markm

I've talked about my love of stoner and doom recently. I really don't listen to stoner metal thaaat much anymore but it's a bit like saying I've sworn off from pizza or donuts....uh, it's not a realistic goal.  I guess I'll chalk it down to my affection of a let sleeping dogs lie -genre, but I do trot out some of my favorite gateway albums which really are comfort food for me at this point. Today, I did a rewind to the late 90's to a second tier band that despite limitations, deliver the goods:

Solarized/Neanderthal speedway-1999-these Jersey Boy stoners came out with a couple of albums at the turn of the millennium-This one has guests from a couple of Monster Magnet members, most notably stoner guitar hero Ed Mundell and the influence of early Magnet is as subtle as sledge hammer, but for those of us that love early Magnet, that's a good thing. Vocals are straight up weak but the skuzzy heavier than Magnet sound released on Man's Ruin make this throwback to 70's nostalgic thick and grungy rawker a winner for an infrequent but enjoyable groovy spin once in a blue moon.  Next up-2002's Driven.

37 minutes ago, JamesT said:

 My very first exposure to the band was "Songs of Darkness, Words of Light", which remains my favorite MDB album.  

That is one of my favorite later MDB albums, too. Turn Loose the Swans and and Angel are pretty hard to beat, tho! 

Melvins/Tarantula Heart (2024)-new album!

Alkaloid/Liquid anatomy (2018)

The Cult/Love

5 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Accept - Metal Heart 1985

 

On the Accept discussion, Restless and Wild is cool and I do randomly enjoy Balls to the Wall, but I love me some Metal Heart. Dogs on Leeds, Too High to Get it Right, Up to the Limit, but is a bit like Screaming for Vengeance/Defenders of the Faith-moments of metal ecstasy with some commercial filler that I usually just want to skip (Midnight Mover, Screaming for a Love Bite). Piece of Mind also comes to mind. In each case, the highs are so-stick the needle in-euphoric, I'm willing to overlook both bands desires to break into the U.S. top 40 market. And, of course, Priest did just that. Metal Heart, ntl, is one of my absolutely favorite 80's metal albums. I finally repurchased the disc a few years ago when I realized it was a desert album I could not live without.

Necrot-Lifeless Birth, I dunno, these guys don't do a lot for me

Been listening to Panopticon's 2023 release, Rhyme of Reason some recently and comparing it to other atmospheric/melodic black metal one person bands I've enjoyed in recent years. 

Spectral Lore/Mare Cognitum-Wanderers/Astrologers of the Nine-a split but two one man bands

Afsky/Ofte jeg drømmer mig død-big fan of this one that seems to be classified as just black metal or melodic black metal with doom influences, but I don't see much daylight between melodic and atmoblack tbh

Grimma-Frostbitten

Grimma-Rotten Garden

57 minutes ago, Hungarino said:

Aloha Mark!

 

Hope the east coast is treating you well.

I do use the Dragonfly, or a small portable amp, or a dongle for both, but Meze's do not need much. 

Cheers my Friend and Thank you! Here's to the endless summer even for deathly, blackened frostbitten hearted among us.

3 hours ago, SurgicalBrute said:

Stop...you're going to make me blush. 😁

I am actually alive and well, and amusingly enough just happened to be looking in on the forum late last night when I saw my name go up, so I figured I'd check in. Didn't mean to completely wander off like I did, tends to happen with me sometimes when it feels like conversation at a place has gotten too quiet or fallen into too much of a rut...something else will grab my attention and off I go...and yeah, the new job, while not overly taxing by any means, definitely has moments where it needs a lot of my time (the next several weeks for example). So, that certainly doesn't help.

As for Whitenoise and my taste, there is quite a bit of overlap. We definitely cover a lot of the same ground, and I've pulled some good reco's from him over the years, but he's right when he says we have different priorities in our music. Usually a lot of the stuff he likes best would get just get a "not bad" rating from me, and he'd probably say the same about a lot of my personal favorites. In recent years my tastes have been running toward bands that like to hide a surprising level of melody under a thick layer of fuzzy production...the so called "raw black metal" trend. Though, I'll admit, it's a trend that's quickly wearing out its welcome.  I'm also probably a lot more forgiving of the use of synth, even though I seem to be one of only 5 people who's already over that Moonlight Sorcery band that's making everyone cream their shorts.

