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10 hours ago, KillaKukumba said:

Oh and Dave gets all the credits because noone else can write a Megadeth song.

In the interviews he's been saying that Dirk and Kiko contributed a lot?

Anyhoo. Blabbermouth gave it a 9. Which seems unrealistic. Mind you he (Dom Lawson) gave Machine Head a 10 which would be a perfect album.

I dabbled in Machine Head when they first hit the scene but heard nothing since. So it means I should be able to get a religious experience from it.

NP - Mastodon - Hushed and Grim

I watched the documentary about making it so felt inspired and broke all my own rules by getting the vinyl. 

it is good. Mastodon is like a metal Queen with three different vocal flavours and varied songwriting. 

so bummed that Scott Kelly isn't doing guest vocals though.

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Yeah he has said that, and I don't know how much they contributed but it's guaranteed that in a few years time when D&K have gone Dave will lessen their contribution just as he's done with every other band member. It's only taken him 12 months to change his story from "we changed Jnr's parts", to "they were only demo recordings so they were easy to over write."  The most appropriate line Dave Mustaine ever wrote was "little man with big eraser changing history," because it's what he does every few years.

I don't usually give scores for albums simply because they mean so little without words, but I couldn't see myself writing enough praise for a 9 out of 10.

I don't listen to Machine Head so I doubt they'd get a 10 out of me either. In fact I don't know many bands that would get a 10 out of me.

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1 hour ago, KillaKukumba said:

Yeah he has said that, and I don't know how much they contributed but it's guaranteed that in a few years time when D&K have gone Dave will lessen their contribution just as he's done with every other band member. It's only taken him 12 months to change his story from "we changed Jnr's parts", to "they were only demo recordings so they were easy to over write."  The most appropriate line Dave Mustaine ever wrote was "little man with big eraser changing history," because it's what he does every few years.

I don't usually give scores for albums simply because they mean so little without words, but I couldn't see myself writing enough praise for a 9 out of 10.

I don't listen to Machine Head so I doubt they'd get a 10 out of me either. In fact I don't know many bands that would get a 10 out of me.

Not even your beloved Inquisition?

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15 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Not even your beloved Inquisition?

That'd be MY beloved Inquisition Blivvie. I can't imagine Kuke would be a big proponent of Inquisition, I doubt he's ever heard them.

There are several Inquisition albums that would get a 10 from me if I was rounding, or a score above a 9.5 if I wasn't.  I usually break things down into tenths, effectively scoring on the basis of 100 rather than 10. My Inquisition rankings are roughly as follows:

 

Nefarious Dismal Orations, 10. this is my perfect metal album. Lots of people have written lots of words about how no album could ever be absolutely perfect, but this one is for me. 

Ominous Doctrines, 10

Bloodshed, 9.8

Invoking the Majestic Throne, 9.7

Black Mass, 9.5

Obscure Verses 9.4

Magnificent Glorification, 9.2

Infernal Regions, 8.8

 

I will decline to score the new MegaDave debacle because I haven't heard it and was not planning to. But my highest ranked MegaDave platter, Peace Sells, would get somewhere in the neighborhood of a 7.5 and I couldn't imagine any of his newer ones being able to top that.

 

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8 hours ago, Rexorcist said:

THANK YOU.  I don't fully get it either.  I guess it was just heavy enough at the time of release???

I think it's because most people you'll meet on forums did not discover Judas Priest until at least the 80's or even the 90's or 2000's. And since the band is arguably THE quintessential early/mid 80's heavy metal band they want to apply the term retroactively to their earliest hard rock albums as well. 

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9 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I think it's because most people you'll meet on forums did not discover Judas Priest until at least the 80's or even the 90's or 2000's. And since the band is arguably THE quintessential early/mid 80's heavy metal band they want to apply the term retroactively to their earliest hard rock albums as well. 

