FatherAlabaster

Guitars too sharp. Too much compression on vocals. Must redo the mix with my tin ears and cheap equipment. Keep plugging away. Ancient samurai say: Cry in the dojo, laugh on the battlefield.

I prefer the Lionheart (NYC based medieval a capella group!!!) version from their album "Paris 1200". But this song. Despite being non-religious. S7Ax2yl2f6U

Wasn't sure what to expect from this, but I liked it. A little too simplistic for my taste, but quirky enough to be interesting. 7/10 Looks like there's a linked ad in this video, annoying, don't know what's up with that. But: YepbZ90amLY

Chris Cornell, Grutle Kjellson from Enslaved, Mikael Akerfeldt, Jonas Renske, Garm (Ulver), Michael Gira (Swans), Phil Anselmo, Maynard from Tool. Hansi Kursch has an amazing voice but I really can't stand Blind Guardian. Pasi Koskinen for his singing on Amorphis albums Elegy and Tuonela and his screams on the Ajattara stuff - the music is a bit bland but his screams are intense. For even harsher stuff, I love Jeppe Lerjerud (old Disfear frontman), Jon Chang (Discordance Axis), Edgy 59 (Burning Witch) and Alan Dubin (Khanate). At the moment I'm really diggin Cedric Bixler-Zavala on ATDI's "Relationship of Command" and Mars Volta's first two albums. My fuck but he can sing. Bit of an acquired taste.

Odd to see so many shout-outs for Hammett and none for Hetfield. Oh, let me add: Chris DeGarmo (from Queensryche, kids). I didn't like "Hear In The Now Frontier" AT ALL but they really 100% shat the bed after he left. His solos still inspire me to come up with guitar parts.

I don't know what you mean by "awesome vocals" but if you like sort of gruff, dark screaming and kinda doomy guitars, October Tide's first two albums are amazing. "Rain Without End" and "Grey Dawn". It's Jonas and Fred from Katatonia, BITD. No clean vox but a surprisingly mellow vibe. I really don't like the new album they came out with but those two are pure gold. 86avke300zg

^I think they drove that car off the cliff together. I can't even listen to more than four songs on the black album. In a word, ugh. Unhear? Anything by Despised Icon, Whitechapel, or Job For A Cowboy. Machine Head. Coal Chamber. Music is better off without you.

I don't know if I put Type O in the doom category. They're too gothed out for that. Definitely in my top ten bands of any genre. Doom for me is Burning Witch and Khanate. The self-titled Khanate is harrowing. And another shout-out for Swans - Body To Body era prefigured a lot of doom metal.

I'm not a pagan, but I used to hang out with a bunch of pagans when I lived in Raleigh. Some of my favorite people. I have a Mjollnir on my keychain, probably had it for about 15 years now - the one thing that hasn't changed. And yes, I still have an impulse to offend people when I get accosted by their opinions about god. Growing up in the South, if nothing else, made me hate sappy-ass passive-aggressive christian pandering. Trying to keep it cool now that I'm all over the neighborhood with my kid, but sometimes nothing but "Fuck Off" seems to work.

Any list with Bergtatt is ok by me! My favorite Ulver album, and probably my favorite black metal album though I love Nattens Madrigal and Themes from A Marriage of Heaven and Hell (not black metal but still brilliant). Criticisms or additions, IMHO: Satyricon: "The Shadowthrone" makes "Nemesis Divina" sound like commercial pandering. Maybe a touchy choice, but Sentenced - "North From Here" belongs on my list. Fuck all their other albums. So does some old Dawn, like "Naer Solen Gar Nither For Evogher". "Slaughtersun" is cool, but not my favorite. I like Khold, and Tulus' "Biography Obscene" - maybe not "black metal" but I'm not sure where else you'd put it. I hate to admit it, but "Vittra" by Naglfar used to be one of my favorites, about 16 years ago... In retrospect it's either bad black metal or not black metal at all, and I don't listen to it anymore, but it had its place. In this vein I'd also put up "Ancient God Of Evil" by Unanimated. Rotting Christ: all I can say is "Triarchy Of The Lost Lovers":"Thy Mighty Contract" as "Arise":"Beneath The Remains", and I can't get past the guitars being out of tune. Bunch of cool tunes on there but this is a case where bad production really harms the album. If we're including Celtic Frost, "Into The Pandemonium" is still my favorite. Before they went full-on suck. Older Enslaved, I'd hang out with "Blodhemn" although some might want to call it "viking metal" instead. Overall, "Below The Lights" may still be my favorite for overall impact and inventiveness although I love almost everything they've done since then. Mork Gryning's self-titled from 2005 is really good, as is Dodheimsgard's "Supervillian Outcast" - both odd albums, pushing the industrial envelope, great for walking around the city in a bad mood. Some of these bands really hit their stride after their initial "black metal" phase, like Emperor (IX Equilibrium is still my favorite) and Bethlehem (I admit to actually liking "Dictius Te Necare", but I think they found their voice with a few songs on "Mein Weg"). I saw Mayhem on the Grand Declaration tour. Really intense. The album didn't do them justice. I liked it OK but it wore on me quickly. "Wolf's Lair Abyss" is a bit more to my taste. Again, not "black metal" at all, but I got into Disfear through their involvement with Darkthrone, and they have a lot in common on their early albums. Love the vocals! "Brutal Sight Of War" and "Soul Scars" were some of my required listening in college. Not that dreck they did with Tomas. I'm still not sure how I feel about the resurgence of (so-called) black metal in NYC over the past few years, but a couple of local bands that stick out as being solid to me are Castevet and Mutilation Rites. Good live shows, good recordings. Check them out if you haven't heard them. I'm not involved with either band, not even really friends with the guys - no bias on my part! A lot of great stuff on your list, with plenty of shit I haven't heard of and a lot of great choices that I couldn't argue with. Good times. Keep it coming!