Regarding my year end list...honestly, I got tired of trying to whittle it down to a manageable number, and since there was no real pressing need to have one, I figured why make myself nuts, and basically just kind of stopped working on it. If you want to see it "as-is" though, I'm more than happy to post my rough list.

Hope everyone is doing well

 

Hey man! Just glad you're going well my friend. But I do enjoy listening to your picks. Congrats on the degree and the new job. And, I understand the forums can get redundant. 

4 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Haha Surge is still alive, I just saw him post a pic of the eclipse obscured by clouds yesterday on the 13 man txt thread we're both a part of. But he doesn't really pop in there so much anymore and neither do I really. I spend more time here. He threw in the towel on his former commercial carpet cleaning business a couple of years ago and went out and earned himself a high falutin college degree. So now he's joined the actual smart people workforce and he doesn't seem to have the same kind of free time like he once used to. I'm sure he still posts on a metal forum somewhere like NCS probably, but I don't have to tell you there are only so many hours in a day for this shit.

Surge and I do have a reasonable amount of overlap musically, but his tastes seems to be just as specific as mine if not even more so, just in slightly different areas. So like we both consume a ton of black metal, but I'm more into caustic riffy Norsecore, Finnblack, first wave influenced stuff as well as black/death & war metal while he seems to be super into that fuzzily produced atmo-black right on the edge of lo-fi and some folk metal. We definitely like some of each other's stuff, we do both dig a bunch of the Finnish bands I think, but I think he and I are mainly focused in different areas and probably out hunting for different shit.

Same with death metal, he goes more for the mid-paced Swedeath, Bolt Thrower and European style bands, some Chilean death, classic death/doom and maybe some more melodic Amon Amarth type viking stuff, while I cast a somewhat wider death metal net. I like all that kind of stuff he likes as well, (not the Amon Amarth so much) but I do also tend to go more for the ugly brulal and putrid caverncore, Incantation clones and more recently I've been getting into a ton of deathgrind and old late 90's/early 00's era BDM. Mortician, Malignancy, Suffocation, Exhumed, Devourment, Deranged stuff like that which I don't think he has much interest in if any. I didn't either tbh just a few years ago, but this is where my natural progression of heaviness has taken me. Seems I need it heavier and heavier and ever more brutal to get the same high off of it if ya know what I mean.

Besides the black and death metal I know he dips his tootsies into stuff like modern day heavy metal and thrash which I have little to no interest in (unless it's been very heavily blackened) while as you probably know I'm heavily into grindcore, hardcore, punk rock, and of course boatloads of crust and stenchore, which I don't think he's too interested in. So you can see when you drill down a bit and take core samples there's not as much crossover between us cool cats as one might think.

So sure, to the uninitiated we would both appear to be mostly into black and death metal, same basic shit, right? And it's also true we do both have a strong aversion to prog, hipster black, tech death and twinkcore. But to the well traveled extreme metal connoisseur he and I actually have somewhat different and pretty clearly defined tastes. We could both make top 25 year end lists and only have maybe 4 or 5 albums in common. There I go overexplaining again. Sorry dude, I know you don't read anything I write that's more than 3 paragraphs and that was just 5.

I'll have you know I read the whole thing. Surge finds some interesting stuff, sometimes. Good dude. Glad he got a job after getting his degree. I know he was trying to make a better life for he and his wife.

4 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I would happily use the filters and shortcuts too my friend if they took me even close to where I wanted to go. But my problem is they inevitably take me much farther away from my intended destination, so they're of no use to me. Obviously it'd be so much easier for me to just be able to enjoy whatever music was readily available, like turning on the radio was for lots of people I knew back in the day. I'd love it if I could just buy like the 40 albums on the Decibel list every year and then just enjoy them and be done with it. But that method doesn't work for me. I have some pretty specific requirements for what I want from my music, and I have yet to find a reliable source (other than Marko) who consistently nails it and gives me the type of music I'll most likely dig.

How about Surge?  You guys have a lot of cross over. Where the hell is Surge, anyway?

Oh Surge!!!!

Imma start yodeling for Serge. He didn't even post his 2023 list. Sergiiiioooooo.....yodelayheehoo!!! (silence)

Sergio, Sergio, Wherefore art Thou, Sergio (nothing)

Sergio, come out and Plaaaay!!!

This is an extremely sad state of affairs. Maybe I'll do a Surge rain dance or make a Surge cupie doll or get out my Surgi crystals. 

