Guaporense's Music Thread [Archive]

Guaporense

08-30-15, 06:11 PM

Bathory - Blood on Ice (1996)

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Xwvtc-Io3f8/maxresdefault.jpg

Bathory's Blood on Ice was released during a phase of the band's sound that was much softer and lighter than ir was in previous years. Bathory was one of the most influential heavy metal bands of all time, indeed, in number of cover songs listed on the Encyclopedia Metallum database there are more cover songs of Bathory than Iron Maiden, Metallica and Judas Priest :eek:. And it's very easy to see why: the band was an individual project of Quorthon, who was a musical genius and it's sound changed with the changes occurring in Quorthon, what I mean is that when he was young the band's sound served as the prototype for modern Black Metal (together with Hellhammer) while when he got older and his hormone levels went down the band's sound changed to a more melodic Viking Metal sound, also highly influential on the Viking metal genre. :D Though it never got to the flowery levels of a power metal album, it's still hard and serious sounding music. :p

http://www.spirit-of-metal.com/membre_groupe/photo/Quorthon_-12402.jpg

While the album was pretty good overall I still think it lacked a bit of the creativity and heaviness of Bathory's earlier albums. In fact my favorites of the band are Hammerheart and Blood Fire Death.

*Edit: By the way, the album was recorded around 1989, but Quorton was afraid to release it because it represent a too major departure from the band's sound at the time. Indeed, it's very similar in some aspects to Hammerheart and Blood Fire Death but it's generally lighter than these two albums. There goes my model of lower hormone levels, though it's true that metal band's sounds generally change from pure aggression in the beginning to a more melodic direction in later albums.

Guaporense

08-30-15, 06:13 PM

I am looking for some good doom metal and black metal recommendations, so if you can review some (at your leisure of course) that'd be awesome.

This list of band's is awesome:

http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=2413

Celtic Frost and Bathory are essential for black metal. Doom metal is perhaps Candlemass.

Guaporense

08-30-15, 06:23 PM

Falkenbach - Tiurida (2011)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/3/3d/Falkenbach_-_Tiurida.jpg

Falkenbach is becoming one of my favorite folk metal bands. This album in particular drops the band's previous black metal influences and is more of a pure folk metal album. And it sounds more like folk infused with metal rather than metal infused with folk as the compositions are not very aggressive instead the songs represent a sort of contemplative folk music infused with heavy guitars and harsh vocals, like a musical version of a Tarkovsky film. Very nice music overall though it's not of the headbanging type but more of the contemplative almost classical* kind in terms of style.

Given that classical music is mainly defined as focusing on instrumentation rather than vocals and on composition rather than performance as well as being often bombastic/strongly theatrical this album pretty much classifies as such as it satisfies all these criteria.

Also, like Bathory, Falkenbach is a musical project headed by a single person Vratyas Vakyas who plays ALL instruments in the studio and does the vocals as well. Pretty impressive feat and like Bathory this sounds like serious art music and it has almost nothing to do with popular music besides using the instruments also used by pop rock bands to create a completely different experience. A very nice album of excellent atmospheric music.

*Edit: By the way, Vakyas was heavily influenced by Quorthon, indeed his work is rather similar but I would say it's more refined and endowed with more "beautiful" compositions than Quorthon's harder and more arid sounding viking metal albums.

Mr Minio

08-30-15, 06:32 PM

I am looking for some good doom metal and black metal recommendations, so if you can review some (at your leisure of course) that'd be awesome.

Black metal:

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/trist_f1/zrcadleni_melancholie/
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/paysage_dhiver/paysage_dhiver/
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/burzum/det_som_engang_var/
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/deathspell_omega/paracletus/

Doom metal:

https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/electric_wizard/witchcult_today_f3/
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/warning_f1/watching_from_a_distance/
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/my_dying_bride/turn_loose_the_swans/
https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/katatonia/brave_murder_day/

Guaporense

08-30-15, 07:28 PM

Celtic Frost - Into the Pandemonium (1987)

http://www.metallus.it/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Celtic-Frost-Into-The-Pandemonium.jpg

Very eclectic effort. It's a very different type of album from their earlier efforts. I found it really disappointing personally, since it deviates from heavy metal too much for it's own good :p. Indeed, one of the songs was used in a History Channel commercial, yes, this song showed up a lot in a History Channel commercial (at least in the Brazilian History Channel):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37ku1CzCpEs

