Members' Top Ten Lists
Time to return to Mondo Bungle's Top 10, and Number
6
is, for the third time,
Angel dust --- Faith No More --- 1992
Give it up guys! I am not reviewing it again! Moving on...
5
Pleasure to kill --- Kreator --- 1986 (Noise)
I've only experience of Kreator on one album, checked out during Metal Month last year, and that one was well into their discography. I was told it was at a point where they were losing the thrash influences. This, on the other hand, is their second album and said to be a classic of thrash metal, so I expect it to be a bit, what, more brutal? It's also quite long, with twelve tracks, so let's get this party started!
There's the no doubt deceptive melodic guitar opening “Choir of the damned”, but as it's only less than two minutes long I think it may be an instrumental. Now we have keys and choral voices, gentle gutiars .... yeah yeah. I'm not fooled guys. I'm not fooled. With track titles like “Riot of violence”, “Carrion” and “Flag of hate”, I know it's going to break into a fast, aggressive ... and there it goes. Sort of Slayer speed, growly voice but I can understand it so that's good. “Ripping corpse” kind of blends into “Death is your saviour” with no real demarcation line between them that I can see, but maybe I was just distracted. Cool solo.
Title track has got a great chugging rhythm, with a really silly death vocal like a record that has been put on two speeds too slow (OFA) but generally this is all passing in something of a blur of sound and growls. I'm losing interest now; everything seems very similar and I can't separate the tracks one from the other. The playing is great, the solos sweet but I just can't pick anything out that really impresses me, other than the opening instrumental. Sorry, nothing more to say about it. Didn't hate it, didn't love it. In some cases, didn't really notice it. What can ya do?
And so on to
4
Blood in our wells – Drudkh --- 2006
Well this sounds interesting. Ukrainian metal? I've sampled progressive rock from there and it was pretty impressive, so we'll see. Hmm. Two ten-minute tracks, a twelve-minuter and a nine. Out of six altogether. I see. Well the first one is short, with an odd kind of folky intro, but I wonder how long that will last? I know this is black metal: it's getting harder to surprise old Trollheart, you guys! Guess that's basically an instrumental, though there are some voices wailing in the background, but I don't think I'd categorise it as singing. The nine-minute track is next, and they all have what I assume are Ukrainian titles (lots of square characters, you know) but I have translations so I know this is called “Furrows of gods”. As expected, it has the angry, growly vocals that seem to characterise so much of this subgenre, but thanks to Jansz I'm getting used to tuning them out. The music is damn good, very slow without being doom metal and very dramatic. I like this a lot. Says the lyrics are based on Ukrainian poetry and literature but --- surprise, surprise! --- I don't speak Ukrainian so can't comment on them. The album is said to be dedicated to the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, basically equivalent it would appear to the IRA. Again I know nothing about this. But the music is very cinematic and powerful. It doesn't batter you with high-speed guitar solos and trundling drums as much black metal I've listened to tends to do. Nice change.
Nine minutes has gone in pretty quickly, and the music here seems more like a sort of heavier progressive metal to me; definitely not the bog-standard black metal of some bands. Lots of melody. Yeah yeah I know. “When the flame turns to ashes” has an amazingly agile guitar solo pulling it in, and just gets better as it goes along. Man, even without being able to understand the lyrics you can feel the passion in this music! Superb. The mono playing at the end is inspired, even if it made me think my computer was screwed up!
To me, the real test of good music is can I enjoy it even if I hate the vocals? Usually I'd say no: I like to hear what's being sung and if I can't enjoy the singing then I can't get past that to enjoy the music. But with this --- and a few others now --- I've been able to make the breakthrough and can honestly say this is effing brilliant! It's interesting and refreshing too how Drudkh have one guitarist and two keyboard players, one of whom also plays the drums, the other of whom does the vocals. Certainly makes for a cinematic sound to their music. The uileann pipes or whatever they are at the start of “Eternity” are just perfect and then it piles into one of the most catchy melodies I've ever heard in black metal. Damn, this is good!
I'll be honest, I can't find a track on this album I like, but I can find six that I love. Not a single bad track, not even one that's sub-par, and they're all so good that I find it impossible to pick a standout. They're all heroes, every one. What an incredible album!