😪

Yeah, and the other thing is I'm kind of into it. I mean, into it enough to write lists and buy albums, but your REALLY into metal. It's a huge part of who you are. I respect that. To me it's kind of a voyeuristic dark little corner of my life like having an affair or something that I keep to myself of the most part.

Your also unique in that you take ginormous amounts of time to find the music that appeals to you and buck the notion of using referrals and recommendations whereas I think I might be more typical in that I need filters, I need short cuts. So for me having online sources of information where cites list albums that are coming out and provide mini reviews and monthly and year end lists are really important because I don't spend much time in YouTube or other 'net sources looking for gold nuggets. I need clffnotes. It's not perfect but it keeps me in the mix and has given me hours of listening pleasure. 

7 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

My extreme metal awakening/epiphany was similar to yours in some ways, (I too once bought records by Lamb of god and The Haunted that I then traded back into the store upon my next visit) but my journey's a bit different than yours in more ways than it's the same. I had never grown tired of or stopped listening to metal, I was always pretty much one of those all metal all the time kinda guys. Or let's say metal and other reasonably heavy metal adjacent stuff like hardcore, punk and hard rock. I had just gotten caught flat-footed when real metal disappeared underground seemingly overnight right around 1990 and no one had thought to tell me. I'd had a kid in June of 1990 so our going out to shows 4 nights a week lifestyle came to an abrupt end because we had to be home to feed the baby every two hours. Problem was that talking to dudes at shows had always been the best way to find out about bands in the pre-internet era, along with trips to the specialty metal record store an hour away which also became few and far between after 1990. So I basically got stuck still listening to thrash and all of my 80's stuff all throughout the 90's. For my infrequent new music fixes I had resorted to finding crap off the radio or MTV in the 90's, which I guess is why my purchases (aside from those bands I already knew and had multiple albums from, like Overkill) became much more mainstream oriented in the 90's. Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Godsmack, Social Distortion, White Zombie, STP, Puddle of Mudd and Monster Magnet were all bands I discovered and listened to quite a bit of in the 90's. Not exactly trve kvlt stuff, definitely not brutal or satanic, and not even as heavy as a lot of the shit I'd previously been listening to in the 80's and considered pillars of my collection. I guess I was just too busy working and being a single dad in the 90's to have much time leftover to devote to being a dedicated metalhead who stayed up to date on all the latest bands.

It's always really cool to see the other guys' list of albums that hold great significance to them. So thanks for sharing. Looking down your list I see we have very little in common, or less than I might've thought we would anyway. Almost none of those 2000 - 2005 records mean anything at all to me, and tbh quite a few of those bands I really actively can't stand. I do dig some Electric Wizard though, and of course as I've said Dark Tranquility were huge for me in the 00's, but they're not in the rotation at all anymore. Dead Heart in a Dead World was once in heavy rotation, dig YOB, dig Moonsorrow, I liked The Work Which Transforms God, I went through a brief Naglfar phase (just the early stuff, nothing past Sheol), and I believe I did even buy an Orange Goblin record once. But that's about it, just 8 out of the 60 you listed, the rest of those bands/albums aren't anything I've ever been interested in. Funny how that works, people like us will have completely different impressions and recollections of a musical period in time, in this case the early 2000's, based on what they were personally listening to at that time. 

My extreme metal awakening came a bit later than yours did, and I was a bit older. It was late 2004 so I was 43 already by the time I got into extreme metal. I've told the story on here before, it hit me at some point that a good deal of my favorite albums were a decade or more old, so I just got a bug up my ass one weekend to go to the record store and see if I could get up to speed on wtf was happening in the world of 21st century metal. Came home with an armful of the rankest garbage albums that day, all based on magazine reviews, none of which stuck with me at all. Except for DT, which for some reason I kept going back to and that led me to find similar stuff like Hypocrisy, Kalmah, Insomnium, Amon Amarth and Opeth. But then once I found Necrophobic a couple of years later that was it, I became much more interested in the harder more extreme forms of death metal. Necrophobic were also the band that really got me interested in black metal around '08/'09, and by then I'd left most of that commercial melodeath crap behind me in the rear view mirror. But I guess that's how gateway bands work for me, once I get to where I've actually been trying to get to, those gateway bands are no longer needed for anything. Like when rocketships destined for deep space jettison the spent boosters they needed to get themselves up and clear of the Earth's atmosphere.

