Mordy's Metal Listening Club - New Albums Every Monday

yet they still claimed death to false metal?

After Sign Of The Hammer and hence signing to a major, everything about Manowar is squandered and terrible... no hooks

I wouldn't go that far. Their Atlantic years yielded some insanely catchy tunes.

Fighting the World is a great album.

Metal Mordy's Monday Picks are go!

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.

You need to get some of the later Hades/Hades Almighty (they had to change their name) records, this is where Amon Amarth got the slow/epic side of their sound.

Millennium Nocturne for example.

Week #4

Orphaned Land - Mabool (Century Media Records, 2004)

http://www.alternative-zine.com/images2/orphaned_land__mabool.jpg

Subway to Sally - Bannkreis (BMG, Ariola Germany, 1997)

http://www.hdm-stuttgart.de/~mk069/dunkelbunt/html/musik/subwaytosally_bannkreis.jpg

Skyclad - A Burnt Offering for the Bone Idol (Noise Records, 1992)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5a/Skycladburntbone.jpg

After Sign Of The Hammer and hence signing to a major, everything about Manowar is squandered and terrible... no hooks

Nah, Fighting, Kings and Triumph all contain some killer hook stuff. After that it becomes paint-by-numbers, yeah, and extremely simplified. Although I dare anyone to listen to their last album on which they pretend to be Wagner, on cheap keyboard because they couldn't afford a real orchestra. What were they thinking...

Spotify link for Orphaned Land - Mabool

Updated Spotify Metal Club playlist with all the available albums

Can a mod change the thread title?

Listened to the Skyclad, years since I heard them. Spinning Jenny still sounds great. Always remember the crazy articles in Kerrang.

Listening to Orphaned Land, it's terrific so far.

It was great, interesting mix of instruments,styles and ideas. Good stuff.

Mordy, hope you dont mind, I posted on the mod req forum for title update as noone will click on the thread as they wont know its updated.

Nice, I've heard some Orphaned Land, but not Mabool; was a big Skyclad fan from Prince of the Poverty Line on but never heard the first three albums; never even heard of Subway to Sally. Listening now!

Mordy was right about how good Mabool was, thanks Mordy!

Whats the next Orphaned Land to check out?

I'll try the newest one then

I've always steered clear of Subway To Sally a) the name b) the type of Germans who sang their praises - so despite their lengthy career I've never heard them before. It's quite enjoyable and much better than I feared. The singer gets a bit on my nerves tho with his jauntiness. The others I know well.

These three band approach the concept of "folk metal" quite differently, I presume that was the point of this round Mordy? StS are the simple pub-folk variety that's all about having a good time, Skyclad incorporate folk parts in their trad heavy metal songwriting but in the end don't end up playing much else than souped up NWOBHM, and Orphaned Land go completely overboard in a prog way, throw a zillion ideas against the wall, see what sticks and then weld it all together.

It welded together quite nicely

I really enjoyed this weeks listening - all new to me and all enjoyable.

The Skyclad didn't quite come together, as I felt the folk elements were coloring the compositions and not really integrated. Still very listenable and I'm interested enough that I want to hear where they went after. I understand they were the trailblazers and I'm glad to hear one of the building blocks of the genre.

I loved that Subway To Sally record! The way they combine the folk and medieval elements with the metal ones is almost perfect - the ratios are what I wanted, and whenever they went fully one direction they kept it tight and it didn't overstay its welcome. This record has no bloat, which you just can't say about albums these days.

For example, the Orphaned Land was a little too much a little too often. There are songs I really enjoyed, but the album as a whole is a seemed disjointed and at least 30 minutes too long for my ears. Obviously a very talented group of musicians, and for the most part they didn't go overboard showcasing technique, but the final product often got too proggy for my personal taste.

This week made me want to here more folk metal, so thanks Mordy.

I liked Orphaned Land better when they were doing things the" Skyclad way" - basically My Dying Bride-style doom with middle-eastern interludes and the occasional 'arabic' riff. The "Sahara" album has some great, well structured songs whereas "Mabool" is just too much. Agree that it should be much shorter, tho that could be said for every record they've made so far.

I need to check out Sahara then?

Sounds like I might like Sahara more as well.

