All customer reviews by Tan M.
Posted on: January 2, 2017
Essential
So why is Battle Cry so special? Keep in mind that we are talking about 1984, where up until this point, Dio’s Holy Diver was the Colonists’ primary response to the NWOBHM phenomenon. American power metal was still in its incubation period, with bands like Virgin Steele and Manowar just beginning to reach critical mass. Yes, there was Manilla Road’s Crystal Logic that came a year before it, but Battle Cry was still a breath of fresh air, infusing NWOBHM with a heavy dose of speed, a formula that proved to be so potent that it became the archetype for all American power metal that would soon follow it.
There is not a bad track on this record to really speak of, with the first two ditties, “Death Rider† and “The Axeman,† jumping out the gate with some very tasty Powerslave-esque style chugs. Yet by the time you hit “Be My Wench,† you get the sense that this is very different kind of record than its British contemporaries, mainly due to Powell’s heavy reliance on punk and thrash to give Battle Cry a much more aggressive feel. On top of that, you have Kimball’s iconic vocals, which offer a different take on what it means to be a power metal vocalists. Before Kimball, the “power† in power metal meant being able to hit those high octaves on command a la Dickinson and Dio, and occasionally a dab of falsetto if the need arises. After Kimball however, the “power† could also now mean a mid-range smoothness with a tinge of vibrato. Kimball’s even-keeled performance proved to be the perfect compliment to Powell’s uptempo, highly-energetic riffs, and together they made power metal history.
Posted on: December 31, 2016
Get it
This is just a real blast to spin. It's all here for the discerning long time Metal Head like me. Solid performances and execution all around, with the B/T trademarks in full effect. This isn't your Blast Death Metal with a million time changes and overt technical noodling. What we have here is straight ahead songwriting and killer head banging material throughout. Everything is mixed perfectly. You can hear Jo Bench rumbling away right up there in the mix as the rhythms keep chugging right along with thick guitar chunk over the top. I just love the sound the guitars have on this. This album came out ten years ago. Not their best, but I don't think there's a Bolt Thrower album I don't like. This is the best since 1994's ...For Victory. Not as good as Warmaster, Realms of Chaos or The IVth Crusade, but it holds it's own. A good place to start nonetheless. The album opener, At First Light, sets the tone and keeps you on the edge of your fox hole, fight or flight mode kicking into high gear. Bow before the war machine!
Posted on: December 30, 2016
Good
As death bands go, Bolt Thrower doesn't get a lot of press, but in the UK they're pretty big, which stands to reason as they're from Coventry. To look at the cover and logo one might thing you'd be dealing with a Priest/Sabaton power metal or eighties thrash album, but you'd be wrong. Having never heard them before but knowing of them and a good rep, I found this CD supposedly used but looked like it had never been played or very little. I suspect the buyer was expecting more traditional metal, instead of the deathfest that resides in the binary codes.
Bolt Thrower were a punk hardcore style band at first, but with time honed their axes, tuned them down, and by "Mercenary", have developed a sound that goes down well with those who like bands who tread the blurry lines of a style of metal too categorized for its own good. I immediately appreciated the tone of the guitars, thick and doomy, reminiscent of "Arise"-era Sepultura, and the thrash influence of those legendary outfits who also showed just how closely related thrash and death ultimately are, usually the only difference being grunted vocals, like Slayer, Exodus or Sodom, to name a few. One the death side, you can also put Bolt Thrower in the Carcass/Vader vein, and be just as accurate.
Which means to say after all these comparisons is that "Mercenary", while not exactly creating anything unusual, are a reliably heavy chopping forge hammer of a band, no fancy frills, or excessive lead guitar wanking, solos being slower and melodic, a nice touch, heavy as any doom band and enjoyable, the lyrics of the album subject matter notwithstanding, which you have to read, as the grunt vocals are hard to understand, but that's death metal for
Posted on: December 29, 2016
Not their best
Blend the best elements of IVth Crusade and For Victory and you get Honour, Valour, and Pride. Bolt Thrower finally resurface 4 years after their last album, apparently and hopefully past all their line up difficulties. Dave Ingram, formerly of Benediction, takes up the front man duties quite well. His deeper more powerful voice brings out a fiercer quality from the rest of the band as they're forced to keep up with the tone. New drummer Martin Kearns fits right in with the veteran band as well.
This album is mid-tempo which is where Bolt Thrower is at their best. Each song is heavy as hell with some really catchy riffs throughout. Contact-Wait Out will literally call to mind what a tank sounds like crossing a battlefield. They've taken guitar layering to a new level for this genre of music and it's definately a must have for any fan of extreme heavy metal.