So in the mid aughts I quickly went from like a heavy/thrash/grunge/punk mix to melodeath and from there to blackened death metal and then by the late 00's I'd joined a metal forum and had started the arduous but rewarding process of combing through 15 - 20 years of 'old school' 90's death and black metal bands I had slept on for all those years. I don't remember ever really going through a specific stoner phase, I had just came across random stoner bands and albums here and there over the years that I liked so I mentally filed them away in that Sabbath/Soundgarden/Kyuss area of my brain. Cool for a spin or two now and then, but that bluesy stoner rock stuff was never going to be my main focus, I was always focused on searching for something a bit heavier. Fu Manchu was not a band I ever connected with, even back when I was buying those kind of stoner rock records at one time in the early 00's. I was more of a Sasquatch guy. I'll still buy one or two "stoner" rock/doom albums a year when I find one that speaks to me, but not usually more than that. I've never had any use for post-rock or post-metal, just never found any of that stuff interesting or heavy enough to suit me. Much like funeral doom, another genre I tried to get into a bit but then eventually gave up on as just not for me.

I think a lot of guys in our generation basically got burnt out when as you say the good stuff went underground and metalcore, alt metal (much of which I like to certain point) and Nu metal were the norm along with changes in tastes to hip hop/rap. 

I should be clear, I was listening to other albums besides stoner metal but it was what I think I prefer to call riff rock (stoner) and doom and then post metal which opened me up to hardcorish vocals that got me to listening to metal with growls. I listed albums that came out during that time period, but I was buying a bunch of albums we all know that came out earlier.  Slaughter to the Soul seems like the first reco people give for melodeth. That was one of my first pick ups. I still listen to it from time to time. I bought some cringy stuff that like a bunch of symphonic albums like Nightwish, within temptation, after forever,  Dimu Borgir, Cradle of Filth (both band I rarely listen to anymore, except for Nightwash haha-I still have a soft spot even though it's really pop dressed in metal clothing), and other bands I still like-The Gathering, Tristania, Tiamat. I did like symphonic black like Arcturus' Aspera Hiems Symphonia  I don't know why I didn't buy classic DM, because I bought the usual second wave black suspects you listed in this time period-Immortal, Gorgoroth (bunch of their stuff), Emperor, the Darkthrone seminal early albums, Satyricon, Mayhem. Never bought any Burzum. But then, I pretty much moved on from most of that stuff except Emperor, DT and Immortal. 

I see now, that Encyclopedia of HM book was updated ten years later in 2012, so it must have been 2002 when I bought the book and started reading about stoner and doom and figured that might be up my alley, because I had no interest in death metal at the time. I bought a Lamb of God album and hated it and sold it back to the store-hard to believe but the Baltimore area chain Record and Tape Traders would actually give me my money back if I didn't like an album-wtf? What a great place that was.

Looking at LoG album covers, I think it was New American Gospel (2000) or maybe it was As the Palace Burns ('03)-which places my time frame between 2000 and 2003 when I started dabling and that LoG album made me think death metal was not for me until I started listening to Opeth, Behemoth, Nile, Kataklysm,etc.  It was literally unlistenable to me. 

It just so happens there was a lot of newer stoner metal, hardcore influenced stoner/doom and post rock that came out in the early aughts and it was my metal rebirth.  I keep a list of albums like most of us probably do that I buy each year. It was the years between 2000-2005 that solidified my listening. I think in retrospect there was a kind of renaissance of metal and heavy psyche during these years that helped create or delineate many of the sub genres or incubate kernels of heavy musical ideas that would flower that we see prominently today and haven't seen that kind of growth and creativity since...at least in what you'd call mainstream and maybe "arty" metal. Maybe it's different in bestial black/death circles but the aughts were special in my old world of stoner/post metal/post hardocre/doom/hard doom/sludge/avantish, blackened sludge, prog black/death, etc, etc. Something was in the bong water back then.

Here are some of the albums that made a big impression on me. In a sense these are all gateways:

I list them by  year but I didn't buy them all by release date. I jumped around a good bit from year to year. I don't think I really started buying any "mainstream black/death" until 2003 or so:

2000:

***Electric Wizard/Dopethrone -this was like the heaviest thing I'd heard in years and it was somewhat of a come to Satan moment of me. 
**The Haunted/Made Me Do It- I probably found this album a few years later but was one of those albums where I opened up to 'core vocals and hardcore influenced vox enticed me before death or black vox.
Nevermore/Dead Heart in a Dead World
**Fu Manchu/King of the Road-Definitely a eureka album-I absolutely loved Fu.

