Isbjørn

• This album bored me.
• This album lasts for 79 minutes, which is, approximately, half an hour too long.
• I don't care if the excessive length is to "get enough space for all the art" or whatever, because it's not like I'm interested enough to pay attention to the message.
• I think the whole album sounded pretty much the same, and not in a good way.
• I don't get it.
• I think prog metal really isn't something for me.
• I'm rating it 2.5/5 because it's not utterly terrible, just boring.

2.5/5

__________________

Carpe Mortem

Do not let Tool turn you off of prog metal!!!

'After', a solo album by Emperor's guitarist Ihsahn, will blow you out of the water, I'm sure of it. I demand a review and ratings.

After - YouTube

__________________

Isbjørn

I'll see what I can whip up. I also have yet to hear that Ayreon album...

__________________

Carpe Mortem

Put this on the line too! One of the best Ayreon albums. They're one of those bands where they have a lot of 'best' albums depending on your mood, this one seems to be the most accessible though. Also Mikael Anderfeldt of Opeth does guest vocals on a few songs.

Ayreon - Into the Electric Castle - YouTube

__________________

Isbjørn

Artist: Electric Wizard
Album: Dopethrone
Year: 2000
Chronological position: Third album
Genre: Stoner doom
Expectations before listening: Badass, beard growth-inducing music

I'd heard some good things about this album, to say the least, by our very own Batlord. However, I didn't really sit down and listen to it before now. Finally, we decided to pick this in the album club, IF we could also hear Lateralus (we have a prog metalhead in the club, and he insisted to pick some Tool).

Dopethrone is probably the heaviest album I've heard in my life so far. Damn. It is the musical equivalent of getting kicked in the face with nail boots by a Gandalf-bearded devil smoking weed. Damn. Still, it's a bit repetitive. A couple of the songs could need some minutes cut away from their length. But it's badass as hell, and I will, without doubt, listen to it again.

3.5/5

__________________

Carpe Mortem

I am enjoying watching you flower... or should I say wither?... into your appreciation for my favorite genre.

And also would like to recommend Electric Wizard's self-titled, if even just for 'Mountains of Mars' alone.

__________________

The Batlord

Yeah they'll do that. To be fair though this band is explicitly a stoner band and their songs really are meant to be taken with a joint or a hit of acid.

__________________

Isbjørn

__________________

Isbjørn

Artist: Metallica
Album: Load
Year: 1996
Chronological position: Sixth album
Genre: Hard rock
Expectations before listening: Like, really, really low

A promise is a promise. Listening to this album, Load, was a promise I made to a fellow poseur named Mats (who registered on the forums today as Matshovden). Well... Load? More like Load of Crap. Hah, take that, Metallica. Since I'm not in the mood for forming decent paragraphs, I'm just going to list some things I don't like about this album:

• This isn't metal
• The slick production would fit a pop album
• You get the feeling that this album was written only for the money
• Mr. Hetfield's angry voice doesn't fit with the very non-angry music
• The music is boring and dull
• The lyrics are boring, dull and I stopped paying attention to them before I was halfway through
• The album is 79 minutes long
• The cover art is sickening and physically painful to watch (it's semen and animal blood between two sheets of plexiglass)

2/5

__________________

The Batlord

On the one hand, I don't particularly like Load, but in some ways it's underrated. Musically it's some pretty good, even quasi-great at times, power pop. There's not much of substance other than just catchy songs, but there's nothing wrong with that. Metallica's motivations for that album don't really concern me, so whether it's a sellout album don't matter to me. But, those vocals are terrible. Hetfield is trying far too hard to have 'tude and just comes off as massively fake, which ruins a lot of the charm that the album would otherwise have. He was a brilliant thrash vocalist, but as a hard rock singer he just sucks.

__________________