Progressive metal and rock is a genre I've been immersing my head into for the past few years, even moreso this past year. It all began with Travis Smith and his amazing artwork. Shuffling through the used bins a few years back at my favorite used shop, Nuggets, in Boston, I came across Redemption's self-titled debut and Zero Hour's Metamorphosis, a re-release of their self-titled debut (excluding their previous demo). I remembered the artwork from Travis' website, and knowing that Travis usually works with bands that fit my tastes I immediately bought both of them. The rest is history.
Prog metal and rock has become a new genre for me to indulge in and I'm loving it. Zero Hour's latest, Specs Of Pictures Burnt Beyond, comes a little over a year since A Fragile Mind, my personal favorite from the band, and also on my Best of 2005 list. This new album, however, is no slouch—far from it! Once again Zero Hour delivers with pinpoint perfection; and like I said in my review: Raise your glasses and your horns in honor of the best metal album of 2006!
For many, Candlemass is the greatest doom metal band of all time; others may say Pentagram or even Black Sabbath. For me, however, it is Solitude Aeturnus. I remember the first time I heard them, around 1996, and being simply blown away by their sheer power, the crushing guitar work of John Perez and the soaring, majestic and foreboding vocals of Robert Lowe, one of the most underrated vocalist of all time; he belongs up there with Dickinson, Tate, Dio, and Halford. Unfortunately, over the course of their career, which began in the late 80s, the band had hit their fair share of roadblocks, from bad record deals to an idiot mixing Downfall to band members leaving; thus it’s been eight years since the release of the very underappreciated Adagio. A long time in the making, Alone was supposed to make its debut at the end of 2005, but instead came a year later. And sticking with tradition, the limited edition digipack was messed up at the pressing plant with some tracklisting errors and the bonus track, “Lucid Destitution,” being mislabeled “Embrace” on the back of the digipack and in the lyrics, but labeled correctly in the liner notes. Typical.
Petty misfortune aside, Alone is one amazing piece of work. Not only does the album come off much more doomy than the past few albums, but it also has much more of a heavy metal vibe not heard since Downfall. The production is crisp and crystal-clear, but maintains a dark, sinister quality. The album is flawless; and had this not come out at the very end of the year it would likely be my number one pick for the best album of 2006. If you’re going to pick this album up, buy the limited release because, while not being a part of the main album, and having a different sound to it, “Lucid Destitution” is one amazing 10-minute long journey! Solitude Aeturnus have never come up short on an album, and they that hasn’t changed this time out. I just hope I don’t have to wait eight years for the next one.
“Seeds Of The Desolate” (Live Clip from Beyond The Crimson Horizon)
I’m a huge Savatage fan, have been since I first heard “Gutter Ballet”—get this!—on the radio back in the day. I got all their albums up to that point, and though I became a big fan, I couldn’t always handle Jon Oliva’s vocals. Sometimes his acidic wail just didn’t do it for me, while other times it was awesome. Nothing has changed to this day; though he has become a hundred times the vocalist he was back then. When Jon stepped down and Zak Stevens took up the frontman role I was skeptical, but he won me over with his amazing voice. Savatage was still great in my book, sometimes I think even better. Fast forward many years and albums, and we have Zak stepping down and Jon stepping back up (and some Damian guy who few have seen and may or may not exist in real life). Enter Zak’s new musical output, Circle II Circle.
Zak’s new band doesn’t impress me with their sound; it’s too similar to Savatage for me to be impressed. They do, however, impress me with their music—it’s outstanding! With two full-lengths and two EPs under their belt comes Burden Of Truth, an album I wasn’t keen on after hearing it would be a concept album based on the Illuminati and all the Da Vinci Code mumbo-jumbo. But then I was impressed that Zak didn’t shy away from the recent hype on the subject and admitted that the concept was not something he’s always wanted to do, but devised with the intent on telling the story of what would potentially happen to the characters after the end of The DaVinci Code. So it’s not a lifted concept, but a hypothetical continuation of an existing story. I can respect that. And at the end of the day, even if I didn’t like the concept, I could never deny the music. It’s killer. Once again Zak proves that he’s one of the best metal vocalists out there, and Circle II Circle once again deliver the goods with a great heavy metal album. Savatage may be on its last leg, but with Circle II Circle, Jon Oliva’s Pain, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and Chris Caffery’s solo material, there’s still plenty of Savatage to be had. It’s not the name that matters, but the killer music, and these guys give us plenty.