2001:

***Boris/Amplifier Worship-Boris were a big influence on my listening especially their early drone masterworks like this beast. It was actually released in '98.

***Opeth/Blackwater Park-I actually came to this after Ghost Reveries

2002-was a big year: a lot of foundational albums for me in my re emergence

**Isis/Oceanic-Isis began the post metal plunge for me and at this point I was listening to a lot of Neurosis

**Agalloch/The Mantle 
**High on fire/Surrounded by Thieves 
Porcupine Tree/In Absentia
**Dark Tranquility/Damage Done
**Entombed/Morning Star-this was my introduction to Entombed and it was years before I went back to their classics
**The Reverend Bizarre/In the Rectory
Arcturus/The Sham Mirrors
Pentagram/First Daze Here The Vintage Collection (recorded between 73-74 w/  original line up) & Pentagram/Turn to Stone compilation (80’s & 90’s classic Peaceville releases)
**Immortal/Sons of Northern Darkness
**Xasthur/Nocturnal Poisoning-somehow I jumped in to Xasthur early
The Hellacopters/By The Grace of God
Opeth/Deliverance
Orange Goblin/Coup De Grace

2003-

**Mars Volta/Deloused in the Comatorium
**YOB/Catharsis
**Cult of Luna/The Beyond
Katatonia/The Great Cold Distance
**Spirit Caravan/The Last Embrace (probably Wino's finest hour, IMO)
Nebula/Atomic Ritual
**Boris/Akuma No Uta
**Boris At Last/Feedbacker
Naglfar/Sheol
Sleep/Dopesmoker

2004  really opened up the flood gates

**Mastodon/Leviathan-this definitely pushed the needle-Mastodon's death metal album, some would say

**Enslaved/Issa

**Marduk/Plague Angel-this was a pretty big turning point and began my love affair with Mortuus
**Isis/Panopticon 
**CUL/Salvation
**YOB/The Illusion of Motion-one of my favorite albums of all time!
**Blut Aus Nord/Works that Transform God ('03-such an important album in my metal renaissance)
Therion/Lemuria/Sirius B-went through a symphonic/operatic phase
***Behemoth/Demigod -not the first Behemoth album I bought, but an early death metal album that made a strong impression
**Clutch/Blast Tyrant-still one of my favorite hard rock albums 
Neurosis/The Eye of Every Storm
Goat Snake/I and + Dog Days (reissue compilation full length plus EP)
The Haunted/Revolver
Borknagar/Epic
**My Dying Bride/Songs of Darkness, Words of Darkness-perhaps beginning my MDB love affair and a great album
Red Giant/Devil Child Blues

2005:

****Opeth/ Ghost Reveries-this was my first Opeth album 
Bill Evans / Bill Evans Trio/The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961 (essential jazz purchase remastered and complete)-OK, not metal but brilliant!
The Mars Volta/Frances the Mute 
**Sun0))/The Black one
***High On fire/Blessed Black Wings 
**Akercocke/ Words that Go Unspoken, Deeds that go Undone-still one of my favorite extreme metal albums ever
Nevermore/The godless Endeavor
**Earth/Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method    
**Dark Tranquility/Character
Deathspell Omega/Kenose
**Primordial/The Gathering Wilderness
*Moonsorrow/Verisakeet
Acid King/III

 

4 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Interesting. I wouldn't put stoner rock and post metal/rock in the same realm, they'd seem to be at odds with each other, at least to me anyway. One's riffy, the other's not. But that's probably because I like the one and can't tolerate the other so I don't connect the two. I've loved Sabbath since the beginning so I always liked stoner rock with the recycled Sabbath riffs. But that's casual listening, that kind of stuff didn't ever have the same impact of the heavier shit.

That was my musical journey back in the early days, essentially just a search for the heaviest shit I could find. So the albums that changed my life were usually the ones that reached a new level of heaviness, or in some way opened my eyes to shit I had yet to experience. Which is quite different than my 20 favorite metal albums, which would disproportionately be stuff from the last 25 years. The game changers would mostly be older stuff, 70's-80's-90's much of which I rarely listen to anymore. Because once I got up to speed with the real heavy shit then new albums weren't really life changing for me anymore, they were just new albums.

