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Automaton is the sixth studio album by Swedish rockers Crashdiet. I have heard them before but only the occasional album. Generation Wild from 2010 I think. Lots of things has happened since then. Or maybe not so much, but that have at lest swapped vocalist since then. I like what I hear, it’s just as I want this kind of Glam Metal to sound. There are catchy melodies and some arrogant attitude (with tongue-in-cheek). It...
Battle of the Ancients’ biggest enemy is the production. If the band had just found a better producer who could make it sound less tinny, it would surely have been much better. For my part, there’s far too much bass and overall a dull, rumbling sound that I don’t enjoy at all. I never thought I would say this, but it needs a bit of air and separation between the instruments to work better. Musically,...
Humanoid is the seventeenth studio album by German Heavy Metal band Accept. It’s the band’s sixth album featuring vocalist Mark Tornillo. The familiar sound is there, the male choir background vocals and the classical touch in the compositions. It’s hard to top their previous album though. I thought Too Mean to Die was their best album ever so I guess I was bound to be disappointed. But it’s a good production featuring three guitars. I...
Under the Sign of the Black Mark is the third album from the legendary Bathory. It starts to slowly incorporate symphonic elements. For example, Woman of Dark Desires apparently is about the woman whom Bathory took its name from – Erzsébet Báthory. There are also considerably more melodies hidden within the brutal arrangements than on the previous record. It’s not quite as wild all the time as last time around. It’s a delight when the...
When I first encountered Beatalica, I thought it was a silly joke. However, it turned out after closer investigation that there are actually some albums, and substantively, it manages to avoid becoming silly. It probably helps if you’re a fan of both the Beatles and Metallica, of course, since the whole idea of the band is to make Beatles songs as if Metallica had done them! I’ll readily admit that at first, I didn’t quite...
I would argue that Blood Fire Death is less extreme than its predecessors. The sound quality is still pretty poor, but there’s much more variation than on the earlier albums. Additionally, the musical style has shifted somewhat, at least partially, and the intro to the album suggests, at least in hindsight, that the transition to the Viking Metal that would characterize later albums was underway even here. Overall, the melodies are longer than what we’ve...
From Hell I Rise is the debut solo album of former Slayer guitarist Kerry King. He has gathered a new band around him for this. I guess it’s inevitable since Slayer is no more, even though they’re apparently doing a couple of festival gigs this year. For me, personally, there can’t be Slayer without Jeff Hanneman (who is dead) and Dave Lombardo so I guess I’ll have to settle for something else. Kerry King’s solo...
Armageddon Boogie is the first album in a series of three (that I know of) from Amerikan Kaos. I’m not sure if you should call it at project or a band, or even if it’s Jeff Waters hiring other mucisioan to make the albums. I’ve read in his own statement that the three albums will differ musically and personnel-wise. But it’s hard to make any conclusion so far. The genre of Armageddon Boogie is more...
The Return is the second album by legendary Swedish Black Metal pioneers Bathory. It’s a violent musical odyssey and feels in many ways like a more refined and well-produced record than the debut. Unfortunately, it becomes very repetitive, and it doesn’t feel like the music matches the vocals; it just becomes chaotic. Now, this is probably intentional as it somewhat fits the nature of the style, but it’s not something that resonates with my ears....
Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath is their eponymous first album (duh!). I have seen plenty of lists that list the first 4 or five albums by the band as absolutely perfect. I may not go so far, but their impact on the genre cannot be overstated. There is a lot of Blues approach to these early albums though. Even if they’re considered to be breakthrough albums for the Heavy Metal genre historically, they’re not that...
The somewhat legendary Black Metal band Bathory ‘s first album is a violent musical journey that came to influence an entire generation of musicians. It’s not hard to find the elements that later became some form of standard, at least within the early Black Metal movement. There are fast guitars and drums with a dismal “singing” produced with a truly awful sound. Which back then became the archetype for how this type of music would...
Warp Speed Warriors is the ninth studio album by the Power Metal band Dragonforce. The title itself fits perfectly. Dragonforce has always delivered fast Power Metal and I have usually liked it. At least to a point. But there’s also a limit to it. Just playing fast for the sake of it is usually not a good thing. When the notes start to create a blur instead of individual notes you have a problem. I...
