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Devin Townsend - Snuggles

Catacomb - When the Stars are Right (2023)

Bolt Thrower - Realm Of Chaos

Wyrms - Sarkhral Lumænor, France 2022 Merrimack - Of Entropy and Life Denial, France 2006 I most certainly do! Ramones were the best American pure rock & roll band ever afaic. We take them for granted now, but Johnny Ramone while an asshole personally, was a fucking genius on his $50 guitar. No one had heard riffing like that before 1976. But of course it's the shredders like Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhodes who get all the accolades. There ya go big guy, I can account for my taste, can you account for yours? The Ramones - It's Alive! The legendary concert was held at the Rainbow Theatre in Finsbury Park, London, on December 31st, 1977. Rock music doesn't get any better than this! Timeless.

Yeah, but you love the Ramones. TINAFT.

Lich King - Toxic Zombie Onsalught

Vallenfyre - A Fragile King brackets 2012)

Orden Ogan - "Gunmen" Exodus - "Persona non Grata"

Yeah I love me some good hard rock. Not too surprising since I grew up in the hard rock era after all, although my tastes run to the less commercial more garagey diy kinda bands. Polished rock, aka radio friendly rock, is not really my thing. So yeah all those "classic" rock bands from the 70's are gonna be the bigger selling radio darling bands, and back then the record companies had more influence over young bands and would often pressure them into finding better vocalists. The biggest selling stuff was all mostly vocal driven so they figured they'd need someone skilled in that area to put them over the top into the upper echelon of the bigtime multi-million sellers. But what happens with your lesser known bands is that a lot of the time singers who might not be as technically proficient can still become quite endearing to us when we listen to them repeatedly and get used to their voices. I take issue with your characterization of these types as sub-par though. Over the years I've put lots of vocalists into what I'll call the 'so bad they're good' category. Lemmy obviously comes to mind, the dude from Briton Rites, Joey Ramone, and I'm sure there are many more that just aren't coming immediately to mind. Mr Garcia falls into this category as well. He seems to be very polarizing, people have strong feelings about him as a singer one way or the other. I really like him myself, even though I'm not the biggest Kyuss fan. Their high points were very high, but for me they're few and far between. Those Kyuss albums were chockers with filler and other nonsense that was a waste of my time. So I can't listen to complete Kyuss albums, if anything I'll make a playlist of cherry-picked tracks, Gardenia, Green Machine, Thumb, Demon Cleaner...I like John better for his more riff driven hard rock stuff. But unlike most people, technical vocal ability and superior musicianship just aren't qualities that are in any way important to me when I'm evaluating rock music (or trad heavy metal either). I value songwriting, cool riffs, heaviness and attitude. If you can play well too that's ok, but it's absolutely not required for my enjoyment. More than a few of my favorite bands started out barely being able to play their instruments. But they had that passion and they eventually became at least competent. Predictably, you seem to dig the Sabbathy 'stoner' end of post-80's hard rock, while a good portion of the stripped down hard rock music I personally listen to and enjoy the most seems to get put into the punk rock category. Your Zekes and your Supersuckers and your Peter Pan Speedrocks and your Nashville Pussy's and your Mud City Manglers. Many of these bands I think formed as straight-forward hard rock bands (and they are) but then just got adopted by the punks for some reason. Maybe because of their rough around the edges sounds and counter-culture fuck you attitudes. But I'm not complaining, even though I've always identified more as a metalhead than as a punk. Because as an old boomer counter-culture guy I tend to actually really like punks better than most people. Not that I have any problem relating to "straight guys" like you either. Not to mention all those disco kids in school who laughed at me in 1976 when I thought the Ramones were hands down the freshest and most awesome rock band ever to come down the pike. Kids who I'd imagine are now 48 years later probably a bunch of 'straight' upstanding normie middle class suburban establishment guys who wear suits and blazers and slacks n shit. One question though, who's Roger Plant? Did he by any chance play on Opeth's Morningside? Really? Just had a brief listen and that's not how I would describe it. I don't get the hype with these dudes.

Blazon Stone - No Sign Of Glory

Me too. I'll be into this ASAP.

Seconded w/ gusto

Morningrise was where I discovered Opeth. Love it to pieces, but BWP is their pinnacle which extends through the twins of Deliverance and Damnation. @markm, id hesitate to reconsider your back catalog rule with any other band, but Opeth is different. Everything they did from the first album through Ghost Reveries is worth your time. My Arms and Orchid both have some real gems. The Baying of the Hounds, Face of Melinda, The Moor... just so many great tunes.