Now you've got me wondering what the very first black metal album I connected with might've been. I really don't remember. I mean Don't Break the Oath in '84 could have been the first unless you consider Celtic Frost black metal, which I don't. But for stuff that everyone would agree is black metal I'm gonna say Darkthrone's Panzerfaust could have been the first. Hard to say for sure because when I joined my first metal forum in '08 I was getting tons of recos and discovering many years worth of black and death metal all in a short period of time. I remember the general consensus back then on that board was that Mayhem's DMDS was the best black metal album ever made, a sentiment that I strongly disagree with. So I had to find most of my favorite black metal on my own, because most people, even most metalheads, are black metal casuals who just want to recommend all those same old early 90's Norwegian bands like Mayhem, Darkthrone, Burzum, Immortal, Emperor, Gorgoroth and Satyricon. But besides Darkthrone whom I worship, none of those other Norge bands really do much of anything for me. So I had to do some digging to find the good stuff that no one was recommending. So it was probably Darkthrone first, but it could have been one of the Finnish bands, Behexen, Horna or Azaghal.

 I didn't mean to imply that stoner, doom and post rock were similar but it probably read like that when I used the word riff rock which obviously applies to stoner and maybe doom but not post rock. 

I was 35 in 2,000 and had a realization that I missed discovering new music and yearned for heavy rock and metal like a woman yearning for a child...OK, that's what my wife went through in her mid 30's haha. I would randomly pick up a new album by any of the big 4 or other mainstream thrash or 80's metal bands I liked in the day, but I knew there must be something else out there for me. I had never exposed myself to what you'd call the underground, really. So I ended up buying this book and reading about various bands: 

5 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Except there ain't no chicks/Shielas gonna be watching no old man podcast about 40 year old metal albums by the likes of: Metal Church, Manowar, Anthrax and Exciter. That's a sausage fest if ever I've seen one. The chicks might only tune into the podcast when it's about the sexy 80's glam metal MTV bands they remember having crushes on.

And did no one ever tell you that of all the accents of all the English speaking countries, Americans typically find the Australian accent the least pleasant to listen to? Even the Kiwis have a more pleasing accent. Personally I'd rank South Africa as the worst of all the English accents, and then Australia'd be next, and then Canadia right ahead of OZ just for their silly O sounds. Aotearoa goes in front of Canadia. Scottish and Irish are at the top of my list #1 & 2 I could listen to them talk all day. And then that leaves England which is the hardest to rank because English accents run the gamut. They have some truly lovely and very appealing melodious accents over there while some others are just pants. 

 

Now I think I might get inspired to come up with my own albums that changed my life list. Blackwater Park won't be on mine, but Dark Tranquility probably will, as they were my main gateway band into extreme metal with harsh vocals in '04/'05 along with Hypocrisy.

I'd have to really think about that myself. I'm not sure if it would be that different than my 20 favorite albums of all time. I've got a couple of thoughts. As far as gateways, Dark Tranquility was one of my first intros but I honestly don't remember if I bought  Character or Damage Done first, but both of those would be up there and are kind of interchangeable. My gateways would include those and albums like  Ghost Reveries, Slaughter of the  Soul and Gorgoroth's Ad Majorem was one of the first BM albums that riveted me. But the albums that really had an impact were more in the post metal and stoner/doom realm because they convinced me there was interesting riff rock I needed to dig for-off hand I'd say, Oceanic, Through Silver and Blood, The Illusion of Motion, Leviathon, Surrounded by Thieves, In Search Of, Welcome to Sky Valley, Blast Tyrant, Dopes to Infinity....

43 minutes ago, FatherAlabaster said:

Altar Of Plagues - Teethed Glory And Injury   ...I feel like @markm would appreciate the artsy synth/industrial post-BM vibe of this album. Great on the big speakers.

 

Definitely! I am an AoP fan! I prefer  Mammal and White Tomb, but I respect how they tried to do something different with this album. 

1 hour ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Well right off the bat most 58 year old guys aren't obsessed with music like we are to begin with. But it's certainly more typical that a 58 year old guy would be a big prog rock guy and an 80's hard rock & metal head and an album collector than he'd be someone who's more interested in hearing the latest and greatest blackened goat filth. I've seen a few of his videos where he'll have multiple guests on, some of them a bit younger than him, and they'll talk about and rank different stuff, and it's always 99% mainstream shit that I wouldn't be interested in, or shit I might've liked once upon a time in my youth that I wouldn't give the time of day to now. You seem to be somewhat more familiar with Pete's channel than I am apparently, but if he "clearly knows his way around death metal" then I must've missed that video.

