Members' Top Ten Metal Albums Lists
It’s time to take a quick look at some of the albums rated so highly by members here that they put them in their alltime top ten Metal albums list. As explained, before I started Metal Month II I received about ten of these, but as it was obviously impossible for me to listen to all of them I chose three, and this is the first of those choices.
I have no wish to downplay anyone’s ideas of what a good album is, or to rain on anyone’s choices, but given how much I have to listen to, how much time I have and the quite high possibility that many of these albums won’t chime with me, I’m going to listen to each once and then make some very short and basic comments on each which reflects my opinion only. You may think Godflesh is a great band or that some obscure German thrashcore album is the best ever made. You’re of course entitled to that opinion. I may not think the same. This does not mean I am dissing or denigrating your choice(s), merely voicing my own opinion on admittedly only one listen. As Francis Urquhart remarked: “You may very well think that; I could not possibly comment”.
So please, no wounded feelings or cries of outrage if my opinion differs from yours. And in all likelihood, in many of these choices, it will. Significantly.
So on with the first top ten list, which comes from
Janszoon was in fact one of the first to post a list (Goofle was the first: sorry yours didn’t get chosen) and I can see right away he has, as you would expect, some albums I have never heard of -- some bands I have never heard of! --- but perhaps surprisingly, on his list are two albums that not only have I heard of, but that I have heard, and reviewed! But let’s go in ascending order, beginning with his number
10.
Elvenfris --- Lykathea Aflame --- 2000
Oh Jansz! How could you? Grindcore? My most hated of all subgenres of Metal. Sigh. Well, a little about this band. They’re from the Czech Republic, have been around since 1997 when they were known as Appalling Spawn, under which name they released one album in 1999. But this is their only release under the new name, so it would seem both their debut and their swan song.
It seems to have those most horrible of death growls, the ones that don’t even sound human --- do they call them “Cookie Monster” vocals? --- anyway I hate them. The music does nothing for me either, but this is Janszoon’s choice so I’ll just sit here and take it till this eleven-track behemoth ends. To be fair, there are some unexpectedly melodic moments, like in “Bringer of Elvenfris flame”, but they’re few and far between and usually battered aside by hammerpunch guitar and suicidal drums, with a big helping of “Your-soul-is-damned” vocals, so nothing there for me to hang my bra on I’m afraid.
Well now hold on a moment. They seem to have gone all kind of proggy with “Flowering entities”, not quite as br00tal as the previous tracks. Can’t say I like it per se, but I hate it less than the three that have gone before, so that’s a step in the right direction. Hey! The vocals are even discernible here! I actually find myself grooving to “On the way home” --- until Cookie comes in that is. Um, hold on: the song faded? A grindcore song
faded? I didn’t even think they knew how to do that? I thought any producer who faded out a grindcore song was automatically crucified and made to listen to Justin Bieber on random repeat?
Wow. Now “Shrine of consolation” has a decent, understandable vocal. I guess I possibly like maybe 5% of this album, which is 5% more than I thought I would. Wouldn’t listen to it again though. Almost orchestral work on “Sadness and strength”, some eastern melodies too. Sitar? Some nice melody in “A step closer”: it even
slows down! No, I am
not making a sick joke! AND it FADES! An eleven-minute instrumental ends the album, so at least I won’t have to suffer those vocals. This is utterly beautiful, and the only one I could say I like --- love --- all the way through. A real surprise, and a stunning closer.
Where I can, I’ll be listing favourite tracks, but there’s just the one complete track I like on this, even if parts of some of them weren’t as bad as I expected them to be. That track is the closing one, “Walking in the garden of Ma’at”. Nevertheless, the album wasn’t quite the ordeal I had anticipated, so perhaps you’d be so good as to hand me back my bra now? No, that one, to the left. The blue lacy one. Yeah. Thanks.
And so we move on to number
9
And another grindcore band. You know, I may have learned a little from the previous choice not to judge a book by its cover, but the tiny Wiki page on these guys says that their music was used to torture a prisoner in the series “Homeland”, so I’m not holding out too much hope.
Amber gray --- Gridlink --- 2008
Nope, nothing here. Just noise, screams and more noise. At least the previous band had some --- compared to this lot, a whole pile of --- melody and some passages, even one full song I could enjoy. This is just torture, which is why I can see why they used it in the abovementioned show. Play this to me at full volume and you could have anything you want. Even hardcore Islamic terrorists couldn’t hold up to this. The only blessing is that none of the songs last over a minute almost, many less than that, so although there are eleven tracks they will soon all be played and I can get on to the next selection. Sorry Jansz but this is awful!
But thank the Metal Gods it’s all over in a few minutes and I can put this behind me, try to sleep at night…
So what have you for us next, Jansz? At number
8
we find
Blackjazz --- Shining --- 2010
This one was not easy to track down. Not only are there several bands called Shining, there are two Metal bands named shining. Two
Scandinavian metal bands! Anyway, we got there eventually and so this is an album by avant-garde metal/jazz fusion/experimental/Whatever-you’re-having-yerself band Shining, their fifth album. Now I have made no secret of my lack of love for jazz, and I have a tentative at best relationship with experimental music of any stripe, so this could be a banana skin (like I’m not already flat on my back and struggling for breath after Gridlink!) but we’ll see.
Oddly, of the eight tracks on show here, there are duplicates of two, albeit with differing lengths. This album is meant to mix extreme metal and jazz, and maybe it does: it’s certainly fast enough for the former and freeform enough (and annoying, to me, enough) for the latter, but it’s not for me. Again. Screechy, screamed vocals, blindingly fast guitars and too many horns, with no real melody I can ascertain. Meh. Frownland and bob probably love this. Sort of a Waitsish whispered vocal in “Fisheye”, which is a little better and “Exit sun” is a lot better --- well, for about half of it, till they start experimenting again. Even so, it’s the best I’ve heard on this album so far.
And that’s about it. The rest is, as I feared, mostly those annoying high-pitched horns I hate and a lot of other stuff jumbled together. Even the cover of Crimson’s “21st century schizoid man” can’t pull this album back from the brink for me. Not meaning to be dismissive; I’m sure this album is very close to Janszoon’s heart --- after all, it’s in his top ten --- and surely lots of others would enjoy and praise it. I’m just never going to be among them.
More of Jansz's list tomorrow! God help me...
