Rolling Metal Thread 2009

Yeah can't say enough good about the YOB. The more you listen to it, the more you'll like it. It's their heaviest and most brutal as well. But still exceptionally listen-able and rewarding.

Brilliant album, that YOB. I was a big fan of The Unreal Never Lived, but this one tops it. Love the vocals.

Going to spin the new Ensiferum tonight, which should be fun.

Occasional metal listener here - has anyone heard Bergraven's Till Makabert Vasen? I think it's fantastic: atmospheric, melodic, furious, pretty freaky in how everything comes/holds together - it works. For me. Don't know previous albums so can't compare..

Mine is still in the post.

Aldo did you check out the Woburn House?

The new Bergraven is fantastic. Much more Opeth/Enslaved influence than on previous records, and much faster and harder/heavier than earlier stuff too. He's moving away from the atmospheric Burzum/Nortt feeling of the last disc toward a more organic sound that I really love. Might well wind up on my year-end list.

Am listening to the Madder Mortem, thanks to the mention above. Haven't decided how much I like it, but it's definitely interesting, and I'd never heard of them, so another point for Rolling Metal.

Other thing I just discovered is l'Acephale, whose semi-new album Stahlhartes Gehäuse is worth a try if you like Wolves in the Throne Room.

And did I ever mention how great the new Amorphis album is? Yes, I see I did. But it's been a few days, so you might have wondered if I'd changed my mind. I haven't.

xpost to Kerr

Yeah, sorry for not getting back. Enjoyed it a lot more than the first one, but something about them just not clicking for me. Will give it some more attention soon.

Getting to like, as opposed to being distantly impressed by Madder Mortem...it takes a little investment.

At first I was all, Oh, this is, uh...something else. And there was enough to pique interest to keep listening.

Part of it is that each song has a great deal of density--of ideas, of the way things are composed/structured. And be sure--these things are composed. not glib verse-chorus-verse or even madcap-black-metal structuring. Every part relates to an earlier part for maximum effect in the part playing currently.

I guess "Armour" is a good start point, what with it being the single but their idea of a single include a mini-etude on bass and the singer turning into a theremin every few choruses.

Right now, I'm loving how all the clean guitars have this definite Dick-Dale-on-barbiturates feel.

Has anyone else heard the new Augury? I like it a ton, they've done away with the operatic singing that marred the last album, and there's more of that Deving Townsend yell-singing to offset the growls. Plus some stupidly cool basslines on this record. Very Intronaut-esque.

Oh, and the new Ensiferum is catastrophic. They're always best as one of those middle-tier bands that sticks to a comfortable formula and keep the fans happy, but they have much higher ambitions on the new CD, and everything fails, it's all so overblown (everything from maudlin symphonic metal to inexplicable Calexico-style -!- passages), pretentious, and contrived.

Ha. "Catastrophic" made it sound intriguing til I realized that you really meant it.

old news for everybody i imagine, but due to hammers of misfortune and slough feg both playing in town within days of each other (!!!) i was listening to my newly created last.fm hammers of misfortune station and HOW THE HELL have i never heard reverend bizarre before. this shit is aweosme!

'Doom Over The World' and 'Demons Annoying Me' are yoga flame for all time - great band

From one truly great finnish band to one of the worst ever..

Children Of Bodom, the Finnish five-piece with a burgeoning reputation as one of the world’s premier shred-tastic bands, will release the ‘Skeletons In The Closet’ album on September 21st 2009 – a 17-track collection of cover versions spanning the group’s decade-plus career.

Some of the covers have appeared as bonus material on hard-to-find single releases or limited edition catalogue re-issues, others are brand new recordings. Indeed, the lead track from the project will be a recently completed version of ‘War Inside My Head’, a song originally recorded by Suicidal Tendencies back in 1987.

The full UK track-listing is as follows:

1. ‘Lookin' Out My Back Door’ (Creedence Clearwater Revival)
2. ‘Hell Is For Children’ (Pat Benatar)
3. ‘Somebody Put Something In My Drink’ (Ramones)
4. ‘Mass Hypnosis’ (Sepultura)
5. ‘Don´t Stop At The Top’ (Scorpions)
6. ‘Silent Scream’ (Slayer)
7. ‘She Is Beautiful’ (Andrew W.K.)
8. ‘Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)’ (Kenny Rogers)
9. ‘Bed Of Nails’ (Alice Cooper)
10. ‘Hellion’ (W.A.S.P.)
11. ‘Aces High’ (Iron Maiden)
12. ‘Rebel Yell’ (Billy Idol)
13. ‘No Commands’ (Stone – a band that once featured current C.O.B guitarist Roope Latvala)
14. ‘Antisocial’ (Trust/Anthrax)
15. ‘Talk Dirty To Me’ (Poison)
16 ‘War Inside My Head’ (Suicidal Tendencies)
17 ‘Ooops! I Did It Again’ (Britney Spears)

500% real talk here, I cannot wait to hear what CoB covering Andrew WK sounds like

yuck.

I guess they're into the big lebowski soundtrack.

'Doom Over The World' and 'Demons Annoying Me' are yoga flame for all time - great band

huh? is there a band called yoga flame or something? what the hell is going on here?

It's an old ILX micromeme! That dude Tynan Delong, it was one of his

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXSYpQi7Nt8

all praise deserved--the yob album is amazing.

