Mordy's Metal Listening Club - New Albums Every Monday

Arckanum: Hmm. I liked Phbbthbbthbbt fairly well, but hadn't gone back to hear any of the earlier ones yet. This one isn't really grabbing me. I'm not hearing "incredibly spacious", I'm hearing "mashed into a gray blur". Maybe I just don't have it turned up high enough. Let's see. Ah, yes, that's a bit better. But not enough. The anguished howling is just making me want to listen to Lifelover instead.

The Arckanum isn't my cup of tea. The only tracks I liked were the instrumental interludes. I kept trying to find a way into it, to find the groove or something else that would open a door, but it didn't happen.

I like the Coldworld, but, to be honest, the only black metal I've been able to get into is the ambient and folkier stuff. I'm not sure how often I'd dig this out but I really enjoyed hearing it. "A Dream of a Dead Sun" is great, if just a bit too long.

Gorefest definitely has a groove - was able to get into that right away. The rhythm section makes this for me - the guitarists are solid, but I like that these guys swing. Nodding along as I type but it makes me want to get up and move. Easily my favorite of the three; once again, you guys are making me rethink my stance on death metal (I still find the vocals detract more than add though. Always another hurdle to jump).

Thanks Siegbran! I would never have heard these on my own. This listening club may not be getting the most interesting or salient comments from me but it's definitely expanding my horizons and exposing me to lots of cool stuff.

been listening to a lot of Scorpions (1975-77) lately, and i gotta say, man, were these guys ever less annoying back then than when they hit the '80s. great '70s hard rock guitar tone/sound, decently recorded drums, better than tolerable vocals, and there's bass, too. i dig it. Taken by Force may just be my fave of theirs from that time. good pick.

omg! i can't believe i waited soooooo many years to hear Mob Rules! fucking thing is a monster! i am ashamed and dismayed, and demand that my fellow metal brethren (and sistren) do herewith mete out most just, unyielding & tr00 (natch) retribution on this unworthy infidel's misbegotten person. thankin' ya already.

Sign of the Southern Cross!!!
Sign of the motherfucking Southern Cross!!!!!!

dude, sleeping on mob rules is damn near inexcusable!!

Interesting to hear the reactions. Gorefest and Arckanum are obv longtime faves of mine (the former immediately, the latter a grower), picked the Coldworld because I haven't made my mind up about it. It's surprisingly varied (in a style that is monochromatic by definition), the grand, cinematic themes are very effective and the concept/lyrics/artwork is well developed and executed but yet I keep feeling there's something missing, that something that made Burzum/Strid/Forgotten Woods what they are. Production, drums and vocals could definitely be better.

The irony in Gorefest's career is of course that after the success of False they were very aware of their strengths (the groove and solos) but utterly failed in their attempts to leave death metal behind and capitalise on them. Their later 70s-inspired groovy hard rock records are tedious and uninteresting. JC's vocals got worse and worse too, his voice totally shot.

Oh and yeah Mob Rules rules.

yes it does. and i suck for getting off the Sabbath/metal-in-general bandwagon 'round about the time of Heaven and Hell. i must now make penance most grave!

I really like this ColdWorld album. It's like Xasthur turned from miserable to grandly melancholy.

yeah i thought it was ok on first listen

i got the arckanum album a while ago, but this thread made me revisit it. it really does have great groove! that guy drummed in grotesque for a bit, right?

'acquired' seven albums today so i can catch up on this thread.

also, sorry to be a pain, but does anyone want to switch weeks w/me? i moved on june 1 and still haven't unpacked my cds. i'm doing it this weekend but that won't give me enough time to figure out what i want to post for you guys.

Someone want to swap with him?

21/6 Call All Destroyer
28/6 jeff
05/7 aldo
12/7 A. Begrand.

i can fill in if y'all don't mind.

thanks! pfunk you can wrap me around to the end so as not to disrupt everyone else

Sure. I think I will add myself after you for a week too.

21/6 Ioannis
28/6 jeff
05/7 aldo
12/7 A. Begrand.
19/7 Call All Destroyer
26/6 pfunkboy

Mordy you taking the week after me?

oops that should be
21/6 Ioannis
28/6 jeff
05/7 aldo
12/7 A. Begrand.
19/7 Call All Destroyer
26/7 pfunkboy

swell. prepare for some Osmond-metal, heathens!

Later-Day Armored Saints!

okay, that was great Glenn.

I did an Osmond-metal thing - you can hear it here: Crazy-Ass Horses

Sure, I'll take whatever the very last week is.

coldworld is reminding me a hell of a lot of a lo-fi agalloch

really dig this record--naturally it follows that it's going to be a complete pain in the ass to buy it.

yeah, i listened to the Coldworld disc earlier, too; all those lovely glacial textures and/or riffs were just what the doctor ordered what with this damned heat. great pick, Siegbran; this one goes on my must get list.

\m/

gawd, that "Crazy-ass Horses" mix is giving me the extreme lol's just now! think i preferred your "Working Man" Rush-screw even more, tho. still play that one every so often.

