Metal Reviews

Musically these guys are top notch, killer drumming, guitar work? Some of the best their is or was in metal IMO.

However, Dane's vocals? Eh, I'm not sure how they'd sound with a different vocalist but he just seems a little bit off. I'm sure others have the same opinion.

What's your guys take, favorite album?

Good, not great band. Like you I preferred the music to Warrel Dane (Jeff Loomis and Van Williams are beasts on their instruments!) but his vocals could be decent, particularly the grunge styled ones.

Many people talk about Dreaming Neon Black as their best album, and it probably was the most cohesive one, but I found it dragged towards its slow, murky end. Politics of Ecstasy is faster, but less consistent. This Godless Endeavor gets my highest rating for being faster than DNB but more consistent than PoE.

But the most impressive Jeff Loomis solo was probably from Dead Heart in a Dead World. Skip to 3:10 of this track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4opKyZpeg

yeah, I love dead heart in a dead world.

I like the first half and the titletrack of this Godless endeavor, nothing else ever stuck out to me. Sanctuary and Serpent's Knight are both superior bands.

Yeah, that was the problem with Nevermore, they sounded good, often great, but the songwriting was pretty pedestrian.

I never got why Warrel's vocals put so many people off.

Its not his vocals. Its the fact the riffs are weak , and the songs go one for too long.

Some of us don't like the high falsetto stuff. That is for one why I never got into a lot of power/prog and Sanctuary. I always preferred Dane's vocals to the lyrics though, which are sometimes laughably bad in this band. The solos/leads generally overshadowed the riffs, and the very inconsistent songwriting.

There was times on This Godless Endeavor where I wasn't into the vocals.

Dead Heart in a Dead World? Vocals are as good as they're going to be.

Song "Your Poison Throne" off The obsidian conspiracy is a cool song. I like the gang vocals.

Been meaning to get into these guys for quite some time. I should get on that.

Not sure what it is about the vocals, but I really don't enjoy it. The guitar work is stellar though.

Yeah. If you haven't checked out Dead Heart in a Dead world check it out again, I find that to be his best vocal performance and it doesn't have those annoying moments.

It's actually his voice as a whole that I find annoying than what he does with it. But I do like some of their stuff. I will give Dead Heart In a Dead World a listen. If I can like Sacred Steel's War Gods Of Metal in spite of Gerrit Mutz's laughable, horrible or whatever you call it vocals, I may probably like DHIADW. Not comparing the two though. That's blasphemy. Just making a point that sometimes, I can ignore the fact that the vocalist doesn't impress me much, but still like an album.

I like This Godless Endevour's first three tracks especially and quite a few random tracks. I agree about the weak riffs at times. I was totally underwhelmed by Dreaming Neon Black.

These are the other songs (other than the first three from TGE) I consider masterpieces they wrote:

Garden of Gray
Matricide
Seed Awakening
Without Morals

It's hard stuff to get into. I just don't feel like listening to records a dozen times until bond with the songs and start really liking them. These days it's gotta be good right away or give me a reason to come back to it, I guess. There's a lot I haven't heard and I hate judging material based on pedestrian listening. There's quite a lot of music I wouldn't like now if I didn't hang in there.

I love WD's vocals for the record but I don't know if he's singing 100% correctly sometimes. I know he's damaged it to the point he claims can't sing high anymore, so he's had to have done something wrong considering someone like Fabio Lione who smokes is hitting higher and lower notes than ever and generally has only improved with age. I don't believe in the theory that the voice loses quality or range with age without some deficiency in technique being the culprit. It probably has to do with him claiming to be a baritone and singing down in the bass range. I am probably wrong though. There seems to be a lot of variance in people's endurance. Some guys voices never get tired at all, they smoke pot, do drugs and chain smoke and some guys have to be religious about taking care of it. Jeff Scott Soto talked about this in an interview where he takes an ungodly amount of aspirin, can't even drink a beer after singing and has to go to bed almost immediately afterwards. Of course Warrell could be bullshitting and doesn't like the tone of that register and refuses to do it anymore.

Loomis is a monster player but I remember being put off by the vocals as well. Not a horrible singer but bad enough I didn't pursue the band any further than I did with Politics of Ecstacy.