I like Bodom's cover of "Hellion".

OK, when I said "Am listening to the Madder Mortem ... Haven't decided how much I like it, but it's definitely interesting", I was literally playing it for the first time. They had me by the end of the second listen. This is a fantastic, fantastic record. At times I feel like I'm hearing Cowboy Junkies as a metal band, at times I think "See, the problem with Marnie Stern as 'metal' is that she only understands lead guitar, and metal is 92.3% rhythm guitar", at times I think this is what Voivod could have sounded like if they'd understood why the original version of "Diamonds and Rust" is 1000 times spookier than Judas Priest's cover. And most of the time I'm just mercifully speechless.

all praise deserved--the yob album is amazing.

Yeah, even PFork likes it. http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13327-the-great-cessation/

or, you could say, even Cosmo likes it. i'll take his word over the entity that is pitchfork.

i don't even know why i say that. i don't even read pitchfork. but i do like cosmo. and i didn't even know that he wrote for them.

he is their token metal reviewer of late.

listening to the new Ahab. sounds like Ahab!

must buy

Interviewed Dio today. Nice old guy. Got him to talk about his 1950s rock 'n' roll cover band years and making the turn toward heavy rock in the '70s.

really stoked for that ahab!

Have we talked about the new Nachtmystium EP yet? It's really great, I probably prefer it to 'Assassins'

about to pick up the new KSE. I kinda think the lineup change in 2004 woulda been more entertaining if the Howard Jones that took over vocals was the "No One is to Blame" Howard Jones...

highly recommend the new Necro Deathmort album if you like fat beats AND heavy doom. that probably won't be everyone here. such an entertaining album. album title of the year too: *This Beat Is Necrotronic*

http://www.distractionrecords.com/media/images/releases/dist19/dist19-xlarge-front.jpg

http://www.distractionrecords.com/media/images/releases/dist19/dist19-xlarge-back.jpg

oh and the Necro Deathmort album should definitely be included on the Dub Metal thread.

New Behemoth is the aural equivalent of having your eyeballs pried out and then getting skullfucked in the empty, bleeding sockets by the two-pronged phallus of Evil. Not that I would know.

ew

Going back and listening to some stuff from earlier this year that I skipped over without a lot of time spent and surprised at how solid the new God Forbid still is.

Yeah, it's easy for those early-in-the-year releases to become buried, but I haven't tired of the God Forbid at all.

man, it's pretty hard NOT to love the new yob album after that last song ends!

agreed on the vocals. awesome.

So the new Sonata Arctica is a return to the more straight-ahead stuff of earlier this decade. Frilly as ever, of course. I quite like it.

You heard it yet, Jeff? It popped up on ipool today.

I grabbed that today, too; gonna check it out as soon as i'm done with all the stuff I've already got review assignments for. Also looking forward to digging into the new Vader and the new Tenet disc. The little bit of that one I heard was shredtastic.

I saw some info on the Decibel book

1) The Making of Black Sabbath's Heaven and Hell by Adem Tepedelen
2) ....Diamond Head's Lightning to the Nations ibid
3) ....Celtic Frost's Morbid Tales by J. Bennett
4) ....Slayer's Reign In Blood by ibid
5) ....Napalm Death's Scum by Kory Grow
6) ....Repulsion's Horrified by Matthew Widener
7) ....Morbid Angel's Altars of Madness by J. Bennett
8) ....Obituary's Cause of Death by Kory Grow
9) ....Entombed's Left Hand Path by J. Bennett
10) ....Paradise Lost's Gothic by Scott Koerber
11) ....Carcass' Necroticism - Descanting... by J. Bennett
12) ....Cannibal Corpse's Tomb of the Mutilated by Chris Dick
13) ....Eyehategod's Take as Needed... by J. Bennett
14) ....Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger by Albert Mudrian
15) ....Kyuss' Welcome to Sky Valley by J. Bennett
16) ....Meshuggah's Destroy Erase Improve by Kevin Stewart-Panko
17) ....Monster Magnet's Dopes to Infinity by J. Bennett
18) ....At The Gates' Slaughter of the Soul ibid
19) ....Opeth's Orchid by Chris Dick
20) ....Down's NOLA by J. Bennett
21) ....Emperor's In The Nightside Eclipse by J. Bennett
22) ....Sleep's Jerusalem by J. Bennett
23) ....DEP's Calculating Infinity by Kevin Stewart-Panko
24) ....Botch's We Are The Romans by J. Bennett
25) ....Converge's Jane Doe ibid

Darn, no Immortal! And no Cave In either: it's pretty amazing to know that they recorded 'Until Your Heart Stops' when they were like 17 or 18 or something ridiculously young like that.

I'm actually glad the hardcore content was kept to Botch and Converge. All my favourite Hall of Fame pieces are of the metal variety.

But yeah, it would have been cool to see Immortal included.

Personally I'd class that particular Cave In album as way more metal than Botch or Converge, so it would really be right at home. But you can't have 'em all, I suppose.

I need to dig out my old copy with the Immortal feature - I'm not a fan of black metal, but the Immortal dudes come off really well in the interview, they've got a healthy sense of humour about themselves.

The one I wish wasn't left out is Katatonia's Brave Murder Day. That piece was terrific.

Anthrax should just break up at this point, yes?

in my head anthrax broke up a long time ago.

heh, didn't even realize they were still going.