Although the guitar sound on the Entombed is still lovely.

HEY DUDES LETS JUST THROW HORNS AND BE COOL

i gotta figure out some way to listen to these w/o buying 3 albums a week. stupid no us spotify grrr

(ask a certain canadian how he uses spotify)

john i think they're all on lala.com; u can listen once for free and more than that if you stop each song before it ends

thx!

gotta say, imo, the less rules about what albums someone can and can't pick, the better

sorry pfunk

hey that's fine, i just think its fair to give everyone their say. And to stop people moaning later when people pick albums from the same genre all the time.

And do we keep it all in this thread or start a new one so that the 3 albums each week are always at the top? (remember a lot of people will not click read all messages)

Might as well get this all sorted at the beginning IMO.

keep it in one thread imo--ppl should just bookmark it. will be easier to find shit later. if it gets too big we can always start another one later.

agreed.

i mean to me what will make the engine run is making sure we get 3 new albums posted every monday--everything else should take care of itself from there.

some more thoughts:
- Entombeds death n roll thing really doesn't work for a whole album. Not enough killer riffs, not enough variation (where LHP & Clandestine were a nice mix of longer, riff-salad DM and shorter grindcorish bursts). As a 4 song EP it would be much better.
- Can't believe these weak vocals, dude did LHP for fucks sake?
- glenn & call all destroyer totally otm on Kyuss above
- Baroness really, really not my thing. Hate this kind of unfocused, weak-ass, smoke-and-mirrors metal.

Ah fuck Mastodon not Baroness

i was about to say ;)

lol i continue to be amazed at mastodon hate. it's like a foreign language to me.

^^

i should qualify--hate for remission and leviathan

They've become troo metal fans hate-posterboys since they got big and noone cares about Pelican or Isis anymore. Its the voegtlin effect.

i mean that could very well be true but i don't think most of our regular metal posters really operate that way?

like a couple other guys were hating remission upthread, crazy to me!

but you know what? noone can like everything. And at least people on here dislike Mastodon because they dont like the music, not the other bullshit that others do.

a couple of xposts there

yeah i don't mind at all i guess i'm just curious for more from those folks

A lot of people just dont like hip/hype bands. Any whiff of hype or the wrong sort of people liking it and they hate it. This is not restricted to metal by any means. It was also around long before the 1st metal riff was made.

There was probably mentalists who didn't like Miles Davis or John Coltrane as they were too mainstream

see that beethoven...

How are you getting along with that strawman, guys?

lol don't bring me into this.

Hate this kind of unfocused, weak-ass, smoke-and-mirrors metal.

could you elaborate? what do you find unfocused about remission? too... all over the place?

I myself think it's a "riff salad" album. but a pretty great one.

will be listening to it again once I finish another run through the new cathedral. but I'm already v. familiar.

i liked the mastodon album when it came out. haven't listened since. maybe i'll dig out the cd if i still have it. and same with wolverine blues. liked it back then, haven't really listened since. i like the earlier stuff better AND some of the later stuff better. but they are totally a band where you need to know which albums to buy cuz they are spotty later on. the last album was horrible except for one great slayer song on it.

You can say a lot of things about Remission, but "weak-ass" probably wouldnt be the first thing to come to my mind.

I do admit that the drumming is pretty good. But yeah it's all over the place, just tries too hard & lacks any real soul or purpose. To be fair I never liked this whole approach to begin with, even as far back as Souls At Zero.

I listened to the Kyuss album last night. found it a bit trying at first. But by about track 10 I started "getting" it, the whole wall of sound, hard rock, sludginess of it all. Probably needs another listen. second last track was particularly good i think, or maybe thats just when i was getting into it. Not really what I think of when people say metal, although I'm a complete metal novice so I can't really talk.

just listened to most of the Entombed album. I like how its kinda exhilarating with the crazy fast guitar playing and drumming. I like the desperate vocals and the music isn't uneasy on the ear. However I hate the preoccupation with hating christianity and the lack of songs about X-Men characters.

Crazy fast?? That whole album is in a groovy/midtempo rockish tempo!

Structure-wise, I think we'd get more participants if each week was a new thread with the three artists in the title, and maybe even a running number, like "Metal Listening Club #1: Kyuss, Entombed, Mastodon", "Metal Listening Club #2: Hinder, Hanson, Halford", etc. If it's a single rolling thread, there's no draw for people who aren't already following it, and if you miss a couple days it's a pain in the ass to find the actual albums upthread. For continuity we can also dump the link to #2 in the #1 thread, etc. This also allows one week's discussion to go on after another's has begun, without either disrupting the other.

Glenn makes a great point

And if we can agree on it, then perhaps a mod could add to the thread title.

I cant help feeling that a few posters wont join us though because they disagree with filesharing and it is kind of encouraging that since most of you do not have Spotify.

How about records that are in the 2nd hand bins everywhere by the dozens for a buck? I nominate: The Spaghetti Incident.

I wouldn't equate "listening club" with filesharing. We may not have Spotify in the US, but we've got a growing array of ways to sample music easily, either whole albums or :30 clips to decide whether it's something you're into at all.

And, for that matter, I don't have any objection to people chiming in only on albums they already own and have opinions about, if that's what they feel like.

How are you getting along with that strawman, guys?

siegbran otm in a metal thread - in other news the sun came up

I think peeps may be overthinking this is a bit.

I am starting my own metal fiends listening club which is 100% Let Mortal Heroes Sing Your Fame, no other albums allowed

I'm currently watching Fiends on TBS.

They're throwing a baby shower for Rachel.

I cant help feeling that a few posters wont join us though because they disagree with filesharing and it is kind of encouraging that since most of you do not have Spotify.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Wednesday, April 14, 2010 9:24 PM (43 minutes ago)

i am totally this guy but thinking that this lala thing might be a great answer

guy from Kyuss's voice reminds me of someone I can't put my finger on

Ian Astbury

John Garcia even admits the only rock band he ever liked , until he joined Kyuss, was The Cult.

that's right, that does sound similar

ok now i dont want to listen to the kyuss album anymore

The Cult ruled.

ok lets just agree to vehemently disagree on that one then and move on

I'm actually enjoying this one a lot. The Kyuss I mean. But I would agree with Mordy, it's not as metal as hard rock I would say.

I await Chuck's view on people saying "that's hard rock not metal"

Actually really enjoying the Kyuss album, very good pick

Structure-wise, I think we'd get more participants if each week was a new thread with the three artists in the title, and maybe even a running number, like "Metal Listening Club #1: Kyuss, Entombed, Mastodon", "Metal Listening Club #2: Hinder, Hanson, Halford", etc. If it's a single rolling thread, there's no draw for people who aren't already following it, and if you miss a couple days it's a pain in the ass to find the actual albums upthread. For continuity we can also dump the link to #2 in the #1 thread, etc. This also allows one week's discussion to go on after another's has begun, without either disrupting the other.

ok i actually like this

Can a mod add Metal Listening Club #1: Kyuss, Entombed, Mastodon to the title please?

fwiw lala is not gonna have everything ppl put up here esp. ppl who go on some obscuro/kvlt ish, but it's a great resource. also imo grabbing something via filesharing for one listen is not the end of the world--if you dig put it on yr buylist, if not delete it.

i mean if anything my hope is that i buy more metal records due to this thread

Yeah, if you really like it you can buy it. So it then would be a positive kind of filesharing, you would be buying something you like that you probably would not have bought if you hadn't downloaded it.

yeah that's how i'm feelin

tbh, i'm not into having a new thread every week. i don't want to clog up my bookmarks with 52 new metal threads. one is perfect -- and maybe a mod-participant can update the thread title every week or something.

