Mordy's Metal Listening Club - New Albums Every Monday

id be very surprised if black metal was outselling death metal in the usa

i wonder who the biggest selling "doom" band in the US is and how much they sell? about 5k max?

Volume 12: Stuff Jeff Likes

Cirith Ungol - King of the Dead
http://www.metal-archives.com/images/1/7/6/6/1766.jpg

Doom(?) metal classic. I'm not sure how to classify this, other than "awesome." Still ahead of its time, 25 years later.

http://open.spotify.com/album/5yFnOSjF9MFMokZwXvwofm

Warlock - Triumph and Agony
http://www.metal-archives.com/images/1/9/4/2/1942.jpg

Female-fronted power metal at it's finest! The pop singer they have fronting Nightwish right now could learn a thing or 666 from Doro Pesch.

http://open.spotify.com/album/1Vdxmu8PwATvePFNVrjPMO

Sigh - Imaginary Sonicscape
http://www.metal-archives.com/images/1/6/0/160.jpg

One of the most dizzyingly experimental metal records of all time, this took everything killer about metal, threw it through the Japan filter, and then got the band dropped from their label. Great driving music!

http://open.spotify.com/album/6vX4o28Pp5IFFjCyvhVqqV

love that sigh album!

I love that Cirith Ungol record! So good. Looking forward to hearing the other two which look promising.

A friend introuced me to that Sigh album, and it blew me away. They haven't topped that one since, in my opinion.

The Warlock album is part incredible ("I Rule the Ruins", the ubiquitous "All We Are"), part head-scratcher ("Metal Tango"). But definitely a solid album overall. Doro still sounds great to this day.

http://theninecircles.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/doro-pesch-warlock.jpg

Still a remarkably attractive woman.

man Jeff I only know 2 out of your 3 but those are quality pics. Cirith Ungol is an all-time favorite, a band from an L.A. era when to not have a sound you could call your own would have meant shame worse than death to any band who really wanted to leave its mark. The riffs, the vibe, the overall atmosphere, and just that mood of going for it right now without much regard for whether people will be able to stomach this completely insane vocal style (which, I gotta admit, I love this band on average for 30 minutes at a sitting and then it's like "ok gotta hear somebody who doesn't sound like he's working off a meth hangover in the vocal booth"). I think I prefer One Foot In Hell for its peaks, but yeah, for a good view into an era on its weirder fringes, hard to beat Cirith Ungol.

Warlock I don't know of but I have lots of time for power metal as I say.

Sigh's Imaginary Sonicscape is the only Sigh album that's ever clicked for me -- I haven't heard it in a long, long time but I remember really enjoying getting lost in it.

in re this:

id be very surprised if black metal was outselling death metal in the usa

I would be extremely surprised if black metal didn't outsell death metal in the us by a factor of like 5:1. the leading US based metal mailorder is...blackmetal.com. look at it this way. a lot of indie people fuck with black metal -- it has a fair amount of reach outside its base. death metal is pretty much for the faithful only; the occasional indie dude (whassup) is into it, but if you go to the death metal show, you're not gonna see a lot of guys who'd be able to pick kevin shields out of a lineup. whereas at the doom metal show, you might well see kevin shields.

I had Greg Lindstrom sign my CD copy of King of the Dead when I saw his band Falcon play a few years back. Usually I don't bother with stuff like that, but I kind of had to.

finally, it took cirith ungol three minutes to drive mrs. aerosmith from the music room for the quieter, non-caterwauling environs of the living room

has mrs smithy ever heard
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9B_ckUBC95E
(one of my fave songs ever)

"Master of the Pit" is one of the all time classic evil metal anthems.

My current username is a Cirith Ungol lyric, so yeah, I'm into it. Not so much into Sigh; the whole school of "look how much stuff I can do!" in rock and metal generally fills me with disgust and rage (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Pan-thy-monium, etc., etc.). I'll give the Warlock disc a try.