So instead I expected some skull crushing extreme metal from one of the pioneers and instead I got Avant-Garde light metal/alternative music in some tracks. Seriously disappointing. While I liked the previous two albums which are also rather alternative metal in spirit I disliked this particular "flavor" in general though some songs were good while others were rather "lacking" for lack of a better word. A problem I have is that my musical tastes are very strict so that if you move to outside one my favorite genres the probability that it will land outside of my "comfort zone" is very high and I will dislike it. :p

Guaporense

08-30-15, 09:12 PM

Paragon - Steelbound (2001)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e9/Paragon_Steelbound.png

In a nutshell: Some of the most generic sounding heavy metal ever made. While I was thinking of listening to some plain pure heavy metal after listening to the mainstream music in the tournament and for these rather unconventional metal albums I decided to listen to some pure heavy metal. Indeed I got it, problem is that I already heard similar songs to these ones thousands and thousands of times and executed in better fashion. This is straight mediocre speed metal, like Primal Fear, very bland overall. And I think that they managed to do something that like Ultra Boris said, was very hard to do: to make mediocre speed metal, since speed metal is just: think of any metal melody, play it 3 times faster and voila, a speed metal classic is born. To fail to do so shows a certain degree of incompetence. My standard for German speed metal from the late 1990's and early 2000's remain Iron Savior's self titled debut, their next two albums Unification and Dark Assault as well as Gamma Ray's Powerplant. Though I particularly liked Angel Dust's 2000 album Enlighten the Darkness. These remain my favorite albums that were heavily influenced by Judas Priest's Painkiller. This one was particularly unmemorable.

Swan

08-30-15, 09:37 PM

Are you a fan of Cathedral, Guap? I've been listening to this song a bit lately.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei0WBgCCeOo

Guaporense

08-30-15, 10:03 PM

It has been several years since I listened to Cathedral but I remember that song, really awesome.

Guaporense

08-31-15, 01:12 AM

Diamond Head - Lighting to the Nations (1980)

http://www.diamond-head.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Diamond-Head-Lightning-To-The-Nations.jpg

Diamond Head was one of the vital bands in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal or NWBHM. The first wave of British metal included bands like Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. Later on bands emerged that fused the sound of punk rock with the aggression of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. The most famous of these bands was Iron Maiden, but several other important bands emerged at the same time. One of the most important of these bands was Diamond Head. Lighting to the Nations, released in 1980 at the same time as Iron Maiden's self titled debut, Judas Priest's British Steel and Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell, was the Diamond Head's debut album as well and one of the most influential heavy metal records of all time.

One of the album's most famous song is I am Evil, covered by Metallica, indeed it's Metallica's best song that they didn't write and comparable to anything they composed. This is just a great album full of memorable songs.

My major gripe with this album is the poor production, that doesn't bring out all the sonic assault that the band is capable off. For instance, I am Evil doesn't sound as cool here because it lacks the thick "reverberated" guitar tone that we find in Metallica's albums. Still despite this issue this is a great album and just as great as the classic albums from Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. Essential listening for fans of traditional heavy metal or melodic metal in general.

Guaporense

08-31-15, 11:47 PM

Black Sabbath - 13 (2013)

http://www.billboard.com/files/styles/promo_650/public/media/black-sabbath-new-650-430.jpg

It has been quite some time since this album was released but I haven't listened to it until today. :eek: Well, it's not that good, despite it's popularity (well considering the fact it appears there is an inverse correlation between quality and popularity in music). Black Sabbath was trying to reproduce the feeling of their first 6 albums from 1970 to 1975. Indeed it sounds quite like a second rate band parodying Black Sabbath rather than the original guys. Well, 40 years is a long time and people just cannot make the clock go back no matter how hard they can try and here they have tried really hard to just reproduce what they had already done.

I would think it would be better if they tried to do something a bit different instead. Black Sabbath was always evolving from 1970 up to 1990. Their albums started to get bad after they stopped trying to innovate. Still, the album is not bad, it's has good riffs, a decent performance by a rather untalented vocalist (I don't know why some people worship a guy who doesn't have any vocal range at all) though the drumming is rather plain as well as the production. The guitars sound like those from a computer software, almost like a doom metal videogame soundtrack. Interesting though that Black Sabbath was sounding doom metal like again as their sound evolved to a more traditional heavy metal style by the 1980's (I think due to the influence of the rest of the metal scene probably). Decent album but nothing really special.