I'm kinda half that way.  There are a few early hard rock albums I would apply the term to, but Sad Wings just feels too light for that.

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11 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Nope. Hard rock my dude. I'll even give you proto metal. But it's not heavy metal, no way, no how.

"Revolutionary" (arguably, there's nothing all that special about it imho) doesn't make that record metal. High pitched dog whistle vox can't make that record metal. (whose definition of "metal" is just a dude singing high notes?? It's about the guitars!) The band evolving into a metal band 2 years later doesn't make their 1976 record metal. Yes, hard rock vocals like that existed well before '76, Google Ian Gillan. Go listen to Sabotage (1975) and Sad Wings back to back and tell me Sad Wings is metal. The fucking Scorpions were more metal than Priest back in 75/76. You're delusional Marky Mark. Put the crack pipe down.

Obviously, this is my opinion. But you know me well enough by now to know that no matter how many armchair music critics try to come and tell me a record is one thing, if my ears tell me it's another thing, I'm going with my ears.

Yes, our differences are perfectly fine. But I think many of your takes are outliers, we all know you like a (usually) friendly argument, but some of your takes are IMO intended to poke reactions and you certainly take shall we say-non conformist takes....and all good. 

Of course, guitar is the backbone of metal and hard rock for that matter, not to mention the rhythm section. But vocals and guitar and maybe drumming in the era of extreme metal are all pivotal.  The vocals and the guitar to me are the cornerstone. After all we call extreme metal in large part to "extreme" non clean throat singing. Without extreme vocals, no extreme metal. 

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Going over several John Lee Hooker albums today to see if I still think these albums are prime blues.  I dmit, back when I was first checking out pure blues, it was a new experience for me so I probably gave off too many five-star ratings.  Now that I've heard more blues, I think that's going to change.  My opinions about my favorite, Muddy Waters, might even change a little.

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3 hours ago, markm said:

Yes, our differences are perfectly fine. But I think many of your takes are outliers, we all know you like a (usually) friendly argument, but some of your takes are IMO intended to poke reactions and you certainly take shall we say-non conformist takes....and all good. 

Of course, guitar is the backbone of metal and hard rock for that matter, not to mention the rhythm section. But vocals and guitar and maybe drumming in the era of extreme metal are all pivotal.  The vocals and the guitar to me are the cornerstone. After all we call extreme metal in large part to "extreme" non clean throat singing. Without extreme vocals, no extreme metal. 

First of all Marky Mark, ALL of my forum arguments are friendly on my end. Let's please get that straight at least. Not "usually" but always. I can have a difference of opinion about music with someone without it getting personal. I can often get quite passionate about my music and my opinions about music, absolutely, I'm not denying that. But passion and anger are two very different things. Because getting angry over a sub-genre argument would be as stupid as getting angry at someone because they said they thought those curtains were red and I thought they looked orange. Getting angry over differences of opinion about a band or a particular album would be like getting angry with someone who said they didn't like asparagus or brussel sprouts or something. It's all subjective and it wouldn't make any sense to get angry or take it personally because someone has different tastes than I do. I enjoy the argument/debate for the argument's sake. This is fun for me. If they would've had a debate team in my high school I definitely would have signed up. My mother always said I should have been a lawyer because I love to argue. But when I see someone has the propensity to take things personally, I try to make a mental note to be cautious about arguing with them in the future because if someone gets pissed off or offended then that's not fun for anyone.

You fall into that category Mark. I like you, and I consider you a friend. I've even been to your home, met your family and eaten your wife's cooking. But I've noticed that you don't always recognize my more savage attempts at humor as humor, and that you don't always appreciate my more passionate rants about music, and you might not always receive them in the friendly spirit in which they were intended. Clearly you have at times exhibited a potential to get offended. So I try to be careful what I say to you because believe it or not I truly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings or squash our friendship. So please keep that in mind when we discuss and debate musical topics. I do believe that if we were arguing these things in person face to face you'd be able to pick up on the friendliness much easier by the smile on my face and the twinkle in my eye. In my world this is how friends and peers interact.

