Mordy's Metal Listening Club - New Albums Every Monday

The Fate's Warning is way better than Dream Theater.

Absolutely, Dream Theater doesn't compare to early Fates. Awaken the Guardian is actually the album of theirs I prefer.

Well, that gives me a little more motivation to give it a spin, but still not entirely sold.

Yeah, I think my biggest problem will be the earnest, smooth vocals. I like harsh, growling vocals in my metal. I don't like being soothed. Have a feeling I'd like an instrumental version much better. But away we go...

^^ Agreed x100

The musicianship on display is fantastic, so I totally get that part of the appeal.

Seven songs in now and I would definitely have to say I'm enjoying this quite a bit more than any of the Dream Theater I've heard, but the vocals are still not doing a thing for me. The guitar work (is most of this Matheos? don't know the history of this band) is fantastic, easily my favorite part.

Wrapped up with "The Road Goes On Forever" which represents exactly what I don't like about this sort of thing - really earnest and borderline cheese lyrics, showy percussion that reminds me of new age music, and a just general too smooth vibe.

The problem with the fates warning album, is that it reminds me of Queensryche, who I thoroughly despise. But at least it's not as bad as Queensryche or Dream Theater.

I really liked their first EP and The Warning when they came out. Haven't heard either in 20-odd years though.

They being Queensryche, obv.

when john justen gets his shot, he must pick Ulver, OK? Dan agrees.

Listening to that Fates Warning album makes me nostalgic for a time when metal was more commercially relevant - in particular that early '90s period when stuff like Queensryche, Kings X, and Rush could be commonly overheard blaring from college dorms.

Also stuff like Living Colour and Jane's Addiction.

doing fates warning now. i don't really have a lot to say--i'll make it through the whole thing but i really dislike this type of music. i would like to point out that the drummer sucks though--he is basically intentionally making the songs choppy and grooveless.

I agree that the drumming is not going for groove, but strongly disagree that that means it sucks...

yeah i did not mean to imply a direct relationship there necessarily--basically dude is just in the wrong band.

I recently rechecked my old copy of Parallels and I loved Mark Zonder's drumstyle. Very neatly executed, complex, but not as overblown as Mike portnoy.

Trying to cut down on my needless downloading so I am skipping to Fates Warning.

Parallels - Nicklas Bendtner, how others see him. Ridiculously ambitious considering that reality suggests (t)he(y) are actually rubbish.

did you listen to the mastodon?

Nah. It's not on spotify and like I said, trying not to just download musics. Will maybe listen to one of the two records they do have on spotify but considering i am catching up as it is, it doesn't seem like a big deal.

Srs this sounds like it should be the soundtrack to a fucking awful 80s cartoon epic. You are intentionally putting shit albums in the listening club to see if we can tell the different, right?

soundtrack to a fucking awful 80s cartoon epic

one day i'd like to use this to describe something i actually enjoyed.

That mastodon is very different to what came later, you cant compare them.

uh be nice now

oh and i didnt pick these 3, glenn did!

and i would prefer it if a mod made it clear on the thread title that i did not pick Him & cradle of filth! lol

Are we only allowed to be part of the listening club if we like 100% of the records? Or was an ilxor a member of fates warning and I just didn't know?

no winston, its fine if you dislike them. I dislike all 3 picks, but y'know, try to be constructive rather than insulting to glenn or whoever picks albums.

ok well maybe i'll look for the mastadon tomorrow. one a day seems plenty. the artwork for the one here certainly suggests its worth a lot more of my time than the lol r u srs ones on spotify

Ok, yeah, that was my bad. Sorry glenn.

There's so many sub-genres in metal its going to be impossible to like everything , that's why I think its better to not stick to albums in the same genre when choosing (not that glenn did this, but you know what I mean).

Sam if you scroll up you will find some Mastodon youtubes.

:D Well I think I have heard less metal records than there are metal genres, so I think we are ok on knowing whether I like everything or not.

If you tell us what you do like, I'm sure we would all be happy to recommend you stuff in that vein/we might think you will like.

That goes for anyone reading the thread. I like people recommending me stuff too btw (hint hint)

I don't know what I really like yet! And I'm cool with just taking the backseat atm.