The Rush wasn't me, but was the inspiration for my own goofing around. My best was probably a version of the Stooges "Loose" which made it sound like Loop.

more ketchup:

Arckanum – loving this on the second listen--thought it sounded a little too flat and monochromatic at first. but now I hear all these cool little folky-pagan/occult/what-have-you details all over the place that add just the right sinister touch to the overall atmosphere of the thing. Also, the vocals are tr00ly fierce; more so than in most BM I’d say.

Gorguts – wow! these are damn impressive! i think the key to digging this more technical end of DM is to more or less treat it as if it's some kinda avant jazz-rock hybrid (with COOKIE!). i mean, these fuckers can play! and we're not talking about some "oh look at me wank off in public in order to impress all the other white boys who wish they could shred like i can shred" crap either. nope, we're talking about serious chops of the pure fucking musical DENSITY school here! great shit when you're in the mood for it.

volume 11: revenge of the ‘80s

Accept – Balls to the Wall (1983)

http://thisrecording.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/accept_-_balls_to_the_wall-front.jpg

Bathory – Under the Sign of the Black Mark (1987)

http://www.truemetal.org/metalwallpaper/images/underthesignoftheblackmark.jpg

Queensryche – Operation: Mindcrime (1988)

http://fuckingsick.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/1988-operation-mindcrime.jpg

given that EZ Snappin already did an '70s week, i figured i should run with the '80s for my shot. strange thing is i pretty much ignored all things metal--aside from my beloved Motorhead and a number of more-or-less "hair metal" bands, that is--during that misbegotten decade. so this weeks choices are as much an excuse for me to play catch-up with a few ignored (on my part) classics from the era as anything else i guess. i do, however, wholeheartedly recommend these choices to anybody out there who likes to have a rockin' good time.

(still can't believe that O: M ranked fifth in Marty Popoff's Top 500 Heavy Metal Albums of All Time book, tho. i mean, it topped anything and everything by Priest? and given that the book's results were the product of genuine fan/pro voting [iirc], that just seems like an absurdly high placing, if not just plain nuts.)

spotify ain't workin' for me (sob). links, anyone?

I love that Bathory and it was actually on my shortlist for my weeks. The vocals in particular are tremendous - they sound like they are coming from very far away (someone who knows more than I do could probably say why, have they been mixed lower than the instrumentals?) and from some very violent cracking place in the vocalist's body. I feel like I can hear all kinds of innards in the vocals -- something violent coming up from the ribs, sticky mucous, lacerated vocal chords, etc. One of those types of performances where it sounds to me like the singer is literally doing damage to his body by singing. I'm sure this is not the case (tho I'm not sure what kind of studies into the longterm affects of singing this way are, I know that a lot of singers can do similar work without doing permanent damage), but it definitely sounds like that to me, and it's a huge part of what draws me to the music.

Ha, I was just listening to Operation: Mindcrime a week or two ago. I'm not sure that "Suite Sister Mary" works but otherwise I think it's quite strong if you like that sort of thing (Rush meets Maiden meets Metallica but even more theatrical and bombastic than that sounds?). Tate's vocal gymnastics are pretty dazzling, e.g. on "Revolution Calling" and the title track. "The Needle Lies" sounds weirdly like a prototype for much mainstream emo from the past decade and may be my favourite. In fact, I like it so much that I want to give Fates Warning another shot.

I'm going to check out those other albums.

excited, as usual!

Tempted to see if I still have Operation: Mindcrime in my box of cassettes. It'll be neat to hear it again after all these years. Love the Accept, and the Bathory looks familiar but I can't bring it to mind. Looks like a fun week!

Ugh Queensryche. Despise them, no way will i ever sit through that album again! Yay for Bathory though!

Ha, now we're talking. Outstanding choices, Ioannis. This is my era right here. I don't know where to start.

I'd been into Queensryche since '84, I really dug how daring Rage For Order was, and by 1988 I just knew these guys had a classic album in them. With my tastes in metal getting increasingly proggy I was thrilled to learn they were putting together a rock opera in the vein of The Wall and Quadrophenia, and I was counting the days, that was the most anticipated album of 1988 for me, more than Metallica, Maiden, Megadeth. But I didn't expect Mindcrime to be that good. The songs all stand up on their own as separate pieces, the storyline actually goes somewhere (a rarity for concept albums), and bombastic or not, the lyrics are damn smart. The singles are the best of the band's more accessible fare, the tension and melodrama in "Suite: Sister Mary" is totally over the top, but in the long run the one track that's always stuck with me the most is "The Mission". It's simply gorgeous.

On a side note, the band made the album in Montreal, and the Quebec separatist movement was a big inspiration for the whole "Mindcrime" thing.

!

Are those other two albums similar at all?

Rush meets Maiden meets Metallica

I mean, there's something more overtly pop/glam/synth going on in there too, of course.

spotify links (yay!):

Accept - http://open.spotify.com/album/2twCPCDGJjVD90GWUjA8vN

Bathory - http://open.spotify.com/album/450O7sJi2GTzmLqHS03T88

Queensryche - http://open.spotify.com/album/6030cjvuQJHGvWCR4LD9N4

Sundar - Accept sound kinda like classic AC/DC to me (except more German/metallic than that lame and obvious comparison would imply); riff-rocking sing-along anthems were their thing, and, boy, were they ever great at 'em! Bathory are sorta ground zero for all things BM. the sound is cold, distant, agonized, faintly post-industrial. all that good stuff. and Mordy's otm, re: the vocals.