Cirith Ungol were an incredibly ugly sounding band, though, for a group that was actually pretty melodic with their songs. Besides the singer, you had the guitar which literally did sound like a bandsaw, thudding bass, and just brutally sparse production. but that just adds to the charm.

You should try this Sigh record if you haven't heard it. That's the one where they got it together.

man what a classic track "finger of scorn" is

and the awesome excess of Tocatta in Dm...there's so much more to this band. I'm kind of obsessed with their bio, how the drummer was so insulted by being asked to play to a click that he never played drums again...deeply tragic story, I have visions of setting it as a novel or an epic poem

interesting interview with drummer here: http://www.sleazegrinder.com/int_CirithUngol.htm

yeah this is what I'm talking about:

Did everyone continue to play music after the band broke-up?

I sold my drum set the next month, and have never touched a stick since. I told Ron and those at Restless that I would rather never touch another drumstick than be in an industry with such scumbags as them. I have kept my word to this day.

if you find other interviews with him & the band, you find that they went "up" to the style where the first thing you do is record all the drum parts at the tempo they're supposed to be at, using a click track. I can 100% see how a guy who'd been playing live with his band for 10+ years would be like "no, I'm not doing that" - but I think the deal here is he got pressured into doing it, and then the production sucked anyway. a bad experience in the studio can really make you want to quit forever if the thing you end up with is something you'd thought you'd love and instead you hate.

sounds like he's ok tho--just working on his ferrari and stuff.

sure, but I'd rather be struggling & still getting the joy I get from playing than doing ok but feeling permanently estranged from what was once a great passion - I mean one can say "he didn't love it that much if all it took was one shitty studio experience to get him to quit" (bob rusay doesn't play any more, either - hasn't since cc gave him the boot) but it just feels very sad to me, that somebody can actually stop playing altogether because something happens that makes them want to not play.

I do like that he's like "we were always metal," instead of "oh, we were classic rock" or something.

yeah no doubt--you get the sense that he loved it too much more than anything

Re: Cirith Ungol, it reminds me of how dearly I miss the days when a metal singer would go all-out in trying to sing, even if he had no absolutely melodic vocal ability whatsoever.

Doro sounds like a cross between Hansi Kürsch and Geddy Lee!

Thought that Cirith Ungol album was pretty bad when I reviewed it (on 2-for-1 reissue) in 1995. Probably haven't heard it since, so that'll be interesting.

Had the Warlock record on LP, and several later Doro records, though I didn't have much good to say about her last couple. Happy to have an excuse to hear T&A again.

Have not liked Sigh, but haven't heard this one.

Excellent!

even if you don't like Hangman's Hymn (I don't) or other Sigh, Imaginary Sonicscape is really worth your time. It's its own thing.

haw, i like the Cirinth Ungol lots (never heard anything by 'em before, i don't think)...including the dude's decidedly unique singing style, i gotta say...and most definitely the absurdly dry and trebly, yet bizarrely appealing bass tone. unfortunately, i found the Warlock record to be damn near insufferable on the first listen--mainly thanx to the vocals; get ye back o wretched screeching harpy from hell (or the UK, i suppose [there's a difference?]). back i say! still need to listen to Sigh. definitely very cool picks tho.

man I'm listening to the sound samples of this warlock album and thinking about buying it. like a lot of people, I think, I was turned off to this sort of thing early on; then, after I became addicted to KNAC, I listened to it with my tongue planted in my cheek; and then as usually happens I ended up thinking, after the whole thing was over, "wtf is wrong with you, this kind of music is awesome."

listening to cirith ungol now. this guy's voice is really, uh, something.

I didn't realize that when I was choosing the albums, but I guess I picked stuff with very unique vocalists. I think that's actually one of the big things I look for with metal. I'd rather hear someone with a crazy voice than yet another slickly produced Europower metal singer.

are you a fellow mercyful fate fiend jt?

'cause if so you need to get these chozzen fate & genocide records, they are the hotness. I too love pretty much anything where the vocalist is unafraid to sound completely ridiculous as long as he gets to carve out an area that belongs entirely to him.

