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Atrocity - Todessehnsucht (1992)

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I have always held this second album from the Germans of Atrocity in high regard.

I love everything about this album: the sound, its epic and dark side, the ambiences that go from gloomy doom to wild death metal, Alex Krull's vocals.

I didn't like too well ( not even at all) what Atrocity did afterwards (Blut for example, wanting to surf on the Pantera/Machine Head wave with a big sound), especially their albums of covers of New Wave hits from the 80s.

Lately, with their Okult albums, Atrocity seems to come back to something more aggressive. I would have to look into it but in the meantime, let's have a look at this Todessehnsucht !

 

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12 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

As a child of the 60's & 70's I'm of course familiar with the name Al Di Meola. But I've never actually bothered to sit down and check out any of his music until now. (shocking, right?) I'm glad I finally did tonight though. Normally I hear phrases like progressive rock or classical/jazz guitarist and my eyes glaze over. But I've gotta say, this is some really good shit. I appreciate a virtuoso guitarist who keeps it interesting and accessible to low-brow dumbasses like me. And the bass player on this Gypsy album is absolutely killing it. Not sure if I'll be looking to buy this, but I'll definitely be back to give it another go sometime. Skipped track 2 because it was boring me, but tracks 1, 3 & 4 were killer. Getting some bigtime Zappa vibes from the title track, but that could just be the use of all that typically 70's instrumentation they must have had in common like the keyboards and percussion and stuff. Anyway good call on the Al Di Meola. Now I guess I'll be heading back to my previously scheduled extreme metal.

 

Perdition Temple - Merciless Upheaval, Tampa Florida

 

That's awesome. I would not have expected you to be into it at all. Super cool. Al is a great player and Elegant Gypsy is a fantastic album. Anthony Jackson on bass. If you can hang with the second track for about 5 minutes, they bring it home with a melodic section that gets stuck in my head all the time and is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of Al's playing. Then there's a sort of disconnected percussion thing, but, whatever. Casino and Splendido Hotel also have some great stuff on them  if you want further listening.

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5 hours ago, FatherAlabaster said:

That's awesome. I would not have expected you to be into it at all. Super cool. Al is a great player and Elegant Gypsy is a fantastic album. Anthony Jackson on bass. If you can hang with the second track for about 5 minutes, they bring it home with a melodic section that gets stuck in my head all the time and is one of the first things that comes to mind when I think of Al's playing. Then there's a sort of disconnected percussion thing, but, whatever. Casino and Splendido Hotel also have some great stuff on them  if you want further listening.

Yeah well by now I've all but given up trying to predict what I might like. Because it's just happened so many times that a piece of music will surprise me and just hit me in a certain way that I never saw coming. Like Elegant Gypsy did last night. It's easy for me to have expectations with death & black metal and crust punk I'm hearing for the first time because I listen to so much of that stuff. I have a pretty good idea what I like and what I'm getting into and it's just the nuance and little differences that I'm looking for which separate some of these bands from one another.

With something like this that is well outside of metal and I'm going in cold, never having heard a single note of it before I try to keep an open mind because I really don't have any idea what I will be greeted with when I click play. And I guess that's the fun of it for me, that's why I'll take the time to check out stuff that most people who know me a bit wouldn't think my closed minded old ass would be able to accept much less enjoy. Because every now and then stuff just ends up working for me and I won't even be able to tell you exactly why. Not all the time, most of the stuff you'd think I probably wouldn't like you'd be right, I really don't. But it happens just often enough to make me feel it's worth it to keep trying. 

This Splendido album didn't hit me as immediately as Gypsy did. It's still good, but it's much too happy sounding. I'm used to a lot of dark music where I guess they use different chords, "minor chords" or different scales or whatever Idk I'm not a musician. So then anything that comes across as upbeat and happy is a bit of a shock to my system haha. Took me until track 4 Two to Tango to get into this one. I'm currently on side 2, Dinner Dishes of the Gods and this is cool, I'm digging their jam session. This is so quintessentially 70's sounding though, it's like a time machine listening to stuff like this that evokes sounds from my youth. Man, at this rate you'll probably have me hunting down old 70's prog records of bands I've always hated, like Yes & Genesis n shit. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to listen to a King Crimson album that I've been putting off for awhile because I was waiting until I felt I was in the right mood.

 

Al DI Meola - Splendido Hotel, beware there's a skip at 24 minutes where the needle gets stuck and it plays a few seconds of this over and over for a minute.

 

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Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands (2022)

This is the raw black metal album to beat this year. This thing is fanfuckingtastic.

Morrigan - Plague, Waste and Death

Finally got around to picking up something from these guys after many glowing recommendations from the Goatmaster. Yup, these guys are indeed very good. I slept on them for way too long. Better late than never right?

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3 Inches of Blood - Advance and Vanquish

AC/DC - Highway to Hell

AC/DC - Back in Black

Agressor - Neverending Destiny

Anthrax - Attack of the Killer Bs.

Death - Human

Exciter - Violence and Force

King Parrot - Dead Set

Motorhead - We Are Motorhead

Nocturnus A.D. - Paradox

Sodom - Agent Orange

Soundgarden - Superunknown

 

Joys of working from home.

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On 7/8/2022 at 10:30 PM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

C'mon Jon-O loosen up! Hackney's not so bad bruv. Oslo seems like a great place to see a band in a converted railway station. This could have been an all-around fantastic night out. The new Hackney Central railway station is right next door so you wouldn't need to drive your car and waste precious petrol. There's a Maccas right up the street to the North so dinner is sorted. You wouldn't want to start drinking on an empty stomach. Conveniently located right across the intersection from the club is a Tescos Superstore so you could do your weekly plant based food shopping between sets. And just one block to the south you'll find the "shabby chic" Cock Tavern in case you aren't quite ready to go straight home while the final notes of the show are still ringing in your ears. Surely you could chuck a sickie and have yourself a little 3-day weekend?

