The Batlord

Dude, ignore the "death" part of melodic death metal. Melodic death metal stopped having anything to do with actual death metal some time in the 90s and they are as different as any two metal genres can be besides the odd heavier melodic death metal band.

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Trollheart

Okay. So another word for melodic death metal would then be melodic metal? But I have heard albums described as mdm which, when listened to, were much closer to what I would think of as DM. This one is not: other than the odd screeched vocal and a few banging riffs, it has, as you say, about as much to do with Death Metal of any stripe as, oh I don't know, Kesha does.

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The Batlord

Think of melodic death metal sort of like a devolution of death metal back to a modernized version of NWOBHM (roughly speaking). You had Carcass and At the Gates, two death metal bands, slowly getting more and more melodic with each release until they finally dropped Heartwork and Slaughter of the Soul (along with the preceding Terminal Spirit Disease EP) and sort of created the cutoff point. I'll throw Amorphis in there too with Tales from the Thousand Lakes. I'm sure someone more versed in the genre could give you a more in-depth intro but that's good enough I suppose.



Around the same time plus a year or two you had some other bands that were crossing the line even further like In Flames, Dark Tranquility, and Hypocrisy. In those days (mid-90s) those bands were going even further away from death metal with a sort of "turbo-charged Iron Maiden" sound (in the words of Kerry King) that was much more slick, contained little true extreme metal besides extreme-ish vocals. Some of it was even kissing cousins to power metal tbh. I honestly think you'd eat up Dark Tranquility.



In Flames are worth their own paragraph as once they got going they basically dragged melodic death metal with them as far as where the style would end up when it became "mainstream", and so you can almost use them all by themselves to show what happened to the genre.



After that I guess you can remember whatever melodic death metal you've heard from after the early 2000s and compare. The genre didn't do much after that and became a stagnant formula for European bands who I guess figured they could make money off of it. Know Soilwork? That.

TLDR: Just remember that time you heard Heartwork and then pay attention to the In Flames section and you'll hear all you need to know. Do with this post what you will, but hopefully it'll clear some things up.

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Anteater

Bleh, melodic death metal was fine after the 2000's. Don't listen to the purists. If it has a hook and doesn't completely sacrifice heaviness, then it works. Soilwork are miles beyond Dark Tranquility or In Flames at this point in the game. Plus their songwriting gets better with every release.

The real champs in the genre these days are guys like Christian Alvestem (Solution .45, formally of Scar Symmetry) who snarls with the best of them but has a great pure clean singing voice as well.

But to be fair, its all just basically elaborate pop with a death metal influence on the backburner.

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The Batlord

Oh and I am neither a melodeath nor a death metal purist. I likes me some 90s MD, but it's really not my genre for the most part. That post-Reroute to Remain **** (and Reroute to Remain to an extent) is just tepid, vapid nonsense with little to no personality and is one of the nadirs of metal.

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Trollheart

Album title: Why Love Now
Artist: Pissed Jeans
Genre: Hardcore Punk/Noise Rock
Nationality: American
Release date: February 24
Position in Discography: Fifth
Fear Factor: Critical
Familiar with this artist? No
Familiar with the genre or subgenre? No
Average RYM Score: 2.94
Ah yes, just the sort of thing I like! When Wiki describes this band as "loud, heavy, noisy punk rock” (that's actually a quote from the band themselves) you know this is about as much up my alley as a Marillion triple boxset would be up Frownland's. Still, if punk has one saving grace for me, it's that it almost invariably turns out short albums with short songs. This one clocks in at a mere half-hour, so at least it won't take long to get through. Well, might as well push play: this album ain't gonna hate itself! Slower than I expected on the first track, certainly, and for the second too: definitely less frenetic and mad than I thought I'd be hearing. Almost metal in some cases. A whole lot more accessible and not nearly as raucous as I had feared. Not like those bloody Priests. And this guy can actually sing. There are some pretty bitchin' grinding riffs here; whoever's playing the guitar really knows what he's doing.

“I'm a Man” is pretty hilarious really, and yeah, it does get a little more frantic towards the tail-end of the album. I wouldn't be a fan by any means, but this was not the dreadfest I had been anticipating.

Check out more from this artist? Unlikely
Check out more from this genre or subgenre? Probably will have to


Expectation Index: 4

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Trollheart

Album title: Close to the Sun
Artist:Place Vendome
Genre: Melodic Hard Rock/AOR
Nationality: German
Release date: February 24
Position in Discography: Fourth
Fear Factor: Very Low
Familiar with this artist? Yes
Familiar with the genre or subgenre? Very
Average RYM Score: 3.33
I've heard two of the four albums from Michael Kiske's foray into AOR, and liked both of them, and this one includes guest guitar from his ex-Helloween bandmate Kai Hansen, so what's not to like? Helloween fans may snap at Kiske for “selling out”, but some of the work PV have put out has been, in my opinion, as heavy as some of the best of the famous German Power Metal band. ****, it's not like he suddenly started writing pop tunes! Get over yourselves, Helloweeners!

Yeah well I have to admit, though I like this, as I knew I would, it's not really impressing me as much as I had hoped it would. A little generic, so far. The ballad “Strong” is a nice highlight, but no, overall I'd have to say I'm a lot more disappointed with this than I had expected to be. It's kind of, as Batty said recently, bleh.