So with that discalimer out of the way let's get down to business! My musical takes are simply my takes Marky Mark. They unequivocally represent how I honestly feel 100% of the time. Despite how it may appear, I'm not being contrary just for the sake of being contrary, and my takes are never intentionally formulated simply in hopes of provoking a reaction, even on those occassions when I'm acutely aware that they will. But fuckin' hell man, surely the odds are I must have a take or two that conforms to the consensus opinion every now and then! But as you've already deduced, it is undeniably true that I feel not the slightest pressure or obligation to conform to group-think. And I am a firm believer in the larger group consensus generally being wrong far more often than they are right. (at least when it comes to music) I do feel like you personally might rely too heavily on consensus opinions that you've read somewhere because they might subconsciously help you form your own opinions and then they also serve to reinforce or validate those opinions for you especially when you've read them in multiple places. I of course take a different approach and feel it necessary to form my own opinions and I don't even take the general consensus into account whether it reinforces and confirms my opinions or disputes them. My logic is that unfortunately most people are dimwitted, incurious and have shitty taste. This is why top 40 music is garbage. The overall group opinion means absolutely nothing to me. I guess this attitude makes me an iconoclast or maybe just a big dick in some people's minds. And I can accept that. But I can assure you I'm a friendly and magnanimous dick!

And let us not forget that even you Mark, as a sophisticated and well-rounded connoisseur of the auditory arts whose tastes range far beyond the limited scope of metal, you must realize that most people think of the metal music we love (if they're even aware of its existence) as little more than repugnant noise. So it would seem that the bigger picture is that you already find yourself in direct opposition to the overall consensus opinion that heavy metal as a whole is generally an inferior, distasteful and quite low-brow form of music/art. So then would you say that you enjoy metal music in part to provoke reactions from your other educated, refined, suburban, middle-class "normie" friends and colleagues? Or do you enjoy metal music in the privacy of your spare bedroom because you genuinely enjoy it and feel drawn to it?

Jeez, I almost forgot why I started typing which was that I wanted to hit that Sad Wings proto metal debate one more time! Let me refresh my memory of what you said in your last two posts regarding that album so I don't have to keep switching to the other tab:

Marky Mark says:

"You're extreme cvlt metal listening has scarred your ears. Sad Wings of Destiny is an early metal album classic and one of the best metal albums of all time in large part based on the vocal performance of one Mr. Halford. Halford's semi operatic vocals, cliched as they became changed the way kids in the late 70's/early 80's related to a maligned, derided distortion of rock that became metal.

VH, AC/DC even Robert Plant -No one sang like that. He took the blues based style and turned it into something else. Then fact that you hate screechy vox doesn't take away how revolutionary and laughable they were at the same time. No hard rock vocals like that existed. By the time British Steel and certainly Screaming for Vengeance came around, the twin guitar attack caught up with the vox."

"Of course, guitar is the backbone of metal and hard rock for that matter, not to mention the rhythm section. But vocals and guitar and maybe drumming in the era of extreme metal are all pivotal.  The vocals and the guitar to me are the cornerstone. After all we call extreme metal in large part to "extreme" non clean throat singing. Without extreme vocals, no extreme metal."

I would agree with you that harsh vocal styles are intrinsic to the sub-genres of death metal and black metal. "Extreme metal" as it's often known. You really can't have death metal with clean singing, can you. Even as the line between thrash metal riffage and death metal riffage can at times be blurry, (especially with a lot of those bands from the very late 80's and early 90's that seemed to have one foot planted in each sub-genre) It was the harsher vocals and "growling" that really set death metal apart from the thrash metal it was spawned from.