Man, that is more research than I would have done. Still a possibility to go, but my wife works in London on Thursdays which makes it logistically difficult with childcare to get into the city at that time. If I could teleport I would.

In an effort to prove I'm not shit and lazy though, I did go to Gatecreeper/Urne last night. Although, it had the advantage of being at a pub a 7 minute drive away. The gig ended at 10.30pm. I was in bed by 10.45.

Both bands (I missed the opener) were cool. Gatecreeper has a solid HM-2 buzzsaw tone but is somewhat samey after a whole set. The grooves reminded me of Obituary a bit. But without blistering lead work and a vocalist who has actually escaped from the gates of hell.

There was circle pit, which was funny. For the last track the singer said "I want everyone to push each other...no punching, no kicking, just pushing." I had never heard of that before as a thing. Walls of death, sure, kung-fu fighting emo knobs, yes, but "go and push each other" ? Nope. I am not sure what effect he was going for. 

Anyway, I enjoyed myself, and drank Guinness 0.0 for the first time. Blow me down if it isn't indistinguishable  from regular Guinness.

 

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14 hours ago, zackflag said:

Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands (2022)

This is the raw black metal album to beat this year. This thing is fanfuckingtastic.

Morrigan - Plague, Waste and Death

Finally got around to picking up something from these guys after many glowing recommendations from the Goatmaster. Yup, these guys are indeed very good. I slept on them for way too long. Better late than never right?

All the Morrigan is essential. Glad you like it.

Yeah I'm listenng to the Calderum now. Nice. 🤘💀🤘  Pretty mystical.

Calderum - Mystical Fortress of Iberian Lands

 

This Cerberus record had been in the running for the raw black metal album of the year for me. I'll have to choose between them now. Two entirely different approaches to black metal production. The Calderum album has the muffled production with the vocals buried. Riffs are good and there is boottom end so it might win this battle. The Cerberus album has the razor sharp "tinny" production with the low frequencies removed and the paint peeling vocals. Love those vocals. But back to back with the other album I really do miss the bottom end. After a minute or two then I get used to it and it's fine. Gonna be a hard decision.

Cerberus - Unrelenting Chaos, USBM from Quincy Mass

 

Then you have these nice boys from Norfolk Virginia: Serpentshrine - Allegiance to the Myth

 

And then there's this Swedish gem here, if you consider this "raw." I listen to so much black metal that I get desensitized a bit and it becomes hard to know where to draw the line and say if some particualr black metal album qualifies as "raw" or not. I suppose it's mostly in the ears of the beholder.

Grimtone - Polaris

 

And these Greeks are pretty raw: Akerbeltz - Merciless

 

And then there's this Finn who has given us probably my overall favorite black metal album of the year at the halfway point, which is also fairly fucking raw.

Serpentfyre - Baptism of Shadows

 

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1 hour ago, Serpentboi1992 said:

 

Unveiling The Wicked by Exciter on Amazon Music - Amazon.com

Exciter was a pretty important band for me in the mid 80's before the first wave of thrash had really gotten rolling. Remember seeing their debut Heavy Metal Maniacs in the store in 1983 with the Marshall stacks on the cover and being a heavy metal maniac myself I had no choice but to bring it home. I've played their first 3 albums countless times over the years but for some reason I never ventured past 1985 with them. The Unveiling the Wicked cover does look quite familiar to me though, too familiar. I've definitely seen it before so Idk maybe I did have this 4th album at some point in the distant past (it is 36 years old now) and I've just forgotten about it.

Looking the Canadians up on M-A I can see their first 3 albums all have scores in the low 80's and this one got a 69%. The self titled one that came after this in '88 got a 53% so they were clearly on a downward trajectory at this point from their 1984 pinnacle which was Violence & Force. Listening to UtW now, I'm up to track 4 'Hate School Rules' and I have to agree this is very clearly a big step down from their first 3 classics. Still has that same Exciter sound, but the songwriting is lazy and uninspired, they were just going through the motions churning out more of the same exact crap at this point. All songs seem to have the same midpaced tempo and seem to be lacking any catchy riffs. Sounds like a bunch of leftover tunes from the Long Live the Loud sessions a year before that didn't make the cut.

I think I might have to cut this off here at track 5 and just put on Long Live the Loud, an album I'm still quite fond of. Certainly not their best album, there are a couple of filler tracks in the middle, so I'd probably give it a 74% while each of their first 2 rippers would get at least a solid 90%. I just really love the song Born to Die for some reason, and then the epic closer Wake Up Screaming. That's why I go back to this 3rd one more than it probably deserves. 

 

 

Little bit of trivia: Dan Beehler the drummer and lead vocalist for Exciter was asked in 1985 to join Megadeth to replace Gar Samuelson while they were on tour together (Megadeth was the supporting act for Exciter at the time, being a new young band on their very first tour) but he didn't take Dave Mustaine up on his offer. Coincidentally Megadeth did end up getting someone named Chuck Beehler who looked a lot like Dan on drums right after they'd asked Dan and he'd turned them down. Dan says that he and the two Daves partied so hard on that tour that he didn't join their band because he feared the drugs would destroy him and he'd be dead in 6 months.

And then in 1989 Cronos asked him to join Venom after they had toured together. He says he started learning their songs and stuff but then for whatever reason that never actually happened either.

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