Check out more from this artist? I've still to listen to the second album, so I guess we'll see
Check out more from this genre or subgenre? Always


Expectation Index: 8

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Trollheart

Album title: Five
Artist: Prince Royce
Genre: Bachata/Pop/R&B
Nationality: American
Release date: February 24
Position in Discography: Ffith
Fear Factor: Moderate
Familiar with this artist? No
Familiar with the genre or subgenre? No
Average RYM Score: 3.00
Hey, wonder if he has a brother called Rolls? No? Suit yourself then. Hold on: bacha-what? What even is that? Oh. I see. Some sort of depressive bitter Latin music. Nice. So this has songs in English and in Spanish, and features the likes of Shakira, Chris Brown and a whole lot of people I don't know, but you might. Latin influence is evident right from the start, though I don't detect any bitterness, at least not yet. Quite uptempo and happy, but also pretty bland and boring. Oh and how inventive: let's have some reggae beats too, cos no other pop artist does that. To be totally fair, this is probably the most interesting track - “Ganas Locas” - which is not saying much though. Shakira's up next, so hopefully that one will be better. Hips don't lie, y'know? Yeah, the girl bosses this track totally.

And back to bored I go. He's even singing in English now, and I could not care less. The most appropriate lyric here is in “Amor Prohibido” when he sings “Ay yi yi!” My thoughts exactly. Must be honest though: this bachata stuff? Ain't heard anything here that I would consider in the least bitter, unless you include having to go through this to the bitter end. Pretty vacuous, empty pop pap really. I wouldn't even call it r&b; just pure pop, and not very good pop at that. Thank Jaysus! We're on the last one. Man that was terrible. No, not even terrible. If it was terrible it would at least have made some impression on me, whereas this just felt like, I don't know, turning around when you think you hear someone calling your name but there's nobody there. Shrug, with a capital S.

Edit: actually, the last track is great, but only because it reminds me so much of “Cuba” by The Gibson Brothers. Sigh.

Check out more from this artist? Oh, no.
Check out more from this genre or subgenre? Yes


Expectation Index: 0

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Trollheart

Album title: Freedom Highway
Artist: Rhiannon Giddens
Genre: Folk/Americana/Old-Time
Nationality: American
Release date: February 24
Position in Discography: Second
Fear Factor: Moderate
Familiar with this artist? No
Familiar with the genre or subgenre? No
Average RYM Score: 3.29
What a great name Rhiannon is! Conjures up all sorts of magical images, legend and fairytales and so forth. Perhaps appropriate that this is then an album of road tales from America's history, and ooh is this dark when it kicks off. Love the banjo, slow and moody and very reminiscent of Bernie Leadon; her voice suits the music well and there's a real sense of drama building about this. Nice. This seems quite stripped down and barebones so far. I like this a lot. Her voice is really powerful without being overpowering: think Billie or Ella, you're in the basic area. Her cover of Baez's “Birmingham Sunday” sends chills, man. Chills.

Interesting: there's a rap coming out of nowhere on “Better Get It Right the First Time”, which is a kind of soul/gospel hybrid, though “We Could Fly” drags a little and is kind of dreary really. This is however quickly relieved by the dixieland bop of “Hey Bebe” with some super cool trumpet, trombone or some damn wind instrument anyway. Very jazzy, but that's kind of the problem. I see now why Wiki included the odd genre tag “Old-Time” here: the album has gone from a dark country/folk style into some kind of twenties jazz/ragtime thing, and I have to say I don't like the change. I've never quite altered my opinion so drastically of an album as I listened, but this is literally a record of two halves, and I'm losing interest as we enter the second half. Okay, it reverts to the original folk/country style eventually, but I'm just not as sold on this now as I was within the first three tracks.

Check out more from this artist? I'm really not sure
Check out more from this genre or subgenre? Yes

(would have been at least two points higher if the album had stayed the same quality as it began)

Expectation Index: 9

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Trollheart

Album title: Inception
Artist: Sanctuary
Genre: Power Metal/Thrash Metal
Nationality: American
Release date: February 24
Position in Discography: Fourth
Fear Factor: Low
Familiar with this artist? No
Familiar with the genre or subgenre? Yes
Average RYM Score: 3.64
This is, apparently, a bunch of unused songs from 1986 or prior, and man does it sound like it! Production is awful, the riffs and rhythms are right out of Maiden's second album, and basically it just sounds so dated. Plus I was convinced the singer was a woman – it ain't. This is pretty poor now to be honest. Oh dear Dio! Now they're covering Jefferson Airplane's “White Rabbit”. Help me. All I can say about this album is that these recordings, obviously considered not good enough for their debut album, are still not good enough and I have no idea why Sanctuary thought it was a good idea to inflict them on the twenty-first century, but they stand very much as anachronisms and show how out of touch this band is. When was their last actual album? 2014. Hmm. But prior to that, 1990 and before that 1986, which I think shows they hardly have their finger on the heavy metal pulse. Hell, they'd be hard pressed to find it! Disappointing and dull, an album very much out of time and causing me to run out of patience.

Okay, the last three are not terrible, though “I Am Insane” sounds very like “Two Minutes to Midnight.” Spookily so. Probably the most/only interesting thing about this collection of rejects that should have been left on the cutting room floor, where they belong.
Check out more from this artist? Probably not
Check out more from this genre or subgenre? Yes, always


Expectation Index: 9

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