Metalheads! Confess & Brag

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just thought I'd pass along this tangent:

There is an avant garde modern composer named Glenn Branca who composes hard rock/metal symphonies. You might want to give him a listen.

http://www.glennbranca.com/

And for giggles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Branca
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Glenn_Branca#Disputed

 

[Testament]

Blessed is the Black

Nycarius, how could you post Black Metal acts and not include the two of the true legends of the form, Emperor or Mayhem?

Mayhem are pretty much the godfathers of the infamous Norwegian wave of BM, their Deathcrush demo is an icon of so called "tr00" or "kvlt" BM. They've been through a huge number of lineup changes, all of them forced to some degree, and as a result all of their albums are quite distince. Their latest, Ordo Ad Chao is murky, muted and unrelentingly dark, and very hard to get in to. De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is probably their most famous, and is quite accessible. Very nasty, very evil, with suprisingly good production, and Attila Csihar does some seriously wicked vocals. The title track is absolutely killer, with some demonic moaning operatic howling interspersed with the snarling vocals.

Emperor are, in my opinion, nothing less than gods. I have all their albums, from Wrath of the Tyrant to Scattered Ashes, and I adore them all. These guys took the genre to its boundaries and beyond constantly, using classical flourishes before Dimmu Borgir had even been formed, let alone drowned an album in keyboards, and moving beyond christ-killing church burning lyrics into further fields. In The Nightside Eclipse is their first album and oozes sorrow and menace from every track. Ihsahn's vocals are very much demonic screams, and the primitive production does hurt this album somewhat. Despite that, it features two of their best ever songs, "I Am the Black Wizards" and "Inno A Satana". If you want a good starting point for Emperor, then grab Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, their second album. The production is good without being overly slick, the tracks are bold and powerful, and Ihsahn's vocals are probably at their peak.

Another good band to check out is Immortal, and Darkthrone are also noteworthy, although they're the absolute epitome of raw, "necro" BM. Sigh are pretty much impossible to classify, although Scorn Defeat and Hangman's Hymn: Musicalische Exequien are more than a bit BM, and are both excellent albums. Hangman's Hymn in particular has become a favourite of mine.

On the matter of CoF, I was a fan, then they did Thornography, an album I consider to be a disgrace and an insult to their awesome early work, especially Dusk...And Her Embrace and ESPECIALLY Cruelty and the Beast. Damnation is good, although horribly overproduced for my liking and drowned in samples and FX. I'd reccomend starting off with Cruelty and the Beast.

As for Dimmu Borgir, I'm one of many BM fans who thinks they could be really good again if they'd get rid of Shagrath (honestly, he's like Dani Filth with less than half that psycho's range) and put Vortex on vocals full time. Not only does he have a magnificent clean voice, but he can snarl and shriek with the best of them.

 

[Ferret]

Well, it's been a week, and I don't think I'm goign to do a full reveiw of the conert anymore, but here are some thoughts:

Kataklysm - 4/5. Great showmen and good DM songs; I liked them. And they promised to come back

DevilDriver - 3/5. Crappy showmen I was really expecting more. Played a new song off their upcoming album. Sounds good. Hope they come back to a bigger stage, so there's room to mosh; maybe they'd be in their element more.

Unearth - 4/5. Great crowd-pleasers and I really wasn't expecting them to be so good - but their live show is *much* better then their albums. They really kept the crowd moving and moshing, and their songs were top-notch live and all stood out. Great guys, great show.

Dimmu Borgir - 3.5 (almost a 4) /5. Well, these guys were pretty scary looking metalheads, but I was honestly expecting more from the headliners. I said 3.5 because I felt like they really didn't try to get the crowd going throughout their time on stage, and the singer, I felt, honestly brought the band down. Maybe it was just the acoustics live. Not sure. Their bassist however, sang some clean vocals which were amazing - and he was an amazing bassist to boot - those fingers FLEW over the strings. The drumming was intense, and the keyboardist was really good and atmosphereic as well. So somewhere between a 3.5 and a 4.

Oh, and one more thing about Dimmu Borgir's drummer - he's kinda famous in his own right. You see, he is Hellhammer, the fellow who used to drum in Mayhem, the band with Varg Vikernes et al. And *I* caught one of his drumsticks Now that is a keeper.

cheers,
--N

Sounds like you had an awesome time! I need to get into more of theses gigs though, and still hear more types of metal. I mean, groove metal?

Nice souvenir though!

 

[Nyaricus]

Nycarius, how could you post Black Metal acts and not include the two of the true legends of the form, Emperor or Mayhem?

Well, at the time of posting I actually wasn't much of a fan of Mayhem, actually. Their music is just very hard to get into, and I just didn't get it. Now though, I've really taken a liking to DMDS and to a lesser degree their newest disk.

As for Emperor, this is a band I really need to get into. Ironically, I just bought Ihsahn's The Adversary a few days ago, and I've completely fallen in love with the disk - the style is indescribable in regards to genre... it retains a symphonic metal edge throughout while flirting with power and black metal, and all the while being incredibly progressive in sound and scope. WHERE DO I FIND MORE MUSIC LIKE THIS?