“Watching In Silence” (Offical Video from Watching In Silence)
For me, if there is any musician in the world to bet the house on, it would be Devin Townsend. His musical brilliance continues to astound me with every release. Synchestra is much more a cerebral experience than his previous, more immediately pleasing releases. I liked Synchestra from the get-go, but it took a good number of listens before I truly began to appreciate its stark beauty. The album plays better as one long song, with most of them more pleasing stacked up next to the other songs on the album. Vampira, the album's lead-off single, is the only song that really stands on its own. And it's an amazing song; the video is easily one of the most ridiculous videos of all time! While not his most popular among fans, Synchestra still shows that Devin Townsend is one of the best in the game.
Again, like Synchestra, The New Black is an album that took fans by surprise, and seemed to disappoint more than please long-time fans. Anyone who was paying attention could see this album coming from a mile away. Devin has slowly but surely incorporated more and more of his “solo” personality into every Strapping Young Lad release ever since the debut. There is no previous Strapping Young Lad album without melody, catchy hooks, and clean singing; but with The New Black there's simply more of it, a fairly even split between melody and the band's signature brutality. Maybe the album being written in close proximity to Synchestra caused them to creatively bleed into one another—who knows!
The bottom line is that The New Black is a tremendous album, one that would have been hailed a masterpiece if it were released under a different name, such as Physicist, I think. Unfortunately it seems that a name has more meaning than the music to many fans. While the album did well, many fans called it a failure; some even going so far as to call it a sell-out album to get the band mainstream exposure with the Ozzfest crowd; many even calling the song “Fucker,” a crystal-clear, tongue-in-cheek, intentional anti-hit, the band's attempt to appeal to a younger, more mainstream crowd. The joke was clearly lost on these so-called fans.
City is Strapping Young Lad's magnum opus to date, but The New Black is one step behind. It belongs on this list.
Memorial may very well be Moonspell's best release yet. After a few years dabbling in the more somber gothic side of the spectrum, Memorial saw the band take all their various style shifts over the years, pool them together, and unleash one monstrous amalgamation of gothic black metal. The gothic dark metal is still featured aplenty, but also this time out they brought back the black metal from their early days—the Anno Satanae demo days! Hermeticum by Daemonarch, the black metal side-project by four current and former Moonspell members, is also a good reference point. If not the best Moonspell release to date, Memorial stands toe-to-toe with any of their previous releases.
You’re a normal, respected, and honest man. You’ve lived an honest, upstanding life. But you've been diagnosed with terminal cancer. You have a very short time to live. What do you do with your remaining days? Why, of course, you indulge in every dark desire you could possibly imagine: drinking and drug binges, sharing bed space with some prostitutes, making romance explosions inside them, and then killing them, and all other manner of dark, twisted fantasy. This is Adultery, a concept album following a man through his final days as he wreaks havoc on what remains of his life and all those around him, indulging in the dark side of life before he inevitably dies.
Dog Fashion Disco is virtually impossible to slap a genre label on, mainly due to their melding of styles ranging from jazz to death metal to nu-metal to R&B, often in a single song. Vocalist Todd Smith is a dead ringer for Mike Patton, and thus have always been called a Mr. Bungle copycat; but Mike Patton and Mr. Bungle could never stay focused long enough to come close to the brilliance that is Adultery. Mr. Bungle has brilliant moments. Dog Fashion Disco is brilliant. All day, every day. Sadly, though the band’s best work to date, Adultery is their swan song. They announced their disbandment in on December 5, 2006. Adultery is the real deal, however; one of the coolest concept albums ever written.