Mordy OTM

i knew no-one would agree on anything , lol

tip: anyone who remotely like the Kyuss should hear Welcome to Sky Valley and ...And the Circus Leaves Town. 2 of the best records of 90s imo

circus is good, but not as good as the other two. I'm not sure you would like Wretch (the 1st album) though. There is a cracking live recording of Wretch floating about however.

ok, listening to kyuss right now and im really glad that the cult comparisons didnt throw me off. track one reminds me of a laid back metallica thing somehow?

good lord the lyrics to track two are some dumb stupid shit however. not that i expect brilliant poesy from my metal, but hmmmm

ok track 3 breakdown gives me hope, was getting a little sleepybye in the beginning

50 million year trip is giving me the lumbering juggernaut vibe i was hoping for so far. and the time change at about 1:10 is pretty great. still having the problem where the lead singer sounds like that dude from beatallica tho. knowing who some of these dudes are i cant help but feel like the musicianship is kind of lazy? not sloppy so much as a little phoned in in spots

i def think they need something more from their vocalist in both the performance and lyrics dept.

ok at the thong song now and wondering if lyrically this is supposed to be funny?

no offense to dudes that like this, but this is kind of meandering in the worst possible way. reminds me of why i dont listen to jam bands tbh. not sure that ill make it all the way through this album, so if there are some later cuts that are going to make me change my mind, somebody should speak up.

yep this is just getting sloppy and annoying at this point. i know its sacrilege and all, but give me QOTSA any day over this. made it through freedom run (which was better than most of the earlier stuff but TOO LATE) moving on to entombed

ok wait going to give freedom run a whole playthrough because this is winning me over a lot more than the earlier stuff. oh wait but that dude is singing now and i am bored.

this would be an ok instrumental album, but this singer dude just drives me fucking nuts. moving on for real now.

gonna listen to entombed and maybe finish kyuss tomorrow during the day. i think i got to the song after freedom run before i got interrupted

ok this is 100% more my thing just judging from the first 30 seconds. pfunk, i am surprised that you dig this and (i think) dont like thrash, because the beginning of the first song is total thrash reminiscence for me.

like anthraxy goodness + slow blastbeats + hardcore sensibility + vocal barking = A+ imo

ok no seriously this is the shit, totally digging the rhythmic trickyness and all the jumping off beats and then back on them, feeling stupid for ignoring all the peeps that told me to listen to this. and again, this is so much closer to thrash/hardcore than death metal that i am genuinely confused about the classification. suprisingly (and urrgghhh i hate to use this term due to the whole pantera douchebag fan overuse) full of groove. lots of reminders of why i love max-era sepultura in here too.

oh dudes, the super cheesy everything drops out other than the shitty drum fill at the end of "Demon" moment is so so great, intentional or not.

contempt def giving my thrash description a bit of a slap upside the head, but this feels all stonery (in a good way). this is a complicated album

even more so on fuel of hell. and then the alice cooper "billion dollar babies" drum intro quotation in the beginning of blood song, oh entombed you are treating me all too well.

which is the first real death metal vibe ive gotten from this, tbh

closing out the album with much heavier stuff is interesting, heavens die is def back to the thrashy vibe, and out of hand touches on the death metal thing again (and is great). really dug this, thx pfunk

not going to liveblog the mastodon, no energy left, but i will report back

ok so maybe i lied a little, although im going to try to limit myself to only a couple posts on this one. first 2 songs are great, and then out of tuney intro to song three pulled me totally out of the mood, and in fact that whole song had some sort of vaguely crap nu metal vibe that did NOTHING for me, trying to get brought back into the fold w/song 4 and so far its working, but oh man that song 3 was a bad bad move.

def getting back into this but that last song (where stride the behemoths) was sort of Mastudvayne or something and i did not like it at all.

track 5 is all noodly noodly noodly and then gets ok i guess. little bit of a slump here in the middle, and then burning man shows up and pulls me back into the album. so fucking tight and full on, digging this as much as the first two tracks, nice and compact and focused.

ok this is the best thing yet, but i am noticing that the next song is 7+ minutes and getting worried about it. OH NO chorused guitar, which is almost never a good sign in my book, although now some atonal stuff is going on that might save it? ok no wait, now we are done wasting time w/the intro and back into the good stuff. digging the song, but for the first time the vocals kind of suck (well they might have on track 3, but that whole thing was imo a fucking misplaced trainwreck so). riffy stuff is great here, but yeah these vocals are full on crap and are ruining the song a little for me. SHUT UP DUDE.

trampled under hoof makes me kind of feel that there are heavier bands that do this stuff better than you guys. vocals continuing to grate on this one. some sort of half-assed sevendust thing here, which i swear is not a description i have ever imagined before and also to be clear sevendust is not a thing to aspire to.

ugh weird more chuggy numetally stuff going on in the intro to trilobite what the hell? this band is better than this, and whenever there is a chance for the instruments to do their thing w/o vocals that is really clear - and dare i say it there is some math rocky stuff here with all the swirling guitar tempo stuff. also a weird precursor to the new high on fire in some spots on this album, but hof do it a lot better - not in general, but when i hear it here i feel like skipping tracks and listening to snakes of the divine. mother puncher is alright. elephant man is ahowy but noooooodly + long silence followed by white noise? why? and btw overall i am not bagging on this album, i think there are some really high points and great moments, theres just some glaring stuff that drags it down a peg for me, def no leviathan.

didn't finish it yesterday, so I listened to the mastodon during my commute this morning.

not a controversial opinion but the drums are, by far, my favorite thing about this one. a great rhythm section outweighs most any band's sings for me and I really get off on the constant fills thing in general, so dailor's playing on this album is a total treat. improves everything around him in every way. and listening this morning brought back fond memories of me driving around and playing steering wheel drums to it. (though, unfortunately, there was not a steering wheel in sight today.)

btw, this is 100% otm:

i think the dumbing-down of his drumming is the worst thing that happened to this band.

as for the rest - as I said upthread, there's some riff salad going on here. the songs really do sound like a bunch of riffs they liked thrown together but that's the modus operandi for so many metal bands that I can't really hate. I do like the little build-ups they do frequently where everyone plays more increasingly more aggressively over a few bars and then they all drop into a slow, crunchy part. again, the drum fills add a lot here too.

vox don't add much but they don't detract either. (as they often do on later albums.)

anyway, this is still my fave mastodon. but blood mountain is the only one I have no use for.

lol alan we have the exact same thoughts about mastodon. like, identical.

*high five*

john you didnt like Motherpuncher??

Since Mordy doesn't want separate threads can a mod still add the names of this weeks bands to the thread title?

haha mind reader

brilliant

i don't want to clog up my bookmarks with 52 new metal threads.

sry to ask a dumb question but why wouldn't you just delete the bookmarks for the old threads every couple weeks?

I like the idea of this metal listening club. It seems like there's a lot of metal knowledge floating around this board, and this seems like a good way to tap into it and fill the many gaps in my knowledge. I guess you could call me an occasional metal dilettante who's been getting more interested in it lately. Sure I owned Master of Puppets and liked the first Black Sabbath album when I was in college, but it was a very small part of my overall listening. I usually filled my appetite for noisy guitars with stuff like Sonic Youth or Fushitsusha. (Oh where have all the loud indie guitar bands gone? But that's a topic for another thread.) So anyway, I'll be listening along to this thread. Cheers.

pfunk i need to listen to mother puncher again (last night and upthread i said it was "alright", but in the light of day i don't know if that was supposed to mean "ok" or "OH YEAH ALRIGHT WHOOO!!")

Was always one of the live highlights along with Crusher/Destroyer and March Of The Fire Ants

commencing wolverine blues btw

live blog?

probably just here and there comments--it's accompanying some work i have to get done

wondering if i am the only one who gets the thrash vibe from entombed. note: i was accompanying my listening with beers so not everything i felt should be taken as gospel truth

i can't say i'm getting a super-big thrash vibe tho that is far from my area of expertise.

this is a great record

dude who told me on slsk to listen to it 5 years ago, sorry i didn't listen to you

although i think i like it now more than i would have then

the old drummer wrote the early albums, so I think you need to check out The Hellacopters (i only have some of their early albums but they are GREAT)

What about Grooveshark for those without Spotify? It's badly sorted, sometimes a pain to navigate -- but it certainly has all 3 of this week's albums.

Great idea, by the way.

been listening to a bunch of gorguts lately. we should totally do a gorguts week, imo. (the erosion of sanity / obscura / from wisdom to hate)

would be really fun to have lots of people picking these albums apart, and though they're all death metal albums, they all build on that foundation in different (and v. cool and interestin') ways.

of course, if you're not into gorguts, you're outta luck.

just my 2 cents.

