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Darkthrone - Old Star - I'm probably in the minority, but I actually like the later DT (or Dadthrone) output. It's not the trinity, or even the first few albums that followed them, and I'm totally ok with that. Paradise Lost - Shades of God

Brutal Truth - Extreme Conditions Demand Extreme Responses 1992 Darkthrone - A Blaze in the Northern Sky 1992 Atra Mors - Morbid Killers and Other Deaths in Music, Italy 2022

Darkthrone - Astral Fortress Looks like we're getting a new Darkthrone album already! How about that album cover!! Lol, I think it's great personally. These guys truly do not give a single fuck. Set for release October 28.

No doubt inspired in large part by Wu-Tang's massive success with that one album they sold to Martin Shkreli.

Avro Pärt - Tabula rasa

Can confirm. Saw them a few years ago and he sounded great. Circle of Ouroborus - Vimeninen Juoksu

I have changed my mind about them since this post, and am now the proud owner of Survive, Handle With Care and Out Of Order 😄

So the story goes, Bush was asked to join Metallica. While Hetfield became a bit ridiculous with the countryfied "yeahs!" he still has a pretty strong voice. Much stronger and solid tone than Bush. Which sounds mean, because I like the guy. In fact I'd go see him if he did a tour of Anthrax era stuff. But Metallica would not be the biggest band in the world if John Bush was the front man. There's just no x-factor. Joey is the voice of peak Anthrax. There are moments of excellence but if you laid it out on a graph none of their highs reach even close to the peaks of the other Big Four, yet maybe a more consistent level line over time. I read/saw yesterday about Dave Ellefson doing a little tour with Jeff Young and Chris Poland to perform Killing is My Business and So Far, So Good. Both of those albums would be great live, sans the stupid cover songs. I hope they bring that to Europe. One of the first gigs I ever went to at 16 had a bunch of massive Maori/Islander guys playing Hook in Mouth and In My Darkest Hour (note perfect solos). It changed my life and I can still picture it. My Chaos AD CD is missing from the digipak I have. Think my brother lost it. Have a real hankering to listen to that album now.

I have not, but I'll track a copy down..thanks man!

Until it wasn't. Jumped the shark in the second last series and the last series was rubbish. A shame. That sequence with the Vikings was fun. I enjoyed reading this book, but like many of his books it was too long and there was too much trivial detail slowing down the narrative.

Did you ever read Seamus Heaney's translation? I like it - it's a lot more accessible than the other one I have, a cramped 1960s prose version in Norton.

Terrorizer - Hordes Of Zombies

ASBESTOS - The Final Solution....

Yeah, hard agree. She seemed to be pretty classy from my very disinterested outsider American perspective. The thing that amazes me is the length of her reign. Will probably never see that again. When she was coronated, Churchill was the PM and Stalin was in power in the USSR. The shit she saw and was a part of as a world leader... It will be interesting to see what happens to the "empire" and UK now that she's gone. I think we could see an independent Scotland and Wales in the next 25-30 years and likely see places like Australia and Canada drift further away without a strong English crown. Personally, I say good riddance to a relic of humanity's past. Monarchy & Empires are garbage.

For the most part, I couldn't care less about the English royals...and please for the love of God, Britain come retrieve Prince Back-up Plan and his annoying, attention seeking wife...but the Queen actually seemed like a legitimately cool lady.

In theory, Beowulf should totally rock...dragons, magic swords, arm ripping, and cannibalism...but goddamn if it isn't a total slog to read. Anyone know a good version that just translates the story into easier to read English, without butchering the story?

thank you so much i already know primodrial they are so great. Im going to look the others and tell my thoughts about it.

There's always Beowulf. Neal Stephenson had a fun collaborative novel kind of recently called "The Rise And Fall Of D.O.D.O.", with an author named Nicole Galland. It's got a bunch of time travel, and one of the more hilarious and bloody sections is about some Vikings who come forward in time to ransack a Walmart - told in Anglo-Saxon verse through the eyes of their bard. Maybe a bit abstruse but I laughed out loud for a while. Viking fiction cameo?