This album took me a long time to find. I initially heard an MP3 of the song “Chaos Prophet” on a French metal site. The song was very much like something from Therion’s Lemuira/Sirius B albums: symphonic death/power metal. I contacted the band about the album and it wasn’t finished yet. I waited. When it was released it was impossible for me to buy. The French site selling it did not ship to the United States; every eBay seller was just another bootleg seller, those that plague the once-great eBay and turned it into a terrible, untrustworthy on-line store. Eventually I took my chances with their Russian distributor, Irond Ltd. Bootleggers these days put out a fairly high-quality product, and many come from Russia. I had no interest in a bootleg, no matter how good it was. But since Irond Ltd. was a legit distributor I gave them a shot, and luckily they delivered. Birth Of The Prophet arrived shortly thereafter and has been played consistently since. A very ambitious and fantastical debut concept album, part one of three, from this French band.
Tarot is a band that is completely new to me. Though I’ve owned Suffer Our Pleasures since its release, for some reason I thought it was their debut—and what a great debut I thought it was. However, I had no idea this band goes back all the way to 1986! I was shocked when I found out earlier this year; but stoked all the same, for I had some new Tarot material to seek out. And it was a good time to make this discovery, too, as their first five studio albums and one live album were remastered and re-released this year with a ton of bonus material: demos, unreleased tracks, and live songs.
So that brings us to Crows Fly Black, the band’s seventh studio album. Led by the Hietala brothers, Marco (Nightwish, ex-Sinergy) and Zachary, Crows Fly Black brings back more of the 80s metal style found on their earlier albums, something that was overshadowed by a more modern metal style on Suffer Our Pleasures. This album also features a new dynamic in the vocal department with Zachary lending his throat to some songs, giving them a slight Ozzy Osbourne feel. Crows Fly Black is an album needed to be heard. There’s nary a bad song in sight—which can also be said about each of their albums.
The music fan who doesn’t listen would label Cataract as a metalcore band. They would be wrong—sort of. Cataract is more of a modern death metal groove band, but I won’t argue with the metalcore tag. They do have some similarities, but they steer clear of any sort of clean singing, there’s no hardcore posturing, no by-the-numbers solos, or anything typical of the metalcore genre; and thus, in my eyes, they do not fit the metalcore mold. There are breakdowns, but they're more like old school thrash breakdowns rather than typical “get da fuck up” metalcore breakdowns. But it matters little what genre label they fall under.
Kingdom is the band's fourth full-length release and it kills from beginning to end. Either way you look at it, Kingdom is an outstanding and brutal piece of modern metal, one well worth listening to.
...And the turd was flungeth from a great many. Edguy's Rocket Ride did not hit the spot for a lot of fans. The abundance of rock tendencies and catchy hooks had many fans scratching their heads and flinging poo at anyone who liked this album. I loved this album; thus ate a lot of poo. I grew up living on 80s rock/metal, so this album was awesome for me. I wasn't blown away by every song, but I absolutely loved most of them. “Sacrifice,”“Rocket Ride,”“Wasted Time,”“Fucking With Fire (Hair Force One),”“The Asylum,” and “Superheroes” are all outstanding tracks; and the rest are very good. All but one, anyway….
“Trinidad.” I hate you, Trinidad! You’re damn near the worst song I've ever heard. You’re not funny, you’re not good, you’re not catchy; you’re terrible and highly annoying. Edguy occasionally indulge in their oddball sense of humor too much and misfire. “Trinidad” is another misfire, as is the official video for “Superheroes” (below). Otherwise, Rocket Ride is a great album. The 80s rock fan in me declares it my favorite Edguy album.
The first song I heard from Communic was “Under A Luminous Sky, and the song still gives me goose bumps when I hear Oddleif Strensland’s wail during the chorus. The first time I heard the song I knew I would love this band. You’ll hear a lot of people compare them to Nevermore, and this is mainly due to Strensland’s very similar vocal style to Warrel Dane; but take that away and the band isn’t all that similar in musical style. Nevermore have always had some progressive elements, but they’ve never been a progressive band. Communic is.