False Writer

09-01-15, 12:49 PM

Guaporense

09-01-15, 01:56 PM

Ensiferum - Iron (2004)

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/197/507849527_c03cb29519_b.jpg

Ensiferum have quickly gained a spot among my favorite bands of all time and I didn't know anything about them a year ago. The reason is that Ensiferum have been great in consistently making great albums (oh, I wouldn't have guessed that :p) that are not only great fun to listen but also capable of transporting me to another world. It's like discovering Iron Maiden all over again.

One of the finest albums of the band is Iron, their second studio album and widely regarded as being among the band's best work. It's atmosphere is incredible and it combines Finnish folk music with heavy metal in a way that is rather organic and natural, quite differently from other bands (such as Eluveitie) and it also essentially heavy metal infused with folk rather than the other way around (unlike bands such as Korpiklaani). Indeed, this is heavy metal and feels fresh and authentic in the same way early Judas Priest or early Iron Maiden feel like. It is not like that Paragon album I just reviewed that feels like a second rate attempt at Painkiller, instead this is something different and creative but still heavy metal. Indeed, it is listed among the top 2 folk metal albums of all time in a pool in Encyclopedia Metallum for a reason: It is easily the best album I have commented on in this thread.

I would personally regard Ensiferum as so far perhaps the best metal band of the 2000-2014 period.

Brilliant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTDkVhexweg

Guaporense

09-01-15, 06:03 PM

Ensiferum - One Man Army (2015)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Ensiferum_-_One_Man_Army.jpg

Ensiferum last album was released a few months ago and it is a blast. It shows a heavier death metal influence, with a lot of blast beats, as well as the production got a super thick guitar tone. Another important change was the increased importance of symphonic elements in the album. Overall it's almost a masterpiece IMO, though it received a generally colder reviews in Metal Archives than Ensiferum's earlier albums. But f*ck those elitistsv :p.

Despite the loss of the vocalist and the whole band's lineup changed greatly (only one founding member remains, everybody else is different from the lineup in Iron), the band's core sound continues to be very characteristic and easily identifiable in the 6th studio album of the band (with many other albums to come, as the whole crew is averaging 35 years in age they will probably tour around for a couple of decades at least, let's hope Ensiferum reaches their 17th studio album like Grave Digger did!)

Anyway, this album also features some interesting experimentation with some acoustic folk songs between heavy as f*ck death metal tracks as well as some weird reggae sounding parts in some songs. :D Judas Priest did the same in a British Steel song though.

Guaporense

09-04-15, 12:18 AM

Ensiferum - From Afar (2009)

http://www.nuclearblast.de/static/articles/161/161575.jpg/1000x1000.jpg

Incredible album. Some metal heads criticize it for being inferior to the classic first two Ensiferum albums but in some ways it is actually superior. This album represent's the band's aesthetic evolution into more symphonic territory while still being more focused on a rather "classical" heavy metal sound (unlike One Man Army which is more like melodic death metal).

One feature that makes this album so great is the presence of two massive songs over 11 minutes long each. These two songs are EPIC, speciallly the first one. Incredible album overall and perhaps the strongest Ensiferum album from the decade 2005-2015. Indeed, superior to One Man Army released this year which I also loved. Well, I loved ALL of Ensiferum's albums, so far the band's catalogue has been 100% win: 6 great albums in a row. Indeed, the greatest metal band of the 21st century.

Guaporense

09-04-15, 01:30 AM

Ensiferum - Unsung Heroes (2012)

http://www.thisisnotascene.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Ensiferum-Unsung-Heroes.jpg

And yet another Ensiferum album. Well, they are the best band I have discovered since 2006. :eek: Truly incredible band and indeed the flag-bearers for metal into the 21st century. Their music is very much like traditional metal but still it feels very fresh and original. Just like Iron Maiden is traditional metal but it's early albums felt very fresh and original if compared to Judas Priest or Diamond Head. However, differently from other, older bands, I haven't heard an Ensiferum album that I would regard as "not great", well perhaps their 2007 release Victory Songs might be rather plain sounding. However, still that album is way above the competition, easily superior to ANY Eluveitie, Koorpiklani or Falkenbach album I have heard. Here the band continues to progress more on it's symphonic approach to folk metal, in fact, the band sounds almost like a folkish style Blind Guardian's Nightfall on Middle Earth.