!!!!!!!! ILX METAL ALBUMS of 2009 POLL RESULTS!!!!!! (FINAL RESULTS NOW IN! LISTENING TO THESE ALBUMS WILL MAKE YOU STRONGER FRAIL INTERNET PERSON!)

ILX METAL ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2008 RESULTS (NOW COUNTING DOWN THE TOP TEN, BTW)

Good a place to start as any^

ILX0RS - FREE YOUR MIND AND YOUR ASS WILL FOLLOW.... TO THE ILM FUNK LISTENING CLUB! (This Weeks Albums are Funkadelic , Ohio Players and Mandrill.) is now up and running.

Mastodon are Didier Drogba - strong,punishing ,classy with great skill but a bit petulant.

not an arsenal player damn you wenger for not paying the extra 500k before he went to marseille

viera then?

Aside from glenn, is anyone other than me familiar with any of HIM's previous albums? I definitely thought that Venus Doom was an unquestionably metal album (if a rather poppy, gothy metal album) but this does sound like a departure to me so far. Also, it sounds like crap so far (and I actually enjoy radio emo).:P

(My girlfriend is a big HIM fan. We sang "Wings of a Butterfly" as a karaoke duet once.:P)

By way of comparison:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NYXksSK-3w

Now I'm trying to pinpoint exactly what the differences are that make me identify these albums as different styles...

ok, fates warning. just going to have to judge this off the one song i seem to be able to stream on grooveshark. inoffensive i guess? def hits the same queensryche hate vibes mentioned upthread, although it is better than that horseshit. idk, i get it, but not really for me, not getting as much of a prog-metal dream theater vibe as other people are, which is good, this just sounds like mainstream relaxing metal for metallers stuff. not bad at that tho. not running out to buy it in the near future tho.

song was eye to eye btw

ok going to go ahead and liveblog the cradle of filth experience.

Devil Woman is cheeeeeeeeeezy, kinda sub par kinda boring. too much industrial undercurrent done the wrong way, also this guitar player sucks.

hate the drum sound here on the intro to soft white throat, but that is not really their fault, its a shit drum sound that i hear on lots of stuff from the era.

vocals sound cartoony to me? kind of a fake evil going on here, maybe ive just been bent by listening to peste noire too much.

ok stutter vocal was irritating, but the post part here is better than anything else so far. still some sort of clinical separation in the recording that is distracting from whats going on. theres no density here - which is kind of frustrating, because if there was, i would prob be digging this. song screams for heavy, and there isnt any here.

so uh what the hell is going on here (bestial bitch)? now its all halfassed motorheady, but with scratchy doubletracked vocals? again, this could be kind of great but its like this band is listening to a lot of stuff and not really making good choices about how to put it all together.

ok now its prey and its the best thing so far, by far. hated the intro, but i could listen to this (less the DUMB mindless self indulgence synth stab noise shit going on in sometimes). and now, its all mediocre synth bridge which sucks a lot. and now its back to the song, but ehhhhh. also that drum thing that just happened was crap.

this seems to be a band that could be good but is too busy fucking around outside of what they can actually do well (which given my U1v3r and SGM and whatever leanings seems like a strange thing to criticize but).

cant help but feel that for a second there i heard a band that might be pretty good, but is too distracted.

track 5 seems like the best thing so far despite my evanescence puke reaction. still, the guitar is just so LAME, and i dont need like shredder stuff going on, but can this dude (dudes?) actually play beyond a simple functional level? i am now to the part where there is a dual guitar lead and still, this is hitting me as dumbed down "metal guitar", theres nothing really interesting going on here.

ok so the crowley cover just started and i am either going to be super stoked or really pissed. just started to kind of obsessively revisit this song a couple weeks ago and i am kind of in the zone with it at the moment.

ok fuck you guys I HATE THIS A FUCKING TON. taking a legitimately creepy song and dressing it up in your crap arglebargle voice with a bunch of pitch shifting and then some badly executed half time blastbeats turns it into some clown shoes LOOK AT ME I AM SPOOKY garbage. this is tex avery moustache twisting evil. yuck.