Waves Of Visual Decay may remind people of Nevermore, but it stands strong on its own two legs. Songs like the brutal “Under A Luminous Sky,” the melodic, foreboding “Frozen Asleep In The Park,”“Fooled By The Serpent,” and “At Dewy Prime” are simply too good to overlook, too brilliant to simply blow off as “just another Nevermore wannabe”—which I recently heard someone say. Waves Of Visual Decay goes down in 2006 as one hell of a progressive metal album, easily one of the best.
Wastefall is yet another progressive band I discovered in 2006. Hailing from Greece, after two successful albums, Wastefall was scooped up by Ken Golden and signed to the Sensory Records division of The Laser’s Edge, Golden’s multi-genre label. Wastefall share shelf space with similar killers like Zero Hour, fellow Greek prog-band Fragile Vastness, and Pain Of Salvation (only for the similarity in vocals).
Self-Exile is heavy, modern progressive metal, but not self-indulgent where you get lost trying to follow the song. The songs are definitely progressive with that seemingly discordant instrumentation that somehow contradicts itself and mixes seamlessly, but it's also extremely catchy. The album features no instrumentals either, except for the short Dead Can Dance-like intro that contains some chanting. I was very impressed upon my first listen, and I remain so today. Wastefall has two other albums, Falling Stars And Rising Scars and Soulrain 21, the former, the debut, being very solid but flawed, and the latter being equally as good as Self-Exile, if not a bit less realized. A band most definitely worth your time.
“Self Extinction Project” (Official Video from Soulrain 21)
Clearly 2006 was the Year of Prog for me. Degree Absolute was another newfound band discovered solely on the trust I have with Sensory Records. I saw it in the record store, the cover looked cool, I flip it over...Bam!...Sensory Records—sold! And yet again I was not let down. Degree Absolute is the product of one Aaron Bell. A long time in the making, this self-titled debut, but well worth the wait, I assume, for those who were waiting. It's a killer album, very heavy and dynamic, and well written. The album includes three instrumentals in a row—which I found odd. Most prog-metal albums have at least one instrumental, but I know of none to include three in a row, unless, of course, they're an instrumental band. Fans of Sensory Records label mates would do well to give this album a listen.
Cellador is a band many of us here at MetalReviews.com have had the pleasure of listening to since their debut demo, mainly due to a crazed, obsessed, and slightly stalker-like fan (aka groupie) spamming our forum with praise for the band. Good thing, too, because Cellador is easily one of the best power metal bands to come out of the United States in a long time. Their sound gives a heavy nod to the early days of Helloween while never coming close to being a clone. It’s your standard brand of power metal so you’re not going to find much in the originality department; but if you’re looking for a hefty chunk of extremely fast power metal with great hooks, then Cellador is a no-brainer.
On the strength of their debut demo EP, Leaving All Behind, the band secured a deal with Metal Blade. A new album was quickly ordered up. The result was Enter Deception, an album consisting of the four tracks from the demo EP, slightly altered, but essentially the same, and four new tracks (fifth was written but never finished). The new songs were not flawless, but considering how fast they had to come up with this new material to meet Metal Blade’s ridiculously short deadline, the band did a stellar job. The quality of musicianship and songwriting is extremely high for such a young band, and even though vocalist Michael Gremio (aka Michael Smith Jr.) looks like the product of a Papa Roach/Avenged Sevenfold orgy, he can wail with the best of them, and put many more to shame. With Enter Deception, Cellador stands tall within the tight confines of the genre, and they sit secure atop the heap when it comes to power metal bands from the US.