I don't know if focusing on just a single artist in one week is such a good idea, as you said it just might leave some people with nothing at all to discuss. I'd rather have people be interested in talking about least one of them.

yeah, maybe a bit early in the game to go into that level of detail. but, personally speaking, getting really deep into the catalog of an inventive band that tweaks their formula album-to-album sounds really cool to me.

that mastodon album rules, but i haven't really liked their most recent stuff. i often chastise metal bands for refusing to inject a little melody and instrumental variety into their sound, and then mastodon goes and does it, and they are worse for it.

anyway, i saw mastodon live around the time remission came out and it was at this chuck e cheese arcade type place, and the band was surrounded by a giant ball pit that no one was allowed to get in :/

Mayhem would be good for that. Or judas Priest. Or paradise lost.

btw this entombed album kicks ass

gorguts week will be awesome, everybody will say how obscura is better than the erosion of sanity and I will get really petulant about how when enough people are wrong about the same question they get really certain about their wrongness

I think focussing on one band might put too many people off

Judas priest would be PERFECT.

guys there are plenty of weeks, we can do all these things

Since there was such popular demand (i.e., two people, somewhere back upthread) for me to do a week, I volunteer to take the helm for the second set on Monday. And please, everybody, before you pass the helm to the next person, just take a moment to wipe it off.

: )

right on!

are we doing only old albums (ie before 2010) or new albums too?

hahaha I think we're doing whatever the person that's picking wants to do!

at least, I hope so

well we will never agree on anything on here so you might be right. I bet someone picks the new High On Fire then.

Although it's gonna be funny when someone picks 3 , ltd to 50 copies of ,death metal tape demos from 1989 that don't exist in mp3 form. LOL.

I'll go after Glenn (week of 4/26-30). I promise to pick relatively easy-to-locate stuff.

on vaycay the week of 5/3 but I'll do 5/10 if that's cool.

And since it's Mordy's Club and Mordy wants one thread, one thread it shall be...

but when does mordy pick his albums? You guys have all jumped in ahead of him, lolol.

Ok some youtubes just to try attract people who haven't heard either album yet incase it might tempt you to listen to the whole album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUT2L5zAFOw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-avPZB9h7Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfWI-yV7TUY <---- one of my all time fave songs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV-_kOTW-BU

I nominate Mordy for 5/3.

Only just noticed this. Great thread idea! Unfortunately it's all a bit tl;dr but def. giving it all a listen. Initial thoughts on Kyuss is I like the band, except for the ghastly vocals. And in my mind this is what most metal vocals sound like, so as a first album to listen to, it doesn't encourage further listening. Will crack on though.

I used to hate Garcia's vocals until I heard Unida where it was more fitting. But now I love his vox.

mastodon is a bit murky and impenetrable for me.

He hates slow songs and he doesn't even care!

this guy is a lil retarded right? I don't see the appeal tbh.

silly winston

10 songs in and I'm giving up. Will try the next one on spotify later. 3/10

Just seen this thread. Am going to listen to Kyuss album today or tomorrow now. Not listened to it for several years. Be interested to see what I make of it now. Came to them after Rated R, having never heard of them before (got some three CDs for a tenner offer of Amazon) - but when I first listened to them they sounded like not-as-preposterous Saint Vitus, and I felt little need to return. Hope I'll find something in it that appeals now.

For those who prefer something a bit more musical & accessible check out
http://www.todaslasnovedades.es/rs/832/e9c4455d-a317-4f4c-9f70-108d736bae98/f80/filename/welcome-to-sky-valley.gif

Week 2, 19-25 April 2010

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_H0cvEzwqTaE/S2xtxOQybnI/AAAAAAAAAWQ/xtcoNdwyUg0/s1600-h/FatesWarningParallels.jpg
Fates Warning - Parallels (Progressive Metal, 1991)

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sublimeacide/images/images/musique/craddle%20of%20filth.jpg
Cradle of Filth - Nymphetamine (Gothic Metal, 2004)

http://www.rocksound.tv/images/uploads/screamworks300.jpg
HIM - Screamworks: Love in Theory and Practice (Love Metal, 2010)

I'll let these sink in before I say much about them. All three have double-disc editions that are worth seeking out if (and only if) you like the albums themselves.

Grr. Site needs a damn Preview function. Will this work?

http://letrasmp3.com/images/discos_l/parallels.jpg

A passing mod could fix that image and update the thread-title with week 2's bands...

So exciting! More albums to listen to!

I have that Cradle of Filth record and I'll happily give Fates Warning a shot, but I'm going to need some major convincing to go anywhere near a HIM record.

What is Love Metal???

lol

i dont wanna know

Re HIM: It's OK to listen to Sentenced, right? So just pretend Sentenced had kept making records. They might easily have made one that sounded a lot like Screamworks by now. Give it a shot. I only made it all the way through one of the three from last week, myself, but I tried them all.

("Love Metal": HIM's self-declared genre, and the title of an earlier album.)

Its not a case of not being willing to give something new a shot, its just that I've heard quite a few of HIM's singles and they've never done anything at all for me. I'll give it a shot.

Well, at least I didn't pick their complete singles box-set, then.

we can only but try

I heard Nymphetamine when it was new and it didn't do much for me. No CoF album has, other than Damnation and a Day, and even then I prefer Dimmu Borgir when I'm gonna listen to bombastic, John Williams-esque black metal. But I'll revisit.

The Fates Warning disc (which has just been reissued by Metal Blade with a second disc of liveage and demos, and a DVD with videos and more - different - liveage) is okay so far, but way too Queensrÿche-y in its power metal for me. I think I may need to dip into their earlier, proggier stuff.

I have almost no experience with HIM, don't think I've even ever heard a whole song. Interested to check it out.

And note, in case it doesn't go without saying, that I didn't pick HIM because I thought everyone would like them, but because I thought it would be interesting to hear what people thought.

Nymphetamine was the last Cradle of Filth album that sort of worked. They've got a really spotty discography.

Liv Kristine makes the title track worth listening to, that's for sure.

this is def going to be a prejudice challenging week for me

Listened to Fate's Warning to start my day. I think I've heard "Eye To Eye" before but the rest was new to me. I don't have a problem with this era of prog metal - I was a big King's X fan, and had the first couple of Queensryche records back then - and Parallels is perfectly fine, but I don't really want to listen to Journey/Iron Maiden hybrids anymore. Is this a touchstone record for the genre or artist? I'm incredibly ignorant of that particular sub-genre.

On to Cradle of Filth. First thought - this guys cackling voice sounds like the Salacious Crumb muppet from Return Of The Jedi. Second thought - there are some short moments of joyous riffing within these songs, but wow is this not my thing.

Okay, got to the title track and I just can't listen without laughing. That duet...

Even chanting for Cthulhu in "Mother Of Abominations" can't save this for me. Another point - this album is way too long.

god this cradle of filth album is just unlistenable. Sorry glenn

Argh! I'm falling behind already. I listened to a few YouTubes of the Kyuss and Entombed from last week. I can get why some people said that Kyuss is not metal. I guess it's kind of cross-over metal. It reminds me of some other similar things that were going on in the early '90s - that kind of almost minimalist riff-driven songs with the drop-D tuning - stuff like early Soundgarden and the first Smashing Pumpkins album. I like it, but to me it kind of sounds like background music - not enough going on to really grab me - at least on the songs I played. The Entombed was okay too, but also didn't really grab me. I'm not sure why. I do like some later bands that took that direction but kind of went a bit more mathy, like Meshuggah, although even that can get a bit monotonous because of the shouty vocals.

OK, "unlistenable" seems like about the only thing you're not supposed to say in a Listening Club.

The voice is really interesting actually. I'm used to grating/obtuse metal voices taking the form of the death metal growl. This is frantic almost, insane, gibbering. It sounds like he's using his tongue a bunch in pronunciation (as opposed to his throat).

just squeezed the kyuss album into week #1 last night while cooking. as expected, I love the music but the vocals and lyrics still grate.

