Mordy's Metal Listening Club - New Albums Every Monday

ooooooooooooooooooooh

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

first riff on versus the world is THUNDEROUS

i remember streaming some of twilight of the thunder gods and not getting what the big deal was, so this is a good re-engagement opportunity.

Listening to Amon Amarth just now. On the first song and liking it so far, love the guitar solo.

hahahah love the bell on the second track

amon amarth is on grooveshark for amurrcans, btw.

I got the sound of a phone dialling on the 2nd track then a scottish dude asked me to give blood. Damn spotify adverts.

REMEMBER! PIRATING IS A CRIME! ARGH.

I'm not paying £10 a month premium just to listen to amon amarth, its good so far but I'd rather buy the damn thing for a tenner.

Guitar sound is awesome on this, but the drum sound is argh.

yeah i know what you mean--i'd like the drums to be a little more aggro but it's not really bothering me that much

its that farting drum sound all the way through it, im not a muso so cant explain it, its all over most extreme metal albums and its always annoying. But you all know what I mean.

back to last week's:
Fates Warning is the surprise. Im sure I mustve heard some of it when it came out, but its much better than I remembered FW being. Fantastic drummer, great songs, great solos...singing obv a bit dated and silly. Like that theyre somewhere midway between queensryche and iron maiden. Production is great too, if only more records sounded as breathy, open.

I wonder if this is what people mean by drum triggers? Someone needs to explain it to me. But it really is annoying me spoiling a really good record.
xp

Triggered drums are when the producer adds a sample drum sound on the beats to keep the kick drum tone as clean as possible. Lots of people hate it, but I'm fine with it in most cases. On this album the kicks are borderline intrusive, that's for sure, but that sort of adds to the whole cannonading fun of Amon Amarth. Gets the blood pumping!

CoF on the other hand so unsurprising. This band really put all their originality into their first album and then cruised all the way to the bank/goth chicks for the next 15 years. Its a nice franchise but it really depends on fresh flows of adolescents cause who would buy more than 2 CoF albums? Basically theyre the Insane Clown Posse of metal. And with all original non-Dani members now out they really have nothing going for them musically at all, so boring and predictable and stale.

Interesting to note that their debut was received very well in 'serious' metal press and many a tr00 metalhead I know liked it on first listen. Amazing how fast this band wears off.

in conclusion--amon amarth fucking ruled, that's def going on the buy list, thx phil!

re: camp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH3LghdBWxc

on to manowar now--this might be good, i don't know. i understand the point about turning your brain off a little but i hate 80s cock-rock vocals so so much

"mountains" is actually just disgusting

when did ross the boss leave?

after kings of metal iirc?

bass harmonic melody plus volume swell pedal solo

i mean, wow

yeah i hate this type of vocal mostly, but unlike with john garcia of Kyuss, i'll never be able to like them.

ok just gonna skip to guyana (cult of the damned) if no one minds

Love Guyana!

Manowar definitely lost something when Ross left. The riffs by the other guy are good, but always so darn stiff. Ross knew groove.

Oh, and Eric Adams and Ross the Boss are two of the nicest guys you will ever meet.

lol probably don't even need to say this but that was dict. definition of "not my thing"

time to track down gridlink

oh god is this a ballad?

this is horrific

i fucking despise power ballads

death to false metal

i've lost the will to live

gridlink might just give it back to you

i like this but it's hard to know what to "do" with an 11-minute lp. yes i am a grind noob.

I hate grind but I think i could handle 11 mins of that more than another 11 of Manowar. But not tonight.

Three songs into the Manowar so far and liking this a whole hell of a lot better than the only other album I've heard from them, Warriors of the World. Phil was right, this is much more enjoyable if you ignore the lyrics and focus on the musicianship. Absolutely love the solo on "Thor (The Powerhead)".

Okay, this first part of "Mountains" is really hard to take, bring back the riffs please! And quick!

Phew, there they are.

Haha, that first bit of "Thunderpick" was way unexpected!

