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Wpnfire's Heavy Metal Expedition
Alright, so with Trollheart's metal month ongoing, I have decided to post my own metal review albums for this month as well. I racked my brain a bit, and at first I was going to review the albums from member's top ten metal albums list that were not chosen by Trollheart, but I decided that was too taxing (also I used a random number generator to choose which albums I was going to review, and Ninetails albums kept popping up. Sorry Nine, but your albums frighten me greatly!).
So, I decided to instead review some of the albums I have listened to in the past year. During this past year I have discovered more metal albums in one year than I have in the past 19. I will add what my thoughts were when I first listened to each of the albums that have slowly shaped my metal tastes.
Much to my dismay, the first true metal album that I listened to was something so sinister, it almost put me off from metal altogether...again!
Load
*sigh* well maybe I will just put this one at the end...but if I want my chronicling to be accurate..
fine! I guess I will review this **** stain of an album.
I am not posting the artwork because I refuse to look at it.
Alright, so as much as I hate the prospect of listening to this entire album again, I will say this.
"Ain't My Bitch" is my favorite Metallica song, bar none. Also it was on the strength of this one song that I bought the album. You see, I still was not a true fan of metal a year ago and in my confusion I mistook thrash metal for overly aggressive, disgusting, offensive metal. Not sure why I thought that, (I guess I was just a pussy as Batlord would call it) but I elected to
buy Load as all the reviews said it was not in the realm of thrash. Alas, it was not what I expected. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have gone BACK instead of going forward, but hey, I knew nothing about metal, let alone Metallica...
Alright, so "Ain't My Bitch" is still my favorite Metallica song, and I will never apologize for that. Truly, the guitar riffs on this song are just all-around spectacular, and while the lyrics, and the solo in the middle, are lackluster at best, I do not ****ing care. The riffs are heavy, it is singable, and at the end of the day, that is really all I am looking for.
****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****, ****!
I basically summarized my views on the next 13 tracks, but that is a cop-out right? *sigh* (
again) Alright so "2x4" has got some mighty fine riffing that is right up my alley (like seriously, we are talking 10/10, lights out for the riffs, wow!) but these lyrics are just awful! Holy **** Hetfield, please ****ing stop singing this goddamn minute. The vocals for Suffocation are better than what you are doing right now! "Put the screws (ah!) to yah"
Oh my god these are so terrible. Having flashbacks to "Frantic" right now. Right away, "One" is sounding more appealing than listening to this–hell, even the black album sounds good! Okay, it is not black album bad, but it is not too far away from that ****.
There is an odd trippy/psychedelic section of this song after the first minute that sounds about x1000 better than Hetfield singing on his own. It is actually bearable. Oh, but of course Hetfield ruins that too as he comes whispering in. The solo is nice, also right up my alley, but it can not save this song.
lol Track 3 has descended almost entirely into hard rock. And I am done! I can NOT take this anymore. THIS...
...is heavier than 90% of the songs on load, and about a 1000x more appealing! Good God! I can not believe I spent my ****ing money on this album.
Alright! So let us forget about that one and just go right on to the main album I was going to review first and foremost.
Bathory -- Bathory
I had zero respect for black metal before this album. I thought black metal was worthless, offensive (an emphasis on offensive), skill-less noise metal. After the Batlord showed me a song from this album, I quickly realized all my preconceptions about black metal were just wrong, and that First Wave Black Metal was more up my alley.
Technically, I am skipping ahead a few albums to get to Bathory, but this is the first extreme metal album that I listened to that was not a thrash album.
I still find that album cover rather eerie. I have seen the yellow one, and good god, that one is way more creepy, but oddly enough, the album cover I have has one with red eyes for the goat, and I am not quite sure why. I have never seen that cover before, but I think I actually like it the best of the covers I have seen (also it is the least creepy!)
Tracklist:- Storm of Damnation (Intro)
- Hades
- Reaper
- Necromanc(s)y
- Sacrifice
- In Conspiracy With Satan
- Armageddon
- Raise The Dead
- War
- Winds of Mayhem (Outro)
The album opens with a dark ambient track, "Storm of Damnation," that cannot set the stage more perfectly for this album. Like the name implies, there is howling wind, what sounds like thunder (?), and perhaps most creepy, a very large bell, or gong maybe. This ambience continues directly into the first track, "Hades" that starts immediately following the intro track. I originally found this album on the internet, and that album had the intro track and "Hades" as separate tracks, but the CD version I bought a few months ago has them
combined as one track, something I have never seen before or read about.
Anyway, when this song begins, virgin black metal listeners such as myself, may immediately notice the absolute dearth of quality recording techniques on this album, and it is quite shocking. The overal album sounds like it was recorded using something slightly higher in quality than a tape recorder. The guitars are downtuned, the drumming is fast, but when Quorthon comes in with the vocals, it puts the instrumentation into perspective: this is truly just a grinding, downtuned, satanic mess of an album--in a good way. An accurate comparison would be that it sounds like a Venom album, but considerably more intense. The vocals are raspy, rapid-fire, and for the most part, unintelligible.
The album gallops along at a brisk pace, offering some high-level songwriting finesse by Quorthon, who adds in some minor breakdowns, false starts, and occasionally a wild solo. Most of the songs are average in length. Regardless of whether you like Bathory or not, I do not think there is any debate: this is a great debut album. The vocals change slightly from track to track, sometimes Quorthon sings slower, but deeper, gurgle-y vocals (like on "Armageddon"), Other times, he sings (yells) much more clearly, or screams fiendishly.
Now I cannot do an album review which includes my personal thoughts at the time and not talk about "Raise The Dead." This was the track that the Batlord originally showed me many moons ago. A few chimes from a bell slowly give way to what sounds like a heart beating; then a few ringing guitar chords give rise to one of the best guitar riffs from this album; followed shortly by Quorthon shouting "Dust to dust!!" Simply spectacular.
After a much faster track, a doom-y outro track plays called "The Winds of Mayhem" that runs for thirty seconds and is supposed to be the antithesis of the intro track "Storm of Damnation." Instead of hollowing wind, distant claps of thunder, and a ringing bell, that all carry a foreboding sense of an impending storm, "The Winds" are the aftermath of that storm with–I do not even know how to describe it–drone-ish ambience I guess you could call it. It is chilling, and I could not think of a better closing to this dark album.
Alright, so let me summarize my feelings on this album. This was the first black metal album I listened to, and while it is not a flawless album, and it can get a tad stale at times, it was without a doubt, the darkest, most intense album I had listened to up to that point--and I loved it. Gritty, glorified satan worship at pretty much its finest.
My favorite tracks from this would be "Hades," "Sacrifice," "Raise The Dead," and "War," though all of the tracks are great, and I could listen to each and every one of them. After this album, I started listening to heavier and heavier metal. It was truly the beginning of my extreme metal days.