\m/(~_~)\m/ Bring the Metal! \m/(~_~)\m/

One of the frontrunners for my album of the year so far is from Ceremony of Silence, a Slovakian duo from the Gorguts neighborhood of technical death metal, with a good amount of post-black atmosophere coloring the whole thing.

Oh, and remember Abyssal and Abyssic? As if those weren't enough to keep straight, now Humanity's Last Breath is about to release their sophomore album, called "Abyssal". Not sure how to feel about them quite yet, given the band name that screams "metalcore" and some very obvious deathcore/djent-y elements that pop up right away. But from what I've heard so far, they don't go full Bring Me the Horizon, but rather stay anchored by more traditional death metal elements. The full album doesn't release until the 2nd. But I had to mention them because of the Abyssal name.

*Legion* wrote:

What is Anthrax's St. Anger?

There were a couple of songs on Volume 8 that were questionable, but the expanded album with the covers at the end is probably one of my favorite Anthrax albums. Commercially, Anthrax's "St. Anger" could be Stomp 442, not that it sounds bad, but it did so poorly in sales and on the charts. St. Anger could have wrecked Metallica but didn't, Stomp 442 derailed Anthrax for a while. Volume 8 and the live Greater of Two Evils are fantastic records.

Man, Stomp 442. The internet was just getting going, but you still couldn't reliably check out an album without buying it. Money was fairly tight in college. Even though I adored Sound of White Noise and saw them on tour, the reviews made me stay away from that one. Haven't heard it or any Anthrax album since, except for Greater of Two Evils.

Symphonic (black) metal Cthulu sh*t. Seriously weird, bombastic and fun.

Made up of members from Bal-Sagoth, who is now a band I'll be listening to.

Fedaykin98 wrote:

Man, Stomp 442. The internet was just getting going, but you still couldn't reliably check out an album without buying it. Money was fairly tight in college. Even though I adored Sound of White Noise and saw them on tour, the reviews made me stay away from that one. Haven't heard it or any Anthrax album since, except for Greater of Two Evils.

Some of their stuff, especially Joey 3.0, sounds a bit like Jell-O Instant Thrash, but Stomp 442 was pretty good.

Aaron D. wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:

SoWN is definitely Anthrax's version of the Black album. In fact, James Hetfield has called "Only" a song he wishes he'd written.

John Bush's voice is incredible. So much soul.

I really dug Armored Saint's first album (even though the production-end sucked), but when they released the followup Delirious Nomad* my appreciation for his talent kicked into overdrive.

* EASILY in my Top 10 metal albums of all time.

Symbol of Salvation is my favorite of theirs. The prior albums were hit and miss for me, bu SOS was great all the way through.

Tool's entire catalog has now hit the streaming services and digital stores. All of their albums are now in the iTunes top 10. All this in preparation for the new album at the end of the month, of course.

Speaking of Tool, I don't know why some people were so disappointed by 10,000 Days. They're wrong.

Spoiler:

It's good, like Black Album good.

Lol

10000 Days is just more of the same. It's fine.

The catalog sounds differnt on streaming. I think they quietly remastered everything.

If you love the sound of a band disappearing up their own arsehole, sure :p

Lateralus saw them on the approach but was still excellent, 10k days marked a steep and rapid descent into said location.

garion333 wrote:

The catalog sounds differnt on streaming. I think they quietly remastered everything.

Totally agree here, Undertow in particular sounds a lot rounder than it did on disc. Much better bass/treble ratio, cymbals have been pushed back in favour of those deliciously chunky bass licks - Prison Sex sounds a lot heavier to me for example, but that could just be my old ears talking.

garion333 wrote:

Lol

10000 Days is just more of the same. It's fine.

The catalog sounds differnt on streaming. I think they quietly remastered everything.

Someone on the Tool subreddit ran them through an analyzer and compared with the CDs. The results suggest the digital release masters differ the most with earlier material and is virtually identical by 10,000 Days.

I've never listened to Atheist and that's a huge loss on my part. These guys are amazing!

DC Malleus wrote:

If you love the sound of a band disappearing up their own arsehole, sure :p

Lateralus saw them on the approach but was still excellent, 10k days marked a steep and rapid descent into said location.

I don't find Tool to be any more or less up their own ass than they have been all along.