Okay, the Manowar really isn't up my alley, but now I can at least understand why people still talk about them and that they aren't a complete joke. They actually had some talent and great riffs once upon a time. "Thor" and "Guyana" probably my favorite songs of the bunch.

Listened to them all once, and a few extra spins of tracks from Amon Amarth & Manowar to revel in the riffage.

I don't care much for grindcore, and GridLink didn't change that. Did like the one-second tease of just drums at the beginning of "Burning Tiamat".

Amon Amarth I liked more than I expected, mainly for the undeniable riffs and overall guitar sound. It felt a little back-loaded for me, but I like the slower tracks like "Across The Rainbow Bridge" and "...And Soon the World Will Cease to Be" more than their burners. If someone more familiar with their catalog wants to point me toward an album even more along those lines I'd greatly appreciate it.

The Manowar was a pleasant trip down memory lane. My best friend growing up had this and Fighting The World, both of which we played to death. "Mountains" is just horrible, but I can't get enough of "Thor (The Powerhead)" and "Thunder Pick". The title track is a wonderfully ham-fisted and amped-up take on Judas Priest - in other words, right up my alley. This and the Entombed are my favorites thus far in the listening club.

I dig the Gridlink, though it's almost too intense. If we get round to grind again I'd suggest something like Nasum; a bit more accessible (if grind can be accessible).

I've enjoyed the times I've caught grindcore bands live, but the few records I've listened to just don't do anything for me. I like the noise & skronk stuff related to grind more than the true metal end of the spectrum.

I appreciate the Gridlink in a very abstract way (wow, that's fast), and I don't have a problem with its brevity (at least, not compared to what I paid for it), but I definitely don't relate to it very deeply. I think it would be very interesting to hear it without the vocals or drums. The guitar parts are weird and, I think, inventive. The drums and shrieking, on the other hand, are monotonous no matter how fast, and I find it hard to listen through them to even be sure whether the rest has any substance.

The Manowar campiness is fine with me, too. I mean, I like Helloween and DragonForce, so whatever. I particularly like the wiry punk energy of "Animals" (reminds me a little of "City Baby Attacked by Rats"), and the buzz-slash bits and tempo-stalls of "Guyana", but most of these songs have at least something I enjoy. Pleasant to be reminded of a somewhat simpler metal era, at least in production terms, in which velocity and general extremism hadn't yet crowded out so much good bombast.

But Amon Amarth is the week's winner for me. I already knew of them, and had played a copule of their albums at least once, but they'd just never clicked for me, falling in between In Flame / Dark Traquillity, on the death side, and Enslaved or Tyr on the viking sides (depending on which kind of "viking" vibe you mean). But I've warmed to them quite a bit while listening to Versus the World and the bonus disc, and will be immediately giving With Oden on Our Side another chance, as well.

The pairing with Manowar feels nicely apt: Amon Amarth count as extreme metal, I guess, because of the growling, but compared to Gridlink this is almost pastoral. It's more heavy than extreme; they're focused on their own aesthetic, not trying to blast apart some implicit other one. I like the at-times almost ritual cyclicality of the guitar riffs, and the fact that they often stay slow when the drums speed up. Maybe I've been listening to too much strained weirdness lately (and/or more aware of it by contrast with all these Cathedral albums I've been remedially inhaling), but Amon Amarth feel almost soothingly understated to me.

PS: But obviously it goes without saying (but I'll say it for the benefit of stray ILXors coming across these archives long after the fact) that none of these are really metal...

Hey guys Join the http://www.last.fm/group/ILX+Rolling+Metal+Group

oops that was meant for the rolling metal thread but oh well youre all the same people join away

I'm listening to the Manowar and this is further proof I just don't enjoy obnoxious old metal. I will give the other thing w/ a spotify link a go and then I think I may start to try the playlist with all of the 09 metal poll stuff in it.

Ok I much prefer this Amon Amarth, not that I could figure out why, an Abou Diaby maybe? (Style seems at odd with what I like, but damn if he/they don't seem to do something enjoyable with strength and pace?) Entombed no longer the only thing I would listen to again, it has a companion in my METAL LISTENING CLUB playlist.