I love "green machine" tho. brought back fond memories of staying up late to watch (mostly horrible) videos on headbanger's ball.

and maybe this is just because I wasn't stoned to the bone, but the album really overstays its welcome, huh?

also, lol:

this is def going to be a prejudice challenging week for me

― HOT DISH THYME MACHINE (jjjusten), Monday, April 19, 2010 4:27 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark

You guys wanna keep this on one thread? Gonna make it harder for search. Let me know on this thread if you wanna spin off or just keep renaming it.
Gonna try the cradle of filth.

now that I'm seeing this in action, it does seem to make sense to break it up each week, yeah.

yes, but mordy says he wants it all on one thread with the weeks albums added to the thread title.

We can do whatever the majority of people want. I'm just balking at the idea of having 52 metal listening threads this year. We can start a new thread when this one starts having trouble loading, but we only have 308 posts right now. It shouldn't be too hard to ctrl+f the thread atm.

how about something like 5 weeks per thread, append the bands to the title when we hit the fifth week?

dunno. I don't really care too much either way, honestly.

I also like the idea of people being able to chat about previous bands in the thread that the current discussion is occurring in. I'm not into saying that because the week is over that means those albums are done for discussion.

How about changing the thread on the first monday of each month if people dont want to load full threads?

So I'm kinda digging the Cradle of Filth album so far. The guy's voice is distinctive (at the very least), but I actually think it suits the music (the dueling guitars, the gothy tone). I can't imagine really falling in love with this album -- it's not really my kind of music -- but it has its moments (really enjoyed "Absinthe with Faust," specifically, also "Gilded Cunt"). I guess this is the kind of music that The Used and My Chemical Romance got their shtick off of?

Changed the title.

Is Sarah Jezebel Deva the vocalist on Nymphetamine?

Nevermind, apparently it's Liv Kristine.

I hate to be this guy, but I don't hear any metal in HIM. I hear stuff like Thrice, or AFI, or The Used, and even like The Living End (one song actually sounded a lot like the Living End's "Read About It"), but def no metal in it.

i couldn't get past the 5th song, Sorry Glenn.

I listened to the whole thing. Mostly unmemorable to me, but if this had come out while I was in highschool I would've prob fallen for it big time. It sounds a lot like a lot of the music I was into in 11th grade.

listening to HIM now

Joined the party late, but I managed to listen to the Kyuss and Entombed this morning. Liked the Entombed quite a bit, the Kyuss not so much. I had not heard either before. I was already familiar with the Mastodon and love it. Listening to HIM now... hmm, not at all what I was expecting. Is this considered metal? I'm surprised.

No need to apologize, pfunkboy or anybody, but it's definitely more interesting if you try to say something descriptive about your listening experience, rather than just reporting when it ended!

I picked the HIM album as a deliberate compare-and-contrast to the Kyuss record from last week. Both are clearly in some borderland informed by metal, but maybe or maybe not metal themselves. But what determines this? Take HIM's "Shatter Me With Hope", for example. Crunchy, distorted guitars, stomping drums, some wailing lead bits, surging bass, empassioned and oft-breaking vocals. How is this not metal? Easy to point out particular kinds of metal it isn't, but how do you justify saying it's not metal at all? I don't mean that as a "how dare you?", but as a genuine inquiry. If you instinctively feel that this isn't metal, examine your instinct and see if you can explain what it arises from.

Likewise, how is "Disarm Me (With Your Loneliness)" not a classically structured metal power-ballad? How is it different, in nature, from Queensrÿche's "Silent Lucidity", say?

let's be straight for a sec--there is no way HIM would be considered metal if they were american, right?

this seems to essentially be mall-rock except these guys are total pros when it comes to writing hooks?

if there was anything remotely interesting about the production i could give this a positive review tbh

glenn, I guess I wonder by that measure (breaking voices, surging bass, crunchy guitars) that makes bands like Thursday, Thrice, Coheed + Cambria, My Chemical Romance, or The Used metal too. Obv genres are as useful as far as they help communicate, and I'm not trying to draw firm lines where this is metal and this isn't, but I wonder what the use is to call HIM metal when they seem to share a lot of commonalities with a band like Evanescence and less so with a band like Iron Maiden, or Black Sabbath (whether or not those are huge influences on them). And obv influences distill in weird ways and maybe in some ways a band like Thrice IS heavily influenced by metal. But what does it give us to call HIM metal outside making explicit that influence (that could otherwise be stated/acknowledged).

this actually seems to be of a piece with europe's boner for crunchy-but-melodic rock that i am tangentially familiar with, except it gets marketed to teenage girls too?

i'm on the 6th track--i mean, after a while you've reached your daily limit of sugary hooks, right?

Lacuna Coil-style

Turbonegro do it so so so much better

I was actually going to do Turbonegro - Apocalypse Dudes last week but I decided against it as I knew far too many would say it wasnt metal.

Wrapping up last week's right now with my 100th or so listen to Remission. Such an absolutely fantastic album and the first I turn to when I want Mastodon to pummel me instead of regaling me with prog tales of Rasputin and shit. "March of the Fire Ants", "Mother Puncher", "Ol'e Nessie", love 'em all.

I will give the HIM a fair shot, but I could never get the Spotify U.S. proxy thing to work right and it's not on Grooveshark, so unless I find another way I might skip it.

I guess the good news about weeks like this is that I don't have to worry someone will beat me to the albums I'm gonna pick.

it's on lala jon

actually that reminds me the fates warning is not on lala--any u.s. bros have any tips for hearing that?

Fates Warning is on Grooveshark.

Thanks for the lala tip.

ok word. will investigate.

"in the arms of rain" is my new favorite HIM track fyi

lol i'm probably gonna download that one track for the misc. section of my ipod

Seeing some of the band names tossed around, I guess I shouldn't be so dismissive of HIM. I mean, I have at one point or another heard and enjoyed album's by Thrice and Coheed and Cambria... so... glass houses and such.

i am liking it WAY more than i ever thought (tho it's still outside of something i would actually buy) so props glenn, i would have just ignorantly hated on this band without you.

I think it's a context issue. When I come to a Coheed album I'm expecting one thing, and when I come to a HIM album (through the metal listening thread, but through the genre signifiers too) I'm expecting another and then it fails to deliver. It's not a super successful album as Hot Topic Punk either tho -- since the tunes aren't super memorable and I'd still rather listen to MCR's Teenagers again. So it kinda fails on its own level, not to mention failing on the level on which I was trying to listen to it. It took half the album before I realized that it wasn't about to turn into metal (there's that turn on so many albums where the first track is soft, melodic, and then the next track is brutal) and that never happens here. But maybe it says something about me that I expect brutality from metal and am disappointed when it doesn't show up.

(Also, glenn, I think it was a great idea to include HIM if only to open up these discussions about what is metal, what is HIM, etc. So even if I'm hating on it, I think it was a fab choice.)

xp i disagree with part of that--i think it's pretty successful on its own terms. i guess i can see mcr being more "memorable" but i always found the tone of their stuff a complete turnoff, where HIM is kinda campy in a way i can get with.

So the first track on HIM was a lot better than I expected, but "Scared to Death" is killing a lot of the goodwill built by it. This is just too far on the cheesy ballad end of things for my tastes. Yeah, wow, the "I am scared to death to fall in love with yooooouuuu-oooh-oohhh" is just killing me. Hoping the rest of the album has a lot less of this and more of the first track.

and yeah ppl in this thread shouldn't fear bringing in something "not metal enough" esp. since i'm pretty sure we all listen to plenty of other kinds of music.

i think scared to death was the worst track actually

Yeah "Heartkiller" is a pretty good pop tune.

Should've been able to tell from the title alone, but "Disarm Me (With Your Loneliness)" is on some 80s power ballad ish, and not really in a good way.

"Love, The Hardest Way" has a killer solo but I wish they'd have kept those synths from the intro going.

(xp from back upthread where Mordy mentioned Thrice)

I wasn't saying that breaking voices, surging bass and crunchy guitars inherently make something metal, I was asking what does. I just went and listened to some Thrice, for comparison. Clearly they have a lot of non-metal songs, but if I take the most metal-ish ones I can quickly find, like "To Awake and Avenge the Dead" or "The Earth Will Shake", I still find a couple easily identifiable non-metal elements: the singing goes between hardcore shouting and soulful sighing and this emo-ish sensitive-boy croon, and the drums are much more twitchy than battering. It'd take me a while to construct a music-theoretical explication of what I mean by that, exactly, but I have a feeling it could be done.