Lots of good stuff in here. If nobody mentioned it yet, Assuck's "Anticapital" is a bit of a hidden gem. More grind than death. Also, -1 on The Faceless. Their name suits them perfectly.

Matt Taibbi has a good response to the criticism. My knee-jerk reaction was to agree with Ozzy (surprisingly) but Taibbi's article makes a lot of sense.

Wow, I feel that way too a lot of the time! I know exactly what you mean!

Alice In Chains At The Drive-In Opeth TV On The Radio Soundgarden don't look at me that way I love metal too

I already posted about this in some other thread, but mine is the title of a song I wrote in 2004 about my grandfather while he was sick in the hospital. He had Parkinson's and he was so pale and thin that he looked transparent. Feeding tube, breathing tube, medication in an IV. Awful to see someone lose themselves that way. Grim.

That's more like it... I'll push my Metal on anyone, I don't give a shit! Crom laughs at your four winds!

I just finished my last Brooklyn East India Pale Ale. Now I'm sad.

Hmm. Ok. I don't believe that "the metaphysical" and "things we can't perceive" are the same thing. I think there's a lot that we'll never know or even grasp, and a lot that we can make instruments to measure and make fumbling guesses at, and then plenty of things that directly affect us on a daily basis that we're well equipped to see and understand. I'm not saying that what we can see is all there is... but my point about the "scientific method" is that it's an outgrowth of the way that we all naturally process information. It depends on what information we get and how we interpret it, but everyone does have some concrete reason for believing they're right - some childhood experience, some "mystical revelation", whatever, they were convinced. And if that makes someone else wrong in the process, so be it. I love that quote, "never try to reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into in the first place", but I think it misses the point. The most ass-backwards justification for Christianity that I ever read was in CS Lewis's "Mere Christianity" where he basically said - I paraphrase - that all of the stuff that makes people doubt god's existence is actually even more evidence for god's existence, because it seems like exactly the kind of thing a god would put there to test your faith! Really. Ugh. More like proof that if you really want to be convinced of something, you'll find a way to convince yourself. I've seen friends go through the conversion process. Some of them are even still my friends, because they didn't go all evangelical on me! Some people equate talking about science with proselytizing religion, but that's a false equivalence - like I said before, the heart of science is nothing more than asking questions. The religions I've experienced have a lot more assumptions built in from the outset. AAAnyway. Enough of my babble.

Ok, this has some potential. But you need vocals. You're basically doing variations of one theme for like five minutes. This needs some other parts, some rhythmic variation, some different guitar textures, and it should probably be shorter. And you should tweak your drum parts so they don't sound so much like preprogrammed loops. We all have computers! Make it happen. I'm not trying to be a dick, it's supposed to be constructive. Oh. This is one of those "one post wonders" I read about. I see.

I like the sound on the older album better, new one is too shiny and modern for the kind of music you guys are doing. This is well done. Not my thing, but sounds pretty pro.

I hate to say it but y'all have a lot of work to do. Tighten up your vocals. Your vocal rhythms are all over the place and it makes you sound like you lack confidence. Your kick drum sound in particular needs a lot more bass and punch. Not addressing songwriting, that's a whole different topic.