But when it comes to debates concerning the natural evolution of rock music into heavy metal that took place a decade earlier sometime in the late 1970's, (I've had hundreds of these debates in years passed) I would argue that vocals are not an important distinguishing factor in separating hard rock from heavy metal. When hard rock began to transition into heavy metal the vocals really didn't change at first. Hard rock bands had already been using high pitched singing for nearly a deade by 1976. It was the heavier distorted guitars and then later the double bass style of drumming and the punk influence (where they started shouting as much as they were singing) which really set the two genres apart. I'd say the production of the guitars and drums on those mid to late 70's albums counts far more than vocals (semi-operatic or otherwise) when it comes to distinguishing whether an album is hard rock or heavy metal.

And we know that punk really wasn't a big thing just yet in '76, there's no punk influence whatsoever on Sad Wings that I can hear. It really wasn't until Iron Maiden came along around 1980 (and other similar nwobhm bands) where we started hearing a lot of noticeably rougher punk influenced vocals. If you play the 1970's Priest albums in chronological order you'll notice that by 1978 your hero Rob Halford in addition to his high-pitched schtick he had also started putting just a little tiny bit of distortion or gravel in his voice on certain lines in some of their songs. But there was none of that to be found on Sad Wings, his high-pitched semi-operatic singing was still clean and clear as a bell on that album. (except for just a few seconds towards the end of Victim)

Listen to Delivering the Goods, or Hellbent for Leather, or Burning Up, or Killing Machine, or Green Manilishi. These are full-fledged heavy metal songs. It's that little bit of distortion in his voice not the high notes that matter. And of course even more importantly they had figured out how to get much heavier guitar & drum sounds by that album. That's the album where "the twin guitar attack caught up with the vox" as you put it. And I believe those heavy distorted guitars are an essential prerequisite for something to qualify as heavy metal. Hellbent for Leather (or Killing Machine as I believe the commonwealthers like to call that album) is a visceral heavy metal attack that makes me bang my head while causing my pulse to race and my blood pressure to rise. Sad Wings strikes me as more of a less aggressive and more cerebral affair, the more blues based songs on that album provoke a different less visceral response. 

So in conclusiuon I will agree with you that Judas Priest were quite instrumental to the formation of heavy metal in the 1970's. I just don't think they had fully made that transition yet by 1976's Sad Wings. Just like I'd make the argument that Sabbath didn't fully become a heavy metal band until their 3rd album, Master of Reality. I'd say it was on Priest's two 1978 releases: Stained Class and Killing Machine where they definitively crossed that line into heavy metal territory. I'm not trying to provide a 'hot take' to provoke anyone or to be controversial, that's just how it sounds to me. And I'm not trying to invalidate your opinions either, you're always free to disagree. I just enjoy the debate for its own sake, and I hope you got something out of it as well.

 

Judas Priest - Hellbent for Leather, 1979

 

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10 hours ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

Not even your beloved Inquisition?

Huh?  What Now?

 

6 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

That'd be MY beloved Inquisition Blivvie. I can't imagine Kuke would be a big proponent of Inquisition, I doubt he's ever heard them.

I've heard them but I don't ever remember talking about them so I guess part of this statement makes sense.

NP: Frenzal Rhomb - Smoko At The Pet Food Factory

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I do so enjoy my phone telling me I’m quoting one person, when I’m actually quoting someone else sorry about that. KIMB is the MegaDave album I enjoyed the most and even that only gets a 5.5 from me these days.

 

NP: My Dying Bride - Turn Loose the Swans

As Close to 810 as any album in my collection.

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Sigh/Shiki-hmmmm-it's always a grab bag from Sigh...not sure I love this one.

ABHORRENCY - Climax of Disgusting Impurities-Starts off pretty impressive, turns into OK, & becomes redundant by the end.

Wake/Thought from Decent


Acephalix/Theothanatology

Chat Pile/God's Counrty

BlackBraid I-Not bad.