Now take nearly anything loud from Sentenced's final album, say "Vengeance Is Mine" or "Consider Us Dead" or "Lower the Flags". As far as I can hear, HIM are doing a very similar thing. A little more production sheen, a little more keyboard support, and Ville Laihiala's singing has a throatier rasp than Ville Valo's, but otherwise it seems to me that it could easily be the same band, a few years apart. Now you could say that by the end, Sentenced wasn't "really" making metal, either, but to my ears it's a pretty smooth continuum all the way back to Down, at least, and I hear plenty of similarity in the band's music even back to their two albums with Jarva grunting.

So take these gradual musical evolutions, and I don't understand how we confidently draw lines and say "Oh, this clearly isn't metal". Not on aesthetic grounds, I mean. If we're bringing album-covers and politics and other stuff into it, that's its' own deal. But if tomorrow we unearthed two unknown early HIM demos with a death-metal singer, would we feel differently? If so, I think we're not so smart.

My own theory (and this is why I used HIM's own "genre" label, Love Metal) is that the thing we're responding to here is, more than anything else, Ville Valo's emotional affect and vocal presence. We're used to distance, to listening to metal as observation. Guys in corpsepaint are doing a spectator sport; they're not offering to come spoon with you and get paint in your hair. Ditto for power-metal technique, or black-metal muttering, or Dani's shrieking, or obviously anybody trying to sound like a monster. Valo's singing, on the other hand, or maybe more importantly the production of his singing, is disarmingly human, more Tori Amos than Dio or Gaahl or Wrest. More seduction than ceremony. Oh, and he sounds happy. Not a small thing, that last point.

If there's anything to this idea, by which I mean anything that resonates with anybody other than me, I think it has interesting cultural implications for the form. If happiness and unavoidance of contact are what makes this "not" metal, should they?

that is interesting reading, but tbh what makes this "not metal" to me is the straight-up melodic pop chord progressions and song structures they use on exactly 100% of the album.

We're used to distance, to listening to metal as observation. Guys in corpsepaint are doing a spectator sport; they're not offering to come spoon with you and get paint in your hair. Ditto for power-metal technique, or black-metal muttering, or Dani's shrieking, or obviously anybody trying to sound like a monster. Valo's singing, on the other hand, or maybe more importantly the production of his singing, is disarmingly human

This feels false to me. On one hand, even the most human voice (let's say Joni Mitchell imo) is still affected when singing and is constantly using that affect to deal with affect/emotions in really interesting ways. So there's a level of spectator in all music. No one is rubbing their paint in your hair. But moreso, in many ways metal is even more personal to me and is often dealing with affect in a way that's incredible intimate. Sometimes that's terrifying, or more recently in dealing with NSBM, is there anything more personal than listening to a band that hates me? Whose music is being aimed precisely towards me and my personal identity? By contrast to that, HIM is incredibly distant, and many of their lyrical/musical tropes are almost too cliched to strike in a personal way at all. To draw a comparison to last week's albums, I feel much closer to Kyuss than I do now to HIM -- part of that is sensorium-related (or synesthesia) as I associate Kyuss now with a warmness, a slow desert feel, like lying out on a bench in the sun (and it helped that the day I first listened to it was really warm and I sat outside, and there's a drug association there too). With HIM I feel impossibly distant, almost like I'd have to be a totally different person to relate to what's going on there (specifically, a 17 year old version of me).

Also, I don't hear happiness in his voice. Is there a specific track you're hearing that in?

but i agree, dude's vocals are a+

You've got some great points in there glenn. Not sure I've got my thoughts in a nice orderly place to respond, but in general I pretty much agree with your general gist.

Just wrapped up the HIM. I would say there might be a handful of tracks I'd be willing to hear again, but I can't say I'll find myself aching to go back to any of it. There was a time in my life where this would have been right up my alley, but I feel like I've heard enough variations on this type of music that I don't have a place for it. I can see the merit and understand why he's got a pretty dedicated following, but I just don't feel like this is offering me something I can't find in other bands.

I'm surprised Chuck isn't taking part in this.

Sure, all recorded music is obviously distanced by definition. But being Jewish and listening to NSBM is "personal" on a different axis than what I meant. I didn't mean that Valo's style "makes" you feel close to him; that part of your reaction is entirely up to you. But he sounds open, in a way that most metal singing feels to me much more closed. Or at least that's my subjective attempt to distill the objective difference, which is obviously a dubious proposition (but then, so is typing about music at all).

goddammit i accidentally listened to three songs from the nymphetamine bonus disc instead of the album itself

I guess I hear his "openness" as stylized in a totally different way, which may be a product of listening to so much "emo" over the last decade. Artists who I generally associate with openness (Chris Carrabba, earlier Conor Oberst, Geoff Rickley) feel open to me because it sounds like there's so much risk for them in singing what they sing -- so much seems almost affectless (particularly stuff like "This Bitter Pill," "Understanding in a Car Crash") which is an affect itself, but there's something raw here. I can't get by here how stylized the vocals still are, which doesn't code for me as openness. (Death metal growls, which I still can't wait to discuss, and I've got a paper on them that I'll be ready to show you guys in a few weeks, are open to me in a totally different way.) The vocals are too clean, and even when they break-falter-crack they do so in a way that's so immediately recognizable as a trope of the genre that I'm not impressed by the "openness."

(Which is to say: This definitely has something to do with when I'm hearing this, and I might've felt a little intimate connection to the singer if I had heard it just a few years ago. Maybe.)

I've got a paper on them that I'll be ready to show you guys in a few weeks

psyched for this!

HIM def young person's music in general

^^^^^

If HIM were around in 1991-92 I'd have been in heaven.

Re "young person's music", I note for the record that a) I'm 43, but b) I often still respond very positively to art that I "would have" liked when I was younger.

Also, I definitely agree that HIM is stylized, and I didn't mean that Valo is impressive or unusual in his "openness". Maybe reverse the question: is there anybody you do think of as clearly metal whose singer sings like that? Could Entombed be metal if they had Conor Oberst singing?

I like early bright eyes , but keep conor away from metal!

throwing in a vote for eluveitie's Slaina album.

Eluveitie is remarkable. I can't wait for folk metal week(s) (there's so many of it!).

Btw, I just wanted to give kudos to kerr + glenn. Both weeks are really productive in terms of how the albums speak to one another, especially in unpredictable ways. These three albums clearly share something (some kind of gothic sublimity), though how they go about it is so different from each other. More to say on this after I've listened to the albums a bit more, but esp Fates Warning w/r/t HIM, where one expression is elongated, bombastic, stylized in a really familiar metal way and the other is more softened, pop, mall-style (whatever that may or may not be), but both seem to be drawing from similar impulses. The theatrically occult, the dramatically morbid. Cradle of Filth too, tho there the voice is doing such weird things (it's almost insane, the more I listen to it -- it's like a voice of total lunacy in such a really interesting way) that it's hard to really compare it with the other two. Ie: It's hard for me to get past the voice. But clearly they're all covering similar aesthetic terrain, but in such different (chronological, stylistic) ways.

One thing I'm interested in w/r/t metal is how often it's coded super masculine (Deena Weinstein writes about this a bit in her book), but stuff like this week's albums seem to undermine that. It's so theatrical and esp re: HIM very soft almost, without the hard masculine edges you expect from metal. (I used to see this a lot when I hung around metal/punk forums and something like HIM would often be called "gay," or something like that which indicates the listener's discomfort at hearing something that doesn't conform to the expectations of metal music.)

Another reason I hate Him is because they forced the Doug Scharin HIM to change their name despite doug having it first.

What Mordy says about COF/Him being "mallrock" they do get Kerrang covers and lots of teenage girls like them.

Actually, I think Scharin forced the Finnish HIM to release their US material as HER until they eventually paid him for right to share the name.

For the curious, and especially those among the curious who think of Conor Oberst as the antithesis of metal, the second disc in the two-disc version of Screamworks is Valo doing hushed mostly-acoustic versions of the whole album. Really.

Haven't listened to this Cradle of Filth in a loooong time, think it still might be my favorite of theirs. They may be pretty much a cartoon version of an extreme metal band at times, but I still feel like this album is full of some pretty great riffs and solos. Love pretty much all of the guitar playing in "Nemesis".