Posted on: December 11, 2016
Fall from grace
Steer and Amott make some incredible riffs and complex leads in some songs, the drums and the bass are not what we were used to, in some songs the drumming is killer and in others it's just standard with typical rhythm, the same thing for the bass; yes this is the main reason why people called this The First Melodic Death Metal Album. The best song in the album in my opinion is Arbeit Mach Fleisch, this song is Remarkable here all the instruments have something good to highlight, the riffs and leads, the drums, the vocals and bass are astonishing, not to mention that it is the strongest song in the album, so this may be THE song on this album, Blind Bleeding The Blind, Buried Dreams and No Love Lost are also overwhelming songs maybe because this are the only songs where the music was entirely written by Steer without Amott's influence, who knows?
A good album merit to be listened, not the best Carcass's Work (though it can be the best for some people, including the band members themselves) but sure it's high-quality and some songs are amazingly well played and recorded, the production is very good I didn't found any mixing flaws and the sound is exceptionally clean. So here it is, Heartwork people..buy it, you don't need more reasons.
Posted on: December 10, 2016
Get it
Sepultura's rise from utter obscurity in Brazil to being international metal stars is one that most fans are quite aware of. The mere fact that the band was able to attain any sort of success coming from such humble roots is quite impressive. But it should be noted that their success had to start somewhere, which in this case is a pair of early releases: Bestial Devastation and Morbid Visions. Bestial Devastation was one half of a 1985 split with Overdose and Morbid Visions was Sepultura's first LP released on a small Brazilian label.
Morbid Visions sounds somewhat like you'd expect from a group of young musicians with more ambition than time spent practicing their instruments. And yes, the production on the LP isn't exactly top notch either. That, of course, is to be expected in Sepultura's situation. I can't imagine the recording budget of Morbid Visions exceeding what Sepultura might have spent in twenty minutes around the time Arise was recorded. That said, Morbid Visions does manage to sound better than, say, Sodom's Obsessed By Cruelty. Possibly the most noticeable aspect of this LP is that someone loved their reverb. As a result, the record sounds cavernous where it occasionally sounds like they set up the band at the far end of a big expansive room and set the microphones far away from the scary, hairy Brazilian thrashers.
Satanic and morbid occultist imagery pervade the lyrics and composition of this release, which in the style which bands from Havohej to Beherit and Darkthrone employ, subjugates the ridiculous to serve the abstracted lifestyle determinations the visions of mythos and living mysticism evoke. Muscular in its recombinant structure in both sum of phrases and the construction of phrases as minimalist motion of structure around central tones, these dark hymns inspired generations of metalheads and after some delayed propagation following their respective releases in 1984-85 are recognized as foundational to the embryonic death metal genre.
Posted on: December 2, 2016
All hail to Metal Blade
..for making this available on vinyl finally!
This album kicks off with Join the Legion, a picture perfect example of heavy metal done properly. Riffs chop away with brilliant edge that rip through flesh. The chorus is a fist-pump-fest that´ll get you on your feet, shouting along, pathetically trying to emulate Baker´s tough, surprisingly raspy, deep lines. Tim sounds rougher and goes lower than earlier, and for those who had problems with his vocals on previous albums, may like his style better here.
With new members come new ideas, and one of them wrote the following song. The Troll is a bit choppy, yet certainly one of the gloomiest tracks on the album. Fire ups the pace a little, and if it wasn´t for Baker´s snarls and awesome, slower, crushing passages, this would wander off into forbidden 80´s rock territory. Heaven Help Us is a straight up heavy metal tune with dominating, melodic riffs, clearly audible bass, gallopping passages and awesome leads.
Although this cleaner sound is a bit boggling and come off as a bit of a downer at first, it will eventually grow on you. Plus, you have the lovely, dirty doom moments like Before the Lash, and the Phantom of the Opera-esque Chaos Rising, which starts out slow and churning before exploding into a flurry of absolutely fantastic riffs, completely dominating choruses, and a lead section that will shred you to pieces. In other words resembling songs like Of Frost and Fire and 100 mph complete with a doomy intro.
All in all, given the circumstances this is a pretty damn great album. Sure there are some downers like the flowery Go It Alone, and less deliberate The Troll, but this is still Cirith fucking Ungol and everything with their stamp on is worth getting. Oh and did I mention that the song Paradise Lost is terrific? Yeah it is, and there´s some awesome stuff here that fans of Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Legend and Heavy Load should know and love even if it isn´t on par with their previous efforts.