The Tool fanbase, on the other hand...

Nah, the last two were definitely deeper up there. For sure.

Hey, this is a great song:

I didn't start out a Tool fan and didn't get onboard until 10,000 Days. As far as I'm concerned, it's their best and I've been impatiently awaiting the new album for a very long time.

r013nt0 wrote:

Hey, this is a great song:

Panopticon is great, but this album did not land with me.

*Legion* wrote:

Panopticon is great, but this album did not land with me.

I'm just diving in to 'em now after having seen the name floating around for years.

Google Play Music suggested them to me as I'm a fan of Wolves in the Throne Room.
I can see where they're coming from. So far that song above and the song Pale Ghosts are standouts.

Panopticon, in general, is a band I should love but don't. I've never connected with them but loved so many parts of their music.

Autumn Eternal is a great album. The newer album has some good parts, but takes the black metal and folk elements and stretches them out into two separate halves of a double album. The elements work better together in harmony than they do separated and lengthened.

I still need to check out the new EP, but what I read is that it's like two new tracks from the 2018 album, one track from each style.

New TOOL track sure is new TOOL.

Need more listens to judge, but seems okay.

e:
Might as well add the track.

r013nt0 wrote:

New TOOL track sure is new TOOL.

Need more listens to judge, but seems okay.

Seems like one of their intro/interlude tracks... Not much to judge the new album on (unless you're judging on the WTF?!!!-ness of a 10-minute long intro/interlude)

Nah, judging this particular track, not the album. Except, of course, that it seems reasonable at this point to expect this album to just sound like a time capsule.

Which, either you're fine with or not, I suppose.

My buddy says he expected the entire album to sound like Intension. Apparently he's correct. It's Intension and Wings all the way. Shame.

To me this sounds like they're out of new ideas and repeating old riffs and whatnot, even on bass and drums, which shocks me. A couple new-ish moments, but a hell of a lot of super samey sounding stuff. Starts out with some Push*t drumming, moves into Wings stuff and ends on 46&2.

Jesus. I can't believe it's this derivative.

The first song off Gatecreeper's sophomore album is out today. Full album October 4.

vypre wrote:
r013nt0 wrote:

New TOOL track sure is new TOOL.

Need more listens to judge, but seems okay.

Seems like one of their intro/interlude tracks... Not much to judge the new album on (unless you're judging on the WTF?!!!-ness of a 10-minute long intro/interlude)

It's only 7 songs.

*Legion* wrote:
DC Malleus wrote:

If you love the sound of a band disappearing up their own arsehole, sure :p

Lateralus saw them on the approach but was still excellent, 10k days marked a steep and rapid descent into said location.

I don't find Tool to be any more or less up their own ass than they have been all along.

The Tool fanbase, on the other hand...

I'm not an OGT, but I dig this band. I heard somebody call it Prog Metal. I was thinking it's more Pretentious Metal, because if I tried to explain it to somebody, I'd probably sound like a tool.

The guys are just wallowing in their own crapulence now (which is pretty obvious from the current interview circuit). Totally cool with that but I'm pretty sure it's extinguished everything I related to or was interested in from their creative set.

Plenty of other music out there though, so it's worth nothing more than a bit of half-hearted snark

I hope that track's not seriously ten minutes on the CD and is just a big hype gimmick. Admittedly, all I really know of Tool is "I KNOW THE PIECES FIT!!!" and basically assumed they were "prog rock" for kids that didn't know what prog rock was.

Which, I mean, is big words coming from me, who effectively listens to some of the most pop music equivalent of metal around.

Still, that track was basically an extended version of ambient video game music. Which, sure, cool to just let hang around in the background as white noise, but uh... not what I'd want to hear if I was waiting years for a new album.

Fun story: The band I was in during high school, Lords of the Sith (when no one knew what a Sith was, extra nerd points), used to cover "Sober". We once played it at a dance at a Catholic church.

Another group of us played Ministry's "TV Song" at a Christian youth group thing. We must have been pretty oblivious back then, there was no strategic rebellion intended.

I'm not listening to any early released tracks. Just going to hear them on the album when it comes out.

But can we talk about how hideous the cover's font is? It's the kind of thing absolutely no one would believe is real if it leaked out a year ago.