Like the theatrical piano bit in "Gabrielle" would annoy me in pretty much any other band, but its all part of the CoF charm.

Hahaha this bit in "Absinthe with Faust" reminds me sooo much of the Tenacious D inward-singing skit. Never caught that before.

haven't listened to any of this week's picks yet but I'd just like to say that this thread has been top-notch.

I'll say a little about Fates Warning to start my day. My own personal creation-myth for theatrical progressive metal holds that Queensrÿche defined it with Rage for Order, but that it was Fates Warning's Perfect Symmetry and especially Parallels that made it into a genre, as opposed to just one band's particular style. (And later Dream Theater took it over and led it astray, but that hadn't happened yet.) Fates Warning always worked with a more muted and more limited palette than the other two, and although I think that eventually wore on me (A Pleasant Shade of Gray, in particular, seemed helplessly aware of its own drabness), in some ways it makes these earlier albums more intriguing. I.e., anybody can make complex-seeming music by layering enough stuff onto it, but to make complex music with fewer layers you actually have to compose it.

I know for some FW fans the Arch era is the only one that matters, but I admit I never learned to love his singing. Alder, conversely, I adore. The Journey comparison is both cheaply dismissive (Alder and Perry belong to a long tradition of singing that neither of them remotely invented, and Perry is the notorious poster-child for its wimpiest manifestation) and technically accurate (they do both belong to it, clearly). For me the key thing about Alder's style on Parallels is that he provides the legato ties that hold together the twitch-shifting turns of the music behind him. In a lot of metal, everybody goes full-speed, or full-force, or whatever full-thing the band happens to be going for. Contrast isn't unheard-of, but metal's defining quality it ain't.

listening to "abinsthe with faust" from nymphetamine right now (a++ title if nothing else). this album has some catchy riffs for sure but i can't really get w/the camp/goth elements and terrible keyb/string sounds.

somewhere near the end now and i'm pretty bored. i was surprised by "guilded c***" because it was pretty aggressive and i thought this band wasn't really like that. so the rest of it has been disappointing me by fulfilling my expectations. also: TOO LONG!

soooo many piano/ambient/fake-choir intros and outros

Am a week behind but I'm gonna try this Emtombed thing once the football ends.

It's ended

Thus the week behind. Let a fella catch up, gonna still get in all of this weeks listening.

"All ILXors and Lurkers welcome!*"

*except ones that saw this thread a week late.

I think he meant that the match is over. You're welcome to keep talking about last week's albums.

ah glenn, you and yr logic.

currently listening, and enjoying. being roughly the 14th metal record i've ever listened to though, i have nothing to say about it as I don't yet know anything else about the genre that falls into 'i like this' or 'i don't like this'.

yeah, the silly sod posted after the game already finished

winston feel free to give albums ratings based on arsenal players ;)

cradle of filth is definitely a Lolmunia to my eyes

Kyuss - Armand Traore (Talented sure, but needs to grow a fucking pair before worthy of actually playing.)

Entombed - Thomas Vermaelan (Hard headed motherfucker, like a lot against my better judgement.)

If Entombed is actually some weak shizz then my bad, 14th metal record and all that.

i thought you were checking out the EOY metal polls?

I meant to and forgot. Still have the spotify playlist, so I may still sometime.

you said that about the 2008 poll!

I actually downloaded and listened to a bunch of them! The few metal records I have actually listened to are basically 10 random 2008 things and a couple Sabbath things.

you need to get to it

So the Fates Warning 30-second clips on iTunes are not giving me hope. I never "got" Dream Theater either.

The Fate's Warning is way better than Dream Theater.

Absolutely, Dream Theater doesn't compare to early Fates. Awaken the Guardian is actually the album of theirs I prefer.

Well, that gives me a little more motivation to give it a spin, but still not entirely sold.

Yeah, I think my biggest problem will be the earnest, smooth vocals. I like harsh, growling vocals in my metal. I don't like being soothed. Have a feeling I'd like an instrumental version much better. But away we go...

^^ Agreed x100

The musicianship on display is fantastic, so I totally get that part of the appeal.

Seven songs in now and I would definitely have to say I'm enjoying this quite a bit more than any of the Dream Theater I've heard, but the vocals are still not doing a thing for me. The guitar work (is most of this Matheos? don't know the history of this band) is fantastic, easily my favorite part.

Wrapped up with "The Road Goes On Forever" which represents exactly what I don't like about this sort of thing - really earnest and borderline cheese lyrics, showy percussion that reminds me of new age music, and a just general too smooth vibe.

The problem with the fates warning album, is that it reminds me of Queensryche, who I thoroughly despise. But at least it's not as bad as Queensryche or Dream Theater.

I really liked their first EP and The Warning when they came out. Haven't heard either in 20-odd years though.

They being Queensryche, obv.

when john justen gets his shot, he must pick Ulver, OK? Dan agrees.

Listening to that Fates Warning album makes me nostalgic for a time when metal was more commercially relevant - in particular that early '90s period when stuff like Queensryche, Kings X, and Rush could be commonly overheard blaring from college dorms.

Also stuff like Living Colour and Jane's Addiction.

doing fates warning now. i don't really have a lot to say--i'll make it through the whole thing but i really dislike this type of music. i would like to point out that the drummer sucks though--he is basically intentionally making the songs choppy and grooveless.

I agree that the drumming is not going for groove, but strongly disagree that that means it sucks...

yeah i did not mean to imply a direct relationship there necessarily--basically dude is just in the wrong band.

I recently rechecked my old copy of Parallels and I loved Mark Zonder's drumstyle. Very neatly executed, complex, but not as overblown as Mike portnoy.

Trying to cut down on my needless downloading so I am skipping to Fates Warning.

Parallels - Nicklas Bendtner, how others see him. Ridiculously ambitious considering that reality suggests (t)he(y) are actually rubbish.

did you listen to the mastodon?

Nah. It's not on spotify and like I said, trying not to just download musics. Will maybe listen to one of the two records they do have on spotify but considering i am catching up as it is, it doesn't seem like a big deal.

Srs this sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a fucking awful 80s cartoon epic. You are intentionally putting shit albums in the listening club to see if we can tell the different, right?

soundtrack to a fucking awful 80s cartoon epic

one day i'd like to use this to describe something i actually enjoyed.

That mastodon is very different to what came later, you cant compare them.

uh be nice now

oh and i didnt pick these 3, glenn did!

and i would prefer it if a mod made it clear on the thread title that i did not pick Him & cradle of filth! lol

Are we only allowed to be part of the listening club if we like 100% of the records? Or was an ilxor a member of fates warning and I just didn't know?

no winston, its fine if you dislike them. I dislike all 3 picks, but y'know, try to be constructive rather than insulting to glenn or whoever picks albums.

ok well maybe i'll look for the mastadon tomorrow. one a day seems plenty. the artwork for the one here certainly suggests its worth a lot more of my time than the lol r u srs ones on spotify

Ok, yeah, that was my bad. Sorry glenn.

There's so many sub-genres in metal its going to be impossible to like everything , that's why I think its better to not stick to albums in the same genre when choosing (not that glenn did this, but you know what I mean).

Sam if you scroll up you will find some Mastodon youtubes.

:D Well I think I have heard less metal records than there are metal genres, so I think we are ok on knowing whether I like everything or not.

If you tell us what you do like, I'm sure we would all be happy to recommend you stuff in that vein/we might think you will like.

That goes for anyone reading the thread. I like people recommending me stuff too btw (hint hint)

I don't know what I really like yet! And I'm cool with just taking the backseat atm.

!!!!!!!! ILX METAL ALBUMS of 2009 POLL RESULTS!!!!!! (FINAL RESULTS NOW IN! LISTENING TO THESE ALBUMS WILL MAKE YOU STRONGER FRAIL INTERNET PERSON!)

ILX METAL ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2008 RESULTS (NOW COUNTING DOWN THE TOP TEN, BTW)

Good a place to start as any^

ILX0RS - FREE YOUR MIND AND YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW.... TO THE ILM FUNK LISTENING CLUB! (This Weeks Albums are Funkadelic , Ohio Players and Mandrill.) is now up and running.