Canvas Solaris changed my outlook on the whole instrumental genre. I have always been uninterested in instrumental music; but for whatever reason I was very impressed with Canvas Solaris’ Penumbra Diffuse. Since then I’ve picked up albums from a few more instrumental progressive bands, namely Canvas Solaris’ previous two releases, Liquid Tension Experiment, OSI, and A Triggering Myth. I am pleased with them all. I have also learned that my aversion to instrumental music stems from my general dislike of musicians like Steve Vai and Joe Satriani and their albums. I can appreciate their skill but their music doesn’t grab me, there’s not enough depth beyond the look-at-me-go factor. It strikes me as a little different with progressive bands doing instrumental work; while it is inherently self-indulgent it never comes off as anything but one cohesive package, nothing standing out more than another, everything is there for the sake of the song and not for the musician. Whether this notion is true or not is beyond me, but that’s where I stand on the subject. Penumbra Diffuse is not only a great album but it was a gateway album for me; thus becomes my biggest surprise of 2006.
I am not afraid to admit to liking mainstream music. I never turn my back on a band if they become popular while continuing to write good music. I don’t find it amusing to bash bands that I dislike. I simply dislike them, and then focus my time and energy on things I do like. Being a fan of Evanescence I’ve had to battle my way through armies of turds that do the exact opposite of what I do, and with much more passion. They dislike mainstream music for no other reason than it being mainstream music; they hate on bands for becoming successful, and they spend far more time bashing bands they dislike than praising bands they do like. It makes little sense to me. So going against the grain, I thought Fallen was a great album. I’d been lucky enough to follow the band from their earliest demo and I always thought they were very good, and never imagined them to achieve the level of success they did. Evanescence was once Amy Lee and Ben Moody; but a few years back Moody left the band. That left Amy Lee, and left me with little faith.
Fast forward a few years and we have The Open Door. I envisioned a very pop-oriented, fluffy, girl-power reincarnation of the band this time out. Some have labeled The Open Door as radio-friendly pap because of the catchy and relatively trite lead-off single “Call Me When You’re Sober,” but what Amy Lee churned out for the rest of the album is darker, heavier, and more grandiose with more depth and layers than anything the band did previously. It shocked the hell out of me. So while the haters will hate, and many of the so-called fans of Fallen fail to hear that everything that was on Fallen is here on The Open Door, just in greater numbers, I’ll sit back, happy, laughing while they waste their time talking their trash, and enjoy a great album.
When I first heard a clip of “Foxy Foxy,”Educated Horses’ lead-off single, I was baffled. The signature Rob Zombie sound—a sound that goes back to the 80s—was gone. “Foxy Foxy” just sounded weird. But then I began to think about some of the more recent tracks Zombie had released; songs like “Pussy Liquor” and “Two-Lane Blacktop” and “Girl On Fire.” These songs were also very different from the typical Zombie, but I liked them. At this point “Foxy Foxy” was only a streaming clip online, so I waited until the complete song was released before passing judgement. When it was finally released in complete form I was again taken aback. “Foxy Foxy” is very different, very stripped down, with an almost late 70s rock vibe. After a few spins, though, I was hooked.
Educated Horses is a mix of the heavier White Zombie-like tracks (“Let It All Bleed Out,”“American Witch,”“The Lords Of Salem”) that Zombie carried over to his solo albums and more experimental, laid back rock tracks (“Foxy Foxy,”“Death Of It All,”“The Scorpion Sleeps”). Though not as hard-hitting as previous Zombie albums, Educated Horses turned out to be a great addition to my collection. If you haven’t given it a chance, I suggest you do; just leave your expectations at the door.
Speaking of expectations, Operation: Mindcrime II was an album I tried hard to not expect anything from. The live bootleg tracks the band posted on their site were mildly promising at best, but the quality wasn’t good enough to make a call. Then a radio version of “The Hands” was released, and my curiosity was peaked. “The Hands” is a great song. Could I expect more? I thought. It was tough to put that sort of faith into this album. Hear In The Now Frontier was the album where Queensrÿche really shifted styles. Empire is a world away from their more recent output; so how could we expect anything remotely comparable to the original Operation: Mindcrime album, a classic, possibly the greatest metal concept album of all time? Luckily, Operation: Mindcrime II turned out to be a pleasant surprise when it was finally released. Stylistically it bears little resemblance to the original album; but that’s no surprise considering the album was basically written by Geoff Tate, album producer Jason Slater, and former Klover—a great, short-lived punk band—frontman/guitarist and current Chris DeGarmo replacement Mike Stone.