Yes! Beware a thin sound and some off-key singing though.

i liked mabool a lot though, i might like this one less if its not as weird

Oh there's enough WTF moments on that one too. It's just less in your face than Mabool, the thinner/more distant production helps too. That typical sound all bands on Holy Records had in the early 90s.

To me Sahara is easier to sit through, it has most of the experimental/disjointed weirdness frontloaded but then goes into more coherent/traditional songs towards the end.

I'll give it a go if its on Spotify.
Who is up next for choosing btw?

I'd like to do a week pretty soon. But no objections if someone wants next.

i dont know if mordy has anyone lined up but i dont think theres anyone for next week and that prob means you can go next if mordy agrees.
I guess now is the time for people to say they would like to do a week after Alan.

finally have time to get to mordy's albums--just started orphaned land

it's funny--there's at least one or two things i like about all these songs and at least that many things where i'm just smh and thinking "that would've been really easy to cut." ultimately i think they just need to rock harder and lose all the keybs and melodic prog dross. really pushes the limits of taste for me personally.

mysteriously, there are only 4 tracks from the skyclad album on grooveshark. they're ok.

I often say that my musical taste all basically devolves from The Mob Rules and The Sound of Silence, so Folk Metal is pretty much a native idiom for me.

I was a Skyclad maniac when I discovered them with Prince of the Poverty Line, and it's a sad testament to how disappointed I became by their later albums that I'd never gone back, in the internet age, to find their first three albums, which I'd never been able to find back in the CD age. Listening to them now, including Burnt Offering, I'm pleased by how raw they are, but the particular pagan glee which characterized the next two or three records, at least in my memory (I haven't played those for a while, either), doesn't seem quite there yet on the earlier ones. The way I imagine folk-metal history, though, without Skyclad there's no Eluveitie. And maybe no Alestorm, either, but anybody who defines a new genre inevitably gives rise to both the future masters and the future embarrassments.

Mabool was an interesting listen, and I'm glad I've heard it, but count me in the camp who thinks they really badly needed an editor, probably starting from the conceptual and compositional stages, and certainly later in production. For me the album is way too long, way too scattered, way too overwrought. And over-earnest, and maybe I have to admit that the particular arabic (?) cast to their version of "folk" isn't as instinctively appealing to me as, say, Skyclad's more Celtic version. By the end of the album I felt like I'd been trapped listening to Scheherazade's endless stories for rather longer than they deserved.

The Subway to Sally record, and I'd never even heard of the band before, was in a way the most interesting of the three to me. I haven't heard much German folk-metal, and although StS are incorporating influences from a bunch of places, there's a kind of thumpy polka-ish core energy that was new to me. Not sure I actually want much more of it, but I'm pleased to know it exists.

thumpy polka-ish core energy

That's what hooked me - it reminded me of the humpa style of Korpiklaani, only a little more stiff.

havent had any time for this this week but i listened to some subway to sally stuff and really dug it

Im not sure about it but need to listen further

Just noticed that the 2002 reissue of Sahara adds a few bonus tracks and another 15 minutes. Great, just what that record did not need, the original 58 minutes were enough already.

We need to sort a rota for metal club.

Who wants to go monday? Alan N I know volunteered. Who wants to go after him? If noone volunteers then I guess its back to me. CAD & Seigbran surely want a go first?

Volunteer guys!

I'm told I need to decide who is posting albums next. However, this listening club is egal-anarchistic, so whoever wants to be next will be next. There's no rush, no time limit. Everyone who wants to be fit in will be fit in, because this thread has no expiration date. And many times! If you want to post albums a thousand times over the next hundred years, I'm totally okay with that. Strict rotation in metal stinks of fascism to me anyway, and as I just got done with a paper on NSBM (which, despite its nods to fascism is so much looser, more open), I'd rather none of that. So step in, whoever, and if no one by the end of Monday, then someone else as the day grinds to a close. No need to micro-manage these things, I think.

grumpy mordy

agreed on the anti-mico mgmt stance. i'm game. I'll do next week.

arent you meant to be doing it like now? noones chosen for this week

If noone wants to do it this week then i guess its back to me.. so you better do it Alan!

I'll do a week at some point if needed. Just not tomorrow's picks.

^^^yeah this

Mordy says I can do todays picks. So you guys have a week to decide who goes next

don't we do this monday mornings? what's the bfd?

and I'm on the east coast, USA

it's monday where i am, and im not staying up to 9am!