Metal Reviews

You address quite a few things in your post so I will respond to one part of it, namely, of musical taste and its flux. I still love the bands which I first fell in love with. Bands such as Emperor/Ihsahn, Enslaved, Iron Maiden, Mercufyl Fate/King Diamond, My Dying Bride, Opeth, King Crimson, and The Tea Party.

However, outputs by bands such as Tribulation, Lychgate, Inquisition, A Forest of Stars, Hidden In The Fog, and Esoteric are all new favourites which I have come to love equally. I started listening to classical music 6 years ago and jazz about the same time. I still love them dearly. The only genre I never listen to anymore, at least in the past two years, is electronica.

I have maintained my roots and have expanded on new musical horizons. I firmly believe in natural progression rather than spontaneous leaps. Natural gradation persists longer than any sudden swing.

yeah i've never really hand any sudden shifts in musical tastes. closest is probably when i started to appreciate jazz fiveish years ago (someday i plan on moving my jazz tastes beyond the 50s but i've been planning that for probably four years now) since that opened up a lot of music to me. but as i've started appreciating new things i've tended to also drop things by the roadside. i'm not sure how i feel about that yet! on one hand my tastes are imo steadily moving away from dumb garbage and towards dope tunes (also new things get me childlike excited and thats great), but at the same time it's kinda sad that i can count the number of bands that i enjoyed 10 years ago that i still enjoy now on one or two hands. and i'm wondering if that drift will continue and maybe someday i'll lose my patience for even those

I'm sorry if I conveyed my words in a manner which was misinterpreted. I was not implying that you have had any sudden shifts but that sudden shifts usually don't last very long. Change is the nature of reality as you very well know.

Appreciating that you can listen to whatever you find enjoyable is the dividing line of metalhead maturity, I think. I like jazz, but only when in certain moods - it's always good cooking music, too.

yeah. listening to other genres is great too because you start hearing their echoes in music you were already familiar with. like i've gotten into swing music in the last three years, and one of the dudes from The Postman Syndrome/Day Without Dawn's singing voice is all up into that jazzy stylings. or Zebulon Pike have hefty echoes of Bartok and Stravinsky all thru their tunes. like i guess i always knew those two bands had classical/jazz influences but now i can really hear it for myself.

or pretty much every metal band is replaying Wagner. he is so metal holy cow

Can't argue with that. I'm listening to Grieg again in tandem with the Norwegian 2nd Wave recordings, I'd say he certainly had influence on some of those bands, more so Emperor than say, Gorgoroth.

slow down alvin and the chipmunks and you get black sabbath

whoda thunkit

http://www.gq.com/story/chipmunks-slowe ... al-as-hell

This is surprisingly good:

http://www.metalsucks.net/2015/12/07/li ... e-curezum/

First song is blek metle, second is total Godflesh. Not listened to The Cure in ages, should dig some out.

Oh like this a lot, thanks for the find. I was always a big fan of Disintegration, but will have to relisten to Pornography.

Abbath has done a cover of Riding on the Wind. It's either brilliant or terrible, I can't quite decide:

http://abbath.bandcamp.com/track/riding-on-the-wind

The vocals are pretty cringeworthy considering it's a Priest cover but the music itself is fine. Still looking forward to Abbath's solo debut, which is coming out in late January. If Count the Dead (A-Side to the Priest track) is any indication of what to expect, then it should be a pretty solid album.

Hopefully! Speaking of Abbath:

http://shop.season-of-mist.com/abbath-abbath-snow-globe

Abbath snow globes! Available from February! Do they think black metal fans don't celebrate Christmas or something...

That is too much fun. Abbath should have done this a long time ago. If only it chimed "Tyrants" then my Black Metal Christmas wish would come true.

Music is alright, but in no way compares to the original. When I saw them during the SFV tour, they played this, and it was incredible. The studio version is fucking awesome, but the difference between studio and live is like Popeye before and after a spinach injection.

First Lemmy, then David Bowie, another giant leaving us. Fuck cancer, and fuck 2016 already.

http://www.metalsucks.net/2016/01/11/na ... ith-music/

Blake Judd isn't dead in a ditch, hooray. Let's hope he can stay off drugs and stop making Nachtmystium's name a laughingstock.

lol

http://pitchfork.com/news/65463-agalloc ... al_twitter

Agalloch have split up.

A shame, but at least I thought they ended the project very well with both Faustian Echoes and Serpent and the Sphere (which I know many of you didn't like).

Turns out they haven't split, but John Haughm has grown an ego and kicked everyone else out. Hmm.