(And for those who continue to insist that Chris DeGarmo would bring Queensrÿche back to their glory days, knows this: Chris wrote 90% of Hear In The Frontier, it was essentially a DeGarmo solo album; he later left Queensrÿche and formed the modern alt-rock band Spys4Darwin with the vocalist from Sponge and two Alice In Chains members; he then went on to contribute to songs that sounded nothing remotely like early Queensrÿche to Queensrÿche’s album Tribe; and finally his most recent output had him working with the very non-metal band Dredg. Chris DeGarmo is further away from the old Queensrÿche than any other member of the band. He won’t help. Please stop suggesting otherwise.) With that said, songs like “The Hands,”“Re-Arrange You,”“Signs Say Go,” and “Murderer?” are excellent, while many others are very good. Only a few tracks on Operation: Mindcrime II failed to hit their mark. The storyline was well done, but the mystery of the original isn’t found on this album. It’s a dramatic tale of Nikki’s final days, his struggle with life after prison, the lies, and the betrayal. A worthy conclusion, and a big surprise and a very good album; easily the best since the underrated Promised Land.
I tried hard to like Trivium’s first two albums, but it wasn’t happening. Musically the band is damn good. But Matt Heafy’s screams are terrible. He sounds like he’s dying of the flu, been smoking cigars for 40 years, and hasn’t had a drink of anything in weeks. Terrible. Then they recorded a cover of “Master Of Puppets” for a Metallica tribute album put out by Kerrang! magazine. This time out Heafy didn’t scream, but sang aggressively; and all of a sudden Trivium weren’t so bad to me. In fact, their cover of “Master Of Puppets” is one of the best I’ve ever heard. Then songs from their upcoming album, The Crusade, began to be posted online, and these songs were also sung in the same non-screamo retard manner; and again, Trivium weren’t so bad to me.
The Crusade turned out to be a great modern day metal album. Musically little changed, but with the exclusion of the screams the band sounded quite different. Sadly it seemed to just present another angle from which people could fling their annoying hate. It wasn’t old school enough for the old school fans, and it wasn’t metalcore enough for the emo turds. But it was just right for me! It’s not 100% original, but the songs are great and Heafy isn’t screaming. A slight stylistic shift and now I’m impressed. “Ignition,”“Detonation,”“Entrance Of The Conflagration,”“To The Rats,” and “Tread The Floods” are great old school metal songs with a new school approach, while “Anthem (We Are The Fire)” and “The Rising” are catchy 80’s metal jams. The bottom line is that The Crusade is a solid album for those openminded enough to give it a chance.
Tool lost me on this one. A few great songs, but overall a very boring experience for me. Maybe I didn’t get it. I don’t know. All I know is that every time I put this album on I just feel like the band kind of lost themselves being a little too self-indulgent for nothing more than the sake of being self-indulgent. 10,000 Days is not terrible by any means; but it’s only a hair above mediocre. The packaging is excellent, however. Too bad it couldn’t match the music.
Killswitch Engage embraced mainstream metalcore a little too much for this album. Alive Or Just Breathing, I think, will forever stand as the band’s best release. Howard Jones is a good singer, make no mistake, but original vocalist Jesse Leach (Seemless) is by far the better of the two. Leach’s days with Killswitch showcased him as a singer that sounded powerful and natural in tone, whereas Jones sounds very processed. The End Of Heartache, the first album with Jones, was also a very good album, but it would seem that the downward spiral began there. The music on As Daylight Dies is still very good, but the structures are mainstream cookie-cutter metalcore to the nth degree. The order of the day is screamo verses and cleanly-sung choruses. While the album is a good album, it pales in comparison to Alive Or Just Breathing and the self-titled debut. They can do much better than this.
