Mordy's Metal Listening Club - New Albums Every Monday

Come My Fanatics - not my go to Electric Wizard album (I love Witchcult Today), but I play it more than Dopethrone. Heavy as shit, but not overwhelming the way Dopethrone can be, as the riffs never disappear into a wall of rumbling bass. They definitely improved technically as they went on - the drums on this sometimes lose their way - but the overall sound of this just so, so good. Simple, and simply massive. I have a soft spot for the spacey, less crushing bits; "Ivixor B - Phase Inducer" is some great Hawkwind/Floyd tuned-down shit, and is a welcome breather when it comes on. Great way to start a week.

Does anyone have the addition with the additional bonus cuts ("Demon Lung" and"Return to the Son of Nothingness")? Do they make it feel too long?

I thought that was the version i didnt link to when i couldnt find the spotify

Well, I didn't need the link. What do you think of those tunes?

they aren't bad but they don't really jive with the rest of the album. like many bonus cuts, they're kind of an anti-climax. I never listen to em when I play the whole thing straight through.

Thanks Alan - that's what I figured.

The Lord Weird Slough Feg: so good, so good. Not quite sure how you like this and not the Manower, pfunk, as there is lots of classic power metal (and Manowar in particular) in Slough Feg's sound. Great riffs. I love how the start of the riff in "Warriors Dawn" (dun-dada-da-dun) is from Thin Lizzy's "Bad Reputation", but then they just extend it into crazyriffcentral John Cobett broke into some Lizzyisms when I saw Ludicra last month, too, and who wouldn't? The mix on this is wonderful - vocals are clear and understandable, but not as forward as is common in more traditional power metal. "Fergus Mac Roich" is my jam. A minute and a half of glory. Mike Scalzi's vocals don't really sound like anyone else, though when his voice starts to get ragged at the end of long vocal lines he veers into Mike Ness of Social Distortion territory.

Special shout-out to Erol Otus, cover artist and D&D god extraordinaire. If people want to know more about the band, check this out - Eclipsing a Vargr Moon, and then an interview of Mike Scalzi by the same folks - Release the Spores.

I see more early Maiden-isms in them rather than Manowar.

I wonder if for once Glenn will like one of my picks

this slough feg album is a blast! i had never really listened to them. definitely reminds me of a slightly heavier maiden and a vocal style i much prefer to that of manowar. so many catchy riffs!

Dunno for sure about "like" yet, but I'm on Lord Weird Slough Feg now, and after 9 songs don't see any reason I won't make it to the end. So that's something!

pfunk or anyone--are slough feg's records pretty consistent, quality-wise?

I would say so! The last one was a tad doomier(like dio sabbath doom)

I was expecting it to be way weirder though. And feggier.

Yeah, sounds very much like a rougher, less bombastic Iron Maiden. I enjoyed it. I'll probably play it again some time! I don't find myself immediately checking EM for the list of other albums of theirs I now need to download, but we'll see.

Not sure I'm going to make it through Electric Wizard. I already have the first Black Sabbath record, and I already don't listen to it much.

If you like Down Among the Deadmen be sure to check out Ape Uprising!, it's arguably their best album since that one.

I like them all, but that's not a bad one to go to next

bought entombed's wolverine blues today; thanking u metal listening thread

you're welcome!

jj can you update thread title if you're reading this please?

thanks mr/mrs mod

I wonder if the bands names ever put people off listening/buying/downloading?

Gave up on both Electric Wizard and YOB halfway through. No big surprise, I already knew both bands and found them uninteresting. And yet I like Sunn O))). I don't have a really systematic explanation of why I like some kinds of lumbering tedium and not others.

was it the vox that put you off? Many find the YOB vox a deal-breaker

Vox didn't help, but in both cases I found the music plodding and unfun, even before anybody started making any mouth noises...

I find the music fun myself, in that i enjoy listening to it, but ,y'know, doom isn't meant to = "fun".

I really liked the last Slough Feg record, so am looking forward to hearing this one. Come, My fanatics is one of a couple of Electric Wizard albums I've not heard, so also looking forward to that. Don't know YOB apart from all the ILM love they've been getting, so am interested to hear that one too.

Come My Fanatics is many Electric Wizard fans fave (cuz noone will admit Dopethrone is the fave as that's the crossover canonical choice non-elitists pick)

I really want to listen to these but am abroad w/ no time nor access to my songs at home, fuck it.