Mastodon are Didier Drogba - strong,punishing ,classy with great skill but a bit petulant.

not an arsenal player damn you wenger for not paying the extra 500k before he went to marseille

viera then?

Aside from glenn, is anyone other than me familiar with any of HIM's previous albums? I definitely thought that Venus Doom was an unquestionably metal album (if a rather poppy, gothy metal album) but this does sound like a departure to me so far. Also, it sounds like crap so far (and I actually enjoy radio emo).:P

(My girlfriend is a big HIM fan. We sang "Wings of a Butterfly" as a karaoke duet once.:P)

By way of comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NYXksSK-3w

Now I'm trying to pinpoint exactly what the differences are that make me identify these albums as different styles...

ok, fates warning. just going to have to judge this off the one song i seem to be able to stream on grooveshark. inoffensive i guess? def hits the same queensryche hate vibes mentioned upthread, although it is better than that horseshit. idk, i get it, but not really for me, not getting as much of a prog-metal dream theater vibe as other people are, which is good, this just sounds like mainstream relaxing metal for metallers stuff. not bad at that tho. not running out to buy it in the near future tho.

song was eye to eye btw

ok going to go ahead and liveblog the cradle of filth experience.

Devil Woman is cheeeeeeeeeezy, kinda sub par kinda boring. too much industrial undercurrent done the wrong way, also this guitar player sucks.

hate the drum sound here on the intro to soft white throat, but that is not really their fault, its a shit drum sound that i hear on lots of stuff from the era.

vocals sound cartoony to me? kind of a fake evil going on here, maybe ive just been bent by listening to peste noire too much.

ok stutter vocal was irritating, but the post part here is better than anything else so far. still some sort of clinical separation in the recording that is distracting from whats going on. theres no density here - which is kind of frustrating, because if there was, i would prob be digging this. song screams for heavy, and there isnt any here.

so uh what the hell is going on here (bestial bitch)? now its all halfassed motorheady, but with scratchy doubletracked vocals? again, this could be kind of great but its like this band is listening to a lot of stuff and not really making good choices about how to put it all together.

ok now its prey and its the best thing so far, by far. hated the intro, but i could listen to this (less the DUMB mindless self indulgence synth stab noise shit going on in sometimes). and now, its all mediocre synth bridge which sucks a lot. and now its back to the song, but ehhhhh. also that drum thing that just happened was crap.

this seems to be a band that could be good but is too busy fucking around outside of what they can actually do well (which given my U1v3r and SGM and whatever leanings seems like a strange thing to criticize but).

cant help but feel that for a second there i heard a band that might be pretty good, but is too distracted.

track 5 seems like the best thing so far despite my evanescence puke reaction. still, the guitar is just so LAME, and i dont need like shredder stuff going on, but can this dude (dudes?) actually play beyond a simple functional level? i am now to the part where there is a dual guitar lead and still, this is hitting me as dumbed down "metal guitar", theres nothing really interesting going on here.

ok so the crowley cover just started and i am either going to be super stoked or really pissed. just started to kind of obsessively revisit this song a couple weeks ago and i am kind of in the zone with it at the moment.

ok fuck you guys I HATE THIS A FUCKING TON. taking a legitimately creepy song and dressing it up in your crap arglebargle voice with a bunch of pitch shifting and then some badly executed half time blastbeats turns it into some clown shoes LOOK AT ME I AM SPOOKY garbage. this is tex avery moustache twisting evil. yuck.

not sure that HIM is metal so far but i would def rather listen to this than cradle of filth.

actually, first song has some kind of amazing pop-metal nostalgia going on for me. throat screamy thing out of nowhere is pretty cool, and doomy monk chorus in the middle is pretty cool. surprised, but theres something going on here that works for me. and this is def a pop informed metal prob hard rock album, but they are sneaking in some cool shit here, and doing decent pop shit as well (on the second track now, which is like some sort of popjizz explosion for the most part, but i am digging it.)

if i was going to draw a totally unsolicited compare/contrast thing here, cradle of filth is positioned as a metal band sneaking in pop, and HIM is some sort of pop/rock/poppunk thing sneaking in metal, but these dudes are making me buy it and COF sounds like a bunch of teengrabbing bullshitters.

third song is semi-awesome pretty pop but fails on the metal side so far.

Ok so tbf, I like this a lot. But more and more as a funtime party album thing, not so much a metal deal.

album is ok. trying hard not to be "death to false metal" dude here but eh idk. most enjoyable of the three by far.

wait til dan reads that you enjoyed HIM

I wish I had more constructive things to sat tbh

*say

goddammit i accidentally listened to three songs from the nymphetamine bonus disc instead of the album itself

― call all destroyer, Monday, April 19, 2010 7:42 PM (3 days ago)

and upon further research that is exactly what i did as well, so all my COF ranting up there was about the bonus disc.

fucking hell

memo to lala users, the first result thats only 6 tracks long is not the one yer supposed to be listening to.

yeeeeah the actual disc is better tho i ended up having more than my share of complaints about it.

the real tragedy is that i cant unhear that garbage mr crowley cover

rofl

but you dont mind the cliff richard cover?

well i wasnt a fan, but it didnt offend me on a personal level

and the cof version?

come on guys, where's the chat?

Anyone playing catch up want to talk about last weeks albums?

Gonna watch last nights 30 rock and then try the him/mandrills.

Just don't mistakenly try a Himdrill

OK, a few things about Cradle of Filth, to end my picking week. I had long ignored them, assuming from the name that they were goregrind or some other grimy niche that I'm not really into. I gave Thornography a chance, for reasons I have forgotten, and really liked it, and that sent me belatedly scouring through the back catalog. I like most of it, including some of the dubious-sounding EPs and compilations. Godspeed on the Devil's Thunder is probably the first whole record of theirs I've been actively disappointed with. (But I saw them on tour for it, and they were still fabulous.)

Nymphetamine may or may not be my favorite, but it's the one that seems most intriguing on its own, to me, precisely for its tension between flagrant cryptic ugliness and goofy goth-pop ambition. In a way it finds Cradle of Filth trying to be both Dimmu Borgir and HIM, at once. Easy enough to hate, for many reasons, but for me the artistic risk involved is admirable for its own sake, and obviously it doesn't hurt that I like the effect, personally. I'm a devoted metal fan, but I'm also an unapologetic pop fan, and a fan of a lot of other things, and I have no purist agenda for any of them. Cross them all! Cradle of Filth is plainly wearing "evil" as a costume, but I guess it basically always seems like a costume to me. I don't inherently take Emperor or Gorgoroth or Bathory any more seriously. Anybody who was "really" evil wouldn't be wasting their time writing songs about it.

If this were a three-song listening club, I might actually have used that bonus-disc cover of "Mr. Crowley". I like their own material better, but hearing them take something familiar and transform it kind of demonstrates their style and agenda even more succinctly. Could have done HIM's cover of "Wicked Game", and one of the many Dream Theater covers in place of Fates Warning. Or maybe Anacrusis doing NMA's "I Love the World"...

is it artistic risk though? Im pretty damn sure it's the sound of a "band" (they have a constantly changing line up dont they?) trying to stay accessible to the kerrang kiddies so they sell loads of records and make money. I dont see dani filth as having any artistic integrity at all.

And these bands doing covers is purely aimed at MTV/Radio play. Fuck that.

Integrity usually makes for boring music, IMO. I like the Cradle of Filth. I like singers who do weird things with their voices - it's one of the areas where metal bands can break out of the fairly rigid formal constraints of the genre and do something really surprising.

If this were a three-song listening club, I might actually have used that bonus-disc cover of "Mr. Crowley".

hahahaha that might have made me erupt in a full on hatesplosion

i am going to go back and listen to the straight album if i have time over the weekend and give it a fair shot.

and obv given some of the stuff i champion around here i am totally down with singers that do weird stuff w/their voice, but nothing i hear in COF is actually weird, its just kind of cartoon scary, almost like a parody of what i hear when weird/scary works.

Integrity usually makes for boring music, IMO.

"integrity" is also a vague term that can mean anything to anyone. it's fairly useless to talk about it in music criticism, imo.