I'm listening to the Sigh album now. Or else there's an incredibly annoying person who's been up for 27 hours drinking bad coffee in the office next to mine, shuffling through his terrible iTunes library really loudly without the patience to listen to any one thing for more than a minute.

Wow, I stopped listening to that and instantly felt a lot better.

I like the Cirith Ungol better now than I did 15 years ago. I'm with J3ff and Smitty on vocal enthusiasm. Plus I always liked Geddy Lee, anyway.

Warlock were great, and I'm glad Doro didn't fall apart completely like Lita Ford, but I definitely think she's been bringing up the rear of the power-metal parade for a while now.

I'm actually surprised you didn't like the Sigh, Glenn. they didn't strike me as all that far from some of your picks. The thing I love about Japanese metal, and the reason I wanted to choose a Japanese metal band, is that they don't feel restricted by genre boundaries, at least when it comes to Western music. They seem to look at it as a whole, go "that sounds cool," and then throw it in.

I'm actually not as familiar with Merciful Fate as I probably should be. I have 9 and a couple King Diamond solo records, but I don't have any of their classics. Probably something I should rectify.

oh my God seek out w/o delay the first two Fate albums (Melissa & Don't Break the Oath) plus the outstanding Time & the King Diamond solo premiere, Fatal Portrait

imo

Maybe I should include some Fate here in two weeks!

yeah, those first couple of Fate albums are pretty undeniable (even if you mostly hate pseudo-operatic vocals as much as i do).

Yeah Melissa and Don't Break the Oath are beyond essential. Get those today.

Oh, it's the kind of thing I might like. I certainly approve of experimentation and stylstic adventurousness and Japanese lots-of-things. But this particular one was just not doing anything good to my mood.

ok, giving the Warlock album another chance now, and lo and behold, it's sounding WAY better to these floppy old ears than it did previously. hell, i'm actually digging the shrieking even (so maybe it was her Germanic accent that threw me off initially? i dunno). let that be a lesson to me: "never ever ever listen to two oddball metal (or otherwise) vocalists you've never heard before back to back in one sitting."

yow, really digging this Sigh record here! man, leave it to the Japanese to take the throw-in-everything (and please to incl. kitchen sink, k, thanx) approach and get ever-so more interesting (not to mention listenable) results from it than just about anyone else i can think of in the wonderful nether-world of metal. i humbly prostrate myself in the general direction of girly-warrior Jeff; hosannas in the highest, dude!

Like Ioannis said upthread, the bass tone on the Cirith Ungol is appealingly different. Just as Armstrong's vocals are different from the prevailing trends of their day, the rhythm section is it's own beast. Dry bass and drums that sound like drums - hard to believe it was a late 80s record. It's aged really well; I'd be hard pressed to tell you when after 1978 that came out.

The Sigh didn't work for me at all. Just couldn't find a way in - element after element (though mainly the keys) pushed me away whenever I thought I was warming to the idea.

The Warlock is good, honestly much better than I expected. Their are some serious high points ("All We Are" - a friend's band covered this back in the day but I'd never heard the original. Way better than I would have guessed from the sad cover he played) and the filler doesn't seem to egregious. I, too, had some trouble with her accent at the beginning ("Three Minute Warning" in particular as the speed makes it more prominent) but was totally on board with it by the end of "East Meets West." Really fun album.

Thanks J3ff - loved revisiting Cirith Ungol and discovering Warlock.

yeah, "East Meets West" was the track that first made me go "aha, what's this about then?"

I just cant listen to the warlock, just not my thing, sorry. Her videos shown on raw power and noisy mothers were fun though

Am I up this coming Monday?

05/7 aldo
12/7 A. Begrand.
19/7 Call All Destroyer
26/7 pfunkboy
02/8 mordy

I'll add myself to the rotation again, and switch to a date-format everybody can understand.

5 July - aldo
12 July - A. Begrand.
19 July - Call All Destroyer
26 July - pfunkboy
2 August - mordy
9 August - glenn