Other then that, I've really begun to delve deeper into BM, with Rotting Christ, Marduk, Woods of Ypres and Akercocke being new favourites.

cheers,
--N

 

[reanjr]

Confession is a strong word, since I am proud of my entire music collection. Some very non-metal stuff that appears in my collection (and of which I am a big fan):

Bjork
Collective Soul
Motown of all varieties
Eminem
Sunny Day Real Estate
Phil Collins

I have all sorts of metal stuff, but nothing too obscure (my obscure tastes tend to run outside of metal). This is probably the best example of obscure I've got (or maybe I'm too out of touch with mainstream to even know how obscure my collection is):

Agalloch
Green Carnation

 

[reanjr]

Damnation is good, although horribly overproduced for my liking and drowned in samples and FX. I'd reccomend starting off with Cruelty and the Beast.

I LOVED Damnation. But I'm a big My Dying Bride fan and especially of Martin Powell (MDB's violinist, now CoF's Keyboardist) who wrote most of the album.

 

[Weinbehalter]

I'm not exactly sure if you will be able to help me, but im looking for more good melodic death metal bands. I absolutely love In Flames, Soilwork, and Opeth.

Also great thread guys, im listening to lots of great metal I didn't even know about until recently.

As for the first purpose of the thread, I must confess I have cd's of falloutboy and some rap.

As for the metal though, I own every iron maiden album, and have albums of iced earth, in flames, soilwork, opeth, at the gates, kataklysm, slayer, sonata arctica, kamelot, dragonforce, static-x, emperor, lamb of god, children of bodom, unearth, god forbid, megadeth, disturbed, killswitch engage, etc. I can go on and on. Then theres all the hard rock bands which have already been mentioned.

I'm all over the place in metal genres.

 

[Testament]

Well, at the time of posting I actually wasn't much of a fan of Mayhem, actually. Their music is just very hard to get into, and I just didn't get it. Now though, I've really taken a liking to DMDS and to a lesser degree their newest disk.

As for Emperor, this is a band I really need to get into. Ironically, I just bought Ihsahn's The Adversary a few days ago, and I've completely fallen in love with the disk - the style is indescribable in regards to genre... it retains a symphonic metal edge throughout while flirting with power and black metal, and all the while being incredibly progressive in sound and scope. WHERE DO I FIND MORE MUSIC LIKE THIS?

cheers,
--N

No argument whatsoever as to Mayhem being hard to get into. I'm not really that enamoured of most of the Maniac era stuff, but DMDS and OAC are fantastic. OAC in particular is almost impentrable, its so murky, bleak and dark. But then again, I also love Sunn 0))), so the drone influence that Attila brought across with him to Mayhem is something I consider a plus.

Glad to hear you like The Adversary. If you liked it, then its pretty safe to assume you'll like Prometheus: The Discipline of Fire and Demise, the last Emperor album, considering that its pretty much a solo project by Ihsahn. Its very much the prototype to his solo work, and is very difficult to get into, but will reward repeated listenings. The work he did with his wife and his brother in-law as Peccatum can be a stone cold bitch to track down, but also well worth checking out. Its even more avant-garde than The Adversary, but never dull and always challenging.

 

[Testament]

I'm not exactly sure if you will be able to help me, but im looking for more good melodic death metal bands. I absolutely love In Flames, Soilwork, and Opeth.

Also great thread guys, im listening to lots of great metal I didn't even know about until recently.

As for the first purpose of the thread, I must confess I have cd's of falloutboy and some rap.

As for the metal though, I own every iron maiden album, and have albums of iced earth, in flames, soilwork, opeth, at the gates, kataklysm, slayer, sonata arctica, kamelot, dragonforce, static-x, emperor, lamb of god, children of bodom, unearth, god forbid, megadeth, disturbed, killswitch engage, etc. I can go on and on. Then theres all the hard rock bands which have already been mentioned.

I'm all over the place in metal genres.

You want more good melodeath? Two words for you then: Arch Enemy. Their early stuff with Johann Liiva on vocals is alright but the first album with Angela Gossow on vocals is probably their best to date, Wages of Sin. Anthems of Rebellion is alright, at best, IMO, and Doomsday Machine is fairly good. These guys are all about the big showy solos that almost cross into power metal territory they're that over the top, but some very good drumming and Angela's scorched raw screaming keep it firmly rooted in Gothenburg death. Well worth checking out.

Great, now I need to put it on, "Ravenous" has just lodged itself in my brain.

 

[Nyaricus]

Sounds like you had an awesome time! I need to get into more of theses gigs though, and still hear more types of metal. I mean, groove metal?

Nice souvenir though!

Yes it was! I'm also seeing Cannibal Corpse, The Black Dahlia Murder, The Red Chord and Goatwhore next Wednesday, which is going to kick something major

Groove metal is also known as "half-thrash" and/or "post thrash". Pantera or Machine Head are good examples of Groove metal.

cheers,
--N