Maybe the COF vocals are not weird by the standards of extreme metal, but I think they sound weirder in the context of COF's music, because they're going for something with a bit broader appeal and the vocals contrast with the more commercial elements. There can be something almost embarrassingly intimate about listening to the sound of saliva rattling around in a guy's throat. It's a rather vulnerable and naked way of producing sound - in contrast to the tough guy distancing effect of playing a guitar through loads of pedals and amplifiers. And in conjunction with the overtly sexual lyrics of COF, it makes for a unique effect.

HIM- Anyone want to explain why this is metal and Fall Out Boy is emo pop? Is it because Fall Out Boy have sex with hot girls and HIM like that heart/star symbol thingy? Only two songs in and this is a Lukasz Fabianski (watching him makes you feel like he took up the wrong sport.)

Dani Filth does sound like he has a really sticky, well lubricated singing instrument. I can almost hear the mucous being produced.

sam, HIM arent really metal though. Theyre more hard rock while fob arent. But they prob share a part of each others audience at least as far as kerrand kids go

+ fob have actual tunes.

nah

ok halfway through and i'm turning this off for some Mandrills. 1/4 so far (Entombed) for actual enjoyment. Will listen to COF tomorrow and try to download the Mastadon when Sunday maybe.

Maybe i should have picked the more accessible Kyuss album then

A hoy hoy, do you feel the same way about the HIM track I posted? I agree with you about this week's album though.

(So far, Fate's Warning is bringing back memories of listening to Queensryche on my Walkman while riding my bike the summer I was 13. Some good guitar solos too.)

i haven't checked the yt but will tomorrow

hes funking it up tonight

listening to the fates warning right now. can't say I have any serious problems with it but it does seem kind of plodding and clunky. some of the choruses are near fist-pumping territory; this would probably go down smoother w/a couple brewskis.

I bet my guitar major buddy is into these dudes.

you make john justen shudder saying that

then some of this might as well...

listening to the cradle of filth record. anyone make a dethlok comparison? this is the dethlok of black metal right here.

anyway, this ain't all that bad either. totally cheesy but lots of metal is, so whatevs. a lot of this strikes me as tedious; esp. the slower numbers like "english fire" (tho the hammerheart backing vox are a nice touch).

like the maiden-ey leads that they sprinkle throughout.

opening of "gabrielle" belongs in an RPG. i'm thinking maybe a chrono trigger outtake? and I see where people are going with the "embarrassingly intimate" coments after that spoken word bit at the tail end of the track.

"gilded c-bomb" is the best track so far. everything on it works to their strengths and it's surprisingly heavy.

also, holy shit, this thing is really long. it's 77 mins total but it's not just the length of the whole album - every track so far has overstayed its welcome. don't think I'm gonna make it through this whole thing...

i'd like to participate in this but missed the first week, and am not really interested in what's going on this week. i like metal a lot but don't really have a solid knowledge of it. this thread is going to do wonders for me, i can see it now.

i did pick up the entombed record though, as it was the only one of the three that i hadn't heard. great stuff!

You can still discuss previous weeks albums. Feel free to do so, that is why Mordy wanted it all on one thread.

Still haven't chosen all three of my records for tomorrow...

So after some more listening, I'm not entirely sure what to make of the Fates Warning. It's not doing that much for me beyond the nostalgia I mentioned above. I have no problems with the style but this presents no surprises at all. I feel like I want it to be more of something: either catchier, heavier, or more complex. Scale the Summit, Hammers of Misfortune, or White Willow hit my pomp/prog spots much more than this does. "Eye to Eye" is not bad hard rock pop music though. The singer does sound an awful lot like Steve Perry, whom I actually like.

I like the HIM album better as emo-pop on second listen. It's the kind of thing where I recognize its crassness but don't want to turn it off at the same time. Even my girlfriend was surprised by how poppy this was.

I'm still scared to listen to the Cradle of Filth.

it wont scare you

unless you're scared of the monsters in Scooby Doo

Ha, I just meant "scared" because Cruelty and the Beast wasn't to my taste. I listen to heavier things all the time.

Here I go in any case...

I really dislike it so far (made it through the first 8.5 songs and will not listen to more right now). I can't quite explain why yet. Other than the awful heavy-handed orchestral writing, there's nothing obviously poor about their craftsmanship but something about their aesthetic really does not appeal to me and just leaves me irritated. I could imagine myself loving it, down to the ridiculous narrative, when I was 17-18 though.

This said, it often takes me a while to get into something,

OK, folks, here we go.

Amon Amarth, Versus the World, 1994
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61C%2BEgk9wWL._SS500_.jpg
Their fourth album, and the one that found them settling into the sound they've explored ever since.

GridLink, Amber Gray, 2008
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51-DgKbZpbL._SS500_.jpg
Ultra-tight grindcore featuring vocals from former Discordance Axis frontman Jon Chang. 11 songs in as many minutes.

Manowar, Sign of the Hammer, 1984
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61nnGV-rZIL._SS500_.jpg
Like Amon Amarth, this is their fourth album; but in Manowar's case, this album marked the end, not the beginning, of a sound. On later discs, they'd be just as aggressive, but more pomptastic and less rocking.

Interested to know everyone's thoughts!

I don't know why I said the Amon Amarth album was from 1994; it's from 2002.

Listening to Man O'War, is it me or is there something very slightly camp about them?

Thoughts about this record: not as "power metal" as I expected (much looser and self-consciously epic), very much influenced by Maiden, unsurprisingly I suppose considering the year of release. Presumably the proper power metal stuff came after this record?

PS Spotify link for Man O'War:
http://open.spotify.com/album/2Ry1UTk7LC4bpZ6cXiAdPC

For Amon Amarth:
http://open.spotify.com/album/2N4o8xXRlIRNa8Y4covLjp

No Gridlink, sadly.

"Thank you for the Kool Aid, Reverend Jim" lol

"Are you our god, or a man in a cape?" KBP to thread!

KBP is too scared to listen to metal. Bogans listen to synth pop from the 80s now.

Awesome! Metal thread making my Mondays tolerant!

(Haven't heard this Manowar album yet, but yes -- Manowar is always super campy. That's the concept.)

I've heard other Amon Amarth and Man O'War records, just not either of those two. Have the GridLink, but haven't really listened to it since I was sent the promo. I remember thinking I had to be in a very particular mood to want to hear it.

Some tips for appreciating Manowar: remember that the lyrics are not the music. The album cover and any band photos you may Google up are not the music. Yes, they're goofy looking. Yes, their lyrics wallow in a kind of machismo that our placid suburban middle-class upbringing and secondary/higher education have taught us is to be ridiculed. But can they write a riff? Hell, yes. Can they play their instruments? They can play the fuck out of their instruments. So shut off the part of your brain that reflexively snickers at things you might be embarrassed to be seen/overheard liking, and fully invest yourself in taking Manowar seriously for 40 minutes or so.

The ManOwaR is not an obvious (thunder)pick, but Thor The Powerhead, Mountains and Guyana are three of their strongest songs, epic stuff. I get goosebumps when the song is introduced in the Hell on Wheels live album.

Also, some fanclub dude counted the times the word "metal" was uttered in each Manowar album. The average was around several dozens, but strangely it's nowhere to be heard in Sign.

^ the song="Thor"

Excellent, just starting the Amon Amarth now! I haven't heard this Amon Amarth album, had never even heard of GridLink, and haven't listened to this Manowar album since it was still current, so this will all be new enough for me, but I shouldn't have to bail out of anything!

I always prefer Hail to England over Sign of the Hammer, but it's still a solid album. "Guyana" and "Mountains" especially.

And I play Versus the World's "Death in Fire" all the time. I never tire of that tune, and it kills live.

My first and fave Manowar album is Fighting the World, primarily for the totally awesome insane "Black, Wind, Fire and Steel," but this album is really great. Especially Guyana which has some completely gorgeous moments that I had no idea Manowar was capable of. I can see why unperson wanted us to listen to this unironically (or without looking for camp), because this song at least is totally good in a very sincere beautiful way. (Every time they sing Guyana, I keep hearing Diana, and then imaging that they're singing this to a girl.) That said: I think it's totally legit to appreciate Manowar songs for being completely over the top metal camp.

ooooooooooooooooooooh

http://i42.tinypic.com/6z3af8.jpg