And it's not "milk toast" my friend, the word is "milquetoast" and it's spelled with a Q. 

Well thanks for that, General, I just learned something new-milquetoast! Being mild or timid. Thank you!  I always greatly appreciate your attention to detail and spelling corrections

Yeah, I had to check if I listed the wrong video-but it's right around minute 8:45 when he intros Blackwater Park as the album that got him into extreme metal in the early to mid 2000's.

I haven't seen that many of his videos. I must have done a search for best Motorhead and best Neil Young albums because I remember seeing his rankings for both. For years I mostly listened to Motorhead's No Remorse and then some of their later albums and recently decided to pick up some of their back catalog. And I went on a Neil Young bender recently and did a little research on his classic albums. 

3 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

 

 

I get that Pete Pardo like most people our age want to have or feel they deserve to get something they can hold in their hand when they have purchased music. But as someone who moves around a lot I don't understand why anyone would want to own 10,000+ CD's. Silly to argue they take up less space than vinyl bevause if space was really a concern you'd go all digital, which takes up no space at all. Not everyone has a spare room they can dedicate entirely to their large and ever growing physical music collection. And who wants to keep all those discs organized and then have to get up and go look for the ones you want and then put them all away again later when you could just scroll and click? I understand that some people do get value from staring at the little booklets, but I'm old and I can't read print that small anymore anyway. So just the files for me thanks. I hate when something I really want is only being offered on some physical format and not available digitally. First world problems I know.

But still fuck these old guys like Pete Pardo with his extensive Tom Petty collection and his prized signed copy of Fly Like an Eagle. Can you say milquetoast? And they wonder why people make fun of Boomers. Actually it seems he's your age Mark, he's 58, so he's just a Gen-X'er with the musical taste of a Boomer, even worse. I'm a Boomer with the musical taste of a Gen-X'er. I don't know many Boomers who have really embraced extreme metal and the black arts. Most of 'em are happy playing around with their Billy Joel, ELO, Fleetwood Mac and Eagles box sets. Maybe some Van Halen or AC/DC if they're feeling frisky. 

He's milk toast by your standards definitely, but for some odd reason, I had some time to kill and listened to his 20 albums that changed my life and found some parallels. I''ll post it here in case anyone has some time to kill and is interested. 

 I'm milk toast by your standards also. He lists some classic rock and prog and jazz but he's obviously been listening to some form or other of heavy music most of his life, just like I have. I mean, clearly, not everybody who claims to like heavy music, listens to mostly bestial black/death goat metal.

He's much more of a collector than I am, but was pretty heavy into standard fare hard rock and metal in the 70's-80's . He has one video where he ranks Motorhead's albums. Also, like me got turned off or burnt out on metal in the 90' and like me and you actually, started listening to some extreme metal in the early aughts and like all three of us  found Blackwater Park as a gateway and clearly knows his way around progressive death and black, but is a pretty a big prog rock/metal guy, and jazz fusion, and I just dabble in prog here and there, and I have a few jazz fusion albums myself. 

He claims to have gone from jazz fusion  in the 90's to listening to mostly extreme metal in the early 2000's where I just started picking up random extreme metal albums here and there around 2004.  I don't know really how typical that it for your average average 58 year old guy to have listened to mostly extreme metal in the early 2000's? Maybe there are tens of thousands, but I kind of doubt it. 

Panopticon – The Rime of Memory

New Witch Vomit is out today on Bandcamp-it sounds pretty good to me first time through, greater emphasis on melodic death/black

https://20buckspin.bandcamp.com/album/funeral-sanctum

listening to pre released tracks on Bandcamp on a couple of my favorite bands:

Sumac/The Healer

Couch Slut/You Could Do It Tonight

One difference between me and Pete/Sea of Tranquility is that I have no issue listening to things in random play or playlists. I do tend to listen to whole albums for sure, but I'll also make a playlist of newer albums  and listen in shuffle. Right now, my go to is new music from 2023-24 and I'll often listen to that when I don't have  specific album I want to listen to.  Or I might listen to a genre in shuffle. 

This is pretty much me, except I do download stuff I can't get on CD or is too expensive, and I do stream for convenience in certain situations. But, yeah, like NY Pete, I'm an an old school stuff guy.