Chainsaw - Satan

It's a good album and the guy does have the talent. He's been a bit of a dick with his comments about Megadave, in and out of Kings Of Thrash, in the last 12-18 months. But Megadave is such a dick with his own comments that it's hardly surprising when some people bite back.

Mammoth Mammoth - Volume III Hell's Likely

I shall listen!

MorningRISE dammit mark I love this album. It was where I discovered them and it was pivotal to the way I thought about songwriting as a budding musician. I'm hopelessly biased in favor of it. If you're a fan of Blackwater Park you should definitely listen to Still Life and My Arms, Your Hearse. MAYH is a conscious shift in style away from the first two albums, Still Life is similar but more fully realized and polished.

Borknagar - True North (2019)

Checked out a bit of that Unida album with Garcia on vox that the General posted. I've always thought a good vocalist can make a good hard rock band great (and let's be honest, that's what stoner metal is). Lots of great guitarists out there, no offense to present company, but finding a good clean vocalist has to be the icing . Not necessarily a "gifted" vocalist but from Bon Scott to Ozzy, to Lemmy to David Lee Roth (fuck Hagar) to Chris Cornell to Roger Plant to Dave Wyndorf to John Garcia, a good front man has a big part in defining those bands. Not to mention, many of those bands frontmen were also songwriters, which just means bands with weaker singers like the aforementioned Solarized, Fu Manchu, Nebula, etc., etc. had to have some great musicianship and songwriting to compensate. But when I think of the classic 70s/80's hard rock bands, I can't think of one that had a shit singer or at least a singer with big balls and charisma. Of course, it's easier to get away with subpar vocals in sludier atmosphere of stoner/doom vs the radio friendly more pop rock oriented hard rock of ore. Inter Arma/ New Heaven pre released tracks-sounds pretty rad to me. Now listening to Opeth's Morningside that M. Eternal posted-funny, as big an influence Opeth was on my mid age metal unbrith, there are a ton of bands I didn't go back and revisit their earlier catalog. In the early 2000's there was so much music I wanted to keep up I mostly stayed in the present and moved forward except for some black metal classics mostly because the history from the Lords of Chaos book compelled me. Anyways, I've only really heard from Blackwater Park forward. I can see that these "compositions" are of high quality but not as complex and developed as BWP perhaps.....so much acoustic work.

NP: Eternal - Cryptic Lust ▶︎ Cryptic Lust | Eternal | Raw Skull Recordz (bandcamp.com) Kind of a shame they have such a generic name. The material is quality, but you're going to run into trouble with people not being able to find your stuff with a name like that. Then again I guess if Carnage came onto the scene today they'd probably have the same problem. I definitely dig the Entombed-style font though. Always makes me happy to see it. In any case the material is good, and surprisingly it's got a little more in the way of variety than just pure Entombed worship. It doesn't stray too far though. We're deep in Swedeath country here.

Ya know, I was thinking you might have a soft spot for those Jersey Monster Magnet indebted stoners being from your neck of the Northeast generally, but wasn't sure if it would be sufficiently punkish enough as I know that's your preference with the genre. For some reason, I never got into Unida, not sure why. I should give them some ear time. Solarized stood along bands with less name reco than Kyuss/Fu/Magnet in my listening like band like Nebula, Sons of Otis, Orange Goblin, etc. But they have that great heavy, skuzz factor. Speaking of punk influence, following that split you posted of Nebula. I definitely enjoy me some Nebular like To the Center that has a punchy heavy psyche meets Stooges vibe, and in a decidedly punkier vein. I still go back to this from time to time :

Seven Doors - Feast of the Repulsive Dead (2023) Old-school British death metal with a horror-movie vibe. XenotronE - Queen of the Night (EP) (2023) Ukrainian Thrash Metal. Tetragammacide - Typho-Tantric Aphorisms From The Arachneophidian Qur'an (2023) Indian Black/Death Metal. Incantation - Unholy Deification (2023)

Paradise Lost - Gothic (1991) Fuck yeah!

It's a shame Chris and his brother never put together a proper thrash band to rival Megadeth back in the day, because I listened to this album on repeat for weeks when it came out.