Posted on: December 1, 2016
Possibly the best Grave outputs
Listening to Necropsy: The Complete Demo Recordings 1986-1991 has clarified for me exactly what I like and detest about this band. Unlike most bands of that era, Grave understood the concept of hook, in this case a rhythm that is fascinating enough to be instantly memorable. On the downside, the hook swims in what are ultimately predictable song structures borrowed from the lower echelons of 1980s speed metal. These demos show Grave developing its style from an early Possessed/Kreator hybrid into full-fledged death metal, yet the band never really breaks into what made death metal powerful. These songs cycle through verse-chorus with exceptions made to fit in some transitional riffs, but never construct themselves around an idea expressed in both riff and song. As a result, they come across as random outside of the one moment of clarity for the hook, at which point the brain goes to sleep waiting for the random power chord slamming to end and the hook to come around again.
These demos progress from the prescient in style works of the 1986-1988 period in which bands were still figuring out how to work with the fertile ferment of Bathory, Hellhammer, Possessed, Sepultura, Sodom and Slayer. The Grave tracks from this era sound like a second-rate speed metal band imitating Possessed as death vocals ring out around clumsier versions of riff patterns you might find on a Heathen or Dark Angel album. As time goes on, the riffs pick up more technique and the clumsiness becomes an aggressive slamming rhythm mated to an adroit sense of pick-up rhythm that conserves and intensifies the energy of each riff. But, much as with Kreator, the riff is the hook and the “sweet spot† in the midst of relatively unrelated material, which means songs keep clunking along on the rhythm of the drums and vocals while the guitars do random stuff. It’s as if these bands never fully come together and are just too individualistic for their own good, Kreator especially. As the demos accelerate toward 1991, the technique streamlines into recognizable full death metal, but the song structures revert to the 1986 styles and despite increased proficiency remain just as clumsy in end result.
Posted on: November 20, 2016
Essential
There are tons of fantasy metal bands these days, but 'Awaken the Guardian' really sounds like fantasy itself in a way that only Blind Guardian's 'Somewhere Far Beyond' rivals. Moonlit forests, glowing glyphs, ancient secrets, mysterious women - these all are evoked in the listener's mind not only by John Arch's (vocals) lyrics, but by the carefully crafted music itself. This is often considered a pioneering progressive metal album, but I find it to be closer to power metal (with progressive touches), with a little bit of thrash thrown in from time to time just to add some aggression and excitement.
Yes, this is a complex album. It has odd time signatures out the wazoo, shredding guitars, wailing vocals, all that good stuff. But above all this album is about SONGS. Everything here is to serve the songs, strange beasts as they are. Somehow, they take these razor-sharp, lurching, stumbling riffs, strengthen them with effective drum and bass parts, and let John Arch take it away on top of it all with his nasally, soaring vocals.
Jim Matheos and Frank Aresti had to have been two of metal's greatest guitarists at this time, and most underrated. They perform some bizarre riffs here, yet they manage to be catchy and melodic anyway. They also rip out some blistering solos, and they're like gold when they appear, because this album is not all about solos. They'd much rather hit you with an intense riff than dazzle you with a technical solo. If only more 'progressive' bands would do that; Fates Warning may have been progressive, but they were first and foremost METAL. One thing I really like is the red herrings they throw at you: one section of song will seem to wrap up, and a new riff will come in, and just when you think they're about to jump in and pursue this new riff, they'll go into a modified version of the previous part instead. I've never heard quite such an approach, and it works really well. And the solos, scarce as they are, never seem to come right where you'd expect them to; but their placement always makes perfect sense, and you wonder what you were expecting in the first place. Awesome, awesome performance by these guys.
Posted on: November 16, 2016
Greater things to come
Cirith Ungol is an underground 80s metal band (one of many that had been trying to "make it" since the mid-70s with a more doomy, 70s vibe than most 80s bands. Their sound is pretty unique, and vocalist Tim Baker's over-the-top scream is part of that reason. The band's two middle albums (they only did 4) are probably their "definitive" sound, this debut (the only one with two guitarists) has more of a jammy 70s vibe, and Baker's vocals are a little less extreme - he's kind of reminiscent of Alice Cooper at times, here. Lyrically, this album has more stuff about rock'n'roll lifestyle than the more epic-fantasy-themed later albums, although it also has the best of their Elric fantasy-art covers. While at first I wasn't as impressed with the "underground 80s metal" value of this as their later albums, I found I really rather enjoy it. Start with their "King of the Dead" album for their best music (and 2nd best cover), but this is still pretty cool music. The production may not be the best but this album is pure fun. Catchy, strange and fresh (30 years after it's release). You haven't heard anything like this before. Some wont like the vocals, but it really is a big part of the album's charm. Guitars are awesome, melodic and powerfull. Buy this one if you like retro heavy metal.