K - all we are saying is give Geoff a chance! (c'mon, dude, get in the spirit of this thing and try to listen beyond your biases.)

Adrien - completely on the money, re: O: M, concerning the quality of the songs as discrete individual musical pieces--as opposed to mere component parts of a greater whole, a la Tommy and The Wall, say.

And how awesome is Bathory's "Enter the Eternal Fire"? You see a band like Watain go for broke with similar theatrics, but after listening to their new one repeatedly for a review and then digging out Black Mark tonight, there's no comparison.

more catchup--everyone pretty much saying what i was feeling abt gorefest--great drummer and lots of fun riffs. dude's voice on the live tracks was really annoying but on the tracks that sounded like they were the actual album it didn't bother me. unfortunately my mp3s were all out of order in this case. good choice tho!

Great choices. As a big fan of Rush, Voivod, The Wall, Tommy, and SF Sorrow--I've never understood why Operation : Mindcrime love has eluded me. It's time to try again.

Accept - love them, but it's been years since I spun anything off Ball to the Wall except the title track.

Bathroy - this is the most important album in the catalog that I've never spent time with.

Looking forward to a great week! :)

I came to Bathory a bit late, so my personal favorites are the second 3 (Blood Fire Death, Hammerheart and Twilight of the Gods), but even so I can see that arguably Under the Sign of the Black Mark is the first perfection of the style. I always adored Bathory most for the combination of epic bombast and guy-in-a-garage insularity, which in a way for me connected black metal to some other more synth-based non-metal stuff I was into at the time, and thus helped kind of reunify my musical world.

Operation: Mindcrime is a fascinating piece. For me Rage for Order was genre-definitive, and O:M is clearly a refinement of the aesthetic, musically. But the weird semi-inverse-Orwellian concept-album baggage squats on it like a giant aluminum-foil-hat-wearing toad. It doesn't exactly interfere with my appreciation of the music, but it definitely makes me reluctant to push the record on others. (On the other hand, it makes all those Rush albums seem subtle and literary by comparison, so that's a kind of roundabout public service.) Taken song-by-song, though, it remains monumental. If I had time and re-production skills, I'd love to make a de-conceptized version that grinds out all the dialogue and interstitial stuff and makes a ruthless 40-minute song-based album out of this. I suspect that would actually surpass Rage for Order for me.

But oh, man, what a tragedy to watch this band's decline over the years since.

[Accept is up next. I don't think I've ever heard this whole album!]

scorpions alb is from the hard rock/early metal era that i don't really care for, but even ignoring that, there's something pretty tacky about that record.

Well, I can't say the Accept record does a lot for me. I've heard worse AC/DC albums from AC/DC, but I guess I don't really need more of them from anybody.

Dieter Dierks' production on Balls to the Wall is incredible. It's like chrome. Really unique sound.

man, I am so far behind on this thread that it's not even funny. but I'd just like to say that the last few weeks of picks have all been REALLY interesting and I'm looking forward to setting aside a chunk of time for em.

I just end up playing the Bathory instead of the others, even though I've heard it hundreds of times! Spotify has all of the Bathory and its just too tempting to listen to Bathory.

Spent the morning with this weeks picks, and I'm surprised to say I like them all! Well, maybe not really surprised; the only one new to me was this specific Bathory album.

I'll start there - I love, love, love the production. It sounds like they recorded in the same cement box Motley Crue used for their debut, only the microphones were left outside the door. I think a higher fidelity recording would have ruined it; the scuzzy patina keeps the bombast from being ridiculous. I have no interest in a black metal Manowar, though I'm sure it's been done by now. The long sequence from "Woman of Dark Desires" to "13 Candles" is amazing. Really happy to be introduced to this record.

Balls To The Wall is classic for a reason. Great tracks, great production, and the result is probably my favorite early 80s Judas Priest album (I'd have loved to hear Halford and co. tackle "Losers and Winners" and "Turn Me On"). I know the stock comparison is always AC/DC, but - except for Udo's raspy growl occasionally calling to mind Brian Johnson - I think they're past it by this point. Anthemic sing-alongs but not hip-shaking in any way; the rhythm section has zero swing (sadly, AC/DC lost their swing too as the 80s went on, but 83's Flick of the Switch still has some groove). I like Restless and Wild more, but I'm always happy to revisit this record.

The Queensryche record is better than I remembered, but i'd rather hear the two that proceeded it (The Warning and Rage For Order), despite the improvement in songwriting and skills. Like Glenn said, this is just a bit too bloated. Some great stuff ("The Mission" stands out) but a bit of a slog. And Geoff Tate, talented as he is, sounds absurd when he sings the word "fuck." He swears as convincingly as my mom.

Good week - thank Ioannis!