Rolling Metal 2017

oops, forgot to put the band name in the previous post: Blood Stronghold
https://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Blood_Stronghold/3540381470

I actually like the new Danzig!

Linnea Olsson (from The Oath) and a couple of dudes from In Solitude - and ONE MORE BONUS DUDE. Sounds not unlike the last IS album, musically.

http://maggotheart.bandcamp.com/album/city-girls

want to reiterate that the Lunatii album is really pretty special and merits sit-down-and-really-dig-in listening sessions

also Ingurgitating Oblivion's Vision Wallows In Symphonies of Light deserves more attention than it's been getting. This style of progressive death is kinda Death Metal Porcupine Tree, which I think few around here have much use for -- it doesn't go as far out or dig as deep as Gorguts or Ulcerate...but it's still really good imo!!

Helluva good album title, that.

Checking out that Ingurgitating Oblivion on Bandcamp and it is sounding pretty good right now. Might have to pick it up tomorrow. I'm liking this creeping, cleanish guitar in "A Mote..."

The Suffering Hour album is worth checking out, too, for fans of discordant but not completely unhinged death metal. Some really great guitar work on that.

This style of progressive death is kinda Death Metal Porcupine Tree

i can get down

damn, second track on this is wild

more metal records should have prominent vibraphone

ok here's post no. 4 of me live-blogging my reaction to recent recommendations in this thread but:

holy fucking shit this lunatii record is knocking me on my ass

yeah it's really something

why did oranssi pazuzu come all the way to the USA for MDF and not stay to play more shows? :(
i'd love to see them but their website makes it look like they're straight back to europe for more shows there

I can't remember if Earth Rot's Renascentia was discussed here or not. It's been out since March. It has some black metal to it, but it's mostly big stomping grooves and Swedish death metal, so I'm into it. They're from Australia.

http://earthrot.com.au/album/renascentia

Oh, and here's a trailer for the upcoming Incantation album, Profane Nexus, out on Relapse in August:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e--bLVnIQgY

cover looks like a gloomy satanic version of Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

Good call! Hope it doesn't sound like that, though. Alright, maybe a little bit of banjo.

banjo in Incantation would be dope

Pete Sandoval nust took a whiz after me in the men's room

Did he try to convert you to Christianity y/n

goddamn I just enjoyed the HELL out of the preview track for the new Dark Sanctuary

https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/metal

usually I tend to like stuff that pushes against the boundaries of whatever genre it wants to be in, and this is the polar opposite of that - more like it is trying to be THE quintessential gothic metal tune, and the vocal melody here, frankly, reminds me very specifically of something I know but can't quite place. But it's just done SO well.

xpost yes and he succeeded! btw Terrorizer played a new song last night, the first written by the new lineup of Lee Harrison, Sam Molina, and Sandoval. it's not really in the World Downfall vein entirely, kind of a mix of straghtforward death metal and that sound.

I like the new Serial Butcher album. no frills death metal that kicks ass like your grandma's death metal did. production is a bit antiseptic (I miss the days when death metal albums sounded massive) but that's my only gripe

Iron Maiden and Ghost tonight! Up the Irons!

Still plenty of tickets available for Wednesday night in Newark, but my interest in seeing Iron Maiden for the sixth time (and Ghost for the second) is...not that high.

I'm going Sunday. Floor tix. My friend is bringing his 4 year old

Baroness have a new guitarist, Gina Gleason, and they've posted two videos of her playing songs from their last album with them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Q_oWxhoL0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUTzDS9TZc4

I've still never seen Baroness live. I'd really like to, one of these days.

female backing vox are something I didn't know I needed Baroness to incorporate but damn that "Morningstar" sounds great

I've listened to the new Elder four times since last night, it's amazing. I was going to order it from Armageddon Shop, but their online order page isn't secure, so I imported it from Stickman, like I did with Lore. I wish they were distributed by a real label in the states.

My Iron Maiden / Ghost musings...

Ghost played eight songs. Of the first seven, six of them were fantastic. Then they closed with Papa making bizarre banter about women's orgasms before ending with "Monstrance Clock" which is plodding hippie psych-rock that maybe wouldn't have been my choice to end the set.

My friend Richard Cowell noted that he felt the band was not as tight as in the past, which was not an unfair point though there are reasons other than new musicians that could be the cause - this was the second show of the biggest US tour (and maybe a bigger tour than they've done anywhere, I have no idea) so maybe it was jitters.

The band got 45 minutes which seemed like a lot and the sound was pretty good - Maiden has never had a reputation for cutting support acts off at the knees with their sound as far as I know. But they didn't or were unable to use the bigger screens on either side of the stage and I didn't see any video work which made it harder to keep track of the band if you were on the side of the stage or farther back.

All that said, I still fucking love this band. I loved Blue Oyster Cult as a kid, Mercyful Fate as a teenager and I have zero problems with a band who sounds like those things and writes serious pop hooks. The image is goofy, so fucking what, it's different. Venom was goofy, Accept was goofy, tons of metal bands are goofy and still brilliant. So is Ghost.