 

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8 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

First of all Marky Mark, ALL of my forum arguments are friendly on my end. Let's please get that straight at least. Not "usually" but always. I can have a difference of opinion about music with someone without it getting personal. I can often get quite passionate about my music and my opinions about music, absolutely, I'm not denying that. But passion and anger are two very different things. Because getting angry over a sub-genre argument would be as stupid as getting angry at someone because they said they thought those curtains were red and I thought they looked orange. Getting angry over differences of opinion about a band or a particular album would be like getting angry with someone who said they didn't like asparagus or brussel sprouts or something. It's all subjective and it wouldn't make any sense to get angry or take it personally because someone has different tastes than I do. I enjoy the argument/debate for the argument's sake. This is fun for me. If they would've had a debate team in my high school I definitely would have signed up. My mother always said I should have been a lawyer because I love to argue. But when I see someone has the propensity to take things personally, I try to make a mental note to be cautious about arguing with them in the future because if someone gets pissed off or offended then that's not fun for anyone.

You fall into that category Mark. I like you, and I consider you a friend. I've even been to your home, met your family and eaten your wife's cooking. But I've noticed that you don't always recognize my more savage attempts at humor as humor, and that you don't always appreciate my more passionate rants about music, and you might not always receive them in the friendly spirit in which they were intended. Clearly you have at times exhibited a potential to get offended. So I try to be careful what I say to you because believe it or not I truly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings or squash our friendship. So please keep that in mind when we discuss and debate musical topics. I do believe that if we were arguing these things in person face to face you'd be able to pick up on the friendliness much easier by the smile on my face and the twinkle in my eye. In my world this is how friends and peers interact.

So with that discalimer out of the way let's get down to business! My musical takes are simply my takes Marky Mark. They unequivocally represent how I honestly feel 100% of the time. Despite how it may appear, I'm not being contrary just for the sake of being contrary, and my takes are never intentionally formulated simply in hopes of provoking a reaction, even on those occassions when I'm acutely aware that they will. But fuckin' hell man, surely the odds are I must have a take or two that conforms to the consensus opinion every now and then! But as you've already deduced, it is undeniably true that I feel not the slightest pressure or obligation to conform to group-think. And I am a firm believer in the larger group consensus generally being wrong far more often than they are right. (at least when it comes to music) I do feel like you personally might rely too heavily on consensus opinions that you've read somewhere because they might subconsciously help you form your own opinions and then they also serve to reinforce or validate those opinions for you especially when you've read them in multiple places. I of course take a different approach and feel it necessary to form my own opinions and I don't even take the general consensus into account whether it reinforces and confirms my opinions or disputes them. My logic is that unfortunately most people are dimwitted, incurious and have shitty taste. This is why top 40 music is garbage. The overall group opinion means absolutely nothing to me. I guess this attitude makes me an iconoclast or maybe just a big dick in some people's minds. And I can accept that. But I can assure you I'm a friendly and magnanimous dick!

And let us not forget that even you Mark, as a sophisticated and well-rounded connoisseur of the auditory arts whose tastes range far beyond the limited scope of metal, you must realize that most people think of the metal music we love (if they're even aware of its existence) as little more than repugnant noise. So it would seem that the bigger picture is that you already find yourself in direct opposition to the overall consensus opinion that heavy metal as a whole is generally an inferior, distasteful and quite low-brow form of music/art. So then would you say that you enjoy metal music in part to provoke reactions from your other educated, refined, suburban, middle-class "normie" friends and colleagues? Or do you enjoy metal music in the privacy of your spare bedroom because you genuinely enjoy it and feel drawn to it?

Jeez, I almost forgot why I started typing which was that I wanted to hit that Sad Wings proto metal debate one more time! Let me refresh my memory of what you said in your last two posts regarding that album so I don't have to keep switching to the other tab:

Marky Mark says:

"You're extreme cvlt metal listening has scarred your ears. Sad Wings of Destiny is an early metal album classic and one of the best metal albums of all time in large part based on the vocal performance of one Mr. Halford. Halford's semi operatic vocals, cliched as they became changed the way kids in the late 70's/early 80's related to a maligned, derided distortion of rock that became metal.

