Metal Reviews

These days Burning Bridges is probably my favourite AE album. Bring back Liiva!

Damn straight! Although if they keep up the path of Rise of the Tyrant, it's good. I love that album, honestly. I hope 2009 will be as good a year for death as 2008 was.

NP: Arch Enemy - Pilgrim

Pretty much......I'm a sucker for solid vocals. I love some of the music of bands like Dark Tranquility and I do enjoy some of Opeth's material but I'm just not into growls and screetches for vocals. I know it adds to the atmosphere of extreme/death/black metal but as a kid, I was weaned on bands like UFO, Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, Sabbath, Uriah Heep etc. They all had great vocalists and that still continues to be a top priority for me in metal music. From a site that used to be all power/prog and traditional metal 5 or 6 years ago, now I'm the outsider!!!

Hey, at least unlike me you didn't have an Eminem fixation until you were 16/17. Dark, dark times......

+1 dude, Pilgrim is fucking A.

I loved RotT as well. And Amott is easily my favourite wah wah using guitarist, though I was listening to Draconian Times yesterday so I definitely have a close second.

Hey don't worry, there's still plenty of us who read your reviews as they come. Too much death/black would be boring, anyway.

Awesome. By far my favorite PL album. I'm one of the few who wasn't into the early stuff (Gothic and Shades of God, namely) and that really liked the more electro sound of Symbol of Life and the self-titled. In Requiem for some reason just won't click. I need to get back to it.

Didn't the self titled have no electro elements on it as it was being touted as a return to form for PL after what everybody saw as the shitty electro albums?

You're right, the one I meant was Believe in Nothing.

I did like the self-titled, but not as much. Some of it was great like Accept the Pain, Close My Eyes and others. In Requiem... I don't know. Something about it just doesn't sit with me. I like the single (The Enemy) and Fallen Children is good too but the rest is just ok.

I guess it's me getting older and softer, lol. Some of my favorite bands have changed their sound and are coming back to their roots (Moonspell, namely) and I as much I wanted this and should be thrilled, I just don't seem to enjoy it as much. Love some stuff on Night Eternal and Memorial but just nowhere as much as say, Darkness and Hope or The Antidote.

Still have to hear The Antodote, but Night Eternal and Memorial are better than Darkness and Hope.

Night Eternal was really good. Like, a future classic.

I have to agree.

Not dark, stupid times. I like hip-hop, but Eminem is a tragedy to the genre. Better listen to Jedi Mind Tricks.

Well obviously. In any case I loathe rap now so don't bother.

Whenever I'm in a rapacious mood I tend to stick some old Public Enemy/Cypress Hill/Ice Cube/Wu Tang on, or some Dalek on, despite albums from Nas, MF Doom, Mos Def, and Snoop Doggy Dog lurking in my hard drive. Nothing beats the first four I mentioned, and Dalek constantly amaze me with what they do with Noise.

I used to like MNM too, but went off him after he apologised for the homophobic stuff.

Well, they're much heavier and more aggressive, that's for sure. For the record, I think Night Eternal is much better than Memorial. On Memorial, I only liked Finisterra, Blood Tells, Sanguine and Luna. Night Eternal is generally good, I don't care for Hers is the Twilight but the rest is good.

It's just that when I have a Moonspell fix, I tend to reach more for Darkness and Hope or The Antidote than the last two (not counting Anno Satanae... I love the re-recordings). But that's just me. I always had a weakness for Fernando's clean crooning. I'm one of the very few that loves Sin/Pecado, so that gives you a clue...

If you don't like Darkness and Hope, you probably won't like The Antidote much more but there's some awesome stuff on it like Everything Invaded, The Southern Deathstyle (surely one of the most intense Moonspell songs ever) and Capricorn At Her Feet.

The Antidote was my first Moonspell, great album.

Ahhh me too man, I was a sophomore in high school when they first released that album and it even though I was listening to Slipknot and getting my first real feel of what metal was the album got me into Rotting Christ some Dimmu Borgir and gradually helped me branch out into darker material. They are my favorite band and although in my personal opinion Memorial is darker and overall a better album then Night Eternal. I still sing along with Scorpion flower hehe

Night Eternal is better than Memorial IMO.

And isn't Sin/Pecado a classic on this site?

Actually, it is... but that's pushing it a bit, maybe. It may be a "cult" album for the band in that it's album some "get" and some don't but take a quick look at the comments and you'll find out not many agree on such a status (myself included). It's not my favorite Moonspell album (like most, that belongs to Wolfheart, now being very closely followed by Anno Satanae... who needs another Deamonarch album now that we that this? ) but I still listen to it often. Abysmo is one of my favorite Moonspell songs. Even within Moonspell fans, Sin/Pecado is often hotly debated.

I don't know... what kind of bugs me about Night Eternai is the lyrics more than the music, honestly. It's how Fernando's great dark poetry on the likes of Sin/Pecado or The Antidote shifted towards a more satanic approach. Don't get me wrong, I'm Satanist-Chaoist, so it's not the subject matter that bothers me. I don't know how to say... it's just that I feel it's somewhat purposely provocative at times (At Tragic Heights or Night Eternal) and I don't think it suits Moonspell so much. They're also more simplistic. Some are great like Moon in Mercury but some leave me indifferent, like Shadow Sun or Hers in the Twilight. I much prefer the witty, tongue-in-cheek stuff of Sin/Pecado or the more philosophical meanderings of The Butterfly Effect (even though the music kind of sucked). But then, lyrics for me are as important or at times even more important than the music; probably because I'm a writer myself.

Sorry for ranting so much.

Bottom line: All Moonspell albums are great to me in their own different ways, for their own reasons. It's just that when it comes to personal taste, some do better than others for me.