Roadrunner Records annoys the hell out of me. Black Label Society is one of my favorite bands, and their new album, Shot To Hell, is a great album from what I’ve heard. Sadly, I haven’t bought it yet because Zakk and the boys decided to sign to Roadrunner; and long ago I vowed to never buy Roadrunner’s initial pressings because they continue to release those goddamned reissues. I’m all for a reissue with extra content, but if they insist on reissuing an album six months to a year after its initial release they need to start making it worth the extra money. Like the reissue of Jerry Cantrell’s Degradation Trip, for instance, which was a double album with eleven unreleased tracks. Now that was a worthy reissue. A reissue with worthless live songs, a video or two, and a track or two from an already released soundtrack or single being released six months after its first pressing is nothing but another way to rip off the band’s fans. And these labels will sit around and wonder why people continue to download their releases for free! So I’m disappointed in Roadrunner Records and all the bands that I like that released albums through them this past year (unless I got the promo for free—haha!). Bastards!
Nothing like shitting on the legacy of Chuck Schuldiner. We don’t need to see this played out online anymore. While I don’t think releasing unfinished demos and ideas was a good way for Guido Heijnens (Hammerheart Records/Karmageddon Media founder) to represent the late, great Schuldiner and his work; the bottom line is that he was within his rights to do so. But enough is enough with the battle over Chuck’s “legacy”—which is about money, in case anyone couldn’t figure this out. Chuck’s sister, Beth Schuldiner, needs to do the following:
1. Pay Guido Heijnens the money that he paid Chuck, the money that Chuck’s family likely inherited, spent, and do not want to pay back.
2. Either release the second Control Denied album, finished or not, or let it rest. We all know you have the masters; quit dangling it just out of the fans’ reach.
3. You’re out of line. Grow up. Move on. Find a justified crusade.
Chuck’s passing was a tragedy, indeed. But let his legacy be his music, not a stupid, childish, international online battle between his family and a (defunct) label owner. Or at least keep it one-on-one, because WE DON’T CARE!
— BEST SONG OF 2006 —Strapping Young Lad - You Suck
This past year was a ridiculously great year for music in general—tons and tons of great releases in all genres I like—not just metal. Coming up with a list of fifteen was virtually impossible, and many of those I chose could likely be swapped with other albums many other reviewers here listed. I tried to think back on the albums I think I listened to most. I gave Zero Hour the distinction of Best Metal Album of 2006, and they surely deserve it. I listened to that album a thousand times—at least! Had Solitude Aeturnus' new album, Alone, come out sooner they would like have taken the top spot. But even though I know I will love this album a few months from now, I can't know for sure; thus it's only fair to give it to Zero Hour and Specs Of Pictures Burnt Beyond, as I have given that album some rigorous listening. With the seemingly countless amazing releases we saw this past year, 2006 should go down as one of the best years for music in a long, long time.
And as we look back on 2006 we can do so without lament, because right there on the immediate horizon we’ve got plenty more to look forward to. 2007 will bring new releases from Iced Earth, Nightingale, Orphaned Land, Judas Priest, Masterplan, Threshold, Megadeth, Battlelore, Sirenia, Rebellion, Suspyre, Avantasia, Swallow The Sun, Slumber, Trouble, Tristania, Nightrage, Dark Tranquillity, Manowar, After Forever, Dark Moor, Deadsoul Tribe, Machine Head, Primal Fear, Symphorce, Brainstorm, and that’s only scratching the surface. If you thought 2006 was a great year for metal, get ready for 2007!
So as my first—and, sadly, final—year with MetalReviews.com comes to pass, I’d like to thank the team for making it a great one; but highest praise goes to the readers of this site, and to the bands that continue to make such great music—and even to those who do not! And a special thanks goes out to the forumites who made my 10-hour shifts at work much more enjoyable—and even to those who did not! Thanks for a great year!
Note: The above lists are in no special order.