I thought a certain mod would have been on this thread saying how amazing the lord weird slough feg is

But he hasnt

Dopethrone is my favorite, follwed by the self-titled. I'm overdue for another listen though.

Catharsis is pure magic. Such a treat to hear them trot out Aeons in Europe.

Love Slough Feg live. I owe it to Scalzi to try harder with the recordings. I'm sure they'd click for me if I tried.

Stop picking all my friends Herman. That makes it hard ;)

not my fault mr namedropper!

come my fanatics sounds great--a lot closer to the dopethrone sound than some of their other records, which seem to lose a lot with cleaned-up sonics.

yob is predictably great too. i mean i knew i liked both these bands but it's always good to have a reason to dig into their back catalogues.

You dont need a reason!

slough feg record is great great GREAT! i mean, i knew it would be - love the band, but only really know traveler and atavism. have always wanted to dig deeper, due to sci-fi & rpg nostalgia as much as anything, so endless thanks to HGN for suggesting this. strongly reminiscent of iron maiden, as others have said, maybe with vocals by bad religion guy's cousin?. (hammers of misfortune guy, yeah i no...) anyway, i haven't had this much fun listening to a metal album in quite a while. would have LOVED this band when i was 15 - totally hitting that rush/maiden/IASFM sweet spot. and "walls of shame" is totally built around "temples of syrinx", right? line between tongue-in-cheek nostalgia and straight ripping it off is a fine one, but both songs are awesome, so i don't care. walked around last night with "death machines" BLASTING on endless repeat. totally a sucker for epic sci-fi fables set to soaring power metal. gets me where i live. "traders and gunboats" scratches the itch, too.

only complaint i have is that they deserve bigger, better, clearer production. epic and gleaming, like some doomed world's resource-depleting generation ship embarking new on the fathomless depths of space. well, and that they occasionally cross over into a version of geekness that bugs me ("troll pack").

is the stuff with the new vocalist comparable?

new? Scalzi has always been the vocalist.

it was hammers of misfortune he left

cobbett left slough feg

yeeps, i though scalzi had left for some reason. [shrug] haven't heard the revised, cobbett-less version of the band, so wasn't sure what was going on.

jeez, can't believe i said "totally" three times in that fucking post. or, well, i can easily believe it, but it's still a difficult truth to face.

Yeah Slough Feg without Scalzi would be like a Monster Manual without Demogorgon.

Nate are you taking a week in this?

dunno what to add about come my fanatics. never sure whether or not to call it my favorite e-wiz record, cuz i go back and forth between that and dopethrone, but it doesn't matter - they both rank high among my very favorite metal records. dopethrone's angrier, harsher, and therefore less invitingly, psychedelically womblike, so i turn to it less often in the long run. love the weird gentleness of ...fanatics. "return trip", "doom mantia" and "solarian 13" are such gooey, groovy, mind-melting things. they're metal, but they've also got something in common with some austin powers cliche of swinging 60s dance pop. don't know what i mean by that, exactly, but agree with myself anyway. feels like bathing in the mathmos, makes me feel high even when i'm straight.

weirdest thing about records like born too late, spine of god, sleep's holy mountain, ...fanatics, paso inferior and amplifier worship is how simple and derivative they seem, while still retaining a strong, basically inimitable identity. i was really excited about the possibilities of stoner/doom in the late 90s and early 00s, due to those records (and a few others), but wound up liking very little of what they spawned and accompanied. dunno why. i guess it's easy to duplicate a sound or general vibe, but less so to express a clear artistic personality within a narrow formal straightjacket. like i have nothing against ufomammut, but they don't move me in the same way.

UFOmammut are great!

"Nate are you taking a week in this?"

Give me a week. I'll totally do it.

Yeah I also love UFOmammut.

Ok listening to this week's tunes over the weekend. Will report back.

I would have joined the club sooner but I was overseas.

So unless I missed something, next week is Alan, then EZ Snappin, then me?

yah, i dunno why i picked on ufomammut specifically. i think it's that they always sounded a little too much like stoner doom by the numbers. and i dunno, line-sixy. but maybe i wrote em off too quick.

anybody spotted any other easter eggs in the slough feg, like the syrinx nod? seems like a record made for that kind of trainspotting...

only complaint i have is that they deserve bigger, better, clearer production.

The (lack of) 'production' is one of the things I like best about both Slough Feg and Hammers, it's like power metal without the POWER, but in a very good way. I especially like the organic feel and sound of the drums, which - according to John Cobbett at least - is definitely a creative choice rather than the result of a lack of means.