They are headlining a much smaller venue in Philly in July. I cannot wait.

Seeing Iron Maiden play a sold-out arena without the benefit of a brand new album - Book of Souls came out nine months ago - or some huge touring package was really great to see. Many Maiden fans who stuck with the band all these years remember seeing the band in smaller theaters during the "dark days" are now rewarded with higher ticket prices miles away from the band!

Seriously, good for Maiden for weathering the storm and now selling out basketball arenas.

You can tell Maiden does not want to be seen as a nostalgia act and that they're proud of the last album, but also that they have concessions to make with such a long, storied discography to sort through when making a set list.
The band literally did two on-two off the whole set: Kicking off with two songs off the new album before playing two classic Maiden tunes and repeating that pattern three times.

For those who are not math-magicians, that means a dozen songs with exactly six of them from Book Of Souls. That's a lot of songs from one album for a band with fifteen other studio albums. Even discounting the Blaze Bayley stuff, that's still a lot of stuff that didn't get played.

I have a confession to make about Book of Souls: I went on record as loving it when it came out last year but I haven't played it since about that time. So I wonder how much I did love it though the half dozen new songs they played did sound good.

The classic stuff presented was:
Wrathchild
Children of the Damned
The Trooper
Powerslave
Fear of the Dark
Iron Maiden

Can't quibble much with those selections though I am not a huge fan of "Fear of the Dark."

Brice Dickinson is almost fucking 60 years old and it blows my mind how good his voice sounds. Singers that reach his age always are unable to reach and sustain like they used to. Even legendary ones such as Ronnie James Dio, Rob Halford and Tom Araya had to make concessions to age. Apparently Bruce doesn't. Amazing.

I've seen Maiden with three guitarists for so long now, I don't even notice it anymore.

Steve Harris is still a fucking god. What he does in "The Trooper" still astounds me. I have had the honor of being "shot" by him as he put a foot on his monitor at a few shows. It was a shame that I was way out of range tonight.
It's also hard to believe he's 61 years old. Honestly he doesn't seem to have aged since the '80s. Maybe he and Bruce actually did make a deal with the devil...

Speaking of which, the encore was "Number of the Beast." You hear that intro and you get chills and then the song cuts in and damn, I am a teenager again (maybe that's how they stayed so fucking young, writing songs like that that keep you perpetually unaged).

I wondered whether Bruce, a very proud Englishman, would say something about the recent London Bridge incident. The closest he came to it was an impassioned speech about how everyone who was an Iron Maiden fan was welcome and a Maiden show was a safe place for all, and this was kind of cool.

Unfortunately it introduced "Blood Brothers" which is a meh song off an album I never loved all that much (even though I desperately wanted to) but the show stopper of "Wasted Years" was a nice way to go out.

Even with a set list that I wold have chosen differently and sitting farther back than I would have preferred, Iron Maiden is still the consummate metal band. I loved them when I was a teenager and they still make me proud to be a metal fan after all these years.

Great recap, and I'm glad you had fun! Maiden's show in Vancouver in April 2016 was unreal. They have not lost a step.

I wrote about the new Danzig album for Burning Ambulance.

Incantation is gunning hard for that Song Title of the Year trophy: there's a track on their upcoming album (which I haven't heard yet) called "Stormgate Convulsions From The Thunderous Shores Of Infernal Realms Beyond The Grace Of God."

and it'll probably be a 0:17 instrumental

the advance track does sound really good though

As someone who loves Incantation -- but has heard like 10 mins of their music post-2000, what's a good intro to their newer stuff? Can I just start up again w/a new record?

Yeah, the most recent album, Dirge of Elysium, is great. Here's my review.

Last week I got the new Avatarium and Solstafir albums and fine albums they are. Anyone else like either band?

I'd never heard Solstafir before, but yeah, that album's really good.

The previous 2 are brilliant as well. They've come a long way since their early black metal albums

I haven't figured out what I think of the Avatarium album yet, but I've really enjoyed following Solstafir's evolution all along, including this bit!

finally got around to the new artificial brain. "estranged from orbit" is BEAUTIFUL

holyyyyyyyyy shiiiiiiiiiit the new full of hell album

Good review of new Danzig Phil. I agree. It's solid and better than anything he's done in years

Does anyone like the Arcadea disc, a synth-pop project featuring Brann from Mastodon and Raheem Amlani from Withered and some dude from Zruda (itself a project fraturing a couple guys from Lazer/Wulf)? I wanted to like it but didn't find it very compelling.

New Loss album's good.

I'm feeling quite pleased at working how why Tom Violence likes Elder. It's so obvious too

btwn Soen, Pain of Salvation, Anathema, and Elder, a good year for proggy clean-vox jams. The Soen is particularly noteworthy for anyone who likes the idea of late-era Opeth vox meeting Blackwater Park-style instrumentals.

Ordered the new Schammasch

new schammasch already? scheesch.