VH, AC/DC even Robert Plant -No one sang like that. He took the blues based style and turned it into something else. Then fact that you hate screechy vox doesn't take away how revolutionary and laughable they were at the same time. No hard rock vocals like that existed. By the time British Steel and certainly Screaming for Vengeance came around, the twin guitar attack caught up with the vox."

"Of course, guitar is the backbone of metal and hard rock for that matter, not to mention the rhythm section. But vocals and guitar and maybe drumming in the era of extreme metal are all pivotal.  The vocals and the guitar to me are the cornerstone. After all we call extreme metal in large part to "extreme" non clean throat singing. Without extreme vocals, no extreme metal."

I would agree with you that harsh vocal styles are intrinsic to the sub-genres of death metal and black metal. "Extreme metal" as it's often known. You really can't have death metal with clean singing, can you. Even as the line between thrash metal riffage and death metal riffage can at times be blurry, (especially with a lot of those bands from the very late 80's and early 90's that seemed to have one foot planted in each sub-genre) It was the harsher vocals and "growling" that really set death metal apart from the thrash metal it was spawned from.

 

Whoa-that's a lot to digest. So many words. Fair points about Priest. You don't like the clean piercing highs in 80's vox and I'm a bigger Priest fan than you are.

As far as consensus goes, we've talked about this before. You listen to massive volume. I love metal but it's less central to my existence than I believe it is for you. I need to cut to the chase and try to find things and don't put in the hours some do. I'm open to just about anything-but unabashedly often go to the more popular metal albums backed by reviews and blogs and people here. 

You used the word angry several times at the beginning of your post. Not sure where that comes from. I didn't say you seemed angry and I'm certainly not. Yes, the merits of a band or sub genre are pretty irrelevant.

Fair if you think I take some of your diatribes personally. Not my take really. The better word is irritation or annoyance. You always ask for honesty. I find some of your posts too much to read and I find some of your talking points repetitive and tedious like a drunk guy at the bar who keeps going on and on and you smile and look at your watch and think, all right already, you've made the same point 20 times....Uh, gotta go. 

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39 minutes ago, markm said:

Whoa-that's a lot to digest. So many words. Fair points about Priest. You don't like the clean piercing highs in 80's vox and I'm a bigger Priest fan than you are.

You used the word angry several times at the beginning of your post. Not sure where that comes from. I didn't say you seemed angry and I'm certainly not. Yes, the merits of a band or sub genre are pretty irrelevant.

Fair if you think I take some of your diatribes personally. Not my take really. The better word is irritation or annoyance. You always ask for honesty. I find some of your posts too much to read and I find some of your talking points repetitive and tedious like a drunk guy at the bar who keeps going on and on and you smile and look at your watch and think, all right already, you've made the same point 20 times....Uh, gotta go. 

Yeah I hear ya, I can get a little verbose, can't I. And I was stone cold sober this morning too. I'm sure you're not the only one who has found some of my posts too much to read and just scrolls on by. And that's OK. The angry thing wasn't really so much aimed at you specifically, although going by some of your reactions to things I've said in the past there have been a couple of times that I wondered if maybe you thought I was angry or attacking you or something. But still, the theory had been floated that I was angry a weekend or two ago when I dropped a couple of very wordy and strongly anti-religious posts, and I guess that was still lingering in the back of my mind. So when I saw you say "we all know you like a (usually) friendly argument" a few posts back, even though you were obviously kidding, I guess for some reason I felt the need to clear my name in my typically overly verbose way. Maybe one day I can learn to be more succinct. But I doubt it. Can't teach an old dog new tricks and all that.

 

Celtic Frost – Into the Pandemonium, 1987

 

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