I like digital for convenience, but I prefer to own physical media for the releases I really place value on. I don't buy a lot of physical media anymore, so I try to make it count when I do

Honestly, it's surprisingly hard to find good Viking fiction...believe me I've tried. The Saxon Tales books I mentioned are enjoyable and another I've enjoyed is the Blood Eye series by Giles Kristian. For metal....I listed a whole bunch of them for you in this thread: https://www.metalforum.com/topic/24745-what-is-your-fav-pagan-metal-band/?tab=comments#comment-368055 My personal favorite is Manegarm...this album in particular Manegarm - Vargstenen Unfortunately, they haven't maintained the quality in their more recent albums, though they've bounced back a bit with the newest one they released this year. Some of the others I'd recommend are Primordial, Havukruunu, Saor, Thyfing, Kroda, Menhir, and Kampfar

Utzalu - The Grobian Fall

I do find the lack of availability annoying, but there are so many things out there to listen to, I usually just move on to something I can get rather than waste time and energy on the things I can't (at least easily). I love vinyl, but I don't get to spin one nearly as often as I like to. Digital is much easier and portable. I'm not setup to "burn" my vinyl to digital and have no interest in doing so. I might take a glance at the shadier parts of the web to look for a digital copy if I already own the vinyl to avoid the trouble, but it has to be something special that I really want to listen to often. My purchasing of vinyl has taken a nose dive over recent years due to cost and time. Old(er) age is moving me towards all digital whether I like it or not.

I'll order a CD if I have to - always annoyed by lack of Bandcamp, but it's not the end of the world. Also, I guess my listening for new music is mostly constrained by what's available to hear in some digital format. I can't think of a current band I enjoy whose output isn't available to at least hear online. The vinyl-only thing is different... I mean, whatever, if they want to limit their audience to vinyl heads who like their stuff enough to drop $25+ on an album, ok. Maybe there are enough of those people out there to make it work for them for this short run. Festivus for the rest of us.

...not till you've done mine, bud!

We rescued two kittens around a year ago, both around 12 weeks and both are super-adorable and bonded to us both in equal measure. All my life I have wanted a cat who will sleep on my knee whilst I read a book, listen to music, etc and Mina does this at least twice a day when I am working (she's on my knee as I type this). Vlad (named after Dracula, not that prick in Russia) is less clingy but is happy to be picked up whenever and both have a superb temperament. Previous rescue kitten only truly bonded with my fiancée and he was also taken from his mother very young. Kind works for us but no earlobes have been compromised to date.

What a dick move on their part. Hey Altarage, the late 80's called they forewarned of a coming digital age where music was available and you didn't have to physically touch it.

On that topic... Using AI to Re-Create Iconic Album Art

Cirith Gorgor - Onwards to the Spectral Defile (1999)

Carpe Noctem - In Terra Profugus (2013)

Nocturnus - Thresholds I prefer The Key and in fact, I don't often listen to this Thresholds.

Well, Europe didn't happen. Wife and daughter caught a nasty cold that lasted way longer than expected. A real shame, but hopefully they'll come around next year when they have a new album out.

Drudkh - Autumn Aurora

Bathory - Nordland II Kind of inferior to Nordland I imo

Perversion - Dies Irae, Detroit death Barn - Habitat, Idaho death. Cody from Afterbirth tipped me to this band of youngsters this morning but midway through the first track I'm starting to think it might be just a little too technical for me. It's not tech death per se, I just mean techical in that I can hear a little later era Death in here.