Specially considering songs like this 17 minute epic of monumental proportions (beat, that 17 minutes of song, the longest Iron Maiden, Judas Priest or Helloween clocks at less than 14 minutes!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Us_V6KX7UqU

Guaporense

09-04-15, 01:51 AM

By the way, here are the top 10 highest reviewed albums on metal-archives:

Order ------ Score Reviews Artist -------------- Album Year
-------1 ---- 97.3 ------ 20 ---- Lykathea Aflame · Elvenefris 2000
------ 2 ---- 97.1 ------ 18 ---- King Diamond · Abigail 1987
------ 3 ---- 96.6 ------ 13 ---- Entombed · Left Hand Path 1990
------ 4 ---- 96.4 ------ 19 ---- Morbid Saint · Spectrum of Death 1990
------ 5 ---- 96.3 ------ 19 ---- Judas Priest · Sad Wings of Destiny 1976
------ 6 ---- 96.3 -------17 ---- Atheist · Unquestionable Presence 1991
------ 7 ---- 96.1 ------ 28 ---- Death · Symbolic 1995
------ 8 ---- 96.1 ------ 28 ---- Metallica · Ride the Lightning 1984
------ 9 ---- 96.1 ------ 12 ---- Primordial · To the Nameless Dead 2007
------ 10 --- 96 ------- 19 ----- Kreator · Coma of Souls 1990

I haven't listened to 3 of these. :eek: How ignorant I am of some modern metal (well these 3 are Death Metal and I don't listen to it much).

Swan

09-04-15, 02:02 AM

Guap, can you review an Ensiferum album?

False Writer

09-04-15, 12:51 PM

I've known about Ensiferum but never paid much attention to them. Your reviews are making me want to give them another shot though.

Guaporense

09-06-15, 12:00 AM

Guap, can you review an Ensiferum album?

I suck are "reviewing", specially music. So I guess I refer you to this:

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Ensiferum/Iron/38635/
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Ensiferum/From_Afar/244037/

I've known about Ensiferum but never paid much attention to them. Your reviews are making me want to give them another shot though.

Ensiferum is the greatest folk metal band of all time. And one of the greatest metal bands of all time.

Guaporense

09-06-15, 12:30 AM

Darkthrone - A Blaze in Northern Sky (1992)

http://www.hrrshop.de/bilder/produkte/gross/DARKTHRONE-A-Blaze-in-the-Northern-Sky-CLEAR.jpg

Featuring perhaps one of the worst cover arts in the history of metal (and I always found the make-up of black metal to be a bit silly), A Blaze in Northern Sky is still not quite my type of album. It is true metal indeed, very tr00!, characterized by a strong dissonant "background" texture and rather simple/arid in terms of melodies: the melodies consist of few notes but each note is played 30 times in 3 seconds as a palm muted power chords :eek:. Still, it an impressive and memorable album, widely regarded as among the most influential black metal albums of all time.

This is one of the defining albums of the genre in fact, in my opinion, when I think of pure black metal I think of Darkthrone's 1992-1994 albums, though this was Darkthrone's first black metal album and so it contains a certain amount of influences from their death metal past (as Darkthrone started out as a death metal band and shifted to black metal, and becoming one of the major influences on modern black metal), hence the band doesn't regard it as pure black metal. Though I am no specialist in black metal so don't ask me for "purest black metal": metal heads are perhaps divided into two major groups: power/thrash/heavy/speed metal fans and extreme metal fans. I am more of the first group (Ensiferum itself, while containing significant death metal influences, is actually more of a heavy/power metal band than anything else).

Anyway, this album is essential listening for anybody who is looking for knowing what black metal IS. And to my relatively inexperienced ears it's pretty definitive example of black metal.

Swan

09-06-15, 12:46 AM

I just got some Darkthrone off my friend's comp today. Should be good. :cool:

Do you like Cattle Decapitation, Guap?

Guaporense

09-06-15, 04:03 PM

Never heard of them. I don't listen to grindcore.

Guaporense

09-06-15, 04:10 PM

Darkthrone - Under a Funeral Moon (1993)

http://www.metal-archives.com/images/6/2/8/628.png?3323

I don't know why but I find this album more enjoyable than their previous one. One of the albums of the "unholy trilogy" of Darkthrone style black metal, together with A Blaze in Northern Sky and Transylvanian Hunger. This one dispenses with the death metal influences still present in their previous album and is what the band themselves regard as their only completely "pure" black metal album.

I loved the atmosphere of the album. It's very serious and evil abstract music. Well, Black Metal is supposed to be "trying to sound as evil as you can" and they undoubtedly succeed here. My main problem with this album is the same as with the previous one: the melodies are pretty simple (though that's obviously not the focus here) and make the whole album a bit arid to my ears.