Yeah, minidisc is dead. M-DISC is a different thing though. Minidisc had a fatal flaw - lossy compression due to small storage size. So yeah, we're all on streaming services now, iTunes stores etc, owning nothing essentially. Best case - buying FLAC from Bandcamp. But again, this means we're no longer owners of anything. All the rights we have are non-transferable, there will be nothing left after us. So some people still buy CDs, Vynil records or even cassette tapes instead. Just to have that physical copy which you actually own. With CDs I do that and then rip them into FLAC and use that in my laptop and smartphone. So yeah, no significant downsides. I have to do the rip (once) and maintain copies, but for the latter you can still upload files to the cloud if you wish. But it's not complicated. However, CDs don't last that long. Unlike Vynil records - given proper maintenance of course (ideally, don't play and don't touch). But Vynil are analog! Also I think they wear out during usage - that needle still takes out some material from the grooves on each pass. So to have that one perfect physical medium: M-DISC, which lasts basically forever, in MiniDisk form factor with cartridge casing = ideal physical medium for music IMO. It lasts forever, it's protected from scratches and wear, and it's digital. Unfortunately, something like this doesn't exist now. M-DISC at the moment exists in a CD-like format (well, blue-ray DVD is probably closer to it than a CD, but whatever - form-factor wise it's the same thing). Though even for this form factor, I remember magneto-optical drives which had those discs in casings, 5.25 inch. These were widely used for data archival.

Yeah Vikings the series was very good. I just started watching Vikings Valhalla last night which is set about 100 years after Vikings ends. It's not as good as the original Vikings series with Ragnar Lothbrook I don't think, but I found it enjoyable enough, I watched the first 4 episodes. There is another series The Last Kingdom which is set in old England in the first century and features a lot of Norse/Viking characters that I thought was as good or maybe even better than Vikings. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4179452/

That's like saying if you buy a PPV event you must watch it alone, or if you buy a piece of art to hang on the wall only you can look at it. The idea that "they" could ever hope to control who shares what type of artistic content between family members or housemates or close friends is laughable. You buy it, it's yours, do what you want with it. If something is good then word will spread and people will want to have their own legit copies. How many people have bought the same album multiple times? I know I have. But I have never bought any digital content from iTunes, not even back in the old days when I used their desktop player to synch my iPod because fuck Apple and their whole universe of products.

BONES - Sombre Opulence VIRTUE OF THE VICIOUS - Oneirophobia

Amebix - Sonic Mass

Aeviterne and Suffering Hour at the Middle East tonight. First "real" show I've seen in years. I purposely didn't go back and listen to any of the albums so I could take the performance on its own terms. Judging by the first band, it sounds like crap in here tonight, but that's ok. Update: Aeviterne was pretty good live. Ian's such a good drummer. Awesome seeing him play again. Would have been better with a bass player. Bass players make the rockin world go round. Hissing - never heard of these guys. They were a bit of a mess, but it was a good mess. I dug the guitarist, fun dissonant tremolo picking with an absolutely nasty tone. Drummer got a bit lost in the back. Suffering Hour - the real deal. These guys were a really fucking good live act. Great energy and great sound, good charisma from the vocalist/bassist, guitarist is a complete beast. I'll have to revisit The Cyclic Reckoning and see if I like it more now, it worked really well in a live setting.

The Dave vocals I heard on the new singles weren't terrible; still distinctive Dave, but live he really has to pace himself because there is nothing left of his voice. Just no power and barely opens his mouth like he's a casualty of Botox. It is unclear to me how anyone cannot be disappointed or, more accurately saddened, by a Megadeth live show. I am an obvious outlier but We've Come For You All got me interested in Anthrax again after a long indifference. Ironically, I did later find I had Volume 8 and Stomp 442 CDs in a box, but don't recall ever listening to them. And then they dumped Bush. I actually saw one of the first reunions in 2005 (I am guessing) at a Metal Hammer awards I managed to get comped into. Anthrax were voted best live band, despite not having actually started their tour yet. Dan Spitz was playing that night. Anyway, there is some Bush era material that is decent, but if you listen closely his voice is not actually that stable. Joey's voice is more powerful, even though I thought his tone didn't really suit the music on everything up until Persistence of Time when it just seemed to sit better in the mix. Of all the Big Four vocalists, he was most out of place. The greatest band that never was would have been circa 1984 Dave Mustaine on lead guitar, James Hetfield on rhythm, both trading lead vocals (Dave snarls while Hetfield could shriek).