Oh yeah, and the cover art also sucks.

Swan

09-06-15, 05:32 PM

Never heard of them. I don't listen to grindcore.

They kind of remind me of Nile, which is why I asked. :)

Guaporense

09-09-15, 12:12 AM

Nile is good.

Guaporense

09-11-15, 11:48 PM

Virgin Steele - Nocturnes of Hellfire and Damnation (2015)

http://assets.blabbermouth.net.s3.amazonaws.com/media/virginsteelenocturnes2.jpg

I once said that the greatest American contribution to world culture was Slayer. Well, that depends, because according to my LastFm profile the American band that I listen to the most is Virgin Steele. Yep, while most Americans never heard of it, it's perhaps my favorite band from the whole North American continent (and South America too, I like it more than any South American metal band :p).

Their music can be understood as traditional heavy metal with operatic/symphonic elements. Their music makes heavy use of pianos and other classical instruments while being heavily influenced by classical music but in a very different way than so called symphonic metal bands (like Epica). Their sound is also very different from those of other bands associated with terms like progressive metal or power metal. I understand Virgin Steele to be, well, Virgin Steele, it's heavy metal played in their own style. It's a band like Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath and Judas Priest and just as good if not better than these bands. :eek: But one that is not that remotely as famous.

LastFM has a good short description of the band: They play what they call "barbaric-romantic" metal, which is very symphonic and contains many elements from classical music. Band-leader David DeFeis describes the music as "From a whisper to a scream, barbaric, romantic, bombastic, yet subtle, grandiose, yet earthy. A call, a shout, an invocation to Freedom and the continual awakening to the awareness that every moment of life is lived to its fullest potential. It is a force, a sacred quest which drives Virgin Steele on."

Perhaps one of the reasons why they are not as famous is that their vocals are quite an acquired taste. However, this album in particular, being their latest and their first album in 5 years, is a considerable disappointment but I liked it, perhaps because it had been some time since I had listened to Virgin Steele so the feel of nostalgia kicked in. Though I don't understand why so many people hated this album. It's not brilliant and consistent but it's a good listenable heavy metal album.

Guaporense

09-12-15, 12:05 AM

Overkill - Ironbound (2010)

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2yPUfkcxoK8/U9QUP4BiASI/AAAAAAAAC3g/ofQtuIMJDxI/s1600/Overkill_-_Ironbound_artwork.jpg

Perhaps Overkill's finest album in the last 20 years or so. It's a really great thrash metal album, really inspiring and powerful melodic thrash metal. It's not as aggressive as Kreator or Slayer but more of the melodic thrash metal in the Testament/Metallica/Megadeth/Anthrax variety.

Ironbound represents a very good sample of that subgenre of thrash metal. Perhaps the best melodic thrash metal album released in the 21st century (mainly because the genre is absolutely dead and buried IMO). Though it's not as memorable/impressive as Years of Decay (1989), that one is an absolute masterpiece and one of the finest thrash metal albums of all time. Still it's an excellent album that deserves all the praise it gets from it's numerous fans. It's certainly superior to the albums they made just before or after (The Electric Age is also very good though).

Guaporense

09-21-15, 04:25 PM

Virgin Steele - The House of Atreus acts 1&2 (1999-2000)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4d/The_House_of_Atreus_Act_I.jpg

Awesome cover, awesome music, awesome everything. This is my favorite Virgin Steele album, well, album duology. Easily one of the best albums ever.

Virgin Steele is the relatively unknown American heavy metal band whose music is actually awesome here. Indeed, it's perhaps the best album of the past 20 years. :sick: Though Ensiferum's debut might be superior. Well, anyway, this album is awesome.

It's a 3 hour long metal opera divided into two acts. Almost half of the runtime is dialogue and indeed it appears it was even performed in some opera houses in Europe for a while:

This album is the first part of a metal opera inspired by the Oresteia, a trilogy of Greek tragedies written by Aeschylus which concerns the end of the curse on the House of Atreus. The music was intended to be the soundtrack for theatrical shows, with actors impersonating the characters of the tragedy.[2] The metal opera was actually performed under the name "Klytaimnestra - The House Of Atreus" in European theatres from 1999 to 2001, with the production of the Memmingen Opera House company and Landestheater Production.[3]

It's very epic sounding and the atmosphere is very dense and compelling. Easily a masterpiece but not like most heavy metal albums, this one is actually quite sophisticated music and it works wonders. Though I had to listen to it a couple of times before it really grew on me.